Spotify brings its new audiobooks service to Canada

Image credit: Spotify

Spotify’s still relatively new audiobook service is expanding to Canada, the company announced today, bringing the experience to both English and French speaking customers. Launched last fall, Spotify initially debuted audiobooks to US users with a catalog of around 300,000 titles. It then rolled out the audiobook purchase option to other English-speaking markets in November.

With today’s expansion, Spotify says its catalog has grown to 350,000 titles, but has yet to share how many Spotify users have expressed interest in audiobooks or purchased titles. Instead, the company said it was “seeing positive engagement” but didn’t share any kind of metrics on what that would look like.

However, customers may find the process of purchasing audiobooks through Spotify more difficult than it should be, as it tries to circumvent the app store’s in-app purchase requirements to avoid paying commissions. Instead of being able to purchase, Spotify tells customers that “audiobooks cannot be purchased through the app” and does not direct them to a website where they can purchase the book. This is to avoid violating the app store rules for steering. This means directing customers to buy directly from your company over the web instead of making in-app purchases.

Instead, customers are prompted with a green[了解]you have to click the button. This can reduce the number of possible sales as it requires many more extra steps to make a purchase and frustrates potential consumers.

At launch, Spotify touted its potential entry into a growing market with audiobooks, but audiobooks account for only a 6-7% share of the overall book market, with the category growing year-over-year. 20% growth. Additionally, Spotify’s recommendation engine can learn more about a user’s interests based on the books they’ve read, not just the music they like or the podcasts they follow, so this addition is even more fueled. is supplied.

The company recently announced a revamp of its Spotify app aimed at improving recommendations via a TikTok-style feed that offers previews of audio content, including audiobook clips. However, these changes have not yet reached all customers, so it remains to be seen if audiobook sales will actually increase as a result.