YouTube is in talks with publishers to add audiobooks to its service, reports the Wall Street Journal. This could be officially announced next year, but Google is yet to officially comment on the matter.
Speaking of Google, the Google Play Store has offered audiobooks since 2018. However, you have to buy each book you want to listen to – there is no subscription.
According to the Journal, YouTube will do the opposite – it will bundle audiobook listening with its ad-free Premium plan. Presumably, this will act as another selling point for the Premium plan compared to the cheaper Premium Lite plan. And it will partially make up for the recent price hikes.
Google added podcast support to YouTube Music back in 2023, if you prefer podcasts over audiobooks. They are available for online and offline listening with a Premium subscription (ad-free, of course). Premium Lite excludes music but it does keep ad-free playback for podcasts.
Audiobooks on the Google Play Store
Anyway, this move will put YouTube into more direct competition with the likes of Spotify. Spotify launched an audiobook-only tier a couple of years ago, in addition to having them available as part of the Premium plan. It expanded its audiobook service to over 180 markets earlier this year. It also has a clever feature called Page Match – if you started reading a physical book but wanted to switch over to an audiobook, you can snap a photo of the page you are on and Spotify will automatically start playing the audiobook from that point.