Review
I love having very important articles read to me that I would never have taken the time to read! In exploring topics that I formerly regarded as “secondary,” i.e.,articles that I didn’t agree with, my eyes have been opened to the severity of dangers to the U.S., it’s legal foundation, and our democracy. Now that I’m aware, I’m talking to my friends about my concerns and fears. Thank you for this superb compilation of readings and thank you for bringing them within my reach by reading them to me. The readers, too, are easy on the ears, and they don’t read too fast which allows me to absorb the material which sometimes requires deep reflection.
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Still buggy after all these updates
AUDM has great content though, as others have pointed out, has sparse offerings from some of the publications that may have attracted you. The app is a stripped down audio player with no bookmarking, cross device play is hit and miss if you use more than one device, forget trying to fast scrub by touch—it isn’t supported. The app stutters, does weird time indexing (buffer mishandling), inserts strange awkward pauses. “Did the article end?” “No it’s just pausing for irritating effect.” It is very difficult to recommend the service as implemented despite the great content. Today I could not get the app to play for several minutes without quitting the app repeatedly. Older devices crash the app. These are issues still present from prior versions! No bug fixes for 6 months. Today it lost my profile. I had to delete and reinstall. I discovered that even automated support is nonexistent.
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Great listening, app has missing features
The content on Audm is fabulous. Great narrative stories with excellent readers. The app, however, is frost rating. Like other reviewers said, I come here for long form journalism, compelling stories, and profiles. The feed is taken up by 5 min news clips. The Trending section needs to get refreshed for recency. A story about Hunter Biden’s laptop has been the top story for weeks. Who cares. I’d like to filter by story types- longform, profile, narrative journalism, crime etc. I would also like to follow publications. And the queue functionality needs improvement. Currently there is only the option to “play next”. I would like to play next, play later, play last like the Apple Podcasts app.
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Fabulous fabulous
Easy to use. Excellent content. Engaging voices. Good pacing. Incredible value.
If you are a person who often looks longingly after articles shared on Twitter that exist behind paywalls that you either can’t afford to pass or know you won’t have time to make it worth it if you did choose to subscribe, then this is absolutely for you.
I’ll be honest, if you don’t actively want to read more excellent articles, I am not sure it will create this desire for you, but if you have any inclination towards excellent journalism- I recommend this so much.
If you are a person who often looks longingly after articles shared on Twitter that exist behind paywalls that you either can’t afford to pass or know you won’t have time to make it worth it if you did choose to subscribe, then this is absolutely for you.
I’ll be honest, if you don’t actively want to read more excellent articles, I am not sure it will create this desire for you, but if you have any inclination towards excellent journalism- I recommend this so much.
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Too busy to read?? You can listen to great journalism
I love AUDM! Grocery shopping, loading and unloading the dishwasher and doing the laundry - along with endless other boring stuff I have to do - is now an opportunity to be catching up on terrific articles that I don’t have time to sit and read.
if you are in the same fix and don’t have enough time to sit and enjoy reading great articles, AUDM is godsend for frustrated readers, providing audio versions of great long form journalism from terrific publications and you get access to dozens of articles from an extensive list of magazines including The Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, New Yorker and many more. The monthly cost is best described as a screaming deal - I don’t know they do it, but I am just glad they do!
if you are in the same fix and don’t have enough time to sit and enjoy reading great articles, AUDM is godsend for frustrated readers, providing audio versions of great long form journalism from terrific publications and you get access to dozens of articles from an extensive list of magazines including The Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, New Yorker and many more. The monthly cost is best described as a screaming deal - I don’t know they do it, but I am just glad they do!
