Inside the secretly vibrant business of porn MP3s

As a sex worker, you get a lot of unusual requests. Three years ago, one of my client’s fantasies involved me giving him a blowjob in a parked car on the train tracks — as a train barreled toward us.

I’m happy to report that I got him off just in the nick of time. My client was able to speed off the tracks just moments before we would have been pancaked. I’m also happy to report that this thrill-seeking scenario was not real. And it was something I could never have recreated on video, at least convincingly. It was something I described to him — in explicit detail — via a custom-made MP3 for which I charged him $250.

Video clips on sites like Pornhub, OnlyFans, and ManyVids get all the attention, but erotic audio is a secretly vibrant, and profitable, corner of the internet. I loathe recording video — which has ya girl feeling like she’s a cartoon character, always staring into bright lights with a ton of makeup on — and have spent much of my career doing audio, beginning as a phone sex operator in 2005. In 2009, looking to generate some income outside of phone-boning (which I continue to do to this day), I decided to record an MP3 on the potato of a microphone I used for online gaming.

There isn’t yet a site exclusively dedicated to audio — no AudioHub or OnlyMP3s — but there should be. Right now, a lot of the audio action takes place on Clips4Sale, one of the oldest sites for indie creators in the erotic space, where I’ve been selling aural content for over a decade. NiteFlirt, an online phone-sex site, also allows creators to sell MP3s. Popular subreddits like Gone Wild Audio allow for models to post links to sample content and find buyers. Audible and other such platforms carry audio erotica; you might think their stuff is tamer than that of porn sites, but I promise you, much of it isn’t!

Empress Mika, a femdom who calls erotic audio the “core focus” of her brand, says she initially questioned how profitable audio could be. But she was soon won over by the medium. “I fell in love with the audio creation process and found myself more immersed and connected to the fantasies I created,” she says. It’s hard to get sex workers to talk money, but Mistress Lillith, a Clips4Sale creator who caters to adult babies and diaper lovers, reports making over $3,000 in a month on Clips4Sale — not a jaw-dropping figure, but definitely nothing to turn your nose up at. I’ve personally made low five figures a month in recorded audio alone.

But given the existence of Rule 34 — the maxim that pornography about every conceivable subject exists — how is it that audio is still relevant in this day and age? Probably for the same reason people are listening to podcasts when they could be, say, watching a Netflix documentary. “Erotic audios go deeper than visual,” Mistress Lillith says. “It starts to touch the client on a more cerebral level.”

One lover of erotic audio, who asks that I call him John, tells me how he prefers listening to MP3s over more traditional forms of porn. Back in college, John evaded nosey roommates by storing his audio porn under boring file names in his computer and iPod. “Popping on my headphones while sitting in my dorm bed, I could go anywhere the fantasy led me with more realism than just watching video,” he says. Yes, green-screen technology has come a long way in recent years, but there are still limits to the realism that the average creator can achieve.

Faye Taylor an art student turned model who records ASMR erotic porn, says some clients prefer audio because “they don’t have the visual reminder that this is a porn performer on screen like they would with video.” She adds, “In their mind, I can be the best version of myself that turns them on the most.” Love the model’s voice but prefer a redhead? It is far easier to visualize the fantasy you want when you’re not taking all your cues from the video in front of you.

With so few platforms that cater to audio, sex workers like me who like to talk have to do what sex workers do best — get creative. I’ll post a video on XVideos or Pornhub that’s just a static image — for example, a dominatrix or a pair of eyes — and then place my audio track over it. So it’s basically a YouTube thumbnail that talks dirty to you. OnlyFans allows creators to upload audio; it’s generally seen as an option for podcasters and musicians, but, of course, sex workers can use it, too.

The pandemic has led to a boom in demand for audio porn, according to some creators. “Several of my customers have told me that they plan on working from home indefinitely,” says Sitara Smith, a self-described “dominant nerdy hairy Indian” creator on NiteFlirt. “Some of them do watch porn while working from home. However, it is much easier for them to listen to an audio file of me describing my hairy body than watching me tease them with it while they’re working.”

Many of our work-from-home customers are finding it more difficult, with others around, to stare at a screen discreetly. While my phone sex calls have gotten shorter due to customers having a full house, with MP3s they can listen without suspicion and sneak off to the bathroom to take care of business.

Will there still be a need for erotic audio when virtual reality can drop us into fully immersive sex dungeons and the like? Perhaps not, but we are at least a while off before that technology becomes affordable and practical for most. Until then, I will keep recording audio smut, all the while looking out for the next site that will allow me to make money off my dirty mouth.