From CNET:
Spotify said Wednesday it wants to expand aggressively into audiobooks, broadening beyond music and podcasts into another form of audio, and it plans to introduce a store where you’d pay Spotify for individual titles.
“We believe that audiobooks in their many different forms will be a massive opportunity,” CEO Daniel Ek said Wednesday, speaking at an investor presentation. “Just as we’ve done in podcasting, expect us to play to win.”
Spotify, the biggest streaming service by both listeners and subscribers, will also widen its business model to include a marketplace where users pay for things, like audiobooks, a la carte.
That’s a change from Spotify’s tradition for years, which opened up its entire library to listeners almost without limits; people could either listen free with advertising or pay for a premium subscription that strips out ads and includes some other perks, like downloads.
Essentially, adding an a la carte element means evolving from an entirely all-you-can-eat smorgasbord to a buffet that doesn’t let you eat every single thing on the menu.
For some things, like audiobooks, you may need need to pay to unlock specific titles.
Link to the rest at CNET
Probably pay people the same equivalent rate as musicians, which is currently $.003 per song streamed (if I’m wrong, I’ll gladly accept the correction). I’m already not a fan of Spotify because they decided August 2021 to pull some of their podcast content from other platforms and make it available only on theirs (they also charge to download, which a lot of people do to save on data charges).
But how will they be sharing their largesse with the rights holders, authors and narrators? That’s the important question.
And I’m sure you already know the answer. The music industry does us no favors by paving this particular road to no-rewards.
I did one audiobook (by author) for my 8 released books so far, but there is absolutely no financial incentive to do any more. If I were already a bestseller, than the investment vs return could still be worthwhile if underwater (as a much smaller percentage of total investment), if it brought an incalculable increased revenue across the whole line, but in ordinary-indie-land, this will never be a cash positive route for me, by title/format or overall.