Audible Reacts to Audio Wars with Loyalty Program

Audible has been doing ‘challenges’ for a few years now where if you spend X time or listen to Y books in Z period, you get something like a $5 credit. That’s been inconsistent both in type and in frequency. Now, right when Spotify and ElevenLabs are heating up, they’ve decided to regularize it.

It’s really not much. My guess is that they’re feeling a little threatened, but they’re also betting on still being the giant in the industry. Audible is still synonymous with audiobooks, and until about five minutes ago their biggest competitors have been so small they make David look like Goliath.

So I think Spotify is leaning into discoverability, ElevenLabs into flexibility, and Audible into . . . market inertia. Which isn’t a great long-term bet (never assume things will stay the same), but it is a safe short-term strategy.

And I admit I’m fully feeling that inertia. I use Audible as my default audiobook and podcasting app, and I’ve had a membership since 2012. Though according to the above screenshot, those last 14 years don’t count.

Like I said, it’s not a groundbreaking loyalty program. I don’t think it’s going to convince anyone to sign up when they didn’t before, so it’s really more directed at people like me. And, frankly, I’m not particularly thrilled by it. I’m not disappointed or upset (at least, not any more than I have been at their royalties splits), but I’m also not excited.

This amounts to, as a near-daily listener, a yearly $26 bonus. I price that in my head that way because I think of a credit as costing $11 (since it’s $11 and change per credit if you get a 3-credit bundle after running out, which I haven’t bought in a long time but still runs in my head. I used to commute a lot more than I do now, with fewer interesting podcasts to listen to.

Why am I not counting the incremental steps? Mostly because they’re not repeatable, but the level-four $15 credit is.

Apparently if you’re a bit slow at it, though, you can get a repeat of a lower level reward.

I’m really not sure how that would happen, though, because there’s a really low bar as to what counts as a “listening day.”

Anyone who’s paying for a constant Audible membership without a lot of progress each year on this scale is either listening a lot more, or they’re really wasteful with their money and I’m absolutely judging them.

Since it’s just listening time, podcasts count too. And Audible is my normal podcaster app. I’m doing that more than audiobooks these days.