"Reasonably priced secure downloads. Compensation for writers and artists. Peaceful alliances between publishers and online distributors.
A utopian vision for the music industry? Perhaps. But that approach, which appears to be the goal of Apple Computer's iTunes music store and others like it, is already a reality for delivering audio books and other spoken word offerings over the Internet, as created by Audible, a small company in Wayne, N.J....
On Thursday, Audible's reach grew with the announcement that thousands of hours of its offerings will be available from Apple's iTunes music store....
Persuading audio book publishers and radio producers to allow him to sell their content online was not easy at first, Mr. Katz said, particularly because many publishers were still feeling the sting of failed experiments with the CD-ROM. But unlike the record industry, book publishers agreed to share their rights long before a free alternative like Napster or Kazaa came along to make copyright violations as easy as clicking a mouse." [The New York Times]
Of course, I'm a big Audible fan because they are so willing to work with libraries. More on this soon....
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