Spotify (SPOT) plans to offer up to 15 hours of free audiobooks to subscribers each month in an effort to better compete with Amazon.com's (AMZN) Audible and find a path to profitability.
The streaming company said Tuesday that it will make more than 150,000 audiobooks available to existing premium subscribers in the United Kingdom and Australia, and expand to U.S. users later this winter. The audiobooks the company plans to offer include bestsellers such as Jennette McCurdy's memoir "I'm Glad My Mom Died" and award-winning works such as Min Jin Lee's novel "Pachinko."
Under the new service, premium Spotify users can listen to up to 15 hours of audiobooks per month under their existing subscription plan, and can buy an additional 10 hours of listening beyond that for $10.99.
Spotify has signed deals with all five major publishing houses, including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster; Schuster, along with hundreds of other independent publishers. The company says it plans to consistently offer more than 70 percent of its best-selling books.