Amazon Music adds audiobooks in Spotify fight

• First look: In a move that could be targeted at Spotify, Amazon Music is adding the entire Audible audiobook catalog to its app. Unlimited subscribers in the US, UK and Canada can now listen to one Audible title for free each month (of any length), alongside more than 100 million songs in HD Audio, and a range of ad-free podcasts. Audible is the best-known brand for audiobooks (and lays claim to be an early podcast company, too): this offer also includes the company’s original productions. We’ve analysis, below.

• First look: Acast has signed an exclusive ad sales deal with Casefile - and it’s a big deal: the show has 80 million listens. The show was with Audioboom.

• How bad is “podfade”, the phenomenon where podcasters stop podcasting? Research by Podnews suggests that of the 24,464 podcasts started in January this year, 7,388 - 30.2% - haven’t posted a new episode since the end of February.

  • 22.7% of shows started on Spotify for Creators in January haven’t posted a new episode since the end of February - that’s better than the average, as is 20.4% for Ausha, 18.9% for Megaphone, 12.6% for Podbean and 12.3% for Libsyn. As you’d expect, podcast hosting companies with well-publicised free trials show the highest levels of podfade, including Spreaker (40%), RSS (71%) and Hubhopper (83%).
  • These figures were calculated from Podcast Index data in August, using the dates for the first and last episodes in the feed. Some podcast hosting companies delete free accounts when the free trial ends, so they’ll not appear on this data. The top 5 companies with new shows in January this year were Spotify for Creators, RSS, Buzzsprout, Spreaker and Acast: who between them attracted 60% of new shows in that month.

• Adobe Podcast has released Enhance Speech v2 - an, um, enhancement of the original technology. There’s a free tier. We’ll find out more later this week.

• The UK’s Goalhanger has announced its latest launch - The Rest is Classified will launch at the end of this month, hosted by a former CIA analyst and a national security journalist. The show will uncover the murky and often misunderstood world of international espionage. It’s to launch on podcast apps and YouTube.

• New data shows that a significant portion of listeners takes action after hearing a podcast ad. The most common actions include visiting a brand’s website (57%) and making a purchase (28%). The data is released as part of Veritonic’s November 2024 Podcast Study, which is free and released today.

• Podtrac’s “top podcasts by country” rankers have been updated for October.

• Magellan AI has released its top podcast advertisers ranker for October. Amazon is #1; BetterHelp at #2, T-Mobile at #3. The biggest movers this month were investment company Robinhood and AI company Anthropic. The page has details of a webinar.

  • Also, because we asked… Magellan AI have started archiving these rankers. :-)

• Speech enhancement tool ai|coustics has announced a partnership with Sieve, a video and audio infrastructure company.

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Analysis

On the face of it, Amazon Music’s announcement today is a better deal than Spotify. Spotify offers 350,000 audiobooks, but only offers around 250,000 in its Premium bundle: and a confusing “15 hours per month for free”. Today’s Amazon offer is four times as large, and the offer of one book a month is much clearer, and broadly similar (most books we found in Spotify’s featured section are around 8 or 9 hours long, so you get one whole book a month there anyway). Amazon’s offer for podcasts is better for many people, too, with ad-free podcasts (which the company pays for); and Amazon launched HD Audio back in 2019, whereas Spotify HiFi, announced in Feb 2021, still has yet to launch.

Amazon Music has a free tier for Prime subscribers, though Unlimited is an extra US $9.99 a month. In 2020, Amazon reported over 200mn Prime subscribers globally, though they’ve not updated that figure since. In spite of that, Amazon Music is only responsible for 1.5% of all podcast downloads globally (OP3, Aug), 0.9% (Buzzsprout, Oct), 0.3% (Libsyn, Sep). Will a free audiobook change the numbers?

Elsewhere, Apple offers audiobooks, as does Google, yet neither offers a subscription offer, and both are entirely separate from podcasts and not cross-promoted. And perhaps you don’t need to pay at all: your library card also gives you free audiobooks, thanks to the Libby app - even books banned in some US states.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• What has podcast download numbers got to do with a pizza shop? Our article about understanding podcast stats includes a tale about a man called Jimmy, and his magic pizza shop.

Podcast News

My Mate Bought A Toaster has joined the Audio Always originals network. The show chats with celebrities about their Amazon purchase history, and the stories behind some of the purchases there. The show is hosted by Tom Price.

As above, Goalhanger announced The Rest Is Classified - the latest in its successful series. The show will launch at the end of this month.

In 1912, more than 1,000 Black residents were forced out of Forsyth County in Georgia. From WABE and the Atlanta History Center, 1912: The Forsyth County Expulsion and Its Aftermath aims to correct the historical record and confront widely held myths about Forsyth County, and to highlight the generational impact that has persisted for over a century in the county. It launches today.