Spotify is making it easier to release audiobooks narrated by AI

Spotify is bringing more AI-narrated audiobooks to its platform via a new partnership with ElevenLabs. On Thursday, the audio streaming giant announced it would begin accepting audiobooks recorded using ElevenLabs’ AI voice software, saying it “recognizes the potential of digital voice-narration to grow and expand the audiobook market.”

To be clear, AI-recorded audiobooks are already permitted on Spotify, albeit with several restrictions. Spotify’s audiobook distribution platform, Findaway Voices, only accepts digitally recorded audiobooks from “specific partners” — having previously also partnered with Google Play Books — and requires each recording to undergo review before publishing. ElevenLabs is one of the most recognizable AI voice providers on the market, however, which could lead to a surge in synthetically voiced audiobooks on Spotify’s platform.

Authors can use ElevenLabs to narrate their audiobooks in 29 languages, with a wide selection of synthetic voices to choose from. The free version of the software only provides 10 minutes of text-to-voice per month. There are several premium tiers available that expand this limitation, but users will need at least the $99 monthly Pro subscription to generate 500 minutes of narration — roughly the length of the average audiobook.

While Spotify says it “firmly believes in the power of human narration,” the company believes that digital voices could make audiobook production more cost-effective for smaller authors and make it easier to create audiobooks of older, backlist titles that would otherwise be ignored. Spotify says that all AI-narrated titles will have their metadata marked and be clearly identified to listeners in book descriptions with “this audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.”

Correction, February 20th: The Verge was initially told that the number of languages supported was 32. This was an error and has now been updated.