How cute -- the download instructions are in iambic pentameter: I hate to rain on anyone's business plan, and I have a long-standing respect for poetry (heck, I even have Gwendolyn Brooks' autograph floating around here someplace), but it's hard to see this going anywhere. A British company has launched iPoems, a site where, for 95 cents a track, you can download any of 1,000 readings of modern poetry to load onto your iPod or MP3 player. Oh, that's for audio poems; video poems (an animation accompanies the reading) go for $1.80. Oh, and there's an annual subscription fee of $18. I dunno -- even undercutting iTunes music tracks by four cents may not be enough to earn these downloads a place on your device. On the other hand, where else are you going to find Jean "Binta" Breeze performing a Caribbean version of Geoffrey Chaucer's "Wife of Bath" tale.
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Harold Again: Actually, I like the idea of this service and will need to check it out. I suspect it will make money, even if it does not become a huge success.