First it was music, then podcasts… the next thing on Spotify’s roadmap to take over a large part of the pie in the streaming digital content market are audiobooks.
The growth potential of the audiobook market could reach 70,000 million in a few years
This may be the evolution in the commitment to the content formats served by the streaming platform Spotify, the reference in terms of music streaming like YouTube it can be to videos on the Internet, but over time it has diversified its offer. This was announced by Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, during the company’s Investor Day.
Spotify was not the pioneer in adding podcasts to its platform, but yes it was among the first in doing so and over time it has shown that the decision was the right one, having integrated this content into its ecosystem, and now it would be a matter of repeating the strategy with audiobooks, something that was evident with the acquisition in November 2021 of the platform of Findaway audiobooks.
According to Ek, the world audiobook market represents 10,000 million dollars with a growth potential in the coming years that could reach 70,000 million. And Spotify wants to get a significant slice of that promising market.
To assess the interest in the market, an analysis carried out last June by VIP+ on 1,500 adult Americans indicates that the number of subscribers to an audiobook service can grow by 50%. Of the 87% of the US population who currently do not have a subscription of this type, there are 7% who intend to subscribe to one of these services in the next 6 months.
That assumes that there are currently nearly 43 million Americans subscribed to audiobook services and in the next six months there could be 66 million subscribers. The users that would be incorporated in the next half year would be 16 million, a very important number of users among which Spotify wants to have a relevant proportion.
However, it is a market with important competitors, as is the case of Audible, the Amazon audiobook platform, Google Audiobooks or Storytel/Audiobooks.com as actors who are already on the pitch. The advantage for Spotify is to be the leader in the podcasting platform market, having overtaken Apple Podcasts, which led the sector until this year 2022, exceeding 433 million active users, also managing perspectives that indicate that it could have 1,000. million users in the year 2030.
30% of Spotify users listen to podcasts, this content representing 7% of the total hours of listening on the platform, and Ek’s estimates would range in similar percentages regarding the inclusion of audiobooks in the catalog of content available on Spotify. Hence also the importance of being pioneers by integrating them and continuing to expand their user base, with the ever-present uncertainty of how to improve the monetization of this new category of content.
