Listening In: Audiobook Use in Canada 2021

July 12, 2022

BookNet Canada today released a new study about how Canadians use and acquire audiobooks. Listening In: Audiobook Use in Canada 2021 updates Press Play: Audiobook Use in Canada 2020 and continues to monitor the growing interest of Canadians in purchasing, borrowing, streaming, and listening to audiobooks.

• Full report

Highlights

Who’s listening and how often?

Almost half of all Canadians listened to audiobooks in 2021 (45%). But just how many audiobooks are Canadians listening to? The majority of audiobook listeners listened to 1–5 audiobooks (48%). Another 30% listened to 6–11 audiobooks, 17% listened to 12–49 audiobooks, and 6% listened to 50 or more audiobooks.

In terms of frequency, we found that 27% of Canadians listened to audiobooks a few times a year, 24% once a week, and 18% less than once a month.

Okay, we know the frequency and quantity of audiobooks listened to by Canadians in 2021, but how are they getting access to them? To buy, borrow, download for free, or pay for a subscription service, that is the question.

Buying audiobooks

According to data collected for the Canadian Book Consumer Study 2021, 19% of all Canadian book buyers bought an individual audiobook or accessed an audiobook through a subscription service in 2021.

Of these audiobook buyers and subscribers, 68% had purchased at least one audiobook on its own, while 46% had accessed their audiobook(s) through a subscription service.

How are audiobook buyers making their purchases? We found that 88% of audiobooks were bought via an online channel and 12% in person. These buyers also said they bought audiobooks at full price (35%), as part of a subscription (26%), or on sale (20%) for an average price of $13.43.

With so many retailers, online and physical stores, offering audiobooks, buyers had to make the decision of where to buy the audiobooks they wanted. But what influenced their decision? Audiobook buyers chose to shop at a particular place because of its prices (27%), selection of audiobooks (19%), subscription account or loyalty card (18%), or easy checkout process (18%).

But not all audiobook listeners buy audiobooks or subscribe to an audiobook service, some choose to borrow from their local public libraries!

Borrowing audiobooks

According to OverDrive, the world’s leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools, digital audiobook loans increased 156% between 2017 and 2021. In fact, 30% of all digital library loans in 2021 were audiobooks, up 4% from 2020.

Bringing the focus back to the data collected for the Canadian Book Consumer Study 2021, we discovered that 9% of all library loans in 2021 were audiobooks. On average, Canadian audiobook borrowers borrowed two audiobooks in a single month.

Here are some of the reasons why audiobook consumers chose to borrow instead of buy:

• 46% borrowed books to save money (vs. 47% of all book borrowers);
• 34% did not want to spend money (vs. 41% of all book borrowers); and
• 27% wanted to read the book but did not want to own it (vs. 34% of all book borrowers).

Other highlights

• Adult Fiction titles were popular among 61% of audiobook listeners in 2021.
• Juvenile titles were the least popular subject for audiobook listeners in 2021, at 9%.
• Young Adult was the subject with the biggest increase of audiobook listeners in 2021. Read by 15% of audiobook listeners in 2021, the Young Adult subject category increased by 71% between 2019 and 2021.
• Most Canadian audiobook listeners listened to between one and five audiobooks (48%) on their smartphone (42%) in 2021.
• The average number of audiobooks purchased by Canadian book buyers in a single month was two — the maximum number of audiobooks purchased by a book buyer was 13, while most purchased only one.

The full report is available from the BookNet Canada website.