Audible to cut staff

Audible CEO Bob Carrigan, in a memo to staff, said that Audible is cutting its workforce, reports Publishers Weekly (PW).

PW said the cuts are believed to be about 5% of staff, ‘or some 100 people’, and come despite Carrigan acknowledging the company had had a strong year in 2023.

Carrigan said the staff cuts were necessary ‘to position us for continued success in the coming year and into the future, given the increasingly challenging landscape we face’, and added that ‘getting leaner and more efficient is the way we will need to operate now—and in the foreseeable future—in order to continue delivering best-in-class audio storytelling to our customers around the world’.

The cuts follow the entry of Spotify into the audiobook streaming market last year, and developments in AI, particularly in enabling more AI voiced books to enter the market, as well as at a time when other parts of Amazon’s business are also reducing staff, according to PW.

Category: International news