Disruptive Conversations

I am a huge fan of TwitterSpaces! I enjoy hosting and participating in live audio TwitterSpaces. In fact, I’m hosting one later today!

It’s a great system and service to have live audio conversations. Easy for people to join and use. Easy to manage in terms of moderation. Easy to promote and publicize, particularly with the scheduling, and because you have your existing network of Twitter connections. The “live bar” in the mobile apps also helps people discover your Space, as does Twitter’s algorithm in promoting the Space to your followers and others. The user interface works for me, although I do wish web browser participants could participate versus just listen. Live transcription is great, as are the recordings.

All in all, I really like the service and want to continue doing TwitterSpaces.

BUT… with all the (mostly self-induced) chaos happening at Twitter right now, and the fact that a good number (most? all?) of the TwitterSpaces developers were let go in all the layoffs, I do wonder how much of a future there is. I’ll keep using it… but will the service stop working some day? Do TwitterSpaces fit into whatever grand plan there may or may not be?

So the question is…for those of us who want to engage in live “social audio"... what are the alternatives to TwitterSpaces?

Reddit Talk

I am most intrigued by Reddit Talk as the service provides most all of the features of TwitterSpaces, with the addition that web browser users can be full participants in the Talk (unlike Twitter).

The user interface is similar to TwitterSpaces, particularly in the mobile apps. Raising hands and moderating users is a similar experience. As a moderator you can check out the potential speakers by looking at their Reddit profiles and their “karma” points (a measure of engagement on Reddit). You can easily bring people on stage - and just as easily remove them.

Reddit added a “sound board” before Twitter did, and it has some nice jazzy music you can play while waiting for a talk to start. Talks can be recorded and stay around indefinitely (versus 30 days on Twitter). You can schedule them in advance and easily promote their URL. Comments are integrated into the “post” for the talk.

There are three things I miss from TwitterSpaces. First is the lack of an ability to spotlight content during a Talk, as you can share tweets into a Space and thus focus attention on the tweet in the conversation. You can of course post this as a comment in the Reddit post and direct people there, which is almost better because it is easily accessible after the Talk is over. But it doesn’t have the same effect as sharing into a Space in terms of helping guide the conversation.

Second, there is no live transcription as there is in a TwitterSpace. From an accessibility point of view, I think the transcription is great.

Third, there is no easy way to get any kind of analytics about how many people listened to your Talk or participated. I mean, TwitterSpaces don’t have much either, but they at least tell you: 1) how many people have listened to your talk in total; and 2) how many people listened live. That’s at least something that can help you understand how much engagement you have.

Overall, though, I like the Reddit Talk experience a lot!

A challenge for some people will be that Reddit Talks can only be done with a “subreddit” (a community), and only initiated by a moderator of the subreddit unless the “mods” have authorized you as a user to create Talks. If you are already a Redditor, and have a subreddit with a following, this may not be an issue. And the good news is that anyone can create a brand new subreddit where they are the moderator. But if you are doing that, you are essentially starting over in creating a new social graph.

And some people may have a challenge because it’s… well… Reddit... and the site’s reputation for trolls and bad behavior affects many people’s views of the site. I’ve been a long-time Redditor and would argue that there are many strong, positive, and non-troll-infested communities… but I grant that it can be an issue.

LinkedIn Audio Events

Wait… LinkedIn has social audio? Yes, indeed, you can now host LinkedIn Audio Events (see also this PDF that walks through the service).  I hosted an Audio Event the other day and it does provide a very basic audio experience. You set it up within LinkedIn as an event. You must schedule the audio event - you can’t just “go live” right at that moment, but you can schedule it for 5 or 10 minutes from the time you are creating the event… so that’s close enough. When you create the event, you can:

• Add a cover image related to your event
• Add a description with information about what you will be discussing
• List any speakers who will be participating from your LinkedIn connections. Apparently after they confirm they will appear in the event information. (I did not test this.)

Once you publish the event it goes out in your activity feed where your connections may see it.

