Audible Inc.
 |
|
| Opened | 1995 |
|---|---|
| Pricing model | Variable subscription and a la carte |
| Platforms | Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Kindle, Windows Phone |
| Format | AA format (.aa) variable bit rates; AAX format (.aax) high quality bit rate |
| Restrictions | Single burn to media, streaming to authorized devices |
| Preview | 10 minutes |
| Streaming | Purchased titles only |
| Features | Bookmarking, wireless distribution, wish list, author interviews, free downloads weekly |
| Website | www |
| Alexa rank |
 834 (September 2016[update]) |
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. Audible's content is only accessible through special proprietary closed software, including unauthorized-playback prevention by means of an Audible user name and password.
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.
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.
...
Wikipedia