I attended the London Book Fair for the first time this year, and attended many interesting, insightful, and some controversial, panel discussions. One of my favourites was Duncan Bruce, Director of Global Publishing Partnerships & Licensing at Spotify, discussing Spotify’s place in the audiobook market (Bruce et al. 2025). He was joined by Sam Halstead, Director of Audio at Bloomsbury, and Richard Lennon, Audio Publisher at Penguin Random House.

Duncan, as can be expected, was quick to give a glowing report of Spotify’s impact on the audiobook market. From being the ‘new kids on the block’ at last year’s LBF, Spotify now has a catalogue of over 400,000 titles available on audiobook (Bruce et al. 2025). The company uses similar tactics as they do with music artists to connect listeners with authors: author pages, countdowns to new releases and ‘pre-saving’, including audiobooks in last year’s Spotify Wrapped, seasonal campaigns (2025 Valentines Day ‘Spicy Romance’ campaign ranked books from 1-5 ‘spice rating’, and to great audience amusement the spiciest titles proved most popular) (Bruce et al. 2025). It was also interesting to hear how the panel believed audio will benefit the Reading for Pleasure Crisis, the key talking point at the 2024 Bookseller Children’s Conference (McNally 2024). Sam shared a heartwarming anecdote that audiobooks have ceased her three-year-old’s requests for “Baby Shark” on repeat in the car; he now listens to children’s factbooks about sharks and other animals.

The London Book Fair 2025 © Cameron Pimblett

The panel also discussed the most popular genres on the platform: non-fiction and Sci-Fi-Fantasy were expectedly popular. Literary Fiction’s popularity was surprising, but a success. Despite these glowing accolades Spotify has achieved, and I have only named a very brief selection, there is a flaw in how Spotify offers audiobook products compared to the largest audiobook provider, Audible.

Audible offers, with its most affordable plan, 1 ‘credit’ per month (Audible 2025). Aside from dramatic audio productions, 1 book = 1 credit. Spotify takes a different approach, offering listeners 15-hours a month, regardless of how many titles this might provide (Spotify 2025). In light of SFF being, as discussed by all panellists, one of the most popular audio genres, Spotify’s system poses an issue.

The average length of the Top 10 ‘Bestselling’ SFF titles on Audible is 22-hours, 21-minutes (Audible 2025a). On average, then, Spotify provides SFF listeners with 0.67 titles a month to enjoy. Compare this with Audible, where titles, regardless of their length, cost 1 credit: SFF listeners could enjoy Samantha Shannon’s A Day of Fallen Night with their credit at 38-hours 48-minutes. Value chasers could listen to Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth. The goliath was a No. 4 Sunday Times Bestseller on its release, and would take 62-hours 48-minutes to get through.

There is no perfect solution to this issue. Fans of Literary Fiction, with a 10-13-hour average length, benefit more from Spotify’s system than they would from Audible (Weitzman 2022). However, when all audio industry-leaders at LBF agree that SFF is a top genre, it seems a strange decision to alienate these listeners (Cudden et al. 2025). Ultimately, I look forward to seeing what Spotify does in the future. I think it likely the company will offer an add-on to their Premium subscription, offering more hours (or a credit-based system) for an additional cost. Time will tell.

Bibliography:

Audible. 2025. “Member Benefits.” [Online] Available at: https://www.audible.co.uk/ep/memberbenefits (accessed 10/05/25).

Audible. 2025a. “Science Fiction & Fantasy Best Sellers.” [Online] Available at: https://www.audible.co.uk/cat/Science-Fiction-Fantasy (accessed 10/05/25).

Bruce, D. & Lennon, R. & Halstead, S. 2025. “Spotify: Expanding the Audiobook Market.” London: The London Book Fair 2025.

Cudden, A. & de Troyer, A. & Cutler-Ross, G. & Mak, F. 2025. “Transforming Audio Content.” London: The London Book Fair 2025.

McNally, R. 2024. “Winning Kids Back.” London: The Bookseller’s Children’s Conference 2024.

Spotify. 2025. “Audiobooks in Premium.” [Online] Available at: https://www.spotify.com/uk/audiobooks/ (accessed 10/05/25).

Weitzman, C. 2022. “Audiobooks under 5 hours.” Speechify. [Online] Available at: https://speechify.com/blog/average-length-of-an-audiobook/ (accessed 10/05/25).