Long-Short Guy

Amazon Strengthens Its Digital Hand With Purchase of Audible

Amazon's stock should take a hit for this. If Amazon was confident that it could maintain its market share in media as the market moves to digital downloads, it wouldn't need to do this acquisition. But it realizes that the shift to digital will result in a hit to its media market share. So it's just paid $300MM to stay in the game. And that's probably only a first move.

Five Reasons To Buy Audible, The Online Book Provider

Interesting:
<blockquote>
<b>Podcasters Unite to Figure Out a Role for Ads</b>

...Advertising, the other potential revenue source for producers and publishers, does not work when marketers have no way of tracking how many times their advertisements are being heard or swapping out old advertisements once they have run their course.

Industry executives say they have closed in on a solution in recent months, which means that consumers may have a much wider array of free audio (and video) content coming to them, if they can stand a little advertising to go along with it.

The effort is a multifront initiative, starting with improvements in technology. Companies have begun distributing media files that stay connected to publishers, giving them a way to track the number of times that advertisements have been heard or viewed, or replace old advertisements.

At the same time, about 15 companies, including Apple and NPR, announced last week the formation of a new industry group, the Association for Downloadable Media, that will help executives improve methods for creating, distributing and tracking advertisements in podcasts...
</blockquote>

Source:
www.nytimes.com/2007/0...