Audible officially announced their initiative to offer services for “fully integrated, end-to-end” AI narration and production for audiobooks, including machine translation. Publishers can choose from more than 100 voices in English, Spanish, French, and Italian, “with multiple accent and dialect options, and will be able to access voice upgrades for their titles as our technology evolves.” “Audible believes that AI represents a momentous opportunity to expand the availability of audiobooks with the vision of offering customers every book in every language, alongside our continued investments in premium original content,” Audible ceo Bob Carrigan. “We’ll be able to bring more stories […]
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Pending Spotify Update Will Allow Users To Buy Audiobooks A La Carte And Top Up Hours
Spotify has submitted an app update to Apple that, if approved, will allow users to buy audiobooks a la carte and Premium users to top up hours in-app, which has previously not been allowed by Apple. The update follows a court ruling on Epic Games v. Apple, which granted developers more freedom to show pricing. Previously, Apple charged a 30% commission on user purchases in-app, and prevented Spotify from telling customers the cost of audiobooks or where to buy them. Spotify writes in an announcement that the court ruling “helps level the playing field by allowing developers to offer basic […]
Spotify To Invest To Develop French and Dutch Audiobooks
Spotify announced that it will spend €1 million to partner with publishers and authors to increase audiobook production in non-English languages, beginning with French and Dutch. The audiobooks that Spotify “cofunds” will be nonexclusive and available to upload on any platform. Though the company “believes in the power of human narration” and will “continue to work with partners and the narrator community to bring these titles to fans in French and Dutch languages,” they will also offer an option for narration by an AI voice, “to help make audiobook production more cost-effective for those partners who require a lower barrier […]
Spotify Audiobooks Solicits Short Audio Content from Independent Authors
Spotify has launched a new website for authors to submit short English-language content for possible audiobook creation and publication by Spotify. Authors are encouraged to submit adult romance, mystery/thriller, or sci-fi/fantasy stories of 10,000 to 20,000 words that are “written specifically for audio.” The program is open to authors who control their own audio rights. Spotify will pay an advance and royalties for any selected book, and manage production. Authors can distribute the book in print or ebook on any platform. “Spotify Audiobooks is thrilled to be opening submissions for short-form content written by independent authors who are as passionate […]
Spotify Reflects On The Last 18 Months In Audiobooks
On Wednesday at London Book Fair, Spotify director of global publishing partnerships & licensing Duncan Bruce reflected on the first 18 month since the company’s 2023 relaunch of its audiobooks program. Bruce was vague on the topic of author royalties, noting (as they have in the past) that the company has paid “hundreds of millions of dollars” to authors (PL dug into the numbers last month). But he did mention expansion in the catalog from 150,000 to 400,000 English language titles and reported that listening hours are up 35 percent in the US, UK, and Australia, with 60 percent of […]
ElevenLabs Allows Authors to Create AI Audiobooks for Free
ElevenLabs has launched ElevenReader Publishing, a service for authors to create AI-narrated audiobooks for free, which will be listenable in the ElevenReader app, which they assert has “hundreds of thousands of listeners globally.” Authors with a paid ElevenLabs subscription can export those audio files to use on different platforms, but the company cautions, “please note that many other audiobook platforms like Audible, Apple Books, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble may not accept AI-narrated audiobooks, so check each platform’s terms and conditions before attempting distribution.” (Spotify recently announced that it was accepting titles from ElevenLabs.) Authors can upload text and choose […]