Apparently 2017 was the year of the podcast. That was news to me when I read it, but it would be news to one such as I who keeps up with that scene about as much as I’ve kept up with any of the content worlds I have populated over the last 22 years.
I do not think it is because 2017 saw a turning point in the quality of content being put out in that realm of narrative nonfiction. Some would say that turning point came a few years ago with the hugely popular “Serial” podcast, a series to which I (by the way) made a small contribution. By my estimate the turning point came with President Obama’s interview in Marc Maron’s garage.
If 2017 was the year of the podcast it was not on account of the content filling that space. It was because of analytics, and the fact that someone figured out how to monetize this stuff. Until now most podcasts have essentially functioned as advertising, or promotional material for ulterior interests. This is how the successful websites of the early Internet justified their existences. CNN, for instance, wrote off the expenses of its website as advertising, deeming it a promotional vehicle for its television network. By this measure podcasts are often used as ways to bring attention to the presenter’s comedy career or to the work of a local historical society.
The more I put together the logistics of my attempt at a podcast the more I understand why people do it. Or rather, I understand why people choose to record narrative audio pieces instead of writing blog postings. It’s just easier to record conversational pieces and interviews than it is to craft grammarmarm-ready text matter of bulletproof linguistic perfection. I don’t mean to suggest that such perfection is common across the blogosphere, nor do I imply that delivering listenable narrative audio content is as easy as many people make it seem. But I, at least, find it to be far more natural than the written word, even if that naturalness comes at the expense of filling a lot of hours with a lot of aural effluvia that must be excised to its essentials.
Another reason I think podcasts are the next frontier is that narrators can, for now at least, bypass the surgical analysis of the search engines. Keyword brinkmanship and playing baiting games with algorithmic relevancy are more or less out the window with audio content, though it should be lost on anyone that this will change, and the searchies will eventually swallow all audio content and make a whole lot of money for themselves off of it. But for now we live in a relatively undiscovered country where speech-to-text as implemented by the searchies is kind of a joke. But even that hearkens back to the very foundation of the public Internet, when search engines delivered what would today be considered unbelievably poor results while making gobs of money in the process. We can look forward to utter rubbish search results when the searchies start indexing audio content.
Audio content is also, for now at least, somewhat more immune to being robbed by AdBlock and other browser plugins that have helped erase a lot of web-based livelihoods. It will be interesting to see if that changes. Given the passive nature of listening to audio it seems like even given access to a 30-second fast-forward button it would take enough effort to skip audio ads that a lot of people would simply not bother.
So if I am really getting into this sphere it may be that the time is right, or it might actually be that the time is wrong if it means there will be that much more competition for listeners. Maybe that doesn’t matter.
I conducted a rare successful experiment yesterday. I attached the 3D mics with rubber bands to the back of my hat and recorded my voice into a voice recording app on the cell phone. The mics in that position just barely capture the sound of my voice, which I actually found to be kind of surprising since I thought those mics picked up everything. It may be that higher-end mics would pick up my voice from a spot that is basically behind me, but maybe not. They are designed to hear sounds exactly as human ears would hear them, so I guess if we had ears on the backs of our heads we would have trouble hearing ourselves talk.
So instead of recording everything with the mics and hoping my voice does not get drowned out by the environment or by my tendency to speak softly when other people are nearby I can isolate my voice by making what amounts to a two-track recording. An advantage to this setup is that I can look a little less conspicuous in recording whatever I have to say, as it looks like I am talking on the phone and not to myself, into thin air. Another advantage is that it eliminates the incredibly annoying problem of the mics constantly falling out of my ears. It’s not just annoying that it happens, it’s annoying because the fuss and fumbling of re-inserting the mics into my ears causes a thunder of noise that has to be edited out of the WAV files.
A disadvantage, if you can call it that, is that it creates double the amount of audio files and I have to move from editing simple WAV files to making multitrack sessions, which I’ve done before but is still kind of new to me. It’s not particularly complicated in principle but the experiment from yesterday revealed that I might have to figure out how to deal with a subtle echo effect that happens when the phone and the mics pick up the same sounds. The editing job becomes a little more nuanced compared to dealing with single audio pieces.
It was not the best day outside to conduct this little test but for the first time in memory I can say that a new approach to doing this actually worked. This does not need to be the only way I do things but it addresses an abiding desire of mine to make this a fully 3D/binaural experience for those who choose to listen with appropriate headgear. For those who don’t listen that way it shouldn’t matter.
The end.