Audio Books – When and Why Did They Become So Popular
But when did this audio book phenomenon really start? In other words, what’s the history of audio books? From all indications, audio books look like a very recent invention, right?
WRONG!
To know how long audio books have been around, it is relevant to understand exactly what audio books are. Audio books are simply books that are recorded to be heard, instead of read.
That being the case, such recordings of books in audio formats have been around for a very long time. If you want to be specific, it is safe to say they were first introduced over half a century ago. It could even be longer, if you include the Library of Congress recordings made especially for the American Foundation for the Blind and distributed free throughout the U.S.
Caedmon (just a small company way back then in New York and now a subsidiary of Harper Collins Publishers) can be credited to have started the recordings of literature as far back as 50 years ago. They started recording the audio of great authors and poets of the 1950s. These early recordings can arguably pass off for the first collection of audio books ever. However, the transition of these book recordings into audiocassette tapes didn’t happen until the late 1970s up to the 1980s.
For whatever reason however, the audio book phenomenon didn’t really kick off until the 1990s. And with the transition from audiocassette technology into CDs, more people have become interested in audio books.
The boom of the Internet technology and high-speed Internet connections made available another breakthrough in the industry: downloadable audio books, also known as digital audio books and that’s exactly what they are: digital versions of the audio books. They can be listened to on a computer, on a CD player or on a portable Mp3 player.
The best advantage of downloadable audio books, combined with the use of portable Mp3 players is convenience. You can listen to fiction and non-fiction bestsellers, how-to books, biographies, children books and so on… while doing boring or repetitive tasks. This way, we can fill the "dead" moments we all have in our lives and increase our knowledge at the same time.
In fact, today you can find almost anything you can think of in a digital format, including radio dramas from the first decades of the 20th century.
Downloadable audio books are becoming more and more popular these days because they are cheaper than audio books on tape or CD. And the reason is obvious: you don’t need a storage medium.
So if you always say that you don’t have time to read, now you’re out of excuses. Go get yourself a cup of coffee, download2listen.com/free.html” target=”_blank get yourself a free audio book and start enjoying the wonderful world of downloadable audio books.
The author of this article loves the advantages of audio books. Visit the download2listen.com” target=”_blank online audio bookstore with downloadable versions of thousands of audio books to choose from. On a daily bases new titles are added and special offers with large discounts are available every month at download2listen.com/” target=”_new www.download2listen.com
© Copyright: Mirella Wouters
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