Bundle up: Audible audiobooks join the Amazon Music catalogue

As audio platforms continue to expand into industries beyond audio, new fronts in the platform wars are emerging. With Spotify now competing with YouTube for video, podcast, and music supremacy, the company’s foray into audiobooks has placed it in  direct competition with Audible and, by extension, Amazon. 

In March, Spotify made waves by reclassifying its Premium plans as bundles, offering 15 hours of audiobooks per month alongside music and podcasts. This reclassification enabled Spotify to reduce its mechanical royalty payouts to music publishers under the US Phonorecords IV settlement, which allows bundled services to pay lower rates than standalone music subscriptions. 

A few months later, Audible announced a user-centric royalty model for audiobooks. Now, Amazon Music is offering one audiobook per month from Audible to its Unlimited subscribers in the US, UK, and Canada at no additional cost — to both consumers and music publishers.

This bundling trend underscores a larger challenge for platforms: how to grow while appeasing multiple industries with competing interests. Bundles drive user engagement and retention, but they also dilute revenue streams for each industry, forcing platforms to divide a finite pie among more stakeholders. This gives platforms power, because it diminishes their dependency on any one rights holder. While that may reduce licensing costs, it also opens up the possibility of alienating partners.

Spotify’s audiobook bundling, for instance, was met with swift backlash. The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) accused Spotify of “attacking songwriters” in Music Business Worldwide, while The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) sued Spotify, alleging underpayment of royalties by almost 50 percent. As a result, Spotify must address growing discontent among music publishers while proving its value to book publishers. 

With its music and audiobook bundle, Amazon seems to have preempted backlash within the music industry by negotiating in advance. According to Music Business Worldwide, the NMPA has welcomed Amazon’s approach, with NMPA CEO David Israelite highlighting its “respectful and productive” engagement; however, Amazon must still ensure its bundling strategy does not undercut its core music or audiobook businesses.

For Spotify, the gamble lies in whether the audiobook initiative will drive enough new subscriptions to offset the backlash from music creators. For Amazon, the question is whether its bundle will expand its market share without alienating existing users or disrupting Audible’s standalone offerings.

Ultimately, the platform wars are evolving into a broader battle over how to fairly compensate creators in a bundled ecosystem. The winners will be those who can balance innovation with equity, securing not only market share but also the trust of the industries they depend on.