| Hey HN, I built NarrateNow after noticing a pretty consistent pattern: blog readers engage more when there's an audio option, but the barrier to adding it is either "record yourself" or "pay for an enterprise tool with a demo call." Neither is realistic for an indie blogger or a small team running a content blog. So I built the simplest version I could think of. You drop one line into your site's <head>, and a floating audio player appears on every article automatically. No markup changes, no manual uploads, no config beyond that. How it works technically:
- JS snippet detects article content on page load
- Text is sent to the backend and converted via TTS
- Generated MP3 is cached in object storage and served via CDN
- On repeat visits, audio loads instantly from cache The whole integration takes about 60 seconds. I've kept the architecture intentionally simple. Free tier: 5 articles/month, male voice, watermarked player — enough to actually test it on a real site before committing.
Pro: $15/month for unlimited articles, both voices, and an unbranded widget. Still very early. I'd genuinely appreciate signups from people willing to kick the tyres — especially if you run a blog with decent traffic, since I want to stress test this under real conditions. narratenow.app Bugs, architecture questions, pricing feedback — all welcome in the comments. |