AfterDawn: News

Amazon pays $300 million for Audible

Amazon has announced it plans to buy out Audible for about $300 million USD, expanding the company's interests in the digital audio market. Those familiar with the acquisition say the purchase will include all of Audible's cash and short-term investments.

For those unfamiliar, Audible offers a huge range of audio books from popular authors alongside a large library of newspapers, television and radio programs, magazines, and original programming. In the US, Germany and the UK, the site hosts about 80,000 programs.

"This deal brings together two pioneering companies that share a long history of ceaseless focus on improving the customer experience," said Donald Katz, founder and chief executive of Audible.com. "We are very excited to be joining a company as innovative as Amazon.com."



The deal, which should close by mid-year 2008, will help Amazon in its recent trend of moving into the digital audio market, following the glaring success of Amazon MP3.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 1 Feb 2008 16:53

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• 5 comments

• Moomoo2

  *Shrug*
  
  I'm an Audible member.

  1.2.2008 19:55 #1

• b18bek9

  funny this merge goes thru like clock work yet sirius and xm have been waiting a year to merge which is the longest merger in history why chevron an texxaco merge in weeks .... weird ....

  1.2.2008 21:28 #2

• foxrider

  dude rad. now i can buy paper AND electronic books off amazon

  2.2.2008 02:46 #3

• bbruere

  I buy hard copy books from both Amazon and DoubleDay and just purchased my first Audible book from Audible for my new Insignia Pilot.
  
  I wonder, how the merger will affect DoubleDay? They offer links to Audible books.
  
  //BBB

  2.2.2008 09:30 #4

• borhan9

  Amazon is another version of ebay.

  22.2.2008 18:57 #5