The concept is simple: Top stories on top publications in audio format. You listen to them. You can sign in and then follow certain domains or topics (like technology or entertainment or business) and have a playlist full of the stuff you want to listen to.
It's basically NPR...on demand...with not-as-talented voice talent reading whatever the top stories on Guardian or Mashable or Firstlook are.
That's it. Certainly makes the driving in circles around LA more productive.
kleinbl00 - I think this is up your alley but I'm going to guess that you are going to be frustrated by the voice artists at times.
edit: if you sign up via this link, I get to listen to more articles per day for free: https://umano.me/signup/19QOLP
kleinbl00 thenewgreen FYI, I've been occasionally recommending the best stories from Hubski via Umano's chrome extension (one click ease FTW). I can't say for certain, but I think 100% have been recorded within 24 hours. We may just need more Hubskiers submitting non-listicles to increase the level of content on the site. ;)
One thing that I have been noticing as I'm listening to these more and reading stories less is the amount of fluff that occurs in articles. It makes it painfully obviously what pieces are pissed onto a page for clicks & SEO and which ones aren't. Take this piece by Mashable for example: The 11 most useful web tools of 2014. A minute in and you are still painfully listening to some shit fluff so that there is text above their slider. It's interesting that these things fail to annoy me on paper - we skim right past them - but are gagworthy on the ears and make me hate Mashable all the more.
A ha! I have found a solution to the listicles. Find whoever is submitting them and murder them in their sleep. Or submit better things....
I was trying to figure out where their narrators come from. It appears they have four of them.
It looks like they have more now: https://umano.me/readers That's funny. I had never thought about that. It seems like almost all of them are using the site for self-promo too. Probably a pretty good gig, actually.Hungry voice actors, who never get any opportunities for consistent work, sent the team 50 demoes a day, Mendiola said
It can be a super plum gig. My cousin was the voice of Jenny Craig in the era before Kristie Alley became the face of Jenny Craig. a couple dozen :30s for radio and TV and she was pushing six figures a year. It can also be a miserable, miserable grind. The majority of the available work is local used car promos. I've done voiceover professionally, but just a couple times. Working in sound in Hollywood people tend to encourage you. Then you go to an actual voiceover thing and discover that everybody there is one of those annoying people that bursts into accents at weird moments, just like you, and you realize that it's a really annoying habit that you should drop. I looked into pursuing it. For some reason, voiceover was just too much. It pushed me too far into that flakey pursuing-every-possible-avenue-of-fame thing that Angelinos do, particularly in and around Hollywood. Screenwriter/mixer/voiceover actor was one too many slashes.
There are certainly listicles galore but there seems to be a lot of content that is better as well. I think the key is to stay out of popular and build it with the domains you respect. I grabbed a bunch of domains from my recent post/share history here as a start. Also, I unfollowed the topics fairly quickly. Needs a hide story button though. A hide all listicles / garbage button would be even better.