Amazon buys Audible

THE BOOK-SELLING FIENDS at Amazon have stumped up $300m to buy Audible, the audiobook online delivery service.

Audible, which is the provider of audio books to Itunes amongst others, will now become part of the web e-tailers increasing online media efforts, which currently include Amazon MP3 (an Itunes rival) and Amazon Unboxed (a movie download rental service).

Audio books are obviously a complementary product to Amazon's core business, and will also fit well with the MP3 music store. However, Amazon said that it still plans to keep the audio books DRM'd up, unless customers complain.

This being the internet, complaints will no doubt be forthcoming.

Could Amazon pull the plug on the Itunes deal to kill off a large chunk of Apple's digital business in one easy move? Stranger things have happened. µ