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Originally Posted by pwalker8
It's fairly typical for subscription services to actually pull content when it rolls off, and if you haven't finished, too bad. I see this with various movie subscriptions all the time. Audible is not unique in that respect. That's why I prefer to buy media that I want to watch/listen to, rather than depend on subscription services to always have it available. This is one way that subscription services counter the join, binge, quit cycle that some people like to use.
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I think the aspect that’s unique about Audible is that audiobooks are much longer than the typical movie and most people can only listen to perhaps two or possibly three per month, and they’re certainly not listening to one in a single sitting, as with movies. It would be annoying to start a 20-hour book, say, to have it yanked the following week. Maybe they’ll handle this by announcing with a long lead time before pulling a title, but they’ll have to come up with some accommodation unless they want a bunch of furious customers. The paradox is that they’d probably prefer people to listen to fewer but longer books with the subscription, but people may be somewhat tentative about committing to a long book if they think it’s at risk of being pulled.
I’m not at all familiar with subscription services, but I know I’ve seen with Netflix, for example, articles that say, “Shows to watch this month before they leave Netflix” or something along those lines. However, I admit I’m ascribing to Audible some measures of forethought and customer care that I don’t really think they have; they don’t seem to mind figuring it out as they go along.