Spotify’s audiobooks can kick the reading habit

In the second week of March, people from the world of books will gather at the Olympia Exhibition Center in Kensington for the London Book Fair. The fair is one of the largest international publishing events.

But this time the London Book Fair looks different than in years past, with music streaming service Spotify being the latest to enter the literature market with its audiobook streaming offering. Spotify will appear everywhere you look. Spotify will sponsor various events and participate in discussions on the future of audio across multiple platforms.

Readers, writers, and publishers keep in mind that Spotify will be central in the future.

Things have never been better for audiobook readers. Part of the reason for the huge increase in popularity of audio books in the last decade is their ease of listening. This task has become even easier after Spotify’s decision to start streaming audiobooks. But there is a problem. This means that while Spotify is poised to provide more convenience, accessibility and convenience to listeners, streaming will prove to be bad for audiobook fans going forward.

I am not afraid of technology when it comes to books. As someone who has listened to audiobooks for most of my life, I have seen the evolution of audiobooks. From vinyl records to cassette tapes. Everything from compact discs to MP3 files shared over the Internet has its advantages.

However, I am concerned about the potential consequences of following a path that has already destroyed other creative industries. In addition to the devastating effects of streaming on the compensation of creators, Spotify’s entry into the world of streaming music has created clear and troubling changes in the art form itself.

These changes will be immediately noticeable to anyone listening to the album. Now the songs start in a catchy way. These songs are short. Each album has more songs. The discovery of new and different sounds is limited. People don’t pay much attention to music anymore. Their mind is elsewhere. They listen to music during their other activities. This music is often dominated by big names and labels.

The trend of creating music to express art is changing with the aim of satisfying Spotify’s algorithm. I fear the next target will be books.

It is easy to imagine a similar literary future where books will be written with a climax within the first 30 pages. The purpose of this process is to reduce the ‘forward rate’ from readers and satisfy the algorithm. The plots of the books will be arranged in such a way that they meet the requirements of ‘discovery charts’ and attention grabbing.

Publishers will spend money to feature authors’ books on ‘New Book Friday’ or your favorite novelist will release their new book in snippets like the musical ‘Trex’. Get ready to disrupt the process of immersing yourself in the fantasy worlds of books that readers are entitled to enjoy. This disruption will come in the form of ads asking if you would like to eat potato chips while reading this novel.

Streaming will move audiobooks further away from print books towards audiovisual entertainment that includes music, film, television, radio and podcasts that are more ‘audio’ and less ‘book’ in style. .

Spotify isn’t the first service to experiment with streaming audiobooks, and the early stats aren’t encouraging for anyone who cares about literature. In Sweden, where audiobook and e-streaming service ‘Storytell’ dominates, the ‘best streamers’ offer action novels. Crime novels have a strong plot and dialogue.

Research on the subject by Karl Berglund and Mats Dahloff from Uppsala University confirms that the most popular audiobooks are shorter, more straightforward, and style-wise than the print editions of books. They are easy. Although nothing prevents people from listening to the novel Moby-Duck, the way people read books seems to influence the types of books they choose. Streaming favors a straightforward approach.

How will two or four authors with financial difficulties respond to the pressures and utility of this new way of capturing the attention of an audience? Does this shift in the way we create literature mean that audiences will miss out on the vast benefits to our brains from ‘immersion reading’? Will writers be encouraged to create literature with a musical twist instead of writing the next ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ style novel? Will new writers be discovered based on an algorithm designed to influence our mood or maximize listening time?

Streaming may be the future of audiobooks. The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) prefer streaming audiobooks over other reading methods.

More than half of all books sold in Sweden in 2020 came via digital streaming services. Stockholm-based Storytell has responded to the success of streaming books with an ‘audio-first’ approach that completely bypasses the printing process. It remains to be seen how the boom in audiobooks will affect writers accustomed to writing for the eye rather than the ear.

In this photo taken on August 14, 2020, a woman reviews books at a bookstore in Lahore (AFP).

Spotify insists that more audiobook listeners will mean more revenue for authors and publishers, but here’s where the situation gets complicated. That is, the first thing is that having a large audience is not a guarantee. As former Apple and Google CEO Kim Scott has warned, the new music market is shrinking in the age of streaming.

Second, streaming will only benefit readers if the people responsible for creating audiobooks—writers, editors, sound engineers, and voiceovers—are not excluded from the decision-making process or profits.

People who write for a living are especially horrified by horror stories about disappearing royalties from musicians. Authors may face an even more dire potential situation as books are generally not repurchased and lost revenue is recouped from book promotion tours or commercial book sales. Cannot be brought.

The Organization of Authors in the US and the Society of Authors in the UK have raised several concerns, including objections that Spotify’s licensing agreements were negotiated with publishers and that there was no transparency regarding agents or authors. . Some authors didn’t even know their books were available on Spotify.

Authors reserve the right to refuse subscription services if their concerns are not addressed. There are examples of this with existing roles. Cory Doctorow and Brandon Sanderson made headlines after withdrawing their books from the streaming service Audible in protest of the platform’s payment terms and other policies. Although they had to pay quite a price for it which not all writers can afford.

This is where users can dictate what they want to hear. Sustainable listening means choosing platforms that provide publishers, voice-over artists and the environment necessary to produce high-quality audiobooks that do justice to the format.

Audiobook service libro.fm supports local bookstores with every purchase. For example, an application called Overdrive’s Libby takes audiobooks from your local library.

Apps promoting the work of small and independent publishers have also begun to emerge. Some publishers also offer books directly, such as Princeton University Press’s app that helps convert more academic titles to audiobooks.

Mistakes to be made in the rush to stream other forms of entertainment are to be avoided because while my concerns are real, I am optimistic about the evolution of the audiobook industry provided the people who make it up do not become extinct themselves. be done

Matthew Rowbury is Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of ‘The Untold Story of the Talking Book’ and a member of the Association of Creators of the Talking Book.

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