Commentary: Downpour.com – an audiobook delivery system that just works
Downpour.com, Blackstone Audio’s online audiobook store, is a genuine competitor to Audible.com.
It offers audiobook downloads of titles, from Blackstone Audio’s extensive catalogue, and also those from many other audiobook publishers like Recorded Books, Harper Audio, Penguin Audio, Hachette Audio, and AudioGo.
Their subscription service is almost identically priced to Audible’s, each offers one credit per month for about $15. And, like an Audible credit Audible.com, a Downpour credit almost always gets you one audiobook.
I signed up for Downpour when they started late last Summer. And so far, I really, really like it.
I’ve had an account with Audible.com since 2001. But Audbile.com has always caused one giant problem for me: DRM.
DRM is actually designed to prevent you sharing your audiobook with your friends and family.
But worse, it can also make it difficult for you, the owner of the audiobook that you bought, to actually listen to what you have paid for.
Over the years I’ve spent countless hours trying to make an audiobook, that I bought, play on my audiobook players.
Every single time I’ve bought a new computer, iPod, iPad, or iPhone I’ve spent time authorizing and deauthorizing my devices. Sometimes it just takes a couple of minutes, sometimes hours.
Audible’s DRM makes you have to authorize your iTunes account, and your computer, and your iPhone, and your iPad, and your iPod. And you have to deauthorize your old devices to make the new devices work. You can’t have all of your devices authorized if you have more than three.
I just want my audiobooks to work like regular books, I want them to open up and give me their ideas. DRM cripples your ability to do that.
Downpour.com has no DRM at all. It just works.
In fact it works absolutely perfectly.
You make a purchase, it shows up in your online library, and then it downloads and delivers itself to your devices.
It is smoother than any audiobook service I’ve ever seen. It’s even smoother than Tantor Media’s excellent DRM-FREE download service.
If you use an iOS device for an audiobook, like I do, I’m betting Downpour.com is will work for you.
If you use a different audiobook player Downpour offers MP3s, which work with every audio player.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #179 – AUDIOBOOK: The Murders In The Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
The SFFaudio Podcast #179 – The Murders In The Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Bronson Pinchot. This is an UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (1 Hours 31 Minutes) and comes to us courtesy of AudioGo and their collection Poe’s Detectives: The Dupin Stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
Thanks AudioGo!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #179 - The Murders In The Rue Morgue by Edgar Rue Morgue [ 1:31:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadAudioGo: YouTube trailer for Great Classic Suspense (Five Unabridged Tales)
Do you recognize the voice of this narrator?
Perhaps you will if you were, like me, a fan of a particular Canadian TV show (that also aired on CBS in the mid 1990s).
The narrator is Geraint Wyn Davies. He was the star of Forever Knight, a terrific “Crimetime After Primetime” late night drama that promised, and delivered, an odd blend of cop show and vampire mystique.
Hmmmm… now that I think about it, Forever Knight could have been set within the same universe as True Blood (prior to the invention of Tru Blood).
The collection includes five of the greatest stories of American classic horror. The richest of language is used to create extraordinary atmosphere — gloom, darkness, solitude, despair-and the relentless feeling of impending doom.
Table of contents:
The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe
Ethan Brand by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers
The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford
An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
Posted by Jesse Willis
AudioGo: YouTube trailer for Poe’s Detective: The Dupin Stories (narrated by Bronson Pinchot)
Wow, check out this amazing extended illustrated preview of Bronson Pinchot’s narration of Poe’s Detective: The Dupin Stories published by AudioGo!
The illustrations, by the wau, are by Rick Altergott.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Recent Arrivals: AudioGo: Poe’s Detective: The Dupin Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
After reading Cory Doctorow’s glowing review of Poe’s Detective: The Dupin Stories last year I added it to my list of audiobooks I just had to listen to.
I’m very, very excited at the prospect!
