It’s an exciting time for audio. Familiar experiences such as podcasts and audiobooks have a newfound momentum. At the same time, new and innovative audio experiences are coming to the forefront. Although similar in some respect, recorded and live audio experiences can be quite divergent. They prioritize different user needs and preferences. Since more of our attention is taken up by these experiences, it’s a great time to take a closer look.
2020 was podcasting’s best year yet. Podcasts now exist for every possible topic and interest. Even with the rise of innovative podcast apps, such as Overcast and Castro, the experience has largely stayed the same since inception. You subscribe to a podcast. An episode is delivered to your podcast app and you listen to it on demand. This paradigm has been largely set by podcasts being built on top of the RSS format. It’s one of the key reasons enabling podcasts to be a consistent, reliable, and ultimately thriving experience over the past 15 years.
In the past year, the phenomenon of live social audio has emerged out of the shadows. This rise is well documented in the piece, The Future of Social Audio: Startups, Roadmap, Business Models, and a Forecast. Much of the attention in this space has be captured by Clubhouse. The Silicon Valley startup is currently leading the social audio space. Clubhouse has pioneered a particular live social audio experience. Any user of the app can start a live audio “room” and invite other users to listen in. Users can participate in a large variety of live rooms on topics from psychedelics to stand up comedy. The moderator can bring up listeners up to the “virtual stage” and allow them to participate in the live conversation.
The experience of live audio chat rooms has been explored in the past by multiple startups. Clubhouse managed to get the right mix of minimal features, branding, and timing.
I joined Clubhouse earlier this summer. I played around with it and even started my own rooms for a few weeks. What grew me back recently was the sheer quality of conversations. A live interview with Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signal. A chat between Ryan Singer and Bob Moesta about Jobs to Be Done. A live conversation between Jason Fried, founder of Basecamp, and Kevin Rose. Although I’ve previously heard most of these folks on podcasts, there was a visceral quality and energy to these live conversations on Clubhouse. The conversation was more dynamic and engaging, with a sense of serendipity. Many of these conversations involved engaging audience participation. The experience was very compelling.
For all its’ vitality, the live audio format and Clubhouse come with some unique challenges. Many on Twitter were not shy to identify them.
What’s fascinating to me is how the amount of user friction impacts each experience. Here’s my quick breakdown:
Recorded Audio - There’s a lot of friction for the creator. Recording equipment, editing and packaging up a show. That friction comes with total control over the final output. There is very little friction for the listener. They subscribe and get notified when a new episode is available. Listen to it on their own time. In one sitting or over many days or weeks. Similar to the creator, the listener has a lot of control.
Live Audio: In this environment, almost anybody can create a room and start a conversation. All you need is a smartphone. It democratizes creation. However, for the listener, there is a bit more friction. They need to listen now or forever miss the conversation. If they want to hear the entire conversation, they need to commit the time and attention at the moment. There’s no way to timeshift the experience. At the same time, they have the possibility of participating in a live conversation themselves. They may never get invited to speak, but the possibility is enticing and makes for a different experience than passive listening.
This was just a peek at some of the tradeoffs and differences. If anybody reading this is working on live audio experience, I have a few thoughts on how some of the challenges might be addressed:
Make a recording of the show is available on Clubhouse for 48 hours after the initial show. It gives a user a slightly longer window of time to listen to it. Then it goes away forever.
A user gets the right to record/save a certain number of shows per week. Basically, if there’s something that you absolutely don’t want to miss, maybe you can record it for yourself. This allows you to not miss the things you really care about in case you can’t be there. Maybe the recording is only available for 7 days and then it expires and disappears.
I’m intrigued to see what happens in the audio space over the coming year. Specifically how Live Social Audio experiences like Clubhouse will overcome some of their experience challenges. Can these experiences continue to thrive when we’re no longer captive in our own homes hopefully later this year?
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A new company from April Underwood, a former head of product at Slack and Twitter alumni. This is the type of obvious and noble play I was expecting to see coming out of the pandemic experience with local businesses. I’d be curious to see if this effort has real legs.
Like many people did, I made the conscious choice to support my local businesses with my own purchases, and found it was… just as hard as it always has been to find out which stores exist, whether they sell online, and how I would get products from them.
This looks to be a fascinating product when it drops later this year. There’s hasn’t been enough disruption in screenshots. This product is attempting to push this medium forward.
Excellent post by the always insightful Giff Constable, former CPO of Meetup.
In product, we swim in complexity, which is why it’s essential to seek simplicity wherever we can. If we accept or even indulge in complexity, I’m convinced it will show up in your product in unintended ways
✍🏻 Your next smart home device is a $30 used kindle
The search to design a distraction-free Smart Home dashboard.
I’ve found myself wanting a less intrusive channel for ambient data. Something I can glance at in passing, without giving my full attention or opening myself up to whatever other interruptions my phone might have in store. It should be easy to check, but just as easy to ignore.
This is the device I landed on: a wifi-connected Kindle 4, mounted on the wall in a simple laser-cut acrylic frame. Once a minute, it loads a screenshot of a web page I built that shows a few different kinds of data I want easy access to: calendar events, weather, the status of packages I’ve ordered, etc.
I’ve recently re-discovered this wonderfully simple note taking app from the Icon Factory. It’s become an indispensable tool for making this newsletter.
Tot liberates you from ever having to remember where you put some piece of information
This tweet about rewatching Lost in Translation, one of my favorite movies of all time, says a lot about the time we’re living in. 🙏🏻
Enjoyed this article. Thanks Oz!