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Generally disappointing
Audio is very glitchy. There’s noticeable chirps between paragraphs and some sentences. Seeking is also painful, probably because of the quirky and questionable UI choice the developer team made to have the text of an article scroll in sync with the spoken words. Kinda a useless embellishment in my opinion, and it makes seeking forward in an article truly painful. Queue sorting is also buggy. Often sorting changes are lost, and more often the app will outright crash when trying to sort a playlist. On the subject of content, i feel a bit cheated by their claims of “professionally narrated content” (or something to that effect, in their marketing). Many articles, particularly those by NYT are narrated by the authors themselves, who are not necessarily professional narrators, a pretty obvious cost-cutting measure. The curation of content is also lacking, or perhaps just slow—i check back often but don’t see a meaningful amount of new articles posted on a frequent basis. By and large this app disappoints, but I’ve already paid for a year in advance so my only recourse is to publicly shame all the very rough edges. Their devs put some effort into refinement. There’s tons of potential here.
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Needs some additional features.
I love Audm for many reasons - especially the long form journalism from the New Yorker, Atlantic, NYT, Mother Jones, etc. However it would really benefit from some improvements.
1. It can be buggy and sometimes clears my history/queue unprompted. At other times it gets stuck on the same article (it keeps suggesting that I’m about to listen to an article that I listened to and cleared from my queue a couple of months ago).
2. Most frustrating is that there is no way to save certain articles that I’ve listened to and may wish to revisit later. It’d be helpful if there was a playlist feature that would allow me to sort and save different articles.
3. The content can be inconsistent. Sometimes I want to listen to all of the articles and sometimes there isn’t much added on a given day and nothing really appeals. Other times it gives you a part of a series but not all of the accompanying articles. Why only upload the introductory essay to a series on private equity firms from Mother Jones?
1. It can be buggy and sometimes clears my history/queue unprompted. At other times it gets stuck on the same article (it keeps suggesting that I’m about to listen to an article that I listened to and cleared from my queue a couple of months ago).
2. Most frustrating is that there is no way to save certain articles that I’ve listened to and may wish to revisit later. It’d be helpful if there was a playlist feature that would allow me to sort and save different articles.
3. The content can be inconsistent. Sometimes I want to listen to all of the articles and sometimes there isn’t much added on a given day and nothing really appeals. Other times it gives you a part of a series but not all of the accompanying articles. Why only upload the introductory essay to a series on private equity firms from Mother Jones?
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EXACTLY what I've been seeking
Not an audiobook, not a podcast, it's the articles I would read if I had the time. Excellent selections read by true professionals, it's truly a pleasure to listen to. And the best feature of all is that the text scrolls in time with the audio! So when they're reading names, for example, you don't need to guess at the spelling to google for more information. I can't believe no one has done this before. Apps like audible truly missed the boat on this one.
Without a doubt the best value subscription service I use. Highest recommendation!
Without a doubt the best value subscription service I use. Highest recommendation!
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Stop using NYT reporters as readers
I like Audm generally but a few things keep me from using it as often as I had hoped. My complaints-1) I’d like more longform pieces. When the feed is overrun by 5-10 minute short pieces and op-eds it’s disappointing. It’s the longer news stories, profiles, features, and investigative pieces that I really want from this app. Also, there are times when a long print piece from a participating publication will get a lot of attention on social media during the work week, and I will think “great, I will catch that on Audm this weekend” and it never appears. Or it takes several weeks. Not sure what’s happening there. 2) The car interface is annoying because you have to line up all of your preferred articles in a queue in advance. You can’t just play straight through the current news feed. 3) This is probably the most important item— please stop having NYTimes reporters read their own work. Stick to the professionals voice folks. It genuinely impacts the quality of my listening experience with this app, to the point that I will often just switch to another article, podcast, audiobook, or NPR because I just… cannot. It is a lot like listening to your classmate being made to read a passage out loud to the class— awkward, and sometimes even cringey, for listener and reader both.
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Great Idea - Needs More Content
Love the idea and what they do have available is high quality, but as someone who expected to be able to listen to 15+ pieces of quality journalism and writing monthly, it fell rather short. In my opinion, they need to add more sources ( e.g., Washington Post, LA Times, etc ) and I expect content updated bi- weekly for the price of the subscription. If you’re looking for a service that will allow you to listen to 10 or fewer, quality, long form pieces of journalism monthly for $8.99, this is money well spent. Anything more, and you’ll quickly run out of content. Unlike other reviewers, I had no App issues with my iPad Pro. Narration and sound quality outstanding.
