Allow me to recommend my favorite part of Spotify: audiobooks

New-release audiobooks are free with a paid Spotify subscription.

You probably already know that Spotify offers audiobooks with its paid-tier subscriptions. (If not, now you do!)

You might even be confused about why I’m mentioning this when the audiobook feature launched more than a year ago, in November 2023.

Well, I’m writing this because fairly often over the past year, when I’ve talked to people and mentioned that I’ve listened to a book on Spotify, they’ve been surprised — they didn’t notice the audiobook feature, even if they’re a regular Spotify music listener. Or maybe they didn’t realize the books were included with their subscription.

So I am taking it upon myself during this quiet dead time between the holidays to remind you all:

You can listen to books for free* on Spotify.

(*OK, technically you get 15 hours a month for free with your subscription. That’s typically one or two books. If you go over, you can purchase more books à la carte. For me, 15 hours is fine.)

On Amazon, the largest bookseller, you can go through its Audible subscription service, which charges a monthly fee in exchange for credits you can use to purchase audiobooks. Amazon Music is now doing something similar to Spotify — you get one free book to listen to a month with a paid subscription.

I listened to Al Pacino read his biography in a Spotify audiobook — and I was hooked.

Of course, there are people who are extremely high-volume consumers of audiobooks, and one book a month isn’t going to even come close to cutting it for them. On Reddit, some of these power listeners who burn through three to five books in a week discussed their strategies: mixing Audible credits, the one free Amazon Music book, and Libby, the app for public libraries (which is great because it’s unlimited and actually free, but it doesn’t have everything, and there can be long wait times for new releases or popular titles).

There’s also a shady underworld of audiobooks: torrent sites, or YouTube brain-rot-style videos where someone plays “Minecraft” over the audiobook narration for the entire “Lord of the Rings” series.

I don’t condone any of that. Point is: With Spotify or Amazon Music, the audiobooks are a nice add-on. They could completely change your reading habits if you’re now someone who really loves the feel of paper in your hands or likes to curl up with your Kindle.

If you’ve never listened to audiobooks, allow me to make the case for a specific genre they’re perfect for: celebrity memoirs, especially if the celebrities themselves read them.