After several years, I have dropped my subscription to Audible.com. My subscription had provided one audio book and one “periodical/radio” program per month. It was really the daily access to a radio program (“All Things Considered”) that motivated my membership. Out of the blue, the NPR programs were gone. I contacted Audible.Com by email, but did not really receive an understandable explanation.
Today, I discovered a blog entry (Tim Lauer) that provides the information I needed. It seems NPR is exploring providing audible content via podcasts (NPR podcasts). I am not certain how the funding model is supposed to work. I assume that some of the money I paid to Audible.Com went to NPR and the immediate benefit to NPR of offering content without compensation is not obvious. “All Things Considered” is not presently available by podcast (although it is available at no cost from the NPR website), but some other NPR programming can be received via podcast.
It is amazing to me how quickly this option has developed and how many things I listened to via other methods 6 months ago are now available in this way.
