Audible: Audio Entertainment Ratings and Reviews

Get it together

I’ve purchased both of Watter’s audio books. I buy audio books so I can hear the author say the words and the inflections and tone of the words give me more about the book than the words. I will NEVER purchase another book by Watter’s that he doesn’t narrate.
I don’t think he has any idea the sales you’re going losing by not narrating it yourself. It’s also very lazy. If you’re not proud enough of the book to bother to narrate it why should I bother.
Taking the lazy way shows me you’re not worthy of watching you’re show on Fox or the five when you on.
Whatever reason you’ve created to not narrate you own book the truth is you’re just lazy and will only give 90% to whatever you’re doing. Not a good legacy to leave. Unfortunately you have to write another book and narrate it to get me back. I realize I just one person but what you don’t know the hundreds of thousands of people that feel the I do. Good by for a very long time and likely forever, I doubt you’ll ever change only giving 90%. Your biggest problem is you don’t know what you don’t know, you should find out, that extra 10% is where you find the real answers. Last note, this is first review I’ve ever written and I have well over 1000 Audiobooks in my library and have finished everyone.

PLEASE Adjust the More Options Menu on Right Side!

The gist: the newer right hand More Options Menu conflicts with playback and needs to be thought through for ease of function (and to prevent loyal customers from experiencing immense frustration).

I have enjoyed Audible for many years now, listening to several books each month and a library of nearly 400 titles. Most everything has been great (though I’ve found headaches with the bookmark/note taking and so do all of that outside the app), but one of the more recent updates changed the way customers interact with books in the library. You used to swipe left to select “remove from device,” which was a very conscious effort action. Now, however, there are three dots on the right side that one must hit to bring up a short menu of options to then select “remove from device.” My gripe with this is that 98% of the time, when a book is completed and I want to remove it to then begin a new title, I go to hit the dots and instead the dang book I just finished starts to play again. Similarly, I recently purchased several titles that all automatically downloaded to my device, and here again each time I tried to three-dot-tap to remove them for a later listening time, each one started playing. It’s so dang maddening. And I hate that my books are now all out of listening order. Please, PLEASE do something about this. The design is so flawed.

Why do they update, only to break the app

Had my new iPhone 15 pro max less then a month. Go to download my catalog of titles only to find out anything over a GB won’t work. It only streams, as I’ve tried twice since the most recent updates. I called and logged the issue with Audible, and told to download in parts. I love the bigger books all in one file. It was fine on my old iPhone 11 Pro Max. I have reflex sympathetic dystrophy, I can no longer hold books or write. So using Audible is so important to me when it comes to the Bible. Use daily and take notes through the app. The app even encourages customers to download all in one file. That’s great, but it doesn’t work anymore for books larger then GB. If anyone like me you have larger libraries, this means can’t even use higher quality downloads on many books. But it’s getting ridiculous the way Audible has gotten lazy. It happens every other year with iOS update and app updates. It either wipes out all of your downloads, or it breaks the app to be able to download.

I’ve been at the premium level since 2012, I can’t count the times I’ve bought three extra credits a month. When they had their reading challenges last year, had the amount listened to in a week. I love this app, but I need it to work at the level it has for so many years before. Need this to be addressed and fixed. I can call again and be told sorry, and given extra credits. I don’t want to call anymore if nothing is going to be done to correct the issue.

Pay 16 bucks and no credit?

Once upon a time I loved this app, I work a third shift job so listening to books was a great way to pass the time and I always had something fun to listen to. A big part of paying 16 dollars a month is to receive a credit to purchase any book in their library which is nice as some of the things I listen to is odd ball stuff that isn’t always free. All this sounds great right? Well it is until Apple takes your 16 bucks , it updates your account that it has been renewed but no credit. Ok this has happened more than once. I have over 600 hours of playtime versus my metrics and have had it happen 3 times. Now I did what anyone would do, you contact customer service and explain the situation and they give you the credit no problem right? RIGHT? Wrong , even though they can clearly see my renew date was updated and that I did not receive the credit as has happened in the past, nope…. Look I’m not asking for any special treatment, I just want the bill of goods that I paid for and that to date has not be resolved and it is disappointing to say the least that a company’s customer service is not bright enough to look at your account which I’m sure has more deltails than I have as far as metrics in my end to conclude that I am not trying to “get one over” on you . All I wanted it the credit which I pay for to be honored. I guess that was too much to ask.

Buyer beware is all I am saying here because it has happened multiple times to me

Most used app I have aside from gps

Love this app so much. Had it for years and does not disappoint. Thank you for being here, existing and being in my life. Such a great idea and concept. Sorry it took me so long to rate this amazing app! Get it, you won’t regret it, so many wonderful title and books and not over priced!

Update: This is still a great app but it needs to be said that the home tab is waaay too much noise visually speaking. Way too many suggestions and advertised books for an app. It’s not a clean look and honestly it’s ugly. The app needs a more sleek minimalist feel for ease of use. I literally get anxiety seeing the homepage with all the extra books recommendations, catalogues and so forth. When I use the app I just want to get to the point not be defaulted to a crazy looking page foot of book images. Please higher someone to update your app comestically. With the IOS update people are discovering less is more with widgets and less apps. Try to use that same concept, I want to see recommendations make it the last tab not the first. Have the first tab be the library and instead of a line chart of books maybe give the option of line display or chart display, just something more sleek please.

