audiobooks
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When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
To determine how great this loss in royalty value would be for the music business, Billboard calculated that songwriters and publishers will earn an estimated $150 million less in U.S. mechanical royalties from premium, duo and family plans for the first 12 months that this is in effect, compared to what they would have earned if these three subscriptions were never bundled. Notably, this change will not impact Spotify’s premium, duo or family pay outs for the first two months of 2024. Bundling kicks in starting in March, so this number refers to losses for the first 12 months after premium, family and duo is qualified as a bundle, not the calendar year of 2024.
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Billboard’s figure was calculated by determining how Spotify’s service revenue, payments to labels, performance royalty rates, and other factors that impact mechanical income are expected to rise each month throughout 2024. These 2024 projections are based on actual numbers pulled from the Mechanical Licensing Collective’s Spotify rate sheets for 2023. For premium specifically, the streamer will pay an estimated $100 million less in the first 12 months bundling is in effect, in comparison to what Spotify was projected to pay in the next 12 months had it never been reclassified.
To be more conservative with the premium-only estimate, if the lost royalty value was calculated purely based on actual 2023 numbers from the MLC, the losses would be around $80 million for the first 12 months, but given all of Spotify’s music service revenue grew by an average of 1.1% every month in 2023, according to Billboard’s calculations, $80 million is almost certainly a low-ball. (A representative for Spotify declined Billboard’s request for comment).
As Spotify grows, the chasm between what payments would have been to songwriters and publishers if premium was counted as a regular standalone service versus what it will be paid now as a bundle with books is expected to increase. According to Spotify’s latest earnings call, the company is growing steadily, up 14% year-over-year for premium subscribers and 20% year-over-year for premium revenue globally.
The lost royalty value for songwriters and publishers could become even larger if Spotify ups the cost of premium to $11.99, which a source close to the matter thinks is possible. It is also possible that this loss could be lessened by how many users change their subscription from premium, duo and family to Spotify’s forthcoming music-only tier, which will pay out in the way that premium did before it was bundled, but this is unlikely to make a significant impact in the estimate of first year losses, considering the tier has yet to be launched and users are automatically renewed on their current plans, even after bundling.
Given there are some unknowns still present, estimates range for lost mechanical royalty value for the first year. One source close to the matter agrees with Billboard’s estimate, also independently calculating that the lost royalty value will total at $150 million in U.S. mechanical royalties for premium, duo and family. Another source calculated somewhere between $140-150 million. A third source says their personal estimate totaled at around $120-130 million at minimum.
This change only impacts the United States, but there are fears that Spotify’s reclassification will have a domino effect worldwide, given other major markets like Australia, Canada, Ireland, U.K. and New Zealand also have audiobooks now included in Spotify premium. Roberto Neri, CEO of the U.K.-based songwriting organization The Ivors Academy told Billboard that “if Spotify gets away with this in the U.S., they will no doubt use it in their future negotiations with European, [Asian-Pacific] and other territories,” and that “what happens in one territory can impact others.”
The National Music Publishers’ Association, which represents U.S. music publishers, said that it would be “looking at all options” to fight back against Spotify’s changes to premium when it was first announced in March, and now that the fight between TikTok and UMG has concluded, it has turned its “full attention” to this issue.
“It appears Spotify has returned to attacking the very songwriters who make its business possible,” said David Israelite, the NMPA’s president and CEO, when the change to premium was first announced. “Spotify’s attempt to radically reduce songwriter payments by reclassifying their music service as an audiobook bundle is a cynical, and potentially unlawful, move that ends our period of relative peace. We will not stand for their perversion of the settlement we agreed upon in 2022.”
Phonorecords IV Settlement
So, how did we get here? It all goes back to the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), the slate of judges that set the rates for U.S. streaming mechanicals, based on weighing the business interests of publishers, songwriters and services. Unlike the sound recording side of the music business, which decides on their streaming rates based on private, free market negotiations, the publishing mechanicals are highly regulated in the U.S.
Every five years, the NMPA, Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and members of the Digital Media Association (DiMA), such as Spotify and Apple Music, come together to discuss the rates for the next five-year period; and if no agreement can be reached, then the CRB judges make a determination after a rate trial. In 2022, the three organizations convened about the period of 2023-2027, called “Phonorecords IV” or “Phono IV,” and decided, in an effort to save time and money, to come to a voluntary settlement to present to the CRB judges.
