Text-to-Speech

Listen to this article instead ▶ 0:00 / 0:00 0.75× 1× 1.25× 1.5× 2× Your browser does not support the audio element Seven years ago I used Google’s text-to-speech API to create audio versions of my posts. There was a Python script that parsed the Markdown file, cleaned it up, chunked it to stay under Google’s 5000 byte limit, convert each chunk to an MP3, stitch them together, and finally embed the resulting file with a Hugo shortcode that is essentiall a fancy <audio> tag. It worked, it was free1, and I was pretty pleased with it. The little audio player has been sitting at the top of my posts ever since. ...

Audio is big. Like, really big, and growing fast, to the tune of “two-thirds of the population listens to online audio” and “weekly online listeners reporting an average nearly 17 hours of listening in the last week”1. These numbers include all kinds of audio, from online radio stations, audiobooks, streaming services and podcasts (hi Spotify!). It makes sense too. Consuming audio content is easier to consume and more engaging than written content while you’re on the go, exercising, commuting or doing household chores2. But what do you do if you’re like me and don’t have the time or recording equipment to ride this podcasting wave, and just write the occasional blog post? ...