Amazon-owned audio storytelling and spoken word infotainment platform Audible is looking at the Indian market in a big way. Launched in 2018, Audible's India content already includes more than 200,000 audiobooks, podcasts, and originals.
But the audio streaming giant wants to take it a notch up. Audible, on Friday, announced an 'all-you-can-listen Plus' catalogue for its members and over 150 exclusive podcasts and Audible Originals for its free customers.
"One year after our launch in India, we came up with a free Audible Suno app exclusively for the Indian market. There's an opportunity here to accelerate awareness of this category. We've been pleased with how our paid, as well as our free offering, has done, and India has been one of our fastest-growing markets for our paid service since our launch. What we're launching now is an enhancement of both our paid as well as our free offering," Shailesh Sawlani, Vice President and Country General Manager, Audible India told Business Today.
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This number is close to double in other developed markets. "We've adapted a fair bit to what our customers in India have been looking for. We launched with English-only and within a matter of 12 months we spun up a comprehensive Hindi and a separate free offering," Sawlani added.
"Rs 199 is a very attractive price point if you look at a price of books and e-books generally. Nowhere in the world do we have a free offering. Only recently in some markets like US, UK, Canada, Australia, we recently rolled out non-exclusive podcasts," he noted. Audible's new all-you-can-listen Plus has over 15,000 titles in Hindi and English, including Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts, all included with an Audible membership at no extra cost.
The company is also merging its free offering Audible Suno in the main app. The app has a new lineup that includes local productions like Dharmayoddha Kalki by Kevin Missal, The Karadi Tales, The Panchatantra and Autobiography of a Yogi (Hindi Edition) by Paramahansa Yogananda, etc. and global audiobooks like The Prophet by Khalil Gibran (voiced by Riz Ahmed), laugh out loud fan-favorite My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse, A Short History of Nearly Everything written by Bill Bryson, and others.
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"Conceptualising entertainment content in audio has been an experience of a lifetime and has helped me push the creative envelope further than ever before. My new show 'Darmiyaan' (and first audio show!) has everything Balaji fans love - love, unbelievable scandals, shocking twists and much, much more. I'm sure listeners are going to love it, and become audiophiles for life!," Ekta Kapoor, Joint Managing Director and Creative Head, Balaji Telefilms said in a statement.
Sawlani stated that the pandemic-induced lockdown has led to people discovering audio content throughout the day (instead of certain peaks in the mornings and evenings).
"During the pandemic, both audio and video platforms grew and coexisted. There are a lot of interesting homegrown apps and players growing and that's great because it's increasing the awareness of audiobooks and podcasts. Offering free content in India exposes people to what this content really is. Building awareness is a matter of time. We're still in consideration and a trial stage. After that, it moves to habituation. It's a long-term process," he said.
(Correction: The headline of the story has been tweaked and a grammatical error in the quote of Shailesh Sawlani, Vice President and Country General Manager, Audible India has been fixed.)