Best 2023 audio books

 Best 2023 audio books

 is an American online audiobook and podcast service that allows users to purchase and stream audiobooks and other forms of spoken word content. This content can be purchased individually or under a subscription model where the user receives "credits" that can be redeemed for content monthly and receive access to a curated on-demand library of content. Audible is the United States' largest audiobook producer and retailer.[1][2] The service is owned by Audible, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.[3][4]

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History of audible.com

The company's first product was an eponymous portable media player known as the Audible MobilePlayer; released in 1997, the device contained around four megabytes of on-board flash memory storage, which could hold up to two hours of audio. To use the player, consumers would go online to the official Audible website, download the audiobook, and put it onto the player.[5][6]

In 1999, Microsoft invested $11 million into the company.[7] On October 24, 1999, Audible suffered a setback when its CEO, Andrew J. Huffman, died.[8] Development proceeded, however, leading to Audible licensing the ACELP codec for its downloads in 2000,[9] and Amazon bought a 5 percent stake in the then-publicly traded company the same year.[7]

In 2003, Audible reached an agreement with Apple to be the exclusive provider of audiobooks for iTunes Music Store. This agreement ended in 2017 due to antitrust rulings in the European Union.[10]

Two years later, the service released "Audible Air", which allowed users to download audiobooks directly to PDAs and smartphones. Its content would update automatically, downloading chapters as required that would then delete themselves after they had been listened to.[11] In 2006, the company released its A-List collection, which had famous works read by Anne Hathaway and Annette Bening.[7]

In 2016, the company announced that it would open a new facility in Newark, New Jersey, the "Innovation Cathedral", in a former Second Presbyterian Church, last used in 1995.[20]

In July 2019, a new feature was announced called Audible Captions, in which machine-generated text would be displayed alongside the audio narration. The company was sued by the Association of American Publishers shortly thereafter for copyright violation.[21][22] The lawsuit was settled in early 2020, with Audible agreeing not to implement the Captions feature without obtaining express permission.[23]

In November 2020, Audible modified its return and exchange policy in response to concerns by authors, who felt that customers were abusing the policy to listen to audiobooks without paying.