It's a big challenge to take the fight to Amazon, but Spotify thinks it has what it takes. The music streaming giant has confirmed that it signed on Amazon Audible's main competitor, Storytel, to provide audiobooks for Spotify listeners.
Spotify's Push to Weaken Amazon's Grip
As reported on Storytel's investor news channel, Spotify has brought on Storytel to help give its listeners some audiobooks to try out.
Storytel is a Swedish company that has the moxie to take on Amazon's audiobook service, Audible. It has over 1.5 million subscribers, 500,000 titles to listen to, and operates in 25 different markets.
However, while Storytel is putting up some awe-inspiring numbers, the company really wants to become more worldwide. This is likely why they teamed up with Spotify, which operates in 178 different markets and sports 356 million users.
As you might expect, the CEO of Storytel, Jonas Tellander, was very pleased for his business to have exposure from Spotify's vast userbase:
Partnering with Spotify make amazing audiobook experiences and exciting authorships easier than ever to access for our customers, while we will also be tapping into the opportunity of reaching new audiences who are on Spotify today, but have not yet experienced the magic of audiobooks.
Spotify's Global Head of Studios, Courtney Holt, is more than happy to welcome Storytel onto its platform. She cites the Spotify Open Access Platform as a major key for making this possible. This platform allows audio services with an active subscriber base to bring all of their content onto Spotify.
As such, you'll likely see more and more audio mediums make their way onto the Spotify platform. For example, while the service has supported podcasts for a while, it recently gained the ability to transcribe podcasts automatically.
As such, this may be the first of many steps Spotify takes to break out of the music streaming business and into other markets. We'll have to wait and see what the company has planned next.
Will Spotify Become the King of Online Audio?
Spotify has been firing on all cylinders lately. First, they added some amazing features for its podcast section, and now it's bringing audiobooks on board. The question is, does it have the strength to compete versus the big players in the market?
If you've never used Spotify to listen to a podcast before, you're missing out. The service even comes with its own "podcast charts" that let you know the latest and greatest shows to listen to.
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