Tag: publishing

Spotify Partners With Crooked Lane and Alcove Press To Bring More Mystery and Crime Audiobooks

February 6, 2025

Our aim is to bring great audiobooks to as many people as possible, and we’re glad to give book fans more options as they discover their next great listens. Spotify Audiobooks—our in-house audiobook publishing imprint—has entered into an exclusive audiobook publishing partnership with Crooked Lane Books/Alcove Press, a leading publisher spanning commercial fiction genres and select nonfiction.

Under the partnership, Spotify Audiobooks will publish titles from Crooked Lane and Alcove’s frontlist catalogs beginning March 2025. Titles will be distributed widely on Spotify via Spotify’s Audiobooks in Premium offering and available to purchase a la carte, as well as across more than 30 other digital retail and library channels.

“Crooked Lane is thrilled. Spotify’s position as both a distributor and audiobook publisher plus their innovative approach make them the ideal partner,” said Matthew Martz, publisher at Crooked Lane and Alcove. “With over hundreds of millions of paid subscribers, we’re confident that Spotify will bring our books to new listeners. Spotify has done great work with our titles, and we know our authors are in the best possible hands.”

Spotify Audiobooks and Crooked Lane have partnered previously on multiple audio titles, including The Darkest Night edited by Lindy Ryan, I’ve Got My Mind Set on Brew by Stephanie Jayne, and A Dream in the Dark by Robert Justice.

“We are so excited to kick off 2025 with such an important partnership,” Henna Silvennoinen, Associate Manager of Audiobooks at Spotify, said. “We’ve admired Crooked Lane’s catalog for years. Their strong commercial stories will appeal to listeners on Spotify and beyond, and this is just the beginning. We believe that partnering will elevate Crooked Lane and Spotify’s publishing to a whole new level.”

Spotify Listeners Gain Even More Great Stories With Audiobooks From Podium

February 6, 2025

Spotify listeners around the world have embraced our Audiobooks in Premium offering, and we continue to grow our catalog of titles to give them more options to discover and enjoy. Thanks to a new partnership with publisher Podium Entertainment, there are even more reasons for audiobook lovers to cheer: Podium is one of the largest audiobook publishers in the world and an industry leader in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and romance, and beginning today many of its popular and award-winning titles will be available to Spotify listeners.

“Spotify is building a worldwide audience for audiobooks and reimagining what the format can be for authors and their fans,” said Duncan Bruce, Director, Audiobook Partnerships & Licensing, at Spotify. “We’re proud to partner with the great folks at Podium to further enrich our catalog of titles and bring more stories that readers love to Audiobooks in Premium.”

Audiobooks in Premium gives eligible paid subscribers 12-15 hours of audiobook listening per month. Through this offering, eligible listeners can easily explore, discover, and try audiobooks on Spotify with just one click.

“We are incredibly excited to launch some of the industry’s hottest audiobooks with Spotify this week,” said Scott Dickey, CEO of Podium Entertainment. “As a rapidly expanding publisher with a catalog filled with extraordinary stories, this partnership with Spotify represents a tremendous opportunity to expand our fan base and reach new listeners on behalf of the amazing authors we represent at Podium.”

Spotify listeners can’t get enough of sci-fi, fantasy, and romance audiobooks

On Spotify, the sci-fi & fantasy genres continue to gain popularity with listeners. At the end of 2024, the genre ranked in the top three for completion rates for audiobooks on our platform and in the top five for both return rates and hours per use. Now, with titles like Callie Hart’s #1 best-selling audiobook Quicksilver, the BookTok favorite The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent, and so much more, fans on Spotify have even more options to dive into.

Spotify is continually testing ways to bring fans closer to the stories they love, so selected Podium titles will leverage video clips to help listeners explore and discover audiobooks in new ways. Much like a digital book jacket, these videos help contextualize an audiobook for users so they can assess it before they commit to pressing play.

Spotify Inks a New Partnership With Bloomsbury To Offer A Greater Assortment of Audiobooks

November 22, 2024

Our library continues to grow. In 2022, we announced the addition of audiobooks to Spotify, and since then we’ve worked with publishers around the world to deliver more titles to our digital shelves. Today marks another exciting chapter for audiobook lovers thanks to a new partnership with Bloomsbury, one of the largest publishers in the U.K.

“As we celebrate the one-year anniversary of Audiobooks in Premium, there’s no better way to build on our momentum than with the addition of Bloomsbury’s beloved library,” said Duncan Bruce, Director of Audiobook Partnerships and Licensing at Spotify. “This partnership allows us to expand our author lineup and give listeners an even wider array of titles to enjoy, taking us another step forward in our goal of reimagining the audiobook experience.”

