Our Company

We will build a new medium that will redefine and enhance the nature of spoken information, education, entertainment, and other modes of verbal expression we will help create ourselves.

Don Katz, Founder and Executive Chairman, AudibleJuly 30, 1996

What We Do

Audible is the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, offering customers a rich destination for insight and inspiration to enhance their daily lives.

What

Yara Shahidi stands in a brightly lit purple room. — Yara Shahidi performs “A Trick of Light.”

The Best in Audio Entertainment

As the largest producer of audiobooks in the world, we are passionate about well-composed words that are artfully performed. We bring talented performers like Emma Thompson, Mahershala Ali and Nick Offerman to interpret great texts through nuanced performances that our millions of listeners can enjoy anytime, anywhere.

Aaron Sánchez stands in a audio studio performing his title — Aarón Sánchez performs “Where I Come From.”

Innovative, Original Content

A range of talented creators—novelists, journalists, playwrights, screenwriters, and comedians—are writing directly to our intimate listening aesthetic and creating original works that are available only from Audible. And our theater initiative provides a venue for emerging and established playwrights to develop one- and two-person shows driven by language and voice. Audible productions at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City include performances by Billy Crudup, Carey Mulligan and Aasif Mandvi, which are then enjoyed as Audible listening experiences by people around the world.

Leading Talent Who Have Created Audible Originals:

Richard Armitage sits in our Newark Audible Studios. — Richard Armitage in the Audible studio.

Unleashing the Spoken Word

A recent University College London study showed that listening to audiobooks is more emotionally engaging than watching TV or movies, something our listeners appreciate every day. In 2017, we launched the Narrator Hall of Fame to celebrate the actors whose voices have taken listeners on powerful journeys. Acclaimed performers regularly narrate for Audible and we’ve worked with thousands of actors at our top-of-the-line studios in Newark, London, Paris, and Berlin and elsewhere around the globe. Our productions are celebrated across industries, including garnering Grammy and Audie awards, and continue to elevate the category.

Acclaimed Performers Who Have Narrated For Audible:

An Audible employee stands in front of a wall displaying the wide range of devices, including a Fire TV, Fire Tablet, Echo and other Alexa Devices, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices, that can play Audible

Cutting Edge Technology

In pursuit of the idea that technology can transform a culture, we created the first mobile audio player in 1997, four years before the iPod was introduced. Audible’s consistent focus on technological innovation and superior programming has earned the company many millions of habituated subscribers. Our innovations include Whispersync for Voice, which enables book lovers to switch seamlessly between reading and listening without losing their place.

Who

Who We Are

We are a company whose entrepreneurial spirit has defined us since our founding in 1995. We are pioneers and inventors who are not afraid to disrupt the status quo, and we apply that innovative approach to everything we do—from revolutionizing an art form to enacting positive change in the cities and countries in which we operate.

Audible customers downloaded nearly 4 billion hours of content in 2019.

A large plywood wall covered in street-style posters with a man walking quickly in front of it

Our People Principles

Audible’s People Principles celebrate who we are and where we’ve been, and guide the way we work shoulder to shoulder to enhance the lives of our millions of customers. They reflect and apply to everyone who works at Audible—the entrepreneurs and operators, the dreamers and the doers, those who have worked here for 20 years and those who have arrived in the past few weeks and months.

People Principles

Life at Audible

Our customers span the globe, and so do we, with offices all over the world. We embrace working, living, serving, and playing in our communities. Even as we work hard, we also have fun together—playing sports, attending happy hours and concerts, and going on team outings.

Our Community Impact

We believe that companies can have hearts and souls and missions that transcend financial success. We moved our headquarters to Newark in 2007 to contribute to the city’s urban renaissance. We support Newark’s economy through subsidizing living and dining out in the city, hiring locally, seeding new startups and running a paid internship program for Newark students, and our employees participate in service projects throughout Newark and the other cities in which we operate. We also invest in the creative economy of the countries in which we operate, building ecosystems of narrators, studios, sound engineers, writers and other creatives.

Audible’s membership has grown by double digits year over year for more than a decade.

History

Our History

1995
- Audible Inc. is founded
While jogging around Riverside Park in Manhattan with a cassette player, Don Katz has a vision for a better way to listen to books while on the go: downloadable digital files.
1997
- Audible MobilePlayer is released
- Audible.com goes live
Audible debuts the world’s first commercially available portable digital audio player. The first audiobook downloaded: Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus.
1999
- Audible goes public on NASDAQ
2000
- Audible creates its first subscription model
Audible introduces its membership model, giving customers access to the content for a flat monthly fee.
2001
- Weekly audio show with Robin Williams debuts
- Audible Otis portable audio player introduced
Audible launches a downloadable weekly audio program with Robin Williams years before the word “podcast” is coined. The Audible Otis portable audio player is introduced.
2003
- Audible inks deal to provide audiobooks to iTunes
2004
- Audible Germany launches
Audible Germany launches with a catalog of 250 German audiobooks–the first step in our mission to serve customers globally.
2005
- Audible launches in the UK and France
2007
- Audible moves headquarters to Newark, NJ
A key element of Audible’s culture is defined by our moving our world headquarters to Newark and being an active player in the city’s turnaround.
2008
- Audible joins the Amazon family
- Audible wins first Audiobook of the Year Audie Award
Leveraging Amazon’s reach and technological innovations has helped millions of readers discover the joy of listening. Audible is also awarded its first Audiobook of the Year Audie Award for The Chopin Manuscript.
2011
- ACX launches
Audible’s self-publishing marketplace launches, helping connect authors, agents, and publishers with narrators, engineers, recording studios, and producers to create new audiobooks.
2012
- Whispersync for Voice & Immersion Reading are released
Audible introduces Whispersync for Voice, enabling book lovers to switch seamlessly between reading and listening without losing their place. Also, Immersion Reading, which enables people to read and listen to a book simultaneously with real-time highlighting of the text so they can be fully immersed in the experience.
2013
- Audible wins Grammy Award
- Audible Australia launches
Audible Studios wins a Grammy Award for Janis Ian’s autobiography, Society's Child.
2014
- Audible acquires Rooftop Media
Bringing Rooftop Media into the Audible family expands our offerings of comedy series and specials.
2015
- Audible launches in Japan
2016
- Audible launches in Italy
2017
- Audible listeners in 150+ countries
- Our People Principles are introduced
- Audible Canada launches
We mark our 20th anniversary with the introduction of our People Principles, which celebrate who we are and where we’ve been, and guide how we work together.
2018
- Audible India launches
2019
- Innovation Cathedral Opens in Newark
- Paris Studio Opens