Titles offered in French and/or Dutch in Spotify’s audiobook catalogue. Image: Spotify
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Less Than 3 Percent of French-Language books’
In October 2024, Spotify announced a launch of audiobooks in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, offering the “Audiobooks in Premium” approach to those area’s consumers that first had been rolled out in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
Today (April 11), the company has announced an investment of €1 million (US$1.13 million) “to increase the production of audiobooks in non-English languages, starting with French and Dutch.
Since launching Audiobooks in France and the Benelux last October, the company reports having seen “an average month-over-month growth of 12 percent in listeners and listening hours.”
In France, Spotify’s media messaging released this morning indicates that its growth in audiobook listeners features a younger, more diverse audience, with nearly 60 percent of listeners aged 18 to 34—accounting for more than half of all listening hours.” That, of course, is intensely attractive to publishers, many of whom are following the growth of audiobooks in many markets of world publishing as an increasingly sound bet on widening a consumer base toward younger customers.
“In order to continue to build” audiobook consumerism, “especially in countries where the audiobook market isn’t yet mature,” Spotify’s press-communications team writes, “we want to support audiobook production.” And this, of course, then, is the intent behind the investment in the production of audiobooks in non-English languages, starting with French and Dutch.
Not surprisingly—and of course other companies such as Amazon‘s Audible and Storytel can attest to this–investment in new markets’ local-language audio libraries can be pivotal, “particularly in markets where audiobooks are still growing as a format.”
Jérémy Amsellem
In a comment on the news from Jérémy Amsellem, who is Spotify’s audiobooks partnerships and licensing manager for Europe, we read, “Our aim is to help create long-term value for the publishing industry and build new revenue streams for partners.
“To do that, we must attract new audiences while also retaining existing book lovers, and audiobooks can play a key role in that. But at the heart of that must be great books.
“With less than 3 percent of French-language books available in audio format today, this is a great opportunity to help publishers and authors find new readers.”
Spotify notes today that its co-funded audiobooks—those the production of which will benefit from the €1 million investment—will be non-exclusive and made available on Spotify, with the rights holder’s option to also be hosted on any other major platform.
‘High Production Costs, Slow Market Adoption’
Spotify’s announcement minces no words in pointing to “high production costs and slow market adoption” as part of the reason that non-English audiobooks have been less available in the region as desired.
“In France, for example,” the company writes, “there are approximately 750,000 titles in French, but approximately 20,000 audiobooks. In the Netherlands, there are approximately 15,000 audiobooks in Dutch from a total physical catalogue of 209,000.”
While it’s not mentioned, it’s well known among Publishing Perspectives‘ international professional publishing readership that the avidly reading French population has long been uncomfortable with digital formats, which of course would be part of that mention of “slow market adoption.”
Human and Digital Voicing
As for the sometimes vexing question of human readers for audiobooks (sometimes called narrators) vs. automated voices, Spotify’s announcement offers reassurance to those who voice audiobooks, saying that the company “believes in the power of human narration, and we will continue to work with partners and the narrator community to bring these titles to fans in French and Dutch languages.
“With less than 3 percent of French-language books available in audio format today, this is a great opportunity to help publishers and authors find new readers.”Jérémy Amsellem, Spotify
“But we will also offer digital voice narration as part of this investment,” the company quite forthrightly goes on to say, “to help make audiobook production more cost-effective for those partners who require a lower barrier to entry. For listeners, AI-narrated titles will be clearly identified in the description with this audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.”
That last point is in line with the suggestions made by the United States-based Audio Publishers Association and the United Kingdom’s Audio Publishers Group—part of the UK’s Publishers Association (PA)— have together issued a kind of holiday gift to the industry: a concise guide for publishers and retailers to consider around issues of responsible consumer labeling of audiobooks on which the readings are made with digital voices.
The world industry’s most articulate specialists on the proposed labeling of audiobooks made with digital voicings—either from purely synthesized content or from the sampling of voices of actors and/or celebrities—are of course Jon Watt of Bonnier Books UK, whose work led the Publishers Association’s group on the topic for many months, and the Audio Publishers Association’s executive director Michele Cobb.
You can read our announcement story here (December 19, 2024) about the release of their proposed guidelines for the audiobook industry in producing the most transparent and ethical identification of digitally produced readings of audiobooks here.
And a side note familiar to many in world publishing and audiobooks: Frequently you’ll see automated readings of audiobooks referred to as having “AI voices” or “AI narration.” However, digital voice production preceded the advent of publicly discussed artificial intelligence—with such companies as Speechki and others doing synthetic voice work more than a year before the first release of ChatGPT. In fact, the sampling and manipulation of the human voice was a topic of huge controversy around soprano Sarah Brightman’s high note in the West End original staging from Cameron Mackintosh of The Phantom of the Opera in October 1986. Today, this would, of course, be quickly dubbed an “AI-powered” feat, as so many elements of automation of almost any kind nowadays are erroneously referred to as having something to do intelligence, artificial or otherwise. The buzzy popularity of the phrase “AI” is simply in its predictable stage of overuse. Remember when all was suddenly “digital”?
Spotify announced in late February that it was working with the familiar ElevenLabs in a blog post directed primarily at authors looking for audio production.
More from Publishing Perspectives on audiobooks is here, more on Spotify and its audiobook work is here, more on the Audio Publishers Association is here, more on the United Kingdom’s Publishers Association is here, more on industry statistics is here, more on publishing in France is here, more on publishing in Belgium is here, and more on publishing in the Netherlands is here. More on book publishing in Europe is here, and more on digital publishing is here.