Spotify-owned Findaway Voices eliminates distribution fee for audiobooks on the streaming service

Spotify and Findaway announced today that Findaway Voices, an audiobook distributor for independent authors, is eliminating its 20% distribution fee for audiobooks purchased on Spotify. The streaming service acquired digital audiobook distributor Findaway back in November 2021.

Findaway says the change means that Spotify now offers the highest royalty authors can make when selling their audiobooks with Findaway Voices. The move sees Spotify courting independent authors to its platform with the allure of higher earnings.

“We’re excited to announce that starting in May, there will be no 20% Findaway Voices distribution fee for audiobook royalties with Spotify,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Findaway Voices pricing structure for audiobook distribution is a very simple 80/20 share, where you keep 80% of your royalties. Our standard 80/20 pricing will remain the same for all other partners—except Spotify, where we no longer charge a 20% distribution fee. When your audiobook is sold on Spotify now you receive all of the 50% of the list price you set. Authors can find a new audience on Spotify who recently announced that its global monthly active listeners are now 515 million strong.”

With this update, Spotify is making its platform more appealing for authors. Spotify says it’s at the beginning of its journey to support independent authors, and that it has plans to help authors expand their reach, maximize revenue and build a strong audiobooks business, and notes that today’s news is part of this goal.

Over the last few years, Spotify has been working to expand beyond music. The streaming service has invested hundreds of millions to build out its podcast business, and has been gearing up to take on the audiobooks industry. Last September, Spotify launched support for audiobooks for users in the United States. The initial launch included 300,000 titles.

Similar to other audiobook apps, Spotify offers a standard set of features, including the ability to download titles for offline listening, rate titles, adjust the playback speed and listen across devices.

Spotify expanded the audiobooks service to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand last November, and then brought it to Canada in March. At the time, Spotify said its catalog has grown to 350,000 titles. The company noted that it’s “seeing positive engagement,” without sharing any sort of metrics about what that may look like.