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AUDIO CONTENT RUNS AMOK
There is excellent news if you are a provider or creator of audio content. Audio is cool and it is not only available on- demand but it is in demand. Audio is available on more platforms of distribution than ever. There is of course traditional radio which has always tried to be a steady and reliable source of content and audience engagement. The rise in content creation from Podcasters has been a boom for the audio sector as well. Then along comes Clubhouse which has inspired other social media type platforms and the trend for social going private along with people gravitating toward niche communities. What got me thinking about writing this article was the dramatic negative trendline regarding Clubhouse downloads and consumption. First, we hear that Clubhouse enjoyed this surge in use during the pandemic and could be valued at 4 billion dollars without any revenue. They experienced a sharp spike in February with 9.6 million downloads and in April numbers plummeted to 900,000 downloads worldwide (according to Sensor Tower, a company that offers intelligence on the “app economy.”) Is it the novelty of a new app to play with wearing down or is it the quality of the audio content catching up with it? Even if it is some combination of both it begs the important questions of content creation and presentation and the difficulty of it for novice presenters. Spotify just announced its live audio app and Clubhouse rival, Spotify Greenroom which came behind the company’s purchase of the sports focused app Locker Room which promises to leverage their personalization technology to better connect users to content they want to hear. Twitter is jumping into the audio fray with something called “Spaces” and Facebook has created their version called “Live Audio Rooms.” Not to be outdone, Reddit will offer its community Reddit Talk, a similar venture that hopes existing users will flock to a new feature rather than download a whole new app. All of this has fueled new voices that are being heard in some cases for the first time. It has also created a dash for content creation that has run amok when considering quality. Radio is the original social network and has generally taken a quality first approach. There is always room for improvement and radio content providers get how to win audience attention. While there are many great examples of well-orchestrated podcasts, the highway is littered with poorly executed examples that have gone to market. Steve Goldstein, the founder of Amplifi Media has done great work in sifting thru the 2 million podcasts and his analysis makes the point that podcasting is hard work. Those of us who have been content creators or content presenters respect that delivering content and connecting with an audience is hard work. Just as riding a bike for the first time was a dispiriting experience because of the degree of difficulty we all remember the first time we cracked a microphone as equally challenging and humbling. The work that needs to be put in to curate and tell a story with a succinct beginning, middle and end is significant to say the least and is the difference between content that connects and content that repels. Let content run amok elsewhere and be great every second you have an opportunity to connect with your audience. That will always win in the long run.
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AuthorBuzz Knight shares his thoughts about media happenings Archives
October 2021
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