Home
/
News
/
The Audible Story: From...

The Audible Story: From Cassette Tapes to a $36 Million Industry Leader

Archana Chettiar
March 22, 2025

We all loved stories as kids, right? Begging grandparents for “just one more” at bedtime. Or remember the thrill of sleepovers, whispering bhoot ki kahaniyan until someone got too scared to sleep? Stories have always had a hold on us—thrilling and comforting us.

From cave paintings to oral traditions, written manuscripts to print, visual media to digital, and now audiobooks and podcasts—storytelling has come a long way, so much so that it’s a $6.63 billion industry today.

As we celebrate Poetry and Storytelling Day on 21 March, let’s tell you a story—of how one simple idea transformed into the world’s leading audiobook platform worth ~ $36 million.

Curious? Let’s rewind

A Frustration, and A Billion-Dollar Idea

Sometime in the mid-90s, Rolling Stone journalist Don Katz was out for a jog at Riverside Park, New Jersey, listening to an audiobook on his Sony Walkman.

When he needed to flip the cassette, Katz stopped in frustration and wondered why storytelling was still stuck in outdated formats.

A storyteller at heart, he envisioned a way to make books digital, seamless, and on-demand. His research showed that 93 million Americans commuted alone daily, stuck in traffic.
What if they could listen to digital content instead?

Katz crunched the numbers—if just 9% subscribed to a new storytelling format at $10/month, that meant 8.37 million users and $83.7 million in monthly revenue.

So, at 43, he quit his successful career, took an 85% pay cut, and founded Audible in 1995.

Of Digital Audio

In 1997, Audible launched the Audible MobilePlayer, a game-changer with 4MB of memory and two hours of audio digitally. Modest now but a marvel back in the day.

Audible.com went live with “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” as the first download, and a new era began. Sounds exciting. Except… it wasn’t.

Digital audio was new, slow, clunky, and expensive. Investors weren’t convinced, and customers weren’t interested.

Of Highs, Lows, & the Dot-Com Bust

Things started to look up for Audible as it went public on NASDAQ in 1999, valued at $538 million.

However, tragedy struck with the unexpected passing of CEO Andrew J Huffman, proving to be a challenge for the company. But the company soldiered on.

In 2000, Audible pioneered the subscription model—a flat monthly fee for access. But then came the dot-com bubble burst, causing financial strain with a $32.3 million loss.

Startups were crashing everywhere, and Audible was barely hanging on. A desperate Katz cut his salary to zero and fought to keep his vision alive.

AppearsWith the Launch of iPod

In 2003, when Steve Jobs launched the iPod, Katz saw an opportunity and struck a deal with Apple as the exclusive provider of audiobooks for iTunes.

Boom! Suddenly, audiobooks became calm, and more and more people tuned in. Audible was no longer struggling to survive but growing as another tech giant watched from the shadows.

From A Struggling Startup To an Industry Leader

In 2008, Jeff Bezos saw what Katz had built. And, just like that, Amazon bought Audible for $300 million, in what’s called one of Amazon’s smartest acquisitions because Audible was about to explode.

The Kindle + Audible integration made audiobooks more accessible than ever. People could now seamlessly switch between reading and listening. Thus, with Amazon’s backing, Audible went from a struggling startup to an industry giant.

Of the Audiobook Empire

From that moment, Audible became unstoppable. It launched ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) in 2011, giving independent authors and narrators a platform to produce audiobooks.

In 2012, it rolled out the A-List Collection, featuring Hollywood voices like Anne Hathaway & Samuel L. Jackson. Whispersync for Voice followed in 2013, which let users switch between reading on Kindle and listening on Audible.

Since then, Audible has added a catalog of over one million titles, collaborating with renowned global names and emerging talent.

The exclusive Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts reach listeners in over 180 countries and 50 languages.

Of the Future

Audible’s valuation as of August 2024 was $36 million and shows no sign of slowing down.

The audiobook market, valued at $6.63 billion in 2024, is projected to grow to $7.42 billion by 2025. Of this, Audible holds the lion’s share at 63.4%. The market is poised to reach $21.79 billion by 2034, with a CAGR of 12.29% over the forecast period (2025–2034).

Because no matter how technology evolves, one thing remains the same: we will always crave a good story. And with Audible, you don’t have to wait for bedtime to hear one!

waitfor delay '0:0:5'--

Archana Chettiar

+ posts

I’m Archana R. Chettiar, an experienced content creator with
an affinity for writing on personal finance and other financial content. I
love to write on equity investing, retirement, managing money, and more.