Audible.com – Worth listening to?

Written by Adam Guy (contact - e-mail) -- January 17th, 2007 | Recommend This

It was the year 2000, and I was in love. It wasn’t another supermodel or a figure skater, but a website for audio books called Audible. You see, I had been an avid reader for most of my adult life, but I was working full time and going to b-school at night, so my busy life left me starved for pleasure reading. Then Audible walked into my life.

Audible’s library of daily news and audio books provided me an easy way to pass myself off as “well read” and I, and many others, cheered. However, internet years are like dog years and Audible appears to be growing old. The rise of podcasts, satellite radio and video integration across handheld devices is taking the wind out of Audible’s sails.

Site traffic is down 39% year over year which corresponds to a 40% decline in Audible’s stock price.
One of Audible’s biggest problems is that it can’t get its members to spend more money. Its executives talk about this issue in the Q3 earnings call and Compete data corroborates.

I have to be honest, I’m not helping. I’ve let my subscription lapse because my life has changed and it’s no longer worth the 5 minutes it takes to download the news or browse for more books. I’ve tried everything – even the wireless application that lets me download content over the air, but it just hasn’t been worth the hassle. Maybe Apple’s new iPhone will make it so easy to get fresh content on my handheld device that I’ll reconnect with Audible.

I hope so.

I miss Audible. I’ll have to give her a call sometime.

ProfileGet SnapShots of sites mentioned in this post:


Analyze more domains: + +

Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.

Link to This Post:     


Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.
  1. Red Rover

    The correlation between the audible audience and share price is remarkable. I know the equity equation is more complicated than this, but simple visitor volume seems like a decent indicator. It looks like the Dec surge has not been meet with a rise in share price. Last year I was given an Audible giftcertificate for x-mas and I never redeemed it. I’m willing to bet there is a lot of breakage in December that pumps up short term results, but does not support long term value.

  2. Steve Peace

    Hi,

    I’ve stopped receiving the blog by email and miss it dearly. Before you ask, I did in fact try to resubscribe and got a message of failure. Curses. If you could look into this matter and get me back on your distribution list, I would be heartily thankful.

    Best,
    Steve

  3. NetAudioAds

    The next craze is internet audio adverts, 5seconds of pure in your ears power, which drives traffic directly to your websites to finalize that sale, come check us out at http://www.audio-adverts.com


Have something to say? Leave a Comment

Get the comments RSS feed, instant notification of new comments

Latest Blog Posts:


Oct 10: Do Consumers Only Have Eyes for the iPhone?
Oct 9: Slow Back-to-School Season for both Wal-Mart and Target, but Strong in Electronics, Apparel
Oct 8: How Effective Are Online Financial Tools?
Oct 7: Travel Search: Hotwire Heating Up in Demographic Segment Performance
Oct 6: Boxing vs MMA: Which Sport Are Fight Fans Turning To?
Oct 3: Who is the New #1 in the Banking Industry?
Oct 2: Homepage Showdown: Quality of Clicks from the Web’s Biggest Billboards
Oct 1: A New Crop of Smartphones – Something for Everyone?
Sep 30: Are Your Financials Minty Fresh?
Sep 29: QWERTY and Touchscreen: Better Together?
Sep 26: Why BankRate is so (G)RATE
Sep 25: Accountable Advertising on the Internet: A unique perspective from Avinash Kaushik
Sep 24: Compete PRO now has Referral Analytics!
Sep 23: August Online Video Market Share: Politics and the Olympics Take the Top 5 by Storm
Sep 22: Will Consumers Flip for the Newest Member of the BlackBerry Family?
Sep 19: August Search Market Share Update: Rivals Cede to Google’s Lead
Sep 18: Is the iPod Touch Really an iPod?
Sep 17: Lipstick Happens: McCain’s VP Pick Shakes up the Race, Online Too
Sep 16: Happy Birthday GM! Your Present? Volt’s Apparent Success!
Sep 15: Do Any Financial Services Marketers Really Do a Good Job in Marketing to Their Customers?