What is it?
Audio erotica is exactly what it sounds like – sexy stories that are recorded for your listening pleasure!
What are the benefits?
Audio erotica offers a lot of conveniences. You can listen in the dark and with your eyes closed, which is not only great if you like to knock out after solo playtime, but also offers an accessible option for those with visual disabilities. With a pair of headphones, it can become a private smut activity in public, like while riding a packed train or sunbathing on the beach. And, for those who enjoy imagining themselves within a storyline, or creating their own visuals in their head, audio erotica offers the plot while you do all the casting.
Why do people choose this over reading or visual erotica?
For the same reason you might put on a podcast or audiobook, there is something about listening, rather than reading or watching, that makes audio erotica a good way to unwind. Many people, particularly women, already use fantasy or imagination for their erotic inspiration and audio erotica offers a gentle next-level step for enhancing the experience.
Those who enjoy dirty talk and phone sex can attest that hearing the voices and sex sounds of others is a big turn-on… one that can equally be satisfied by audio erotica. It’s especially perfect for those with narratophilia, or folks who are particularly into having a fantasy, or anything else they find sexy, narrated to them.
Lastly, audio erotica creates the opportunity to imagine whoever you’d like to see within a sexual scene. This can be a welcome reprieve from the prioritization of certain body types and/or fetishization of others that mainstream pornography is inundated with. Instead, audio erotica offers an empowering chance to cast who you’d like to see, including yourself, in a way that feels aligned with your sexual interests and potentially less misaligned with your values.
I’m sold! Where can I find some audio erotica?
This is an industry that has been gaining traction for quite some time, which means there are options everywhere! Below is a mix of established companies and solo entrepreneurs offering audio erotica that will be sure to inspire your sexy time.
Audiobooks by Zane
Zane is the pen name of a New York Times bestselling erotica author who centers Black women’s sexuality. She has written and published dozens of books, many of which have audiobook options for sale.
Audible Audiobooks of Zane’s work range from around $2.50 – $30/book.
Dipsea Stories
This monthly subscription service was founded by Gina Gutierrez & Faye Keegan who were seeking to create stories they could connect with – which they found lacking in other spaces. The team at Dipsea writes, records, and edits their own audio-erotic material that is “consensual, feminist, and sex-positive” through contracting paid writers and voice actors for their hundreds of 10-25 minute stories. This page is geared towards women but has stories for several genders. Over fifty percent of their characters are voiced by POC actors, and over twenty five percent of their stories are queer.
IPhone and Spotify users can access a sample of free stories and anyone can access a free trial. A monthly subscription is $12.99 and an annual subscription is $59.99.
Lala’s Bedtime Tales: Erotic Stories
Sexual health educator and erotica author, Lala shares audio erotica on her podcast, “Lala’s Bedtime Tales: Erotic Stories.” She describes her erotic podcast as “female-friendly, inclusive, and sex-positive” offering “sexy and salacious tales that explore sexual pleasure and sexual experiences across many book genres.”
New (free) podcast episodes are released every 2 weeks. Additional content is available via a Patreon membership.
OhCleo
This is a platform where individual creators can share their work. Content creators set their own prices and users can search for erotica by following their favorites and by searching for specific genres, sexual acts, accents, dynamics, etc. Audio tracks include a title, the gender of the voice actor, the sexual orientation associated with the track, and either SFW or NSFW category.
There is free content, content that can be purchased for a specific number of hours, and monthly memberships where you pay specific creators to access their materials.
A Note To Keep In Mind
Even though audio erotica lets you imagine whoever you’d like in the story, it doesn’t mean that every story in your erotic genre will be a good fit. As Kristin Corry, a Senior Staff Writer at VICE describes in her experience of reviewing Dipsea’s Black Voices stories in particular, representation does not equal sincere inclusion of relatable narratives. Even if stories are being read by a member of a certain group or include characters and body descriptions of certain groups, the stories themselves need to be written by those populations to create authentic relatability across a variety of experiences (ahem, intersectionality). This means that you might not feel represented by everything you hear and, just like in other forms of erotica, may need to pay close attention to find good fits.
