Got that Friday Feeling? Swing by and tell us which audiobooks will be keeping you company over the weekend!
Here’s what the Gals have been listening to this week.
BJ
Narrated by Helen Laser
Carrie
Narrated by Greg Tremblay
Caz
Narrated by Gary Furlong
Melinda
Narrated by Karen White
I was just on Audible browsing through the new releases list and discovered that it’s packed with Virtual Voice narrations choking out listings narrated by actual people. Do you know of a good alternate way to learn about new audio releases?
I’ve seen this issue being discusse in various Facebook groups. Someone posted a copy of the email they’d received in response to that question (How do I filter out the “virtual narration” titles?) and basically got a bog-standard non-response that Audible didn’t yet have a way of doing that.
It doesn’t seem to have filtered through to the UK site quite as badly so far, as I can still browse lists of new releases that are narrated by actual people. I’m sure it won’t be long. A lot of people are writing to Audible to complain – I think that until it really hits them in the £££/$$$ they won’t do anything. They clearly don’t care about their long-time customers, people who, like us, have spent lots of money on audiobooks over the years, and helping us to continue to do so. What it means for me is that I will narrow my searches down by narrator and author – names I already know – so it’s going to be even harder for new writers and voices to break through. It’s bad enough that AI is being used to produce so much crap that nobody wants to buy, but it’s going to seriously hurt authors and narrators and likely drive some of them out of the business of audiobooks entirely. It’s disgraceful.