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Categorize the Browse Experience
We’ve changed the way categories are displayed in the desktop application. When users are in the Browse screen, the new vertical layout for categories gives them a clearer sense for how your content library is organized. The new display allows you to guide your users through Categories of content as they scroll down the page–just remember to adjust the category order in the Application Administration section of the Management Console to maximize the curation possibilities.
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Video Subtitles on Desktop
We've extended platform subtitles on video to the desktop application, giving you the power to offer closed captions for enhanced accessibility or translations so users can enjoy content in their preferred language. By adding synchronized text to your video content, you can broaden audience reach and engagement.
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Larger touch areas
We've continued to expand the touch areas of buttons throughout the mobile app, ensuring that actions are easier and more reliable on the first try. This enhancement makes navigating the mobile application smoother and more efficient.
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Personalized Play Now Section
The new Play Now section in the mobile and desktop applications is tuned to each audience member’s listening history. It automatically updates to display the most recent episode the user hasn’t completed, ensuring that the promoted content is always relevant, fresh, and engaging every time your audience logs in.
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Mobile App Infrastructure Upgrades
We have taken advantage of Summer’s change of pace to upgrade our mobile application infrastructure. While these changes aren’t visibly exciting to users, they allow our engineers to work faster and they increase our system and code resilience, all important things for ensuring you have the scale and stability you depend on.
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Product Health Checks
If you haven’t already had yours, please reach out to our team to review your configurations and usage. Our goal is to ensure you are maximizing your streaming program success. If you are the account owner, you’ll be hearing from us in September as we begin scheduling Q4 meetings. If you're eager to get started, use this scheduling link to select a convenient time for your Product Health Check.
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New Audience Support Policy
To ensure transparency and keep account owners fully informed, we are formalizing a policy across all accounts to copy account owners on support desk conversations with audience members. This way, you can rest assured that you have complete visibility into any issues your audience may be experiencing.
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Read along
We’re very excited about our upcoming read-along feature, where the audio track in your content is automatically converted to a companion transcript upon media upload, and then presented to your audience in real-time as content is streaming. This not only caters to different learning styles, it allows users to follow along, skim, or jump to the most interesting parts of content, creating more utility and efficiency in your streaming app experience.
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Brighter, bolder colors
Admins and audience members alike have enjoyed a more modern, custom and immersive application experience with the use of background colors from thumbnail artwork. Our new color extraction method takes this a step further by using a rich color palette to draw the audience into the content. In some cases, you may notice the existing splash color on your shows and episodes is a slightly bolder and crisper color choice.
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Mobile Player update
We are working to extend our in-app mobile media player, adding more ways for users to interact with content like adding it to their playlist, reading the episode description, giving feedback, downloading, and navigating through the transcript. This update sets the stage for a progressively more featured player.
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Text Automation Improvements
We’re busy upgrading our platform to automate the creation of “text tracks,” i.e. closed captions, subtitles, and transcripts for every piece of content uploaded. These improvements lay the groundwork for two powerful upcoming features: Read-Along Transcripts and Translations, making it effortless to expand your content’s reach without any extra work for administrators.
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Stream Anywhere Embeds
We are working on a next-generation media player that allows you to embed mini app experiences directly into the applications your audiences use daily. These mini streaming apps will allow you to embed entire shows or playlists while also giving users the ability to interact with content via buttons such as “save for later,” “follow,” and “add to playlist” options.
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“News” is now “Featured”
Be sure to use the newly rebranded Featured section of our apps to draw attention to new or evergreen content. Learn more here: Featured.
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My Library Revamp
Usage of My Library has been steadily increasing since we released a mobile redesign and the addition of Latest Content. Learn more about the changes and discover how to help your audience get the most value out of My Library.
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Play Now!
Making new content readily available, our Play Now promotion on the Browse screen is already accounting for a significant number of plays in the mobile and desktop streaming applications. Learn more here: Play Now section.
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Have you checked your feedback lately? Regularly requesting and checking feedback helps your content creators tweak their recordings to optimize engagement. |
