Member Gains Push Audible

Source: PublishersWeekly Article
An increase of 63,000 new AudibleListener members in the quarter spurred a 38% sales gain at Audible in the third period ended September 30, to $27.6 million. The company finished the quarter with 455,000 members compare to 345,000 members in last year's third quarter. The company reported a net loss in the quarter of $192,000 compared to $2.5 million in last year's third quarter. Although the loss declined, Audible said its bottomline in the period was hurt by the pay-out of an employee profit-sharing expense that was triggered by faster-than-expected EBITDA growth.

Harlequin Inks Deal With Audible

Harlequin has worked out an exclusive content deal with Audible to give its customers subscription-based access to its audio content. The Harlequin AudibleListener Plan will allow readers to receive two audio romance titles a month from the publisher’s HarlequinBlaze imprint for $9.95. The deal marks the first such branded audio subscription model that Audible has offered. Audible is also offering an incentive to customers who sign up for a one-year subscription, giving them the option to purchase a Creative Zen V MP3 player at the reduced price of $29.99. Article

Amazon.com Launches Beta of MP3 Store; Undercuts iTunes Pricing

Amazon.com announced the beta launch of Amazon MP3, a digital music store that offers over 2 million DRM-free tracks, more than a million of which are priced at 89 cents. Amazon said the top 100 best-selling songs will usually feature the 89 cent price point, and the top 100 best-selling albums will usually cost $8.99. Most albums at the store will cost between $5.99 and $9.99.Amazon MP3 launches with support from two of the four major labels -- EMI Music and Universal Music Group -- as well as over 20,000 independents. The store offers Amazon's "one-click" purchasing, as well as an Amazon MP3 Downloader application that automatically adds purchased tracks to iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries. Wired News reports that some of the 256 Kbps MP3 tracks sold by Amazon will feature a watermark, but the data included will only indicate the track was purchased from Amazon, and will not identify the consumer who made the purchase. Will Audiobooks follow? Article

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3cz4h8
http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/09/some-of-amazons.html
http://tinyurl.com/2jvtxd (Amazon MP3)

Project Playlist Raises $3 Million for Social Music Sharing

Project Playlist, a service that lets users share music playlists on blogs and social network profiles, has raised $3 million in its first round of funding, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing. No investor information was disclosed. Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Project Playlist's technology allows users to add their music playlists to blogs and profiles on social networks including MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and Gaia Online. Article

Related Links:
http://www.pehub.com/article/articledetail.php?articlepostid=7821
http://www.projectplaylist.com/

EMusic, a Song-Download Site, to Offer Audiobooks

eMusic, which is second to iTunes in music download sales, will offer more than a thousand books for download, with many of them costing far less than on iTunes. For example, “The Audacity of Hope,” read by author Barack Obama, will cost $9.99 on eMusic compared with $18.95 on iTunes. The retail price for a five-CD version of the same book is $29.95. The biggest selling point for eMusic is also its biggest point of controversy: the site uses the MP3 format, which works on any digital player but lacks the technology, known as digital rights management, that protects copyrighted material from unlimited duplication.

eMusic, which has 10 percent, still sells more than twice as many songs as competitors like Napster, Rhapsody and WalMart.com. It is owned by Dimensional Associates, an arm of JDS Capital Management. Some publishers are just dipping in a toe. Random House Audio, for example, will be selling about 500 titles, roughly 20 percent of its catalog, through eMusic. “Our customers don’t steal music,” said David Pakman, chief of eMusic, of the company’s 300,000 subscribers, who pay from $9.99 (for 30 songs) to $19.99 (for 75 songs). “A lot of them are technically sophisticated, but they’re not prone to piracy.” Article

Holtzbrinck launches podcasting business model

Holtzbrinck has launched an online network of downloadable audio snippets dubbed Quick and Dirty Tips. The move marks the first attempt by a publisher to establish a money making podcast business. Quickanddirtytips.com, which will generate revenue through online ads and content licensing agreements, grew out of the publisher’s standing relationship with Mignon Fogarty, podcaster-turned-Holt author. Known to her listening public as Grammar Girl, Fogarty signed with the house last winter, after publisher John Sterling heard about the former technical writer’s growing fan base. (Fogarty’s forthcoming book, The Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing, an extension of her show on the science of correct writing, is slated for April 2008 from Holt.) Article

Mobile Music Provider gets new funding

Groove Mobile, a provider of mobile music services, announced on Wednesday that it has raised an additional $6 million in funding from ORIX Venture Finance. Since launching its service in 2004, Groove Mobile said it has completed 35 million transactions, many of which consist of full-track song downloads to mobile phones, and in July alone enabled nearly three million downloads. The company powers mobile music services for mobile carriers including 3 UK, Vodafone and Sprint. Article

Digital Audiobook Sales Up in 2006

According to the Audio Publishers Association download sales accounted for 14% of the business in 2006, up from 9% in 2005. The library market continues to be largest sales channel for audiobooks, representing 32% of sales last year, followed by general retail at 30%, emphasizing the growing importance of digital library distributors like Overdrive, NetLibrary, etc. Article

Random House declares DRM will fall

PublishersLunch just highlighted an annoucment from RH Audio Group publisher Madeline McIntosh in which she declare that DRM (digital rights management) is an obstacle to consumer adoption and market growth, and it will fall. "We at Random House believe that DRM will ultimately disappear," McIntosh writes, "and we believe that will be a positive development for our market."McIntosh explains further: "The potential benefits of moving away from DRM are clear: it would allow the market to open up, so that any online retailer would be able to compete to sell content destined for any device, including the iPod. The hope is that the greatly-simplified consumer experience, coupled with greater retail competition, would lead to growth." "Essentially, the very best, most 'secure' DRM is only so good as the ethics of the individual consumer." McIntosh notes that digital audio is the fastest-growing part of the audio business--now comprising about 15 percent of retail sales--but "these sales come almost entirely from iTunes and Audible." That hegemony is now an obstacle to growth, and the only way onto the dominant-iPod without going through Apple is with unlocked files. Amazon's long-stalled plans to break from their sales agreement with Audible and offer their own downloads probably hinges on getting producers to offer DRM-free material.

Nokia to Adopt Microsoft's PlayReady DRM for Mobile Entertainment

The technology will allow users to share protected pieces of content like music, games, or videos between PCs and other devices. Nokia is expected to launch a online music and mobile content store, a rival to Apple iTunes, in the coming months, using technology gained in last year's acquisition of Loudeye. Article