Sounding is That name on audiobooks, and if you’ve bought an audiobook in the last decade, chances are you bought it from Audible.
That position meant there was a lot of criticism of him, and challenge directly from Spotifybut despite that, he continued to dominate the room.
Audible is perhaps best known for its credit system, where customers are given one credit a month in exchange for audiobooks.
Considering how expensive audiobooks are, this massively increases the accessibility of audiobooks for many people.
Therefore, a new, cheaper Audible subscription must be great, right? Unfortunately no.
Audible’s new Standard tier may make audiobooks cheaper than ever, but the value is terrible, and you shouldn’t buy it.
Science says this new Audible feature is the best way to remember what you read
Deep reading will change the way you finish books
The myth of digital ownership
It should come as no surprise to you that we don’t have much of anything at the moment.
When you take a physical object and exchange it for money, chances are you actually own it. You are free to do whatever you want with it (within reason and legality), and you can give it away or sell it as you see fit.
Not so with digital products.
Almost all digital products you buy online are not traditionally yours. Instead, you have a license to access the product.
This applies to games you buy on Steam, books on your Kindle, and yes, audiobooks on your Audible account.
What is the difference? In short, it’s not yours. Basically you are buying a service, not a product, and the service provider is free to pick it up whenever they need it.
That’s why we see e-books changed and edited, and even removed from services.
That’s part of the reason why I personally don’t like Audible that much. The money I spend there is locked into Audible forever, and if I choose to stop using it, I lose everything I’ve paid for.
But, there is a positive side.
As long as the audiobook I buy is available on Audible, at least I can listen to it. I don’t need an active subscription to listen to the audiobooks I buy, which means I can subscribe whenever I need a new book, and then not spend any money until I’m ready to buy a new book.
This is no longer possible in Audible’s new subscription, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s so bad.
So this is Netflix for audiobooks?
When you think of subscription services that you lose access to when you stop paying, you think of services like Netflix.
Pay monthly, and you get full access to everything on the service. And when you stop paying, of course you lose access to everything you used to enjoy.
So this is what Audible does, right? Unfortunately no. That niche is filled by Audible Plus subscriptions, so… what does Standard do?
Audible’s regular subscription, Audible Premium, gives you one audiobook credit in exchange for $15 per month. Audible Standards Also gives you audiobook credits, but only charges $9 per month.
So what’s the catch? The catch is that you have to stay subscribed to listen to your books.
On the Premium subscription, you can buy books with your credit, unsubscribe, and then listen to your books in peace. With audiobooks purchased using Audible Standard credit, you can’t.
Want to listen to the audiobook you just bought? Make sure you keep giving us money, because we don’t want you to pay us just once for this title, we want you to pay us for it forever.
This is naked, shameless capitalism at its worst.
Keeps you locked up forever
If you’re a regular Audible customer, this may not be a big deal.
After all, if you cancel your subscription, you lose access to all the bonuses that come with the title and podcast, so it’s basically the same thing, right? But actually it’s not.
We all know that we pay the credit, for one audiobook a month that is ours, that we buy. Everything else is a bonus, and we know it. But the praise? It’s ours.
But what if I always subscribe? Sure, then that’s fine. Until it doesn’t. Until things change and you have to give up some luxuries. Then, suddenly, you don’t have access to the huge library you once had. And it will hurt.
But in the end, it’s about money. For Audible, it’s better to have fewer paying customers own to stay, versus people who pay more, but only whenever they need a new book. Because if you’re a slow listener, it might take a while.
Ultimately, this is Audible lifting the veil. The layer of ownership we’ve always thought we had is removed with a Standard subscription, and Audible’s true colors are revealed.
At first glance, Audible Standard feels cheap. But apparently not. On the other hand, this gives you less control over the media you buy, because you pay for it in perpetuity. This is a bad product, and you should not buy it.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
