Here’s how Spotify will challenge Audible (Amazon) with audiobooks
Spotify will offer an audiobook service, starting with a catalog of over 300,000 titles. With pay-per-download audiobooks, the music streaming giant challenges Audible (owned by Amazon) and beyond
After podcasts, Spotify launched its audiobook business.
US users of Spotify will now be able to purchase and listen to over 300,000 different audiobook titles, the Swedish company announced yesterday.
The New York Stock Exchange-listed music streaming platform's foray into audiobooks since 2018 marks its latest attempt to make the platform a one-stop shop for all things audio, comments CNBC .
Spotify introduced podcasts in 2015 and now hosts over 4.4 million, according to the second quarter earnings report. The company is banking on podcasts and audiobooks to grow 10 times bigger, according to the plans of CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek.
SPOTIFY LAUNCHES AUDIO BOOKS FOR AMERICAN USERS
In the US, Spotify users interested in listening to audiobooks can find them in their search, library, and curated recommendations on their home page. Audiobooks will have a lock icon on the play button to indicate that they need to be purchased.
Once a book is purchased, users will be able to bookmark their place in the audiobook, control the listening speed and download the content for offline listening.
It starts from the books of horror writer Stephen King, to the book by U2 frontman Bono “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story”, out on November 1st.
HACHETTE AND PENGUIN AMONG THE EDITORS ON BOARD
Major publishers who have agreed to make their books available on Spotify have said they appreciate the opportunity to put authors in front of as many listeners as possible, reports the Wall Street Journal . Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, Paramount Global's Simon & Schuster, and the world's largest consumer book publisher, Bertelsmann SE's Penguin Random House, have all put their catalogs on the Spotify service.
THE STRATEGY OF THE MUSICAL STREAMING COMPANY
The company decided to introduce audiobooks because it represents a "substantial untapped market," Nir Zicherman, Spotify's vice president and global head of audiobooks and gated content, said in a Tuesday release. Zicherman says the segment is growing about 20% year-over-year, despite only accounting for between 6% and 7% of the current book market.
On Investor Day this summer Ek said he expects the podcast business to have the potential to generate margins of between 40% and 50% and that audiobooks also have margins above 40% (according to Ek they could bring in 70 billion. dollars of annual revenue).
COMPETITION WITH AUDIBLE (AMAZON)
The move also leads Spotify to more direct competition with Amazon-owned Audible, which was the market leader in 2018 with a market share of 41%, according to Codex Group. In addition, Amazon also sells e-books under its own brand. Books available on a pay-per-download basis, is a similar mode to existing audiobook services such as those offered by Apple and Google. Without forgetting also the Rakuten player.
But one of the most loved features by Spotify users is the recommendation of user-specific music tracks and now the platform is working to build it for podcasts as well and will provide editorial-curated recommendations for starting audiobooks. The company said it will work to add algorithmic recommendations, based on the full scope of a user's listening habits, over time.
AFTER THE USA NEW MARKETS
Finally, Spotify plans to introduce audiobooks to new markets and add new features after its initial US launch.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia-on-demand/ecco-come-spotify-sfidera-audible-amazon-con-gli-audiolibri/ on Wed, 21 Sep 2022 11:14:30 +0000.