Are you listening? Yes, this is about the third blog I have devoted to the popularity of audio in one week. Well deserved, considering that, in addition to Augmented Reality, Audio is the hot topic, the one that has publishers tuned in, reporters considering how well their voices would project in a podcast, and storytellers everywhere ready to hang a microphone around their lapel.
Me, too. I am quite interested in discovering what makes for good audio.
I am extremely curious to study audio for all its lean forward (“Alexa, give me the news when I wake up”) and lean back (“Let me settle down for a 30-minute podcast by a famous commentator”). The interesting part is that while our ears lean forward or lean back, we could be doing something else. That, I think, is one of the reasons that audio is the oldest thing to become new and trendy, sort of what happened to coffee in the hands of Starbuck.
Amazon: Alexa will take you a little deeper into the news
Amazon folks are betting that you want more than just the headlines from Alexa. As in something deeper.So, it’s rolling out an Alexa feature in the US that provides long-form news from Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, Newsy and NPR. According to this piece:
Ask Alexa to “tell me the news” or to “play news” from a specific outlet and you’ll get detailed audio from all providers, and video from CNBC and Newsy. You can skip stories if you’d rather not examine every story in vivid detail.
The evidence is there that people are interested in getting news from their smart speakers, such as Alexa. According to a 2018 Adobe survey, 46 percent of voice assistant users ask their smart speaker for news. And today’s Alexa Skill Store lists more than 5,000 voice apps in its News category, which indicates some level of consumer demand for this sort of content.
Audio it is
Hear it loudly and clearly, publishers and editors. You must include audio as part of your storytelling tools. Amazing time to be a storyteller, knowing that your audience wants to see, to hear, to read and to engage. And we now have the perfect mobile platform—the smartphone—to serve that audience.
A celebration of the senses for every storyteller to explore—and for the users to enjoy.
Wonder how soon journalism schools across the globe will start requiring an audio course? Ironically, it is readily available in most curriculum via radio journalism.
I am tempted to audit such a course.
More audio blog posts
Of related interest
The words have it…..
Sometimes it is the manner in which the lead of the story creates an imagery that seduces us into reading the rest. Take a look at this one just now from The New York Times:
The National Enquirer, the supermarket tabloid that once published a photo of Elvis Presley in his coffin and later backed President Trump, is for sale, the publisher said in a statement.
Pre-order The Story
The newspaper remains the most powerful source of storytelling on the planet. But technology threatens its very existence. To survive, the Editor must transform, adapt, and manage the newsroom in a new way. Find out how, pre-orderThe Story by Mario Garcia, chief strategist for the redesign of over 700 newspapers around the world.
Order here:
https://thaneandprose.com/shop-the-bookstore?olsPage=products%2Fthe-story
An interview of interest
http://www.itertranslations.com/blog/2019/3/11/fd60ybflpvlqrgrpdp5ida5rq0c3sp
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TheMarioBlog post #3028