YouTube is planning to add audiobooks to its Premium subscription, the WSJ reports

YouTube is in talks with publishers to add audiobooks to its service, reports theWall Street Journal. This could be officially announced next year, but Google is yet to officially comment on the matter. According to theJournal, YouTube will do the opposite – it will bundle audiobook listening with its ad-free Premium plan. Presumably, this will act as another selling point for the Premium plan compared to thecheaper Premium Lite plan. And it will partially make up for therecent price hikes. Google addedpodcast supportto YouTube Music back in 2023, if you prefer podcasts over audiobooks. They are available for online and offline listening with a Premium subscription (ad-free, of course). Premium Lite excludes music but it does keep ad-free playback for podcasts.

Anyway, this move will put YouTube into more direct competition with the likes of Spotify. Spotify launched anaudiobook-only tiera couple of years ago, in addition to having them available as part of the Premium plan. It expanded its audiobook service toover 180 marketsearlier this year. It also has a clever feature calledPage Match– if you started reading a physical book but wanted to switch over to an audiobook, you can snap a photo of the page you are on and Spotify will automatically start playing the audiobook from that point. Source(paywall) |Via