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Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

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Re: Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

#42
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you listening to podcasts on that it's not easy to skip ads? I'm using Downcast. It's a fairly old app. I think it defaults to +30s +2m -30s buttons which IIRC are settable. It's trivial to skip the ads. I don't need AI to solve that.

Usually I'm listening to podcast when doing dishes, or grocery shopping, at the gym, or on a walk. I don't really want to have to take up my phone to skip an ad, and the controls on the headphones are too janky. This would definitely be a killer feature for me.

"Siri, skip ahead 30 seconds". Doesn't always work, and... sometimes, it's 60, sometimes it's 2 minutes... If it's a podcast I listen to a lot, I usually know if it's a 30/60/120 second ad spot. Even the voice command to do it isn't always convenient though, I'll definitely grant.

Re: Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

#44
post #17

Interestingly, I know several people what would like AI to read stuff to them and read it to them in an interesting way (not Hal-9000 ish) One friend wants conference papers turned into audio. Another wants fan-fiction read dramatically.

I've converted a few fan fictions into audiobooks using edge-tts (https://github.com/rany2/edge-tts).

It uses a reverse engineered API from MS Edge to use the more premium MS voices for free. A bit of a grey area, but it works remarkably well.

Re: Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

#45
post #43

Super cool. My podcast has transcripts already. Any chance your app will be able to pull those in, instead of needing to generate a new one? https://podcasting2.org/podcast-namespace/tags/transcript

Good idea. I was originally supposed to support transcription in the podcast RSS specification, but since there are not many podcasts implementing this field, I have not yet added this support.

Re: Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

#46
post #24
post #2

The killer feature for using AI on podcasts is automatic ad blocking. You get that working folks will pay $5/mo for that alone.

Well killer of podcasts at least.

as far as I understand it, ad blocking on podcast doesn't cost the creators anything The way it does for blogs and newspapers. Podcasts are downloaded and apps generally don't report back on which seconds you listen to and which seconds you skipped. ad revenue is largely based on the number of downloads in a particular region.

Re: Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

#47
post #17

Interestingly, I know several people what would like AI to read stuff to them and read it to them in an interesting way (not Hal-9000 ish) One friend wants conference papers turned into audio. Another wants fan-fiction read dramatically.

As someone who consumes a lot of Hal-9000 and produced audio, I would say they diverge into very different experiences. Former, especially if you settle on a robot voice is almost like "reading", in that that you can learn to apply personal imagination over "neutral" audio. It can be more active. Latter is more experiencing, producer influences how you think about work based on voice casting / performance. It can be…

In watching so many movies these days where the story simply cant be told without extensive CGI, and the fact that I personally, and likely many others are so tired of the crop of Human "celebrities" -- Its only a matter of time where I just ask for a full movie about a copelling story in a subject and World of my choosing and soon - if I want a Super awesome spy movie with lots of stealth and action and heists etc -- itll bea full bespoke movie experience.

So in book, as you mention, an author will be able to define the full experience - and AI will allow people to select the stories and movie experience they want on demand.

Re: Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

#48
post #17

Interestingly, I know several people what would like AI to read stuff to them and read it to them in an interesting way (not Hal-9000 ish) One friend wants conference papers turned into audio. Another wants fan-fiction read dramatically.

We are actually working on turning papers into audio books. Would appreciate any feedback: https://vocademic.com/

Re: Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who consumes a lot of Hal-9000 and produced audio, I would say they diverge into very different experiences. Former, especially if you settle on a robot voice is almost like "reading", in that that you can learn to apply personal imagination over "neutral" audio. It can be more active. Latter is more experiencing, producer influences how you think about work based on voice casting / performance. It can be…

In watching so many movies these days where the story simply cant be told without extensive CGI, and the fact that I personally, and likely many others are so tired of the crop of Human "celebrities" -- Its only a matter of time where I just ask for a full movie about a copelling story in a subject and World of my choosing and soon - if I want a Super awesome spy movie with lots of stealth and action and heists etc -…

>AI will allow people to select the stories and movie experience they want on demand.

Yeah there's a bunch of movies/show I'm not interested in watch but fascinated by aftershow content, i.e. all the game of thrones podcasts/recaps. It's interesting the variety you can get in a 5 minute recap, a 20 minute one, or a 2 hour one. There's alot of mid movies out there that I'm satisified with just the recap. Ditto with all the channels summarizing entire seasons of TV shows. I'm just waiting for a selectable X minute recap/summary/synopsis slider for content. Bonus choosing how recap is done, i.e. I really like game of throne wiki because it feels more like history book with drama stripped out / toned down.

Re: Show HN: Anycast+ – An AI-powered podcast app

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a pocketcast lifer, I wish you success. Does Are you aware of listennotes who transcribes $1+0.06c per minute? I like the idea of 50 transcriptions per months, but there's like 30m podcasts and 3 hour podcasts. Eitherway feels like there's ~5 years where AI podcast have good subscription market before device side transcription/translation/natural voice. Hope you grow big before then.

Agreed, I also think local transcription is the ultimate solution. For now though, whisper.cpp is still too slow on cell phones. It may take some more time to develop. I haven't followed listennotes' transcription feature, I'll check it out. I've tried their catalog and search API, and many popular Chinese podcasts are not included.

Look forward to Chinese podcast integration especially. TBH PRC podcast ecosystem is just so far ahead. There's nothing close to Ximalaya as an audio platform/economy. Podcast keeps getting bundled into music or video streaming platforms in west, when it should be combined with audiobooks, other spoken word content into it's own thing.
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