November 18, 2006

The Top 10 Arguments Against DRM

One question we get a lot here at LearnOutLoud is why we’ve chosen to go DRM-free with our digital downloads. I’ve explained it to a number of people and written a number of posts about it but I’ve never summarized our reasons for going the DRM-free route in one post before. So here goes… (And if you have no idea what I’m talking about or what DRM is please click here.)

1. DRM doesn’t prevent illegal use of files, it just makes it a bit more difficult to access them. A lot of publishers are under the impression that once you put DRM on a file nothing bad will happen to that file ever. It just ain’t so. There are a multitude of tools out there that allow you to strip DRM off of files relatively easily. So while DRM might make illegal sharing a bit more difficult if someone really wants an unprotected/unencrypted version of the file it’s not very hard to do this. This is an important point because…

2. All it takes is one person to crack the file and it can be made available to everyone. Most illegal trading of files happens over P2P networks. The thing with P2P networks is that it only takes one copy of a file to be unencrypted/unprotected to have that file be available to all. Check any P2P search engine and you’ll find a multitude of titles that are supposed to only be available for sale online as protected files. Of course, there is one other possibility…

3. Anyone selling content on CD is already selling unprotected files anyway. With the exception of debacles like the Sony rootkit, 99+% of all CDs sold contain unencrypted files. This means that anyone who sells content on CDs is making unprotected content available and that putting those files online is as easy as ripping them to MP3 files, a pretty simple task these days. What boggles my mind is record companies and publishers who are willing to make content available unprotected on CD but for some reason insist on copy protection for digitally downloaded files. Especially considering that…

4. DRM adds a lot of costs for content producers – Implementing DRM isn’t free of course. The costs to develop and/or license DRM technology, encode media files and deal with a multitude of DRM-related customer service complaints are usually passed on from the retailers to the content producers. What this means is that content producers make significantly less money selling DRM “protected” content than they do selling DRM-free content. Royalty rates offered to many content producers from online retailers are often pitifully low and DRM is typically used as a main reason why this is so. That’s a shame. Of course that’s not the only cost…

5. There’s a huge hidden cost in trying to sell DRM’ed content – In addition to the many costs of implementing DRM for content there’s a cost that is often overlooked: The sales you lose because people don’t want to buy DRM’ed content or have incompatible players. This is huge. There is a growing number of people who won’t buy any content that has DRM. In addition, because there is no universally compatible DRM standard, many people can’t buy your content if they don’t have a compatible player. For instance, if you only sell your content with Apple’s Fairplay DRM all of the people getting Zunes during the holidays won’t buy you content because it won’t play on your player (and vice versa of course). So by implementing DRM you are losing out on a significant (and unknown) amount of revenue.

So those are five good reasons why content producers shouldn’t implement DRM. Let’s take a look at five good reasons why DRM hurts consumers…

6. Often the costs of the DRM are passed along to the consumer as well. Since DRM isn’t free someone has to pay for it. Sometimes it’s the content producer in the form of reduced royalties. Other times it’s the consumer. Take the example of eMusic and Apple iTunes. iTunes tracks sell for 99 cents while eMusic tracks sell for 25 cents. One of the reasons why eMusic can sell its music for so much cheaper is that it isn’t spending tons of money implementing a DRM system and dealing with customers who are having DRM issues. So it is able to offer a technically superior product for a significantly lower price. Which is good and even better when you consider that…

7. DRM-free content will play on your device of today and your device of tomorrow – It’ll be a little shocker for some people in a few weeks when they get the new Zune device from Microsoft and try to load all of their Rhapsody or MSN Music tunes on it only to find that they won’t work. Why? Because Microsoft’s previous DRM (PlaysForSure) isn’t compatible with the new Zune DRM. And that’s an example of one of the biggest problems with DRM. It locks you into a specific player from a specific company. While that might be good for a hardware manufacturer like Microsoft or Apple it’s not good for you the consumer. Want another reason? Consider that…

