April 8, 2005

Indie Audio Book Scene

I was just turned on today to what may be an underground independent audio book and spoken word scene. And it seems there should be. Who’s going to stand up against Simon & Schuster Audio and Time Warner AudioBooks of our feudal corporate globe. Because let’s face it. Even though hundreds of thousands of books are published each year, the stuff that makes it to audio book is usually the junky best sellers. As the audio publishing industry expands (and it is the fastest growing sector of the publishing industry) then hopefully some more obscure and more intelligent material will be recorded for our listening pleasure.

In the meantime though there is an independent spoken word scene. And with digital download this is a lot easier. Today I was suggested a few sites:

www.mperia.com
www.cdbaby.com

And these are independent music resources with spoken word sections from indie authors and narrators who charge nominal fees for their stuff to be downloaded. Here’s another punk rock label with spoken word titles I found:

www.alternativetentacles.com

Granted I don’t think a lot of indie rockers are intelligent enough to lay down their own high quality audio book but they go to Noam Chomsky and get him to do it. Any way it’s interesting. I don’t think the state of audio content is anywhere near the dire straits of the popular, radio-played music world, but with the world of podcasting and more digital downloading of spoken word, popular independent producers of great audio learning content could start popping up. And I guess by independent I mean not owned by giant multinational corporations, but I think a lot of audio book publishers are more or less independent or so we think but the AOL-Time Warner’s and Rupert Murdoch’s Harper-Collins’s of the world cast a wide swath. What I’m saying is we need a punk rock genre of audio book. Maybe.