Spotify’s decision to stop selling his voice over an audiobook platform is violated by section 4(1) of the ‘Property Terms” of the Agreement

The feature is a big change from the current audiobook model, which means that authors narrating their own books can take weeks and cost hundreds of dollars for a publisher. Smaller publishers could be able to make their audiobook less expensive thanks to the potential of digital narration.

In addition to Amazon, Spotify has also been investing in making audiobooks the third pillar of its streaming service alongside music and podcasts. Spotify clashed with Apple over in-app payments, which they claim is “choking competition” and are “destructive” to the industry.

Findaway’s machine learning clause states that the rights holders can choose not to follow the agreement. Starling contacted the platform to say she wanted to opt out and received a response saying they had sent her an opt-out request to Apple. Furlong says Findaway has not responded to an emailed request to withdraw all copies of his voice from Apple’s servers.

Starling says the company had not specifically informed her about that part of the agreement, nor compensated her for it. She believes it wasn’t noticed because it was under the sections prohibiting hate speech and sexually explicit material. Even though he narrated the audiobook, he was still not part of the agreement that was signed by Starling as the book’s rights holder.