May 14, 2006

LearnOutLoud in the New York Times

We got a cool mention in the New York Times Travel section today in an article entitled “New Audio Books Pack a Lot More Prose.” Here’s the link but you’ll have to register to read it. It’s actually a cool article in that it talks about digital rights management and mentions LearnOutLoud as one of the only companies selling DRM-free content. Here’s a bit from the article:

For travelers who are interested in self improvement or concerned about proprietary formats, the portal LearnOutLoud offers MP3-based audio content at www.learnoutloud.com. MP3 is a common file format for digital music and audio files. “LearnOutLoud focuses on the educational market — not K-12, but adult, life-long learners,” said Jon Bischke, its founder and chief executive. While you won’t find blockbusters like the Harry Potter books there, LearnOutLoud offers something that few other sites offer — downloads in MP3 format, making it easy to copy the files to just about any device (May’s free download is “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”).

We’re getting the vibe from a lot of people that they’re getting more and more interested in getting their content on MP3. One of the reasons for this is that people don’t know what kind of device they may want to listen to audiobooks on in the future and worry that if they purchase a book in a proprietary format it might not be compatible. For instance, let’s say you get a new phone a year from now that plays MP3s. If you buy audiobooks from other companies you might not be able to play them.

Anyway, it was a great article and hopefully will bring a few more people to our site.