IT firms dive into audiobook market
Naver's audiobook platform Audio Clip. / Courtesy of Naver
By Baek Byung-yeul
With more people using voice-recognition artificial intelligence (AI) speakers, Naver and other IT companies here are rushing to introduce audiobooks in cooperation with education and other content providers.
The audiobook market has been expanding rapidly around the world in recent years in line with the increasing number of people using AI speakers. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 18 percent of surveyed Americans listened to an audio book last year, a 4 percent increase from 2016.
Korea's audiobook industry is still in its infancy, but has shown a significant increase over the past few years. Local audiobook provider Audien said 351,428 users had bought audiobooks through its platform in April-June this year, a 377 percent increase from 74,552 a year earlier.
Recognizing the potential, Naver, the country's largest portal operator, has been increasingly focusing on the audiobook market.
Along with a local venture investment firm KTB Network, Naver in May last year set up the 30 billion won ($26.6 million) Naver-KTB Audio Content Investment Fund.
“The world's prominent IT firms like Amazon and Google are actively investing in the audiobook market as they have seen double-digit growth for years,” a Naver spokeswoman said. “However, Korea's audio book market is still in its infancy, so we are trying to expand the industry,”
Naver said the audiobook market would keep growing as more people were enjoying audiobooks amid the rise of AI technology.
“Thanks to the growing popularity of AI speakers as well as the development of autonomous vehicles, we expect more people will be able to enjoy audiobooks,” the spokeswoman said.
Naver said its AI speaker users could voice control the firm's audiobook platform Audio Clip. Naver said the platform began offering a paid audiobook service on July 30. The platform features 30 best sellers including “Kim Ji-young, Born in 1982” and “Memoir of a Murder” and sold 630 audio books on its first day.
To attract more audiobook readers to Audio Clip, Naver hired celebrities to narrate audiobooks. As part of the plan, Naver is selling “The Little Prince,” read by K-pop boy band GOT7's Jin Young. Also, “Memoir of a Murder” is narrated by author Kim Young-ha.
Podbbang, a local audio content provider also began selling audiobooks on July 9. The company, known for providing popular audio shows, said it would sell audiobooks for children as well as best-selling books in various categories.
With its massive user base of 3 million, Podbbang has been dominating the country's audio content market. The company said its audiobook platform would become an open platform for content creators.