Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bloomberg Media has a text-to-audio function on its app for multitaskers

Bloomberg Media introduced a text-to-audio function in its app and online with the hunch that commuters would prefer to multitask while getting their news, reports Lucinda Southern of Digiday.

Southern writes, “According to Julia Beizer, global chief product officer, adoption started off slow, particularly on mobile web, and shortly after launch, people were listening to two and a half stories on average per app session. Now, this has increased to six stories and has become the second-most popular media type on the app (behind live TV).

”Audio is particularly interesting for our audience because of that multitasking utility, that is a real news use case,’ said Beizer. ‘The delivery of journalism is changing to meet this moment, audio for a multitasking audience a huge tool in our toolkit.’

“Publishers like the Financial Times, which has a similar audience segment of global business decision makers, has been converting text to audio articles since last year and is seeing that people are coming back regularly to listen.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.