The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Spotify Bolsters Audiobooks Business with Findaway buy
Spotify has made a major push to have more Audiobooks on its platform by buying US-based audio tech company Findaway as it tries to recreate its success with podcasts.
Findaway, which has partnerships with audiobook publishers such as Amazon's Audible, Apple iBooks, Google and Storytel, offers a global audio book catalogue. It also 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 said in an interview.
Terms of the transaction, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter, were not disclosed.
Spotify is following a playbook similar to that of its podcast business. It ventured into podcasts in 2018, bulked it up with a string of acquisitions and is expected by analysts to overtake Apple as the largest podcast provider by the end of the year with more than 3 million titles.
The company, which already has a tie-up with Swedish audiobook streaming group Storytel to allow its subscribers to listen to audiobooks, had also launched Open Access Platform for publishers to stream their content.
"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," said 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 total monthly active users rose 19% to 381 million in the latest quarter with revenue of about 2.5 billion euros (approximately $2.87 billion).
The global audiobooks market is expected to be worth $9.3 billion by 2026 from $4 billion in 2020, according to research firm Omdia.
The team at Platform Executive hope you have enjoyed the '[post_title]' article. Automatic translation from English to a growing list of languages via Google AI Cloud Translation. Initial reporting via our official content partners at Thomson Reuters. Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee, European Technology & Telecoms Correspondent, based in Stockholm. Editing by Kirsten Donovan.
You can stay on top of all the latest developments across the platform economy, find solutions to your key challenges and gain access to our problem-solving toolkit and proprietary databases by becoming a member of our growing community. For a limited time, our subscription plans start from just $16 per month.
This news article was published by Platform Executive, the home of the platform economy.
If you enjoy the content then please post a link on your website, or share on social media to help us get the word out.
