Findaway, which has partnerships with audiobook publishers
such as Amazon's Audible, Apple iBooks, Google, and Storytel, offers a global
audio book catalog. 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 percent to 381
million in the latest quarter with revenue of about EUR 2.5 billion euros.
The global audiobooks market is expected to be worth $9.3
billion by 2026 from $4 billion in 2020, according to research firm Omdia. ©
Reuters
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