Spotify begins promoting audiobooks within the US, 300K titles obtainable at launch

Audio streaming large Spotify has proven a eager curiosity in audiobooks – CEO Daniel Ek remarked in its Investor’s Day in June that audiobooks may have a gross margin of above 40%, just like podcasts, and that the share of audiobooks was as excessive as 50% in markets with the best penetration of audiobooks. Now, it’s transferring past providing music and podcasts because it brings assist for audiobooks on its platform.

At launch it would make obtainable to customers within the US, who will have the ability to entry to a list of over 300,000 audiobooks, which might be current in a separate part within the app. These audiobooks might be beneficial by Spotify editors and be obtainable to subscribers, no matter whether or not they’re Premium members or not. Sooner or later, the corporate plans to develop the variety of audiobooks and enter totally different markets, and even use algorithmic suggestions to recommend books to customers.

Customers can have the choice to buy the books they need to take heed to (they may present up with a lock icon on the play button), or preview them through internet pages exterior of the app itself.

Spotify may also let customers obtain the audiobooks, in order that they’ll take heed to them offline, and the automated bookmarking characteristic saves their place to allow them to simply choose up the place they left off. Different options embody the pace management, which lets listeners pace up or decelerate the tempo, and even a score characteristic for individuals who need to share their opinion.

“We’ve at all times believed that the potential for audio is limitless, and we’ve been saying for some time now that our ambition is to be the whole package deal for everybody’s listening wants. Audiobooks are subsequent to return into the image as a result of we see a considerable untapped market: Whereas audiobooks symbolize only a 6%–7% share of the broader e-book market, the class is rising by 20% yr over yr,” mentioned Nir Zicherman, Spotify’s Vice President and International Head of Audiobooks and Gated Content material.

“However what we’re actually enthusiastic about is offering an important new expertise for listeners—introducing audiobooks to an viewers of people that might by no means have tried them in any other case. By bringing audiobooks to Spotify, we’ve the chance to each develop the house as an entire and enrich listeners’ lives,” he added.

Spotify has not been shy relating to its plans for audiobooks – in truth, it has been teasing us relating to the identical for fairly a while. Two years in the past, it supplied an audio model of Harry Potter and the Thinker’s Stone that was learn by celebrities, and later final yr, it introduced that it was testing a small “pilot” of audiobooks and had roped in some well-known names to learn them.

The identical yr noticed Spotify purchase digital audiobook distributor Findaway and introduced that courtesy of its partnership with Storytel, their subscribers may hyperlink their account to the streaming service and entry their books on the Spotify app.