Apple bringing 'Spoken Editions' of publishers' content to iTunes

PanARMENIAN.Net - If you prefer listening to the news over reading the news, you'll soon have a new way to do so, via Apple'siTunes. In the near future, you'll be able to browse through a variety of podcasts focused on turning media publishers' articles and news into audio content, dubbed "Spoken Editions", AppleInsider says.

On iTunes, podcasts branded "Spoken Edition" will be short-form programs that offer listeners an audio version of the publisher's written content. That means you could "read" your favorite website or hear the news when you're doing other things - like walking your dog, commuting to work or working out at the gym, for example.

During early tests on iTunes, Spoken Editions for several media brands showed up.

Wired, for example, will launch Spoken Editions for "Business," "Science" and its homepage. TIME will offer a Spoken Edition called "The Brief." Forbes, .Mic, Bustle, Playboy, OZY, and - yep - TechCrunch (which I discovered while browsing our iTunes page, of all things) will have Spoken Editions, it seems, as all popped up for a time on iTunes.

The links to all the publishers' Spoken Editions have since been pulled, after our discovery and outreach.

For larger publishers, like Wired, iTunes also broke out the Spoken Editions into their own section: "Top Spoken Editions," which was found below the "Top Episodes."

This indicates that iTunes itself will be tweaked to better surface this particular type of audio content for users.