Audible’s Top Moments from 2023

In 2023, Audible created blockbuster global content, secured exclusive production deals, celebrated Audible Theater's fifth anniversary, expanded our hubs and community engagement worldwide, prioritized employee well-being, and earned widespread acclaim and awards.

Our listeners racked up more than 4 billion hours enjoying content across 47 languages and in 180 countries. With the help of all-you-can-listen memberships and deals and discounts for subscribers, Audible customers accessed hundreds of thousands of inspiring and educational titles—including hundreds of Audible Originals produced this year in 10 languages—and they celebrated them with us at events, panels, talks and book fairs around the world.

Step into the moments that shaped our year through 10 images that command the spotlight.

Our Newest (Aud)venture: Brazil!

The Audible launch event in Brazil included some of the country’s biggest stars, who performed audiobooks in Portuguese.

Audible, with Amazon Serviços de Varejo do Brasil Ltda, introduced a localized service in October created exclusively for Brazilian listeners. With an unlimited catalog of more than 100,000 global audiobooks, including nearly 4,000 Portuguese titles, many of which had never been available in Portuguese before, and an additional 500,000 titles available for purchase, Brazilians gained access to memorable stories created and performed by talented authors and actors from around the world.

Learn more about our new Brazil service.

We Reached Higher Ground

Michelle Obama in conversation with Oprah Winfrey for her podcast.

This year saw the official kick-off of the collaboration between Audible and Higher Ground, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s media company, with the release of Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast and Your Mama’s Kitchen: Conversations from the Heart of the Home, hosted by Michele Norris. Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast won four Signal Awards including Best Advice & How To Podcast, while Your Mama's Kitchen was hailed as "a hit."

See more of the exciting talent, titles and deals we launched this year.

Listeners Amazed by Marvel’s Wastelanders Series

The all-star cast of “Marvel’s Wastelanders: Star-Lord, A Hindi Audible Original” with Audible’s Head of Content, APAC, Karen Appathurai Wiggins and Country Manager, India, Shailesh Sawlani.

Fans of the Marvel Universe rejoiced over the release of Star-Lord, the first of six seasons of Marvel’s Wastelanders to be shared on Audible internationally in French, German, Hindi, Italian and Japanese. Each local-language edition is a richly designed, fully immersive audio entertainment experience with its own cast of A-list talent in the roles of iconic Super Heroes Star-Lord, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Wolverine. This collaboration underscores our commitment to providing global customers with envelope-pushing audio experiences.

A Slew of Awards Signaled Love for our Podcasts

The Audible team at the Signal Awards for Podcast Company of the Year.

Among numerous awards garnered from around the world for our Original content this year, Signal awarded us Podcast Company of the Year and bestowed a remarkable 37 awards on 25 titles. We also received Podcast Company of the Year from the Webbys. At that award ceremony, Rachel Ghiazza, Chief Content Officer, gave this five-word speech which encapsulates our entire production ethos.

Titles Primed to Appeal

A billboard in Newark for one of bestselling author Sebastian Fitzek’s latest audiobooks.

We produced two blockbusters this year, The Gift and Therapy, with one of our longtime collaborators, international bestselling author Sebastian Fitzek. We first released Therapy, Fitzek’s debut novel, as an Audible exclusive in Germany in 2006, back when he was an unknown author, and have since worked with him to grow a worldwide audience for his thrillers, which now include radio plays, Audible Originals, movies and TV series. Therapy became an Amazon Prime series this year—an excuse for us to produce a new version of Therapy as a full-cast, immersive audio adaptation of the TV series.

Other crossover series this year included Australia’s Hugh van Cuylenburg: GEM, an inspirational listen that’s now a Prime special, and Germany’s Der Greif: Die Vorboten, an audio spin-off of the Prime series Der Greif.

Creators Took Center Stage for Audible Theater’s 5th Anniversary

Tituss Burgess performing in “Center of the YOUniverse” live at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre.

We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Audible Theater. Since its founding in 2018, Audible Theater has presented 44 live shows at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York and released 119 audio titles globally, which have received 35 award nominations and 13 wins including Tony, Lortel, Drama Desk, and Audie Awards. Audible Theater has proudly commissioned 50 playwrights through its Emerging Playwrights Fund, which invests in and nurtures writing talent such as Madhuri Shekar, whose thriller Evil Eye was adapted for film by Amazon Studios.

We Hit (Cos)Play on Comic-Cons Worldwide

We brought several Audible Originals to life at comic-cons in San Diego, New York City, London, Mumbai, Osaka, Tokyo and Delhi, where fans (and press) got to interact with the performers, characters, and universes they love. This ranged from a post-apocalyptic vampire dinner for the Audible Original Impact Winter Season 2 in San Diego to numerous discussions and panels with the likes of Neil Gaiman in Delhi, the stars of the Japanese version of Marvel’s Wastelanders in Tokyo and the cast of Slayers: A Buffyverse Story at NYCC.

Listeners Explored a Whole new Atmos-phere of Audible

Sound engineers map the immersive, spatial audio experience of a new title in our London studios with Dolby Atmos.

Our content teams worked with Dolby Laboratories to launch Dolby Atmos on Audible, a collection of cinematic, immersive listening experiences in pioneering spatial sound. The collection launched with 40 of our most popular titles, as well as new titles, in the US, UK and Canada. We also integrated Siri controls into the iOS app and launched a new app for Google’s Wear OS.

Learn more about how our sound designers make Audible productions so stunningly realistic.

We put the “Life” in Worklife

Audible employee Nandhini Gunalan photographs her colleagues at the Grace Hopper Celebration.

Our commitment to employee well-being was recognized by Worklife, which put Audible in its top ten list of outstanding employers. Among the reasons Audible earned a spot as a stand-out workplace: our professional development programs, such as tuition reimbursement; our Hub+Home hybrid model of working, which offers employees the flexibility to work remotely and together in person; regular meditation and access to dietitians and clinical psychologists; and our several employee-led impact groups, which enhance our employees’ sense of belonging by creating spaces that reflect and celebrate them.

Nothing Short of Pride for our Impact Work

The Harriet Tubman monument, Shadow of a Face, being unveiled in downtown Newark. Photo credit: DreamPlay/Cesar Melgar

Audible won two Shorty Impact Awards for our initiatives in Newark, the city we’ve called home since 2007. One award, in the Corporate-Community category, honored our recently launched Business Attraction Program, created to support Newark’s economy by helping startups relocate or expand to the downtown area. The other, in the Interactive Content category, recognized the onsite audio experience we created for Newark’s Harriet Tubman Monument, Monumental: Harriet Tubman and Newark’s Liberation Movement, which is also available to listeners around the world for free. Learn more about our other impact initiatives, such as taking the Audible Artist Collaboration global, Newark Venture Partners, and more.

This is a mere snapshot of the boundary-pushing imagination behind our teams’ collaborative achievements with creators, community leaders, and valued customers.

Here's to 2024!