8. Your media devices of the future will be significantly different than your media devices of the present. I discussed this point at length in my post The 5 Dangers of Buying DRM’ed Media. There’s a really good chance that your next media player won’t be an iPod and that in the not-too-distant future it’ll probably be your cellphone. If that’s the case then you need to be aware that any DRM-encoded content that you buy probably won’t work for you anymore. While millions of cellphones are currently shipping that play MP3 files, very few of them will play songs from iTunes or audiobooks from Audible.com. So if you’re at all interested in being able to play your content (the stuff you paid hard-earned money for) in the future you should think twice before buying anything infected with DRM. Furthermore…

9. DRM fundamentally changes who is control of your media. This might be the most esoteric of the arguments and is a bit difficult to explain but in a nutshell, when you buy DRM content for the first time in history, someone else is dictating to you what you can do with something that you’ve legally purchased. Watch this short video from the great folks over at DefectiveByDesign which illustrates this point nicely:

Finally, it’s really important to understand that…

10. Whenever you buy DRM’ed content you support the system of DRM – I buy DRM’ed content from time to time like most of you. However, I have realized that with each purchase of DRM’ed content I help to perpetuate a system in which DRM is acceptable. And at the same time, whenever I frequent a site that offers DRM-free content I’m helping to support a system in which DRM is viewed as unacceptable and a bad business practice. There are a ton of good sites out that offer DRM-free content (here’s another great list) and they could use your support. By rallying around these sites we can help to tip the balance and make this a world where the power is in the hands of people who produce content and legally purchase it.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to me ramble and I hope you now have a better understanding of why this issue is important and what you can do to help make this world a better for place for content producer and content consumers.

October 26, 2006

The Economics of Abundance and Why Most People Don’t Get It

Chris Anderson (author of the Long Tail and editor of Wired Magazine) recently spoke at PopTech on the subject of The Economics of Abundance. I’ll let you click the link for more information but to make a long story short, the economics of abundance are directly opposed to the economics of scarity. You remember scarcity right? After all it is in the basic definition of economics itself:

Economics, as a social science, studies human choice behavior and how it affects the production, distribution, and consumption of scarce resources.

(link)

But here’s the problem…in a digital world resources are no longer necessarily scarce. A file can be replicated an unlimited number of times at virtually no cost. So in a world in which resources are increasingly abundant rather than scarce everything changes. (For a further elaboration on what is changing, check out this *excellent* series of posts on Media 2.Uh-Oh.)

Yet, most people don’t understand what is shifting. Which is why you see Tower Records shutting its doors. It’s why you see NBC laying off 700+ employees. Because too many people are blind to the economics of abundance and have no clue how to operate in world that is no longer defined solely by scarce resources. And so rather than change they’d prefer to stick to existing business models that worked in the past.

It’s sad to me. Because I have conversations with people in the media world (like one I had this very morning) who want to keep their businesses closed off to the rest of the world. Who don’t want to embrace the new channels of distribution that are available. Who’d rather spend their time and energy protecting their existing turf rather than going out and innovating and taking advantage of all of the new markets that are opening up.

And it’s a shame because for most of these businesses they won’t realize it until it’s too late. By the time it becomes painfully obvious what the answer is they are filing for Chapter 11 and laying off the majority of their staff. Because they forgot to read The Long Tail or The Wealth of Networks.

Or more likely, because they didn’t know those books existed in the first place.

October 5, 2006

Sheer “Zune-acy” a.k.a. How the Zune will destroy businesses and confuse customers

So we’re a few weeks away from the much bally-hooed launch of the Microsoft Zune. And while a lot of people are talking about the wireless capabilities or the questionable choice of brown for colors, no one seems to be discussing the most important impact of the Zune…the lack of backwards compatibility with the PlaysForSure DRM.

