Spotify has launched audiobooks in India, widening its offering beyond music and podcasts. Through a new plan called Audiobooks+, priced at ₹199 a month, listeners on both Free and Premium tiers get 15 hours of listening across the full catalogue. They can also top up their hours or buy individual titles outright.
At launch, the catalogue includes more than 3,50,000 English titles and almost 7,000 Indian-language audiobooks across Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. Literary picks include Premchand’s Godaan, Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan and Tagore’s Kabuliwala. Personalised recommendations and audiobook charts will help users discover titles, while Page Match lets them scan a book’s ISBN and continue listening from the exact page. Offline downloads and a sleep timer are also available.
The launch also brings Spotify for Authors to India. Independent and self-published writers can distribute audiobooks on the platform, view listener insights worldwide and use marketing tools such as redemption codes. Partnerships are non-exclusive, so authors remain free to publish elsewhere.
Amarjit Singh Batra, GM South Asia, Middle East, Africa and MD India at Spotify, said storytelling in India has always been as much about listening as reading, and the aim is to make books as accessible as music and podcasts. Globally, monthly audiobook listeners have grown around 40% year on year, and the platform now carries over 8,00,000 titles.
