Add a Soundtrack to Your Reading Experience with Booktrack

Sep 10

Add a Soundtrack to Your Reading Experience with Booktrack →

Meg Rayford viaTech Cocktail

Your favorite movies have their own unique soundtracks, and now your favorite books can, too. Founded by Paul Cameron, Booktrack is a startup that is changing reading – and the publishing industry – forever.

Booktrack creates synchronized soundtracks for ebooks to enhance the reader’s imagination and engagement. Combining music, sound effects and ambient sound, Booktrack’s technology automatically paces itself to an individual’s reading speed.

I mentioned the idea of a ‘booktrack’ to some friends last night, and it elicited a surprisingly heated response from several, who seemed almost angry at the audacity of those that would ordain what music should accompany the reading of a book. But, I wondered, don’t you accept the idea that there is a soundtrack in a movie? But my friends went on grumbling, even after agreeing that there was a certain authoritarianism in a movie soundtrack as well, but they maintained that book reading was a soliltary activity, and a s a result, no one should get in between the words and your mind.

Wow. I have a feeling this may not catch on with everyone.

This reminds me of websites with music— 99% of the time, I navigate away or turn the distracting music off. If I want music while I’m reading, I’ll select it myself, end of story, especially since I doubt anyone will really be able to correctly determine the right speed to play soundtracks at while their readers are reading. Movie soundtracks work because everyone watches a movie at the same pace; you can’t say the same for ebooks. And you have to wonder how it would handle skipping back and forth for information.

That said, I’m kind of surprised how much this idea annoys me. I know I would rage if I ever found a book that made me have it on, and I’d definitely turn it off by default if I could.

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8 months ago Source: underpaidgenius