I understand what Microsoft is trying to do here. They’re building an integrated stack (read: MSFT has full control over the player, the DRM and the content store). This is what has worked for Apple so well and indeed the lack of an integrated stack (read: the general yuckiness of slapping Microsoft DRM on content from Yahoo/Rhapsody/Napster and then trying to play it on a device from Creative or iRiver) is what has caused Microsoft to lag in the media world over the last few years. And if the crew in Redmond wants to truly have an integrated stack then they can’t support anything outside of that stack which means they have no choice but to drop compatibility with PlaysForSure.

But the implications of not supporting PlaysForSure are huge. Let’s assume for a second that the Zune is relatively successful in the market (it takes more than a 15% market share in the next couple of years). If that’s the case then that will likely mean the following:

1. Companies that are supporting PlaysForSure content are screwed. There are hundreds of companies out there selling PlaysForSure content, the most famous of them being the music services listed above. A good chunk of Zune’s market share will come at the expense of other PlaysForSure devices which means that the number of devices that can play content from those services will dwindle.

2. Companies that are supporting PlaysForSure content are screwed twice. So the easy solution seems to be for the companies selling PlaysForSure content to encode their content with the Zune DRM and either sell Zune content exclusively or sell both formats. Except for the fact that this won’t work. Microsoft won’t allow companies to sell Zune-DRM-laced content because that destroys the integrated stack model. So your only hope for getting on the Zune will be to work directly with Microsoft to get your content into their store. And that pretty much destroys the market for the middlemen (all retailers currently selling WMA DRM content).

3. Companies selling PlaysForSure devices are screwed. I hadn’t planned to use the word “screwed” so much in this blog post but I couldn’t help it because a lot of people are getting…well, screwed. Creative and Samsung and iRiver and all the other companies trying to compete with Apple get screwed twice as well. On one hand, they now have another device to compete with (and one that will no doubt have tons of marketing muscle behind it). On the other hand, the services they are so dependent upon (e.g., I bought my Zen almost exclusively because of the Rhapsody-To-Go service) will lose ground and may even shut down if they can’t gain traction in a post-Zune world.

Yikes, not pretty. So that’s what could/will happen if Zune takes off. What if it doesn’t?

Well, if it doesn’t then the situation isn’t necessarily any brighter. What you’ll have is a lot of customer confusion as people rush out to buy Zune devices and can’t figure out why they won’t work with Rhapsody or buy a Creative/iRiver/Samsung player and are at a loss to understand with they can’t load content from Microsoft’s store on it. Let’s face it…DRM is already causing a fair amount of confusion on the part of customers. The launch of the Zune will likely more than double that confusion.

The funniest thing is that I’ve yet to see anyone talk about this all that much. Several of the content retailers I’ve talked about (people selling PlaysForSure content) didn’t even seem to be aware of the situation. That’s kinda scary when you think about it because there’s a good chance that their businesses will change drastically in the coming months and years. Bloggers seems to be talking about everything else related to the Zune but not this. It’s kinda eerie…

So is there a silver lining in this cloud? Perhaps. My hope is that customers get so sick of this DRM-nonsense that they start gravitating towards DRM-free audio and stop buying content that will someday be viewed as the 8-track tapes of the digital world. If the Zune accomplishes that then I’ll applaud Microsoft for doing this…not because they made the right decision but rather because they made this thing such a mess that people looked for more sensible choices elsewhere.

October 4, 2006

DRM: Think about it…

Here’s a great short video from the folks at Defective by Design that’ll make you think twice about the implications of DRM (the copy protection schemes implemented by most retailers of downloadable goods):

We’re incredibly proud that all of the 500+ titles we have for download on LearnOutLoud are DRM-free. This means we don’t decide where you can play the audiobooks you purchased from us. You do. And that’s the way it should be right?

