The series format also expands in the sound universe

'La que se avecina', broadcast on Amazon Prime Video and Telecinco, has its own audio series on Audible.

The consumption of audiobooks grows in Spain.

Also the

.

But Audible is already betting on new ways to expand the possibilities of audio entertainment.

It has just been 25 years since businessman Don Katz launched this service focused on sound content in the United States and two years since he arrived in Spain.

Despite the high numbers —its catalog on Audible.es has more than 100,000 titles, of which almost 14,000 are in Spanish—, Juan Baixeras, the company's general manager in Spain and Italy, admits that this is just the beginning. of audio in the country.

“We have all the work ahead of us in an industry that is still in its infancy in Spain.

We have to discover what the Spanish audience is looking for.

Up to now, we know that what the listener of the audiobook wants is the same as when he goes into a department store to buy a traditional book:

.

That changes little, what does change a lot is the way in which we can send them that audio version, ”he commented at the end of November to EL PAÍS, from the top of Torre Foster in Madrid, the company's headquarters.

Juan Baixeras, head of Audible in Spain and Italy, in an image provided by the company.

Although the service, owned by Amazon since 2008, has released successful titles in its audiobook version, such as the Harry Potter saga in the voice (or rather, in the voices) of Leonor Watling playing more than 40 characters and the Almudena Grandes' posthumous novel,

, which premiered narrated by Aitana Sánchez Gijón the same day the original text appeared in bookstores, innovation comes with the creation of new formats.

And, with them, the long-awaited new audiences.

“We have to think about the behavior of the youngest, between 18 and 35 years old.

It is a generation that is more related to the shorter format, such as the

, than an audiobook, which requires an average of 10 hours of listening”, explains Baixeras.

The serialized audio dramatization of novels, lasting just over two hours and divided into chapters of less than 20 minutes, is one of the ways to seduce them.

Lorenzo Silva has scripted the adaptations of his own novels

and

.

They are presented with

sound effects, a wide cast of voice actors and a soundtrack.

"They are lifelong radio soap operas with a certain patina of modernity," admits the head of the company.

By 2023 they plan to launch between six and eight audio dramatizations, such as

, by Dolores Redondo.

“It will be something more complex and ambitious”, advances Baixeras, a translation of the text to the audio that will go far beyond a narration aloud.

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The commitment to this format, so close to the radio past, is no coincidence.

“Spain has an entertainment culture based on audio, because it has a very strong radio program that came to make up for the lack of audiovisual formats.

Here, it was not until the 1990s that the regional television stations began to broadcast.

And the private ones arrived much later than in other countries”, highlights Baixeras.

Sound fictions, a genre on the rise that other companies such as Podium Podcast (

) and Spotify (

) have opted for, also create original content in a serialized way.

is an original writing by María Dueñas, a self-styled

(dramatic comedy)

Marbella with Cayetana Guillén Cuervo and Lolita Flores in its cast.

Competition

Audible started in Spain with 6,700 titles in Spanish, a figure that has doubled in these first two years.

The local and international landscape may change shortly, since Spotify has boosted its presence in the audiobook market since this month of September.

“We have the advantage over the competition of already having a track record with book publishers, recording studios, narrators (either professional voice actors or prestigious image actors), scriptwriters, directors… Up to now we have worked with more than 2,500 people to build our catalog of titles in Spain and create an industry”, defends the head of Audible.es.

Another new format, that of audio series, expands the universe of fictions

and

with unpublished plots designed in audio and not in image and that also divide their content into installments, as television series do. linear or

platforms .

The future of the platform is much closer to these productions than to the

conversational

And not only in the field of fiction, but also in that of the documentary.

In 2023, after

and

, sound expansions equally separated by chapters of the audiovisual premieres seen on Amazon Prime Video, will reach its catalog "a similar project related to the history of Spain", a subgenre that "has a lot of pull among listeners".

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