5 ms·

Show HN: Text-to-podcast: Repurpose any content into podcasts

48 points by paulaz 6y ago

felix12777 6y ago
Great concept. The other day I stumbled upon https://podcastle.ai/ https://podcastle.ai/ - I am wondering what makes your product different and how's the performance of conversion so far?
- alexjm 6y ago
  Not to be confused with https://podcastle.org/ https://podcastle.org/, which is a podcast of fantasy short stories.
- Causality1 6y ago
  I got very excited at that link and then progressively more and more disappointed. Why do they have a slick animated ad reel with no example of the speech output? Why is there no example anywhere, even on YouTube? What's the point of this as a chrome extension when you can already say "ok Google, read aloud"? Maybe I'm just salty that I'll never find a good solution for my favorite ebooks that never got an audiobook version.
  - corobo 6y ago
    > with no example of the speech Right! The only thing this site needs is a "Click here to listen to a sample" and it misses its shot.
- luismmolina 6y ago
  One is voiced by humans the other by ai
- paulaz 6y ago
  We use real voices from real people who care about creating an engaging experience for your listeners.
ggggtez 6y ago
But does it automatically include ads for mattresses? That seems to be the reason podcasts exist to begin with.
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  Because of your comment I googled and came across the company Saatva. I was surprised to see that it is actually a fairly big company which had a revenue of $375 million in 2019. Podcast marketing must be really effective. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saatva https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saatva)
  - jachee 6y ago
    And now you know why Spotify is so gung-ho into podcasts, lately. That and the payola for advertising your content on their platform[0] and the not having to pay artist royalties. [0] https://support.spotifyforpodcasters.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043829672 https://support.spotifyforpodcasters.com/hc/en-us/articles/3...
  - swyx 6y ago
    unless this is sarcasm, that is a glaring cause and effect error. consider that maybe already large companies are the ones with money to blow on podcasts.
- paulaz 6y ago
  Haha, no but that's a good feature request :)
- dddw 6y ago
  I bI don't own a TV and blocked pretty much all online advertising in my life.(thanks to nextdns) However am an adamant podcast listener, most days it is probably the only advertisements that reach me.
asimjalis 6y ago
Nice. The voice sounded completely real. Are you using AI on the back-end or real humans? If real humans how long is the turnaround time?
- asciident 6y ago
  The voice itself says it's a real voice, and based on the pricing, it looks like it's just narration-as-a-service rather than any automated technique.
- KMnO4 6y ago
  I didn't dive much deeper, but the header text says "Narrated by real voices". I guess that's why it costs $11/500 words, which is an order of magnitude higher than TTS solutions.
  - echelon 6y ago
    > I guess that's why it costs $11/500 words, which is an order of magnitude higher than TTS solutions. Multiple orders of magnitude. TTS and VC are going to do to voice over and narration what Getty and Flikr did for photography. We're not quite there, but we're not far off. Give it two more years. (I work pretty closely on this domain. I built https://vo.codes https://vo.codes, which sounds like shit, but it's adjacent to cutting edge techniques that sound practically real.)
  - paulaz 6y ago
    Yes, we work with real narrators who really care about delivering the best possible reading. TTS is fine but it's never going be able to engage an audience in the same way a real voice can.
- paulaz 6y ago
  We wanted to optimise for human engagement so we went to real people :) TTS is fine for some things but very few people actually want to listen to a robot reading to them.
narrationbox 6y ago
When evaluating end-to-end human narration services, the most important factor is audio mastering. For services that target the podcast industry, good quality audio output that can be used as-is is a must.
- paulaz 6y ago
  Absolutely! We only work with narrators who can consistently produce great quality narration.
abqexpert 6y ago
So one issue I can think of with this, would be that you often mold a work to be a podcast, by adding in extra auditory elements that wouldn't work in a pure text format. Listen to the BBC world service, often in their longer pieces they add in auditory clues like a busy street with the sounds of people bustling and so on to clue in the audience about what is happening. I can't imagine a straight rock bottom priced translation to a podcast working super well.
- paulaz 6y ago
  Hey, glad you raised this. It's true that not all content works narrated. We offer an editing service to make content ready for narration & break it up into manageable episodes. You can hear some of our recent work here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-simpplr-podcast/id1539816334?uo=4 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-simpplr-podcast/id...
The_Amp_Walrus 6y ago
This is a really cool service for content creators who want to easily switch channels. Descript offers the ability to go the other way with their transcription service https://www.descript.com/ https://www.descript.com/ For readers who want to listen to articles that they like, there's the (free?) Pocket text to speech service, plus other sites like mine (https://blogreader.com.au/ https://blogreader.com.au/) which put TTS articles into a podcast for you.
devwastaken 6y ago
I want this but for legal cases.
- paulaz 6y ago
  Hey, we can create podcasts from any content. Shoot me an email to andy@narratedbypoise.com and we can help you.
fao_ 6y ago
It's amazing that part of their advertising is that they are offering the ability to hire people for transcription of text to audio for even less than competing services. Why... would anyone work for them when they could work for other services that pay 10x more?
- paulaz 6y ago
  Not sure you're referring to Poise here? We don't offer transcription. We create podcasts from any content.
  - fao_ 6y ago
    Yeah, I forgot the proper word for reverse-transcription. Regardless, my actual point which you ignored was: Voices.com: 300 words - From $250 Bunny Studio: 500 words - From $151 Poise: 500 words - From $11 Why would any reader work with you, when they are going to be paid at least 10x less than the competition?
jcun4128 6y ago
Curious if you guys consider licensing voices that would be interesting pairing that with the ability to generate a voice for TTS(that small voice sample model generation tech). Then theoretically can use it for whatever eg. home automation or reading stuff on demand. The AWS polly voices are decent but would be nice to get a bigger selection.
- paulaz 6y ago
  Hey, I would like to talk more about this. Email me at andy@narratedbypoise.com Thanks!

