eMusic will start offering nonDRMed audio books—providing strong competition to iTunes, which “protects” its audio books.
Message to e-book publishers and retailers, large and small: Hint, hint.
(New York Times and press release via Publishers Lunch.)
Related: Copyright chief: I’m a DMCA supporter, from CNet. Sorry the news isn’t all good. Oh, and by the way, Marybeth Peters is a self-confessed Luddite without a home computer—much less an e-book tablet. Figures. Don’t you love our rulers in Washington?
I had never heard of eMusic before, so I went to their web site. Even without the audio books yet, the selection of old blues/jazz looks good. However, nowhere do they tell you what samplerate the MP3’s are. I assume the same, crappy 128Kb/s that most people offer, but I wanted to make sure.
I tried to use their online contact form to ask them about the samplerate, but I can’t do that either. Their contact form requires a partial credit card number. Since I am not a customer, I have no intention of giving them even a partial number. Even if I was an existing customer, this is pretty stupid, requiring this information just to be able to contact customer support.
Emusic has a 192 VBR MP3 bitrate.
Thanks for letting me know. It’s a shame that I couldn’t find that out from their web site.