What is Audible: Audiobooks and Podcasts from Amazon

If you are not sure if you are interested in Audible or not, in this guide you will find the answer to all your doubts: what is there, how much it is worth, how it is heard or what advantages it has. Is it really worth it? We analyze everything that allows.

What is Audible?

Audible is Amazon’s audiobook and podcast service . It has been operating in other countries for years but now it has reached Spain with 90,000 titles in Spanish and with well-known voices such as Michelle Jenner, José Coronado or Emilio Aragón or with classics by Miguel Delibes or Eduardo Mendoza, among others. It works on mobile phones and in the web version with unlimited access to all titles and with an extra of other additional paid titles, approximately 10,000, which are premieres or best-sellers and that we can buy individually if we want to access them.

Price and fees

Audible is priced at 9.99 euros per month for any user and you don’t have to be an Amazon Prime customer to enjoy the audiobook service. In addition, you can access a 30-day free trial without obligation that you can cancel at the end of this period if you do not want to continue using it or it is not useful. In the case of being an Amazon Prime customer, the price is the same, 9.99 euros, which will be added to the usual payment of your annual or monthly Amazon subscription. But with an advantage: you can try it for three months for free before paying for it.

There are also paid books that are generally “New Releases” and that have a price of 9.99 euros and are not included in the monthly subscription but the percentage of these titles that you have to pay for is very small. The rest you can listen to them in an unlimited way, online or offline. If you want to filter not to see these paid audiobooks, you will find a box in the library filters where you will see only those included in the subscription.

The subscription has no permanence , you can cancel it whenever you want. As always, you can unsubscribe and you can continue using it until your trial period lasts. That is, you can activate the trial if you are an Amazon Prime customer and cancel the service the next day but you will continue to enjoy Audible for the next three months, until the next billing date.

How does it work

Audible allows us to enter with our Amazon account through the website or through an application. You can have all the titles of the platform in an unlimited way and listen to them as many times as you want with or without connection. You can listen to it from the app available for Android or iOS , from the Amazon Echo speaker by asking Alexa to read the audio book aloud or from a computer by accessing the Audible website and logging in with your username and password.

On the website the operation is simple: you log in with your Amazon username and password, choose the program or audiobook you want to listen to, look for the chapter (if there is one) and touch “Play”. A pop-up window will open where you can choose the speed of the narration, pause, go to the next episode or advance or delay the playback 30 seconds to go to the part you want. You will be able to close the audible page and keep exclusively the player window.

From the mobile phone we have more options: we can download the titles to listen to them offline. You will download them to the internal memory or to the SD card and we do not need to be connected to the Internet to listen to them, as was the case with iVoox. We also have a series of categories or functions that we will discuss in the next few paragraphs, so that you know what the app is like.

Compatible Devices

You can listen to it from the web version or on Android and iOS:

• On iOS on iPhone, iPod or iPad with iOS 13 or higher
• On Android with Android versions 4.4 or higher

It is also compatible with Amazon Echo if you have your account linked, just tell Alexa to play the audiobook you want.

It is expected to reach Kindle devices soon.

Content and categories

The first thing we ask ourselves is whether or not Audible is worth it for us, who do not listen to books. Or in case you don’t like today. There is everything. The variety of content is one of the strengths of the service because there are more than 90,000 titles among which we find original podcasts and exclusive content as well as audiobooks. There are also exclusive narrations that are not in other programs or services or new titles are added every week of these podcasts that may well be about sports news or interviews with relevant people but also about information and health and wellness advice, etc.

The categories that we find in Audible are:

• Teenagers
• Arts and entertainment
• Children’s audiobooks
• Biographies and memoirs
• Science and engineering
• Science fiction and fantasy
• Sports and outdoors
• Money and finance
• Education and formation
• Erotica
• History
• Home and garden
• Informatic and tecnology
• LGTB
• Literature and fiction
• Business and Professions
• Police, black and suspense
• Politics and social sciences
• Relationships, parenting, and personal development
• Religion and spirituality
• Romantic
• Health & Wellness
• Travels and tourism

Within all these categories we find subcategories that make us refine more in the search. For example, within Arts and entertainment we can choose between art, auditions and dramatizations, entertainment and performing arts or music. Or just view the entire category.

One of the most interesting things about Audible content in Spain is the original content with well-known faces in our country both in the informational field and in the dubbing field. For example, Newtral’s exclusive Who Says What program that works as a current affairs program for millennials who want to know what is going on but are not interested in what the news says or how they say it. We also found a series of interviews with the journalist David Jiménez, Marca’s sports news program or Gen DRO, the Alaskan program to talk about Spanish pop. But beyond current events or information there are also audiobooks such as Alice in Wonderland narrated by Michelle Jenner or episodes of narrated series such as Vis a Vis or La que se avecina, among others.

Enough variety for all audiences and of all genres, so we can go testing what suits us best. Another of the most prominent categories is that of children’s stories, with titles such as Los Futbolísimos or classics like La ratita presumida or Bambi, for example.

Filters

There are all kinds of filters to find what you want, from included or not in the subscription to news. Beyond the categories themselves you can filter by:

• New releases
  • This week
  • Last week
  • 2 weeks
  • 3 weeks
  • 4 weeks
• Audible Catalog: Included or not in subscription
• Duration
  • Less than an hour
  • 1-3 hours
  • 3-6 hours
  • 6-10 hours
  • 10-20 hours
  • More than twenty hours
• By language (English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Swedish, Mandarin Chinese, Polish or Afrikaans)
• Accent
  • Spanish
  • Neutral Latin
• Format
  • Audiobook
  • Interview, speech or conference
  • Training program

Reproduction

Audible playback syncs between devices. That is, you can start listening to the audios in the web version and you can continue listening to it through the app for the exact minute and second you are going through.

