Ask HN: Listen to HN articles as radio.

That said, with actual human readers this could go very well. I would like, though, to point out the possibly insurmountable issue that pops up every time someone has an idea like this: copyright.

It is a sad state the current copyright laws are in, and a good example of that is how they interfere with the creation of awesome services like this one. IANAL, and all that, but I strongly suspect you'd get hammered down hard if you didn't get explicit permission from the authors of every single article you broadcast.

So seriously, speak with a lawyer, please, before taking a single step with this. Perhaps you can find a workaround, or someway to do this regardless. Or maybe not. But at least you won't drown under a mass of lawsuits.

You might check out this startup: http://umanoapp.com/ which does almost exactly what you want. I don't know how the business model works exactly, but I would imagine that paying people to narrate would be fairly expensive.

You might also have a look at some of the stuff NPR is doing: http://www.npr.org/infiniteplayer/ http://www.npr.org/blogs/inside/2011/11/14/142303990/introdu... they are working on breaking the traditional radio show mold and queueing up individual stories based on personal recommendation.

http://thisdeveloperslife.com/