Even though the Phono IV settlement included changes to the way bundling worked (which was considered a concession to streaming services), many in the music business called the settlement as an overall win, especially because the previous five-year rate (Phono III) was fought over for about five years, causing confusion over rates in the interim. When it was announced, the NMPA touted the Phono IV settlement as delivering the “highest rates in the history of digital streaming,” because of its win for a larger headline rate, and many felt it signaled a new era of cooperation between streaming services and the music business. Israelite says now in his statement that Spotify’s latest move to bundle audiobooks “ends our period of relative peace.”
How Bundling Affects Mechanical Revenue
Even though the price of Spotify premium is rising, that additional revenue does not benefit songwriters and publishers. Now that premium is considered a bundled service with audiobooks, some of the subscription price is owed to book publishers and authors to license their works, too.
Mechanical revenue for bundles is calculated by seeing what audiobooks are valued at as a standalone offering ($9.99) and weighing that against the price of the premium bundle offering ($10.99), according to Phono IV. The value of music is found by dividing the total premium price ($10.99) by the two services (audiobooks only and premium) together ($21), which results in music being valued at about 52% of the total bundle, or around $5.70 per subscriber.
How Bundling Affects the Total Content Cost
The first step in calculating the mechanical royalty rate a streaming service owes to songwriters and publishers is to find the “all-in pool.” Streaming generates two forms of royalties for music publishing — performance and mechanical — so this “all-in pool” includes both types. (Performance royalties are determined by a separate, but also U.S. government regulated, process).
The all-in pool is the greater of either the headline rate (which ranges from 15.1% for 2023, 15.2% for 2024, 15.25% for 2025, 15.3% for 2026, and 15.35% for 2027) of Spotify’s music revenue (which is now lowered to around $5.70 per subscriber because of bundling) or the percentage of total content cost (TCC), a.k.a. what royalty Spotify pays to labels.
Previously, Spotify premium qualified for the full rate of the lesser of 26.2% of TCC for the period (or $1.10 per subscriber). Now, after deciding to change its premium offering to include audiobooks, Spotify argues it qualifies as a “bundled subscription offering,” which moves its rate down to 24.5% of TCC for the accounting period.
Regardless of whether the CRB mechanical formula determines all-in royalty pool based on the percentage of TCC or the headline rate, both options are negatively affected by Spotify reclassifying premium as a bundle. According to Billboard’s calculations, every month of 2023 used the headline rate of music revenue as the all-in pool for premium, but after bundling, the next 12 months will use the percentage of TCC as this pool.
After that, the final mechanical royalty pool is determined by subtracting out the performance monies from the all-in pool. This number is weighed against a calculated royalty floor. Whichever is the larger number is the final amount owed to publishers and songwriters for U.S. mechanical royalties.
What began as a music-only streaming platform evolved into a broader audio platform that included podcasts and audiobooks. Now, Spotify is venturing into video — in both snippets and long-form content, although the latter is only in an experimental phase.
During Tuesday’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Daniel Ek and interim CFO Ben Kung repeatedly referred to “the Spotify Machine” when explaining the company’s expansion beyond music. As Ek explained, the term means the company “isn’t just a sort of one-trick pony anymore, but it’s actually multiple verticals working together” to create more choice for consumers and drive more engagement.
“Because you may come for the music and stay for the audiobooks,” Ek said. “Some customers may come for the podcast and stay for the audiobooks.”
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The term makes sense: Spotify is an increasingly complex product with multiple moving parts, numerous audio and video formats, and a variety of paid tiers. Each new component to the machine is meant to make the company more valuable as a whole. Similarly, concert promoter and ticketing company Live Nation uses the term “flywheel” to describe how its various products and business segments provide momentum for the larger entity. But “the machine” has a better ring to it.
The machine is integral to becoming a sustainable, profitable company. As Spotify detailed in its 2022 investor day presentation, branching out from music will help improve its gross margins and become the profitable company it has long aspired to be. Music margins are roughly 30% of revenue — the remaining 70% goes to rights holders — and will top out at 35%, the company has said. At that 2022 presentation, Spotify said podcast margins can reach 40-50% gross margin and overall gross margin can get to 40% (gross margin rose to 27.6% in Q1 from 25.2% a year earlier).
