Spotify Now In Audiobook Market With Over 300,000 Titles
An audiobook store with more than 300,000 titles was launched by the music streaming service Spotify as part of its long-rumored audiobook initiative.
Notable titles in the store include “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens, “Becoming” by Michelle Obama, and “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover. J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and other public domain literature like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” were previously available on Spotify on a limited basis.
To this, Spotify’s Vice President Nir Zicherman and global head of audiobooks said, “We’ve always believed that the potential for audio is limitless, and have been saying for a while now that our ambition is to be the complete package for everyone’s listening needs.”
He continued,”Audiobooks are next to come into the picture because we see a substantial untapped market: while audiobooks represent just a 6-7% share of the wider book market, the category is growing by 20% year over year.”
Other downloadable works include “The Storyteller” by Dave Grohl, “Deacon King Kong” by James McBride, and “People We Meet On Vacation” by Emily Henry.
At least initially, Spotify won’t offer audio books as subscriptions, instead selling them for “competitive” prices with other retailers.
According to a Spotify spokesperson, “After assessing testing and user research, we found that the best initial offering would allow users to purchase books individually,” a policy which “allows for pricing flexibility and for more casual listeners to access audio books easily.”
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