

Ask HN: Listen to HN articles as radio. - bobbriody

Would you enjoy listening to a radio station that plays HN articles while you travel to work? I know I would! I want to listen to news that I find relevant as I commute. Unfortunately, HN, TechCrunch, and all the good nerd blogs are only available as text.<p>So I’m thinking of making a mobile app to deliver personalized news radio w&#x2F; content from blog and news sites.<p>I would use text-to-speech software when necessary, but TTS can only do so well. Most content would be pre-recorded by an actual human with a pleasant voice. (“Do something that doesn’t scale” -PG.)<p>So my question is: Does this sound interesting to you? If I built this, would you be excited to try it?
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FBT
I strongly recommend you don't use any TTS at all. If I want TTS I can do it
myself. I have no need of an app to do it for me.

That said, with actual human readers this could go very well. I would like,
though, to point out the possibly insurmountable issue that pops up every time
someone has an idea like this: copyright.

It is a sad state the current copyright laws are in, and a good example of
that is how they interfere with the creation of awesome services like this
one. IANAL, and all that, but I strongly suspect you'd get hammered down hard
if you didn't get explicit permission from the authors of every single article
you broadcast.

So seriously, speak with a lawyer, please, before taking a single step with
this. Perhaps you can find a workaround, or someway to do this regardless. Or
maybe not. But at least you won't drown under a mass of lawsuits.

~~~
bobbriody
Agreed, and thanks for the feedback. My initial (and possibly very naive)
assumptions are: 1) If readers are permitted to TTS RSS feeds then human
recordings "should" also be legal. (Not that I actually expect the laws to be
consistent or make sense.) 2) This would be one of the first things I looked
in to if I pursue this idea. 3) "If I want TTS I can do it myself." This is
certainly true, but the options I am aware of do not provide a seamless
interface. For example, would you want to do it yourself while driving in
traffic?

~~~
joshbert
It seems like you have a pretty good idea of what you want to do. That said,
assumption number 3 is not entirely true. Pocket (which is already widely
used) has TTS tech integrated and it's really easy to use.

I could see the value so long as the articles are narrated by a human. A
condition that, like you said, seems to have a lot of strings attached to it.

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swanson
I think the idea is interesting - I played around with a prototype myself
about a year ago (using RSS + TTS).

You might check out this startup: [http://umanoapp.com/](http://umanoapp.com/)
which does almost exactly what you want. I don't know how the business model
works exactly, but I would imagine that paying people to narrate would be
fairly expensive.

You might also have a look at some of the stuff NPR is doing:
[http://www.npr.org/infiniteplayer/](http://www.npr.org/infiniteplayer/)
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/inside/2011/11/14/142303990/introdu...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/inside/2011/11/14/142303990/introducing-
the-infinite-player) they are working on breaking the traditional radio show
mold and queueing up individual stories based on personal recommendation.

~~~
csixty4
> I don't know how the business model works exactly, but I would imagine that
> paying people to narrate would be fairly expensive.

They sell premium memberships now that allow for things like offline listening
and better playlist management.

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lbr
Regardless of how you achieved it, it does sound interesting to me. And if you
built it, I would be excited to try it. A MVP could just be a podcast. You
could pick the best article from HN every day and read it yourself. See how
that goes. Best of luck.

~~~
bobbriody
This is exactly the type of MVP I would go after: me reading HN and Tech
Crunch daily.

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sriramyadavalli
I am actually developing a service that is a text to speech solution for any
app. So, while you travel to work you can listen to ur email/calendar/other
data.

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gee_totes
Have you heard of the This Developers Life podcast?

[http://thisdeveloperslife.com/](http://thisdeveloperslife.com/)

~~~
csixty4
I miss TDL. I'm sure the format was time-consuming to produce, and I know Mo's
cancer diagnosis took top priority. But it was a real gem of a podcast.

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jamesmoroni
I've tried Umano but couldn't stand their reader. I listen to swell radio all
the time and would love a similar service with more content.

~~~
bobbriody
Thanks. I am going to investigate the content from the competition and
determine if I have a shot at finding a toe hold.

