Spotify’s nonetheless comparatively new audiobooks service is increasing to Canada, the corporate introduced at this time, bringing the expertise to each English and French-speaking prospects. Launched final fall, Spotify initially debuted audiobooks to U.S. customers solely with a catalog of some 300,000 titles. It later rolled out the choice to buy audiobooks to different English-speaking markets again in November.
With at this time’s growth, Spotify says its catalog has grown to 350,000 titles however it hasn’t but shared what number of Spotify customers have demonstrated curiosity in audiobooks or bought titles. As a substitute, the corporate famous that it’s “seeing constructive engagement,” with out sharing any form of metrics about what which will seem like.
Prospects could discover the method of shopping for an audiobook by way of Spotify harder than it must be, nevertheless, due to how the corporate is attempting to work across the app shops’ in-app buy necessities with the intention to keep away from paying commissions. As a substitute of with the ability to faucet to make a purchase order within the app, Spotify informs prospects that they “can’t purchase audiobooks within the app,” with out guiding them to the web site the place the books might be bought. That is to keep away from being in violation of app retailer guidelines round steering — that’s, directing prospects to purchase straight from the corporate through the net, as an alternative of by way of in-app purchases.
As a substitute, prospects can solely click on a inexperienced “Obtained It” button after seeing the message about not with the ability to buy books in-app. That possible reduces the variety of attainable gross sales because it requires many extra further steps to purchase and frustrates potential shoppers.
At launch, Spotify had touted the potential to faucet right into a rising market with audiobooks, audiobooks represented only a 6-7% share of the broader e-book market, and the class is rising by 20% year-over-year. Plus, the addition presents extra gasoline for Spotify’s advice engine as the corporate might study extra a couple of person’s pursuits based mostly not solely on the music they like and the podcasts they observe, but in addition what books they learn.
The corporate just lately debuted a revamp of the Spotify app geared toward bettering its suggestions by the use of TikTok-style feeds that provide previews of its audio content material — together with audiobook clips. These adjustments haven’t reached all prospects as of but, nevertheless, so it stays to be seen if audiobook gross sales will really enhance in consequence.