Spotify has announced two new developments in its push into non-music content: a video podcast deal with Netflix and statistics that show subscribers are quickly adopting audiobooks on the platform.
Starting in the U.S. in early 2026, podcasts from Spotify Studios and The Ringer, a media company founded by sportswriter Bill Simmons that was acquired by Spotify in 2020, will be available on Netflix, the streaming giant announced Tuesday (Oct. 14). Among the shows that will be available at the partnership’s onset are The Bill Simmons Show, the basketball oriented The Zach Lowe Show, true crime titles Conspiracy Theories and Serial Killers, and pop culture podcasts The Rewatchables and The Big Picture.
For Netflix, video podcasts provide an additional way to reach viewers, explained Lauren Smith, Netflix vp of content licensing and programming strategy. “As video podcasts continue to grow in popularity, our partnership with Spotify allows us to bring full video versions of these top shows to both Netflix and Spotify audiences,” she said in a statement. “From pop culture and lifestyle to true crime and sports, this curated selection of video podcasts adds fresh voices and new perspectives to Netflix, making our entertainment lineup more exciting than ever.”
Spotify also announced a slew of audiobook statistics that show the company is making progress in its ambition to advance the size of the audiobook market. Of subscribers who are eligible to stream audiobooks on Spotify, more than half have done so, the company revealed Tuesday. Audiobook listeners are up 36% year over year, and listening hours are up 37% year over year.
Spotify made audiobooks available for streaming in the U.K. and Australia in October 2023, followed by the U.S. a month later. Subscribers to the Premier tier are given 15 hours of listening per month and can purchase additional time. Audiobooks are currently available to Spotify subscribers in 14 countries, including the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France, Australia, the Netherlands and Ireland. Approximately 500,000 titles are available in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.
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In the year since audiobooks launched in France and Benelux, French and Dutch listening hours are up 10% month over month, Spotify reported. In the six months since launching in Germany, audiobook listeners are up over 9% month over month.
Spotify entered the audiobook market with the intention of taking on the entrenched leader in the market, Amazon-owned Audible. The goal, CEO Daniel Ek explained in Feb. 2024, is to “grow the pie for the publishing industry and expand the interest in audiobooks to an entirely new set of listeners.” That required raising prices, however, and Spotify increased its monthly fee in the U.S. to $11.99 for individuals in June 2024. Audiobook-free options are available for existing Spotify subscribers for $10.99 per month.
Audiobooks can also help Spotify’s bottom line. Ek said in 2023 that offering the long-form audio content “will increase engagement on Spotify, which will then…reduce churn,” or the percentage of subscribers who lapse in a month. Churn results in additional costs to re-acquire the lapsed subscribers and customer acquisition costs to recruit new subscribers. As Billboard reported in 2021, Citi analyst Jason Bazinet estimated that Spotify’s churn rate fell from 7.7% in 2015 to 4% in 2020, due primarily to family plans that kept people subscribing longer and raised customers’ lifetime value.
