Why I Can No Longer Recommend Findaway for Audiobook Distribution and Creation
/I hope you don’t have have high blood pressure because this post is salty!
A lot of it is also my opinions, so take those with a grain of salt too. Okay, puns done.
In posts from a few years back, I talked about how much I like Findaway Voices as a platform for audiobook creation and distribution. And I don’t regret that; once upon a time, they were great.
Those days are gone. Findaway is no longer great.
This, IMHO, is mainly down to Spotify acquiring Findaway Voices back in November of 2021. At the time, the CEO of Findaway wrote…
“Together with Spotify we have the opportunity to innovate and democratize the audiobook ecosystem... We look forward to combining our leading technology tools and world-class team with the reach of Spotify’s platform to provide an enhanced audio experience for creators, publishers and listeners around the world.”
<pause for mirthless laughter>
Y’all, I don’t know if Mister Kroll actually believed this, or if he saw the deal and was like,
Though, given the already-long history of musicians being pissed at and feeling cheated by Spotify, it would have been staggeringly naive of him to believe the same wouldn’t happen with authors and publishers. Either way, democratization of the audiobook ecosystem and enhanced audio experience, at least for creators and publishers, is unequivocally not what has happened.
So What Has Happened?
Well, in case you missed it, an (alleged) hideous rights grab earlier this year is what happened.
Back in February, Findaway/Spotify notified publishers and other creators of some changes it was making to its terms of use (TOU), which would take effect in about thirty days—which is not nearly as long as it takes to get your books removed from and away from Findaway/Spotify, as will be revealed later in this post. The most egregious part of the TOU changes was this paragraph:
“You retain ownership of your User Content when you post it to the Service. However, in order for us to provide the Service to you we do need a limited license from you to that User Content. Accordingly, you hereby grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, fully paid, irrevocable, worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from (such as transcripts of User Content), distribute, and otherwise use any such User Content through any medium, whether alone or in combination with other Content or materials, in any manner and by any means, method or technology, whether now known or hereafter created, in connection with the Service, the promotion, advertising or marketing of the Service, and the operation of Spotify’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including for systems and products management, improvement and development, testing, training, modeling and implementation in connection with the Spotify Service. Where applicable and to the extent permitted under applicable law, you also agree to waive, and not to enforce, any “moral rights” or equivalent rights, such as your right to object to derogatory treatment of such User Content. Nothing in these Terms prohibits any use of User Content by Spotify that may be taken without a license.”
Now, I am not a lawyer and can therefore not give legal advice, but in simpler terms, to me (and many, many, many others) that means that Findaway/Spotify’s new terms stated that they could take your IP, create derivative works of it (read: spinoffs of their own, for instance) in any form (print books, ebooks, movies if they eventually get into that business, more audiobooks, etc.), royalty-free (they won’t pay you a cent for these), and they get to keep the right to do that forever (that’s the “irrevocable” part of that language). And that’s not just my interpretation. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) also interpreted it that way. You can read their whole post about it on Writer Beware here.
Well, lots of people, as you might expect, didn’t like that new deal at all. So a bunch of authors started jumping ship. Then, Findaway/Spotify sent out another message that basically seemed to say, “What??? Noooooo, that’s not what we meant. Clearly, you’ve misunderstood the language. Here, we’ll make it simpler for you.”
So add possible gaslighting to the list. Real nice. Are we really meant to believe that all the legal experts working at Spotify corporate didn’t know exactly what they were doing when they wrote the new TOU?
Eventually, Findaway/Spotify rolled out a revised version of the new TOU that, while still not great, took out the worst of what had been in there. And they’re still the same as of this writing.
Even with the change, a lot of authors still got out. Tons of people have said they think this was a stress test to see how much people would put up with, and I tend to agree. And I really think Findaway/Spotify will continue to push and make grabs for whatever they can.
So What Did I Do?
The short answer to this is that I got out too. The longer answer is an ugly tale. Full disclosure, this section is looooong. To skip it, scroll down to the section entitled Where To Go Next?.
For reference, here is Spotify’s process for performing a takedown of your audiobooks. I personally like Kitty Thomas’ method, however, which she outlines here. Maybe deleting the audio files after publishing with no distributors doesn’t make a difference. Maybe Findaway/Spotify has backups of all of those (more on that later), but I deleted my audio files anyway.
It was when I reached out to Findaway/Spotify’s customer service that things started getting really bad.
