YouTube to Add Audiobooks to Premium Plan, WSJ Reports

According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube is in talks with publishers to add audiobooks to its service and may announce the change next year. Google has not provided an official comment on the discussions.

That approach would differ from the Google Play Store, which has offered audiobooks since 2018 but sells them on a per-title basis rather than as part of a subscription. The Journal says YouTube would instead bundle audiobook listening with its ad-free Premium subscription, making it a potential additional selling point over the cheaper Premium Lite tier and, the Journal suggests, a partial response to recent price increases.

How this fits with YouTube Music and the wider market

Google added podcast support to YouTube Music in 2023, and podcasts are available for both online and offline listening with a Premium subscription. Premium Lite excludes music but retains ad-free playback for podcasts, which helps explain how Google is positioning different tiers around audio content.

The move would put YouTube in more direct competition with Spotify. Spotify introduced an audiobook-only tier a couple of years ago while also offering audiobooks within its Premium plan, and it expanded its audiobook service to more than 180 markets earlier this year. Spotify also offers a Page Match feature, where a user can photograph the page they are reading and the service will start playing the audiobook from that point.