Listen Later is a clever service that turns long-form articles into podcasts [sponsored]
How long is your ‘read it later’ list? You know, the list of articles you’d like to read, but you just can’t ever seem to find the time or motivation to do it? What if I told you there was a way you could start attacking that list while doing other things like driving, working out, doing yard work, or simply relaxing on the couch?
Meet Listen Later, a clever service that can turn any article into an audio track using AI-enhanced text-to-speech technology. This way, instead of you having to read through a lengthy article, you can have a human-like voice read it to you. The whole thing is super easy to setup, articles can be added in just a few taps, and the audio is automatically sent to your favorite podcast app for streaming or downloading.
How does it work?
It’s as easy as sending an email. Once you’ve signed up for Listen later, the service will assign you a unique URL for your personalized podcast feed. You then pop into your podcast app of choice, locate the ‘Add a new podcast by URL’ option, and paste in your URL. And you’re all set up! Now, anytime you see an article you want to turn into a podcast, simply share it via email to Listen Later, and within about 10 minutes, you’ll see it pop up in your podcast client.
Now that we’ve done the broad overview, let’s dive into some of the details. For instance, you can send up to 10 links in a single email and Listen Later will process each one into a separate episode. It can also read text off of PDF files, either attached (with a 20MB limit) or via links, and it can even grab text off of images—great for screenshots of Notes or other text-heavy apps—and tweets. Essentially, if you have any kind of media with visible text, Listen Later can likely convert it to audio for you.
It doesn’t stop there. You can choose between several different AI voices, featuring both masculine and feminine options, and although I think the stock voices sound great, there is an HD Voice option that delivers higher quality speech with more nuanced speech patterns. You can also customize the voice speed, enable outro music for smooth, podcast-like transitions between articles, and you can even have the service translate articles written in foreign languages.
Who is this service for?
As aforementioned, Listen Later is for anyone who wishes they had more time to read. The internet is bursting with high-quality content across every topic you can imagine: sports, politics, the outdoors, fantasy—you name it. This service not only grants you access to all of this awesome, free material, but it makes it more accessible. You can actually use Listen Later to get around paywalls, and as you can imagine, it’s a fantastic option for users with vision impairments.
Pricing
The good news is, you can try out Listen Later for free, which I encourage everyone to do, because you really need to see it and hear it in action to understand just how useful it can be. You get $2 in free credits to start, which is the equivalent of 2-3 articles, and then after that it’s a pay-as-you go model. The rate comes out to $.03 per 1,000 characters, with a slight price bump if you decide to use HD Voices or the translation feature. It sounds a bit convoluted, but just know it’s totally free to try, and then there’s no subscription plan or other commitments to worry about. Simply add your $5, $10, $20+ and you can go from there.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/05/14/listen-later-podcast-service/
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