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Tuesday
Jul072009

The weakness of music audiobooks

I read a ton, but I also listen to lots of music, podcasts and audiobooks. I just finished a very good audio version of "The Rolling Stones' 'Exile on Main Street' (33 1/3 Series)."

A critical look at The Rolling Stones' finest albumLearned a lot of background about an album I'd have for years but never really dived deep on. I'll certainly listen to "Exile" with new appreciation and insight.

But guess what was sorely lacking in this audiobook? Yep, the music. And that's a regularity with music-related audiobooks I've listened to over the years, including a jazz history and a bio of Phil Spector.

I understand the high price of obtaining rights to the music is oppressive. But when I listen to music-related audiobooks, I'm constantly hitting pause and referring to songs in question. Thankfully, I have an XM Inno portable MP3 player that eases that process. But it's still a pain to listen to the book in isolation. I thought for sure when I was listening to an audiobook version of the Ken Burns' PBS "Jazz" series, that he'd have conquered that rights issue, given the fact there was a whole line of CDs released in conjunction with the series. Wrong.

I guess I just need to learn my lesson and keep my consumption of music books to print versions.

But is anyone aware of any audiobooks that have nice integration of music?

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