Spotify recently held an investor day where they announced new initiatives and milestones.
- In June they will launch Audiobook Creation Tools, powered by ElevenLabs, by invite only for English-language books by self-published authors. Use of the service doesn’t confine authors to Spotify; the AI narration can be distributed anywhere. Learn more. (ElevenLabs users could already create AI-narrated audiobooks and sell them through Spotify.)
- Spotify is also launching “personal podcasts,” where an AI agent generates a daily, private briefing for you, saved in your Spotify library.
- Spotify is trying out human-narrated audio versions of longform journalism, called Articles. Each article is under two hours long and available to Premium users as part of their monthly audiobooks allowance. (Free Spotify users can purchase for $1.99 each.) Articles are licensed from magazines such as Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Vogue, WIRED, Vanity Fair, and others.
- Not unsurprisingly given the above: Spotify has also launched a verified badge for musicians and podcasters. Spotify says the badge “shows an artist profile has been reviewed and meets Spotify’s criteria for authenticity and trust.” Creators with the badge have consistent listener activity and engagement, good standing with Spotify’s policies, and signals of a “real artist” in the profile. (Amazon, are you paying attention?)
Spotify said it’s earning about $8 million per month from premium subscribers who choose to buy beyond their 15 free hours of audiobooks a month. Half of Spotify’s audiobook listeners are under 35, and audiobook listening hours grew 60 percent from 2024 to 2025.
Meanwhile, ElevenLabs announced they’re adding 200,000 premium audiobooks for ElevenReader Ultra subscribers in their ElevenReader app, which allows people to upload any document or webpage and have an AI voice read it to them. Subscribers can pay $11 per month for 20 hours of audiobook listening. Publishers participating include HarperCollins and Blackstone. This makes ElevenLabs a competitor to Spotify.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
