Late final yr, Spotify started providing 15 hours of month-to-month audiobook listening to its Premium subscribers in choose markets, together with the U.S. Now the corporate says the brand new service is the second-largest audiobook supplier behind Amazon-owned Audible — one thing Spotify CEO Daniel Ek mentioned was notable “given how entrenched the legacy gamers are.” Throughout its This autumn 2023 earnings name with buyers, the comapny additionally provided a glimpse into how audiobooks are being consumed by Spotify prospects, together with by sharing insights that point out the books are reaching a distinct set of listeners than on Audible or different platforms.

“The intriguing half is we’re capable of deliver a complete new viewers to audiobooks. So internally and externally, I feel the largest shock had been the kind of titles that resonate with shoppers. These will not be the conventional titles that historically do nicely,” mentioned  Ek.

“It’s lots of leisure. It’s rather a lot about tradition,” Ek famous. “Additionally pleasing may be very many youthful authors, newer authors as nicely, given the mannequin the place you’ll be able to take an opportunity on a brand new e book with out…consuming up the credit, which I feel form of drove you in direction of extra safer bets,” he added. “So we’re seeing a really, very attention-grabbing pattern across the content material consumption which is…I imagine addictive to your entire e book trade.”

On Audible, subscribers can both entry a restricted collection of audiobooks and originals or will pay extra to get a month-to-month credit score to buy an audiobook from an prolonged collection of finest sellers and new releases. This mannequin encourages customers to spend their credit score on well-performing prime titles or these from recognized authors. However on Spotify’s plan, customers merely have a sure variety of month-to-month hours out there for audiobook listening. This has pushed them to discover lesser-known titles and people from rising authors, Spotify defined. They’re additionally all in favour of listening to audiobooks about topics that align with music, like leisure and tradition, for instance.

Buyers had lots of questions for Spotify concerning the new audiobook providing, main Spotify to share its general impressions of how each shoppers and publishers had been adapting to the brand new format. On the latter, Spotify mentioned that publishers and authors had been excited concerning the innovation provided by its subscription and have been “very open-minded” when it comes to attempting new issues.

As well as, client engagement with the characteristic has been robust, Spotify shared, although with none particular metrics.

Nonetheless, the streamer stopped in need of providing particulars as to how the addition of audiobooks was including to its backside line, saying it was too early to say as of but. As an alternative, Ek identified that, usually talking, the extra engagement on the platform, the higher Spotify’s worth proposition for shoppers. The corporate had added 28 million customers within the quarter, its second-biggest achieve in comapny historical past. The service now has 602 million customers, over 236 million of that are paid subscribers with entry to the audiobooks service.

The corporate declined to reply buyers’ particular questions concerning the impression of audiobooks’ consumption prices on margins, however mentioned Spotify anticipated to see gross margins enhance by means of 2024.

One tease of what’s to return for the format was hinted at in a query about Spotify’s common Daylist, a personalised audio playlist that tries to foretell your temper at varied factors all through the day. Folks have been coming to Spotify particularly for the characteristic, driving searches for the time period “Daylist” up by over 2,000%, the corporate mentioned. Now it appears Spotify could also be considering of translate Daylist’s success to new codecs.

“I’m actually happy with the group and the issues that they’re doing on this division,” mentioned Ek, of the group behind the characteristic. “And it wouldn’t shock me if we see many extra modern issues come out of it — each on, in fact, on the music aspect, however afterward additionally reflecting that on the audiobook aspect on the podcasting aspect as nicely,” he prompt.