Poe’s Detective: The Dupin Stories
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Bronson Pinchot
4 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 9781609981624
Edgar Allan Poe is the undisputed originator of the Detective story. His brilliant, imaginative sleuth C. Auguste Dupin set the stage for eccentric, logic wielding investigators like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. This audio collection of Poe’s three Dupin stories also includes one non-Dupin detective tale, Thou Art the Man. It features celebrity narrator Bronson Pinchot. The story titles are: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue“; “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt“; “The Purloined Letter“; and “Thou Art the Man.”
Posted by Jesse Willis
Recent Arrivals: AudioGo: H.P. Lovecraft’s Book Of The Supernatural edited by Stephen Jones
Recently arrived, and currently being soaked in through my skin and ears, is this giant collection of weird fiction. Assembled from a list of stories found in H.P. Lovecraft’s essay Supernatural Horror In Literature, it is a collection of well known and obscure classics by authors that H.P. Lovecraft loved.
Looking at the table of contents I noted that I’d already read several of the stories in this collection – including The Turn Of The Screw (we did a podcast about that one), the engimatic Christmas horror Markheim, the scientific ghost tale What Was It?, the unutterably creepy and horrific The Voice In The Night very recently, and many years ago, perhaps in high school, The Yellow Wallpaper. But even though I’ve read some of these stories already I’m still very excited. Each of the stories seems to be preceded by some relevant words by Lovecraft himself – and at the very least I will be listening to the mini-introductions to those stories I am well familiar with.
Until then I will content myself in listening to the unknown ones. For example, the frightful first person narrative of Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant is thrilling and wondering me in the exact same way The Horla almost exactly one year ago. It’s wonderful!
H.P. Lovecraft’s Book Of The Supernatural
Edited by Stephen Jones; Read by Bronson Pinchot, Stephen Crossley, Davina Porter, Madeleine Lambert, Mark Peckham
MP3 DOWNLOAD – Approx. 16 Hours 44 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioGo
Published: August 1, 2012
Written by arguably the most important horror writer of the twentieth century, H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 essay Supernatural Horror in Literature traces the evolution of the genre from the early Gothic novels to the work of contemporary American and British authors. Throughout, Lovecraft acknowledges those authors and stories that he feels are the very finest the horror field has to offer: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, Ambrose Bierce, and Arthur Conan Doyle, each prefaced by Lovecraft’s own opinions and insights in their work. This chilling collection also contains Henry James’ wonderfully atmospheric short novel…The Turn of the Screw. For every fan of modern horror, here is an opportunity to rediscover the origins of the genre with some of most terrifying stories ever imagined.
Here’s the table of contents:
Introduction by editor Stephen Jones – Approx. 7 Minutes
Notes on Writing Weird Fiction By H.P. Lovecraft – Approx. 11 Minutes
The Tale of the German Student by Washington Irving – Approx. 14 Minutes
Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson – Approx. 49 Minutes
Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant – Approx. 34 Minutes
The Invisible Eye by Erckmann-Chatrian – Approx. 41 Minutes
The Torture by Hope by Villiers de l’Isle Adam – Approx. 15 Minutes
Ms. Found in a Bottle by Edgar Allan Poe – Approx. 29 Minutes
What Was It? by Fitz-James O’Brien – Approx. 34 Minutes
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce – Approx. 24 Minutes
The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James – Approx. 4 Hours 52 Minutes
The Dead Smile by F. Marion Crawford – Approx. 57 Minutes
The Wind In The Rose-Bush by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman – Approx. 38 Minutes
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Approx. 36 Minutes
The Recrudescence of Imray by Rudyard Kipling – Approx. 30 Minutes
The Hands Of Karma (Ingwa-banashi) by Lafcadio Hearn – Approx. 11 Minutes
The Burial Of The Rats by Bram Stoker – Approx. 1 Hour 7 Minutes
The Red Lodge by H.R. Wakefield – Approx. 35 Minutes
The Captain Of The Pole-Star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Approx. 1 Hour 6 Minutes
The Villa Desiree by May Sinclair – Approx. 28 Minutes
The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson – Approx. 36 Minutes
Novel of the White Powder by Arthur Machen – Approx. 48 Minutes
Posted by Jesse Willis
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