ElevenLabs challenges Spotify and Audible with a new audiobook platform

ElevenLabs, the AI voice company valued at $11 billion, is entering the audiobook streaming market in direct competition with Spotify and Audible. Ashley Carman reports for Bloomberg that the startup has licensed 200,000 human-voiced audiobooks from publishers including HarperCollins, Blackstone Publishing, and Vinci Books.

The titles will be available through ElevenReader, the company’s existing app that already lets users upload any document or webpage and have it read aloud by an AI voice. For some titles, listeners will be able to swap the human narrator for one of 1,000 AI voices available across 16 languages.

ElevenLabs is pricing the service at $11 per month for up to 20 hours of listening. Spotify currently offers 15 hours of audiobook listening to premium subscribers for $12.99 per month. Audible’s lowest-priced plan starts at $8.99 per month for one book.

Missing the biggest publishers

ElevenLabs has a notable gap in its catalog. The company has not yet signed deals with most of the world’s largest publishers, including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. Jack McDermott, who leads mobile growth at ElevenLabs, acknowledged in an interview that all five of the biggest publishers are absent from the current licensing effort. He added, however, that ElevenLabs already works with many of them to produce audiobooks on their behalf.

On the same day ElevenLabs made its announcement, Spotify revealed a partnership with the startup to integrate its AI voices into Spotify’s backend tools for authors. This would allow writers to narrate their own books using ElevenLabs technology, while keeping listeners on Spotify’s platform.

AI narration still waiting for its breakthrough

Despite rapid growth in AI-generated content across music and podcasting, audiobooks have yet to produce a genuine AI hit. More than 50,000 titles on Audible already use Amazon’s “virtual voice” feature, and fraudulent AI-voiced books have reportedly flooded YouTube. Yet listener reviews of AI-narrated titles tend to be negative, with many citing a lack of emotion, particularly in romance titles.

Publishers who do experiment with AI narration invest considerable time in quality control, since their reputation depends on the result. According to Carman’s reporting, publishers say AI voices perform adequately for shorter listens but begin to fall short over several hours.

The closest the format has come to a high-profile AI success was Melania Trump’s memoir, a seven-hour audiobook she recorded using ElevenLabs technology. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman also used AI for his latest audiobook, through a company called Respeecher.

ElevenLabs is betting that customization and a competitive price point can differentiate its platform. Spotify, for its part, signaled at its investor day that audiobooks are already on track to generate $100 million in annual recurring revenue from listeners who exceed the 15-hour monthly limit. That figure illustrates the scale of the opportunity ElevenLabs is chasing.