Before I get to that, though, lemme just say that all the narrators I’ve ever worked with have been great. Amazing. Brilliant. Honestly, I couldn’t ask for better. If you’re in the market for audiobook narrators, you should look at hiring them! But I digress. Anyhoodles, as I prepared for the transition away from Spotify/Findaway, I emailed all of those I needed to in order to get on the same page with them as to what I was up to. There are lots of reasons for me doing this, not least of which because there were contracts I needed to buy out and, heaven forfend, if something went wrong and, I dunno, audio files got lost or corrupted, did they have backups? But also, because they are fellow professionals for whom I have great respect, and I wanted to let them know what Spotify/Findaway was up to in case they were not aware.
Right, so I emailed all my narrators that I needed to email, and they were all wonderful and lovely about the whole situation.
This was in April of 2024. Start your watches.
With my narrators emailed, I then began the process for contract buyouts and takedowns. So on April 30th, I emailed Spotify/Findaway customer service about my contract buyouts. I also didn’t include any unnecessary details because, honestly, I didn’t trust them not to try and pull any shenanigans.
“Wow, Dana, you’ve really got some trust issues. Don’t you think you think you might need to chill out a bit?” you might say. I do not. Mainly because 1) see above and 2) Spotify/Findaway had already started doing some hinky stuff.
From: https://support.spotify.com/mt/findawayvoices/article/pool-subscription-model/
“We participate in the most common business models in the industry. These models reflect different partnership types and more ways to reach listeners in unique markets. By choosing to distribute with all of our partners, you will be taking advantage of all the business model types we offer.
Pool subscription Business Model:
Customers pay a flat monthly price to access a subscription service which contributes to a shared revenue pool. Royalties paid based on Publisher’s pro-rata share of total audiobook listening for each monthly period.
There is no set “rate” and payouts in this model will likely vary from month-to-month based on the size of the overall pool and the amount of listening attributed to your audiobook(s).”
How authors and publishers get paid is about as clear as mud. To me, this reads, “Oh, well, ya see, there’s a pool and you get paid from that. How much exactly? Well, that all depends. There’s really no way to know. <womp womp shrug>” Oh, and more gaslighting as well it seems. “The most common business model in the industry.” Weird, because Findaway before Spotify outlined set rates, as does Draft2Digital, and so does Amazon—you know, that industry giant.
They also got rid of the “Delete Project” button. So that’s one bit of control taken out of authors’ and publishers’ hands.
You can’t close your own account.
And they got rid of the “Download All Audio Files” button. True, you can download each individual file one by one—and yes, it’s a pain, which I believe is the entire point. By all appearances, Spotify/Findaway have intentionally made these changes to make leaving difficult.
Remember that bit in the original TOU about how the new changes would take effect in thirty days? It sure is a lot harder to get out in thirty days with all these stumbling blocks in the way.
Back to April 30th, I emailed Spotify/Findaway about my contract buyouts.
And I waited. No reply. So on May 4th, I emailed again to follow up. On May 10th, they finally got back to me.
Now, I want to take a quick moment to say that I don’t blame any of the individual customer service reps for any of this. Firstly, because their numbers were severely reduced. Back in December of 2023, Spotify laid off^ about 1500 people (17% of its workforce), which you can read about beforehand here from BBC and after the fact here from Futurism.com.
^IMHO, layoffs are always, every single time, a failure on the part of management. Fight me.
But also, I don’t blame any individual customer service reps for any of this because a company’s culture is set from the top down. Trader Joe’s, Chick-fil-A (crappy politics and all), and Southwest Airlines are all companies that put their focus on customer service. And whaddaya know? It shows! These three organizations are famous for it. Customer service really does not appear to be where Spotify/Findaway is putting their focus.
Right, so they got back to me. Now, as I mentioned, I’d been talking with my narrators over email already, so I had numbers worked out with them and all my ducks in a row. The contract buyout cost that Spotify/Findaway quoted me was over four times the amount I’d worked out with my narrators. OVER FOUR TIMES?! How? Why? What is it all for??? These are questions to which neither me nor my narrators had answers. Unsurprisingly, Spotify/Findaway did not show their work for this calculation, just quoted me a big ol’ number.
So I emailed back on that same day, May 10, to say that, actually, my narrators and I had already agreed to a different number over email—again, I see no reason for Spotify/Findaway to know the specifics—and could we just settle up outside of the Spotify/Findaway environment.
More waiting. Silence again. I followed up on May 16th. Finally, they get back to me on May 17th. Yes, we can settle up outside of Spotify/Findaway as long as my narrators sent a statement to say they were okay with doing that. Cool. Those emails all get sent within the next two days, and I sent another follow-up email to Spotify/Findaway on May 20th to say we’re all sorted outside of the Spotify/Findaway system and could they please cancel my various contracts.
