Allow me to speak for the Tortoise
Jon Bischke over at Learn out Loud had a great blog posting on how rapid change in media consumption is creating the need for us media distributors to look at business in a new way. Looking at things in a new way, especially in delivering better and innovative services to our customers is always a good idea. But I want to comment on the rapidity of change.
The press in all forms hypes new technologies, and predicts the imminent demise of the current way of doing things. They’re almost always wrong. This isn’t because they’re stupid – it’s because writing about new things is interesting. It attracts eyeballs. Talking about process improvements and gradual change is boring, even though it’s the reality of nearly all businesses.
In this much-hyped era of online delivery of digital content, much is made of the demise of old school technology like CDs and (shudder) Tapes. Look at the statistics though. 30% of audiobook consumption is still in Tape form, 24 YEARS after the introduction of CDs as a mainstream technology. Spoken Word direct download became commercial either in 1998, or 2003, depending on whether you think iTunes is what kicked it off (vs Audible).
Here’s the real stat – only 3% of the commercial music business is download, even five years after this industry supposedly got decimated by the availability of download. Yes we can make all sorts of arguments about pirating and its effects. But industries and formats just don’t change that fast.
That doesn’t diminish Jon’s point of course that the audiobook industry should be innovative and customer focused. It’s just not because direct download is about to dominate. This past year, CDs had more new customers than download did. And that’ll be true for awhile yet.
August 1st, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Shouldn’t the title of this post be “Allow me to speak for the Tortoise”?
While I agree with you that CDs are still a huge part of the industry based on the growth rates (as well as the coming shift to mobile phone consumption of spoken word audio content and the increasing ability to connect portable players seamlessly with automobiles) I think it’s easy to envision this shift happening a lot quicker than previously anticipated. And if you consider that the entire spoken word industry consists not just of audiobooks but also podcasting then you might make the argument that the shift has largely already happened.
The library market will keep CDs and even cassettes viable for a while but the brave new digital world is definitely upon us even if a portion of it might be cleverly disguised as Adam Curry, Leo Laporte and of course…Madge Weinstein.
August 1st, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Damn, I hate it when I make a silly mistake. Yes, it’s tortoise, and I just changed it, so maybe nobody else will notice. And on the rest of your points, well, people who think technology is going to change that rapidly usually have good arguments for it. It’s just that you’re wrong. Sorry, wish it were different.
August 1st, 2006 at 5:42 pm
August 2nd, 2006 at 10:46 am
I also have an opinion on change. First, I would like to ask if there is an age bracket that is more likely to listen to audiobooks. I am not up on the stats, but imagine you folks are.
It is a fact of life, that as people get older, they enjoy change less. I would like to suggest that if the general audiobook age is below 40′s, that there will likely be more of a switch to digital, especially with the popularity or mp3 players today.
Although you may think me “agist” I believe that 40′s and over are likely to do what they’ve always done and rent/borrow cd’s or tapes (pending availability).
I don’t doubt that with SAB, your cd market will continue in popularity though, because as far as $ go, it just makes sense. You can get more cd’s per month for less $ than you can get downloads. For anyone doing the math, it only makes sense.
Linda
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Well said John. I think there might be some fuzzy math in that post. That is the great thing about stats…you can make them say almost anything.
Anyways, blogs are fun, it gives any person with something to say to blurt it out, even if they are wrong.
August 3rd, 2006 at 5:44 am
In fact, the age for listening to audiobooks starts at about 21, rises dramatically to age 32, then gradually tails off. And you’re right about rate of adoption. The sub-25 yr set is much more likely to listen to downloadable books (about 17%), but significantly, they don’t listen to nearly as many books. So the actual %’s of audiobook listenership in downloadable format is constant across the age groups. (About 7%)
As you point out, this of course will change if these younger listeners listen to more books as they get older.
I don’t doubt this industry will go digital, but my prediction is that that it won’t go above 50% for another 7 or 8 years. Call me a Luddite.
August 3rd, 2006 at 4:07 pm
I suspect that estimate is not far off the mark.
Linda