And the “news” has set off a rather rash reaction of stories..Amazon.com, which has slowly been building its digital media plans over the last couple of years, is going to enter the audio downloads market, according to a posting on its site.
And that made it clear that there is no love lost between Amazon and Audible, the market leader in this field. Under a deal reached in 2000, Amazon acquired a 5 percent stake in Audible, and now it has dwindled down to 2 percent. The deal never really took off, with Amazon.com ignoring promoting Audible on the site. Now, with this move from Amazon, Audible CEO Don Katz said in an interview that “the revenue generated through the partnership remains immaterial.”
On Friday, when the news came out, Audible stock went down 13 percent on Nasdaq.
Dow Jones: Audible has 224 content partnerships with publishers, 55% to 60% of which the company says are exclusive. But most of the company’s deals with the largest book publishers are non-exclusive, putting them in play for Amazon and others that want to enter the fray.
Of course, Audible still has the exclusive partnership with Apple for iTunes, which has helped it fame and fortunes a lot…
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