New social broadcasting platform is the Instagram for audio
We respond to Emily White’s Thought-Provoking Medium Post
In a recent article published on Medium, called Where is the Instagram for Audio, author Emily White elaborates on the “upgraded podcast sharing experience” she envisions. Ironically, this happened just as crowdCaster was launching its alpha site to a small group of early users in South Africa and the United Kingdom. So apart from the fact that Emily’s insight resonated with the same discussions and ideals that lead to creating this new platform, it felt almost serendipitous that she started the discussion when she did.
We loved the way White talked about podcasts as being so intimate and engaging but also isolating — because they can be just that. But does this need to be so in the future?
The problem
We often talk about the power of the human voice and how intimate it is, but in some ways, conventional podcasting limits that intimacy, in that it’s not easy to share these moments with the people who are closest to us as listeners — friends & family — or with the public at large. By this logic, it has become something that exists almost entirely in the space where it was created.
Nate DiMeo, one of the commentators, made an interesting point when he shared a link to his own piece The Memory Palace in which you’ll read “audio never goes viral”. If you think back on your experiences, how true does this ring? Can you think of any audio clip that was so widely shared it became a global phenomenon, or even one you could chat about with a colleague, friend or family member? The truth is, audio just hasn’t reached that level — at least not yet.
Current platforms don’t really allow you to create in-application audio bites that are accessible in terms of their length and data consumption. There isn’t as large an audience for audio content as there appears to be for other media, but the desire to use one’s imagination again is now growing slowly. There is an accelerating demand.
The question of how to manage and share audio
So, given that there is all this opportunity to do more with sound, where is the “Instagram” experience for audio to be found, or simply an audio platform that we can all use, enjoy and share with? One frustration expressed in White’s article was is the inability to find and share small clips of audio easily.
The answer
Well, the answer is quite simple — this is essentially what the revolutionary new crowdCaster application does (www.crowdcaster.com). While this platform for bite-sized audio is focused on sound, as opposed to visuals, the short clips can also be gathered into collections called “shows” — with both clips and shows being sharable. When you hear a memorable clip in a show, you should be able to find it on crowdCaster as a clip too.
But crowdCaster is also a social impact enterprise. It intends to be one of the most inclusive platforms for re-imagining radio and “Giving People a Voice”, informing, uplifting and empowering human experience, and bringing communities together in every part of the world, offering the human voice as a force for good. Online Radio Broadcasting, the UK owner of crowdCaster describes crowdCaster’s focus on “voice” as the next big frontier in social media, describing it as “social broadcasting”.
Enhancing the audio experience
Having now launched, crowdCaster is releasing new features to help make the platform accessible to a wider audience, and soon social sharing of audio will be very straightforward on this platform along with an enhanced discovery facility enabling easy navigation to content of choice. With the launch of the mobile application in October, listening, recording and sharing will be an even simpler quick process — giving millions of people access to a central hub of sharable audio.
This should begin to address the concerns that audio sharing to date has been a very siloed experience. crowdCaster’s clips also show the numbers of listens, up votes and down votes, and listeners can comment — addressing the need for more accurate audience measurement, and real engagement opportunities for listeners to say what they think.
We will come back to the other interesting points that White makes regarding supporting the shows she likes — all this is doable.
A new age of social broadcasting
How interesting that crowdCaster and the wishes expressed by a thoughtful listener have converged into the same thoughtline, while the launch of crowdCaster this September fulfils the long held aim of the founders of “Giving People a Voice” in a way which resonates with the needs of its Users. We have all unexpectedly entered the age of social broadcasting.
And if we look at it like this, it might also be fair to say that crowdCaster isn’t just an answer to people’s desire to engage socially in audio — but it has the power to enhance a number of other image and text-based applications.
The truth is there’s an overarching need for the power of the human voice to steer us back towards human interaction. So what better place to start creating the next global wave of enjoyable, educational, revolutionary and entertaining content and sharing it than on the digital airwaves? Who knows, we may be entering the age when the audio clip goes viral!
IAIN RAWLINSON (Co-Founder of crowdCaster) and The crowdCaster Team
