An audiobook or audio book is a recording of a text being read. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book or magazine.

Spoken audio has been available in schools and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops since the 1930s. Many spoken word album

Spoken word album

A spoken word album was a record album that did not consist mainly of music or songs, but of spoken material. It could be said to be the ancestor of today's audiobook format...

s were made prior to the age of videocassettes, DVDs, and compact disc

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

s, often of plays rather than books. It was not until the 1980s that the medium began to attract book retailers, and then book retailers started displaying audiobooks on bookshelves rather than in separate displays.
In 1931, Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

 established the talking-book program, which was intended to help blind adults who couldn’t read print.