Audible's First Billion

Amazon's audiobook platform, Audible, is one of those apps that keep on growing without much fanfare. This summer, Audible's revenue crossed a major milestone - A billion dollars in net revenue (what Amazon gets to keep after store fees).

Let's see how it got there.

Before we get into the dollars, it's worth noting that Audible didn't always use in-app purchases. The change is fairly recent. Today, anyone can subscribe to a paid plan to listen to the books available in Audible's catalog - and that's where the money is coming from.

Audible started offering in-app purchases in Audible all the way back in 2019, but not to all users. That came roughly a year and a half later. During that time, monthly net revenue already built up to more than $6M, according to our App Intelligence. And that's net, which means what Amazon gets to keep after Apple's and Google's fees.

Audible's Time to First Million, net, was just 10 months!

Revenue continued to grow fast during the lockdown years. Our estimates show revenue skyrocketing to $16M in January of 2022 - a 166% increase in just a few short months.

Revenue continued to grow throughout the year and hit Audible's all-time high in January of 2023 with $40M. This is the most the app has ever made in a single month, and the peak started a decline that continued through all of 2023. We've seen many apps follow this trend. And like those other apps, 2024 brought stability.

This year opened with a modest $36M in January which dipped to as low as $30M right after but has been growing over the summer. As of August, Audible is back to $36M and the trend is looking up.

And while revenue was going up and down, Audible crossed a massive milestone. According to our estimates, Audible's cumulative revenue crossed a billion dollars in June - 59 months after it started offering in-app purchases.

Like many other content platforms, Audible has expanded over the years to provide its own content (Audible Originals) and created a lower-cost subscription tier, both of which help push revenue up - the same strategy we see from movie streaming platforms.