Everyone saw a library distributor. I saw Apple's answer to Audible.

Midwest Tape had spent decades as the library world's physical media distributor, and Dreamscape was its content arm. On paper: an antiquated model, CDs and DVDs moving to libraries. In the vault: full rights to a deep audiobook catalog, and no consumer product, no retail brand, no direct relationship with a single listener. That was the problem. The potential was bigger than the problem. When Marvel's graphic novels entered the catalog as audiobook partners, I saw the whole board at once: Apple needed a real answer to Amazon's lock on Audible, and we were sitting on the exact asset to power one. Nobody at a library distributor was supposed to be looking for that. That's why it was still there.

First, the platform side: a complete redesign of the hoopla app. New brand, new colors, new features. The only thing that carried over was the servers delivering the content. Then, the proof: Dreamscape Audio, a consumer subscription product built from scratch, brand, website, app, and billing infrastructure, at $10 a month for unlimited content. We already held the rights, so the model worked from day one, and I built the performance marketing engine in-house, eliminating $350K a year in vendor costs.

Then the play the proof existed for. Through a pre-existing relationship, we pitched Apple directly: let our catalog be the engine behind an audiobooks app preinstalled on iOS. Three free months on activation, $5 a month after, unlimited content against Audible's one-credit-a-month model. And exclusive: we would shut down Dreamscape Audio ourselves, because the app was never the point. The app was the proof.

The hard part wasn't Apple. It was the studios, who did not want marquee releases going out for five dollars. The vision I sold them: this is what podcasts did for radio and what Spotify did for musicians. The partner I expected to be the biggest headache, Marvel, became the deal's biggest champion and paved the way. The catalog behind the pitch: Marvel, the audiobook of the Sex and the City sequel, Hallmark Publishing's first-ever audiobooks, and F*ck, Now There Are Two of You, narrated by Larry David.

Ten thousand paid subscribers in the first month, riding Avengers: Endgame's box-office peak. Fifty thousand within three months. The studios aligned behind a model they'd resisted. And Apple agreed to test adoption in select European markets, with the deal on the table behind it. A library distributor's content arm, twelve months from physical media to Apple's table, on assets it had owned the entire time. Then March 2020 arrived, and the world stopped. The rest of that story is a conversation, not a webpage.