In an effort to continue diversifying its offerings and compete with Audible, Spotify has announced that it will be adding audiobooks to its streaming service. Starting in Britain and Australia, premium subscribers will have access to 15 hours of audiobook content per month, with plans to expand to the United States later. This move has the potential to disrupt the dominance of Amazon-owned Audible in the audiobook market. Spotify sees audiobooks as a rapidly growing medium that they can capitalize on, similar to how they disrupted the music industry with their subscription service and podcasts.
The inclusion of books on Spotify could open up a vast new audience for publishers, allowing them to reach Spotify’s 220 million premium paying members worldwide. By leveraging their recommendation algorithms, Spotify can suggest relevant audiobooks to listeners based on their podcast preferences and promote audio titles to users who have listened to podcasts featuring authors. Hachette Book Group, responsible for popular authors like David Sedaris and James Patterson, will be putting over 7,000 books on Spotify. However, there are concerns that Spotify’s proposed business model for book sales, paying based on the amount of time customers listen to a book, could devalue the work that goes into writing a book.
Publishing agents are worried that Spotify’s model could cannibalize existing sales and potentially lead other retailers to adopt similar models. While diversifying the marketplace for audiobooks is seen as a positive development, there is a risk that this consumption model will devalue authors’ work if it becomes the norm for all platforms. Despite these concerns, Spotify has secured deals with major publishers in the United States and smaller companies, offering a catalog of over 150,000 titles. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek believes that the 15-hour limit will protect the value of audio titles while attracting new customers, stating that the economics are favorable to the book industry.
