The Cărturești cash injection will allow AudioTribe to expand its four audio studios with a target of 60,000 titles, up from 15,000 today, and expand into podcasts.
Digital audiobooks came late to Romania, but last month saw AudioTribe mark its first anniversary, holding its own against rival audiobook platform Voxa (the business models are not the same).
Originally called Echo Audiobooks, AudioTribe.ro has just attracted a 450,000 euro investment from Romania’s largest bookstore chain, Cărturești.
Şerban RADU , co-founder of Cărturesti, said in a press release:
We are excited to officially join a project that we have followed with interest and supported since the beginning. At Cărturesți we have always built experiences around our readers, listening to feedback and shaping our proposal according to the interests, expectations and dreams of those who cross our threshold. We believe that AudioTribe continues these expectations, adding a necessary development to the Romanian book market ecosystem … And this is beneficial for readers, first of all, but also for authors, publishers and,in general, for the entire book market. The more people we bring around books – printed or audio – the closer we are to our mission to transform Romania through reading.
The Cărturești cash injection will allow AudioTribe to expand its four audio studios with a target of 60,000 titles, up from 15,000 today, and expand into podcasts.
Per AudioTribe co-founder Radu Nicolau,
Our priority is to focus on premium title acquisition and bring the best audiobooks. We plan to double the portfolio in Romanian, especially through our own production, and we are going to expand the portfolio in English from 15,000 to 60,000 titles. The investment of our strategic partner, Cărturești, confirms that we are on the right track, and their support helps us manage together the largest audiobook library of a service in Romania”.
What is not clear is how many of the titles are in Romanian rather than English. (UPDATE – 500 titles are in Romanian at the time of this post.)
Earlier this year rival operation Voxa attracted 1 million euros to expand its unlimited subscription platform.
