Spotify is expanding audiobooks from 22 markets to more than 180 by the end of 2026, putting books in front of a potential 750 million listeners. The rollout started Wednesday and was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair, with new markets getting more than 350,000 titles across more than 120 languages, including new catalogs in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Polish, according to Spotify’s newsroom. In much of Africa, Asia and Argentina, the Audiobooks+ add-on will be the main way in.
The business case is already showing up. Spotify says Audiobooks+ passed one million subscribers and $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just over a year, while monthly audiobook listeners grew nearly 40% and listening hours climbed more than 30%. Until now the service lived mostly in English-speaking markets plus a handful of European countries, so this is Spotify taking its fight with Audible worldwide, as TechCrunch noted.