2025.
Storytel allows to buy audiobooks without subscription
Storytel now allows you to purchase audiobooks and ebooks individually in the app or on storytel.com (regardless of whether you have a subscription). These are primarily books from major publishers like Penguin Random House and Hachette. Examples of ebooks and audiobooks available for purchase in the app include Harry's memoir "Spare," Dan Brown's "The Secret of Secrets," James Clear's "Atomic," Habits, Schuyler Bailar's "He/She/They," and Erica Ridley's "My Rogue to Ruin." These books are only available in a few countries, such as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.
2025.
AI audiobooks have come to Libby
AI-powered audiobooks have appeared in
Libby - an app that connects public library cardholders with their libraries' ebook and audiobook collections. For some audiobook listeners, the loss of the human touch of a real person is devastating. So, if you're looking to avoid AI, here's how to spot AI-powered audiobooks in Libby. Go to the search bar and search for two specific terms: "Digital Voice" and "Synthesized Voice." This will display all titles that use artificial intelligence narration, commonly referred to as digital or synthesized voice. The narrator will be listed in the book details. Books that use AI will list the narrator as "synthesized voice" or "digital voice."
2024.
Audible recruits actors to train voice-generating AI for audiobooks
Audible, Amazon’s audiobook division, revealed that it will develop AI trained on the voices of professional narrators to produce new audiobook recordings. A select group of audiobook narrators based in the U.S. will be invited to train the AI with their voices starting this week, according to Audible. The trained AI will be employed to generate recordings and narrators will have the opportunity to approve their synthetic voice for particular works, as well as modify the pronunciation and pacing. Audible states that narrators who engage in the program will be compensated for any audiobooks produced using their AI-generated voices on a title-by-title, royalty-sharing basis.
2024.
Apple Podcasts now allow to listen audio books via web browser
Apple Podcasts can now be streamed from the web. It functions on all major web browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari) in over 170 countries. Apple Podcasts on the web enables users to access features that were previously only available on the app. These include exploring millions of audiobooks, accessing sections like Library and Top Charts, purchasing premium podcast subscriptions and more. Listeners can sync their Apple Accounts to be able to pause a podcast and save their playback progress to listen later, as well as view their followed shows and subscriptions. Users without an Apple Account can also use the web experience but can only explore and listen.
2024.
YouTube is testing sleep timer for audio-books
YouTube is testing a new sleep timer feature for its Premium users, allowing them to pause videos after a set time, which is particularly useful for those who fall asleep to long podcasts or audio books. The timer can be enabled on desktop via a specific page or on mobile through the “Settings > Try experimental new features” option and it appears in the video player's Settings menu. Users can choose to pause playback after intervals ranging from 10 minutes to the end of the video and a pop-up will appear to extend the timer if needed. While this feature has been available on Spotify for some time, YouTube is now catching up with its introduction.
2024.
Spotify adds countdown timers for Audiobooks
Spotify, in its infinite wisdom (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof), has decided to spice up the audiobook game by rolling out Countdown Pages—shiny new digital pedestals designed to help listeners obsess over the exact second their next favorite tome hits the metaphorical shelves. These pages, dazzlingly precise, will let users pre-save upcoming audiobooks while authors, publishers, and narrators bask in the pre-launch promotional glow. In a stroke of intergalactic fairness, this feature will be available to both Premium subscribers and those freeloaders on the free tier. Drawing inspiration from its music-streaming escapades—where Countdown Pages helped luminaries like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish whip fans into a frenzy—Spotify is banking on a similar burst of engagement for audiobooks. After all, when 70 percent of pre-saving music fans dive into albums within a week, it’s not entirely unreasonable to imagine audiobook lovers might follow suit, or at least not wander off in search of tea and biscuits first.
2024.
Google Play Books to offer audiobook previews on YouTube
Google Play Books has been provided an update that introduces several new features to the app. That includes integration with YouTube where users will be able to listen to audiobook previews for free. This would be in addition to the audiobook previews that are already available via the Play Books app for Android, iOS and the web. As it is, YouTube enjoys a huge userbase and it is only natural Google will like to leverage it to seek better exposure for its audiobooks as well. In any case, Google has been restructuring its media business of late and several of its services such as Play Music and Podcasts have been brought under the purview of YouTube. Among the other changes introduced to Play Books include the addition of the new Upcoming tab at the top of the Library section. So, you will now have Your books, Shelves and Series along with the newly added Upcoming tabs at the top under Library. This, as Google explained, will show “all your pre-orders in one location on a calendar that can be filtered based on specific series or authors.” You will also be provided updates on authors and series that you might have shown interest in, which can be like titles that you may have searched or viewed.
2024.
Spotify brings its free audiobooks perk for Premium users to Canada, Ireland and New Zealand
Spotify, in a move that can only be described as whimsically magnanimous, has extended its free audiobook listening extravaganza to the good folk of Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand. These lucky individuals now find themselves in possession of 15 hours a month to indulge in the soothing tones of 250,000 audiobook titles—an upgrade from the mere 200,000 that previously graced the platform. This audacious leap comes just two months after Spotify, with a self-assured swagger, announced its audiobook service is now the second-largest in the galaxy (or at least Earth), trailing only behind Audible, that hulking monolith of Amazonian proportions. Since its launch last November, over 150,000 titles have found their way into users’ ears. Accessing these treasures is delightfully simple—just wander into the Home feed or search tab of the Spotify app, and voilà! Although, as with all things in life, there’s a catch: audiobooks marked “Included in Premium” will gently nudge you toward the land of Spotify Premium subscribers. But don’t worry, dear listener, your precious listening hours are safely logged in the app’s settings, because even chaos has its spreadsheets.
2023.
Audible launches app for smart watches
Audible officially unveiled its Wear OS app, expanding the audiobook experience on Android smartwatches. The app allows users to download audiobooks for offline listening, select audiobook from your library and adjust playback speed. To get started, users simply download it from the Google Play Store and sign in to their Audible account. Once set up, they can easily navigate their Audible library and listen to audiobooks directly from their watch without a smartphone. The launch of the Audible app for Wear OS coincided with the release of Wear OS 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 6. Thus, Amazon and Samsung have collaborated to expand the usefulness of smartwatches.
2023.
Beelinguapp allows to learn language by audiobooksIn the vast and often perplexing universe of language learning, where conventional methods tend to resemble Vogon poetry in their lack of charm,
Beelinguapp arrives like a friendly, towel-bearing hitchhiker with an irresistibly novel idea. Here, audiobooks and music combine forces to help you master up to 14 languages without the usual mind-numbing drills. Imagine this: text from your own comfortably familiar tongue cheekily juxtaposed alongside the enigmatic squiggles of the language you’re eager to conquer. Delivered in a mesmerizing karaoke-style narration by actual native speakers (none of whom are Vogons, we assure you), it’s a delightfully painless way to immerse yourself in anything from fairytales to news. Whether you fancy Spanish, German, Korean, or French—or, indeed, all of them—this cunning app updates weekly, ensuring you’re never left stranded in a literary desert without fresh content. So grab your device and dive in; it’s language learning with a dash of pan-galactic flair.
