Audio needs technical improvements – The Economist Classic US Review

I want audio to advance automatically to the next story after the current one ends. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I have no idea why sometimes it decides not to. This past weekend, no controls at all appeared on the lock screen while articles were playing, so I had to unlock, enter app, and advance manually after each article. Today the desired lock screen controls are back. I don’t at all understand playlist vs track list. There is a 15 sec back button but no 15 sec forward button. The track list should allow one to see the full introductory header, not just the tongue-in-cheek title, which is often funny but not a good clue for what the article is about. One should be able either to flag the current audio article as interesting or else share a link to the current audio article with oneself so that one can remember to look for details in the article text or graphics when one hears something intriguing. I do like that one can download an entire weekly edition’s audio at once and listen offline while commuting, cooking, exercising, doing mindless activity, etc. But this is only effective if the articles advance automatically and are easily controlled via lock screen or other simple means. A sleep timer would be helpful: play for 30 minutes at bedtime, for example. Also, while the readers of the main text are uniformly excellent, I find the voice and tone of the woman who reads the witty subtitles to be harshly grating - like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Review by Bill__A on The Economist Classic US.