Plus, the addition offers more fuel for Spotify’s recommendation engine as the company could learn more about a user’s interests based not only on the music they like and the podcasts they follow, but also which books they read. That likely reduces the number of possible sales as it requires many more extra steps to buy and frustrates potential consumers.Īt launch, Spotify had touted the potential to tap into a growing market with audiobooks, that audiobooks represented just a 6-7% share of the wider book market and that the category is growing by 20% year-over-year. Instead, customers can only click a green “Got It” button after seeing the message about not being able to purchase books in-app. This is to avoid being in violation of app store rules around steering - that is, directing customers to buy directly from the company via the web, instead of through in-app purchases. Instead of being able to tap to make a purchase in the app, Spotify informs customers that they “can’t buy audiobooks in the app,” without guiding them to the website where the books can be purchased. Instead, the company noted that it’s “seeing positive engagement,” without sharing any sort of metrics about what that may look like.Ĭustomers may find the process of buying an audiobook through Spotify more difficult than it should be, however, because of how the company is trying to work around the app stores’ in-app purchase requirements in order to avoid paying commissions. With today’s expansion, Spotify says its catalog has grown to 350,000 titles but it hasn’t yet shared how many Spotify users have demonstrated interest in audiobooks or purchased titles. It later rolled out the option to shop audiobooks to other English-speaking markets back in November. users only with a catalog of some 300,000 titles. Launched last fall, Spotify initially debuted audiobooks to U.S. Spotify’s still relatively new audiobooks service is expanding to Canada, the company announced today, bringing the experience to both English and French-speaking customers.
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