Audible Inc. is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information,
and educational programming on the Internet. Audible sells digital
audiobooks, radio and TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and
newspapers. Through its production arm, Audible Studios, Audible has also become
the world's largest producer of downloadable audiobooks. On January 31,
2008 Amazon.com announced it would buy Audible for about 300 million USD. The
deal closed in March 2008 and Audible became a subsidiary of Amazon. The
company is based in Newark, New Jersey's 1 Washington Park high rise office
building. Audible is the United States' largest audio book producer and
retailer. History
January 1998: Audible introduced the first production-volume digital audio
player almost four years before the introduction of the iPod. It only
supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate .aa
format that could be downloaded from Audible.com. Audible holds a number of
patents in this area. October 24, 1999: Audible's then CEO,
Andrew J. Huffman, died of an apparent heart attack.
2000: Audible licensed the ACELP codec for its level 3 quality downloads.
2003: Audible made an exclusive deal with Apple to provide their catalog of
books on the iTunes Music Store. Books purchased on iTunes have a .m4b
extension and contain AAC audio covered by Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights
Management. May 9, 2005: Audible's founder, Don
Katz, gave a talk that is recorded on IT Conversations about the early history
of Audible. February/March 2003: AudioFile magazine
published a brief profile of Don Katz. November 12, 2005: Katz gave a keynote
address at the Podcast Expo. 2005: Audible launched Audible Air,
software that makes it possible to download audio books over the air -
wirelessly and directly to devices such as a smartphone or PDA. This eliminates
the need to download copy-controlled audio books first to a computer and then
transfer it to Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian Mobile devices. Audible Air
content updates automatically, chapters download as required and delete
themselves after they have been listened to.
March 2006: Katz was featured in Business 2.0.
April 2008: Audible began producing exclusive science fiction and fantasy
audiobooks under its "Audible Frontiers" imprint. At launch 30 titles were
released. May 2011: Audible launched Audiobook
Creation Exchange, an online rights marketplace and production platform that
connects narrators, producers and rights holders in order to create new
audiobooks. The platform has been so successful that in 2012, Audible
reported it had received more titles from ACX than from its top three audio
providers combined. March 2012: Audible launched the A-List
Collection, a series showcasing Hollywood stars including Claire Danes,
Colin Firth, Anne Hathaway, Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane
Keaton, Nicole Kidman, and Kate Winslet performing great works of literature.
Firth's performance of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair was named
Audiobook of the Year at the Audie Awards in 2013. Audible's efforts to
make audiobook narration a mainstream art form extends to the narration
workshops it offers at acting schools including Juilliard and Tisch School of
the Arts; in 2013, the Audible's CEO speculated that the company was the
largest single employer of actors in the New York area.
September 2012: Audible launched Whispersync for Voice, an innovation
that enables readers to switch seamlessly between reading a Kindle book
and listening to the corresponding audiobook without losing their place.
June 2015: audiblebooks from Audible.com is made available on Amazon Echo, a
voice command device from Amazon.com with functions including question
answering, playing music and controlling smart devices.
Website, pricing, and catalog Audible's content includes over 150,000
audio programs from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers,
magazine and newspaper publishers and business information providers,
amounting to over 1,500,000 hours of audio programming. Content includes
books of all genres, as well as radio shows, speeches, interviews, stand-up
comedy, and audio versions of periodicals such as The New York Times
and The Wall Street Journal. In addition to the regular price charged
for audiobooks, Audible offers subscriptions with the following
benefits: Credits: For a monthly subscription fee,
a customer receives one or two audio credits. Most titles can be purchased
with one of these credits. Some titles may cost two credits, while others cost
only a third of a credit. Platinum subscribers also receive a complimentary
subscription to the digital audio version of The New York Times or The
Wall Street Journal. Subscriber Discount: A subscriber may
choose to purchase additional books without credits for a 30% discount.
Additionally, some content—particularly political speeches, government hearings,
content such as the 9/11 Report Speech, excerpts, and short stories from
books—are available for free. Once a customer has purchased a title on
Audible, it remains in that customer's library and can be downloaded at any
time, or the customer may listen to the file directly from the website,
regardless of whether it has been downloaded before.
Device support Audible audio files are compatible with
hundreds of audio players, PDAs, mobile phones and streaming media devices.
Devices that do not have AudibleAir capability require a Windows PC or
Macintosh to download the files. Additionally, titles can be played on
the PC. Titles cannot be burned to CD with AudibleManager. According to
Audible's website, they can be burned to CD using Apple's iTunes and some
versions of Nero. Currently there is no support for Linux, although
AudibleManager is known to work through Wine.
Prospective buyers of media players can check the audible.com "Device Center"
to verify whether the device will play .aa files, as well as play them at the
desired level of audio fidelity. Audible players are available on Apple iPhones,
iPods, Android, and Windows Phone devices.
Quality Books can be downloaded in the following
qualities: AAX files are encrypted M4B's. The audio
is encoded in AAC format. The quality is variable. While the vast majority of
books are encoded at 64Kbits, 22.050 kHz, stereo, some are as low as 32k,
mono. Radio plays are often encoded at 128kbits and 44.1 kHz. Additionally,
many audiobooks in Germany are encoded at the latter bitrate and are marketed
as "AAX+"; however, there is no difference in the actual file format.
Digital Rights Management Audible's .aa file format encapsulates
sound encoded in either MP3 or the ACELP speech codec, but includes unauthorized
playback prevention by means of an Audible user name and password, which
can be used on up to four computers and three smartphones at a time. Licenses
are available for schools and libraries. Audible's content can only be played on
selected mobile devices. Its software does enable users to burn a limited
number of CDs for unrestricted playback, resulting in CDs that can be copied or
converted to unrestricted digital audio formats.
Because of the CD issue, Audible's use of digital rights management on its .aa
format has earned it criticism. While multiple software products are capable
of removing the Audible DRM protection by re-encoding in other formats, Audible
has been quick to threaten the software makers with lawsuits for discussing or
promoting this ability, as happened with River Past Corp and GoldWave Inc.
Responses have varied, with River Past removing the capability from their
software, and GoldWave retaining the capability, but censoring discussions
about the ability in its support forums. But there are still many other software
tools from non-US countries which easily bypass the DRM control of Audible either
with a sound recording or virtual CD burning method. After Apple's
abandonment of most DRM measures, Amazon's downloads ceasing to use it,
Audible's DRM system is one of the few remaining in place.
Many Audible listings displayed to non-U.S. customers contain the following
text: "We are not authorized to sell this title to your geographic location."
According to Audible, this is because the publisher who has provided the title
does not have the rights to distribute the file in a given region. When a user
is logged in, titles that he or she cannot purchase will be hidden.
There were hopes that Amazon, after its purchase of Audible, would remove the
DRM from its audiobook selection, in keeping with the current trend in the
industry. Nevertheless, Audible's products continue to have DRM, in
keeping with Amazon's policy of DRM-protecting its Kindle e-books, which
have DRM that allows for a finite, yet undisclosed number of downloads at the
discretion of the publisher, however Audible titles that are DRM free can be
copied to the Kindle and made functional.
Audible is able to offer DRM-free titles for content providers who wish to do so.
Market power Audible is the exclusive supplier of
online/Internet audiobook content to Amazon and iTunes.
Amazon operates the Audiobook Creation Exchange, which enables individual
authors or publishers to work with professional actors and producers to
create audiobooks, which are then distributed to Amazon and iTunes. The
service is available to residents of the United States and the United Kingdom.
References External links
Official website