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Horrible
This is a horrible app. The content is fine although you have to pay for things you are already paying for if you are a subscriber to any of the publications. Also, quite few articles are published here. But the really horrible part is the reading. Even if you set it to 2x speed it is mind boggling slow. The worst part however is that every time the article has a full stop the audio pauses for several seconds. As in many many seconds. So stressful and it really makes the app useless. iOS even things the audio has stopped so it pauses and restarts. Very strange. The pause is what you would expect between two articles but not something that happens hundreds of times in one article. Having listened to one article for 40 minutes, which should have taken maybe 20, I have never been more stressed ever. To preserve my health I have now deleted the app.
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Great idea but app issues make it unusable
The playback will consistently become stuck at the end of paragraphs for 5-10 seconds. More often than not, when it resumes playback it will have skipped the next paragraph. It’s really annoying to have the app playing while doing something else but have to go back into the app and force it to play a paragraph it skipped when suddenly the story doesn’t make any sense. Then it makes you wonder what other paragraphs it might have skipped that you didn’t notice, but I never have the patience to go back and check. It’s a great idea that I’d gladly pay the price they ask for if it worked as expected, but I’m finding the app unusable.
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A few improvements can bring this to the next level
Great concept overall, but could use a few improvements to make it even better:
- seemingly not up to date with newest articles with Audm recordings. I’ll see a new article on NYT’s own site with a play Audm recoding option but just can’t find that article on Audm. And then it will only show up after maybe a week on audm’s own app.
- there should be a link on each recording to the ORIGINAL publication source/website. so if viewers want to look at the pictures / illustrations accompanying each article they can easily do so.
- search feature is abysmally useless. Often I first see an article that has an Audm recording on an individual newspaper’s own site, then wanting to find it in Audm. I can type in that article’s name exactly as is from the publisher and the search will show nothing close to that article. Discovering an article should be much easier than that.
- No discovery mode, you can only filter by specific publishers and that limits you to the specific news publications you know, hard to discover interesting articles from other sources
- seemingly not up to date with newest articles with Audm recordings. I’ll see a new article on NYT’s own site with a play Audm recoding option but just can’t find that article on Audm. And then it will only show up after maybe a week on audm’s own app.
- there should be a link on each recording to the ORIGINAL publication source/website. so if viewers want to look at the pictures / illustrations accompanying each article they can easily do so.
- search feature is abysmally useless. Often I first see an article that has an Audm recording on an individual newspaper’s own site, then wanting to find it in Audm. I can type in that article’s name exactly as is from the publisher and the search will show nothing close to that article. Discovering an article should be much easier than that.
- No discovery mode, you can only filter by specific publishers and that limits you to the specific news publications you know, hard to discover interesting articles from other sources
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Authors reading their own pieces sound terrible; tech issues
Audm used to be a great app, but lately it has gotten bad. First, they have started allowing authors to read their own pieces (as opposed to qualified voice actors/readers). Many of the authors SOUND TERRIBLE. I’m sorry, I get no joy hearing an article read by someone with a heavy lisp and awful vocal fry. Second, would it kill them to expand the sources they use? I’d love to see Jacobin or some more cutting-edge journals/magazines featured, not the same things over and over and over again. Third, the app randomly will add and intersperse long pauses between paragraphs for no reason, and/or crash.
Please stop having authors read articles. It adds nothing. Use your professional voice actors, the ones we pay for to read these pieces. And please, add some more sources and fix your tech.
Please stop having authors read articles. It adds nothing. Use your professional voice actors, the ones we pay for to read these pieces. And please, add some more sources and fix your tech.
