Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, stated that the global size of the book market is around $140 billion, with audiobooks having only about a 6%-7% market share. But, in the markets where audiobooks are more popular, they represent around 50% of the market. Also, the audiobook category is growing by 20% every year. This is why, according to Ek, the audiobook industry is an “annual opportunity of $70 billion dollars” for Spotify to expand and “eventually compete for.”
Nir Zicherman, Spotify’s head of Audiobooks and Gated Content Vertical, stated that an expansion in the audiobook market “presents a really unique opportunity” to “drastically expand” that industry and to “introduce music and podcast listeners around the world to audiobooks.”
Zicherman added that Spotify will soon be a place where you can buy and listen to your favorite audiobooks directly on the platform. This offering, as he stated, will reach Spotify’s global audience of over 422 million users.
You can currently listen to audiobooks on Spotify, but until recently, they didn’t seem like that big of a priority for the streaming service. However, in 2021, Spotify purchased the audiobook platform Findaway, implying that it may be considering expanding in that segment as well. The streaming service is convinced that it can not only just grow the audiobook industry but also significantly innovate it and even transform it. As to whether Spotify will be able to do what it says, only time will tell, but it sure sounds promising.
