Audible Inc.

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. The first player had about 4MB of memory, which is about two hours of .aa format audio. Audible holds a number of patents in this device area.

October 24, 1999: Audible suffered a setback when its CEO at the time, Andrew J. Huffman, died of an apparent heart attack. Development proceeded, however, leading to Audible licensing the ACELP codec for its level 3 quality downloads in 2000.

Audible scored a coup in 2003 when it made an exclusive deal with Apple to provide their catalog of books on the iTunes Music Store. Books purchased on iTunes would have a .m4b extension (a variation on MP4) and would contain AAC audio covered by Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights Management.

Audible's success began to increase interest in the profile of Audible's founder, Don Katz. Consequently, he had his profile highlighted by AudioFile magazine in early 2003, was called upon to give a recorded talk on IT Conversations in May 2005 about the early history of Audible, and was tapped to deliver the keynote address at the Podcast Expo in November 2005.

Audible launched Audible Air in 2005, software that made it possible to download (copy-controlled) audio books over the air - wirelessly and directly to devices such as a smartphones or PDAs. This eliminated the need for the intermediate step of downloading copy-controlled audio books first to a computer in order to then transfer it to Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian Mobile devices. Audible Air content would update automatically, downloading chapters as required that would then delete themselves after they had been listened to. Interest in Audible and its founder would continue to attract attention as Don Katz was featured in the March 2006 issue of "Business 2.0".

In April 2008, Audible began producing exclusive science fiction and fantasy audiobooks under its "Audible Frontiers" imprint. At launch 25 titles were released. In 2008, Amazon bought the company for $300 million.

Audible continued its publishing endeavors in May 2011, when it launched Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), 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. In 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. In 2014, at Audible's headquarters' six recording studios, producers and voice actors create new audiobooks 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

Technical innovation returned to center-state for the company in September 2012 when 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. Along with Whispersync for Voice, Audible released Immersion Reading, a feature which highlights text on a Kindle book as the audiobook is narrated. It was also the focus in June 2015 when audiblebooks from Audible.com was made available on Amazon Echo, a voice command device from Amazon with functions including question answering, playing music and controlling smart devices.

Website, pricing, and catalog

Audible's content includes more than 200,000 audio programs from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers and business information providers. Content includes books of all genres, as well as radio shows (classic and current), 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:

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 (allowing users to download content from their library directly into their devices) require a Windows PC or Macintosh to download the files. Additionally, titles can be played on the PC (using iTunes, Windows Media Player, or AudibleManager). 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. (The DRM generally allows a title to be burned to CD once, although the resulting CDs can be played in any CD player and have no copy prevention.) Currently there is no support for Linux, although AudibleManager is known to work through Wine (though this is not officially supported by Audible).

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.

The Audible App allows for the downloading and playing of audio books purchased via Audible.com and allows the user to store multiple titles for play on mobile devices.

Quality

Books can be downloaded in the following qualities:

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 username 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. FFmpeg 2.8.1+ is capable of playing Audible's .aa and .aax file formats natively.

Market power

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.