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back to article Amazon turns up volume, buys Audible

Amazon.com said today that it has agreed to buy digital spoken word audio provider Audible Inc for $11.50 a share. The online retailer valued the transaction at about $300m which includes Audible's cash and short-term investments. Under the deal, Amazon said it will start a cash tender offer to buy all of Audible's remaining …

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  1. Paul McCourt
    Thumb Down

    What about iTunes

    I've bought many an audio book from Audible via iTunes (which also included 'The Ricky Gervais Podcasts') will Amazon make the content exclusive to just their store?

    My Gawd, content is king again....... God help us.

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  2. roy lovelock

    MP3 downloads??

    I gave up with audible because of the naff support they give to most other mp3 player other than the ipod. I loved the idea and it was touted as MP3 downloads, this prooved to be false when in fact its the heavly encripted aa. files. I have used archos players for many years and cant stand the ipod - sadly the archos range wasnt good enough for audible. Hopefully amazon buying this company will at least put drm heavy wma or better still MP3 files for download. This would open the media up to many more ppl like myself who would probally renew their subscriptions. The couple of times ive downloaded of audible ive ended up buying loads of cds to burn, in the end it worked out more expensive doing it this way than if i had gone and bought the hard copy.

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  3. Richard Eustace
    Pirate

    @roy lovelock

    I had the same issue but i discovered a program which would convert it ->http://www.goldwave.com/

    In the end I gave up as well, I had a subscription which gave me 2 downloads a month (or something) but after 3-4 months of downloading nothing I discovered they didn't roll over.

    I really like the idea but it needs to be simpler for us non Ipoders

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  4. roy lovelock

    @Richard Eustace

    I had the same subscription, and yep i did eventually find that convert with goldwave but it was too late for me, i had already spend bundles on cds by then. When i approached audible about non ipoders they said tough get an ipod!?!?!?!.

    The amount of business this company must have lost because of this, my local libary has made a killing since (and its a whole lot cheaper!).

    The one nice thing that the site does is allow you to re download your files if needs must (unlike itunes),

    Good idea if you have an ipod or one of the other players, but there are cheaper and easier alternatives, local libary was £2 per book the last time i visited.

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  5. Bronek Kozicki

    @ray

    For one, I am happy Audible customer. I did not know that they even pretend to support MP3, though. I bought the device that is listed on their website as compatible (iRiver Clix2 ) . The format might be encrypted, but I do not care (much) - as long as I can use the files I bought, I have no problem with their DRM.

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  6. John Eustace

    Audio books

    I'm also a happy Audible.co.uk customer. I've been listening via my mobile phone (symbian 60) for a while now. I have it set-up to download the next 2 hours of my book every night via wifi network whilst I'm asleep.

    I also like that you can always download the titles again (alan partridge always stands up to repeat listening) and you can buy a subscription like the dvd rental services, which makes longer books affordable!

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