Spotify has closed the acquisition of digital audiobook distribution company Findaway.
The company entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Findaway in November 2021. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Spotify’s buyout of Findaway positions the company to be able to compete in an audiobooks sector currently dominated by the likes of Audible, which was acquired by Amazon for $300 million in 2018.
The announcement of the deal’s conclusion follows last week’s Spotify Investor Day, where CEO Daniel Ek outlined SPOT’s intentions to double down on the audiobook format.
Spotify says that Findaway’s technology will help it compete in “the rapidly growing audiobooks industry with substantial market opportunity”:
SPOT notes that the audiobooks market “is expected to grow from $3.3 billion to $15 billion by 2027”.
Spotify says that Findaway offers the “largest catalog” of distributed audiobook titles.
The latter company, according to Spotify, also offers “technology tools that independent authors can use to publish and distribute their stories to new audiences”.
Spotify adds that it plans “on accelerating the growth of these tools, with the goal of scaling and expanding the audiobooks market overall”.
In the media statement announcing the closing of the deal, Spotify says that Findaway’s technology infrastructure will enable it “to quickly scale its audiobook catalog”.
This week, Spotify also announced that it’s buying London-based Sonantic, an AI voice platform that claims to be able to create “compelling, nuanced, and stunningly realistic voices from text”.
“We believe that audiobooks, in their many different forms, will be a massive opportunity.”
Speaking at the Spotify Investor Day, the company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, said: “We believe that audiobooks, in their many different forms, will be a massive opportunity.”
Added Spotify’s Global Head of Audiobooks, Nir Zicherman, in his 2022 Investor Day presentation: “We believe this presents a unique opportunity to introduce music and podcast listeners around the world to audiobooks and drastically expand that market.”Music Business Worldwide
