Spotify News’ Post

Audiobooks is now live for Premium users 📚🚀

This is a story about failing self-direction, and about overdoing it. #audiobooks #audiobooknarration #audiobooknarrator #voiceacting #acting #actor #voiceactor #nethervoice

📢 Exciting News! 🎉 MyLang Audio App is now LIVE on the Google Play Store! 🚀 🎧 Unleash your storytelling prowess with MyLang Audio App! 🎙️ Record, narrate, and listen to captivating audio stories in various genres. 📚🎉 📱 Download the app now and embark on a journey filled with immersive audio experiences. 🌟🔥 #MyLangAudioApp #Storytelling #AudioStories #IndianLanguages #kannada

Spotify Premium members can now access 15 hours of #audiobooks each month, as part of their subscription. The communications to listeners have been very visible — in emails, in social media and in platform. What is less clear is how #authors and publishers will be remunerated. Early rumblings seem to be that payments will be based on minutes listened AND that those minutes need to hit a threshold (per title? per subscriber? per month?) for Spotify to pass on a payment to authors/publishers. Additionally, there is no indication whether these payments will be a flat rate or pro rata based on listen minutes, or what the payment will be. A monthly subscription is below the standard cost of most audiobooks, so either Spotify will be a loss leader in the space, reduce their own royalty rate for these titles, or simply pay less back to publishers. A positive development for listeners, but better transparency for the publishing side of things is urgently needed from Spotify.

I spent yesterday in a studio recording the audiobook for Down To Business. This was my first time in a professional studio and it was a very cool experience. 🎧 🎙 It was strange to hear my voice in playback, and to re-read the book while listening to every word choice and how the sounds blended together. A few observations, which I think can apply to many situations: ✅ Collaboration is key: It takes a huge team to create this product. For my part alone, there were two engineers, a director, and two producers. Add to that eight professional voice actors who will read some of the chapters, and teams of people in the marketing, social and distribution departments. Plus many people I’m sure I don’t know about. ✅ Feedback is a gift: I was very happy for feedback on how I was doing, because it made for a better result. When the director told me to pause, take a breath, get a drink of water, speed up, slow down, repeat a line, or pick up a phrase, it improved the outcome.  ✅ The process takes patience: As I’ve learned over the past three years, publishing a book, and all of its components, takes a very long time. My co-author and I were only reading a small part of the text, and it still took several hours. Over the next few weeks, we’ll return a few more times to polish it up. I am grateful to Penguin Random House for another amazing experience and the opportunity to learn something new. #RandomHouseKids #teenauthor #audiobooks

Luminate's Q3 2023 Consumer Trend data provides insightful information on entertainment behaviors. It is now estimated 50% of all waking hours are now spent engaged with entertainment (up 22% YoY). Live event attendance has increased 32%. Those identified as music superfans are 109% more likely to livestream a music event and 91% more likely to listen to audiobooks. Members of Gen Z and Millennials rank climate change and protecting the environment as their top concern after cost of living. #entertainment #music #liveevents #concerts #musicgenre #audiobooks #livestreaming #entertainmentindustry #sustainability #climatechange #digitalaudio #streamingaudio #musicstreaming

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Spotify and Audible raised their prices again. But are artists and authors getting this extra money??? Meanwhile, at ListenerU, we're doing things differently. We know money is tight for a lot of people right now. So, we're working to make things easier for you, not harder. Instead of raising prices, we're lowering them, while also increasing our author royalties. We're also looking for ways you can get some of your money back through tax credits. Want to know more? Visit our website at www.ListenerU.com or send me a message. We're all about making listening and learning easier and more affordable. We are also seeking authors with great books to publish and/or distribute them on our apps! #ListenerU #SaveMoney #AffordableLearning #audiobook #audiobooks #author #publish

Book Publishing - the Audio Route...just to say 4 emailed messages arrived in swift succession last night. Happy news indeed. My first 2 short stories (Sweet Canary Bird) & (Three Hot Air Balloons) which have lain dormant for years on a hard drive, recently re-edited and recorded, production by a great producer (Mark Hutchinson) who with his expertise has enabled each to pass Quality Control with Findaway Voices who are based in Ohio USA. The world's largest network of audio book sellers of which Spotify is now the Parent Company. So over the next few weeks their team will distribute each audio book to my chosen destination platform (43 outlets), one of which is Spotify, the decision to go audio not misplaced in an exponentially growing market. Laying track for a print version being very different from script reading into a microphone, also in post production having to consider the 'ear of the listener' and how and where they might be streaming those narrated words. For authors considering this route think too about your book cover, (a picture speaking a 1000 words) when you're out and about with phone in hand. Then like me find you have the perfect images (a yellow canary in a cage and a red hot air balloon just a coincidence by the way in my stock library these past years) so you too can illustrate your own audio book. The whole process a journey of self discovery in its self; onward and upwards to finish Gar's Game, a much longer project in the making...#audiobooks #publishingindustry #graphicdesign