Amazon Buys Wondery for?

 Though most recently have been looking through podcast offerings, had not heard of Wondery.    Note too that Amazon now also has the talking book system Audible, which I have also used.   All these deal with the interaction of voice and text, which made me think.   In general podcasts are very useful in delivering (usually) narrow chunks of information.  Podcasts are interesting, but the way they are delivered can be difficult to use effectively. I also found Audible also hard to use in that way.   Is this an attempt to pull to pull the broader idea of textual knowledge together and more easy to use?   Or as the article suggests, a means of connecting content providers?  More like the Spotify direction also mentioned?    I like the idea of immersive knowledge delivery.  

Amazon buys Wondery, setting itself up to compete against Spotify for Podcast Domination

Wondery is now part of Amazon Music

By Ashley Carman@ashleyrcarman in theVerge

Wondery, one of the last major independent podcast networks, is now owned by Amazon. The companies announced the deal today, ending speculation about who might eventually buy the network, which is most well-known for true crime podcasts like Dirty John. (Apple and Sony were also reported to have at least discussed a possible purchase.)

Amazon didn’t disclose the acquisition price, although earlier reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal suggested Wondery’s value was at least $300 million. Wondery is technically now part of Amazon Music, which launched podcast support in September this year.

The acquisition is a notable one, if only because it sets Amazon up to better compete against Spotify, which has been acquiring networks and exclusive talent for over a year. Amazon says this Wondery deal doesn’t change existing shows — they’ll still be available through “a variety of providers.” But Amazon says it hopes buying Wondery will “accelerate the growth and evolution of podcasts by bringing creators, hosts, and immersive experiences to even more listeners across the globe.” ... ' 

More on Imminent Audible Captioning

Recently have been reading/hearing long texts in Audible and Kindle,  usually non-fiction.   So gaining an appreciation for the difference in the way we utilize recorded knowledge in varying contexts.  Having the option of having it read to us is good, but seeing it in context provides better retention and integration.     And also has implications for accessibility.   Which leads to this new article in ArsTechnica, considerable additional discussion there:

Seven of the nation's top book publishers sued Amazon subsidiary Audible on Friday, asking federal courts to block the company from releasing a new feature called Audible Captions that's due out next month. The technology does exactly what it sounds like: display text captions on the screen of your phone or tablet as the corresponding words are read in the audio file.

The publishers argue that this is straight-up copyright infringement. In their view, the law gives them the right to control the distribution of their books in different formats. Audio is a different format from text, they reason, so Audible needs a separate license.  ......

The caption feature "is not and was never intended to be a book," Audible explained in an online statement following the lawsuit. "Listeners cannot read at their own pace or flip through pages as they could with a print book or eBook." Instead, the purpose is to allow "listeners to follow along with a few lines of machine-generated text as they listen to the audio performance."

"We disagree with the claims that this violates any rights and look forward to working with publishers and members of the professional creative community to help them better understand the educational and accessibility benefits of this innovation," Audible added.  ... "

Captioning Audible Books

The idea below is a kind of captioning of audio from a a book being read to you.    Gives you two streams, audio and visual, for a given book.    I would find this useful, sometimes one or the other works better, also seems its useful for accessibility as well.  Sometimes I want to 'reread' a section of text I may not have understood audibly, and that's usually easier to visually scan than hear.  Also good for things that are best shown rather than described, like pictures or charts or equations.   Had thought a number of times that captions would be useful.   A recent book on Leonardo kept pointing me to a pdf for painting illustrations, those could have been made accessible in captions.

But it seems some publishers believe its giving too much away:

Publishers are pissed about Amazon’s upcoming Audible Captions feature
Some are asking for their books to be withheld from the feature
By Andrew Liptak  @AndrewLiptak  in TheVerge ... 

Amazon Audible Team

Have examined various kinds of audible experiences, including book reading online.  Here is the Audible team from Amazon.