Swedish audiobook market grows 14% in 2021 with 120,000 additional subscribing households according to Mediavision, Nordic independent analysis and consultancy firm. Storytel, the market leader, shows stable household penetration while several of its competitors have seen growth.
Mediavision found that customers’ reasons for subscribing have shifted throughout the year. Previously, price was the predominant deciding factor, whereas now customers have increased the focus on differences in content offerings among the services. Going forward, this could lead to a less volatile audiobook market, where churn levels may decrease. Today, churn for audiobook services is nearly double compared to streaming services for video and music. Unique, or exclusive, content plays a significant role in this context.
Marie Nilsson, CEO of Mediavision said, “For a long time, we have seen a stable number of subscribing households on the Swedish audiobook market. However, in 2021, the market has grown significantly. Mediavision’s conclusion is that growth has been spurred by a general increasing digitalization, in addition to greater differentiation in content offerings. Possibly, the pandemic has played its part too. Combined, these factors have resulted in an increased inflow of customers, comments. Development for other media types, where content offerings generally have differed more between actors, bear witness to the fact that a strong content slate may decrease churn – which remains high for the audiobook services.”
