Simply Audiobooks is a privately held
e-commerce company that offers
audiobooks for rental, downloading, and sale. Their primary product line is a subscription-based rent-by-mail model for books on CD, similar to
Netflix's
DVD-by-mail model. Although a Canadian company, based in
Burlington, Ontario
Burlington is a city in the Regional Municipality of Halton at the northwestern end of Lake Ontario in Ontario, Canada. Along with Milton to the north, it forms the western end of the Greater Toronto Area and is also part of the Hamilton met ...
, the majority of Simply Audiobooks' customers reside in the United States.
History
*2003: Simply Audiobooks launched with its core rental service, offering unlimited audiobook rentals in both the United States and Canada with free direct-to-door delivery and no due dates or late fees.
*2005: Simply Audiobooks launched audiobooks via download, through low-cost monthly subscriptions and ''a la carte'' purchases. These downloads are
DRM-protected
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...
WMA files which can be downloaded to any Windows computer with
Windows Media Player 10 or 11 and are compatible with most
MP3 players.
*2006: Simply Audiobooks launched the sale of audiobooks on CD and cassette online. They also purchased North America's largest audiobook store in downtown
Toronto, near the company's headquarters in Oakville, Canada.
*2008: Simply Audiobooks began offering DRM-free MP3 downloads which can be downloaded to any computer (running
Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows) and are compatible with any MP3 player (
iPod
The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...
, Zansa,
Zen, or
Zune) or
Smartphone.
*2013: From July 1–6, in honor of Independence Day, Staples.com offered three downloadable Simply Audiobooks for $0.01 each.: ''Bill of Rights Audiobook - Download'', ''The Constitution & Historical Influences'', and ''Gettysburg Address & Emancipation Audiobook-Download'', which do not appear on the company's website and which lack such details as the items' narrators, producers, and release dates.
Audiobooks.com
On January 24, 2012, Simply Audiobooks launched Audiobooks.com, the first
cloud-based service for audiobooks, allowing users to access audiobooks on Internet-enabled devices,
such as
PCs,
smart phones, and
tablet computers. The application allows users to listen to audiobooks by clicking on a link and
streaming
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
their book within the web browser itself, rather than downloading a dedicated application. The audiobooks are stored in
cloud storage
Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data is stored in logical pools, said to be on "the cloud". The physical storage spans multiple servers (sometimes in multiple locations), and the physical environment is t ...
, which means users can listen to books at any time without downloading files and taking up space on their device.
The service uses proprietary cloudmark synchronization technology that enables users to mark their place in an audiobook on one device and continue listening from the same spot when they switch to a different listening device, without needing a
browser plug-in or special application.
As of February 2012, the company's library currently contained more than 11,000 titles from such publishers as
Blackstone Audio,
HarperCollins, and
Simon & Schuster.
Audiobooks.com is compatible with
Firefox,
Internet Explorer, and
Safari
A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...
.
Supported devices include
Android
Android may refer to:
Science and technology
* Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human
* Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system
** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
devices (Android 2.3 and above), Apple
iPads and
iPhones (IOS4.0 or higher), and tablet devices using an
HTML 5 web application. The company is currently working on apps for
BlackBerry OS and
Windows Mobile.
The company released native iOS and Android apps in mid-2012.
Audiobooks.com was acquired by
RBmedia on April 11, 2017 for an undisclosed amount.
Office locations
Simply Audiobooks' head office is located in Burlington, ON, Canada. They also have two distribution facilities in
Buffalo, New York and
Las Vegas, Nevada
See also
*
Book rental service
References
{{reflist
External links
www.simplyaudiobooks.comUS Site
www.simplyaudiobooks.caCanadian Site
2003 establishments in Ontario
Online retailers of Canada
Book rental
Companies established in 2003
Companies based in Oakville, Ontario