Spotify Takes Bold Step to Expand Non-English Audiobook Offerings

Spotify has announced a significant investment of €1 million, approximately $1.1 million, aimed at enhancing its catalog of non-English audiobooks. This new program is intended to increase access to audiobooks in languages other than English. Most importantly for the company, it fills a notable hole in the company’s current lineup.

Spotify is largely taking this step to establish a foothold in the competitive $8.7 billion global audiobooks market. It faces a challenging and entrenched competitive landscape including industry leader Audible. Spotify is kicking off this adventure by focusing exclusively on French and Dutch. They’re looking into markets where audiobooks have had difficulty gaining traction.

In fact, it has gotten to a point where the availability of French-language audiobooks is shockingly worse than that. Fewer than 3% of French-language books have successfully made the jump to audio format. In comparison to the 750,000 physical titles, there are about 20,000 titles available in audiobook format in France. Likewise, in the Netherlands, only 15,000 Dutch audiobooks are available, while the brick-and-mortar library has 209,000 titles in it. These numbers emphasize a large gap between print and radio across these areas, with the latter gaining much higher traction than the former.

To date, high production costs have posed a barrier for publishers looking to convert their works from print to audio mediums. In answer to this industry dilemma, Spotify has pointed out that, unlike the competition, they will exclusively use human narrators for their audiobooks. The company has partnered with ElevenLabs to provide a cost-effective solution, encouraging authors to produce AI-narrated content as an alternative.

In October, Spotify expanded its audiobook service to France and the Benelux region. This action is a clear sign of their strategic move into these markets. Spotify continues to make big bets with its content library, with ongoing investments in non-English audiobooks. This move is intended to increase user engagement in areas where audiobook adoption is more nascent.