Spotify on Thursday made a serious push to have extra audiobooks on its platform by shopping for US-based audio tech firm Findaway because it tries to recreate its success with podcasts.

Findaway, which has partnerships with audiobook publishers akin to Amazon’s Audible, Apple iBooks, Google, and Storytel, gives a world audio guide catalog. It additionally owns Voices, which helps authors to self publish.

“This is the first big move…what we want to achieve is for Spotify consumers to be able to buy any audio book on Spotify and listen to it,” Chief Research & Development Officer Gustav Söderström stated in an interview.

Terms of the transaction, which is predicted to shut within the fourth quarter, weren’t disclosed.

Spotify is following a playbook much like that of its podcast enterprise. It ventured into podcasts in 2018, bulked it up with a string of acquisitions and is predicted by analysts to overhaul Apple as the biggest podcast supplier by the tip of the 12 months with greater than 3 million titles.

The firm, which already has a tie-up with Swedish audiobook streaming group Storytel to permit its subscribers to take heed to audiobooks, had additionally launched Open Access Platform for publishers to stream their content material.

“We know from a survey that many of our users who listened to true crime podcasts also went on to buy audiobooks about true crime,” stated Söderström. “That’s a big potential for publishers, because we think we have a user base that is a really good target for audiobooks as well.”

Spotify’s complete month-to-month energetic customers rose 19 p.c to 381 million within the newest quarter with income of about EUR 2.5 billion euros (roughly Rs. 21,278 crore).

The world audiobooks market is predicted to be price $9.3 billion (roughly Rs. 69,231 crore) by 2026 from $4 billion (roughly Rs. 29,776 crore) in 2020, based on analysis agency Omdia.

© Thomson Reuters 2021