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Taylor Kerns / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Spotify is expanding beyond music and podcasts with narrated magazine articles inside the app.
- More than 650 spoken stories from publishers like WIRED, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone are now available through Spotify Audiobooks.
- Narrated articles live in Spotify’s audiobook section and are capped at under two hours each.
Spotify wants to become more than the app you open for playlists and podcasts. Now, it’s coming for magazine reading time too.
The company has begun rolling out narrated long-form articles within the platform, adding another layer to its growing audiobook push. Beginning today, Spotify Audiobooks users in supported markets can stream more than 650 spoken magazine stories from publications including Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Vogue, WIRED, Pitchfork, and Vanity Fair.
Spotify is calling the feature simply “Articles.” The goal is to allow users to listen to journalism in the same way they already consume podcasts and audiobooks during commutes, workouts, or while multitasking, rather than sitting down and reading a 5,000-word feature. They are found in the audiobook section, and each narrated article is less than two hours long.
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Premium subscribers can access the narrated pieces using their monthly audiobook listening allowance, while free users can buy individual articles for $2 each. Spotify says its in-house audiobook team produces the content, and some stories use a mix of human and AI-generated narration, TechCrunch reports. The company says parts narrated by AI will be clearly marked.
Spotify touts the feature as a gateway to longer listening habits. Colleen Prendergast, Spotify Audiobooks’ licensing lead, says shorter-form spoken content could help users gradually move into full-length books over time.
The bigger question is whether people actually want magazine articles read aloud inside a music app. Rivals like Audible and publications such as The Economist and Financial Times have experimented with narrated journalism for years, but none have turned it into a breakout mainstream format.
Nevertheless, Spotify clearly sees an opportunity. The company is slowly morphing into an all-purpose audio platform, with AI-generated playlists, personalized podcast tools, audiobook recommendations, and now narrated journalism. It’ll be up to listeners — whether they embrace spoken magazine stories or ignore them altogether — to decide if this remains a tiny experiment or becomes Spotify’s next big content vertical.
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