YouTube Wants A Piece Of The Audiobook Market – Should Audible And Spotify Be Worried?

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve stumbled on a full audiobook on YouTube, usually uploaded by someone who almost certainly doesn’t own the rights and set to a still image of a forest. It now looks like YouTube would like to do the whole thing properly. The platform is reportedly considering a dedicated audiobook feature that could launch in 2027.

Audible and Spotify are the names getting the attention, but Amazon, Apple and a bunch of other audiobook platforms have been selling audiobooks for years as well. Each of them earns its money in a different way, while YouTube would be turning up with an audience rather than a library.

YouTube Is Talking To Publishers, But Nothing Is Confirmed

The reported plan is to bundle audiobooks into YouTube Premium, which costs $15.99 a month in the US, rather than only selling individual titles. It’s still unclear how the content would be presented or whether people could buy single books.

The US audiobook market generated $2.43 billion in revenue in 2025, according to the Audio Publishers Association. The association also found that 45% of audiobook listeners surveyed had listened to a free audiobook on YouTube in the past year. YouTube could give publishers another way to earn revenue from listening that already happens on the platform, while giving subscribers another reason to stick around.

Audible Has Built Its Own Library

Amazon says Audible’s catalogue runs past 800,000 audiobooks, podcasts and Originals, and in the UK it offers Standard and Premium membership plans. Standard lets members select one title a month, while Premium includes a monthly credit and access to thousands of titles in the Plus Catalogue.

Anything bought with a credit stays in your library after you cancel, which makes Audible feel more like a bookshelf than a rental. YouTube could win on convenience, since the app is already on most phones, but anyone who listens for hours a week and wants a library they actually own may not trade that for a perk inside a video subscription.

Spotify Has Already Added Audiobooks To Its Music Subscription

Spotify announced audiobooks as a growth area in 2022 and now says it offers more than 700 000 titles. It has also added Page Match, which lets you scan a page of a physical book and jump to the same spot in the audiobook, plus Audiobooks+, which offers additional listening hours on eligible plans.

Spotify has already worked out how to put audiobooks inside a music subscription, so a YouTube bundle would be copying a playbook that has been running for a few years. If YouTube offered an allowance that looked more generous than Spotify’s monthly hours, I’d expect Spotify to feel it and it would be hard to blame anyone for comparing the two options – because who doesn’t love a good deal, right?

Amazon, Apple And The Specialists Are Still In The Room

Amazon has two doors into the same room, because Audible sits alongside Amazon Music. Eligible Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers can listen to one audiobook a month through their subscription, while Audible members can access a much wider range of titles through their separate membership.

Apple Books works differently, with people buying individual audiobooks and keeping them in their library rather than paying a monthly fee. Apple also lets users download purchased titles for offline listening.

Kobo, Storytel and BookBeat then compete on catalogues, subscription models and apps built around books rather than around video or music. None of them has YouTube’s audience, but they already have established catalogues and services built around audiobook listeners. YouTube would need to offer more than a convenient place to press play if it wants regular listeners to switch.

Could A Bundle Change What An Audiobook Is Worth?

Once audiobooks sit inside a subscription people already pay for, they stop feeling like a separate purchase, which could make a £15 audiobook download look expensive by comparison. For publishers the upside is discovery on one of the biggest platforms in the world and the downside is that bundled listening can pay out very differently from a direct sale.

There’s also the challenge of working out how publishers get paid. A book bought outright, one listened to through a monthly subscription and one included in a bundle can generate revenue in very different ways. YouTube would need to agree on licensing terms and royalties that work for publishers, while giving subscribers enough choice to make the feature worth using. There’s also the question of whether the service would include only licensed titles or how YouTube would handle the audiobooks already uploaded to the platform.

What YouTube Would Need To Get Right

YouTube has the audience, but that doesn’t automatically mean people will switch to it for audiobooks. It would need a catalogue that can compete with Audible’s, an offer that gives Spotify’s listeners a reason to look elsewhere and a payment model that works for publishers.

Audible and Spotify have spent so many years building their audiobook offerings, so YouTube would have some catching up to do. Its existing audience could give it a strong start, but people already paying for audiobook services would need a reason to change. I’ll be keeping an eye on the launch, mostly to see whether the forest picture survives.