Spotify loudly announced its reinforcement in audio books during the Frankfurt fair, the world publishing meeting which ended on Sunday 23 October. Nir Zicherman, vice-president of the Swedish group and global head of audiobooks, did not hide the extent of his ambition: “We want to be the catalyst for the explosion of the audio book as we were for music, then the podcast. » According to him, the market is expected to grow by 20% per year. The firm Grand View Research based in San Francisco (United States) estimates that this sector should reach 35 billion dollars (35.58 billion euros) per year by 2030. Seven times more than today.
Since September, the Swedish group has been marketing, as a test, an initial offer of 300,000 audio books in the United States. In 2020, the world number one in music streaming had already posted an audio version that it had produced for free, of the first volume of the saga. Harry Potter by JK Rowling.
“The idea is to duplicate what made the success of our podcast offer launched in 2015. Easy access for consumers, innovative formats and monetization strategies and a strong recommendation algorithm,” Nir Zicherman said in Frankfurt. To support this strategic diversification, Spotify acquired last year the American company Findaway, owner of the largest catalog of audio books in the world, which works as a wholesaler with all the major players in the sector, Apple, Google or Audible (Amazon ).
An indefinite business strategy
However, the vice-president of Spotify gave very few indications as to his future commercial strategy. In June, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek raised the prospect of a free audiobook offering available to subscribers but which would include advertising. Nir Zicherman remained extremely vague: “We carry out tests on different business models that meet different needs. » By promising, without demonstrating it, that “Audiobooks were definitely not going to cannibalize the dramatic fiction broadcast on podcasts”. No timetable has been given on the arrival of these new services in France. Apparently, nothing should be expected before the next six months.
Audio books, which have already become popular in Sweden, Germany and Great Britain, are attracting more and more operators in France. French publishers have already taken a place in this market, such as Audiolib (co-owned by Hachette Livre and Albin Michel) or more recently Lizzie (Editis). With this in mind, Media Participations has entered the capital, in a very minority way, of the music platform Deezer, which markets audio books in Germany but not yet in France.
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