now playing: audiobooks
We’re very excited today to introduce a new service: eMusic audiobooks. You asked for it and you got it — in a recent eMusic poll, more than 49% of you asked us to sell audiobooks. Typical of eMusic, however, we’re doings things a little differently: our audiobooks will be MP3 files. This is a breakthrough for the audiobook industry and for our customers: audiobooks that play on any digital audio device. And we’re bringing them to you eMusic-style — we’ll make it easy to discover which books you like and sell them to you at a great value.
Today’s launch will make available more than a thousand audiobook titles from major publishers — great works like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, read by Sir John Gielgud and Henry James’ A Portrait of a Lady read by Elizabeth McGovern; best-sellers like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, read by Paul Michael; and new releases like Bill Clinton’s Giving. We’ll be adding hundreds of new titles every week and hope to eventually offer every audiobook currently available (as well as some never before available). Everything is in the MP3 format so it will work on any digital device you already have. No worries about having to buy a specific player that works with your files or having to cope with unfriendly restrictions. Burn your audiobooks to CD, back them up, move them to your various computers and devices. We know that’s important to you and we’re proud to be the first company to do this for audiobooks.
Another thing we’ve learned from our music service is that our customers like it when we educate them about what they’re buying and help them discover new works. We’ll provide that for audiobooks too. We’ve lined up a slew of editorial features on audiobooks, including Review of the Day, appreciations of the classics, guest author columns and more. We’ll also debut the eMusic Bookshelf — like the eMusic Dozen, only for books — and the eMusic Book Club. Best of all, this important context will be brought to you by a team of esteemed literary experts who contribute to such reputable sources as the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Observer, New York Newsday, and the Washington Post.
Finally, we know that, whether it’s books or music, we’ve got to bring it to you at a great value. eMusic’s audiobooks subscriptions will cost $9.99 per month for one book and $19.99 per month for two books, a significant discount from competitors’ pricing and especially from physical audiobooks, which can cost between $20 and $50 each.
I’m particularly excited that today, in conjunction with audiobooks, we’re launching eMusic Remote, a unique new application that replaces the eMusic Download Manager. We’re especially proud of eMusic Remote — it lets you browse the eMusic store as you monitor your downloads and seamlessly copies them to your existing iTunes, Windows Media Player or Winamp library. That’s right: no more manual transfers of your downloads so you can listen to or load them on a digital music player. And it’s built on open source Mozilla code, so anyone can customize or develop new add-ons and themes to work with eMusic Remote. We’ve even recommended some great ones.
It’s also a great day for eMusic customers because not only are we expanding our expertise to the audiobook world, it means that eMusic has now become a multi-product entertainment retailer. Audiobooks are the first of more entertainment products that we’ll offer in the future, always with the same winning combination: discovery, value and compatibility.
The eMusic team has done a terrific job getting audiobooks and eMusic Remote live on the site. Like any beta products, they may be buggy for a few days, but rest assured that we’re working on ironing out the kinks. As always, we welcome your feedback, so please comment below or send us your thoughts here.
We hope you enjoy the opportunity to mix some Macbeth with your McCartney, The Inferno with your Arcade Fire or Bridget Jones with Rickie Lee Jones. Welcome to eMusic audiobooks!
David Pakman, President and CEO, eMusic
I’m actually extremely pleased by the new additions to the music subscription packages that seem to have flown in under the radar – I’m surprised these other changes haven’t been mentioned, as being able to finally break the 75 song a month limit without resorting to booster packs is extremely good news. I might even try an audiobook at this rate…
I don’t like itunes, I don’t want anything that imitates it, and I can’t install Remote. And I can’t use the old DLM. This is not good. Switching back to the expensive booster packs is also not good. How many ways can emusic annoy a longtime user in a single day? Looks like today’s the day I find out.
I’m delighted that emusic is offering audiobooks, but as the service is currently designed, I’m going to stick with audible.com, which has a wider selection and let’s me roll my unused books over from month to month (the .mp3 thing doesn’t make a bit difference to me).
What would truly distinguish emusic’s audiobooks would be allowing music subscribers to use music credits to download audiobooks (say 25 or 30 songs per book). That kind of flexibility would really be wonderful!
What’s happened to booster packs? I don’t see any way to order them anymore. Did you eliminate them, or is the link just hard to find?
Nevermind….I found the booster packs, which are more expensive than before.
On the third try I managed to install the new program. Don’t like it. Interestingly enough, while emusic says the new download manager is only really required for audiobooks, the act of installing the new program seems to have uninstalled the old one. Not that the old one was giving me anything other than a popup that required me to try downloading the new software anyway.
Dear David Pakman: how about letting us decide which we prefer? With the exception of one small company’s output I don’t do audiobooks, and that company is dead set against selling their stuff as mp3s anyway. I’m not going to subscribe to emusic’s audiobooks service. Not today, not tomorrow, not the day after. So please can I have my easy and reliable DLM back?
I also would like the old DLM back, the new one reeks of iTunes and is utterly pointless when Firefox DLM done the job much better. If my connection is dropped remote downloads half files and says they are complete, the old DLM would tell you there was an error and let you resume after a dropped connection. Just one issue of a host of issues with this crap.
That’s supposed to read Firefox plus DLM, obviously this page won’t let you use the plus sign.
Come on, guys, there is a new complaint on the message board popping up every 10 minutes. Lets’ review:
1) Can’t install DLM.
2) DLM doesn’t work or has annoying bugs.
3) Why can’t we use old DLM like you claim in your help page.
4) What is the audiobook plan – people can’t understand it, details are difficult to find.
5) People getting signed up for the plan unintentionally via email or (apparently) the DLM interface itself.
In the past I’ve commented about how blithely ignoring the customers’ reality and just blogging about your favorite bands is going to piss people off – this is one of those moments when some well-crafted damage control is called for.
I agree with bklynd 100%.
Audiobooks – whoopee, who cares.
How about fixing the DLM and at least acknowledging the problems?
not interested in the audiobooks. and the pop up said I only needed the new software to download the audiobooks. but I could not finish my subscription without installing the new software???
I will be cancelling my subscription and removing the software. Thanks for nothing. If I wanted iTunes I would be shopping with them.