Spotify Plans to Add Audiobooks to Its Already Cluttered App

Spotify is already a multitude of music and podcasts, and shortly the platform will provide audiobooks as a part of the heap of content material clamoring in your ears each time you open the app.

The streaming music service introduced it is acquiring an audiobook firm referred to as Findaway, with plans so as to add audiobooks to the combination in 2022. The deal reportedly goes past merely distributing audiobooks and might also embrace audiobook creation companies. This sounds akin to Spotify’s podcast platform, Anchor, which helps you to file, edit, and publish podcast episodes on the fly. Spotify will pair authors of books with potential narrators to successfully create its personal model of Audible.

“With this acquisition, we’re going to be able to accelerate the addition of an audiobook catalog onto the platform so that users can effectively get all of the audio content that they want all on one platform,” Nir Zicherman, head of audiobooks at Spotify, advised The Verge.

The firm plans to promote particular person audiobooks to free and paid customers and permit authors and publishers to make use of one other fee processing platform and preserve the gross sales. Those who go for Spotify’s fee platform must share income, although that would assist unbiased authors distribute their work extra shortly.

Spotify additionally plans to work on audiobook discovery, much like its work surfacing songs, playlists, and podcasts. But this might get annoying quick, particularly in the event you’re already deeply embedded inside one other platform for audiobooks. For occasion, I leaned in absolutely to the Google Play Store and its audiobooks, which combine properly with my Google Assistant good shows. Maybe there’s some synergy available right here—say, firing up a playlist of battle songs after listening to a self-help ebook on managing anger—however both method, Spotify goes to have some critical competitors.

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Gizmodo describes these premium headphones as “annoyingly unimaginable.” This is the lowest we’ve seen the Apple AirPods Max yet.

Amazon’s Audible is the clear rival, and including a library of audiobooks to its platform helps place Spotify as your one-stop audio store. According to The Verge, Spotify may even enterprise into subscription territory as a part of its premium choices.

There aren’t any particulars on how a lot Spotify supplied Findaway, although the corporate stands to generate income any time somebody streams a Findaway-distributed ebook. It may also need to pay royalties to different audiobook publishers and authors.