Spotify is mostly known as a music streaming and podcast app, and it currently hosts some of the most famous artists and podcasts, like Joe Rogan. But the audiobook market seems like a tempting market for Spotify, and the company wants to become the leader in this market. In Investor Day 2022, Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, said the audiobook industry would be an “annual opportunity of $70 billion dollars” for Spotify. He stated that the company wants to compete to conquer this market. Currently, the global size of the book market is around $140 billion. But with only a 6 to 7 percent market share, the audiobook market share isn’t significant. Of course, there are some markets where audiobooks have great popularity and account for around 50% of the market.
Spotify wants to expand its business into the audiobook market
Nir Zicherman, Spotify’s head of Audiobooks and Gated Content Vertical, stated that the audiobook market “presents a really unique opportunity” to “drastically expand” that industry. Also, expanding into the audiobook market allows Spotify to “introduce music and podcast listeners around the world to audiobooks.” Zicherman confirmed that users would soon be able to buy and listen to audiobooks within the Spotify platform. Spotify hopes to reach a global audience of over 422 million users by entering the audiobook industry. Spotify has been hosting audiobooks for years, but it has never been a big focus for the company. In 2021, Spotify conquered the audiobook platform Findaway that fueled rumors of its presence in the audiobook market. Spotify also hopes to renovate and transform the audiobook industry. Audible is currently one of the most famous audiobook platforms in the world, and Spotify wants to be a direct rival to it. Of course, Spotify has been dealing with losing some of its key staff in recent months, like its podcast tech chief and Global Head of International Licensing.
