Spotify launches an ElevenLabs-powered audiobook creation tool
Spotify has introduced a new AI tool for self-publishing audiobooks, powered by ElevenLabs, as part of its Spotify for Authors platform. This feature will be available in beta starting this June, initially supporting only the English language. Additionally, Spotify is expanding its platform to include more languages and enhancing its Audiobook+ plans to increase user engagement.
- ▪Spotify's new AI tool for audiobooks will launch in beta in June on an invite-only basis.
- ▪The AI-powered audiobook generation allows authors to publish their works without exclusive contracts.
- ▪Spotify has over a million Audiobook+ subscriptions and aims to generate $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
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| Original publisher | TechCrunch |
| Canonical URL | https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/21/spotify-launches-an-elevenlabs-powered-audiobook-creation-tool/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 15:27:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T15:27:37.979Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T15:27:37.979Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | _ElKZZ189rgL |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Alongside tools for AI-generated podcasts, Spotify on Thursday introduced a new, ElevenLabs-powered AI tool for self-publishing audiobooks within the Spotify for Authors platform. The company said at its Investor Day event that the feature will launch in beta this June on an invite-only basis, initially with support for the English language only. The AI-powered audiobook generation won’t bind authors to an exclusive contract, meaning they are free to publish their generated audiobooks anywhere. The news builds on Spotify’s previous partnership with ElevenLabs, which allowed writers to submit audiobooks created on the voice AI startup’s platform to Spotify. The audio streaming platform also already had a partnership with Google Play Books to allow for digitally narrated content.
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