"Internet piracy is not a problem"

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Don Katz (Chigago, 1952) was a journalist before founding Audible.

And you can tell that:

in a way that almost no manager does.

He proudly tells how he runs the company according to its principles and enters fully into issues such as piracy, the global crisis, social tension in Trump's America or the culture war.

Something even stranger considering that Audible, which debuted this week in the Spanish market with its apps and through the web,

since 2008, when Jeff Bezos bought it for $ 300 million.

For Spain, Audible is still a great unknown.

A company halfway between technology and entertainment headquartered in Newark, an impoverished city with a black majority 15 minutes from Manhattan and with 30% poverty.

As a product, it offers a huge catalog of audiobooks and podcasts, among which is

.

The company, together with Katz, also has milestones such as inventing

thanks to "great engineers who signed up from the Bell company when Newark was a great city of industry and innovation."

The saying that no one is a prophet in their land is true in the case of Audible.

His player, which had a total storage of 4 MB for two hours of audio, did not finish curdling and

.

However, Audible adapted to the success of its competition and went on to become the

in 2003

.

It was also the first company to create an audiobook download and update system that Netflix later popularized with its manager to watch series offline.

Audible's business model also has many similarities to Netflix's (both are based on a monthly subscription payment format) and they face common enemies such as internet piracy.

A problem that brings up the authors' societies in Spain and that, however, Katz perceives with a different magnitude.

"There was a time when the position of the music industry caused many people to take this as a political gesture 'to release content,'" he recalls.

“There came a point where young people thought they were sharing music instead of pirating.

Today the distinction is clear and people are willing to pay.

In our experience,

.

Proof of this is the amount of minutes people consume on Audible, it is higher than video formats.

Katz takes his chest out of his numbers: Audible customers listen to 200 minutes of podcasts a week and consume 20 books a year.

boasts.

The launch in Spain comes at an atypical moment: In the middle of the second wave of a pandemic that the company knew how to weather.

"Unlike cinema, our studios kept working and we managed to increase production."

However, the audiences suffered: “

.

We look at indicators such as the kilometers traveled and in countries like Italy we realized that it was only 3% compared to the previous year ».

Fortunately, the data was soon recovered.

"Parents realized that children spend too much time in front of the screen to play and study and Audible became an attractive alternative for families and we took advantage to create free family content in several languages ​​for

" .

A difficult time in which he also

thanks to a program that delivered food to vulnerable and homeless people in Newark.

By speaking, Katz tries to lead by example and fearlessly addresses the problem of polarization in the United States.

“

.

We have

.

When the terrible murder of Geoge Floyd happened, we already had our own programming focused on issues such as social justice or inequality when these were at the center of the debate, "he says.

So what's better for business, Biden to win or Trump to win?

“

.

We believe in equality and in giving people a chance ”.

Katz, who practiced journalism in Europe and the US for more than 20 years, is surprised by the speeches that have re-emerged during the mandate of the North American president.

"

, but now you see people talking like that and you freak out."

As a good American, he also brings out the famous First Amendment, that of freedom of expression.

"We welcome listeners with different points of view or alternative opinions," he says.

"We have content that tries to reflect historical reality from different people's perspectives and

."

"Sometimes I get philosophical but I don't care", he jokes to take a breath before summarizing his mission in Audible: "If you look on our website you will realize that

, who want to learn and who want to

without falling into hatred towards other human beings ».

EDITORIAL UNIT at Audible

Within the Audible catalog for Spain it is possible to find exclusive content in podcast format that has been produced by the Unidad Editorial group.

In this sense, listeners will be able to find the

podcast

, in which the journalist Pablo Juanarena will offer an analysis of current sports and

, a series about the high-performance school created by the tennis player.

Likewise, every week the

program will be broadcast,

presented by Iñaki Garay, deputy director of the economic newspaper, in which the financial concerns of citizens will be analyzed with the best experts in a relaxed and educational way.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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