Right. If I’m going to get into audiobooks, I want as many dollars I put in to go to the author, editors, and narrator as possible.

Neither of these leviathans are interested in making that happen.

I've been using Spotify for audiobooks for a few years. It's a lot easier to use than the alternatives in my opinion.

Spotify buying Findaway (a company that previously licensed audiobooks to many different distributors with varied business models), for example, centralizes the market in a way that at best, will result in both an oligopoly for consumers and an oligopsony for creaters. It is certainly good that Amazon/Audible has competitors, but if the only competitors it has have basically the same vertically integrated structure there will be less incentive and opportunity for authors and voice actors to create genuinely interesting works, and listeners will in turn have increasingly commoditized options, with creators making less money for their work and consumers paying more.

And that doesn't even include the more specific concerns about the way Spotify uses contract labor to squeeze artists.

Apple has been crystal clear since day one that they want a percentage of payments being facilitated through their platform.

For them they are a channel and channels have costs.