August 20, 2006

The 5 Dangers of Buying DRM’ed Media

A generation of people are being mislead by some glitzy marketing. They are buying music and other media off of services like iTunes thinking that they “own” this media. But unlike the generation before them was able to do with all those CDs they purchased, this new generation probably won’t be able to enjoy their music and other media for many years to come. Instead, they’re making a purchase today that will likely become worthless to them, and perhaps much sooner than they think. As I’ve heard Ian Rogers over at Yahoo! Music state several times, the iTunes music file is the equivalent of the 8-track cassette for this generation. So with that said let me present 5 very real dangers associated with buying DRM media:

1. Your next media player might not be an iPod – Right now everyone is in love with the iPod and for good reason. It’s by far the superior device and experience for personal media. However, history tends to repeat itself and one thing we know from history is the gadgets that are dominant rarely stay on top for long. Microsoft is going to launch its new Zune soon and it may or may not be the coolest thing since sliced bread. Knowing Microsoft it probably won’t be but other companies are going to launch other players and eventually there is probably going to be something out there that’s cooler than the iPod. If all of your media was purchased from the iTunes Music Store (or any other place selling content in a proprietary format) you’ve pretty much locked yourself in to buying a particular type of device in the future. I’m not sure about you but that’s not what I want to do. And besides, it’s possible that your next MP3 player might not even be a dedicated MP3 player. Instead, it’s quite possible that…

2. Your phone will be your next media player – Almost all of the new phones coming out right now have media playing capabilities built-in. For a while you’ll probably find that whatever you’re doing with your iPod is going to be superior to the experience on your phone. However, over time that will change and within a few years your phone will provide an iPod-like experience and eliminate the need for you to carry to devices everywhere (heck, the Nokia N91 is almost there today). So if you’ve bought a bunch of music in a proprietary file format (such as the iTunes Music Store) you really need to ask yourself the question “Am I prepared to not be able to listen to stuff on my phone in the future?” Sure, Apple will launch an iPhone sometime and it’ll probably be cool but the fact of the matter you’ll probably want to keep your options open for a while.

3. You have no idea how you might want to share your media in the future – Oh my gosh are there a lot of cool new media-sharing devices and technologies these days. Slingbox. Sonos. Roku. Bluetooth. Some of these work well with DRM’ed content and some don’t. And who knows how the media-sharing devices of the future will respond to all of these proprietary file formats. The bottom line is that if you want to keep your options open and be able to use all of the kick-ass devcies that are on the horizon you’d be well-advised to have most or all of your media stored in an open, non-proprietary file format like MP3. Otherwise, you just might be SOL…

4. You might decide you want to get a new computer in the future – Yes, it’s quite possible that the computer you are on right now might not be the same computer you’ll be using a few years in the future. I’ll go out on a limb and say that you’ll likely want a little more memory and processing power down the road which will mean you’ll have to upgrade. Will your music and other DRM’ed media go with you? Maybe… Music services such as iTunes/Rhapsody/etc. have ways you to authorize new computers and de-authorize computers you are no longer using. But can they guarantee that it won’t be a pain in the ass? Nope, many people who have to do spend many hours of frustration dealing with this. And an unsettling number of people can’t their media to work at all with their new computer.

5. Two words “Sony Rootkit” – Everyone knows about the Sony rootkit fiasco. That only affected people that had bought DRM-infected CDs. However, there’s nothing to guarantee that something similar won’t affect digitally downloaded files in the future. After all, DRM protection is always changing. For example, a while back Apple modified its firmware to make it incompatible with Real Networks music track. Now, it’s important to point out that there hasn’t been a case where DRM’ed files have rendered someone’s computer inoperable. Having said that, I’d be very surprised if there weren’t a scandal similar to the Sony rookit one that does affect downloadable content in the future. Given the ever-changing nature of DRM and the lengths to which some content providers will go to try to protect their works it could quite easily happen. And I don’t want to be there when it does.

There are no doubt many other reasons not to buy DRM’ed media (including the very important one that you are supporting DRM with every DRM-laden purchase) but I think these five give a pretty compelling reason to avoid purchasing this type of content in the future. Now, I’m not adamantly against all shapes and forms of DRM. Sometimes it does make sense. For instance, it would be pretty hard to pull off an “all-you-can-eat” music service like Rhapsody/Yahoo Music/Napster without DRM. So in this case I’m not against DRM (I personally LOVE Rhapsody).

