Tantor Media to Begin Selling Downloads Only.

[GtrsRGr8]

Tantor Media is going to a download-only business model for selling its audiobooks.

From their homepage just now:
Effective the week of March 20, 2017, Tantor Audio CDs and MP3-CDs will not be available for direct purchase on our Website; the physical products will be available for purchase through major retailers. The book pages on our Website will link you to the correct page on Amazon for purchase. Select Tantor audiobook downloads on our Website will continue to be available for purchase.

In case you don't have a calendar handy, we are in the week of March 20 now.

I think that this is a great move on Tantor's part. It is sooooo expensive, not to mention bothersome, to deal with physical inventory. If they can find retailers that will take their physical inventory off of their hands, and let them just sell digital download products, it will be a huge help to them.

Early in my adoption of ebooks and digital audiobooks, I bought a lot of regular CD's of audiobooks in order to save space (I've got so many dead-tree books that the walls of my house are practically bulging out. ha). Bad move. If I had bought only MP3 audiobooks, yes, I would have saved quite a bit of room. But I didn't always do that, and the size of the clamshell with all of the CD's in them end up being almost as large as the dead-tree book. If I going to buy the physical CD product, I can see no reason to purchase anything other than MP3's! I mean, it's not like I'll be listening to Johann S. Bach's “Toccata in d minor”--I'm just be listening to someone narrate an book! MP3 quality is just fine for that! You live and you learn.

So, I say why fool with CD's--at all. I won't be shedding any tears over companies going to digital downloads only. Besides, if in one of my less sane moments, I decide that I want CD's, it looks like there will be companies out there, for the foreseeable future, that still will sell them.

BTW--If you've never listened to a Tantor Media product, I must tell you that they are consistently very good in audio quality, etc. I've run into some companies in which that is not true. I'll leave off mentioning any names . . . .

http://www.tantor.com.

[AnemicOak]

It would be nice if they sold downloads of all of their catalog, but a lot of their stuff isn't available on their website. Instead they link to Audible. Which is fine I like Audible and everything, but the fact that they only offer "select" downloads directly and then I have to get others in a series somewhere else just means I don't usually get anything from them directly (which would be more profitable for them).

I agree wholeheartedly that their productions are top notch.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

<snip>
I agree wholeheartedly that their productions are top notch.

And, for some reason, I had fallen off of their email list sometime in the last year or so. No telling what kind of bargains on great-quality audios that I could have gotten. Of course, it saved me some money by not buying any during that time. I remedied that (being off of their mailing list) by signing up again yesterday.

I mentioned somewhere that my only "beef" with them on their sales was that the selection looked so "tired." I usually didn't see enough new, so that I would end up buying something. I also mentioned, though, that in this sale, the selection looked a lot fresher. It just occurred to me that that the selection might have looked fresher because I had not been receiving their sales announcements for several months. ha!

[skinmaan]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

It would be nice if they sold downloads of all of their catalog, but a lot of their stuff isn't available on their website. Instead they link to Audible. Which is fine I like Audible and everything, but the fact that they only offer "select" downloads directly and then I have to get others in a series somewhere else just means I don't usually get anything from them directly (which would be more profitable for them).

I seem to recall the reason this happens is that Audible and Tantor had some kind of exclusivity agreement for a period of time. Tantor titles published after July 1, 2015 are currently only available from Audible. Titles before this date are on the website. As of today that's just short of 3,000 titles.

I'm willing to bet some of this has to do with the sale of the company to Recorded Books. I think the Audible-exclusive contract is about 1 year. For the titles that are over 1 year old (July '15 - April '16) the only reason I can think of for their lack of availability is there may have been a "freeze" on any work on the website just before Recorded Books was sold in July of 2015. If this is the case it may just be the case of no one changing that order once the new guard was in place.

[AnemicOak]

What ever the reason it's only led to frustration for me when shopping Tantor's site. It basically just leads me to not bother with them in general.

[issybird]

What bugs me most about Tantor is that it doesn't have a functional Android app. I've picked up the occasional bargain, but I'd shop there more if I could download my books directly to an app.

[skinmaan]

Originally Posted by issybird

What bugs me most about Tantor is that it doesn't have a functional Android app. I've picked up the occasional bargain, but I'd shop there more if I could download my books directly to an app.

Believe it or not they did that intentionally. (I warned them that was a bad idea, but since I download on my PC my opinion didn't hold much weight.) They gave everyone the ability to stream straight from your library. They thought everyone else would download to a PC and use their own app.

[tubemonkey]

The only value I find in Tantor are the free monthly classics. Outside of that, I avoid them.

[skinmaan]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

The only value I find in Tantor are the free monthly classics. Outside of that, I avoid them.

I shopped the $4.99 sale last Cyber Monday, but other than that not much. I would have spent more if they would start offering their more recent titles...

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

What ever the reason it's only led to frustration for me when shopping Tantor's site. It basically just leads me to not bother with them in general.

Same here. I bought a lot from them in the past, before the merger with/buyout by Recorded Books.

For what it's worth - they're covers look pretty bad. I can usually tell which Audible audiobooks are from Tantor, just looking at the covers.

But since I rarely look at the covers, I can live with them.