I googled (as I have before) to figure out how to enable text-to-speech because they just included it again in their On Substack post. I arrived at your post. It's good to know there is nothing I can manually do to enable it. My posts still do not have it and yet the majority of those that I read have it enabled. I wish I could know why I am in the minority.
Cheryl, I was also hoping that ElevenLabs starter plan would be an ethical way to use AI to solve this. (Related article) But they just came out with an AI music feature that seems not to be ethical. So they are off my ethical shoestring tool list.
Have you experimented with recording manual voiceovers or using any AI tools?
I was really hoping after I saw Jasmine’s post that we all can have automated voiceovers now. Still not, I guess 🙁 It would be Really Good for Substack to fix this inequity.
I just ended up here as Substack's newsletter mentioned it.... and it's not available on my posts, with no ability to change the "narrator" for "Publishers with TTS enabled."
Oh wow, that’s a bummer - I didn’t realize TTS still wasn’t enabled yet for everyone’s newsletters. My only suggestion is to try using that ‘beta signup’ link I used months ago, and see if it gets you in the queue for TTS enablement. I don’t have any indication or proof that this is what got TTS enabled for me, but since it apparently isn’t universal, that’s my best guess as to how I got it.
It's been 2.5 weeks; no word yet on being allowed into the beta program for automated voiceovers. So far I've manually recorded 4 post voiceovers for a total of about 32 minutes. The recording process wasn't as painful and repetitive as I feared. The audio time runs about 50-100% longer than the estimated reading time. I'm not sure yet where to see in the post metrics whether anyone has played the audio.
I am exploring how to add to my regular weekly productivity process to record my own (reading them outloud)
I googled (as I have before) to figure out how to enable text-to-speech because they just included it again in their On Substack post. I arrived at your post. It's good to know there is nothing I can manually do to enable it. My posts still do not have it and yet the majority of those that I read have it enabled. I wish I could know why I am in the minority.
Cheryl, I was also hoping that ElevenLabs starter plan would be an ethical way to use AI to solve this. (Related article) But they just came out with an AI music feature that seems not to be ethical. So they are off my ethical shoestring tool list.
Have you experimented with recording manual voiceovers or using any AI tools?
I was really hoping after I saw Jasmine’s post that we all can have automated voiceovers now. Still not, I guess 🙁 It would be Really Good for Substack to fix this inequity.
I just ended up here as Substack's newsletter mentioned it.... and it's not available on my posts, with no ability to change the "narrator" for "Publishers with TTS enabled."
Dear Substack, I'd like to enable TTS!
Oh wow, that’s a bummer - I didn’t realize TTS still wasn’t enabled yet for everyone’s newsletters. My only suggestion is to try using that ‘beta signup’ link I used months ago, and see if it gets you in the queue for TTS enablement. I don’t have any indication or proof that this is what got TTS enabled for me, but since it apparently isn’t universal, that’s my best guess as to how I got it.
It's been 2.5 weeks; no word yet on being allowed into the beta program for automated voiceovers. So far I've manually recorded 4 post voiceovers for a total of about 32 minutes. The recording process wasn't as painful and repetitive as I feared. The audio time runs about 50-100% longer than the estimated reading time. I'm not sure yet where to see in the post metrics whether anyone has played the audio.
Here’s another: https://open.substack.com/pub/eleanormills/p/eleanors-letter-its-official-queenagers?r=3ht54r
I found one publication that appears to have automatic Text To Speech enabled: it’s audible on this insightful Mother’s Day post - https://open.substack.com/pub/toooldforthis/p/my-mothers-death-was-the-best-thing?r=3ht54r