For years, I have wondered to myself, “where is the audio-only version of [Twitter/instagram/TikTok/etc…]?” In articles or blog posts where I would hope to find the answer, I would only ever find explanations of why audio was decidedly not a viral format. Viral or not, it has always seemed to me that there’s enough appreciation of audio’s enduring, endearing qualities for there to exist a moderately-popular, somehow monetizable community for easily sharing aural morsels too small for podcasting. Such a place would be ideal for the mining and sharing of nuggets from my hundreds of hours of iPhone Voice Memos or thousands of hours of minidisc field recordings. I’m still waiting for the day and for the outlet and I feel it coming closer.
Clubhouse, the much talked about social network based on voice, is starting a lot of conversations about social audio (among thousands of other things). The longevity of its COVID-driven popularity is being questioned by some critics, who are saying things like “let’s see how many of you want to be on Clubhouse when the Foo Fighters are playing Jones Beach.” Regardless of whether Clubhouse succeeds in becoming the next social hub or whether most people go back to what they were doing, I am incredibly grateful for the app is making a convincing argument for the viability of social audio.