Audible subsidizes its streaming plan via premium credits

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Audible is transitioning its audiobook marketplace from a traditional buy-to-own model into a streaming service. Audible has changed their royalty structure in such a way to subsidize this transition, by taking money consumers spend on audiobooks and distributing it across all the audiobooks the consumer listened to that month, regardless on whether or not the audiobook was purchased or streamed using Audible's streaming service.

Background

Audible, founded in 1995, is the longstanding global market leader for purchasing and listening to audiobooks. Since 2020, Audible has offered two plan-types to consumers: one that gives credits consumers can use to purchase audiobooks and one that allows consumers to stream a curated selection of audiobooks. Common knowledge suggests if a credit is spent on an audiobook, the author and audible split that credit by some agreed upon percentage. For an audiobook streamed through Audible, it is reasonable to expect the subscription price is split between all audiobooks listened to for the given month.

Consumer rights impact summary

Digital ownership erosion

Since 2020, Audible has been transitioning its marketplace from a traditional buy-to-own model into a streaming service.

Creator displacement by automation

While automated creation of audiobooks is in its infancy, one can extrapolate the potential impacts in quality of the product and creator displacement by looking at AI's impact in other industries, such as music and digital art.

Audible updates their royalty structure

In the past, if you wanted to purchase an audiobook, you purchased a credit and then used that credit to buy the audiobook. The understanding was the author's cut of the credit went directly to the author. In 2025, Audible unveiled a new royalty structure combining its credit-based sales with its streaming service, creating a system that indirectly pushes authors toward the streaming environment. When a user purchases a book using a credit and also streams another title in the same month, the royalty pool from that single credit is split between both the purchased and streamed works. While financially efficient for Audible, this structure dilutes the revenue earned per title and forces authors to subsidize the growth of the all-you-can-listen catalog. Even if authors opt-out of the all-you-can-listen model, they are not protected from the royalty split. For consumers, this system means that the subscription model is increasingly populated by lower-royalty titles, often favoring works that can be produced cheaply or en masse, such as AI-generated content. Over time, this dynamic risks reducing the diversity and sustainability of high-quality content, narrowing consumer choice.

Lawsuit over royalties

In June 2025, a federal judge allowed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon/Audible to proceed. The lawsuit, filed by independent author Christine DeMaio (CD Reiss), alleges Audible discriminates against authors who do not participate in its 90-day exclusivity program by offering higher royalties (40% vs. 25%), potentially violating antitrust laws. The court found sufficient grounds to move forward.

Audible introduce AI narration tool

In 2024, Audible began piloting AI narration for self-publishing authors through Kindle Direct Publishing's (KDP) "Virtual Voice" program. This feature allows authors to create audiobooks in minutes using computer-generated voices, offering 40% royalties on direct sales and inclusion in Audible's streaming library, Audible Plus, for KDP Select titles. To date, over 60,000 AI-generated audiobooks have been published through this beta. Critics argue that this could flood the Audible Plus catalog with AI content, undermine traditional narrators, dilute royalties for authors, and erode ownership rights for consumers. While this represented a milestone in the program's formal expansion, critics argued that the initial beta had quietly reshaped the audiobook market months before Audible's official announcement.

Consumer response

Listeners and professionals alike have reacted strongly against Audible's AI narration initiative, expressing both ethical concerns and dissatisfaction with quality. On Reddit, one user declared, "I will never be purchasing any books read by AI," while others called for a boycott or pledged to avoid AI-narrated content, arguing that personal choices send a message to the platform. Another user said:

Being cheap and easy is why it's a threat, not the quality of the narration. Amazon doesn't care what its customer base actually wants, it just wants a monopoly.

Meanwhile, blog commentator Brian, citing early user reviews, criticized Virtual Voice as "monotonous, boring, misses character accents," and noted that up to 80% of new audiobooks in certain sub-genres might already be AI-narrated. Broader public sentiment reflects similar unease, with long-time Audible users canceling subscriptions over concerns that widespread AI adoption "destroys the purpose of humanity" and diminishes storytelling's emotional depth. The Guardian and National Digest echo this pushback, with authors and narrators insisting that AI fails to replicate the nuance of human narration, stripping audiobooks of the emotional subtlety that defines great performance.

Audible's response

Audible's messaging frames Virtual Voice as a creative and accessibility-enhancing tool. The platform says it empowers authors to reach new audiences and monetize content more flexibly—including titles within Plus memberships and a la carte sales—with monthly insights and statements. In May 2025, Audible expanded AI offerings, allowing publishers to use AI narration via "Audible-managed" or "self-service" workflows, with human linguists available to improve translations. The announcement emphasized ambitions to make "every book available in every language" while assuring human oversight for translations. Earlier, Amazon sent the beta invites via KDP, specifying authors could receive 40% royalties and have AI audiobooks added to the Plus catalog.