Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, July 8

• Uber Is Said to Close $1.15 Billion High-Yield Leveraged Loan: Uber Technologies Inc. closed a $1.15 billion high-yield leveraged loan, a person familiar with the matter said, bringing the total equity and debt raised by the ride-hailing mobile app to more than $15 billion. Bloomberg reported last month that Uber was seeking to raise $1 billion to $2 billion in debt. Morgan Stanley, Barclays Plc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. facilitated the deal. Creditors will receive about a 5 percent yield on the loan, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the terms aren’t public.

• Amazon’s Audible Goes Long on Short-Form Audio: Amazon hopes to persuade people to pay for something they have traditionally enjoyed free: short-form audio. Audible, Amazon’s audiobook and spoken-word subsidiary, on Thursday announced Channels, a subscription service that will offer a new library of audio, including original programs, articles read aloud and more. At $4.95 a month, it presents a lower-priced entry point to the service and significantly expands on Audible’s core audiobook offering, while giving listeners more incentive to stick with the company. Channels will be free under Audible’s traditional $14.95 monthly membership, which provides access to hundreds of thousands of programs and audiobooks.Roughly two out of five Audible customers listen to podcasts, he said. But those customers are not always satisfied with what they find. “When you talk to those customers and you ask them about podcasting, they describe something that equally enthralls them and frustrates them,” he said. In that frustration, Audible sees an opportunity. Similar programs, in the form of podcasts — a label Audible resists as too narrow — have traditionally been free, supported by advertising, sponsorships, user donations or support from media and radio organizations. That a subsidiary of a company as aggressive as Amazon would invest in such a service suggests that it anticipates a willingness among the public to pay for short-form audio.