Anchor FM—How to use it and the basics of what you need to know

“Anchor—radio by the people.” — Anchor FM

Anchor could easily be the up and coming way to record audio on the go via your mobile phone.

Now all you need to know is how to use it.

Are you more of an audiophile? There are audio snippets throughout so you can learn that way!

First, download the app.

Step one for you audiophiles following along.

Unfortunately, right now it’s only available for your iPhone. Android users will have to wait a little longer to play with the surprisingly good audio quality of Anchor FM.

You can set up an account via your Twitter or Facebook if you want.

Then start to play around.

Step two for the audiophiles.

After you make an account, you’ll be walked through the app and its interface. If you forgo the intro, don’t sweat. It’s pretty intuitive.

GIF on how to use Anchor, made by yours truly.

If the GIF moves just a little too fast for you, here’s a different way to consume it.

With Anchor, you have two options for recording methods. You can hold the phone up to your ear, or you can record to an external source. (Screenshots from my phone, which surprisingly has a decent battery life still.)

The nice thing about Anchor is that you can record in one of two ways.

1. You can hold the phone up to your ear and speak into it as if you are just talking on the phone.

Here’s an example of what that sounds like.

2. You can press the record button, and you’re off to the races. The challenge is you only have two minutes to record in this format, so you’ll want to watch your time while your interviewing your source.

Here’s an example of what that sounds like:

The biggest drawback to both of these methods is that you can’t edit it after you’ve recorded. So if you’re a perfectionist like me, you often do your personal takes two or three times. (Okay, okay… If I’m being honest, it was 10.)

Also, be very, very careful that you don’t accidentally X out of the recording. You’ll hate yourself.

Trust me.

Here’s step three, you audiophiles still with me?

Next thing you need to do is create a caption.

This is the page where you can explore the hashtags and for more users.

Summarize what you’re talking about in the audio bit. Feel free to add hashtags as you please.

Anchor only allows people to search for content via users or hashtags, so I definitely would recommend doing your research beforehand and putting in appropriate hashtags in your captions.

The more popular ones tend to be the basics: like #News, #Music, #World

Then share it on your social media platforms.

Or don’t. That’s totally up to you. I feel like I got more followers because I shared it to my Twitter, but you definitely don’t have to.

Here’s what the Twitter embed looks like on your desktop feed if you use Anchor’s automatic upload setting. The one on the left is the expanded version.

Step four… You’re almost there!

The mobile view looks pretty much identical to the screenshot on the above right. But here’s what it looks like when you go to listen to the audio bit.

This is the listening screen on Twitter.

Once you publish, the engagement is a little different than normal.

Sure you can ❤ something to show you like it. But the comments is where things get spiced up.

Rather than replying via text, you reply with your own voice recording. Which I find totally cool.

I’m going to embarrass my mom right now (Sorry Mom), but she replied to one of my audio bits while I was covering the Saturday Market yesterday, so now she gets to be an example in my piece. (Hit the forward or backwards buttons on the side of the player to go through the convo.)

If you’re familiar with SoundCloud at all, I think you’ll find it very similar.

Wrapping it up

Phew, this is the last one!

My one complaint about Anchor is that it is a little hard to use when it comes to finding people to listen to that you might be interested in and the general search-ability of the app.

I wonder if more investors and funding might allow Anchor to develop algorithms and interfaces to cater content better to individual users, rather than basing who you would like to follow off how many listens that user is getting.

Overall, I’m really impressed with the app. It only launched this last February and it already has $1.6 million for funding. I’m just imaging what bigger social networks or radio/audio companies will try to pick this technology up over the next year.

On a scale of one to 10, the quality is arguably an 8 or 9. By no means does it sound like you’re in a professional studio, but there’s no way I’ll complain when you get audio that’s as good as it is out of my iPhone.

Experiment with Anchor on your own and share your thoughts below!