The Economist is launching an online audio version of every issue of the magazine, to meet the needs of subscribers with no time to read.
The weekly said it was the first leading international publication to offer a full audio edition. From this week listeners will be able to scroll through the Economist and download audio versions of articles by section or in its entirety.
The magazine, which has a worldwide print circulation of 1,197,712, said the audio service would be free to subscribers. Non-subscribers can buy each issue for £4.
The idea of giving Economist readers news and features to digest while they are on the move follows a move by all the major newspapers into podcasts, quasi-radio programmes that can be downloaded to a computer and transferred to a player.
With demand for premium financial news high, as reflected in Rupert Murdoch's $5bn (£2.5bn) bid for the Wall Street Journal, the Economist is hoping to open up another way of reaching readers.
It said feedback from a soft launch to a selected group of subscribers had been "very positive", with many users choosing to download the full edition.
The audio project follows the magazine's "This week in the Economist", a five-minute podcast of selected stories available on Economist.com and at Apple's iTunes store.