In the playback control, both in the downloaded application and on the web, we can go to the minute or second we want, advance or go back 30 seconds in the audio, change the playback speed from 0.50x to 3.5x or activate a timer to turn off after a while.

Playback of the Audible app works in the background, which is greatly appreciated because we did not “sacrifice” our phone . You can remove the app from the screen and it will continue to sound until you enter it again and turn it off manually.

Markers

Another interesting function is that we can add markers in the second or minute in which we do not find it interesting. Both in the online version and in the app. If we want to save a paragraph from a book, for example, or we want to listen to an interview again later. We simply have to click on “Marker” at the bottom right and we can add a note of why we have created it. To consult the bookmarks, just touch in the upper right corner of the playback window and open “Bookmarks” where we will find everything we have added.

Attached files

Some books or podcasts include attachments in case there are convenient illustrations that we should have on hand when we are listening to it. For example, in the case of the book by Boticaria García, he refers to graphics that we cannot “hear”, of course. In these cases, there is a PDF attached from the product screen that we can download and consult. We will see it from the Audible website if we have the book in the library. Under the “Listen Now” button you will see the “View PDF” button. If you touch on it, you download a document not with the book but with the aforementioned graphics.

We can also access this PDF from the app. Play the content of the book you want, in this case the title of Boticaria García, and go to the upper right corner of the screen. Click on the three dots and a menu will appear where you will see “Attached PDF”. Touch on it and you will be able to consult it from the Audible app itself, without having to close it. The great advantage is that the audio will continue to be heard while you view the attached tables or graphs, so the tables will be explained to you as you view them.

Simultaneous playback

You can listen to two audiobooks at the same time on two devices if you want. For example, if you share your Amazon account with your partner or with your brother, you can be at home listening to an audiobook and another person, registered with the same account , can use the mobile phone to listen to another audio. Playback does not cut out even if multiple devices are playing at the same time. In any case, the most convenient thing to do is download it if you are going to leave home because you will save unnecessarily spending data.

Audible app

The audible application is free for iOS and Android and you just have to log in with your username and password to access the content. On the Home page we will see what we are listening to and we can continue to do so. We will also see a series of Audible recommendations, news, favorites … And on the left, a drop-down menu.

Tap on the three lines on the left and we will open a menu with different options:

• library
• News
• Statistics
• Discover
• Setting
• Help and assistance

library

The Audible library is available on the website or in the app. Inside it we find everything that we have previously saved because we want to have on hand. For example, original Audible shows that we want to follow to always listen to the new episodes. From the library we can filter by podcasts, titles, genres, collections … And within titles we have other interesting subcategories: All, without starting, started, downloaded or finished. A good organization to find everything that interests us without having to “Explore” every time.

to download

Also, as we have said, it allows us to download. To download you just have to look for the program or audiobook you want. In case of being a program, you choose the episode and in information you can touch on “download” which will allow you to listen to it even if you are in Airplane Mode.

Sleep timer

From the app we have a sleep timer, not from the web. This allows the audiobook or episode to turn off after a while. For example, if we are going to go to sleep and we want the book to not ring all night until the next morning if it lasts several hours. We found it from the playback screen.

At the bottom of the playback screen we will see ” Sleep Timer “. Tapping on it, we will see a series of options (per minute) that we can choose from. For example, that it turns off in five, ten, thirty or sixty minutes. But we can also choose to turn it off when the chapter we are listening to is finished or we can customize the timer by tapping on the “CUstom” option. Here you can choose the number of hours and minutes you want it to sound until it turns off.

Statistics

The statistics section in the Audible application gamifies us when listening to audiobooks or podcasts . You can see the time you have spent listening to audiobooks today, the average time per day, the monthly or the total. But you can also see how many titles you have listened to or you can collect badges or medals as you test the app.

There are all kinds of medals that we get the more we use it. Some of them we will get if we do things like:

• Listen to books for seven days
• Finish a book
• When you listen to books at night, like insomniac
• If you listen to audiobooks on weekends
• Repetitive listener, if you start a finished book
• Etc

We will also level up the more hours we have spent with Audible:

• Rookie
• Beginner
• Pro
• Academic
• Master’s degree

It is not something especially “useful” but most apps that have medals of this type, such as Fitbit or Garmin, help us to make their use more dynamic and attractive, especially among the youngest.

News

Also from the app you will have a news section where you will usually receive the latest news, changes or modifications that are made.

Discover

How could it be otherwise, the fifth of the functions or sections of the Audible app is Discover. From here we can search for new audiobooks or podcasts by name, by recommendations, by outstanding news. Or simply access all the available categories until we find something that we want to listen to, be it travel or babies.

Car mode

From the Audible playback mode we have a car mode similar to the one we also have in other playback apps, such as Spotify. This mode allows us a much easier player to use with larger buttons and whose purpose is to avoid distractions, although it is under no circumstances recommended to use the phone while driving . We will see in large the cover of the audiobook and a play or pause button. Also on the screen you will see the minute it goes. And only two buttons: add a bookmark or go back thirty seconds. There’s no more. If we want to close it, just click the cross in the upper left corner and we return to the main playback menu.

Help and contact

In case you have a problem with or before subscribing, Amazon has a specific contact page for Audible where you can choose to contact by phone via email. To speak with Audible customer service go to the contact page, choose your country and you will have to enter your phone number. Once you have filled it out, tap on “Call me now” or “Call me in 5 minutes” and they will contact you.