YouTube Premium could soon get another perk without any extra cost

For two decades, YouTube has been our source for music videos, comedy skits, movie clips and trailers, podcasts, video lectures, and an unimaginably large dimension of user-generated content. It’s also where you’d find a large volume of audiobooks, often unlicensed or not copyrighted. But YouTube may soon open the gates to a much bigger catalog of titles with official audiobook support.

According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), YouTube is looking to officially bring on a dedicated audiobooks feature to the platform. The report says that Google has been holding discussions with publishers to bring select audiobooks to its platform, and the feature could arrive by 2027. It’s also suggested that YouTube might bundle it with YouTube Premium subscriptions at no extra cost. However, it’s unclear whether free users will be completely cut off from audiobooks or will have to pay for each title separately.

The timing is interesting, as Google continues to face mounting pressure from lawsuits and allegations of copyright infringement from book publishers over training Gemini.

There’s little clarity on the specifics of operation, and whether YouTube would offer select titles with the subscription while charging for some others — thus, replicating the Audible model. It also remains to be seen what happens to user-narrated audiobooks on the video platform when the feature goes live, and whether YouTube plans to use AI to read audiobooks.

Notably, this isn’t Google’s first venture into audiobooks. Google already sells audiobooks through Google Play Books, though it requires users to buy each title individually.