Findaway, an audiobooks retailer under Spotify's ownership, has announced that it will waive its 20 percent royalty cut on titles sold via its DIY Voices platform as long as the transactions take place on Spotify. According to a blog post from the company on Monday, Findaway aims to "transfer cost-saving benefits" stemming from its incorporation with the music streaming giant. … [Read more...] about Spotify is waiving distribution fees in its bid to lure in more indie authors
findaway
Audiobook Narrators and Authors Fear Apple Using Their Voices to Train AI
Spotify’s audiobook narrators and authors became angry after learning of a clause in the agreement between authors and Findaway Voices – a leading audiobook distributor. Findaway Voices allowed Apple to use audiobook files for training machine learning (ML) models. Some authors and narrators say they were unaware of the clause. Many believe they signed off on the ML clause … [Read more...] about Audiobook Narrators and Authors Fear Apple Using Their Voices to Train AI
How human voice artists inadvertently contributed to Apple and Spotify developing AI synthetic voice
The rapid advancement in the field of artificial intelligence has made it possible for computer-generated synthetic voices to accurately mimic the human voice, the same can also lead to human voice actors losing their job to such synthetic voices in the future. Ironically, while that's enough to make the voice artists feel insecure, they might have also contributed to the … [Read more...] about How human voice artists inadvertently contributed to Apple and Spotify developing AI synthetic voice
Spotify’s Purchase of Findaway cost them $123 million
Spotify had spent €117 million - around $123 million USD - for acquiring Findaway, an audiobook platform that has a copious amount of titles from major publishers and also an online system that pairs authors with engineers to create their own audiobooks. Spotify has been betting big on audiobooks even though it had started off as a music streaming service provider. It had also … [Read more...] about Spotify’s Purchase of Findaway cost them $123 million
Findaway Voices Includes Google Audiobooks as a new distribution option
Google Audiobooks launched last week and in over 45 countries and the company is now heavily competing against Audible and Kobo. Indie authors can now submit their own self-published audiobooks to Google via Findaway Voices. Findaway Voices is a relatively new program and it allows indies to work with established narrators and sound engineers to convert their existing ebook … [Read more...] about Findaway Voices Includes Google Audiobooks as a new distribution option
Draft2Digital is the Best Ebook Distribution Platform for Indie Authors
Draft2Digital is one of the rising superstars that indie authors should know about. They distribute ebooks to more sources than Smashwords and StreetLib. They can even get your titles into the public library via Overdrive and have a print on demand system. I spoke with Kevin Tumlinson Director of Marketing to give you the lowdown on what makes Draft2Digital unique and how they … [Read more...] about Draft2Digital is the Best Ebook Distribution Platform for Indie Authors
Findaway Voices Allows Authors To Self-Publish An Audiobook
Findaway Voices is a new self-publishing platform for audiobooks that is launching on July 18th 2017. The main premise of this new service is to connect authors with narrators and once the title is completed they are distributed into 170 different countries and various subscription services, libraries and audiobook retailers. There are not many options to create an … [Read more...] about Findaway Voices Allows Authors To Self-Publish An Audiobook
Odilo is taking the digital library world by storm
Odilo is a digital library solution for libraries and the company offers an interesting value proposition. They have an extensive catalog of over 800,000 ebooks and 73,000 audiobooks for branches in the United States. The other aspect of their business is a feature known as BYOC, which stands for Bring Your Own Content, which was conceptualized to allow libraries and their … [Read more...] about Odilo is taking the digital library world by storm
Global Audiobook Trends and Statistics for 2017
Publishers have experienced an utterly deplorable year for e-book sales and most of them have seen declines by around 12%, things have gotten so bad that most of them do not even report how many units were sold. They speak in broad generalities, which does not bode well for the future of the format. Over the course of the past three years the highest growing segment of … [Read more...] about Global Audiobook Trends and Statistics for 2017
HarperCollins Just Released an Audiobook App
Findaway has partnered with HarperCollins to enable Harper customers to purchase any of the more than 6,100 audiobooks published by HarperCollins directly on www.hc.com and playback the content on any iOS or Android device through the HC Audio app. HC Audio is powered by Findaway’s audiobook distribution platform AudioEngine. “We are uniquely positioned to serve … [Read more...] about HarperCollins Just Released an Audiobook App
40,000 Audiobooks Now Available on TuneIn Premium
If you have an Android or iOS device and listen to the radio, you are likely familiar with TuneIn. The company has been around since 2002 and has over 100,000 radio networks available. Recently the company has expanded to offer a Premium service for $8.99 per month that give you play-by-play from every MLB and Barclays Premier League game, all season long in addition to 40,000 … [Read more...] about 40,000 Audiobooks Now Available on TuneIn Premium
Playaway Unveils a Pre-Loaded, Controlled Tablet for Kids’ Circulation
Users who are familiar with the technology behind Playaways, the preloaded mini-MP3 players that contain individual audiobooks, may remember that the company has a strong history of providing conveniently packaged "safe" content for multi-user consumption. Whether it's the stand-alone audiobook players or the US Navy-specific NERDs (Naval E-Reader Device) that came loaded for … [Read more...] about Playaway Unveils a Pre-Loaded, Controlled Tablet for Kids’ Circulation
New Locked Down e-Reader Appeals to Schools and Businesses
Findaway World made waves a few weeks ago about their new NERD e-Reader that was embraced by the US Navy. The premise of this new device is a severely locked down reader that ships with a full library of books and has no WIFI internet connection and no way to copy the books. You can think of it as a dumb terminal that displays data only. Findaway fresh from the massive media … [Read more...] about New Locked Down e-Reader Appeals to Schools and Businesses