Audible is one of the most popular audiobook apps out there in the market. Audiobooks are a growing industry with hundreds of millions of listeners globally. This article will discuss the history of audiobooks, the benefits of audiobooks, and everything you need to know about Audible.
History of audiobooks
In simple words, audiobooks are audio versions of books. When listening to audiobooks, you’ll hear someone narrating the book for you rather than reading the book. For book lovers, it may not make sense. Isn’t it the joy of reading? Being able to physically touch the book, read it, smell that book scent, and be immersed in the story? Well, audiobooks are very beneficial for the disabled, specifically blind people.
According to PBS, audiobooks were first created by The American Foundation for the Blind in 1932. They created audio recordings of books on vinyl records, with each side of the vinyl holding about 15 minutes of speech. The earliest recordings were William Shakespeare’s “The Constitution” play and Gladys Hasty Carroll’s novel “As the Earth Turns.” Since then, the production of audiobooks just kept increasing, making the audiobook industry a four billion-dollar company (2021) globally.
About Audible
Audible is now available on the internet, enabling you to listen to their audiobooks anywhere and anytime with your gadgets. Additionally, Audible now has other audio content like podcasts and Audible Originals. Although unfortunately, Audible is a membership service and only provides free membership trial for the first 30 days. Unlike Spotify, which still allows you to listen to songs for free, there are no fee audiobooks that you can listen to in Audible.
Benefits of listening to audiobooks
Don’t underestimate audiobooks! Just like reading, there are tons of benefits to listening to audiobooks.
Elevated reading experience
According to testimonials, stories just feel different or even better when narrated by the perfect narrator! When you listen to audiobooks, you can feel the stories’ emotions and get truly emersed in the story. It’s like reading books where you can somewhat imagine the plot playing in your head. With audiobooks, your imaginations will be even more vivid.
Same benefits as reading
Just like the saying “reading exercises the brain,” the same goes for listening to audiobooks. You’ll receive the same benefits as reading when listening to audiobooks. What’s different is just the medium! In a 2019 study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers conducted a study to see the differences in results when participants read and listened. Through the brain scans, they found that both reading and listening stimulated the same cognitive and emotional areas in the brain.
Listening to audiobooks will help expand your knowledge and vocabulary, which is an excellent learning method, especially for people who are auditory learners. For the best learning experience, it’s best to combine reading and listening simultaneously.
Help learn new languages
People tend to recommend you to watch movies and listen to songs when trying to learn a new language. This goes the same for audiobooks! Yes, reading can help you learn new vocabularies and languages. Still, audiobooks can help you learn better by knowing how to pronounce the word and understand the different accents and tones. Do both readings and listening to maximize your learning experience.
It trains your attention span and memory
Listening to audiobooks forces you to focus on the narration to remember the story’s characters, backgrounds, and plots which forces you to pay attention and trains your memory. This is different from reading, where you can easily re-read if you got distracted or missed a plot.
Improve sleep and mental health
Remember, as a kid, your parents or other family members would read you a bedtime story to help you sleep? This is exactly it. There is this calming and comforting feeling as you listen to someone narrate a story. Of course, depending on the audiobook you’re listening to. Also, listening to audiobooks help you relax your eyes since you don’t have to read a book physically.
Getting a good night’s sleep goes hand in hand with helping improve your mental health, but there are also other ways how audiobooks can help you mentally. According to testimonials, listening to audiobooks is a great way to distract yourself from intrusive thoughts and boost your mood. It’s time to drop the depressing, sad music playlist and listen to comforting, calming, and uplifting books instead!
Efficient
Audiobooks not only helped make reading books accessible for disabled people but also made everyone’s reading experience a lot more efficient. With audiobooks, you can get access to high-quality books anytime and anywhere with a simple touch of your phone. You can “read” while exercising, working, and doing your dishes. Listening to audiobooks can help kill time and shoo the loneliness away.
Audible is one of the best and most popular audiobook industries in the world. If you enjoy reading and want to try something new or elevate your reading experience, you should try Audible. Though Audible is not free, testimonials shared that Audible has one of the best services for an optimized listening experience worth the buck. If you haven’t tried listening to audiobooks, what are you waiting for? There are a lot of benefits of listening to audiobooks that can improve and complete your daily life.
If you love listening to audiobooks, Audible is worth it as it has features that make your listening experience pleasant.
No. there are no free services in Audible.
Most people use Scribd or Google Play Books.
According to Audible’s site, they do not provide transcripts or subtitles.
