Private company
Logo: klarawindei, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons3
Public domain audiobook project
LibriVox is a project of a group of worldwide volunteers who read and record public domain texts, creating free public domain audiobooks for download from their website and other digital library hosting sites on the internet. It was founded in 2005 by Hugh McGuire with the objective to "make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet." On 6 August 2016, the completed projects numbered 10,000; on 14 February 2021 there were 15,000, and on 17 December 2024 the catalog reached 20,000 recordings.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0
Last updated Oct 21, 2026.
See how the biggest companies compare on our leaderboards
LibriVox is a project of a group of worldwide volunteers who read and record public domain texts, creating free public domain audiobooks for download from their website and other digital library hosting sites on the internet. It was founded in 2005 by Hugh McGuire with the objective to "make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet."2
Founded by Hugh McGuire on Aug 2005.1
Can the net harness a bunch of volunteers to help bring books in the public domain to life through podcasting?
LibriVox was started in August 2005 by Montreal-based writer Hugh McGuire, who set up a blog, and posed the question. The first recorded book was The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.
From Wikipedia’s article on LibriVox, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4
Who has led LibriVox, and when. Pick a name to see everywhere that person has worked.
Volunteers can choose new projects to start, either recording on their own or inviting others to join them, or they can contribute to projects that have been started by others. Once a volunteer has recorded their contribution, it is uploaded to the site, and proof-listened by members of the LibriVox community.
Finished audiobooks are available from the LibriVox website, and MP3 files are hosted separately by the Internet Archive. Recordings are also available through other means, such as YouTube and iTunes, and, being free of copyright, they are frequently distributed independently of LibriVox on the Internet and otherwise.
From Wikipedia’s article on LibriVox, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4
The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.
