Audm Lets You Listen to Full Journalism Instead of Reading It
iOS: I love podcasts. I love them in my car; I love them when I train. I even put on a podcast when I shower – mostly to help me get through the too long queue.
Although I can read much faster than I can listen, I cannot read wherever I go. (See the previous list of examples.) For this reason, I was also intrigued by the Audm app for iOS, which gives you daily carefully curated journalism articles that others read. It’s not really a podcast, but it’s great for getting to know what’s going on in the world in a way that matches your horrific commute.
I’ll get rid of the bad news first: Since this whole venture costs money, Audm is free to download, but you can’t do anything with the app unless you sign up for the monthly ($ 7) or annual plan. plan (billed at $ 5 per month). You do get a three-day free trial, but that doesn’t give you much wiggle room to cancel before the fee arrives.
If you don’t want to worry about it, I signed up so you don’t have to do it, and this is what I liked the most about Audm.
Pretty solid content, with some gimmicks
Most of the lengthy journalistic material I’m likely to find online and spend half an hour reading at lunch is right in Audm. I counted and there were 49 different publishers to choose from (including the original Audm content), including reputable journalists like Esquire , Harper’s Bazaar , The New Yorker , Texas Monthly and, my personal favorite, Outside Magazine . (I love good climbing articles.)
You will want to have different tastes, as you shouldn’t expect a regular, daily cadence of content to listen to. To use my example, Outside Magazine had just five articles published on Audm throughout April. Magazines like The New Yorker are better off as they publish several new releases weekly. However, there is no such thing in the daily news; However, it will open up your interests a little, and you will have something to listen to on your daily commute.
Unlike your favorite podcast app, you can’t subscribe to publishers on Audm. Instead, you’ll have to check different publishers to see if they have any new content worth listening to – assuming there isn’t some notification in the Audm sidebar that I’m missing as I’m stuck on limited by time trial period. … At least the app has an “all” channel that can be used to find stories to listen to, although there is no way to list the content chronologically.
Listening experience
Aside from these issues, the app cleverly handles the task of presenting podcast-style stories. You can queue up stories you want to hear and they’ll all be told by real people – much better than listening to a thirty-minute story told by Siri. The voiceovers themselves feel more like an audiobook than NPR or This American Life , so I definitely recommend taking advantage of the Audm free trial to see if you enjoy the style. If not, make sure you cancel in time.
I was pleased that Audm is CarPlay compatible, which means that you can listen to the app through your car’s dashboard system without any problems. The playback controls are limited – only 15 seconds back and forth, as well as the speed switch (which I recommend raising a little as readers of the article can drag and drop).
One small feature that I particularly like is that you can set the length of time an article is posted – useful if you want to take a 30 minute reading break and don’t want to mess with having to set a separate timer on your device. One feature I’m particularly missing is the ability to stream your article’s narrative to one of your smart columns, which would be even more ideal.
Despite the ease of function and organization, Audm makes up for this with a significant amount of generic content that you can easily listen to rather than read. The app is not perfect, but it occupies its own niche. And if you don’t like it, there are many other options, including Curio and Noa . While Audm is iOS-only for now, the website claims an Android version is coming soon, and the app’s Twitter feed seems to confirm this .