Spotify buys audio tech startup Findaway in a major push to expand beyond music streaming and recreate its success with podcasts | Tech News

Spotify is likely one of the world’s hottest music streaming providers, with over 356 million monthly active users, together with 158 million premium subscribers. The music streaming behemoth has seen explosive progress in income and buyer base lately.

With billions of {dollars} warfare chest, Spotify is making an attempt to broaden past music streaming providers into the audio enterprise by means of acquisitions and large investments. In contrast to earlier acquisitions of corporations like Tunigo, Seed Scientific, Twine Venture, Soundwave, and CrowdAlbum in 2016, Spotify makes foray into dwell audio programming, podcasting, and unique contracts. Based on analysis agency Omdia, the worldwide audiobooks market is anticipated to be value $9.3 billion by 2026 from $4 billion in 2020.

In 2019, for instance, Spotify acquired three podcast corporations, together with Gimlet Media, the maker of the favored podcasts “Crimetown” and “Reply All.” The spending spree didn’t finish there. As we additionally reported again in March and June, Spotify additionally acquired dwell audio app Locker Room maker Betty Labs to tackle Clubhouse.

Quick ahead eight months later, Spotify introduced it has acquired audio tech startup Findaway in a significant push to broaden past music streaming with the inclusion of audiobooks on its platform because it tries to recreate its success with podcasts. The phrases of the transaction, which is anticipated to shut within the fourth quarter, weren’t disclosed.

Based in 2004 by Blake Squires and Christopher Celeste,  the Solon, Ohio-based Findaway companions with audiobook publishers reminiscent of Amazon’s Audible, Apple iBooks, Google, and Storytel to supply a worldwide audiobook catalog. The corporate additionally owns Voices, which helps authors to self-publish.

“That is the primary large transfer…what we need to obtain is for Spotify customers to have the ability to purchase any audiobook on Spotify and hearken to it,” Chief Analysis & Improvement Officer Gustav Söderström mentioned in an interview.

Along with shopping for audio tech corporations, Spotify additionally launched Clubhouse Clone Referred to as Greenroom on iOS & Android, marking its first foray into making a social media platform. Additionally in June, Spotify purchased Paris Hilton-backed podcast discovery Podz, a tech startup that developed an auto-generated “audio newsfeed” for podcasts. The phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed. Up to now few years, it has spent round $900 million on podcast belongings to assist Spotify rise to the highest of the podcast market.

“We all know from a survey that a lot of our customers who listened to true crime podcasts additionally went on to purchase audiobooks about true crime,” mentioned Söderström. “That’s an enormous potential for publishers as a result of we expect we’ve a consumer base that could be a actually good goal for audiobooks as properly.”

Spotify’s whole month-to-month energetic customers rose 19% to 381 million within the newest quarter with income of about 2.5 billion euros ($2.87 billion).