Amazon Music Unlimited Adds Audiobook Benefit to Compete with Spotify

Amazon announced yesterday that subscriptions to Amazon Music Unlimited in the U.S., UK, and Canada now include one free audiobook per month from Audible’s catalog. This is a clear move to shore up Audible’s market position against Spotify, which rose to being the #2 provider of audiobooks within just three months of introducing audiobook benefits to Spotify Premium customers late last year. I’ve been waiting to see how Amazon would respond since January, when a leaked recording of an all-hands call revealed Audible CEO Bob Carrigan’s fears about the new competitor, and I think this play can tell us a few interesting things.

This move confirms that Amazon is definitely worried that Spotify is coming to eat Audible’s lunch. As of May, six months after the audiobook launch, 25% of Spotify Premium subscribers had already engaged with its audiobook offerings, and that number can only have increased since. But they’re probably not as worried as they could be because they haven’t yet reached for the big gun: Amazon Prime subscribers. Since Amazon is notoriously stingy with its numbers, it’s impossible to know for sure, but it’s reasonable to assume that Amazon Music Unlimited is working with a meaningfully smaller user base than Amazon Prime’s nearly 200 million. If or when this benefit is extended to Prime customers, we’ll know Amazon has seen some troubling writing on the wall. Competition is good for the marketplace and good for consumers, and personally, I’m glad to see someone finally giving Audible a literal run for its money.