The one struggle I had was that after I hit the publish button… I could not find the event! 🤦‍♂️

I was just back on my LinkedIn home page.. and couldn’t see my new event anywhere. I had to go into my profile and into my Activity Feed to find it again and join the event. Hopefully I just missed something in the user interface, but I found this confusing.

The event itself went fine. Two people I know saw the announcement in their LinkedIn feeds and joined in, so I was able to test a bit.

On the plus side, the audio sounded good, and the real-time transcription was pretty amazing. LinkedIn being the kind of site it is, it was also very easy to see the other people in the chat and whether you are connected or not - and then make those connections.

Being just another form of a LinkedIn “Event”, there are also analytics about how many people attended the event live, and also how many have viewed it over time. If you have more than 10 attendees, it seems you will get demographic info about the jobs, industries, locations, etc., which makes sense given that LinkedIn has all of that.

One negative for me was that it seems you can only be in the Audio Event once as yourself. I started out in the web interface and then thought I’d join on the LinkedIn mobile app. Doing so kicked me out of the web interface.

While this may sound strange to want to do, and was probably NOT on the LinkedIn developer’s requirement lists, it’s actually been enormously helpful for both TwitterSpaces and Reddit Talks to be able to have yourself in the session on two different devices. Yes, you need to adjust volume and muting so you don’t create feedback loops, but it can be helpful operationally.

Anyway, this is just something to know if you try LinkedIn Audio Events.

Other differences are that, as LinkedIn notes on a help page:

At the moment, Audio Events cannot be recorded or replayed after the event has ended. Audio Events have no video, screen sharing or text chat.

Now, while you don’t have a live text chat, you can leave comments on the event page in LinkedIn, in a similar fashion to a Reddit Talk or replying to the Space on Twitter, so there is a way 

The other services all do offer recordings, and perhaps this is something LinkedIn will develop over time.

Another note - Audio Events are only available right now for individuals on LinkedIn, not for pages that organizations and companies have.

Otherwise, it has many of the same features as the others, as described in the “Host an Audio Event” section of a help page. There’s a maximum of 17 speakers (which is plenty, to me) and basic controls to bring someone on stage and off.

One would think that, with LinkedIn being all about establishing and maintaining your professional reputation, there would be fewer moderation issues with regard to trolls and people seeking to disrupt a session (versus Twitter Spaces or Reddit Talk).

Without the recording feature, I’m not personally interested in doing as much with LinkedIn Audio Events… but they could be an option.

Spotify Live

Once upon a time (well, in 2020), an app launched called “Locker Room” to host live conversations about… sports! It was then acquired by Spotify who renamed it first to “Greenroom” and then to “Spotify Live”. (Read the history.) I used it a number of times while it was Greenroom and it was a decent service, although only accessible through the mobile app.

It’s not clear to me whether this remains a viable option. Back in April 2022 when Spotify renamed it to Spotify Live, they also announced live sessions would be merged into the main Spotify app. The theory was that the hundreds of millions of Spotify users could find and listen to live sessions. People would still need to use the separate app to participate in the live sessions, but discovery would be easier. They still mention his on their “live on Spotify” web page. Spotify also said it would be streaming its original live events through the main app.

Eight months later, I’m not sure how this is working. When I go into the main app on my iPhone, I can’t find any way to see the “Live on Spotify” items. And when I go into the Spotify Live app, it’s a dead zone. There were only four live “rooms” and they only had one or two people in them… and in the time I was in them, I didn’t hear any audio! Now, I was doing this early in the morning US Eastern, but I would have expected some European activity. There are some rooms scheduled over the weekend, and perhaps they’ll have audiences.

But right now, I’m not getting the vibe that it’s a strong option.

Clubhouse

I could, of course, return to Clubhouse, where the whole "social audio" thing emerged in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic.

I could, but part of the reason I left Clubhouse was because it was completely rebuilding a social network, and I have already spent the time doing that in other services. What I like about TwitterSpaces is it leverages my existing social graph on Twitter. Similarly, Reddit Talk leverages the membership of a given subreddit, and LinkedIn leverages your existing connections.

