Edison Research at SSRS and Spoken, The AI Audiobook Company™, present findings from a blinded study of more than 1,000 U.S. fiction audiobook listeners.

Edison Research at SSRS randomized listeners into two cohorts. Each heard excerpts from the same sci-fi thriller audiobook, produced either with a single-narrator human recording or with Spoken AI multi-cast narration, and rated what they heard before learning how it was made.

Megan Lazovick, Vice President, Edison Research at SSRS, presented the findings alongside Philip Marshall, Founder & CEO of Spoken, The AI Audiobook Company™, which commissioned the study. Michele Cobb, Partner, Forté Business Consulting, moderated a Q&A session following the presentation.

The webinar discussed the data points relevant to the study’s key findings, including:

What do audiobook listeners want from narration?

    • Distinct voices for each character, especially among frequent listeners
    • Quality and immersion more than cost or celebrity

How do human and Spoken AI narration perform in a blinded test?

    • Human narration was rated higher for narrator exposition
    • Spoken AI narration was rated higher for multi-character scenes
    • Listeners who heard Spoken AI narration were just as likely to buy the audiobook as listeners who heard Human narration
    • Most couldn’t tell the difference between human and Spoken AI narration

What happened after it was revealed respondents heard AI?

    • Willingness to listen to an AI audiobook rose after hearing
    • Hearing AI narration changed minds

The study provides a timely resource for publishers, authors, narrators, audio producers, and marketers seeking to understand how consumer expectations for audiobook narration are shifting.

For media inquiries, please contact Megan Lazovick. 

Download the Report >>

Watch the Webinar on YouTube >>

 

About Spoken: 

Spoken, the AI Audiobook Company™, enables authors and publishers to create immersive, multi-voice audiobooks at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional production.

Purpose-built for storytelling, Spoken Multi-CastTM layers proprietary agentic AI with emotionally nuanced voice synthesis to deliver high-quality, character-driven performances.

Authors can choose from custom AI-generated voices crafted exclusively for their characters or AI-cloned voices from professional narrators, each of whom gets paid with every use. Spoken’s mission is to help storytellers tell stories in ways never before possible.  Learn more at www.spoken.press.

About Edison Research at SSRS

Edison Research at SSRS is the leading audio, media, and trends market research practice in the world. Through survey research and innovative measurement approaches, we provide landmark data and insights on consumer behavior and emerging trends in the U.S. and more than 66 countries worldwide.

Our world-renowned studies include Share of Ear®, the only single-source measure of all audio consumption in the U.S.; Edison Podcast Metrics™, the only survey-based measure of podcast listening in the U.S.; and The Infinite Dial®, the survey of record for media and technology trends since 1998.

Press Contact:  Karin Bandoian, kbandoian@ssrs.com