MSN and MediaBay Teams for Audiobooks

MSN (www.msn.com) and MediaBay Inc. (www.MediaBay.com) today announced that they are working together to offer a wide range of audiobook titles via download to the millions of MSN® users in the United States.

"With the growth of broadband access having reached critical mass, we anticipate the popularity of audiobook downloads to grow exponentially," said Jeffrey Dittus, CEO of MediaBay. "Currently, in an $800 million market that has increased 10 percent per year since 1989, sales of audiobooks should exceed $1.1 billion by 2008. We believe downloads will grow to take a much larger share of 2004 sales".

Among the audiobook titles MediaBay will exclusively offer on the MSN Music service (http://www.music.msn.com ) are those from the nation's largest audiobook publishers.

This new relationship complements the already extensive MSN Music service catalog, which provides music fans with an easy, comprehensive service for discovering and downloading legal digital music. MSN Music offers simple sign-up, no-hassle purchasing and superior sound quality, either through a Web browser or the new Microsoft® Windows Media® Player 10.

"We're excited to add MediaBay's audiobooks to our already extensive catalog of music," said Christine Andrews, lead product manager for MSN Entertainment at Microsoft Corp. "Our goal is to bring the largest library of music and spoken-word content to MSN Music customers."

Recent research conducted by the Audio Publishers Association shows that 70 percent of audiobook users listen to them in their cars or on portable devices, making MSN Music a logical choice for MediaBay. MediaBay audiobooks add to the extensive library of the MSN Music service, which is compatible with more portable devices than any other music service.