Audible Channels

I’ve never had a subscription to Audible, but I have a few books in my Audible account that I’ve gotten for free over the years. I saw that the audiobook for Mike Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts was on sale for $3.95 yesterday, and it looked interesting, so I went ahead and bought it. I’ve read and enjoyed other stuff by Mike Carey, and this book seems to be well-reviewed, so I’m hoping it will be good. I usually try to buy audiobooks only if I can get them in DRM-free format, either on CD or as MP3s, but I’ll buy a DRM’d audiobook if it’s cheap enough.

After buying it, I opened up the Audible app on my iPhone, with the idea that maybe I’d go ahead and download it. It wasn’t logged in to my account, and I get the feeling that I hadn’t actually launched Audible since getting my iPhone SE earlier this year. That’s not surprising, since I haven’t been listening to any audiobooks lately.

After I logged in, I got a popup screen, letting me know about Audible Channels for Prime, a free service from Audible that lets Amazon Prime members stream and download a bunch of podcast-like material. There are some original series on there that look interesting (including stuff from Jon Ronson and Eugene Mirman), along with some stuff that’s already available elsewhere (including most of the podcasts from WNYC). I don’t think I’d want to use the Audible app to listen to podcasts that I can get elsewhere; as an app, it’s not going to be nearly as good as Overcast. But the original content looks like it’ll be worth delving into.

They’re also making a limited number of audiobooks free for Prime members, but they’re streaming-only and can’t be downloaded. There’s not much there, but there are a few interesting books that I wouldn’t mind listening to.

Poking around in my Audible account reminded me that I never finished listening to Metatropolis, which I got for free from Audible back in 2010. I remember that I’d listened to the first two of the five stories in that book, so I started in on the third last night.

I may start listening to more audiobooks and audio dramas again. It’s a good change of pace from reading regular books (both print and ebooks), and it’s much easier on the eyes.

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