Plus, as has been outlined in many posts, Clubhouse has had a range of mis-steps and issues. When I go into the app it has a ghost town feel to me. They did finally add web listening, but like TwitterSpaces on the web, you can’t really engage.

I just don’t see Clubhouse as a really viable option for me. Maybe it will work for some of you.

So.. what is Plan B?

I don’t know. Of the options I outlined above, I’m going to continue experimenting with Reddit Talk, and I’ll be curious to see if LinkedIn adds recording capability.

Overall, though, I hope that TwitterSpaces can continue. I’ve noticed that Elon Musk seems to enjoy participating in Spaces. He had one last Saturday with over one million listeners! So perhaps he’ll work to ensure that there are appropriate developers and engineers to keep it all working.

We’ll see! In the meantime, I’ll keep my ears open...

What do you think could be a good alternative?

Will "Facebook Live Audio" be good for podcasters? Will it help us engage with our audiences? Will it compete with SoundCloud and other similar platforms? Or will it pull people away from traditional podcasts to keep people within Facebook's shiny walls?

On December 20, Facebook announced the impending release of "Live Audio", initially with five partners and then "early next year" to more people. There's been a great amount of discussion but as of yet I've not learned of anyone who has seen/heard one of these new Live Audio events. Here is the info I've seen so far or can speculate on:

• Users will be able to go live with audio in a similar way to going live with video.
• Live audio content will go out in News Feed.
• Listeners can ask questions and leave reactions in real-time during the live audio stream.
  • Presumably listeners will also be able to leave comments and reactions after the event is no longer live. Will Facebook differentiate as they do with comments to Live Video events? (Comments during the event have a red dot next to them.)
• Facebook users can easily share the Live Audio streams to their own feeds and friends.
• Listening will occur inside the Facebook mobile application. There will be an important distinction between iOS and Android listeners:
  • iOS users will only be able to listen while the Facebook app is open (and the phone is not locked). The users can continue browsing through Facebook while listening.
  • Android users will be able to listen in the background while using other apps.
  • To me this means that Facebook has not yet integrated with the audio interfaces within IoS that allow other apps to play in the background or on lock screens.
• Techcrunch reports that Live Audio streams will have a limit of four hours in length.

As far as a motivation for launching Live Audio, Facebook mentions the feedback that some publishers prefer audio as a format. They also mention that some people are in areas where Internet connectivity is too low to support Live Video. Writing over on The Drum, Sean Larkin notes that Facebook needs new advertising formats and points to a recent study from The Trade Desk showing that advertisers are looking to increase their spending on audio advertising. Audio streaming and podcasts were highest rated in that survey.

In many ways this seems a logical extension of Facebook's desire to be THE place where people spend their time on the Internet. Given the explosive growth in interest in podcasts, it seems to me only logical for Facebook to try to bring some of that attention inside their walls.

Granted, it seems Facebook's initial focus is on the audio version of "live events" versus on podcasts. But to me podcasts are an obvious extention of this tool.

My Questions

Given that we can't see the Live Audio streams yet, or the tools to produce them, I find myself with the following questions:

• Will users be notified with special "Dan York is live" kind of messages? (I suspect yes.)
• Will Live Audio streams show up in the new "Live" tab in the mobile app? (as Live Video streams do now?)
• What tools will be available for streaming audio? For instance, will there be anything to help with audio levels?
• Presumably we will have to use the Facebook mobile app to stream the Live Audio streams. Will it be able to work with any other mobile apps?
• Will we be able to bring in intros, outros, bumpers and other audio effects? Or will it truly be raw, live audio?
• Will Live Audio streams also be accessible outside Facebook's walls to traditional podcasting apps? i.e. would there be a RSS feed that could go into iTunes? Or will it only work inside of Facebook?
• Will Live Audio be a place to host a podcast? Or will it be another distribution channel?
• Will Live Audio help spread the interest in podcasts and audio streams? Or will it impact the usage of traditional podcasting apps?
• What will the impact be on SoundCloud? Many of us have found that platform useful for quick, fast podcasts.
• And on a techie note, could you start out in Live Video and when connectivity drops, could you drop to Live Audio? Or will they be two separate event types that need to be started separately? (I suspect the latter.)

