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12 Comments

Destroy this idea

Please destroy this idea. Murder it. Tear it apart and make sure it doesn't survive.

A product that turns any email newsletter into a podcast.

My product converts email newsletters into a podcast format using AI voices, and allows users to add them to their podcast app automatically.

Does this sound like something you would use?
  1. Heck yeah
  2. No way
Vote
  1. 2

    The point of newsletter is that I can briefly go through it. I don't have time to listen podcast.
    I see one application of your idea — I can listen to all my newsletter while driving.

    1. 1

      Yeah that's the idea! I have like 15+ newsletters and I literally can't get through them, so this way I can listen to them while I cook breakfast at a faster speed.

      1. 1

        So what's the stack? Wavenet for voiceover and GTP-3 for summarising? Sounds expensive.
        What will be the price?

        1. 1

          Cost on our side is pennies per conversion, the price for the user is going to be on the order of dollars per month!

          The tech for voice Polly for now. Moving to WellSaid if the pricing makes sense. Were doing our own summarizing - no GPT3.

          Out of curiosity, what would you pay for this?

          1. 1

            You asked to destroy the idea, so I'll be honest.
            I'm not that person who subscribed to every newsletter on the planet. That means I'm okay to go through CB Insights or Trends.co and actually read. Also, I'm not reading every single one, only if subject is appealing.
            I don't have Amazon Alexa, Google Home or Apple Homepod as well. And I'm not using Siri on my iPhone.
            With that being said, I won't pay for this product. I'm not the right audience probably.

            But! I'll give you an example. https://www.descript.com/ — saw this on PH a while ago. I'm not a podcast creator and not the right audience here as well. But when I saw how easy you can change the word after the recording using Descript, something triggered in my head. I wanted to buy it badly and started thinking what I can do with it.

            1. 1

              Thanks for the feedback. Do you subscribe to any daily / weekly newsletters?

              Descript is incredible and I love using it.

  2. 1

    Honestly, in my opinion I believe this is a good idea because it has several good purposes apart for the purpose it was made for. The concept could be used by many people such as streamer's notification announcers if the voices are different to the others that are out there already as it will create a new feel to the streaming platforms and make them feel less generic.

  3. 1

    At first didn't see any real use, but was thinking for me only.
    But maybe people with trouble visions or blind people might have use of that, i don't really know. But this means that this probably exists, not with newsletter to podcast but more with every text on the screen to audio.

    1. 1

      Hi Thomas, yes. Speechify has done an incredible job making articles and websites more accessible for people with reading impairments.

      1. 1

        What is the client niche you were targeting with this project?

  4. 1

    I think a better idea would be to have the AI do a TL;DR and then have that output in podcast form

    1. 1

      Have you seen blinkist? Summarization is pretty big right now. Curious about your thoughts on how much value summaries add to medium length articles/newsletters.

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