Spotify users will have access to more than 1,000 new titles from Bloomsbury’s award-winning catalog. It includes an array of stellar titles from acclaimed authors including Sarah J. Maas, William Dalrymple, Alan Moore, Madeline Miller, Dan Jones, Samantha Shannon, and Ann Patchett, all paired with narrations from top-tier talent such as Meryl Streep, Emilia Clarke, Adjoa Andoh, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Listeners can lose themselves in epic, sweeping fantasies for adults, like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, award winners such as Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (which won the Goldsmith’s prize in 2023), and the IPG Audiobook of the Year, Ghosts, read by the cast of the show. Listeners will also find thrilling adventures for kids, such as Katherine Rundell‘s Children’s Book of the Year, Impossible Creatures, read by Sam West. For lovers of nonfiction, Bloomsbury has works written and read by many distinguished historians, including Peter Frankopan, William Dalrymple, Dan Jones, and the recent number-one bestselling title, Want, Submitted by Anonymous, Collected by Gillian Anderson.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Spotify to bring our catalog of audiobooks to even more listeners. We are passionate about bringing the creative talents of our authors and narrators to as many listeners as possible, through our mission to inform, educate, entertain, and inspire readers of all ages and backgrounds. We feel confident that this partnership will help to introduce a whole new generation of listeners to audiobooks for years to come,” said Sam Halstead, Director of Audio at Bloomsbury.

The addition of this catalog continues our commitment to introducing the audiobook format to new listeners while also expanding opportunities and creating an additional revenue stream for the industry. Since launching audiobooks, Spotify has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to publishers on an annualized basis. Spotify’s aim is to be the best place for authors and publishers to get their books heard, and to bring great audio stories to as many people as possible. With a global audience of more than 615 million listeners, Spotify provides a new platform for authors and rights holders to share their content.

There’s no experience quite like getting lost in an audiobook, and we’re thrilled to continue bringing more options and varieties to Spotify. Head to Spotify to discover your next great “read.”

Bringing More Audiobooks From Independent Authors to Spotify With Ingram Content Group

July 25, 2024

At Spotify, we aim to bring great audiobooks to as many listeners as possible, including those from independent authors. Today we’re announcing a partnership with Ingram Content Group, one of the largest distributors for independent publishers and authors across the globe.

This deal will bring audiobooks from over 100 Ingram-distributed publishers to Spotify, encompassing releases from Europa Editions, Milkweed Editions, G&D Media, Bard Press, New Society Publishers, and more. Titles include the likes of Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s self-narrated collection The Hurting Kind, Mo Bunnell’s forthcoming Give to Grow, and bestselling author Bob Proctor’s Born Rich. In the U.S., listeners can also dive into Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Promise and Anne Berest’s international bestseller The Postcard, to name a few.

“Our partnership with Ingram Content Group is part of our goal to bring more independent authors to Spotify to get their books heard through our Audiobooks in Premium offering,” said Duncan Bruce, Director, Audiobook Partnerships & Licensing at Spotify. “As one of the biggest distributors for independent publishers around the world, we are excited to have Ingram to help grow the industry and create additional ways for their authors and publishers to reach new audiences.”

“Ingram Content Group is dedicated to bringing more books, in all formats, to more readers,” said Agustina Casal, Ingram Content Group’s Director of Digital Sales and Marketing. “We’re proud to continue to work with Spotify to bring audiobooks of so many independent publishers to the world.”

Since launching our Audiobooks in Premium offering last year, we’re seeing more listeners try new and different books, with hundreds of thousands of unique titles streamed. We’re not only seeing success with bestsellers, but back catalog titles are also gaining popularity. Of the top 10 audiobooks on Spotify, nine are backlist titles, and six of those were released over five years ago.

Head to Spotify to find your next great listen.

Evolving Brands’ Measurement Experience With All-New Spotify Ad Analytics

June 13, 2023

As digital audio continues to boom, advertisers and publishers need modernized tools to understand the impact of their ad investments. Since 2020, Spotify has led the charge with innovations like Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI), which offers deeper ad insights and reporting than was previously available for podcasts. We continued our investments in this space last year with our acquisition of Podsights as we endeavored to accelerate podcast ads measurement and ultimately, strengthen audio ad measurement across music and podcasts on platform and beyond.

Today, we’re taking the next step in that journey and launching Spotify Ad Analytics (SpAA), a global measurement service for brands and agencies of all sizes. This free tool provides advertisers with more ways to better understand their investments on and off Spotify. For publishers, SpAA unlocks greater opportunities to prove the value of their inventories to direct advertising clients.

To learn more, For the Record spoke with Kelsey Woo, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Spotify who oversees product marketing efforts across Spotify’s advertising measurement, reporting, and insights tools.

Measurement in digital audio advertising lags behind other digital channels. What are some of the ways we’re addressing this with new tools like Spotify Ad Analytics?

