BookBeat surpasses 1.5 billion hours listened to and read globally – J.K. Rowling and Lucinda Riley top the list

Digital books are becoming an increasingly important part of people’s everyday lives, competing more and more with other forms of digital entertainment. At the end of August, streaming service BookBeat passed the milestone of 1.5 billion hours that users have spent listening to and reading books across all markets since its launch in 2015. The most listened-to and read authors on BookBeat globally to date are J.K. Rowling and Lucinda Riley.

BookBeat now has more than 1.2 million paying users. New customers are joining BookBeat at a rapid pace across all ten markets, driving an increase in the amount of time users spend with books. Today, users spend around one million hours per day listening to and reading books on the service on average, and the 1.5 billion-hour milestone has now been reached since the service launched.

“1.5 billion hours is quite a staggering number. Those hours have been spent with books by 200,000 authors and more than 10,000 publishers. In just two years, we have increased the total amount of time our users spend with their books by more than 50 percent. It says something about the strong place books have come to occupy in people’s digital everyday lives. And of course, none of this would have been possible without the incredible breadth of books we are able to offer our users from all the publishers we work with,” says Niclas Sandin, CEO of BookBeat.

As listening hours continue to grow, the list of authors who have surpassed 10 million listening hours on BookBeat is getting longer and longer. The most listened-to authors across all markets are J.K. Rowling and Lucinda Riley. The most listened-to book of all time on BookBeat so far is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, with the other books in the series also making the top ten. Other titles breaking into the all-time top ten include Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, as well as Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing.

Authors who have surpassed ten million hours on BookBeat globally, across all languages*
1. J.K. Rowling
2. Lucinda Riley
3. Lars Kepler
4. Camilla Läckberg
5. Rebecca Yarros

The 10 most listened-to and read books on BookBeat of all time globally*
1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling
6. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone – J.K. Rowling
7. Fourth Wing – Rebecca Yarros
8. Iron Flame – Rebecca Yarros
9. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – J.K. Rowling
10. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens

The 5 most popular genres on BookBeat*
1. Crime
2. Fiction
3. Romance
4. Fantasy
5. Non-fiction

*The list is based on aggregated data from all of BookBeat’s markets: Sweden, Finland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and the UK.