But the bigger problem is people (mostly unsuspecting teenagers and 20-somethings) buying DRM-laden media and thinking that they will be able to play that media ten or twenty years down the road (just like the generation before was able to enjoy CDs many years later). That almost assuredly will not be the case. Unless you’re interested spending tons of time on the tedious (and potentially illegal depending on how you interpret the DMCA) task of removing the DRM from your media.

So where do you go to find DRM-free media? A while back I wrote a post entitled A Guide to DRM-Free Audio and that’s a great place to start. Music services like eMusic and Audio Lunchbox rock and will only get better with time (especially as we lend them more support). And you can get a ton of spoken word content (audiobooks, podcasts, etc.) DRM-free as well.

If you still want to go out an buy DRM’ed content that’s totally cool. Just don’t say you weren’t warned about what might happen. 🙂

July 27, 2006

The “Not-So-Bright” Future for Media

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the future of media. No doubt some of this has been spurred by all of the discussion of Chris Anderson’s new book The Long Tail (which you must read if you’re at all interested in where media is headed). The question on my mind these days is what exactly is the future of media?

Media disruption is happening at a ridiculously fast rate. The best example of this is YouTube. I was walking back from lunch yesterday with my brother and was mentioning that YouTube was disrupting media consumption even more than TiVo did. You see with TiVo you still had to know when something was going to be on and decide whether it was good and TiVo-worthy. With YouTube you no longer need to worry about that. Just wait for everything to air and then wait for something like Digg videos to let you know if it was worth watching (like this awesome Colbert clip).

Then there’s music. The fact that Yahoo is pushing hard to make music available DRM-free (as discussed here) speaks volumes about how far we’ve come in the last few years. More and more companies are getting the fact that DRM doesn’t help anyone and they are willing to roll the dice on business models that don’t assume that DRM offers the protections it pretends to.

And then there’s this whole Long Tail thing which is pushing content to the edges. Your media discovery no longer comes from the aisles at Sam Goody or Blockbuster. It comes from your friend’s MySpace page and some blogger’s del.icio.us account. You use Pandora instead of Rolling Stone to find new music and can’t even remember what network your favorite television show is on because that doesn’t even matter anymore.

Lots of big media companies are frightened by this scenario. And they should be. The gatekeeper mentality toward media is rapidly eroding. It’s being replaced by user-generated content, disintermediation of publishers and AI-like discovery and personalization tools. I’m not saying anything new here. Just making some observations of what I’m seeing and what others are talking and blogging about.

But what does this mean?

It means that if you’re stuck in a 20th-century model for media distribution then you’re toast. Sure, maybe not now…maybe in a few years or maybe you’ll hang around even longer. But you’ll eventually be moved out of the way (sometimes not so subtly) but what’s coming down the pipeline. By the kid in the garage who just invented the next-generation media app that makes your content ridiculously easy to get. By the media discovery device that can’t reach your content and therefore can’t share it with people who are looking for it.

So what do you do?

First, you deliver incredible value to your consumer. You make it so easy to buy your content at a reasonable price that dealing with Bit Torrent or something else of that nature isn’t worth it. You deliver the files in a non-crippled format that is at least the equivalent of what people can find on the Net for free. You make user experience paramount. You make consumption of your media incredibly painless.

Second, you build community around your media. You create passionate fans of your stuff who want to pay you for your stuff (even if they could get it for free elsewhere). Our buddies over at Integral Naked have done this. People pay them money because of the content but it’s not just that. It’s also about the community that forms around the content. Accessing that is just as important for many subscribers as the media itself.

Third, you are willing to innovate and understand that your revenue model is going to change. Hanging on to the way you made money in the past is, to throw out a bad cliche, like polishing the brass on the Titanic. The ship is going down and while you might make some money in the short-term by doing this you do so at the risk of the future of your company. We’re moving to an all-digital world really, really fast and if you’re not prepared for that you’re putting your entire company at risk.