With no reply, I send a request for confirmation of this on May 23rd. Spotify/Findaway emails me back that day to say they’re still working on it.
I email again on June 2nd to inquire as to the status.
And then again on June 6th.
Then again on June 11th.
Once more on June 18th.
Radio silence.
Finally, on June 20th, I get an email from Spotify/Findaway to say they’re still working on it. The next day, I started receiving automated emails from the Spotify/Findaway system to say that takedown processes were underway for my books.
Mind you, Out of the Shadows wasn’t even one of the books that I bought out the contract for. That audiobook was, as I discuss in this blog post and this podcast transcript, recorded and produced entirely outside of Spotify/Findaway Voices. Siiiiiigh. Y’all, we weren’t even talking about this book. Was this necessary because something all throughout my account got changed? Well, I didn’t get these emails for every single audiobook in my catalog during this period, so… no? And I never received an explanation for this either. I got the same emails for my audiobooks that I had done the contract buyout for as well, though, so fine. Let’s move on.
So on July 3rd, I sent official takedown requests to Spotify for all my books. Did I need to do this since I’d just gotten some emails mentioning Takedown Title Confirmations? No idea. But I wanted to cover my bases just in case.
On July 8th, I did something I hate. I posted my complaint about not having received confirmation of the contract end (no details, just that I was still waiting on a resolution to an issue) on social media and tagged Spotify/Findaway. Y’all, I do not like this sort of thing. This is not the person I want to be, and it’s certainly not what I want to fill up my social feed with. Nevertheless, I received another email from Spotify/Findaway that very day to say they were still working on the contract end, and this one even provided a few more details.
The next day, I also received an email to say that the takedown requests I’d submitted had been sent to “all retailers.” That was the word Spotify/Findaway used. All retailers.
Wait for it.
So not long after this, my new audiobook distributor, Author’s Republic reached out to me to let me know that there were some issues coming back with the audiobooks I’d uploaded to their system. Specifically, that some of the retailers they work with were saying that my titles were still up from Findaway. More specifically, and I quote, “Audiobooks.com for example, emailed us saying they have not received any communication from Findaway to remove your titles.“
Not. Received. Any. Communication. From Findaway to remove your titles.
Y’ALL.
More emails were exchanged with both Spotify/Findaway and Author’s Republic, some for clarification from Author’s Republic—they were great all throughout the process—and others to re-request that Spotify/Findaway finish the job. Then, I went away on vacation for two weeks. Hopefully, everything can get sorted while I’m away.
Lolz.
When I got back home, I followed up with Author’s Republic again just to make sure everything was good. I got an email back that very same day (huzzah!) to let me know stuff was still processing but that they would follow-up again. Thank you, Author’s Republic! So fast forward to September 11th, and Author’s Republic lets me know that there are still a couple of squiffy things on their end and that they would <checks notes> get it taken care of. And you know what they did? <checks notes again> They took care of it.
I did a bunch more traveling for work, I got stranded in Asheville, NC during Hurricane Helene, and did yet more work travel. So now we’re at October 23rd and Author’s Republic (who you may recall, has been working in the background to get some of those squiffy things sorted) reaches out to me. Independently. Without prompting or anything. To let me know that one of my titles was still not showing up on one platform because it was… can you guess? Still listed up there under Findaway.
😑
So I email Spotify/Findaway that same day on October 23rd to let them know about this issue.
And then again on October 28th.
And again on November 12th. And I did that same thing I don’t like—tagged Spotify/Findaway on social media with my complaint.
I’m honestly kind of annoyed that it worked again. I SHOULD NOT BE REWARDED FOR THIS BEHAVIOR! Sigh. Well, that did the trick. I forwarded the information I received from Spotify/Findaway to my contact at Author’s Republic, and they resolved the last of the squiffiness.
So What’s Left?
Finally, on November 23rd, nearly eight months after beginning this process, the transfer of my audiobooks from Spotify/Findaway to Author’s Republic was complete. After that, I emailed Spotify/Findaway to have my projects deleted. And once that was done, I asked them for my account to be closed. The process for both was not as bad as that which preceded it (a low bar, I know), but it was still frustrating. No account notes seem to be kept at Spotify/Findaway for what happened previously, because I received several form responses about how my audiobooks would go thru a takedown process and how long that would probably take.
Y’all, I am keenly aware of how long that tomfoolery takes.