So many questions!

Given my interest in using SoundCloud for rapid creation and distribution of podcasts, I'll be curious to see how well Facebook Live Audio might work for podcasting. It might be good... it might be too constraining.

What do you think? Are you interested in Facebook Live Audio?

P.S. Another interesting aspect - over on The Verge, Casey Newton notes the potential of Live Audio for "witnessing" events: "Live audio of police confrontations might be less conspicuous, and thus easier, to broadcast than video streams."

Why do I like SoundCloud as a podcast hosting platform? What advantages can SoundCloud offer podcasters? Why should you consider SoundCloud as a place to distribute your podcast?

Last week SoundCloud announced that its podcasting features were now publicly available to everyone [1]. Given that I've been using SoundCloud's podcasting feature in their beta program since May 2012, I want to share some of my reflections on why I think SoundCloud has great potential as a powerful platform for podcast publishing and promotion.

To set the context for my comments below, I started using SoundCloud three years ago to see how it could work for the "rapid creation of audio content". I wanted to just be able to push record in an app and then publish and promote my podcasts. I wanted it to be super easy. The result has been my "The Dan York Report (TDYR)" podcast that I publish now at:

https://soundcloud.com/danyork

From the start it's been an experiment to try out SoundCloud as a platform because I have several other podcasts I'd like to start. So TDYR has been my testbed to try out ideas and tools. I do pay for their SoundCloud Pro Unlimited plan which at $135/year works out to what I consider a reasonable $11.25/month for the hosting of my audio files.

As a result of all of this, here are 10 reasons I find SoundCloud powerful for podcasters.

1. Speed And Simplicity Of Creating And Sharing Podcasts

Here's all I do to create a new podcast episode:

• Open up an app on my iPhone.
• Press "Record" and record whatever I want to say.
• Press "Share to SoundCloud" (or "Upload"), enter in a title and hit the button to start.

Boom!

That's it. The podcast is uploaded to SoundCloud and then shared out via the RSS feed to iTunes and also via social media to Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

That's seriously it.

Super fast creation and sharing/promotion of audio podcasts.

Now, of course, you could make the process more complex if you want to. I record my TDYR episodes as just raw audio without any kind of post-production and without an intro, outro or any other kinds of audio segments. In my case, I want the simplicity and rawness. But the beautiful fact is..

2. Many Applications to Create/Record Podcasts

... there are many, many, MANY applications that yet you create audio and share it up to SoundCloud. Applications are available for iOS, Android, Mac OS/X, Microsoft Windows and many other operating systems. SoundCloud has a whole directory of applications that can be used. Although many of them are for consuming/listening, they do have a whole list for creating/recording. Many of these are targeted at music producers, but many can also work for podcasters.

Because I am aiming for speed, I typically record on my iPhone and find that I'm generally using either:

• Opinion - an app targeted at podcasters that I reviewed before and like for its simplicity.
• Hindenburg Field Reporter - a more expensive but insanely powerful app with strong editing features, multiple sessions and more.

I've been primarily using Opinion for the past while but recently they rolled out their own podcast hosting (competing with SoundCloud) and now give that preference in the export/sharing part of the app. I'm a bit concerned that they may continue to promote that service and make it harder to publish out to other services. On the other hand, the Hindenburg Field Reporter app doesn't seem to be frequently updated... although that may not be necessary, really. It's a rock solid app!

I've also used AudioCopy, a free app that SoundCloud started recommending when they removed recording from their own SoundCloud app. It's fine, but I like the editing capabilities of the other two apps.

The key point is that there are many choices of apps that will connect and share to SoundCloud.

