MSN and MediaBay launch new Audiobooks service
11 October 2004
Software giant MSN and MediaBay Inc, a leader in spoken-word audio entertainment, have announced that they have teamed up to offer a wide range of audiobook titles via download to the millions of MSN users in the United States.
The audiobook titles MediaBay will exclusively offer on the MSN Music service, http://www.music.msn.com, include many from the nation's largest audiobook publishers.
This new relationship complements the already extensive MSN Music service catalogue, which provides music fans with an easy, comprehensive service for discovering and downloading legal digital music.
"With the growth of broadband access having reached critical mass, we anticipate the popularity of audiobook downloads to grow exponentially," said Jeffrey Dittus, CEO of MediaBay. "Currently, in an $800 million market that has increased 10 per cent per year since 1989, sales of audiobooks should exceed $1.1 billion by 2008.
"We are confident that MSN will provide us with access to the growing number of audiobook listeners who are using the Internet more and more to access their entertainment and information needs, as well as attract new listeners who are unfamiliar with the format," he added.
Christine Andrews, lead product manager for MSN Entertainment at Microsoft Corp, said: "Our goal is to bring the largest library of music and spoken-word content to MSN Music customers, and MediaBay is helping us by providing access to a broad range of audiobooks, such as the most recent New York Times bestsellers, and new and backlist titles from best-selling authors such as John Grisham, Tom Wolfe, Mary Higgins Clark, Bill Clinton and Stephen King."
Recent research conducted by the Audio Publishers Association shows that 70 per cent of audiobook users listen to them in their cars or on portable devices.
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