The machine helps increase engagement. Spotify is more valuable if people spend more time using it. When engagement increases, churn decreases, which in turn reduces the expense involved in bringing those lapsed customers back. When engagement increases, free users are more likely to become paid subscribers. The last thing a streaming service wants is an infrequent customer who doesn’t enjoy the features or delve deep into its content. Audiobooks are a good example of keeping people hooked: Ek said that in the markets where audiobooks are available, 25% of users are listening to them. What’s more, in the first two weeks a Spotify user listens to audiobooks, Spotify sees “over two and a half hours of incremental usage on the audiobook side,” he said.
The machine gives users greater freedom of choice. Ek confirmed Spotify will have an audiobook-only subscription tier along with a music-only tier; the standard subscription tier offers both music and audiobooks. Over the years, Spotify has given consumers multiple options to choose from: an individual plan, a two-person plan called Duo, a multi-user family plan, and, in certain markets, the ability to purchase one day at a time. Spotify wants to provide “as much flexibility as possible in this next stage of Spotify” to convert more users to paid subscribers, Ek explained.
The machine is built to maximize value. Ek and Kung frequently mentioned a particular internal metric, a value-to-price ratio, that Spotify uses as a North Star these days. By adding podcasts, audiobooks and education, as well as features such as Wrapped — Spotify’s personalized year-end recap — Spotify delivers more value than it provided when it was a simpler, music-only service. Ek singled out the videos that Spotify has added in “11 or 12” markets and built anticipation for video clips that will allow artists to tell stories about their new releases. Such videos are one way Spotify is “focused on winning discovery” to make the platform a better listening experience, Ek said. Spotify’s recent foray into educational video courses in the U.K. is another stab at adding value.
The machine ultimately gives Spotify the ability to raise prices. When Spotify adds products and features, EK explained, it increases its value-to-price ratio. That, in turn, allows it to occasionally raise prices to capture the value it created. “The way you should think about this as investors is the better we can improve the product, the more people engage with our product, and the more value we ultimately create,” Ek said. “And the more value we create, the more ability we will have to then capture some of that value by price increases.” After more than a decade of value creation and stagnant prices, Spotify raised rates in July 2023. In April, it again hiked rates in select markets — including the United Kingdom and Australia — and is expected to expand those increases to additional markets.
The machine also requires a feat of engineering. “It’s a fairly complex machine,” Kung said, because Spotify has both variable-cost models, such as revenue sharing and per-hour royalties, and fixed-cost models — some in-house and licensed podcast content, perhaps. Ek added that “the machine takes care of all the complexity on the back end to deal with what was historically a very difficult problem to solve, which is multiple business models in one consumer experience.” Spotify’s engineering challenge is incorporating additional verticals into a seamless user experience without getting clunky — a criticism often launched at iTunes, which started as a music store and added videos, books, apps, podcasts and iTunes U, a place for educational materials. “Simplicity is hard,” a former Apple product designer once wrote. “Very hard. But when you get it, it’s beautiful.”
The machine might take some getting used to. As Spotify branches out to non-music verticals, it has stakeholders other than the music rights holders, artists and songwriters it has served for more than a decade. Now, Spotify also supports podcasters, authors and — although in the early stages — educators. That has already created some tension between music publishers and Spotify following news that Spotify considers its music-audiobook subscription offering to be a bundle under the Phonorecords IV mechanical rate structure in the United States. Subscription bundles allow Spotify to pay a slightly lower royalty rate. But really, is anybody surprised that the machine is trying to save a little money?
Bono’s audiobook Surrender, which the U2 frontman authored and narrated, was named Audiobook of the Year at the 2024 Audie Awards, which recognize distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. The awards were presented at the Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles on Monday (March 4).
Bono’s audiobook, subtitled 40 Songs, One Story, was released by Penguin Random House Audio in November 2022. It runs 20 hours and 25 minutes. A companion album, Songs of Surrender, debuted and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 in April 2023.
The four other finalists for audiobook of the year were All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby, narrated by Adam Lazarre-White, published by Macmillan Audio; Inside Voice: My Obsession with How We Sound, written and narrated by Lake Bell, published by Pushkin Industries; Sing a Black Girl’s Song, by Ntozake Shange, edited by Imani Perry, foreword by Tarana Burke, narrated by Alfre Woodard, D. Woods and full cast, published by Hachette Audio; and Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, narrated by Meryl Streep, published by HarperAudio.
