Spotify invests over $1 million to grow catalogs of non-English audiobooks
Spotify announcement On Friday, it plans to invest 1 million euros, or about $1.1 million, to increase the production of audiobooks in languages other than English, starting with French and Dutch.
This investment shows that Spotify is keen on more English titles in a limited library as it seeks to compete with major players like Audible. $8.7 billion global audiobook market.
Spotify started in these languages, as adoptions were particularly slow in France and the Netherlands.
According to the company, less than 3% of French books are currently available in audio format, with only 20,000 audiobooks in France comparing them to around 750,000 physical titles. In the Netherlands, approximately 15,000 Dutch audiobooks are available from a physical library with 209,000 titles.
company Release Audiobook services in France and the Benelux region this October.
Spotify believes slow adoption is likely due to high production costs, which could prevent publishers from converting written works into audio formats.
Despite the company highlighting its commitment to working with human narrators, Spotify recently partnered evelenlabs As a cost-effective solution to encourage authors to publish content that is narrated to AI. However, the use of AI narration has sparked concerns within the publishing community.