How do you innovate? You take chances. You try new things. You realize that some of the things you do won’t make any sense in the short-term but will return you millions of dollars in the long term. You embrace the youth because their behavior will be indicative of what everyone will be doing in a few years. You watch how people are consuming media and let them dictate to you how they want to consume media vs. the other way around.

What does this have to do with LearnOutLoud? Nothing…and everything. We’re trying to forge new ground with media delivery and consumption. And we’re working with a range of people, some of whom really get it and some of whom don’t (note: we prefer the former). And as much as this rant seems like it’s focused on content producers it’s equally important to consumers. Your world is shifting too and you have an opportunity to help forge this new future by voting your time, attention and hard-earned dollars towards the companies that are willing to take chances on new business models.

So maybe the future is bright after all. At least for those willing to embrace the tidal wave of change that has just started. A year ago nobody knew what YouTube was. Three years ago nobody knew what MySpace was. Six months from now there’s going to be a new company that everyone will have heard of that no one has today and that company will be disrupting things all over again.

Bottom line = pay attention. Media shapes our lives and we’re at a very cool point in history where we have the opportunity to really shape media. Just a little something to be conscious of…ok, back to your regularly scheduled, er, time-shifted programming…

July 20, 2006

LearnOutLoud/Loomia featured on CNET

Ken (one of the co-founders of Loomia, the company we use for our super-cool recommendations service) just dropped me a line to let me know that Loomia and LearnOutLoud were recently featured on Alpha, the CNET blog. Here’s the link. Pretty cool write-up…

If you haven’t used our recommendations service yet definitely give it a try. Log in to the site (or register if you haven’t already), rate a few titles (the more the better!) and then click the Recommendations link in the upper-right corner of any page on the site for your own personalized recommendations. LearnOutLoud is the only spoken word audio site currently offering custom recommendations and we think you’ll really like this feature.

July 19, 2006

DRM-free MP3s from Y! Music???

Very cool blog post from Ian Rogers over at Yahoo! Music about their desire to sell content as DRM-free MP3s rather than protected WMA files (which among other things do not play on iPods). Ian makes the great point that music companies are already selling DRM-free content whenever they sell a CD. Sure there’s an extra step involved of ripping that track to mp3 but what high school/college student doesn’t know how to do that these days?

I’ve been making a similar point to publishers for a while now. At LearnOutLoud we currently have the largest selection of DRM-free spoken word audio content of any site on the Net. And our selection is set to triple or quadruple by year’s end (stay tuned!). We’re able to pay the publishers we work with a whole heck of a lot more because we don’t have the costs associated with implementing and servicing DRM’ed content. And our customers benefit because they don’t have to worry about tedious stuff like authorizing computers or devices, not being able to listen to their stuff both at home and at the office, etc.

I was interviewed last week by someone writing a paper on DRM and they asked what I thought the future of DRM would be in five years. I said (and it was indeed Ian who I first heard this from) that either we’ll see no DRM whatsoever or the DRM that will be there will be so transparent that it won’t bother you and you won’t even know that it’s there.

Sadly, that’s not the case today. I’m a huge fan of the Rhapsody music service but there are times when I’ve driving and trying to listen to my Rhapsody music and DRM issues make me want to toss my Zen player onto the 405. Customers are becoming increasingly wary of this and so unless things get better soon I think you’re going to see more people moving to DRM free audio services in the future.

Hopefully Yahoo! Music can pull a DRM-free service off. I’m definitely rooting for them.

June 18, 2006

A Guide to DRM-Free Audio

Let’s face it. The DRM (if you’re unfamiliar with the term DRM, click here for an overview) debate is probably never going to be resolved. On one hand, you have consumers (and consumer advocates) who hate having media they legally purchased crippled by what are sometimes ridiculous restrictions. On the other hand, you’ve got content producers who feel that distributing DRM-free media will result in rapidly declining business as people opt for sharing content with others rather than actually purchasing. I have no intention to get into that debate but do want to offer up something that I feel pretty strongly:

If you are opposed to DRM and want to see more DRM-free content made available the best thing you can do is support the companies that are distributing DRM-free media.

