Starting this Tuesday, September 20, Spotify users can buy and listen to more than 300,000 audiobook titles.
The “tsunami” of audible books, Spotify’s new strategy, is only available in the United States, but the idea is that the new interface be extended to the rest of the regions and countries where they have a strong presence.
Audiobook features are accessible on Spotify alongside music and podcasts.
As officially stated, For now, Spotify offers the audiobooks for sale, without ads, but that is something that could change in the future.
That’s right, the company is exploring new business models that could include subscription or ad-supported formats. He said that nir zichermannSpotify’s second-in-command and global head of the brand new Audiobooks and Private Content division.
Spotify plans to launch audiobook sales in additional markets after the initial US debut.
I am so excited to finally be able to announce that audiobooks are live on @Spotify! Starting today, any Spotify user in the US can search and purchase books across our catalog of over 300,000 titles. 🧵
—Nir Zicherman (@NirZicherman) September 20, 2022
Spotify puts 300,000 audiobooks on sale
Spotify’s entry into the audiobook market is coming after the leading company among streaming services streaming of music will close the purchase of the audiobook distributor Findaway in June 2022.
For Findaway, Spotify paid $120 million. This is how we told you in Merca2.0.
In a statement signed Tuesday by Zicherman, the company says it has always believed that “the potential of audio,” which it describes as “limitless.” It talks about offering “a complete package for audio-related needs”.
Spotify releases audiobooks because, it says, “there is an untapped market.”
According to Spotify’s calculations, audiobooks represent only 6 to 7 percent of the overall book market, but the category is growing at 22 percent per year, and it will become the norm, not the exception.
How to access audiobooks
In the Spotify app, audiobooks now appear (still only in the US) with an icon that has a padlock in place of playback. This is so because they must be purchased in order to be heard.
For now, says Spotify, audiobooks cannot be purchased through the application: users must purchase them by going to an external website, with a credit card.
The goal is to avoid the transaction fees that the App Store and Google Play charge for in-app sales.
Once back on Spotify, the book is available, without a lock, to be listened to whenever the user wants it.
Audiobook features on Spotify include the ability to download content for offline listening; automatic bookmarks to save and pick up where you left off; speed controls to speed up or slow down the playback rate; and a rating function that publicly displays the overall rating of the book.
Zicherman is not a novice at this, he was until a few years ago CTO of Anchorthe self-publishing podcast company that Spotify bought in 2019.
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