Apple News to Include Audio?

Apple is currently in the works of bringing audio to its Apple News subscription service in an attempt to expand the amount of content it supplies to service users in the form of other mediums. According to sources at Digiday, Apple has been in talks with several major news publishers to ask permission to take their written work and turn it into audio/video news posts. Production costs would be covered by themselves and publishers would be compensated using the same methods as written articles.

Sources suggest that this is not how publishers would like to move forward if they were to be involved with this project but would rather propose their own works to Apple. This response would most likely be due to concerns over copyright and intellectual property.

This move by Apple looks to be in response to Google’s attempt at audio-form news which they launched in November of last year, and the New York Times recent acquisition of company Audm. Audm is known for its work in transforming lengthy written articles into short-form audio clips. 

It has been reported several times in the past that Apple has been looking to invest in its own audio content but most suggested that this would involve the company creating original Podcasts, although there aren’t any monetized Podcast services at current so it is hard to see how Apple could make money from this without a huge mass of adverts, which would surely put many people off, but with Apple, never say never.

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JP Creer
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