Update 03 May 2021: The app skips the audio for some reason and when the screen goes dark it stops playing. Please fix this. This is pretty frustrating and my settings don’t have anything that causes this to happen.

Developer Response ,

We appreciate you sharing this feedback, and will be sure to forward it to our team.

‘tis the season to do some listening

As someone who used to carry around big CD sets of audiobooks, I really appreciate Audible. I have had the service off and on for many years now, and there have been some significant improvements. In this current season, I am choosing to listen to a bunch of shorter books that I probably would not have listened to otherwise and giving them reviews. It’s pretty interesting how many books are on Audible now thanks to the AI voice. That is pretty cool as well. I got up here again recently to listen to a book that my wife recommended. Even though I wasn’t 100% interested in the book myself, I thought it would be good to listen to and have something to converse about. As a result, I am going down a very interesting rabbit hole of material facilitated by the books that come with the premium plan. I wonder what I’ll be like at the end of listening to all of these books. We are in an interesting time where we could learn a lot of things about a lot of people and a lot of world views just by listening to audiobooks. I wish more people would do something like that. But, since I can’t control other people I might as well just do it myself and see how I expand. I appreciate this relationship building tool,

Rating in July - 5 stars. Rating now - 2 stars.

I have been an audible subscriber for many many years and have been happily using the app for as long as it has been around. The most recent update though has turned the audible app into something I don't want to use anymore. 1. For some reason the library completely reordered itself and no longer sorts by date added or most recent 1.a. this includes whatever book I'm listening to which is no longer at the top of the list 2. The app has been crashing CONSTANTLY unless the app is open and the screen is kept from going into power saving mode. 2.a. the app frequently just won't open at all and requires numerous attempts to open 3. About 90% of the time when I can get the app to open and I can get a book to open, there is no information available on the book or the information given goes with a different book. It may or may not open to the last location I was listening too. None of my created bookmarks are available nor can I create new bookmarks. 4. In addition to the library being randomly sorted, it is no longer searchable when in airplane mode. This added extreme frustration when trying to amuse myself while midair and unable to connect to WiFi. 5. The power drain has become enormous and my phone becomes dangerously hot if I try to charge it while using the app. Please fix this issues as soon as possible as the app is unusable in its current form.

EDIT one of my most used apps.

EDIT: Thanks so much for the response, team. I updated the app and am so relieved. I can’t tell you how much I was missing listening to my books. So happy it was just a bug! Definitely giving the app 5 stars overall!

I LOVE my audiobooks. Audible was one of my very top used apps, as I have a hard time focusing on tasks around the house/work/etc without some sort of sensory input. I have it running almost all the time. The last update ruined the whole app for me. I live way out in the middle of nowhere with no wifi and only the most tenuous connection to the data network. Suddenly, after updating the app, it won’t play any of my DOWNLOADED titles without an internet connection. What the heck is the point of taking up my phone storage space downloading all these books, if I now can’t even play them from my phone?? I am so disappointed, as I can’t listen to any of my favorite books at home anymore because I can’t find a place to connect enough to start the chapter. I know I’m just one random human to a huge corporation, but please, please, please, fix this. I am already missing my books acutely. It’s so disappointing to not be able to play my selection of downloaded books.

Developer Response ,

We’re sorry for the trouble! The offline error you experienced was a bug — we’ve since resolved this. Updating to the latest version of the Audible app should clear this up!

Great app

The app generally works well for what it’s supposed to do. The media player is easy to use. However the library isn’t categorized very well. It was very difficult to scan through fiction just to see what’s available in the “free library.”

Speaking of the free library, this seems to be a major selling point for your subscription offer. It took me a long time to search out a list of about 20 “free” titles. Now that they are in my library I’ve begun receiving notifications that they will not stay free. Many titles have already been switched to the paid library. I would think if you make huge profits from the popular titles you sell thousands of times, that if a title’s status changed it would be from paid to free - not the other way around. Because you are moving so many titles out of the free library, old titles you’ve already had years to monetize, it really makes you look greedy. Or at least you’ve presented the free library as something more than what it is. Are you also making other titles free that used to be paid? I would appreciate any info/analytics you can share to make this easier to understand.

I do give you credit for occasionally offering books on sale. I also appreciate the 5 min. Preview, because I’m pretty picky about reading voices. I certainly will continue to use the app even though credits are overpriced, and your library management tactics are questionable.

good for listening, awful as a library

It’s a good app for listening to books. But it’s clear that Audible’s main goal is not to make it easy to read a book you already have, but to try to get you to buy more. When I open the app I get nothing but ads. Click on library and I see my books, but there’s no way to search my library. The search button gives me a seemingly random list of matching books from their catalog, which may or may not include books in my library. I’ve purchased well over 100 books in the past 20 years, most of which are in the Archive, but I can’t search the Archive. You can put books into collections, but the process is awkward and there’s no way to identify orphaned books not in any collection. It’s galling for three reasons: it would be so easy for them to add a better search and an “Uncollected” collection; it is so obvious that they withhold any features that might make it easier for you to find books you’ve already purchased when they might be able to tempt you to buy more; and this is the only app you can use to listen to books from Audible—who also pressures authors to release some books as Audible exclusives so you have no choice. Thankfully our public library has a pretty good selection of audiobooks, but even they don’t have any of the Audible exclusives. It may not be a monopoly but it ain’t for lack of trying.