And, of course, SoundCloud just lets you upload an audio file in a variety of different formats. So you can record your episode using any kind of device or application. I've recorded some episodes using one of my Zoom Handy audio recorders and then just copying the MP3 file from the SD card onto my laptop and uploading to SoundCloud through their web interface.

3. Automatic Sharing Out To Social Media

A great part of the simplicity is that when I post an episode to SoundCloud it gets automagically shared out to whatever services I've configured. I've set up a default configuration and then can override that sharing from the apps during the upload process. The beautiful thing is it supports multiple accounts for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Google+:

And, as noted below, you can use services like IFTTT to distribute podcasts out to even more sites and social networks!

4. Insanely EASY Embedding of Podcasts

Another huge advantage of SoundCloud is that it is incredibly easy to embed podcasts in a blog post or web page. SoundCloud supports "oEmbed" and so very often all you have to do is drop the URL of your SoundCloud episode into your software and... ta da... that's it! This works great for all my WordPress sites. It also works great in chat clients such as Wire.

If your site/application doesn't support oEmbed (such as TypePad, the site I use for this blog), it's trivial to get a snippet of HTML code that you can then drop into your post (as I will do at the end of this post):

This also works with social networks, too. Drop a URL for a SoundCloud episode into Facebook or Ello, for example, and the embedded player will automagically appear so that people can listen right there in their feeds.

5. Comments At Specific Points In The Podcast

Engaging with listeners is always a critical part of building a community around your podcast. Typically you get comments as replies to the blog post about your podcast or as replies on social media.

But what's cool about SoundCloud is that you can get replies AT THE POINT IN TIME within your actual podcast. If someone wants to reply to something specific you said, no longer are you trying to get to the point in the episode where you said whatever it was to remember what you said - the comment can be left right at that point of the episode.

Now, this DOES require a SoundCloud account. And so many of your listeners may not want to register for a (free) SoundCloud account just to be able to leave you comments at specific times. But some of your listeners might, and so for them it becomes a great way to build interaction.

6. Open API Makes Integration Easy

SoundCloud understands the power of becoming a platform for developers and they provide rich support through a SoundCloud developer program and much more. One result is the many applications I pointed out in #2 above, but another result is services such as IFTTT (If This, Then That) that allow you to easily set up actions involving SoundCloud. There are many IFTTT "recipes" for SoundCloud that are already available:

As the screen capture shows, the integration can go both ways - in or out of SoundCloud. For instance, I had a recipe for a while that would trigger whenever I published an episode to SoundCloud that would post a link out to my App.net account (until I pretty much stopped using App.net). I also plan to set one up that will post to a specific WordPress site every time I publish a new post. Going the opposite direction, you can see that there are recipes that will publish to your SoundCloud account every time you put a file in, say, a Dropbox folder.

Now, IFTTT is just one site. There are many other sites that have their own integration with SoundCloud... all because of this open application programming interface (API).

7. Search and Discovery

SoundCloud as a web site / service is all focused around the consumption and listening to music and audio. Like any social network, people with an account can "follow" you and get all your recent episodes. SoundCloud makes it very easy to search and find episodes. It supports hashtags.

Now obviously this is again using the SoundCloud site, which your listeners may or may not do... but this becomes a way that you can potentially find new users.

8. Downloads

Just as the embedding of a podcast is easy, so is the downloading of a podcast IF you enable people to do so. This is a choice. But if you want to allow people to download an episode, all they need to do is to go to the episode page (an example) and the download button is right there.

9. Spotlight

If you create a good number of episode and want to highlight some of the episodes you think are the most important, SoundCloud lets you put up to 5 sounds in the "Spotlight" area of your SoundCloud profile page. A nice way to help people coming to your site to see what you think are your best or most important episodes

10. Statistics

Typically as a podcaster you want to know how many people are listening, right? As I've written about before and we've talked about over on the FIR podcast, statistics are difficult because you can know how many people downloaded a podcast, but not whether they in listened.

