# Audio-Based Understanding of Audiobook Narration Appeal

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.02473 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.02473/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04356/) (2022)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [DiffKendall: A Novel Approach for Few-Shot Learning with Differentiable Kendall's Rank Correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15317/) (2023)
- [Classification of Spontaneous and Scripted Speech for Multilingual Audio](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11896/) (2024)
- [Prosody Analysis of Audiobooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06930/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Narration is central to the audiobook listening experience, shaping how listeners engage with and understand the content. This work explores how narration qualities shape an audiobook's appeal, noting that their effects can vary by genre, title, and audience. We extract vocal and acoustic features (e.g., tone, pace, loudness) from LibriVox using pre-trained audio models and analyse their relationship with consumption data (specifically, view-rate) and their interplay with genre and title. Despite limited consumption data, we find that acoustic information alone has a robust association with appeal, even after accounting for title effects. We further validate these findings using more nuanced proprietary engagement metrics. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic computational study linking narration qualities, genre, title, and audiobook consumption, highlighting the potential of data-driven insights to improve audiobook personalisation and narrator casting.