January 2024 News Roundup
Audiobooks contribute to growth for publishers as well as listeners of all ages. This month read about the audiobook market share, a survey from School Library Journal about young listeners, listeners whose lives are enhanced by allowing audiobooks to keep them company, a celebrated chorus of voices that contributed to a new volume by Ntozake Shange and interviews with Edoardo Ballerini and Grover Gardner. Read about expanding markets for Playaway and Bookwire, the first AI voice rights case in China, and get a little techy to appreciate the impact of Spotify algorithms and the delicate ecosystem of content providers, users and advertisers that drive the platform. While you’re in a tech mood, read about Microsoft’s Open AI copyright claims and dig into the psychology of how TSS influences perception. To end in a positive light… read about the New York Times Book Review’s commitment to audiobook coverage.
Comparing APA and AAP stats yields insights to audiobook market share
Audiobooks contribute to growth in publishing rather than “stealing” sales from other formats. [Source: publishingperspectives.com]
Voice-Over vs. Audiobook Narration: What’s the Difference?
An exploration of the subtle distinctions between these two spoken storytelling genres. [Source: publicistpaper.com]
broader audiobook coverage for The New York Times Book Review
Lauren Christensen, the editor who heads up audiobook coverage, is excited about the future of audiobooks and The Times’s coverage of them. [Source: nytimes.com]
Listening habits
You're Never Alone with an Audiobook
My listening habits allow me to feel as if I’m in company without dealing with the energy-sucking problems of actually being in company. [Source: thecut.com]
Prefer listening to your books? It's not that different from reading
Audiobooks can be a 'goldmine' for people who struggle with reading. [Source: cbc.ca]
Audiobooks Have Taken Over My Life, and I Love It
The draw of the story is the best enticement I know to get me out of the house. [Source: reactormag.com]
the Transformative Experience of Listening to Audiobooks While Ill
Sarah Wheeler, the co-host of Mother Culture, on becoming a different kind of reader. [Source: lithub.com]
FEED YOUR EARPODS
Listen to Ntozake Shange Like You’ve Never Heard Her Before
Sing a Black Girl’s Song is a new volume of the Black feminist’s previously unpublished writing. The audiobook is read by a chorus of Black voices including Robin Miles, Tarana Burke, Alfre Woodard, Ifa Bayeza and the author’s daughter, Savannah Shange, among others. [Source: nytimes.com]
Michelle Obama Might Match Her Husband At The 2024 Grammys
The wife of former president Barack Obama is nominated for the second time in the Best Audiobook, Narration & Storytelling Recording category for narrating her own The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. [Source: forbes.com]
The business of audiobooks
SURVEY: From a Young Age, Children Tune in to Audiobooks
Children are eager listeners of audiobooks, according to a new Library Journal / School Library Journal survey. [Source: schoollibraryjournal.com]
Opinon: Remember What Spotify Did to the Music Industry? Books Are Next
To explain why content creators continue to lose at the hands of distributors and platforms, it’s helpful to understand the three mutually reinforcing networks, (content creators, users and advertisers) that characterize most tech platforms. [Source: nytimes.com]
BEYOND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Playaway Products New Spanish-language Audiobooks Will Help Libraries and Schools Serve Multilingual Communities
Playaway Products is working closely with major Spanish publishers to offer a curated selection of over 350 popular and award-winning titles for people of all ages, giving schools and libraries an easy way to build their Spanish-language collections with confidence. [Source: businesswire.com]
WAY, Bookwire’s Audiobook Service Now Available in new Markets
Bookwire launches its WAY, (We Audiobook You) suite of audiobook services, which includes TTS technology, into English-language, Spanish-language, Portuguese-language Brazilian and French-language markets. [Source: publishingperspectives.com]
Court hears China's first AI voice rights case
The litigant is a voice-over artist surnamed Yin, who discovered in May that her voice was being used in many audiobooks circulating online for which she had not signed any contracts or granted permission. [Source: chinadaily.com]
AI News
The Psychology of Speech: How Text to Speech Influences Perception
It’s essential to recognize that how a message is delivered can significantly impact its reception. [Source: nerdbot.com]
Spotify partners with Google to enhance audiobook recommendations using AI
Spotify, known for its early adoption of AI in music recommendation algorithms, is now extending this tech to enhance user experience in non-music content. [Source: republicworld.com]
Open AI faces Copyright challenges for Utilizing Copyrighted Material for Neural Networks
OpenAI, the Microsoft-supported research lab, has acknowledged that it is “impossible” to develop high-quality neural networks without utilizing copyrighted material. [Source: ai2.news]
INTERviews & Podcasts
How Edoardo Ballerini Breathed Life Into an FX Drama’s Stealthy AI character
Playing Ray, an artificial intelligence assistant, on A Murder at the End of the World marked Ballerini’s first TV role since 2017, after years working as a celebrated audiobook narrator for projects like War and Peace, Metamorphosis and the Hebrew Bible. [Source: thewrap.com]
Grover Gardner interviewed by Robin Whitten
Narrator Grover Gardner joins AudioFile’s Robin Whitten to discuss his narration of John McPhee’s Tabula Rasa, one of the 2023 Best Nonfiction & History Audiobooks. [Source: lithub.com]