When is a book not a book? When it is performed by a starry cast of hundreds. Except it has always been more complicated than thatNews this week of a 17% hike in the UK’s audiobook sales might seem like a niche business story, but it raises an existential question. What exactly is an audiobook today? Is it a book? Is it a play? Or is it becoming something else entirely? What is clear is that a jostle for market dominance is driving it into new dimensions. The streaming platform Spotify followed its move into podcasting two years ago with the launch of an audiobooks business. Though it has yet to start making its own recordings, last autumn it made a deal for 200,000 audiobooks to be available to its premium users.Not to be outdone, Amazon-owned Audible – accustomed to being the market leader – upped its game, hiring the Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes to record multi-voice versions of the Dickens novels Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, and announcing last month that it had reached an agreement for a recording of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, voiced by more than 100 actors and featuring a “groundbreaking new soundscape”. The new Potter audiobooks, it said, would not usurp but “sit alongside and complement” conventional recordings by Stephen Fry and Jim Dale, which Audible also hosts. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-10 17:25:03 UTC ]
After a backlash, Spotify paused an arrangement that allowed Apple to train machine learning models on some audiobook files. Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2023-02-14 16:03:54 UTC ]
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Many people in Japan have been outraged by a recent trend dubbed "sushi terrorism." Videos across social media show people carrying out all kinds of unhygienic acts, like licking the spoon for a container of green tea powder. Another video, which has more than 98 million views on Twitter, showed... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-02-13 12:15:42 UTC ]
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Hogwarts Legacy is the Harry Potter game I’ve been dreaming of since I was a teenager. I grew up alongside the Harry Potter novels and devoured them all, and I spent the time between book releases reading and writing fanfiction set in the Wizarding World. I would’ve traded my little emo soul for... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-02-10 17:00:41 UTC ]
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The Women’s Prize Trust hopes to make the first award in 2024, after research showed female writers were far less likely than men to be reviewed or win prizes The Women’s prize is to launch a non-fiction award to sit alongside its long-running fiction prize, in response to research that found... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-02-08 08:00:10 UTC ]
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Viola Davis, one of the best actors of her generation, achieved EGOT status last night at the Grammys when she went home with the hardware for Best Audiobook (Narration and Storytelling), for reading her own memoir, Finding Me. (EGOT is when someone has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-02-06 15:16:55 UTC ]
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Five days ago, a review code for Hogwarts Legacy landed in my inbox. I’ve been thinking about this moment for more than a year, ever since the backlash against the game started gaining traction online. The author of the Harry Potter novels is transphobic and she’s targeted transgender women in... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-02-06 11:00:18 UTC ]
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Viola Davis won a Grammy Award Sunday for the recording of her memoir, Finding Me. She has previously won an Emmy, Oscar and two Tony awards. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2023-02-05 22:33:19 UTC ]
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Hogwarts Legacy comes out next week. It is, bar none, the biggest video game to ever use the ever-popular Harry Potter license. A Dragon Age-style open-world RPG, made by Warner Bros. Games and Avalanche Software (recently of the scuttled Disney Infinity), it’s kind of a huge deal. The... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2023-02-03 15:30:00 UTC ]
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The former president's $49.8 million lawsuit alleges that Woodward and Simon & Schuster breached his copyright interests by publishing an audiobook based on interviews recorded for Woodward’s 2021 book 'Rage.' Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-01-30 05:00:00 UTC ]
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The co-founder of Kano says that a new Harry Potter wand includes his technology; Warner Bros. disputes the claim. In 2018, Warner Bros. made waves when it announced a partnership with Kano, a U.K. kid-friendly coding firm, to release a Harry Potter coding wand that brought the magical world of... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2023-01-27 14:02:23 UTC ]
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Niantic has created some of the most popular augmented reality games like Ingress and Pokémon Go. But this week the company is launching a new title called NBA All-World that might be the best application of its location-based tech to date.For people who have played one of Niantic’s previous... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-01-25 17:00:37 UTC ]
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First week of the controversial memoir’s sales breaks official UK records reports Nielsen, Guinness World Records and WaterstonesPrince Harry’s Spare has sold almost half a million copies in the UK in its first week on sale, making it the fastest-selling nonfiction book since records... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-01-17 16:13:57 UTC ]
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The Frankfurt-based Bookwire has entered a partnership with Google Play Books for broader automated production of audiobooks. The post Bookwire Expands Its Text-to-Speech Audiobook Offer with Google Play Books appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2023-01-17 14:43:24 UTC ]
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According to multiple presenters at the Digital Book World conference, ChatGPT has potential to remake the way people write and streamline production and editing, while AI voice replication promises affordable audiobook adaptations. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-01-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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According to multiple presenters at the Digital Book World conference, ChatGPT has potential to remake the way people write and streamline production and editing, while AI voice replication promises affordable audiobook adaptations. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-01-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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From audiobook subscriptions to bullet journals to reading lights, here are some things that can help you meet your 2023 reading goals.- Clare Barnett Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2023-01-09 11:34:00 UTC ]
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Because AI is apparently just like us, it seems to have romanticized the creative fields. So instead of, say, figuring out how to help me dispute denied insurance claims, it’s more interested in writing children’s books, getting into poetry, and now… narrating audiobooks. Yesterday, The Verge... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-01-06 17:02:28 UTC ]
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When you browse Apple Books for your next audiobook, you might come across a few titles with a note that says they were "Narrated by Apple Books." That's because the tech giant has released a catalogue of titles that make use of its new AI-powered digital narration service. The company said the... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-01-05 13:10:59 UTC ]
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Apple and Google’s AI turn in a booming market may sound less than human and raise the ire of voiceover actors, but it has cost benefits For the first few seconds, the narrator of Kristen Ethridge’s new romance audiobook, Shelter from the Storm, sounds like a human being. The voice is light and... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-01-05 06:41:18 UTC ]
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If you need a break from the hustle and cheer of the holidays, there’s nothing better than the ultimate escapist genre: sci-fi. This year has been a good one for those who like their entertainment off-planet or otherwise removed from our reality. We finally got a Predator sequel that isn’t... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-12-26 14:15:37 UTC ]
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