Another comment prompted by the LW channel page...

you have six months to download the audio in the podcast (once downloaded they’re yours forever)

If one is free to keep the files forever after downloading them once, why not call this "buy" instead of "subscribe" and give people the right to re-download the files at any time? I doubt you'd lose much money from that, and I expect that it might actually net you more sales. A big reason why I'm happy to use various digital stores is the knowledge that I can always re-download the files at any time if I have a hard drive crash, and don't need to worry about one more thing that I should keep backed up. Or I can even go on a spending spree and buy a big bunch of things at once, knowing that I'll only download a couple of them now and can grab the rest whenever I have the time for them. If there was a time limit on when I needed to download my purchases, I'd be a lot less likely to do that, since I might forget about it.

If you call this "subscribe" and give people a limited amount of time to download the stuff, you're making their mental frame of reference to be to other subscription services, which I expect is going to evaluate unfavorably. Five dollars to subscribe invites an automatic comparison to Spotify, which I currently pay five euros a month to subscribe to, and which gives me access to a lot more content. (Yes, your five dollars is for six months not one, but that's a System 2 distinction and people tend to use System 1 for these kinds of decisions.) In contrast, if you're calling it "buy", my mind goes "wow, 29 articles by a professional voice actor for only $4.99? That's a killer bargain!"

The founders of Castify are big fans of Less Wrong so their rolling out their beta with some of our content.

Twitch.

But seriously, this is great. I'm trying to get into the habit of using podcasts and recorded lectures to make better use of my time, especially while travelling.

I imagine the less technical the subject matter the more likely it is to be useful to listen to as a podcast. I only listen to podcasts when I'm out on errands and so I don't want to or have to devote much mental energy to get something out of the podcast.

So, by this heuristic, I think the quantum physics sequence is probably out and Yudkowsky's coming of age is probably in.

This lookes like it could be very good. I know some people who have started reading the sequences, were moderately interested, but then stopped as they did not have the time. I am definitely going to recomend this to them. In general, I am a big fan of audiobooks and podcasts for listening to in your spare time, and this combines the greatness of that with the super greatness of the sequences. A big thumbs up from me.

Minor interface tweak: most websites have taught me that if I click on the site logo at the top, I'll be taken back to the front page. I was expecting that to work on Castify as well, but it didn't, which delayed me for about half a second before I located the "Home" link. It's no big deal, but many users would probably prefer it if you followed the normal UI convention.

Speaking personally, I'm really put off by the payment model. You're presenting this as "$5 for a one-year subscription". Now, if this was "$5 for a one-year subscription to all our Less Wrong content, released regularly on the following schedule", then that would seem fair value for money. On the other hand, if it was "$5 to buy this sequence, and you can buy other sequences once we have them ready", then that would be okay, too. As is, though it's coming across as "$5 to subscribe to this sequence for one-year, plus more money to subscribe to any other sequences we put out when we have them, and if something happens to your files at some point in the future, then too bad; we'll charge you another $5 to get it again, despite the fact that we have your account information on file and know you paid us". And that is... not good. It strikes me as overly greedy, and to no real purpose, since you're not locking the files or anything so I don't get to play them after the subscription expires (incidentally, also a business model I would not support). To summarize: I'd willingly 'subscribe' to content that is coming out on a regular basis, or 'buy' content that is complete as is. I will not 'subscribe' to content complete as is, since the implication is that my right to the content is temporary and revocable.

What we're really interested in doing moving forward, aside from more sequences, is turning the promoted posts into a podcast. This would be offered as a paid monthly subscription.

We'd love the community's feedback on this.

Edit As suggested by somervta, if anyone is themselves interested in narrating some content, please get in touch with us. We'd love to get people familiar with LW content to help out with the load. When we start adding more channels, we expect our of main challenges to be keeping the quality of the readers high.

The free sample is pretty good. The reader is awesome. You've probably got my (monetary) support in the long run, though I'd like to see how it'd work with Kaj's suggestion about the business model. Getting new people to listen to the sequences would be easier if it doesn't look like there's any commitment, and/or if a sequence can be 'gifted' to someone.

The one nitpick or suggestion I might have, however, would be to have slightly longer pauses between main points / topics, to let everything sink in. The pacing of the reader is excellent, but Eliezer's writing can require some heavy mental juggling between concepts, so I would have put a bit more time spacing e.g. before and after the "It's tempting to try to eliminate (...) short and direct step, but it is still a step." paragraph to let the jump from the argument to the belief steps and from the steps to the tall building example sink in and run more smoothly.

I doubt this alone is worth re-editing all the audio, and it might just be specific to the sample article. Might be worth keeping in mind once you're doing the meat of things like Reductionism or Human's Guide to Words, though.

I realize that you have your own voice actors, but it might not be a bad idea to solicit some help from people already familiar with the whole LessWrong conceptspace. I know we have quite a few members with some excellent recording setups.

Making the Babyeaters/SuperHappy posts into an audio story might draw new people to the site.

I might be missing something obvious but I'm a bit confused about the subscription length. It says on this page that one has 6 months to download the podcast and that you keep them forever. However, it also says in two places that it is 4.99 for 1 year of access. What significance does the year have?

After a very short amount of time listening to a Text to Speech voice I now prefer it to almost any narrator. They are very good these days so I won't be making use of this.

Just something that jumped at me from the FAQ:

Do I need to create an account?

Yes. This way we can manage which channels you are subscribed to and allows you to sign in and change your Castify subscription status.

An awkward turn of phrase. Consider replacing "which" with "the" and "allows you to" with "let you". Or rephrase it completely.

Wow, this is such a great news for me. I listen to a lot of lectures and podcasts.

I see that there's an LW channel subscription page, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of preview that one could use before buying. I presume that there will be one?