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Spotify is launching audiobooks in French.
BOOK – Music is done. Podcasts, too. This Monday, October 14, the music streaming giant Spotify announced that it was opening up to another area in France: audiobooks. More than 15,000 works in French will be added to the catalog of the application used by nearly 10 million users in France.
The price of listening to them is not offered with your subscription, but proportional to the time spent. According to a press release, premium subscribers will benefit from up to 12 hours of listening per month and will be able to purchase additional hours in increments of 10 hours for almost 10 euros. Others will have the opportunity to purchase audio books à la carte.
The approach is not new. Spotify has already invested in this field of action in other countries around the world, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, but also the United States, Ireland and New Zealand. France is – alongside the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg also affected by this new feature – as one of the first non-English speaking countries to access it.
This is not trivial. According to the latest barometer on the uses of digital and audio books from the National Publishing Union, the country had 6.8 million audiobook listeners (digital or physical) in 2023. A younger and more male audience , according to the study, which perhaps risks deserting Audible, Amazon’s platform until now favored in the field.
Hachette, Gallimard and Editis in the game
« This is very good news for the audiobook and the book in general », welcomed Laure Saget, CEO of Audiolib (Hachette), during the press conference at which The Echoes were present. For this launch, Spotify joined forces with the French number one book publisher (under the leadership of Vincent Bolloré) and other leading publishing houses, such as Madrigall (Gallimard) and Lizzie, Editis’ audio house.
At the time of writing, it was not yet available to access the thousands of newly added references. Although this should happen shortly, their availability on the platform could however vary over time, depending on agreements with the rights holders. Just as some of the titles available for purchase will not necessarily be the same as those in the subscription catalog.
Spotify which, during the month of May 2024, increased prices to cover the additional costs generated by the “ taxe streaming », did not specify whether this new functionality would lead to further increases in the price of its offers in the long term.
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