Amazon announced today that it is acquiring Audible.com, the best known digital audiobook company around. The resources of Amazon behind Audible? That’s great news for consumers. And for Amazon itself, what a way to build up digital content. As Brad Linder over on Download Squad points out, we’re seeing an Apple vs. Amazon arms race. With Audible.com and its growing selection of DRM-free music, Amazon is certainly building an impressive stockpile.
Well, I hope this doesn’t affect the deals Audible has with Apple/iTunes. As an iPod owner its certainly the easiest way to get audio books onto the iPod…
Once my iTunes giftcard stockpile from Xmas has run out, I can’t think of a good reason to purchase music from iTunes. Amazon is cheaper, doesn’t have DRM, and doesn’t use AAC. Am I missing something?
There seems to be lots of speculation on whether this will affect the Audible/iTunes relationship. Hopefully the money Audible surely makes off the deal will be enough to keep it going.
Tom–
No you’re not. Unless there’s something you want on iTunes that you can’t get on Amazon, I don’t see why I would buy music there. Every time I do, I have to factor in the effort to strip the DRM (write it to a CD, rip back). And the lower bit rate. And the extra recode losses. Etc.
For audio books though I don’t care as much. I don’t buy that many, and I only tend to listen to them once.
I never got into the whole audio book thing. But I wish Apple would follow Amazon’s Kindle lead and offer digital books for my iPhone. (Though Jobs recently killed that dream for me.)
I’ve been using Audible for around 4 years. I spend alot of time behind the wheel and for a while I had 2 accounts and was going through 4 or 5 books a month. Their prices have gone up with no real increases in service though. I actually noticed a book the other day that required 2 credits (what you get for $21.95/month) that I could buy for $19 something..