Audio streaming sees multifold growth in India
Pune (Voice News Service): Swedish audiobook streaming platform Storytel has recently completed five glorious years in India . Storytel India which launched it’s subscription based audiobook streaming service on 27 November 2017 with just 400 odd titles in English, Hindi and Marathi today boasts of over 400,000 titles in audiobook and ebook formats in 12 languages.
Yogesh Dashrath, Country Manager, Storytel India said that, “storytelling has always been a part of our tradition. We have always heard of various types of stories from our grandparents and therefore listening to such stories always has an instant connect. But to leverage this connect was a challenge as there was no ecosystem of audiobooks. This requires an extensive chain right from content creators, storytellers, narrators, proof listeners to also getting well-known authors, publishers and narrators onboard. After extensive research, study and gathering information on technical aspects, we started our efforts to bring in best literature in vernacular languages on this platform. We were encouraged by the fact that this had an good connect with the audience because they were getting the content in their own language including Hindi , Marathi , Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Assamese, Kannada etc which was naturally comfortable for them.”
Five years down the line Storytel India has one of the best collections of audiobooks in the country comprising of the best classics to the bestsellers in the most diverse set of languages. It also offers exclusive titles thanks to its partnership with some of the biggest regional publishers.
Storytel India is a part of Storytel which is one of the world’s largest subscription-based audiobook and ebook streaming service providers with presence in more than 20 countries with a base of over 2 million subscribers.
Yogesh Dashrath further said that after acquiring the rights to the best literature in Indian languages, Storytel made special efforts to produce quality audio-productions befitting them. Renowned artists in every language were requested to read the best books of their choice. Many celebrities have lent their voices to audiobooks out of their love for language and the desire to use the vocal skills acquired while acting. Storytel has made a major contribution in inspiring famous actors to read audiobooks for Storytelling and making great material available thereby popularizing audiobooks as a medium.
In the last five years, Storytel has developed an extensive ecosystem by creating entrepreneurship in the audio sector in which many stakeholders like audio studios, sound recordists, narrators, proof listeners, illustrators for covers, writers, editors, sound directors, musicians have got jobs and this ecosystem is local Indian. With the emergence of new platforms, print media publishers started publishing audiobooks along with eBooks. Storytel has entered into content distribution agreements with all these publishers to make their audiobooks available on the Storytel app.
In the last five years, the industry of audiobooks has grown significantly & is soon expected to be major contributor to the publishing industry growth in India as it has over the world.