I also included an important question in my emails, which took several iterations to be understood. In the end, the version that got me an answer (sort of) was:
“Hello,
I'm afraid this still doesn't address my concern. All of my audiobooks are already down. This process has taken months. What I want is to know that Spotify/Findaway won't be keeping any of my files for their own use after I delete my account. After I delete my account, I don't want Spotify/Findaway keeping backups of my files and using them for machine learning or anything else like that. Can you please confirm whether or not Spotify/Findaway will do this?
Thank you,
Dana Fraedrich”
And here is the answer I received from Spotify/Findaway:
Well, I mean, not totally. And I’m not really happy about some of that language. “…except for data we are legally allowed or required to maintain…“ Again, I’m not a lawyer and therefore cannot give legal advice, but the line legally allowed is the bit I dislike the most.
A lot of things that still are or once were “legally allowed” have either been abused or are just straight terrible—civil forfeiture, eminent domain, gerrymandering, redlining, denying people life-saving care because it will save the insurance company money, slavery. The list goes on.
So my account is now closed, despite the advice in the last email I got from them (as of this writing). They recommend you keep it open for royalty payment reasons and whatnot, but for how long? That isn’t really specified. Maybe for two months longer? Given that they say you’ll probably get two more months’ worth of royalty payments. Indefinitely, though? Do they get to keep more of your data if you keep it open? Again, no idea.
Where To Go Next?
As I mentioned before, I moved to Author’s Republic. I did a bunch of research^ into the various other options out there—Spoken Realms, Audiobooks Unleashed, Pink Flamingo Productions, Dreamscape, Blackstone, PublishDrive, not using an aggregator at all, etc.—and Author’s Republic seemed the best alternative for me.
^Also, while going thru my emails and things for this blog entry, I also found an email from all the way back in 2019, wherein I’d emailed Libro.FM for advice on audiobook distribution and they recommended Author’s Republic to me.
Author’s Republic was also super helpful in the course of my research. I sent this email to them:
“Hello Author's Republic team, I hope you're doing so well today. I am researching options for audiobook distribution outside of Findaway/Spotify. I see you use Findaway/Spotify for some of your distribution. This might be a stupid question, but if I were to switch over to Author's Republic and chose the full distribution option (that is, to utilize *all* the distribution channels you offer), wouldn't I still be at risk for the right grabbiness Spotify/Findaway will probably try again in the future, or by going through you am I somehow protected from that? Thank you in advance for all your assistance. Have a wonderful day, Dana Fraedrich”
To which they responded:
“Hi Dana,
Thank you for reaching out!
If you choose Author's Republic to distribute your audiobooks, your work would not be subject to the Findaway Voices terms of service.
The terms of our agreement do not give Spotify/Findaway Voices broad access to your intellectual property.
Hope that helps clear things up for you and please let me know if you have any further questions.”
I did also ask them if they have a royalty share option if I were to produce an audiobook thru them. They currently do not, but are apparently hoping to add that feature in the next year or so. Now, do I want a royalty share situation after the Spotify/Findaway cluster? Probably not, but it’s nice to know what my options are.
Anywaze, I know of other authors who are now only signed up with Apple, Amazon/Audible, and selling direct. For direct sales, authors and publisher can use sites like GumRoad, Kofi, and Patreon. But I chose BookFunnel for that piece. Personally, I like that I can offer both ebooks and audiobooks thru BookFunnel, and they provide all the user support for readers. Using BookFunnel also allows me to sell in both those formats at in-person events. My customer service experience has been really great with them too.
Some other things I like about working with Author’s Republic is that they have a page where you can submit your audiobooks for promotional opportunities. For instance, as of this writing, they have one going for Libro.FM for latinx and indigenous authors. That’s not me, but I hope all the people who are selected for that do great.
They also include filters on their narrator search for non-binary and trans narrators.
And they sent me an email just the other day about a big sale for Death Cults and Taxes on Audiobooks.com. That’s my cue to tell you that you can get Death Cults and Taxes for 50% on Audiobooks.com now thru the end of February.
Wrap-Up
Whew! This was a long one, folks. Long to write, long to live thru, and long to read, I’m certain. I strongly believe that Spotify/Findaway will continue to push, to try to get whatever they can out of your IP with no compensation to you. Perhaps, one day, they’ll even get back to the point of that initial (alleged) hideous rights grab from earlier this year and not walk it back like they did before. I believe Spotify/Findaway knows exactly what they’re doing. And that is why I recommend you get out.
Thanks for reading!
