Spotify gave subscribers music, podcasts. Next up: Audiobooks

Four years ago, Spotify’s business was stagnating. Apple had overtaken it as the top paid music service in the United States, losses were mounting and customer growth was slowing.

Daniel Ek, the company’s CEO, decided that Spotify needed to transform from a music service into the everything store for audio. The first missing piece was podcasts.

Now Ek has set his sights on another rapidly growing medium: audiobooks.

On Tuesday, Spotify said that it would begin offering 15 hours of audiobooks each month as part of its streaming service for premium subscribers in Britain and Australia. This winter, it will expand the offering to US subscribers.