Book reading is essential for a man to be educated and to achieve erudition. These days, with the smartphones and apps available with a click, listening to books has become a hobby for most of the people. The one advantage, listening to book offers over reading books is that you can do the former while working on something else. You can just plug in your headphones while at work, and listen to books in the voice of narrators. You can seamlessly multi-task.
Let’s look at the top five Audiobook apps available on Android and iOS.
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Audible:
Audible music app
Audible remains the powerhouse in the audiobooks field, with more than 150,000 titles in its library. Audible’s audiobook player offers solid playback features, with chapter navigation, bookmarks, a sleep mode, variable playback speed and multitasking support for background playback and downloading. Its increasing integration with Amazon’s Kindle system is reaping added benefits for its users, as Kindle users can pay a small fee to upgrade a Kindle eBook with an Audible audiobook.
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Audiobooks Now:
Audiobooks Now offers an integrated market and audiobook player with a library of more than 80,000 bestsellers and classics. Users can stream audiobooks for on-demand listening, or download titles to read them on the go. The app comes with bookmarking and playback controls, incoming call auto-pause and resume, and multi-device syncing. In addition to its in-app marketplace, Audiobooks Now also offers a book club-style subscription system that provides steep discounts of up to 50 percent on your audiobook purchases.
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Downpour:
Downpour (Android and iOS) is an independent audiobook store with a fantastic library of DRM-free audiobooks for sale, as well as select audiobooks that you can rent for 30 or 60 days through the Downpour mobile app. The Downpour app allows users to access their entire library and download audiobooks on Wi-Fi or cellular networks for offline playback. Playback controls are fairly standard with chapter and 30-second skips, bookmarking, a sleep timer and support for background downloading and playback.
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Overdrive:
OverDrive (Android and iOS) is a media management app that allows users to borrow eBooks and audiobooks from their library’s collection, with all the flexibility and convenience of a digital app. OverDrive users can borrow titles from the library’s collection 24/7, and users can create holds, wish lists and effortlessly return eBooks and audiobooks. Cross-device syncing of titles and bookmarks allow you the flexibility to listen to an audiobook on the device of your choice.
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Librivox:
If you’re not necessarily looking for the latest bestsellers, Librivox(Android and iOS) offers access to more than 15,000 free audiobooks of public domain works ranging from classic bestsellers to out-of-print titles that users can browse by title, author or genre. Users can save and listen to any number of books that they want, setting unlimited bookmarks as well as a sleep timer. As the work is done by volunteers, narration quality can vary, but it’s a great way to get classic works of literature in audiobook format without breaking the bank.
