Listnr: Start a podcast without recording anything

Audio consumption, when compared to other media verticals like text, images, and videos, has been steadily growing over the past few years. So much so that Google is building an audio search engine. One that will solely focus on curating content in the audio vertical and making podcasts and audience discovery faster.

The sudden rise in audio consumption over the past few years can be attributed widely to the increase in audio creation and consumption platforms and tools that are empowering creators to churn out audio versions of their content to cater to a larger audience. Listnr happens to be one such tool that we are discussing today. It is an all-new podcasting solution that helps you convert blog posts into audio (speech) content, which you can distribute or embed across various online platforms. Listnr drastically brings down the barriers involved in Podcast production.

Let’s check out Listnr in detail and see how you can take use it to increase your content’s reach on the internet.

What is Listnr, and how does it work?

Listnr is a podcasting solution that helps you convert text into audio. You can use it to convert your blog posts or any other written content into speech and distribute it across different audio platforms. Founded by Anan Batra, Listnr offers support for over 100 voices, in 20+ languages including English (US, UK, Indian), German, and Spanish in both male and female versions, which you can use to diversify your content. Listnr is using the APIs from some of the best in the business – Google, Amazon and IBM.

One of the best things about Listnr is that you can either use its speech synthesis engine to transform your text into audio or upload your own audio.

In general, when you plan to start a podcast, you need two things: content and distribution platform. For the former, you can either record the entire episode talking yourself or convert a written piece of content into audio using a text-to-audio program like Listnr.

However, when it comes to distributing your podcast, there are numerous factors that you need to consider. Of these, one of the most crucial ones is ensuring your podcast gets a good reach. Although distribution platforms have a significant part to play in this, the vital constituent in the mix is how you present and optimize your podcast for these platforms.

This is where Listnr comes into the picture — to help you create episodes and customize them to your preference.

What can you do with Listnr?

By now, it’s well established that Listnr is a text-to-audio conversion tool of sorts that simplifies the podcast production process for you. But the question that still remains is, what all can you do with it?

Well, to put it simply, you can put Listnr to use to transform all your written content, be it blog posts, essays, etc., into audio — kind of like voice-over — and embed it in your blog/website or broadcast it on some other distribution platform. Likewise, you also get the ability to add voice-overs for your YouTube videos in a range of different languages on the platform to reach a diverse audience.

Besides, Listnr can even help you convert your e-books into their audiobook equivalent, which you can then distribute in an audio form over the internet.

Listnr Features

Now that you know what Listnr is and what you can use it for, here’s a quick rundown of its features that you can employ in producing, editing, and hosting your podcast.

1. Support for over 100 natural (human-sounding) voices in more than 22 different languages and more than 4 dialects.

2. Automatic RSS feed updates to update the RSS feed across all podcast platforms as soon as you upload new content.

3. Email subscribers feature to give your audience the ability to subscribe to your podcast right from the audio player using email capture.

4. Freedom to publish your podcast on popular hosting platforms like Spotify, Google Podcasts, Transistor, and more.

5. Social sharing to let you share your podcast on various social media handles such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.

How to use Listnr to create a podcast?

Creating a podcast is as simple as following a few steps. Here’s how.

Step 1. Go to Listnr and log in to your account. If you don’t have an account, create one.

Step 2. Click on the hamburger-like menu button on the top-left to expand the sidebar and choose Dashboard.

Step 3. On the Dashboard window, click on the Start a Podcast button.

Step 4. You will now be redirected to the Podcast Gallery. Here, click on the Create New Show button, and in the show form, fill in the details about your show. And hit Create a Show.

Step 5. Now, you have two options: you can either start your own show by using Listnr’s speech synthesis engine or upload your own audio and use Listnr’s hosting.

Step 6. With either option selected, add your episode script into the Show Editor window and customize its elements to your preference. Listnr allows you to change settings for speech emphasis, volume, rate, and pitch.

Listnr Pricing

Listnr is available as both a free (trial) and a paid service. With the free plan, you get a limited balance of 500 credits that you can use to convert 500 words per month. Since that won’t be sufficient for most users, Listnr also has three paid plans: Solo, Startup, and Agency.

The Solo plan costs $90 per year and allows 30,000-word conversions per month with free podcast hosting and 3 podcast shows. On the other hand, the Startup and the Agency plan come in at $200 and $500 per year, respectively, and they allow 5 podcast shows and access to some more functionalities.

It’s not like Listnr has no competition. There has been a surge in companies working on speech synthesis and deep learning algorithms to reproduce human-sounding voices. But Listnr is one of the few which provides the scale required to achieve greatness without breaking the bank. Take Play.ht for example. They charge $90 per year for a total of 120,000 words (translates to 10,000 words a month) and go up to $640 per year for 1,200,000 words. Listnr is roughly one-third cheaper.

As per its roadmap, Listnr is soon coming out with a Google Chrome extension that can convert any article into a podcast with just a click (like Podcastle.ai) and Podcast templates with intro/outro music like BuildBubbles. There’s also a mobile app in the works alongside a standalone podcast hosting platform. The best of the lot is the ability to Podcast in your own voice by uploading a 90-second voice clip and letting Listnr synthesize the podcast in your own voice.

Listnr Lifetime deal

Listnr is currently running a lifetime deal for its product on Dealify. It starts at just $69 for 45,000 words per month and goes up to $329 for 300,000 words per month. These are one-time payments to keep using the platform forever. Absolute steal. Check out Listnr LTD here.

Creating podcasts with Listnr

With a pretty straightforward process to transform blog posts and turn them into episodes and all the essential podcasting features, Listnr lowers the barrier to entry in the podcasting space, and in the process, makes it easier for anyone to create a podcast, modify it, and distribute it on any platform on the internet.

The ability to convert written content into audio, in particular, is one of the interesting functionalities of Listnr since you can use it to create audio versions of your blog posts and embed them on your websites to cater to those who prefer audio over text. And in turn, grow your audience.

Check out Listnr