Since more than a year ago, Spotify has been working on adding audiobooks to its platform, and “very soon,” testing will start.
Spotify CFO Paul Voge stated that the company intends to keep extending its line of goods where it sees chances for development during the 2022 Evercore ISI 2nd Annual Technology, Media & Telcom Conference, according to TechCrunch. Vogel views Spotify’s entry into the audiobook market as another similar opportunity in the wake of the success of Spotify’s podcasts.
Notably, he mentioned that Spotify would provide an appealing user interface for audiobooks similar to what they have for podcasts. Having said that, the business declared its collaboration with the audiobook platform Storytel in May of last year. According to the terms of the arrangement, Storytel audiobooks were accessible to Spotify subscribers via the Spotify app.
In January 2021, Spotify actually started testing the audiobook format. The great novels “Frankenstein,” “Jane Eyre,” “Persuasion,” and others were evaluated at the time by Spotify, according to TechCrunch.
Even the first “Harry Potter” book, with chapters read by Daniel Radcliffe and other celebrities, is available on Spotify.
Additionally, Spotify purchased Findaway, a distributor of audiobooks. Spotify claimed that it intended to expand on Findaway’s current investments in the audio business as a result of this acquisition.
The company thinks there are other ways to incorporate audiobooks into its platform. Additionally, the platform thinks it can build a market that rivals the top audiobook distributors, like Amazon’s Audible, Audiobooks.com, and others. Vogel has also said that he sees the addition of audiobooks to Spotify’s platform as a chance for authors and publishers to expand their businesses.
Spotify has previously made the case that it could use its current machine learning techniques to increase the audiobook category on its service through individualised suggestions, much like it has done with music and podcasts. But he also views the addition as a means of advancing the audiobook industry as a whole.