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Oscar-nominated screenwriter Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) hosted the awards show. Presenters included Felicia Day (a 2024 Audie Award winner), Lake Bell (a 2024 finalist) and Samira Wiley (a 2021 finalist).
Former first lady Michelle Obama won in the business/personal development category for The Light We Carry. Six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald won in the literary fiction & classics category for Homer’s The Iliad. In the humor category, the winner was Leslie F*cking Jones, written and narrated by Leslie Jones, with a foreward by Chris Rock.
All 27 categories were gender-neutral this year. The best male narrator and best female narrator categories were transformed to best fiction narrator and best non-fiction narrator.
The awards are presented by Audio Publishers Association (APA), a not-for-profit trade organization. Since 1986, the APA has worked to bring audio publishers together to increase interest in audiobooks.
The full list of winners can be found on the APA’s website: audiopub.org.
Here are 2024 Audie Award winners in selected categories:
Audiobook of the year
Surrender
Written and narrated by Bono
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Autobiography/memoir
Making It So
Written and narrated by Patrick Stewart
Published by Simon & Schuster Audio
Business/personal development
The Light We Carry
Written and narrated by Michelle Obama
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Fantasy
The Dragon Reborn
By Robert Jordan
Narrated by Rosamund Pike
Published by Macmillan Audio
Fiction
Tom Lake
By Ann Patchett
Narrated by Meryl Streep
Published by HarperAudio
Humor
Leslie F*cking Jones
Written and narrated by Leslie Jones, foreword by Chris Rock
Published by Hachette Audio
Literary fiction & classics
The Iliad
By Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
Narrated by Audra McDonald
Published by Audible Studios
Short stories/collections
Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver
By Mary Oliver, with the contributions by Sophia Bush, Ross Gay, Samin Nosrat, Rainn Wilson, and Susan Cain
Narrated by Sophia Bush
Published by Pushkin Industries
Dolly Parton, Bono, “Weird Al” Yankovic and other music personalities are among the finalists for the 2024 Audie Awards, which recognize distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. The nominations, which are presented by the Audio Publishers Association (APA), go to the narrators rather than the authors (unless they are one and the same). Winners across 27 competitive categories will be revealed on March 4 in Los Angeles.
Parton is nominated in the autobiography/memoir category for Behind the Seams, which she wrote and narrated with Holly George-Warren and Rebecca Seaver. Her competition includes actor Patrick Stewart for Making It So.
Bono is nominated for the top award, audiobook for the year, for Surrender, which he both wrote and narrated. His competition includes Meryl Streep, the narrator of Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake.
Yankovic is nominated in the multi-voiced performance category for Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!. Yankovic narrated the saga of the 1980 comedy classic with a full cast including Barry Diller, Beau Bridges, Bill Hader, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jimmy Kimmel.
Because nominations go to the narrators, the nominee for best non-fiction narrator for Britney Spears’ best-seller The Woman in Me is its narrator, Michelle Williams rather than the pop superstar.
Nominees in the narration by the author(s) category include former first lady Michelle Obama for The Light We Carry and, again, Patrick Stewart for Making It So.
Obama is also nominated in the business/personal development category for The Light We Carry, where she faces Tony and Emmy winner Sheryl Lee Ralph, nominated for Diva 2.0: 12 Life Lessons from Me for You.
Six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald is nominated in the literary fiction & classics category for Homer’s The Iliad. Among the other nominees in the category: two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks for his own book The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, with a full cast including Rita Wilson, Natalie Morales, Ego Nwodim and Holland Taylor.
Tony and Grammy winner Leslie Odom Jr. is nominated in the young listeners category for I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know, which he narrated with his wife, Nicolette Robinson.
In the humor category, the nominees include Leslie F*cking Jones, written and narrated by Leslie Jones, with a foreward by Chris Rock.
All 27 categories are gender-neutral this year. The best male narrator and best female narrator categories have been transformed to best fiction narrator and best non-fiction narrator.
The full list of nominations can be found on the APA’s website: audiopub.org.
Starting Wednesday (Nov. 8), Spotify subscribers in the United States can effortless transition from Britney Spears’ music to her recently released audiobiography, The Woman in Me, thanks to the launch of its previously announced offering of 15 hours of free audiobook streaming per month in Spotify Premium.
