Audible Reveals NielsenIQ Data: How We’re Fueling a Global Listening Surge

People around the world are consuming more spoken-word entertainment than ever and are increasingly trading screen time for audio storytelling. That's the headline from NielsenIQ's comprehensive global study, The Future of Listening, which Audible Chief Content Officer Rachel Ghiazza unveiled at the Frankfurt Book Fair in a fireside chat with Erin L. Cox of Publishing Perspectives.

Of the 18,000 listeners surveyed across 11 countries, 34 percent reported consuming more spoken-word audio in the last 12 months than in the year before. The impulse seems rooted in a wish to spend time more beneficially: more than half intentionally replace screen-time entertainment with audio, and 47 percent attribute a reduction in their social media usage to listening. Parents share the sentiment, citing “screen-free entertainment” as the number one reason they encourage kids to listen; 52 percent of parents who are listeners say their children listen, too. And nearly every country ranked their top listening occasion as relaxing at home.

Ghiazza says, “What’s particularly striking about this research is the scale and momentum of audio’s growth. Audio is continuing to play a growing, evolving role in people’s lives. We’re seeing audiences listen more, explore different ways to experience stories and increasingly turn to audio as a means of switching off and recharging. In today’s world, consumers are craving more fulfilling ways to spend their time, and they’re finding that more and more through audio content, particularly as an alternative to screens.”

While global listeners are consuming audio more voraciously than ever, the audio format continues to lift the publishing category overall: 63 percent of respondents said they’d listened to an audiobook by an author, then purchased their titles in print or eBook. Consumers like engaging with a title across formats, with 61 percent of listeners having also read the book after listening to it, and 69 percent listening to audiobooks they’d already read in another format. And audio is a gateway to discovery: since getting started with audiobooks, listeners report they’re trying new authors (29 percent) and genres (29 percent), and reading more eBooks (26 percent) and paper books (22 percent).

This matches what we know of Audible’s own multi-format customers: they engage with nearly twice as much content each month as audiobook-only listeners. Features like Read & Listen make this type of engagement seamless, connecting a user’s audiobook and eBook into a single experience: they can read along while listening, switch between reading and listening without losing their place, and pick up a companion audiobook at a discount. Ghiazza announced at the fair that Audible’s Read & Listen features are coming soon to seven new marketplaces: Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Japan and India. Initially, titles will be available in English and German, with local languages rolling out in 2027.

The NielsenIQ research underscores the continuously growing global appetite for audio, and Ghiazza outlined some key ways Audible is investing to meet it. Among a suite of initiatives: Audible will launch localized listener experiences in five new countries next year — Indonesia, South Korea, Denmark, Norway and Finland — adding to the 11 new countries announced earlier this year at London Book Fair as we continue to bring audio storytelling to more audiences worldwide. Customers in these countries will be able to pay in their local currency and receive recommendations specifically tailored to their region.

Ghiazza also shared that in addition to a new membership plan allowing Audible listeners to share their love of audio storytelling with others in their household, we’ll be looking at different ways to bundle memberships as add-ons to subscriptions customers already have.

Separately, via Audible for Business, organizations, publishers and authors will find it easier than ever to get audio content into many hands at once. Already rolling out in the U.S., with plans to expand globally, the program allows companies to offer our extensive catalog of audiobooks as an employee benefit, and enables publishers and authors to distribute their own audio titles in bulk for book tours, launch events and more.

On the search and discovery front, Ghiazza discussed Audible’s investment in AI-powered tools, like Maven, that understand what a customer is in the mood for and guide them to the next perfect listen. The NielsenIQ research shows why this matters: genre is the single most important factor in which titles global listeners choose, followed by topic, with narrator a close third. Narrators, in turn, help attract audiences for authors and publishers: 65 percent of listeners seek out more books by a narrator they like.

Audiences are receptive to the ways audiobooks can evolve: 50 percent of survey respondents said they were now open to listening to or trying AI-narrated content. The majority of countries were most open to AI narration for fiction titles, with Germany and Japan preferring non-fiction. The main driver for listeners is quality and transparency. They want to know what they’re listening to, and they want it to sound great.

Ghiazza concluded the conversation by reiterating that the global momentum of audio storytelling is real: with listeners in more than 225 countries and territories around the world, Audible is seeing double-digit growth in total listening time globally, year over year. In Brazil, one of our newest marketplaces, total listening time grew 73 percent over the last year, a signal of how quickly audio can take off when we invest in local content production. And enthusiasm runs high: 67 percent of respondents feel excited about the future of spoken-word entertainment, particularly listeners in Brazil, Japan, Italy and Mexico.

We share that excitement. We’ve believed and invested in the power of audio storytelling for nearly 30 years, writing the book on what’s possible and creating new expectations of the medium, and we’re delighted to bring it to even more people worldwide.