@Techmeme@techhub.socialElevenLabs, which aims to build an all-in-one AI voice app, licensed 200K human-voiced audiobooks from major publishers, available in ElevenReader for $11/mo. (Ashley Carman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialFor publishers, pirated audiobooks made with AI on YouTube are a growing issue: removal is cumbersome, and some are hiring tech companies to take them down (Alexandra Alter/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/books/audiobook-piracy-youtube.html
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialElevenLabs, which aims to build an all-in-one AI voice app, licensed 200K human-voiced audiobooks from major publishers, available in ElevenReader for $11/mo. (Ashley Carman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters
@cheryanne@aus.socialSubmissions for the SONARR Awards (Sound and Narrative) close on Friday, July 31, 2026. SONARR is Australia's newest dedicated awards program that recognises achievement across the whole audio landscape, including podcasting, radio, audiobooks, and voice-overs.
Submission costs are designed to be truly accessible to independent and developing producers, rather than merely those supported by major networks or publishers.
Entrants will have the opportunity to win SONARR of the…
@mela@zusammenkunft.netProjekt: Lesefortschritt zwischen allen Geräten synchronisieren und nahtlos Audiobooks und die dazugehörigen E-Books immer genau dort öffnen, wo man zuletzt aufgehört hat, zu lesen. Open Source und selbstgehostet.
https://workspace.zusammenkunft.net/wo
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI got home from surgery Tuesday afternoon, and it’s now Thursday night, and I am bored out of my fucking mind.
I’ve listened to audiobooks & podcasts, watched videos, read all the comments, argued with Nazis and car-brained people, read books, listened to music… and now so fucking bored!
I lay on an ice pack, I get up and walk around a bit, and sit in an upright chair for limited times. And repeat.
Going stir crazy here. 😳
@hikingdude@mastodon.social✅ monthly cold storage backup
✅lots auf audiobooks backuped
@Techmeme@techhub.socialFor publishers, pirated audiobooks made with AI on YouTube are a growing issue: removal is cumbersome, and some are hiring tech companies to take them down (Alexandra Alter/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/books/a
@arXiv_eessAS_bot@mastoxiv.pageEvaluating the Expressive Appropriateness of Speech in Rich Contexts
Tianrui Wang, Ziyang Ma, Yizhou Peng, Haoyu Wang, Zhikang Niu, Zikang Huang, Yihao Wu, Yi-Wen Chao, Yu Jiang, Yuheng Lu, Guanrou Yang, Xuanchen Li, Hexin Liu, Chunyu Qiang, Cheng Gong, Yifan Yang, Tianchi Liu, Junyu Wang, Nana Hou, Meng Ge, Fuming You, Wei Yang, Zhongqian Sun, Haifeng Hu, Xiaobao Wang, Eng Siong Chng, Xie Chen, Longbiao Wang, Jianwu Dang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.09413 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.09413 https://arxiv.org/html/2605.09413
arXiv:2605.09413v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Evaluating expressive speech remains challenging, as existing methods mainly assess emotional intensity and overlook whether a speech sample is expressively appropriate for its contextual setting. This limitation hinders reliable evaluation of speech systems used in narrative-driven and interactive applications, such as audiobooks and conversational agents. We introduce CEAEval, a Context-rich framework for Evaluating Expressive Appropriateness in speech, which assesses whether a speech sample expressively aligns with the underlying communicative intent implied by its discourse-level narrative context. To support this task, we construct CEAEval-D, the first context-rich speech dataset with real human performances in Mandarin conversational speech, providing narrative descriptions together with fifteen dimensions of human annotations covering expressive attributes and expressive appropriateness. We further develop CEAEval-M, a model that integrates knowledge distillation, planner-based multi-model collaboration, adaptive audio attention bias, and reinforcement learning to perform context-rich expressive appropriateness evaluation. Experiments on a human-annotated test set demonstrate that CEAEval-M substantially outperforms existing speech evaluation and analysis systems.
toXiv_bot_toot
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSpotify launches a library of over 650 narrated long-form magazine articles in English for Premium users; free users can buy articles "individually for $1.99" (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/937
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialSpotify launches a library of over 650 narrated long-form magazine articles in English for Premium users; free users can buy articles "individually for $1.99" (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/937
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSpotify celebrates its 20th anniversary with a first-ever list of its 20 most streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts, and audiobooks (Gil Kaufman/Billboard)
https://www.billboard.com/business/streaming/spotify-most-stream…
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialSpotify celebrates its 20th anniversary with a first-ever list of its 20 most streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts, and audiobooks (Gil Kaufman/Billboard)
https://www.billboard.com/business/streaming/spotify-most-stream…