It’s not easy to run a company selling DRM-free media. A large number of content producers won’t do business with you because they feel that their content isn’t being protected adequately (even though many of these same content producers sell the same content on CD witih no DRM). So many DRM-free companies are forced to sell whatever they can and may not have the most popular artists or latest releases. However, if we’re ever hoping to live in a world where DRM doesn’t exist or has a much smaller impact I think it’s important to do our best to support these companies.

To help in that regard I’ve compiled a list of companies that sell DRM-free audio (both music and spoken word). After all, the first step in the process is knowing which companies sell content with no DRM restrictions. I feel that the best way to fight DRM is to do what we can to support them (and I’ll admit upfront that there is at least a little bit of selfishness here as we do have DRM-free spoken word audio on our site). If we do then maybe, just maybe, we’ll live in a DRM-free world one day (or at least in a world where there are more options for people who want legal content without DRM restrictions).

A couple of notes: I’ve tried to stick with reviewing companies whose legality isn’t in question. There are a number of companies (the most notable being allofmp3.com) who sell DRM-free media but where it is not certain if they are paying proper royalties to artists. Since this represents a bit of a grey market I haven’t reviewed them. Also, I have no doubt that I’ve left some good and worthwhile companies off this list. I’ve tried to stick with the larger companies with the biggest selections. If I’ve missed anyone worthy of mention, please feel free to leave a post in the forums or drop me an e-mail at jon at learnoutloud dot com.

DRM-Free Music Sites

eMusic – The best-known and most popular DRM-free music site. I love what these guys are doing. First of all they’re cheap ($0.25 a download). They’ve got a large selection (over a million songs) and they are bringing on an increasing number of well-known artists (e.g., Ray Charles, Bob Marley, Coldplay, Johnny Cash). They certainly don’t have as much of the latest and greatest as iTunes or Rhapsody but what they’ve amassed is pretty impressive. I’d love to see eMusic get even more popular and give the big boys a run for their money.

Pros: Great selection, low prices, increasing selection of popular artists

Cons: No rollover on their monthly plans (either use your monthly downloads or you lose them), no a la carte sales

Audio Lunchbox – This is a great site for independent music. They have a number of plans ranging from monthly to a “Platinum” plan which offers over a thousand downloads for $250/year. While eMusic might have a wider selection and better prices on many titles, ALB does have a lot of music that eMusic doesn’t.

Pros: Diverse selection of independent music, low prices, can purchase a la carte, RSS feed available for new additions

Cons: Like eMusic your monthly credits do not roll over, credit system can be a bit confusing

Magnatune – I love what John Buckman has done at Magnatune. One of the coolest things is that CDs on Magnatune sell for a minimum price of $5 but you can choose to pay whatever you want. The cool thing is that the average selling price is $8.93. And Magnatune splits all royalties with its artists so when you buy anything on the site you know exactly how much the artist is getting paid. Magnatune might not have as many names that you’ve heard of but there’s a heck of a lot of good music there and given the general “goodness” of their business model this is a company definitely worth supporting.

Pros: Multiple DRM-free formats (even WAV files!), listen to albums in their entirety before buying, give 3 copies of music you buy to friends, their motto (“We are not Evil”)

Cons: Not many artists that you’ve previously heard of

betterPropaganda – A sweet site for indie music with free MP3 downloads. Most of the artists are up-and-coming ones although artists like Brian Eno, Snow Patrol and Belle and Sebastian are featured (however, many artists have a limited number of tracks available). betterPropaganda has done a lot with playlists and podcasts and has a cool recommendations service from Loomia (the same company we use for our recommendations service). Definitely a site to keep an eye on.

