Spotify is enhancing its audiobooks streaming service with a feature that may be familiar to the app’s music consumers: Countdown Pages. These YouTube-like Countdown Pages were launched alongside other new additions for Spotify’s artists last year, offering a dedicated space on artists’ profiles where a timer could count down to a new release. Now, that same option will be available to audiobook publishers and authors, the company announced today at the London Book Fair.
For audiobooks, the Countdown Pages will allow Spotify’s users to pre-save books ahead of their release. When the book becomes available, Spotify will alert the users through a notification. With this new option, publishers and authors will be able to promote their book before its launch, gathering interest in the upcoming title — much as they can today on other sites like Amazon, where books can be pre-ordered.
Plus, when users visit the Countdown Page to save a title, they’ll be able to tap on a “More Like This” tab to see similar, but already released, books that they can listen to immediately. This could prompt further adoption of audiobooks overall.
Ahead of its expansion to audiobooks, Countdown Pages had been used by artists like Taylor Swift, Karol G, Florence and the Machine, Paramore and the Jonas Brothers — the latter who introduced the feature at last year’s Spotify’s press event. Since then, more than 80% of people using the pre-save feature would stream the new release within the first week, on average.
The Countdown Pages for books will become available in mid-April, Spotify said.
The company also offered an update on its audiobooks service’s usage, noting that “millions” of users have now listened to more than 150,000 titles on the platform since its launch. In total, the service offers a catalog of over 200,000 audiobook titles. With the addition of the new Countdown Pages feature, Spotify hopes to grow the service’s adoption further by tapping into its larger global user base of over 600 million listeners.
Spotify first announced that audiobooks would become a part of its Premium subscription in late 2022, with initial launches in the U.K. and Australia, followed by the U.S. and Canada and elsewhere. With a Spotify subscription, users can stream 15 hours of audiobooks per month. Otherwise, Spotify’s free users can now opt into a standalone audiobooks subscription for $9.99 per month, which debuted earlier this month.
Countdown pages for audiobooks will launch in all markets where Spotify’s audiobooks are available, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.