Measurement remains an industry-wide challenge across all of digital audio advertising. In the early days, podcasters began monetizing their content by simply recording their ad reads directly into the audio file for a specific podcast episode—these became known as “baked in” or “burned in” ads.

The global shift in consumption from downloads to streaming has opened the door for advances in more data-driven podcast advertising measurement. When we launched SAI, we introduced impression-level insight to podcast advertising for the very first time. Rather than relying on download data, advertisers now had access to standard digital reporting like impressions, unique reach, and frequency, along with unique audience insights and creative performance metrics powered by Spotify’s first-party data.

Last year, we acquired Podsights to solve this measurement pain point for advertisers, both on Spotify and across the industry. Today, by announcing that Podsights is now Spotify Ad Analytics, we’re taking the next step in that journey.

Why the decision to offer Spotify Ad Analytics free of charge?

It’s no secret that we believe in the power of audio. And as marketers increasingly invest in this powerful medium, we want to support that industry-wide growth by making it easier to measure the impact of the format. That’s why we decided to offer Spotify Ad Analytics as a free service to all customers. We feel it’s not only important to make this type of data and foundational knowledge accessible to businesses of all sizes, but to also provide it with the expertise that comes from being the world’s most popular audio-streaming service.

Spotify Ad Analytics builds on a strong foundation to provide our customers with a one-stop shop for Spotify’s measurement and reporting solutions. It gives advertisers even more tools to better understand the value of their investments across Spotify and beyond—free of charge.

What does this mean for advertisers? What are the implications for publishers?

This new offering means that advertisers can measure more on Spotify. It also means both publishers and advertisers can measure real-time conversion tracking and attribution across an unlimited number of audio and podcast impressions. For customers who were previously working with Podsights, there’s no new installation required—they’ll get access to more tools and features just by logging in.

Why is measurement so important for both of these groups? How will Spotify Ad Analytics help accomplish their goals?

Ultimately, Spotify Ad Analytics will help advertisers understand which media strategies are helping them reach their goals. In turn, this allows publishers to prove the value of podcast advertising and further accelerate the growth of their podcast businesses.

We’ve been testing the expanded capabilities since late last year, most recently partnering with advertisers like Grammarly and Shopify to measure the performance of streaming audio ads. We’ve received great feedback on the ability to streamline reporting surfaces and easily understand the holistic impact of different media types, so we’re really excited.

Spotify advertisers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States can now use Spotify Ad Analytics to lean into the power of streaming to provide even more accurate and actionable insights across Spotify ads. Learn more here.

Spotify’s New Publishing Tool Makes It Easy To Turn Broadcasts Into Podcasts

April 13, 2023

At the end of 2021, Spotify announced the acquisition of Whooshkaa, an Australia-based podcast technology platform that let radio broadcasters turn their existing audio content into on-demand podcast content. Today, we are excited to share that this technology is now available for any publisher with a Megaphone account. Megaphone is our podcasting platform for enterprise publishers and professional podcasters, and it offers a comprehensive set of tools that helps them publish, measure, and monetize their podcast businesses.

This technology, which we are calling broadcast-to-podcast (B2P), gives broadcast publishers—whether they’re already in the podcast game or new to the medium—an easy-to-use tool that allows them to leverage existing content to reach new, younger audiences and extend their revenue potential.

For the Record spoke to Emma Vaughn, Global Head of Advertising Business Development & Partnerships at Spotify, to learn more about this technology and what it means for broadcast creators.

First, can you share how radio listening habits are changing?

Radio listening has been gradually shifting from over-the-air to streaming as consumers increasingly choose to listen through their digital devices. In fact, the time people spent listening to broadcast radio online in the U.S. grew by 50% from 2019 to 2022.

Similar to TV, busy consumers want to listen to their favorite audio content on their own schedule. This partly explains the tremendous growth of the podcast industry—creators, publishers, and platforms are responding to the demand from audiences. At the same time, there are more ways for people to listen thanks to a high adoption of devices like smart speakers, smartwatches, and more.

Does this new B2P tool require extra effort or technical knowledge to use?

No! The ease of use and automation are major benefits to this product. After a simple, one-time setup process in Megaphone, broadcast-to-podcast will automatically create new podcast episodes from previously broadcasted content, making it easier than ever for broadcast publishers to reach new audiences with their content. It’s honestly so cool.

It typically takes publishing teams approximately 30 to 60 minutes to manually convert each individual broadcast episode to a podcast. This includes downloading the episode off the radio platform, removing the ad spots, placing ad markers, and uploading the episode to a podcast platform.

This amount of friction does not work at scale when converting hundreds of episodes per day across a network. B2P helps automate this entire process for publishers.