The Spotify Premium audiobook catalog includes more than 200,000 titles, over 70% of them bestselling titles from all five major book publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and RB Media) as well as independent publishers such as Bolinda, Dreamscape and Pushkin. Although Spotify has offered audiobooks since Sept. 2022, the user experience has been less than optimal. Users could listen to audiobooks in the Spotify app but, because Spotify wants to avoid costly in-app fees, users must purchase titles at its website.
Spotify announced its audiobook strategy on Oct. 3 and initially gave access to the company’s audiobook catalog only to subscribers in the United Kingdom and Australia. Rolling out audiobook streaming in its largest market will allow Spotify to better capture the expected benefits of offering free listening to a segment of its 226 million subscribers. “This greatly improves our offering, which will increase engagement on Spotify, which will then, of course, reduce churn,” explained CEO Daniel Ek at an Oct. 3 event.
Listeners who exceed the 15-hour monthly allotment can purchase additional listening time. In the early days of the audiobook offering in the United Kingdom and Australia, Spotify has “already seen consumers doing that in ways we probably wouldn’t have imagined, where some consumers are heavily upgrading and being really heavy audiobook listeners [from] day one,” Ek said during the company’s Oct. 24 earnings call.
To help listeners find audiobooks, Spotify offers an audiobook button on the search page and offers an editorially curated selection of popular titles at its audiobooks hub. Listeners can search by category — such as mystery & thriller or self-help — and scroll through lists such as “From book to screen” and “As seen on social media.”
The impetus for audiobook streaming harkens back to Spotify’s origins as a friction-less substitute for digital piracy that had decimated record label revenues by the time Spotify was founded in 2006. “We looked at the world and we thought the only way to beat piracy was to offer a much better experience,” said Ek during the Oct. 3 event. In 2018, Spotify applied the lessons it learned in music to a new format, podcasts, and, Ek claimed, added more than 100 million to podcast listeners to the ecosystem. “This created a win-win,” he explained. “The more people listened to podcasts, the more music grew. And the more people listened to music, the more podcasting grew as well.”
Now, Spotify sees audiobooks as the next opportunity to revitalize an underserved ecosystem with a single dominant player — Amazon-owned Audible in this case. “And just like in music and podcasting,” said Ek, “we’re really excited to be able to bring all the amazing tools that we built for creators and consumers alike to enable more discovery of these amazing audiobooks to the world.”
Spotify is giving subscribers in some of the company’s largest markets up to 15 hours of listening time per month to a library of more than 150,000 audiobooks, the company announced Tuesday (Oct. 3). Audiobook access is available to premium individual subscribers as well as the primary account holders for family and Duo accounts (a […]
Nir Zicherman, the executive overseeing Spotify’s audiobooks expansion, is leaving the company at the start of October after more than four years as an executive at the audio giant.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Zicherman — currently the the vp and global head of audiobooks at Spotify — said he is departing to return to his “entrepreneurial roots with a new project in the startup space.” Zicherman first joined Spotify in 2019 after the company acquired Anchor, the podcasting platform that Zicherman co-founded with Michael Mignano, as part of Spotify’s podcast product division. He was later tapped to oversee Spotify’s growing audiobooks business, which formally launched last September with an à la carte model but has faced setbacks in user adoption in part due to Apple’s App Store policies around in-app purchases.
“After a total of 9 years working across Spotify and Anchor, I’ve decided that it’s time for the next chapter in my career,” Zicherman, whose last day is Sept. 30, told THR in an email. “I’m extremely proud of the work the team has done, and now that we’ve successfully established a foundation, I’m excited about what’s next for audiobooks at Spotify — but I’m an entrepreneur at heart, and on a personal level, I’m excited to be getting back to the startup world. I felt that now was a good time to begin that transition, as the team at Spotify is set up well for success in our future work.”
As Spotify begins the search for Zicherman’s successor to lead the company’s audiobooks product strategy, Spotify’s vp business affairs, David Kaefer, will continue overseeing the business side of the audiobooks expansion.
Zicherman, whose upcoming departure was first reported by The Verge, is the latest in a string of podcast-adjacent executives at Spotify to leave. In the past year, those exits have included Courtney Holt, a major dealmaker for Spotify’s podcasting expansion; Mignano, the Anchor co-founder who left to become a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners; and Dawn Ostroff, the chief content and ad business officer.
