A few things you need to know about the future of audio in the digital age
This article is about audio. Not about the music industry. And not even about podcasting. Many interesting people wrote about it and all finally agreed that podcasting is not booming. What is changing with podcasting is the process of acquisition, distribution and monetization but not the media itself. Lots of startups and media try to be part of this new business game and as a radio lover, I’m very happy about it!
I’ve been working very hard for approximatively 3 years with amazing people in order to bring something new to audio lovers. When I was a student, I created a radio broadcast website with 2-min audio podcasts to help students pass their exams (Street Art in 2 min for example). It turned out to be very helpful for them. After that, I decided to open my platform and turn it into an app called Bobler to allow anyone to record these short audio clips, add a picture and share them on any social platform. It is now used by major cultural institutions, journalists, comedians, radio and audio lovers in several countries.
Now I’m more and more interested in audio as a new creative way to share cool stuff with your friends. This article will be about this topic. I’ve got lots of data and feedbacks from thousands and thousands of users from all over the world, made a lot of iterations and had some sleepless nights creating the simplest equation with my team.
The problem with your voice
Audio is one of the most underrated medias. Voice is the most natural way to communicate but not on social media. Here are some simple reasons:
- You are not used to hear your own voice so you don’t really like when you hear it. Right?
- Listening to someone with your mobile phone is not always convenient.
- You prefer watching rather than listening. Audio is a media of attention and it needs people to focus.
- Creating only voice-based contents for social media demands a lot of self-confidence and some practice.
- Your voice reflects your emotional state (hesitation, fatigue, etc.). Do you really want people to know about that?
- You don’t always know what to say…
These are some reasons why audio creation looks like a UFO or a media only for professionals. But there are some interesting trends that can change that.
Some interesting trends
Messaging apps and platforms
Messaging apps like Facebook Messenger are being transformed into platforms and much more than simple MSN-like communication apps. You can make calls, you can pay or you can create amazing contents. Now these platforms even allow you to build standalone apps to create and share amazing messages with your friends without any technical skills. You can generate in less than 10 seconds a funny GIF, a cool video with nice filters or send beautifully-designed stickers to express a feeling. It is now possible to mix different medias such as picture, text, video or audio to say what you want.
Connected devices
Connected devices are going to be part of our everyday lives. This is a very interesting emerging market. Lots of startups and big tech companies will do anything to be part of the game. We don’t know if the Apple iWatch will be a success or not but that is not the question. We are going to create new way of sharing and consuming contents with these devices. Connected cars, virtual headsets, connected watches or voice command devices like the Amazon Echo are the first steps toward this change. How will you create cool messages with a connected watch? How will you consume media contents with Echo? Lots of traditional medias will be disrupted (again) with these devices.
Easy with a watch, cool with a tool
Audio-only-based contents will never become mainstream. They are part of the niche of audio creators and audio lovers (and I am one of them). It is a small market. With too many frictions. But change is coming. For the following reasons, the upcoming trends we mentioned above will change that.
Situations
Audio will become a convenient media for specific situations. It is the media for mobility and multitasking. I really think the microphone will become the connected watches’ star feature. Creating audio messages with these devices or even in connected cars will be very convenient. Now it is getting easier and easier to translate audio into text. Therefore you can send an audio message with your watch and your friends can read it as a text. In some situations (in a car for example) we will listen to audio messages or social media contents in the same way we listen to music. But people definitely don’t want a platform to communicate only with voice for all the reasons I explained above. People want great tools to create and share rich contents on their favorite platforms.
Tools and platforms
Messaging apps are becoming personal media platforms and are changing the future of media creation. We are in the era of media mixing. Now people want to share a video with text on it, a picture with a sticker, etc. Audio can become more mainstream thanks to this trend. Audio + Text, Audio + Music, Audio + Pictures: there are lots of possible combinations. We will have great tools to create amazing audio contents, mix it with other medias and share them on platforms (friends on Messenger, followers on Twitter and Instagram, fans on Youtube, etc.).
What can you do? Be creative
All these upcoming trends will change the way we think about audio, making it cool and convenient. We no longer want to communicate with only ONE media and we now have the tools to do so. The road is open to creativity and audio will most definitely be part of the journey!
PS: I’m very happy to discuss this topic with you!