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Too many short NYT columns read by author themselves
I have been using this app for nearly 2 years now and I have been enjoying it. There are still some longstanding pesky bugs and issues with the usability, but that's not what I'm here for. Since NYT acquired Audm, this app changed for the worse. Previously Audm mostly marketed itself as an app for verified longform articles, which were read by professional narrators. I liked it a lot. But since the acquisition, Audm is full of short NYT columns or op-eds which don't have much info. Sure, NYT has good articles too; but what NYT pushes to Audm are short columns that are mostly not very informational. And worse still, those short NYT columns are *read by the reporters*. Where have the professional narrators gone? Sure, some of the reporters have really good voices clear pronunciation, but the quality of the narration varies a lot depending on who reads it. Why all NYT articles should be read by the authors themselves? They are not professional narrators. Can Audm please come back to its old self, the app with verified good-quality longform articles, read by pro narrators?
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I want to like this
Second time around subscribing hoping the scope quantity would have increased, but the articles that are available just don’t seem to be the ones from the publications that I would like to hear. Not sure why expected all articles to be read from these magazines, not a fair expectation, just not sure how they choose with articles to read. Wish they were the ones that I wanted to read. Also, the refresh of new content seems very slow. Today get the writer a mic one piece of software, Audm should do slight edits and boom, much more content. But again no idea their business model so…Kinda just venting. Going to cancel and try again in another year
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Great content in a simple interface
I started listening to articles in Audm during the height of the pandemic. When stuck at home all the time, staring at my screens too much, it was such a relief to close my eyes and listen to high quality recordings. I prefer Audm articles over podcasts because they're polished and professional, and also over audiobooks because they're short enough that I can explore a lot of different topics. This is probably the content subscription that I use the most right now, since it doesn't present the same decision paralysis problems as TV / movie apps.
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Life-changing app, Incredible articles!
I live in LA and I’m in the car a lot. I love my New Yorker and Atlantic, but don’t always have time to plow through the long-form articles… though I want to, since they tend to be well-researched and beautifully written - not to mention about fascinating topics. This app has changed all that. I can “listen” to all these amazing articles by having them read to me by fabulous voiceover artists while driving. What a treat! Worth every penny. The other bonus is I’ve stumbled across terrific pieces from other magazines I don’t normally pick up. It has seriously broadened the depth of my knowledge in many different areas. Highly recommend!!
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Used to be better
I enjoyed Audm for quite a while but lately its range has narrowed considerably. Only about three new stories appear per day, mostly about lefty politics, edgy cultural issues and trending entertainment figures. I could not care less about most of these issues. Only by delving into the archives can I find the long-form narratives about adventures, crime, etc that I used to enjoy on Audm.
I’m spending much more time on Curio these days. There, I can hear more stories on psychology, technology, economic trends, philosophy, etc., along with the sorts of topics that Audm covers.
I’ll probably renew my Audm subscription this year, since it’s fairly inexpensive on a yearly basis, but I’d be much happier if it broadened its scope.
I’m spending much more time on Curio these days. There, I can hear more stories on psychology, technology, economic trends, philosophy, etc., along with the sorts of topics that Audm covers.
I’ll probably renew my Audm subscription this year, since it’s fairly inexpensive on a yearly basis, but I’d be much happier if it broadened its scope.
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My favorite app
I really love this app. I really like the longer pieces, and the people who do the audio are top notch. The writing featured on Audm does contain some current events and news, but I prefer the typically longer profile pieces, in depth reporting, narrative nonfiction, etc. I find myself most often selecting articles by the Atavist, Outdoor Magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times Sunday articles, just to name a few.
The overall design and UI is great. I really wouldn’t change a thing, except that I find myself running short on articles some weeks. Don’t get me wrong, there’s tons of content on Audm, but I use this app constantly.
The overall design and UI is great. I really wouldn’t change a thing, except that I find myself running short on articles some weeks. Don’t get me wrong, there’s tons of content on Audm, but I use this app constantly.
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