Audible Studios

In January 1998: Audible introduced the first production-volume digital audio player almost four years before the introduction of the iPod. It only supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate .aa format that could be downloaded from Audible.com. The first player had about 4MB of memory, which is about two hours of .aa format audio. Audible holds a number of patents in this device area.

24th October 1999: Audible suffered a setback when its CEO at the time, Andrew J. Huffman, died of an apparent heart attack. Development proceeded, however, leading to Audible licensing the ACELP codec for its level 3 quality downloads in 2000.

Audible scored a coup in 2003 when it made an exclusive deal with Apple to provide their catalog of books on the iTunes Music Store. Books purchased on iTunes would have a .m4b extension (a variation on MP4) and would contain AAC audio covered by Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights Management.

Audible's success began to increase interest in the profile of Audible's founder, Don Katz. Consequently, he had his profile highlighted by AudioFile magazine in early 2003,[16] was called upon to give a recorded talk on IT Conversations in May 2005 about the early history of Audible, and was tapped to deliver the keynote address at the Podcast Expo in November 2005.

Audible launched Audible Air in 2005, software that made it possible to download (copy-controlled) audio books over the air - wirelessly and directly to devices such as a smartphones or PDAs. This eliminated the need for the intermediate step of downloading copy-controlled audio books first to a computer in order to then transfer it to Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian Mobile devices. Audible Air content would update automatically, downloading chapters as required that would then delete themselves after they had been listened to.Interest in Audible and its founder would continue to attract attention as Don Katz was featured in the March 2006 issue of "Business 2.0".

In April 2008, Audible began producing exclusive science fiction and fantasy audiobooks under its "Audible Frontiers" imprint. At launch 25 titles were released. In 2008, Amazon bought the company for $300 million.

Audible continued its publishing endeavors in May 2011, when it launched Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), an online rights marketplace and production platform that connects narrators, producers and rights holders in order to create new audiobooks. The platform has been so successful that in 2012, Audible reported it had received more titles from ACX than from its top three audio providers combined. In March 2012, Audible launched the A-List Collection, a series showcasing Hollywood stars including Claire Danes, Colin Firth, Anne Hathaway, Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Keaton, Nicole Kidman, and Kate Winslet performing great works of literature. Firth's performance of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair was named Audiobook of the Year at the Audie Awards in 2013. Audible's efforts to make audiobook narration a mainstream art form extends to the narration workshops it offers at acting schools including Juilliard and Tisch School of the Arts; in 2013, the Audible's CEO speculated that the company was the largest single employer of actors in the New York area. In 2014, at Audible's headquarters' six recording studios, producers and voice actors create new audiobooks 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

Technical innovation returned to center-state for the company in September 2012 when Audible launched Whispersync for Voice, an innovation that enables readers to switch seamlessly between reading a Kindle book and listening to the corresponding audiobook without losing their place. Along with Whispersync for Voice, Audible released Immersion Reading, a feature which highlights text on a Kindle book as the audiobook is narrated. It was also the focus in June 2015 when audiblebooks from Audible.com was made available on Amazon Echo, a voice command device from Amazon with functions including question answering, playing music and controlling smart devices.