The BeyondWords Player: Purpose-built for audio articles

At BeyondWords, we've spent a lot of time thinking about and building products to help modern news publishers bring captivating audio to all their stories.

One of those products is the BeyondWords Player.

When we founded BeyondWords, few news publishers made their articles available in audio. The few that did usually published just a handful of audio articles each week, often as podcasts on external streaming services like Acast or Spotify.

To make the audio available on their own websites and apps, publishers needed to manually embed an external player in each article. This made it difficult for publishers to use audio effectively within their workflows, and hence, many missed out on valuable opportunities to engage and retain readers.

In addition, it limited control over their audio UX, access to reliable analytics, and monetization opportunities.

Recognizing this gap, we built the BeyondWords Player to empower publishers to take ownership of audio, ensuring listeners the highest-quality audio UX embedded directly into the publisher's website or app.

The player gives audio the same strategic consideration as text and visuals, helping publishers transform every article into an opportunity for audio engagement. This meets the evolving expectations and preferences of news audiences.

La Nación in Argentina, RND in Germany, Today in Singapore, and The Financial Review in Australia are just a few news publishers already using our player to add captivating audio to their stories.

Automatic audio embedding

The player is natively integrated with the BeyondWords platform – every time you publish an article, the generated audio is embedded alongside it. The player can be rendered on any page using the embed script or automatically with the BeyondWords.js, WordPress, or Ghost integrations.

Because high-volume article production is crucial in newsrooms, whichever way you choose to integrate the player will eliminate the need to manually embed the audio in each article, bringing frictionless audio publishing to all your articles.

Engaging player widget

Unlike podcast players, the BeyondWords Player is purpose-built for news articles, sitting above the fold with an optional floating widget that enables readers to control playback without scrolling, encouraging engagement and reducing drop-off. Additionally, we've introduced controls that allow you to skip back and forth between paragraphs for intuitive article navigation.

Customizable user interface

You can switch between small, standard, or large player styles, customize the colors to align with your brand, or enable "headless mode" for a fully custom UI.

Interactive audio playback

We've developed a new way for readers to interact with articles. By clicking or tapping on any paragraph, readers can start or stop audio playback from anywhere on the page. The playback from segments feature allows readers to switch between reading and listening at their convenience, keeping them in control of how they consume content and engaged for longer.

Bi-modal reading

For those who prefer to read and listen simultaneously, you can enable a feature that synchronizes audio playback with dynamic paragraph highlighting, enhancing comprehension and creating a more immersive experience.

Built-in analytics

The BeyondWords Player has built-in analytics that enable you to gain precise insights into how your audience interacts with your audio content. Track metrics such as listen rates, listen time, listener retention, and more. These insights allow you to tailor experiences more effectively and make data-driven decisions to optimize your audio strategy.

You can access the analytics directly in the BeyondWords dashboard or through our analytics API. Moreover, you can augment your existing analytics setup with these audio-specific metrics via our analytics integrations, such as with Google Analytics, ensuring you have a comprehensive view of your audience's behavior across all platforms.

Seamless ad server integration

The BeyondWords Player supports advertising integrations through our built-in ad manager, which allows you to create and serve direct ads, giving you control over your audio revenue stream. You can also integrate with your preferred ad server, such as Google Ad Manager 360, DAX, AdsWizz, or Triton, through VAST, supported by the player's integration with the Google IMA SDK. This flexibility ensures that you can leverage your existing advertising relationships to open new opportunities for monetization through audio.

Play with audio

Personalized playlists

The player also supports playlists for multi-audio experiences, allowing publishers to curate playlists based on particular topics, authors, keywords, or other parameters. Subscribers can also create their personalized playlists.

Click play to listen to the playlist

Cross-platform compatibility

The player is open-source and crafted to deliver audio across all platforms. You can embed using the JavaScript SDK for web and mobile or utilize the iOS and Android SDKs in-app.

Player paywall integration (coming soon)

The upcoming player paywall integration will enable you to create tailored audio experiences for subscribers and non-subscribers. For example, you can restrict non-subscribers to limited previews to encourage them to log in or subscribe for the full audio. At the same time, subscribers can enjoy an ad-free, uninterrupted audio experience. This integration will allow you to leverage audio to drive subscriptions and enhance subscriber retention.

We've reimagined our player from the ground up, committing to enhancing user experiences for publishers and their audiences. With many exciting new features in the pipeline, we're dedicated to continuously innovating and improving the BeyondWords Player to meet modern publishers' and listeners' evolving needs.

To learn more about our player features, please visit our Docs and Guides, or drop us a line at [email protected].