By building features directly around the habits and behaviors of its audience, Storytel is making the audiobook experience more frictionless than ever. The two latest AI-powered features Recaps and Sleep Timer Recaps are designed to solve the problem of "where did I leave off?", and ultimately help users finish more books. Following a successful pilot in Sweden, these AI-powered features are now expanding to more markets. The idea is to provide concise recaps of previous plot points, ensuring a seamless transition back into the story – whether the user paused for a week or just fell asleep mid-chapter.
Storytel’s new Recaps feature is designed for the modern, multi-format book lover. By providing AI-powered recaps of previous listening sessions, users can quickly orient themselves before they hit play. It’s perfect for those picking up a series after a break, or after reading a physical book and switching to the audiobook. Recaps then help identify exactly where the audio picks up and help users finish more stories.
Internal data shows that over 100,000 users in Sweden alone use Storytel’s sleep timer every night, but 63% struggle the next morning to find the exact moment they drifted off. The Sleep Timer Recaps automatically generates a summary of the section played while the timer was active. When the listener wakes up, they are greeted with a brief overview of what they missed, allowing them to jump back to the right moment without the frustration of manual rewinding.
“By launching Recaps, we are making sure that the story always picks up where the listener’s consciousness left off. We know life is full of interruptions, so by refreshing the memory, we’re making the audiobook experience easier, more fluid, and ultimately, adapted to human behaviour”, says Johan Ståhle, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Storytel.
Recaps use AI technology to help users catch up, but the work of authors and narrators stays protected. The rollout has already begun in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands and Bulgaria, and the features are initially available on thousands of titles in the Storytel catalog, with plans to gradually expand across the entire library and to more markets throughout the year.