In addition to Zicherman, upcoming executive departures include Max Cutler, the company’s top creator partnerships executive and founder of the Spotify-acquired podcast studio Parcast, who is set to leave in May. In announcing his decision to leave in February, Cutler told staff that he was similarly leaving Spotify to “return to [his] entrepreneurial roots” and launch his own venture, though has not yet shared additional details on that business.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
After taking her hit 2015 song and turning it into a novel, Hayley Kiyoko is ready to bring Girls Like Girls to new life with a little help from some of her LGBTQ friends.
On Tuesday (April 4), Kiyoko announced the official audiobook for her upcoming novel, Girls Like Girls. Along with Kiyoko portraying the main character Coley, the new audiobook will boast an all-queer cast, including voice actor Natalie Naudus as Sonya, 13 Reasons Why‘s Brandon Flynn as Trenton, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin‘s Malia Pyles as SJ, and MUNA frontperson Katie Gavin as Brooke.
“I am so honored and excited to have Natalie Nadus, Brandon Flynn, Malia Pyles, and Katie Gavin join me in voicing the characters from Girls Like Girls for the novel’s official audiobook recording,” Kiyoko said of the casting in a statement. “They have all made such a positive impact on the queer community through their art and by living their authentic truth each and every day. I couldn’t have asked for a better cast to help me tell this story.”
Kiyoko’s debut young adult novel is loosely based on her 2015 single of the same name, telling the story of a girl named Coley, who moves to Oregon and meets Sonya. According to a synopsis of the upcoming novel, “neither girl is sure they are ready to open their heart and accept the love they fear and deserve most.”
Both Girls Like Girls the novel and the audiobook arrive May 30, 2023 — pre-order the new audiobook here, and watch the original video for “Girls Like Girls” (directed by Kiyoko herself) below:
The areas of the audio marketplace with the highest growth rates don’t involve music or young people. As online listening growth slows and smartphone ownership is nearly ubiquitous, podcasts and audiobooks stand out in Edison Research’s The Infinite Dial 2023 report.
In 2023, weekly podcast listening reached 40% of people aged 12 to 34, up from 33% in 2022; and 39% for the 35-to-54 age group, up from 31% the year before, the report states. The 55-and-over audience remained at 14% after falling from 17% in 2021. The average U.S. podcast listener averages nine podcasts per week, with 19% listening to 11 or more.
Those growth rates contrast with slowdowns in smartphone penetration (now at 91% of the U.S. population), social media usage (flat at 82% of the population for three straight years) and monthly online audio listening (up slightly from 73% in 2022 to 75% this year).
But podcasts appear to have room for more growth. The percentage of people who listened to a podcast in the last month was 42% — 28 percentage points lower than online audio listenership.
About 183 million people — 64% of the U.S. population 12 and over — has ever listened to a podcast. That’s up from 44% of the population five years earlier and 27% a decade ago.
Audiobooks are also growing. The percentage of Americans who listened to an audiobook in the last year rose to 35% of the U.S. population — up from 28% a year earlier — or about 100 million people. Still, there’s lots of room for growth, and companies will likely see that percentage as an opportunity to introduce the format to new listeners.
Podcasts and audiobooks are tangentially related to music in the streaming age. Digital platforms increasingly combine music and non-music content to keep listeners engaged and make the apps more attractive to subscribers. To improve both its product and margins, Spotify has invested handsomely in podcasts — from DIY tools like Anchor and Megaphone to content creators Gimlet, Parcast and The Ringer — as well as audiobooks, through the acquisition of audiobook distribution platform Findaway.
Streaming companies tend to obsess about young consumers, but the growth opportunity appears to lie in older age groups. Edison found that 89% of the 12-34 age group listened to audio online in the previous month, up from 87% in 2022 and 86% in 2021. The 35-54 age group’s monthly listenership rate improved from 72% in 2021 to 81% in 2022 and 85% this year. The 35-54 age group’s podcast listening improved from 43% in 2022 to 51% this year — a big leap, but still below the 12-34 age group’s 55% mark.
The often overlooked 55-and-over age group has significant room to grow. Its monthly online listening rate stands at just 53%, up from 52% in 2022 and 46% in 2021. The age group is also slow to adopt podcasts. Just 21% of people 55 and over listened to podcasts in the last month. Worse yet, the 55-and-over crowd is losing enthusiasm: Its monthly podcast listening rate was 22% last year and 26% in 2021.