48 points by paulaz 6y ago

Great concept. The other day I stumbled upon https://podcastle.ai/ https://podcastle.ai/ - I am wondering what makes your product different and how's the performance of conversion so far?

alexjm 6y ago
Not to be confused with https://podcastle.org/ https://podcastle.org/, which is a podcast of fantasy short stories.
Causality1 6y ago
I got very excited at that link and then progressively more and more disappointed. Why do they have a slick animated ad reel with no example of the speech output? Why is there no example anywhere, even on YouTube? What's the point of this as a chrome extension when you can already say "ok Google, read aloud"? Maybe I'm just salty that I'll never find a good solution for my favorite ebooks that never got an audiobook version.
- corobo 6y ago
  > with no example of the speech Right! The only thing this site needs is a "Click here to listen to a sample" and it misses its shot.
luismmolina 6y ago
One is voiced by humans the other by ai
paulaz 6y ago
We use real voices from real people who care about creating an engaging experience for your listeners.

ggggtez 6y ago

But does it automatically include ads for mattresses? That seems to be the reason podcasts exist to begin with.

djeiasbsbo 6y ago
Because of your comment I googled and came across the company Saatva. I was surprised to see that it is actually a fairly big company which had a revenue of $375 million in 2019. Podcast marketing must be really effective. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saatva https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saatva)
- jachee 6y ago
  And now you know why Spotify is so gung-ho into podcasts, lately. That and the payola for advertising your content on their platform[0] and the not having to pay artist royalties. [0] https://support.spotifyforpodcasters.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043829672 https://support.spotifyforpodcasters.com/hc/en-us/articles/3...
- swyx 6y ago
  unless this is sarcasm, that is a glaring cause and effect error. consider that maybe already large companies are the ones with money to blow on podcasts.
paulaz 6y ago
Haha, no but that's a good feature request :)
dddw 6y ago
I bI don't own a TV and blocked pretty much all online advertising in my life.(thanks to nextdns) However am an adamant podcast listener, most days it is probably the only advertisements that reach me.

