Spotify narrates magazine articles now

Do you listen to magazine articles on Spotify? The streaming platform certainly hopes so, as it launches A new format for long, narrated articlesalong with its usual selection of music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Starting today, more than 650 articles Of publications including Rolling Stone, Atlantic, Vogue magazine, diverse, Bulletin board, Vibration, GQ, Wired, Vanity galleryand pitchfork It will be available in English in regions where Spotify audiobooks are available.

Narrated articles are less than two hours long and are available within Premium users’ monthly audiobook allowance. Spotify says that free users who don’t pay for a subscription can also “purchase articles individually for $1.99,” though it’s not clear if this is an all-inclusive fee for each article, or if $1.99 will get you a subscription for just the articles. We’ve reached out to Spotify for clarification.

“With Articles, we offer long-form journalism in audio as a natural extension of the music, podcasts and audiobooks people already come to Spotify for, focusing on topics we know they love,” Colleen Prendergast, head of audiobook licensing at Spotify, said in a statement. “By incorporating shorter content into the mix, we meet audiences where they are to help build healthy listening habits, and ultimately increase engagement with books over time.”

This is Spotify’s latest side mission outside of traditional music streaming, and it has also recently launched a suite of AI tools for Generate daily audio filesto prepare Audiobook playlistsand Remix existing songs Among the artists represented by Universal Music Group. Spotify’s announcement didn’t say whether these articles were narrated by AI tools, noting only that they were produced by Spotify’s internal Audiobooks team. Spotify declined to speak on the record about any use of AI for article narration when we reached out to it for clarification.