OverDrive Offering Downloadable MP3s Sans DRM

OverDrive has hit the mother load of e-texts: the company in late March answered the prayers of librarians and patrons by announcing it will begin offering MP3-compatible audio downloads (yes, that means iPods), as well as cutting a massive distribution deal for more than 6500 Random House ebooks. The company will release at least 3000 downloadable audiobook titles—about 15 percent of its catalog—in MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM), to provide compatibility with nearly every MP3 player and mobile phone.

OverDrive MP3 Audiobooks go on sale in May at Borders.com and should be available to libraries by June's end, to be followed by the release of OverDrive Media Console for the Mac.

OverDrive CEO Steve Potash said the MP3 addition emerged from demand in the library market, OverDrive's track record, and “some recent moves in the audiobook retail market,” including a Random House announcement that its audiobook titles will be available as MP3s without DRM.

While Random titles are limited to retail sales, Potash said OverDrive MP3 Audiobooks would be provided by at least a dozen publishers including Blackstone Audio, Books in Motion, CSA Word, Audio Evolution, Audio Realms, plus others. “Each publisher is reviewing their entire audiobook list to confirm each title/author has these rights so the exact title list is forthcoming,” he said, and thousands more titles should be cleared by launch.

Users at participating libraries, he said, will see records indicating that the audiobook appears in two formats, just as some films appear in both VHS and DVD formats. “We expect to see two different catalogs develop, and advantages for each format as they are offered by our libraries,” Potash said, noting that “WMA [Windows Media Audio] audiobooks are faster to download, smaller files to transfer and use, and work great on a variety of inexpensive players.”

Potash said that OverDrive MP3 would be limited initially to its one-book, one user model, with pricing set by the publishers, but expects that “most of the titles will be priced comparable to our WMA titles.”

On the ebook front, OverDrive will market a treasure trove of Random House titles “in both Adobe PDF and Mobipocket PRC formats to its network of library partners.” In this non-exclusive agreement, more than 6500 Random ebooks have been added to OverDrive's e-warehouse, supplementing OverDrive's already Goliath collection of more than 100,000 ebook, audiobook, music, and video titles.

The company said that libraries can add the Random materials to their OverDrive-powered collection by logging into OverDrive's collection development portal.