THE DOWNLOAD REVOLUTION: A NEW WAY OF THINKING

People new to digital content often ask, "Why bother? Don't I already have a perfectly good tape/CD player? And can't I easily purchase or rent audiobooks from catalogs or bookstores?" It's the process we all go through when our minds break out of the box and we begin thinking about something in an entirely fresh way. When did people stop popping popcorn on the stove? Remember Jiffy Pop, and putting oil in the pan? Twenty-five years ago, few of us would have thought to place a bag of corn kernels into a household appliance to zap it with electromagnetic waves. Today we can't imagine popping corn any other way.

There are many advantages to digital audiobooks, and these include lower cost and ease of storage since there's no physical media or packaging; greater safety while driving because you don't have to shuffle tapes or CDs; and no waste, which is better for the environment. But perhaps the most direct improvements for audiobook listeners are the seamless playback (no more, "This is the end of Tape 1") and, with most downloaded audiobook content, the ability to "bookmark" your place, even when you have several audiobooks loaded in your listening device. (See 7 Reasons to Go Digital Chart)

WHERE TO FIND DIGITAL AUDIOBOOKS

At this point, there are just a few online sources of audiobooks for download, and the clear leader is Audible, Inc. (www.audible.com), the major innovator in the field. In terms of content, Audible currently "stocks" more than 4,500 audiobooks and 14,000 other audio programs-from radio, newspapers, and magazines. Another online source is MediaBay, Inc. (www.mediabay.com), which is best known for its more than 60,000 old-time radio programs, distributed in partnership with Radio Spirits. Other sources for DD (digital downloads) are also emerging. Time Warner AudioBooks already has downloads from their site (www.mytimewarneraudio.com), and Blackstone (www.BlackstoneAudiobooks.com) has announced plans for downloads by June 2003.

DIGITAL LISTENING ON THE GO

You can listen to downloaded audio at your computer, of course, but most listeners of digital content will want to take it with them; that's where portable devices such as Otis, iPod, and Rio players come in. Originally designed for listening to music, MP3 players come in all shapes and sizes, some with full-featured jukebox displays that allow cataloging, sorting, mixing, and tweaking. But for a device meant for leaping between 5-minute music tracks, hurtling across 6-hour audiobooks presents a different set of challenges.

For audiobook listening, you need to be able to navigate and bookmark, which means being able to locate an audiobook on your device and find your place in that book. While most MP3 players don't do this, The Apple iPod, with its intuitive interface, is a notable exception. Also, Audible's proprietary Otis player was designed with spoken word programming in mind. Listeners have the choice of either Mac or Windows versions for both the Otis and the iPod.(See Digital Devices Comparison Chart.)

What about listening in the car? For cars with cassette players, inexpensive cassette adapters plug into the headphone jack of a portable player and play through the car stereo. The other solution is an FM transmitter, which we tried with an iPod. The result was surprisingly good.

DOWNLOADABLE AUDIOBOOKS: THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE?

Listening to audiobooks on a portable MP3 player is fun. What's more, it may be the most natural means of listening to stories since the invention of the campfire. When the content and the player aren't separate objects but completely integrated, the listening experience feels simpler, more convenient. This doesn't mean cassettes and CDs will disappear. Audiobook listeners, publishers, libraries, and resellers have too much invested in physical media to toss them out with the Jiffy Pop. But the download alternative is almost certain to become part of our listening experience as time goes on.

[From the 2003 February/March issue of AUDIOFILE.]  Subscribe Now!

Illustration:© Ed Zelinsky