In The Queen’s Guard, actor Andrew Scott (Fleabag’s “hot priest”) plays a sword-wielding hero constantly battling his enemies and his own simmering sexual energy. This isn’t prestige fantasy TV, though, and you never even see Scott’s face. That’s because The Queen’s Guard is an audio series, among the three celeb-led shows that debuted this year from erotica app Quinn. These Quinn Originals are bringing star power to the app’s largely user-generated content library, drawing a surge of fresh users to the app and popularizing audio erotica.
Founder Caroline Spiegel describes Quinn as a “curated marketplace” for erotica, free of violent and misogynistic tropes often found in pornography. She likens it more to Peloton, with its trusted roster of instructors, than OnlyFans, where anyone can produce erotic content. Quinn’s audio creators audition and complete background checks in order to begin posting stories, all of which are reviewed by Quinn’s moderators before going live to ensure the absence of topics like incest or coercive activity. Creators are paid from Quinn’s pool of subscription fees ($4.99 a month or $47.99 annually) based on user engagement.
In the three years since its app launched, its stories have served as fodder for viral TikToks, but Quinn Originals—and the company’s efforts to court influencers while promoting its own creators’ social content—have brought it new visibility. Spiegel says Quinn Originals are the platform’s top driver of subscriber growth, with trial subscriptions tripling in the months that a new Quinn Original is released. By August 2024, the company had surpassed $11 million in annual recurring revenue.
Quinn has released four Originals since September 2023, including Amplified, a summer launch targeted at LGBTQ women read by The L Word’s Kate Moennig, and most recently The Regent, starring Emily in Paris’s Lucien Laviscount. With more Originals coming in early 2025, Spiegel wants Quinn to keep bringing sex and desire “out of the shadows,” she says. “We’re trying to be a company that could advertise at the Super Bowl.”
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