Photo Credit: Distingué CiDDiQi
With an eye on challenging Spotify and Amazon’s Audible, YouTube is reportedly preparing to add audiobooks to its Premium subscription offering.
That possible audiobooks expansion surfaced in a Wall Street Journal report, though at the time of this writing, Google/Alphabet hadn’t commented publicly on the rumored buildout.
But per the outlet, the tech giant’s been engaged in talks with (book) publishers in recent months ahead of a possible launch sometime next year.
As mentioned, YouTube Premium customers are expected to gain access to audiobooks as part of their existing subscriptions; this includes a choice of one title per month to access on a permanent basis, according to the early rumblings.
Additionally, an “all-you-can-listen” library, featuring a rotating selection of titles, would sweeten the pot for subscribers, the Journal relayed.
Unsurprisingly, the expansion would also reportedly coincide with a crackdown targeting unauthorized audiobooks on YouTube, besides the addition of listening tools such as bookmarks.
At this early stage of the game, those brass-tacks details are all we have to work with, and it will, of course, be worth keeping an eye out for concrete information provided by YouTube itself.
Closer to the present, DMN Pro’s been tracking YouTube Music’s unexpected subscriber increases throughout 2026; the ongoing growth is attributable in part to a smart Premium-centered bundling strategy and has materialized despite a new round of price bumps.
As such, incorporating another feature would presumably help Premium/Music keep on adding users. Earlier in October, upon announcing an audiobooks expansion of its own, Spotify disclosed surpassing “more than one million Audiobooks+ subscribers” and $100 million or so in annual recurring revenue.
Put differently, amid ever-intense music streaming and podcasting competition, targeting audiobooks seems like a logical next step for YouTube.
And on the royalties side, word of the rumored buildout is timely given the intense Phonorecords V rate-setting proceedings. That said, it’s unclear whether adding audiobooks to Premium would fuel significant changes to the current bundling math.
Technically, Premium bundles already account for a significant portion of YouTube’s paid subs, but aren’t driving a noticeable mechanicals discount from the standalone Music tier, DMN Pro data shows.
A closing note: Although late to the audiobooks party, YouTube could have something of an advantage due to its video dominance. A quick search shows that “video audiobooks,” meaning audiobooks accompanied by animations and/or on-screen text, are, in fact, finding sizable-enough audiences.
(Also, Spotify’s been incorporating visual elements into certain audiobooks for years now.)
Admittedly, these watchers/listeners would probably benefit from pivoting to proper books. But the bigger takeaway is that video may well be a factor here – just as it is in podcasting and more.
