BookBeat aimed to pass 400,000 paying users before the turn of the year, a level that has now been passed already in November. In 2020, BookBeat is also estimated to exceed SEK 500 million in revenue.
November 24 saw Bonnier-owned BookBeat’s monthly paying subscribers reach 400,000, ahead of expectations, and six days fewer than than five years after launch (November 30 will mark that auspicious day).
In a press release BookBeat CEO Niclas Sandin said,
It is great and symbolic that we reach this milestone before our fifth anniversary, we do it after having successfully entered several markets with completely different conditions either in the role of main challenger or market leader.
Sandin said BookBeat was a,
Business that constantly strives to be better today than we were yesterday. This is the key to us reaching a level in less than five years, which in coomparison has taken competitors over a decade to pass. It is also the key to the fact that over 400,000 paying users each month on average spend about 25 hours of their everyday life on books through us in strong competition with all other digital media.
BookBeat of course competes directly with Swedish rivals Storytel and Nextory in the audiobook and ebook arena, both in Sweden and in some other European countries. In addition to Sweden BookBeat operates in Denmark, Finland, Germany and Poland, offers a token service (thanks to publisher indifference) in the UK, and is notionally accessible across the EU.
Sandin explained how BookBeat had built its audience , 100k at a time:
• 100,000 paying users 26 July 2018.
• 200,000 paying users (339 days later) June 30, 2019
• 300,000 paying users (298 days later) April 23, 2020
• 400,000 paying users (215 days) 24 November 2020
We are only at the beginning of our journey where within a few years we aim to cross the milestone of one million paying users. A journey that we carry out step by step, 100,000 at a time, where innovation and growth become the sum of all the data-driven insights we together create and act on. That we shorten the time between each new milestone we reach is a fantastic rating from users on everything we do.
BookBeat aimed to pass 400,000 paying users before the turn of the year, a level that has now been passed already in November. In 2020, BookBeat is also estimated to exceed SEK 500 million in revenue.
Summarising the press release for Boktugg, Sölve Dahlgren said:
Nextory, Bookbeat and Storytel are all chasing market shares both in Sweden and in a number of other countries around Europe. Expansion costs. For 2019, Bookbeat AB reported sales of SEK 272 million and a loss of SEK 118 million (EBIT). When Bookbeat’s companies in Finland and Germany are included, however, sales land at a total of SEK 311 M (2019), Niclas Sandin points out.
In total, BookBeat (the Swedish company) has reported losses of more than SEK 370 million, a large part of which has been advertising space purchased in Bonnier-owned media such as Dagens Nyheter and TV4 (which is now owned by Telia).
While both BookBeat and Storytel share their subscriber and revenue numbers, Nextory offers us only percentages –
so it’s impossible to be sure just where BookBeat and Nextory stand in the battle for second place behind the clear market leader, Storytel.
In October TNPS reported that BookBeat had seen a 69% revenue boost in Q3.
This followed an 82% revenue boost in Q2.
All this on top of an “incredible” 2019.