SoundCloud has many statistics and can perhaps obviously give more statistics about user behavior when your podcast episode is played from the SoundCloud site or apps. For regular "RSS downloads", you still do get a good bit of information, although, as mentioned above, it's challenging to know what the stats truly mean. Here's the "RSS downloads" of my last week of TDYR stats:

Apparently I'm interesting to people (or someone) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia! Who knew? And then Southbury, CT... (but I have family and friends in that region :-) )

Anyway, a good number of statistics are available

Others...

There are other reasons why podcasters may like the platform. For example, it's great that Creative Commons licensing is available for those who want to allow others to share their audio content under a CC license. There are also monetization options available that I, quite frankly, haven't explored yet (since I don't see TDYR as something that people would want to advertise on). The whole "social network" aspect of SoundCloud can be compelling, too, for building an audience. For example, people can "repost" your episodes and share them out with followers.

I'd note, too, that you don't have to use SoundCloud as your exclusive hosting platform. A friend, Donna Papacosta, primarily hosts her podcast on Libsyn[2] and then also uploads it to her SoundCloud account as an additional distribution channel. C.C. Chapman also posts some of his episodes to his SoundCloud account. So it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing. You can experiment!

Issues

While I'm obviously rather pleased with SoundCloud, there are still a number of issues I would love to see them address:

• Support for IPv6 - Given the work I do with the Internet Society, I'm looking for hosting platforms that realize that all the new mobile networks and the efforts to bring the next 4 billion people online are going to need to use IPv6 in their networks. YouTube, Facebook and all of Google's properties all work over IPv6. SoundCloud needs to get there, too.
• Use HTML5 instead of Flash - Similarly, SoundCloud really needs to ditch their Flash player and use HTML5 audio instead. Flash creates so many issues on my various systems. We now have HTML5 audio support in most modern browsers. SoundCloud has had experimental support for HTML5, but they need to move that out of beta, too, and make it the default.
• Finish the transition to their new website user experience - SoundCloud has been in this strange transition from their "classic" website to the "new" website for a year or more now and it still provides a strange and bizarre user experience. You click some link in your account settings and... ta da... you are back in an old user experience... and then you have to find your way back to the regular "new" view. They need to just finish this up.

Hopefully those are all things they will continue to work on to make the platform even stronger.

Getting Started with Podcasting On SoundCloud

If after reading all this you want to get started with a podcast on SoundCloud, they provide a very simple guide to begin:

http://on.soundcloud.com/creator-guide/podcasting

Basically, you create an account, set up the RSS feed settings, get some app that will upload to SoundCloud... and start publishing!

That's it!

If you are already using SoundCloud, all you should need to do is go into your "Settings" and to the "Content" tab where you will see your RSS feed and can set up any specific fields you want to configure:

As you can see at the bottom of that image you can configure your defaults for all uploads in terms of the license and whether uploads are automatically in the RSS feed.

Again, the Creator Guide for podcasting has more info.

I was admittedly rather skeptical of SoundCloud in the early years of my experimentation. Their "support" of podcasting in their beta program was pretty weak three years ago and it seemed all they wanted to do was build their own "walled garden of audio" and try to get everyone to come onto their platform.

But with this public launch of "podcasting" (which really amounts to exposing RSS feeds!) they've finally opened up those walls and made it so that you can use the SoundCloud platform for hosting your podcast - giving you all the advantages I've outlined above - but then making your content available to everyone out there to consume in whatever applications and systems they choose.

I look forward to hearing many more podcasts on SoundCloud... including yours! Please do feel free to follow me on SoundCloud as I continue with my experimentation. I'd love to hear from you what you think about all of this, either in the comments here or, of course, on the accompanying audio version (TDYR 243) of this post up on SoundCloud.

[1] For more stories about the launch, see Techmeme and Mediagazer.

[2] In full disclosure I also use Libsyn for hosting some of my podcasts (and have since 2005) and find their services very useful, too.

Photo credit: A merger of a Flickr CC-licensed image from Colleen AF Venable and SoundCloud's logo.