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Matt Waite
Medium Audio Stories β€” Listen to your favorite Medium stories
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42
β€’
Replies
Ryan Hoover
I've heard rumors Medium was exploring the podcast space and while this isn't podcasting, it's in the audio space. I like this move, and makes it easier to justify paying $5/mo for a Medium Membership (which launched a few months ago) when people are so conditioned to read news/articles for free. Note: 8 months ago some clever guys hacked together a Chrome extension that robot reads every Medium article. This also reminds me of Umano, an app of professionally voice read blog posts and articles. Unfortunately, it couldn't hit the scale it needed and shut down. Perhaps they were too early as voice becomes more accessible through Alexa, Google Home, AirPods, connected cars, etc.
Graham Gnall
@rrhoover is it read by a humon or text-to-speech?
Ryan Hoover
@ggnall humans. Text-to-speech (as the Play chrome extension supports) is too robotic. Professional readers imbue personality and engage the listener much more.
Nitin Alabur
@rrhoover I miss Umano even now! Hoping MAS sticks around for ever!
Nima Gardideh
@rrhoover @ggnall TTS is starting to become pretty close to passable: https://google.github.io/tacotron/
Nick Barrett
@rrhoover I miss Umano. What did Dropbox ever do with that service?
Ilan Peer
I like it a lot. One day even machines will read Medium stories :)
Nick Horsthuis
Soon you could be hearing you read it back to yourself. Would be cool if you could highlight sections to review in the text or listen to later.
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
How soon before this content is available on Alexa-enabled devices?
Manu Geitner
@chrismessina As far as I know there is no availability to create alexa skills that allow third party voice to be delivered to the consumer. any other knowledge about that? cheers.
LekanB
I used to use an old app called GeckoVoice. It was Amazing. You all should try VoiceDream. While not the prettiest app... it's amazing and the voice is very pleasant though TTS. Just connect it to your Pocket Account and you are business. Doesn't matter if it's a medium Or NYT article. Voice Dream: Best Text to Speech App via @ProductHunt https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Jay Mutzafi
Awesome. It's like they read my mind
Robert T. Maisano
This is really cool. Does the writer of an article make a voice file too? Or is the voice recording done by someone at Medium?
katie zhu
@robert_maisano Thanks! We have some narrations that writers record themselves, and then other ones we get professional voice actors and actresses to voice
Kartik Parija
@ktzhu This is absolutely wonderful. Congrats. We need to show you something we are building that you should find very interesting. Have gotten an intro to Monica & EV, and will reach out soon. But would love to get you in the loop right from the beginning. We love Product/Engineering folks, given that's what we are. Do let me know. Cheers.
Kunal Bhatia
Audio Stories are a great addition for members. πŸ™Œ I wonder what the process is for selecting stories to make audio versions of. πŸ€”
Ferit T.
This really creates some value to the membership. I'm currently a member because I believe that news & advertisement are contra-productive. The latest App Store update also says that "members can now listen audio versions of every member-only post"
Alexandre Mouriec
I like the idea and especially the fact that you need to be a member to use it (even if I don't currently pay for it πŸ˜…) because it will help Medium find a sustainable business model with their membership. I think Pocket could have also done that to help people reduce their Pocket queue. You can already listen to articles saved by using IOS and Android TTS but it's a robot voice, not a professional voice.
Gavin
This is great! This is what I envisioned long-term for https://www.producthunt.com/post... (RIP) to be, but didn't have the funds to support the idea. I'm super glad to see Medium have built it!
Enrique Benitez
Omg. I love Medium. Good job!
Jonathan Pilovsky
Finally, a solid justification for Medium membership! I'm disappointed they didn't include the ability to change playback speed...TTS wins there. Audm supports speed on narrated articles but it's $7/month.
Adam C. Engst
Always nice to see people catching up with what we've been doing at TidBITS for years. :-) We record most articles (it doesn't make sense for everything) and make them available directly from the article or as a podcast. Our versions aren't terribly popular with our readers, so I wouldn't bet big money on this effort from Medium continuing in the long run or attracting a vast listenership. (We do it as much as a final editing pass as anything else.) Doing the recording is also quite a bit of work, both on the reading and technical sides. See http://tidbits.com/article/12953 for a writeup of what we do technically.
Arun
Beats the logic that one should be allowed to try this once before subscribing to Medium membership.
Rahul Ramchand
Oh more "Stories". Wow.
Sanshiro
:( what if i have a podcast on medium? check this out guys! http://neox.fm <- This is the podcast on medium O.o can i send you the audio to include or something?
Yoav Yechiam
I'm actually rather happy with TTS used by Pocket to read out my saved articles. I listen at almost X2 speed and I find it to be an excellent use of my 'dead' commuting time. I'm kind of addicted ;-) I actually save most of my articles from Medium (which plays very nice with Pocket).
Angela Bowman
Is there a story I can listen to for free? Before I decide to subscribe, I'd really like to hear an example.
Mohammed Rafy
I can give my voice. ;)