Amazon Rolls Out Audible Plus
- Paul Thurrott
- Aug 24, 2020
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14
Amazon today announced the preview availability of Audible Plus, a lower-cost tier of the firm’s audiobook subscription service.
“Audible Plus offers members greater selection through unlimited access to a robust catalog that includes over 68,000 hours of content and 11,000+ titles from across the content spectrum, including documentaries, comedy, journalism, kids, wellness, self-development, selections from Audible Theater and more,” the firm announced. “New Audible Originals come from a wide range of talent including Common, St. Vincent, Blake Griffin, Jesse Eisenberg, Tom Morello, Kevin Bacon, David Koepp, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kate Mara, Tayari Jones and Harvey Fierstein, among many other celebrated creators and performers. The content slate will continue to grow alongside various technical enhancements over the coming months.”
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Audible Plus costs $7.95 per month, or about half the price of the existing Audible subscription, which has been renamed to Audible Premium Plus. Members who opt to stick with the more expensive premium option will still get one credit each month for use towards any audiobook
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BrianEricFord
<p>I think people largely overlook the extent to which Amazon has essentially bought out and monopolized the entire ecosystem surrounding books, especially in the US.</p><p><br></p><p>Want to buy a book? Amazon is your best bet because they will almost always offer the steepest discounts. Want to buy an ebook? Amazon prompted litigation that handed them (back) an incredibly destructive monopoly. Want to buy or listen to an audio book? Amazon bought the largest purveyor and now practically (and sometimes literally) gives them away as a subscription offering. Want to buy an old/used book? Amazon bought perhaps the most respected purveyor. Want to talk about books in a popular online forum, Amazon bought those up, too! Want to buy a book locally? Amazon somehow destroyed one entire mega-chain and crippled the other into irrelevance via its predatory pricing strategies. Want an ebook that is something more than a dumb OCR? Too bad. Amazon has stripped any incentive publishers may have ever had to innovate in that market by setting expectations for pricing below cost.</p><p><br></p><p>But you might say, “Amazon lets all these companies operate independently!” Of course. If people don’t realize that almost any interaction they have with books sees their data (and dollars) flow to Amazon, it’s that much easier to keep collecting it without scrutiny.</p>
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BrianEricFord
<blockquote><em><a href="#563850">In reply to [email protected]:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Oh, for sure. They’ll need to be led there kicking and screaming, but Amazon has zero interest in ever being the best in almost anything. They want to sell as cheap as possible and amass customers and marketshare. Alexa is maybe one example but even there their hardware strategy is largely junk sold at cost. This strategy will almost never lead to innovation and when they own an industry that means no one is going to hold that carrot out for publishers.</p>