Music to My Ears: Audio Content is Changing How We Think About Porn

You probably won’t find audio pornography on the front page of Pornhub, but for many consumers of sexual media, audio is a refreshing (and perhaps needed) way to get turned on! Engaging with audio in a sexual way can come in many forms, from listening to a recorded erotic story, to tuning in to ASMR, or to enjoying the backing audio of conventional visual porn. Perhaps its versatility is one of the reasons why, according to numerous news outlets (Vice, The Guardian), audio porn is becoming a booming business, and its popularity is only increasing. Although sexual audios have existed in the past in a variety of forms (CDs, podcasts, Tumblr blogs, etc.), newly developed audio porn apps, such as Quinn and Dipsea, are also up and coming, with offerings of erotic audio stories in a variety of accents, lengths, and categories (Forbes, 2019; Taylor, 2018). If we now have apps that cater to audio porn, it’s no doubt that the genre is taking off, so let’s take a look at why exactly audio porn can be so engaging, and why for some groups, it can even be game changing.

A Brief Introduction to Getting Turned on by Audio

According to Jodie Taylor (who wrote a whole book chapter on this stuff!), audio porn has been widely available since the mid-90s in a variety of formats. However, discussions of Auralism, which is defined as a sexual fetish relating to sexual arousal/excitement caused by sound or music, has largely been confined to kink communities both in person and online (Taylor, 2018). In online communities centred around Auralism, members discuss becoming sexually aroused to both music (due to its stylistic qualities, or ties to past sexual encounters) and non-musical (dirty talk, narrated fantasies, sounds of sex itself) stimulation, pointing to the variety of ways sound can cause sexual arousal (Taylor, 2018). Taylor notes in her chapter that discovering these characteristics of Auralism communities came from years of online observation, but now, we can see that discussions of audio pornography and the possibilities of audio stimulation are occurring on popular news websites. Audio porn is now in the public eye – so who’s using it, and why?

Audio and Women’s Sexuality

In an interview with VICE, the founder of the audio porn app Quinn (the one I mentioned above!) stated she was motivated to start the app when, in college, she was disenchanted with visual porn, and discovered audio erotica instead (Ewe, 2021). Given that conventional pornography traditionally caters to men’s preferences, her experience may reflect that of many women porn consumers, who turn to audio porn when visual stimulation doesn’t quite cut it. However, the reasons behind this switch may vary from woman to woman. For some porn consumers, engaging with audio porn may be a way to control the experience that they have with the content. In 2018, authors at the University of Michigan found that among other strategies, listening solely to the audio from video pornography was a commonly reported strategy that women used to alter their experience with porn; both to avoid negative porn content, and to be able to imagine other scenarios while listening to the audio (Chadwick et al., 2018). This ability to flex one’s imagination while listening to audio porn may be the main draw to audio pornography for other women. Given that women (compared to men) more often tend to report arousal to story-based or mood/emotion-based sexual content (Chung et al., 2013), listening to audio pornography may give women a chance to build their own scenarios and emotions around the audio. Story based erotic audio (which is present on apps such as Dipsea and Quinn) caters directly to this desire to not only connect with the sexual acts in porn, but also to the emotions, tension, or mood shared by the characters. Other potential reasons for engaging with audio porn could be that the sounds increase a person’s immersion in the story – evidenced by one study that found that women perceived sounds within porn to help portray a sense of authentic pleasure and realism in the scene (Macleod, 2020). An additional reason mentioned by an interviewee in a Guardian interview about audio porn, is that most “professional” audio erotica is produced by women (or feminists), and is paid, meaning that the unethical side of the mainstream porn industry is avoided – which is always a plus (Noor, 2019).

Audio and Accessibility

For those with visual impairments, the use of audio porn may not a matter of choice or preference but instead a matter of accessibility. To make strides towards more inclusive programming, in 2016 Pornhub created a described video category on their website, which features audio descriptions for the site’s most popular videos (Pornhub, 2016). While the original audio of these videos is still available, it is presented in tandem with descriptive video narrations that describe the models, positions, settings, and more in each video, to give the user full details on the sexy scenarios in the videos (Pornhub, 2016). What’s most exciting is that research shows audio described porn seems to have a similar effect to conventional audiovisual porn in both visually impaired and sighted consumers. It was recently found that audiovisual and descriptive audio porn both created sexual arousal and immersion in study participants, and that bodily measures of arousal were also the same across porn types (Lopez et al., 2021). So, not only are those with a visual impairment able to accessibly view and enjoy porn, but those who prefer audio porn overall are evidently suffering no “losses” when engaging with their porn of choice.

Conclusion

Although visual pornography still rules in terms of popularity, audio-only porn is becoming an increasingly favored way to get turned on, especially amongst certain viewer groups. As we’ve seen above, audio porn is offering a new avenue for exploring sexual media, and it is also changing the relationship that some folks have with porn over all – leading some to have a positive porn experience for the first time. With its accessibility, flexibility, and conduciveness to fantasy and imagination – and with newly designed apps to propel it forward – audio porn is just beginning to thrive!

Kate Hunker (she/her)
4th Year BAH Psychology, Queen’s University

References

Chadwick, S.B., Raisanen, J. C., Goldey, K. L., & van Anders, S. (2018). Strategizing to Make Pornography Worthwhile: A Qualitative Exploration of Women’s Agentic Engagement with Sexual Media. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47(6), 1853–1868. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1174-y

Chung, W.S., Lim, S. M., Yoo, J. H., & Yoon, H. (2013). Gender difference in brain activation to audio-visual sexual stimulation; do women and men experience the same level of arousal in response to the same video clip? International Journal of Impotence Research, 25(4), 138–142. https://doi.org/10.1038/ijir.2012.47

Ewe, K. (2021, April 29). People tell us why listening to porn is way hotter than watching it. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/epndke/audio-porn-erotica-women-feminist-empowering

Macleod, P.J.  (2021). How feminists pick porn: Troubling the link between “authenticity” and production ethics. Sexualities, 24(4), 673–693. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460720936475

Noor, P. (2016, November 7). Porn to my ears: I tried audio erotica – would it turn me on? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/07/audio-erotica-pornography-quinn-dipsea

Pornhub. (2016, June 14). Pornhub Launches Described Video Category on Website. https://www.pornhub.com/press/show?id=981

Rojo López, A.M., Ramos Caro, M., & Espín López, L. (2021). Audio Described vs. Audiovisual Porn: Cortisol, Heart Rate and Engagement in Visually Impaired vs. Sighted Participants. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 661452–661452. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.661452

Taylor, J. (2018). Sound Desires: Auralism, the Sexual Fetishization of Music. In F.E., Maus & S. Whitley (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness. Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199793525.001.0001