Pros: FREE MP3 downloads, Nice mix of up-and-coming independent artists and more established ones, playlists, podcasts and recommendations

Cons: Limited number of tracks from more popular artists

Others: Bleep | CommonTunes | Epitonic | Garage Band | Insound

DRM-Free Audiobook Sites

Telltale Weekly – Telltale Weekly and its sister site, The Spoken Alexandria Project, have a number of free and low-cost public domain audiobooks. A glance at their bestsellers list produces titles from authors like Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe and H.G. Wells (of The War of the Worlds fame). Telltale’s prices are very low and they have made a commitment to releasing recordings under the Creative Commons License in the future. In addition, they give 7% of gross revenues to worthy charities such as Project Gutenberg and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Pros: Low prices and many free titles, Multiple file formats (MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis), Charitable giving

Cons: Selection consists only of public domain titles, many titles are fairly short in length

Librivox – Librivox has an interesting take on audiobooks. They gathered an army of volunteers to read public domain audiobooks a chapter at a time. The upside is that they are producing a ton of content to listen to. The downside is that they chapter-by-chapter approach leads to some big inconsistencies in quality (although this does appear to be getting over time). And since these titles are all available for free it’s tough to complain.

Pros: All audiobooks are free to download, large and growing selection of classical literature

Cons: Selection consists only of public domain titles, inconsistency both among and within titles

LearnOutLoud – We’re doing the DRM-free thing as well and while our selection is still pretty small (approx. 400 titles) it’s growing pretty quickly. A number of our titles are public domain but most are not including titles like Think and Grow Rich and content from authors like Bodhipaksa and Sir John Templeton. We’re heavy on self-improvement titles but working hard to expand our selection in other areas as well. In addition, we give away one free full-length audiobook each month.

Pros: DRM-free non-public domain audiobooks, Multiple file formats (MP3 and bookmarkable MPEG-4), Personalized recommendations

Cons: Selection is still somewhat small and focused primarily on self-improvement titles

Others: AudioBooksForFree.com | Christian Audio | iAmplify | LiteralSystems.org | Project Gutenberg

DRM-Free Podcast Sites

No discussion of DRM-free audio would be complete without a nod to the podcasting community. I’m not going to review all of them but the best directories I’ve seen are Yahoo! Podcasts, iTunes, ODEO, Podcast Pickle, Podcast Alley and the directory here at LearnOutLoud.

So that’s a round-up of what we’ve found. Like I said, I’m sure we’ve missed some. If you happen to know of any other sites that should be included or of any information that’s incorrect drop me a line at jon at learnoutloud dot com or make a post in the forums and I’ll update this blog post. We’re big fans of all of the sites listed here, as much for what they are trying to do in terms of making DRM-free audio available as for where they are today. If enough of us do our best to support these site I feel we can tip the balance in favor of DRM-free media in the future. It won’t happen overnight but I think it’s a worthy goal.

May 25, 2006

It’s Been a While…

Boy, a couple of weeks on the road and I’m out of the blog habit. Lots going on our end though so make sure to sign up for our newsletter if you haven’t already. Our next update will be going out early next week (plus a brand new free audiobook is on the way soon!).

In the meantime, just a few things in the audio world I thought I’d point you too:

1. Dr. Daniel Amen – Recently listened to a presentation that he gave and was fascinated by what’s happening in the world of brain science. It is really remarakable that although we have sophisticated technique to scan other body parts until just recently we haven’t had anything to scan our more important body part (the brain). By the way, we have a number of Dr. Amen’s titles available here.

2. Red Business – I had a chance to meet the people behind this at last week’s Audio Publisher’s Conference. I really like what they’re doing and they’ve done some cool interviews with a number of big names (e.g., Tom Peters). Plus they recently put a title on TeachOutLoud!

3. Moneyball – I had a chance to listen to about half of Moneyball on the trip out to D.C. Very enjoyable! I’ve always liked Lewis’ writing and if you’re a baseball fan you’re in for a treat with this one.

4. Pema Chodron – I’ve started listening to Pema Chodron and have been getting a lot out of it. I think there’s a tremendous amount of benefit to be gained from merging the best wisdom from the Eastern and Western religious and spiritual traditions. Pema’s treaching can providing the Eastern component of that equation.

So much more to say but I’ll leave it at that for now. More to come soon!