Amazon Buys Audible; Will Audiobooks Be Kindled?

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 2/1/2008

The decision by Amazon.com to buy the downloadable audiobook company Audible suggests an effort by the online behemoth to gain a greater foothold in audiobooks, and suggests the likelihood of wireless downloads to Amazon’s Kindle ebook reading device—an advance over current downloadable audiobook practice, including that available at libraries. Also, the purchase may lead to a loosening of digital rights management (DRM) that makes it harder to transfer audiobooks among devices.

Computerworld commentator Mike Elgan suggested that it would have been better had Apple bought Audible to enhance ebooks on iPods, given that he considers the Kindle too large and awkward to serve as an ebook reader. However, Apple’s digital rights management (DRM) allows content that works only on its devices—a reason why downloadable audio in libraries won’t work on iPods—while Amazon may work to loosen DRM. “That is going to be one of the big questions,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research, told the New York Times. “Can Amazon convince book publishers to do what music labels have done and get rid of DRM. on these files to make them play across the board?”