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Author Topic: Amazon.com to Acquire Audible.com  (Read 2757 times)

skeeterfood

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Amazon.com to Acquire Audible.com
« on: February 03, 2008, 09:28:27 pm »

The deal is valued at approximately $300 million which includes Audible.com's cash and short-term investments at closing and is expected to close by the second quarter of 2008.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1102509

-John
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park

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Re: Amazon.com to Acquire Audible.com
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2008, 02:42:48 am »

I'm glad.

I hope the amazon is more receptive to it's consumers too, and lossens up how you can use the files a bit more.
It has a good selection of books, but the 3 computers rule for listening sucks. You even have to use up one of your registrations to register a computer just to be able to listen to a streamed audiobook! It annoys me so much I was just about to cancel my subscription.

I wonder if they'll still sell to people outside the US too. They don't do that for mp3 music. I guess the agreements with the publishers are different.
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JimH

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Re: Amazon.com to Acquire Audible.com
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2008, 06:28:08 am »

I wonder if they'll still sell to people outside the US too. They don't do that for mp3 music. I guess the agreements with the publishers are different.
They've announced that the MP3 store will be global in the coming year.
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lalittle

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Re: Amazon.com to Acquire Audible.com
« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2008, 01:31:19 am »

I've been waiting for Amazon to start selling down-loadable audiobooks for a while now in the hopes that they would not have Audible's annoying DRM restrictions.  Given that Amazon uses DRM-free mp3 downloads, my hope was that they'd use the same approach with Audiobooks in order to offer an advantage over the competition (i.e. Audible.)  Now that they're buying Audible, I'm wondering if they'll change the model, or just "continue" it under the Amazon umbrella.  In other words, without the competition from Audible, I wonder if they'll still be inclined to offer a DRM free system.  Hopefully they will.

It would be great if they officially "unlocked" the aa filetype and let users convert it to standard mp3.

Larry
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