The other major trends found in the report reflect smartphone penetration, the prevalence of mobile broadband and the use of mobile operating systems in cars such as Apple CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto. In the last decade, the percentage of U.S. consumers who have listened to AM/FM radio in the car dropped from 84% to 73%, while CD listening declined from 63% to 29%. SiriusXM satellite radio use in the car improved from 15% to 20% over that time, while online audio jumped from 12% to 37% on the same metric.
Less than three weeks after she won a Grammy for her audiobook Finding Me (and by doing so, clinching EGOT status), Viola Davis is nominated for two 2023 Audie Awards – audiobook of the year and narration by the author(s).
The Audie Awards, which are presented by The Audio Publishers Association, recognize distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. This year’s finalists also include Paul Simon, Billy Porter, Kevin Hart, Lucy Liu, Thandiwe Newton, Malcolm Gladwell, Molly Shannon and BD Wong.
Finding Me was one of six projects to receive two nominations. Others are Coraline by Neil Gaiman; Good Omens by Gaiman & Terry Pratchett; Hello, Molly! by Shannon; The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine; and War and Peace, narrated by Newton.
There are 26 competitive categories, including two that are gendered – best female narrator and best male narrator. Winners will be revealed at the Audie Awards Gala on March 28. The ceremony will be streamed from Chelsea Piers’ Pier Sixty in New York City.
“The Audio Publishers Association congratulates all of this year’s finalists,” Ana Maria Allessi, president of the APA, said in a statement. “This year’s finalists are representative of the immense talent in the audiobook community and beyond. From the recently crowned EGOT recipient Viola Davis to Grammy winner Paul Simon to audiobook luminaries like Soneela Nankani and Edoardo Ballerini, we’re proud of these multi-hyphenates who are helping shape the medium. We look forward to celebrating all of them at the March 28 gala.”
The Audio Publishers Association is a not-for-profit trade organization. Since 1986, the APA has worked to bring audio publishers together to increase interest in audiobooks. For more information about the APA, visit audiopub.org.
Here are nominees in four key categories:
Audiobook of the Year
The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine; edited by Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein; various narrators; published by Penguin Random House Audio
Finding Me, written and narrated by Viola Davis; published by HarperAudio
Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam; narrated by Paul Simon, Malcolm Gladwell, and Bruce Headlam; published by Pushkin Industries
Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt; narrated by Marin Ireland and Michael Urie, published by HarperAudio
Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, adapted by Tyler English-Beckwith, based on the graphic novel by Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martínez, various narrators; published by Podium Audio
Autobiography/Memoir
The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, by Paul Newman; edited by David Rosenthal; foreword by Melissa Newman; afterword by Clea Newman Soderlund; narrated by Jeff Daniels, Melissa Newman, Clea Newman Soderlund, Ari Fliakos, January LaVoy, John Rubinstein, and Emily Wachtel; published by Penguin Random House Audio
Hello, Molly!, written and narrated by Molly Shannon; published by HarperAudio
Left on Tenth, written and narrated by Delia Ephron; published by Hachette Audio
Safe, Wanted, and Loved: A Family Memoir of Mental Illness, Heartbreak, and Hope, by Patrick Dylan; narrated by Raúl E. Esparza; published by Snow Anselmo Press with Girl Friday Productions
Unprotected: A Memoir, written and narrated by Billy Porter, published by Recorded Books, a division of RBmedia
Humor
Happy-Go-Lucky, written and narrated by David Sedaris; published by Hachette Audio
Let’s Catch Up Soon, by Sarah Cooper; narrated by Sarah Cooper and Felip Jeremic, published by Audible Originals
The Office BFFs, written and narrated by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey; published by HarperAudio
Who Do I Think I Am?, written and narrated by Anjelah Johnson-Reyes; published by Hachette Audio
The Wilder Widows, by Katherine Hastings; narrated by Pamela Dillman; published by Flyte Publishing
Narration by the Author(s)
Apparently There Were Complaints, written and narrated by Sharon Gless; published by Simon & Schuster Audio
Finding Me, written and narrated by Viola Davis; published by HarperAudio
Hello, Molly!, written and narrated by Molly Shannon; published by HarperAudio
Ten Steps to Nanette, written and narrated by Hannah Gadsby; published by Penguin Random House Audio
Waypoints, written and narrated by Sam Heughan; published by Hachette Audio
To learn more about the 2023 finalists visit https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/audies.