Spotify on Thursday said it will buy Ohio-based audiobooks distribution company Findaway as the Swedish streaming service continues to expand its audio offerings beyond music and podcasts. Spotify gained a global following first as a music streaming service, but in recent years it has made significant investments into becoming a podcast company. Podcast listeners tend to stream more audiobooks than non-podcast listeners, and when engaging in longer activities like plane flights they prefer audiobooks over podcasts, according to an Adobe Analytics report released in 2019. Findaway will add to Spotify's efforts in the audiobooks space and help grow Spotify's audience of more than 381 million monthly active users. By scaling up its investment in audiobooks, Spotify will be competing against larger players in the space such as Amazon-owned Audible.

Source: Los Angeles Times November 12, 2021 15:22 UTC