Audiobooks on Spotify: Details, Tips and Recommendations

How to make the most of this new feature, included with Premium

I was quite pleasantly surprised this week when I saw the vast number of audiobooks apparently available to download and read through my Spotify Premium account. The selection is incredibly impressive, even putting the Audible Plus collection to shame.

Of course, it took only a quick search to find the drawback: you only get 15 hours of listening time per month, and must pay $15 (CAD) to unlock just 10 more hours thereafter. And, all of this is only available to the account holder.

Still, this feature is a pure bonus to your Premium subscription. So how do you make the most of it?

Audiobooks can bring worlds to life - Generated with AI

Select your audiobook wisely

With only 15 hours of listening time per month, concise novels will be your friend. I deeply enjoyed listening to Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive on Audible and have highly recommended them in the past, but each of those novels clock in over 45 hours – meaning each would take more than three months to finish with this new feature.

Countless excellent stories are significantly shorter than this and therefore more conducive to the 15 hour monthly limit. For example, you could read Joseph Conrad's classic Heart of Darkness, S. Qiouyi Lu's imaginative In the Watchful City and Chuck Palahniuk's infamous Fight Club in a single month with time to spare – and perhaps you could even fit a fourth book in, if you follow this next tip.

Audiobooks can overcome even drab surroundings - Generated with AI

Choose your pace

One of the best features of audiobooks is the ability to adjust playback speed to suit your tastes. I default to listening at 1.2x, and adjust up or down depending on the narrator and density of a given book.

Listening at 1.25x is enough to finish a book in 80% of its usual length: meaning you could read a 5-hour book in 4, a 10-hour book in 8 and so on. Spotify's monthly limit only cares about how long you listen, not about how much progress you make on the audiobooks themselves. Speaking of...

Let imagination enthrall you - Generated with AI

Now's the time to be picky

Read what you like, and stop reading what you don't.

I've written at length about my willingness to put down a book I'm not enjoying and my GoodReads reviews are littered with books that I started skimming as soon as my interest began to lull. That trait has a lot to do with my ADHD, but it is still something I think more people need to take up – especially if their determination to read a book they don't enjoy means they end up not reading at all. Yet I still feel a trace of guilt when I don't get the "full value" out of a book I spent money (or monthly Audible credits) on.

This Spotify feature does away with that guilt (Except perhaps for sunk cost fallacy, but I would greatly encourage you to read a Wikipedia summary rather than wasting hours finishing a book that's dragging). Spend your first hour sampling thirty different books if it means you'll definitely enjoy the remaining fourteen. Use the skip ahead button as liberally as you want, or simply jump to another chapter.

It feels strange, but truly the only way to waste your listening time is to spend it without enjoying it.

Find my recommendations for some great books you might try below, including some currently available as podcasts (and so don't count towards the monthly limit)!

Enjoy! - Generated with AI

Recommendations

Currently free as podcasts (and don't count towards limit)

Carmilla (3hr, 17min) by Sheridan LeFanu - discussed in my Vampires series!

Piranesi (6h, 58min) by Susannah Clarke - discussed in my post on entering new worlds!

Dracula (15h, 59min) by Bram Stoker - discussed in my Vampires series!

The Secret History (18h, 30min) by Donna Tartt

Find more through Classic Audiobook Collection, Free Audiobooks, Great Audiobooks and more!

Audiobooks which count toward 15hr limit

All Systems Red (3h, 17min) by Martha Wells - Murderbot!

This is How You Lose the Time War (4h, 15min) by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - check out my multimedia post on this incredible novel!

The Thief (7h, 41min) by Megan Whalen Turner - check out my recent post about the novel!

The Bees (10h, 16min) by Laline Paull

The Raven Tower (12h, 2min) by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Justice (12h, 41min) by Ann Leckie - my Pick of the Month for August 2024!

Black Sun (12h, 47min) by Rebecca Roanhorse

The City We Became (16h, 12min) by N.K. Jemisin - my Pick of the Month for February 2024!

I've previously given a list of recommendations here as well.