Spotify Now Offers Narrated Magazine Articles to Premium Users

Spotify is once again expanding its content offering with the addition of long-form articles from popular magazines. The company’s Audiobooks team has teamed up with Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Vogue, Variety, Billboard, Vibe, GQ, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Pitchfork, and other publications to create narrated versions of their articles that Premium users will be able to listen to as part of their monthly audiobooks listening quota.

“With Articles, we’re introducing long-form journalism in audio as a natural extension of the music, podcasts, and audiobooks people already come to Spotify for, focused on topics we know they love. By bringing shorter form content into the mix, we’re meeting audiences where they are to help build healthy listening habits, ultimately growing engagement with books over time,” said Colleen Prendergast, Licensing Lead at Spotify Audiobooks.

Narrated magazine articles are launching today in markets where Spotify audiobooks are available. The streaming platform is starting with a curated collection of over 650 magazine articles narrated in English, and each of them is under two hours long. Spotify Free users can also purchase these narrated articles for $1.99.

Spotify Premium users currently enjoy 15 hours of audiobook (and now narrated articles) listening time every month, and it’s possible to extend this quota by purchasing top-ups. Since launching Audiobooks two years ago, Spotify says that it now has “tens of millions of new readers”, with listening hours increasing 60% year over year. While audiobook listeners get access to AI-generated recaps and an intelligent Page Match feature, the Spotify team has yet to say if its narrated articles will also benefit from these recent advancements.