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p/play-htMaking AI speak better than humans.
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Arnie McKinnis

Play (for Medium) — Listen to Medium Stories with a Chrome Extension

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Play.ht (for Medium) is a Free Chrome Extension to Listen to any article on Medium as an Audio Narration.

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Dre Durrđź’ˇ
I love this. I can create a Medium Podcast of my favorite articles. Now If I can just increase the speed... Then it should be nominated for the Golden Kitty Award
Hammad
Maker
@dredurr yes speed and accents is something we thought about too! We shall definitely add them! Thanks for the feedback!
Shina Charles Memud
@dredurr honestly I can't believe this doesn't exist already, I was brainstorming on this about 2 weeks ago. @ma7moudfelfel .... random idea: is it possible to have it shown on the main screen (homepage) with Play Next option?
Mahmoud Felfel
Maker
@charlesmudy Even us didn't believe that no one has made it before :) And regarding your homepage idea, yes it is possible, we've been thinking of a feature like this actually, that will turn your homepage into a playlist.
Graham Seymour
@ma7moudfelfel @charlesmudy well, to be fair, there are already some "read it aloud" extensions in the Chrome Extensions store, but they're all terrible, esp. in comparison to this. :)
Josh
@dredurr This exists already (exactly!) in @NarroApp https://narro.co
✎ Andrew Warner
Would be a great mobile app.
Hammad
Maker
@andrewwarner Yup, we are working on it! Listening to articles on the go and creating your own playlists is something we really want!
Patrick J.
@andrewwarner There is already a mobile app for iOS for turning news sites (including Medium) into podcasts. It's called NewsBot. http://newsbot.mobi/ https://www.producthunt.com/tech... Disclaimer: I am the author of this app.
Josh
@andrewwarner @NarroApp offers both Android and iOS mobile apps with even greater flexibility! https://narro.co
Sarah A. Downey
@andrewwarner Came here to say this. The use case for desktop listening is pretty thin compared to mobile.
Arnie McKinnis
Hunter
If you write on @Medium ... this should interest you.
Hammad
Maker
@amckinnis thanks for sharing PLAY! We couldn't have done it with you!!
Arnie McKinnis
Hunter
@hammadh4 I also see you finally got the credit for being the MAKER!! Time get update your description, answer questions and keep the ball rolling!
Anthony Stylianou
Really like the idea behind this. Look forward to trying it. Are there any plans to go beyond Medium articles?
Hammad
Maker
@anthony_stylianou Yes! We have a couple of websites in mind. Which one are you thinking?
Josh
@anthony_stylianou If you're looking beyond Medium right now, check out @NarroApp https://narro.co and https://narro.co/apps
Arnie McKinnis
Hunter
The two gentlemen are the Makers of PLAY ... check them out. @hammadh4 and @ma7moudfelfel They deserve all the credit for the very cool Chrome Extension.
Arnie McKinnis
Hunter
@hammadh4 @ma7moudfelfel ... trying to get them approved as the "makers" ... until then, message for questions.
Martin Otyeka
This is life changing. I only ask for a female voice!
Hammad
Maker
@otymartin And you shall have it! ;) We are working on it.. We'll share the next version as soon as it's ready.
David Feng
This is great! Now I can listen to more than NPR while I work :) Medium is full of rich content and advice. Now for a Morgan Freeman voice. @ma7moudfeifei @amckinnis
Eduard Metzger
Wow, this actually works quite well!
Brandy Morgan
YES! As a Medium contributor and consumer this is awesome.
Mark Thomas McEwan
Love it - great job, wish it was an App already , could listen to some articles at the gym or out a run
Hammad
Maker
@marktmcewan Wouldn't that be great?! Being able to create playlists and listen to articles on the go is what we are working on now :)
Josh Pagley
This is awesome! Medium is one of my favorite sources of content. Audio is my favorite way to consume content. I get the best of both worlds now!
Stefano Zorzi
I like it. I aways have the need for something like this. Machine text to speech is not that great though. Not yet at least. Have you consider having real people reading the most popular posts?
Mahmoud Felfel
Maker
@stefanozorzi Thanks Stefano, have you tried it? Actually, we tried many services to find the one with the best quality and not so "robotic" voices, something that we would love to use ourselves. But even if TTS is getting better, the human speech quality is still much better, we will try to mix both soon, so if a human-narrated audio available get it, otherwise TTS. The most important thing to us is to give a good user experience by providing an "instant" narration of any article.
Eddie Pratt
Speech synthesis has come on leaps and bounds! Pity it doesn't have any info on the creators. Would be interesting to learn more.
Hammad
Maker
@prattarazzi We are here. What would you like to know?
Robert Nachum
Great product
Karn Malhotra
hehe excited! Especially given how much i love audible! Great job guys :)
Mat Sherman
This is actually pretty awesome. Medium podcasts? I'm in.
Yvan Scher
having a little trouble. doesnt seem to play on Chrome Version 53.0.2785.116 (64-bit)
Mahmoud Felfel
Maker
@yvanscher Thanks for trying and reporting this, will check and push a fix asap
Aidan Wolf
Awesome! Any way to increase the read speed though?
Hammad
Maker
@aidan Yup, working on it!
shem
That's absolutely should be a must for every publisher or blogging platform. I would love to see this kind of feature on all the readers app. For example @pocket added lately an option to listen to items but it not working so good. This is a great opportunity to change audience content consuming behavior and there's no reason to stop here and support only @medium.
Patrick J.
@shemag8 @pocket @medium This mobile app is an alternative for automatic podcast generation of news sites: https://www.producthunt.com/tech...
Josh
@shemag8 @pocket @medium If you're looking beyond Medium right now, check out @NarroApp https://narro.co and https://narro.co/apps
Enrique Benitez
I use Medium every day, and this extension is amazing, very useful, it's a must have from now on! As a suggestion, when you open a Medium story, the Play tooltip explaining about the play button is popping up every time. Making it appear only 1 time (the first time after installation) == better ux. Second thing, more voices would be great as well as listening at 2x 3x speed and so on. Thanks for this! ^^
Mahmoud Felfel
Maker
@bntzio Thanks Enrique for your amazing suggestions. Speed and voices features are coming soon. Regarding the tooltip, just the point of it was to get the user's attention as it is a new feature for him, at the beginning without it, we noticed some users didn't know where is the button from the first time. But you're right we should make it appears fewer times.