You may not know this, but Spotify already offers audiobooks on its streaming platform and has for a while. You can search for audiobooks and find various playlists that will narrate some of your favorite books to you. The feature is far from polished though and not many people know about it, but, seemingly, that is all about to change with Spotify wanting to become a major player in the audiobook industry.
At Spotify’s recent investor day, the company’s CEO and founder Daniel Ek announced that the company is going to be moving more forcefully into the audiobook space and saw it as a massive opportunity for the company. Ek said that he wants Spotify to compete with the biggest audiobook players including Amazon’s Audible.
Beyond those strange audiobook playlists, we already mentioned, Spotify does already have a foothold here that it can build a foundation on for this move. Towards the end of last year, Spotify bought the audiobook platform Findaway, which will be front and center of Spotify’s audiobook operation.
Details are still thin on the ground about when the new audiobook platform will launch officially but it would be a good guess to say that it will have its own dedicated section of the app, just like podcasts do. When Spotify acquired Findaway, Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s Chief Research & Development Officer said, “We’re excited to combine Findaway’s team, best-in-class technology platform, and robust audiobook catalog with Spotify’s expertise to revolutionize the audiobook space as we did with music and podcasts.”
It is clear then that Spotify is taking audiobooks as seriously as it took podcasts when it moved into that space back in 2019. With Spotify now one of the leading podcast platforms, there is no telling how big audiobooks could become on the platform or if there will be any megabucks deals struck with authors like the controversial deal Spotify made with shock jock podcaster Joe Rogan.
This looks like a big move for Spotify then and follows on from the last story we covered about NFT integration into some artists’ profiles. Make sure you stick with us for all the latest Spotify news to learn more details about Spotify audiobooks as soon as they are announced.
