Why 2024 was the year of the audiobook

Audiobooks aren’t new: the American Foundation for the Blind pressed recordings of books on to vinyl records in 1932. Later, books became popular on cassette tape and then CDs. But the smartphone era has given the format a new lease of life, and data from the Publishers Association (PA) shows that UK audiobook downloads increased by 17% in the year between 2022 and 2023.

The official statistics for 2024 won’t be released until the spring, but it’s already clear that “2024 has been another record year for audiobooks [...] Ellen Peirson-Hagger, The Guardian