How to listen to audiobooks in a different language

[BoxK]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Many

Operating System

Many

My Question or Issue

My Spotify account is based in the USA though I am learning Swedish and would like to listen to audiobooks in Swedish.  Searching for a book in Swedish doesn't yield good results.  I have found a few kids novels, but not much to challenge my listening or that I find very interesting.  Is there a way to find audiobooks in a certain category that are in a specific language, Swedish in my case, or some way to change the language of the audiobooks?

Thanks!

[ThijsvanderZouwen]

Same problem here. I'm Dutch but I don't want to listen to a Dutch translation of a book when I can understand the English original perfectly fine. Please add a way to find English audiobooks.

[Audiosleef]

I'm Belgian but I don't want to listen to audiobooks in Dutch/French and there's no way to change this setting ? Hopefully there won't be a price increase to premium for this new feature that I don't have any use for.

[ErikVollebregt]

Hi Spotify moderator, has Spotify considered that this practice is likely infringing the EU Geoblocking Regulation? Better check with your legal department because the EU prohibits discrimination of users between member states on language alone. Why would you not enable users to choose language in the first place? It just shows disregard for users. It should not be a surprise that people want to hear audiobooks in another language.

[Kathy08822]

I am an American living in France and would love to listen to audiobooks in my own language. Unfortunately, Spotify is offering me audiobooks only in French. Very disappointing.

[mimimtk]

I have the same issue, I'm based in the Netherlands but not a native from the country. My Spotify is in english, is there a way to set the Audiobook language to English? I've looked but cannot find it. Can you support?

[Sarah140]

So funny how all comments here consist out of people in the Netherlands or Belgium with the same problem! I also happen to be one of those; I would love to be able to just listen to English audiobooks instead of their immediately cheaper and less interesting sounding translated version. It seems like such a common function to add in which language you would like things to be recommended to you. I have tried selecting English as my preferred language on Spotify and on Settings, as well as changing the country im in to the US or UK (even though i’m obviously still in the Netherlands). Could Spotify please stop using my real life location to decide in which language I like to listen to audiobooks (same goes for recommended podcasts) and instead just use the location, or even better: the language, that i explicitly chose for the app? It’s almost as if I handpicked those on purpose…

[jeboitim]

Yup. Same here. Mobile app, desktop app and web player are all in English, phone and computer languages are all in English, even my AppleID is in English (location wise), but since my physical location is in the Netherlands it gives me only Dutch audiobooks. I'm gonna have to try a VPN to set my location somewhere in the US to see if that works...

Any luck fixing this?

[potato1996]

Please let us change the language, I don't enjoy listening in dutch and would like to listening in English. 

[ruxiang]

Same here, language set to English, device set to English but I live in the Netherlands so I only get the dutch version of the book, which I cannot read.

[Eni]

Hey folks, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this here in the Community.

Keep in mind that we only provide the content that the author originally uploaded to Spotify. If the author uploaded the audiobook in English, users will receive the English version, regardless of their location. 

However, if the audiobook was uploaded in other languages, such as Dutch or French, we're afraid there's no way to translate it to English as we don't have a translation tool for that.

That being said, you can give this idea a +Vote as @Novy mentioned previously, since it's asking for a language-based search for audiobooks to find the ones in other languages easily. 

Hope this clears things up. 

Cheers!

[Marcell93]

Useless reply. How come we are not able to select language? I may live in the Netherlands but it doesn't mean I can understand Dutch. This is ridiculous

[Nik32]

I am in the Netherlands, and I would like to listen all my audio books in English, specifically those originally written in English by English-speaking authors. However, when I search for a book, I get results in multiple languages, but the English version often cannot be found — even when it's available to friends in the US.

(Just  to make clear I am not asking to change the overall language settings of my audiobook platform or use translations. I simply want access to the original English versions of the books).

[#14]

I want to see what audiobooks are available in a specific language.