asimjalis 6y ago

Nice. The voice sounded completely real. Are you using AI on the back-end or real humans? If real humans how long is the turnaround time?

asciident 6y ago
The voice itself says it's a real voice, and based on the pricing, it looks like it's just narration-as-a-service rather than any automated technique.
KMnO4 6y ago
I didn't dive much deeper, but the header text says "Narrated by real voices". I guess that's why it costs $11/500 words, which is an order of magnitude higher than TTS solutions.
- echelon 6y ago
  > I guess that's why it costs $11/500 words, which is an order of magnitude higher than TTS solutions. Multiple orders of magnitude. TTS and VC are going to do to voice over and narration what Getty and Flikr did for photography. We're not quite there, but we're not far off. Give it two more years. (I work pretty closely on this domain. I built https://vo.codes https://vo.codes, which sounds like shit, but it's adjacent to cutting edge techniques that sound practically real.)
- paulaz 6y ago
  Yes, we work with real narrators who really care about delivering the best possible reading. TTS is fine but it's never going be able to engage an audience in the same way a real voice can.
paulaz 6y ago
We wanted to optimise for human engagement so we went to real people :) TTS is fine for some things but very few people actually want to listen to a robot reading to them.

narrationbox 6y ago

When evaluating end-to-end human narration services, the most important factor is audio mastering. For services that target the podcast industry, good quality audio output that can be used as-is is a must.

paulaz 6y ago
Absolutely! We only work with narrators who can consistently produce great quality narration.

abqexpert 6y ago

So one issue I can think of with this, would be that you often mold a work to be a podcast, by adding in extra auditory elements that wouldn't work in a pure text format. Listen to the BBC world service, often in their longer pieces they add in auditory clues like a busy street with the sounds of people bustling and so on to clue in the audience about what is happening. I can't imagine a straight rock bottom priced translation to a podcast working super well.

paulaz 6y ago
Hey, glad you raised this. It's true that not all content works narrated. We offer an editing service to make content ready for narration & break it up into manageable episodes. You can hear some of our recent work here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-simpplr-podcast/id1539816334?uo=4 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-simpplr-podcast/id...

The_Amp_Walrus 6y ago

This is a really cool service for content creators who want to easily switch channels. Descript offers the ability to go the other way with their transcription service https://www.descript.com/ https://www.descript.com/ For readers who want to listen to articles that they like, there's the (free?) Pocket text to speech service, plus other sites like mine (https://blogreader.com.au/ https://blogreader.com.au/) which put TTS articles into a podcast for you.

devwastaken 6y ago

I want this but for legal cases.

paulaz 6y ago
Hey, we can create podcasts from any content. Shoot me an email to andy@narratedbypoise.com and we can help you.

fao_ 6y ago

It's amazing that part of their advertising is that they are offering the ability to hire people for transcription of text to audio for even less than competing services. Why... would anyone work for them when they could work for other services that pay 10x more?

paulaz 6y ago
Not sure you're referring to Poise here? We don't offer transcription. We create podcasts from any content.
- fao_ 6y ago
  Yeah, I forgot the proper word for reverse-transcription. Regardless, my actual point which you ignored was: Voices.com: 300 words - From $250 Bunny Studio: 500 words - From $151 Poise: 500 words - From $11 Why would any reader work with you, when they are going to be paid at least 10x less than the competition?

jcun4128 6y ago

Curious if you guys consider licensing voices that would be interesting pairing that with the ability to generate a voice for TTS(that small voice sample model generation tech). Then theoretically can use it for whatever eg. home automation or reading stuff on demand. The AWS polly voices are decent but would be nice to get a bigger selection.

paulaz 6y ago
Hey, I would like to talk more about this. Email me at andy@narratedbypoise.com Thanks!