There was a time when it seemed I reported regularly on “Nordic audiobook streaming services.” These days, it seems that has been replaced largely by just Spotify. So it’s nice this week to see some love being given to Storytel, the OG of the Nordic audio phenomenon.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The company has just released its 2025 quarter one figures—and they look really good. Its revenue of nearly $100 million is a 7 percent increase over last year. And this comes with a gross profit of $43 million and a net profit of $1.9 million.
The rumors that Spotify is boosting the audiobook market more generally (rumors Spotify’s own Daniel Ek is always keen to propagate) may not be wholly misplaced.
AI and Copyright at the Forefront
There is also some AI news this week, though you may have spotted that for a month or so now, it is not the dominant headline force it threatened to be. The main news this week comes from the annual conference of the Association of American Publishers.
Copyright was uppermost on the minds of the senior figures present. The AAP chair, Brian Murray, framed the current situation as a war between big tech and publishing. On the one side was an industry that contributes $3.3 trillion to the U.S. economy, he told the audience.
On the other was a tech industry that wants to pull the entire rug out from under it—as illustrated by Jack Dorsey’s call to get rid of all intellectual property law. Murray made the case that really good AI relies on the really good content that rigorous copyright law enables.
Creative Industries as National Security
AAP president Maria Pallante added a further layer to this description of what she framed as “symbiotic superpowers.” She took the tech industry’s contention that exemptions to copyright law that enabled it to use copyrighted material were essential for national security.
And she pointed out that without a thriving creative industry, the quality of that material would dry up (as Murray argued), and that this would, in turn, create a far greater security issue.
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