3:29 MP3 File (1.59MB)
Listen to this postI did a reading in a wedding once – another story altogether – and was told after the ceremony by nice old man that I had a good radio voice. Ever since, I’ve been waiting and hoping for an excuse to tell people what I hit I was. I got tired of waiting, so there you have a rough segue.
Adam Curry of live.curry.com has been toying around with the idea of audioblogging. The concept is simple – weblogs including spoken word audio in addition to text. It would be something like bite-size chunks of talk radio, I suppose.
There are lots of potential problems with the idea of audioblogging. The biggest and most obvious problem would be that no one wants to hear me, or any other navel-gazing weblogger ranting and raving about something or other. When you read text onscreen, you can skim and skip to whatever you’re interesting it. Audio runs on the timeline of the speaker, rather than listener. This just isn’t how the web works.
Another problem is that weblogs post are often based on links to other sites. Links just don’t work in audio. If there was way to link from an audio file, I suppose you’d have to say “click now” instead of “click here”. Regardless, inline links also tend to change the way you write in ways that don’t translate to the web. I tried reading a few recent Acts of Volition posts aloud – and much of the text is written with the understanding that you’ll be following the given links and doesn’t make sense without them. Incidentally, they’re riddled with embarrassing typos.
It wouldn’t make sense to offer an entire weblog in both text and audio formats. Something written for one medium may not work well in the other, and something written with both medium in mind might not work well in either. This post, for example, is much longer than it would have been if I hadn’t planned on reading it aloud.
So, if you aren’t going to make audio versions of all posts available, what do you do with audioblogging? Well, you could, as Adam Curry is doing, only make audio versions of posts you think would translate well to spoken word – but I’m not sure there’s any value in repurposing of content like that. It does, however, lead to any idea I’ve had floating around in my head for the past couple of years: Acts of Volition Radio.
I’ve never really nailed down exactly what aov-radio would be, if were ever to exist. What I’ve had in mind, roughly, would be an occasional radio-style program, as a compliment to the text-based weblog, including talk and music, available for permanently streaming or download on the site. I’m not sure if I would ever get around something like this, but it might be a fun experiment.
I have the means to produce audio – recording software and a good microphone is all it really takes, so this post is an experiment. Does audioblogging make any sense? Let me know.
Don’t judge the format on my lame attempt – here are a few more examples of AudioBlogging from Adam Curry (follow the links and click the little speaker icon to listen in MP3):
This is not meant to be a criticism of you or your thoughts or your abilities to convey those thoughts:
While I was interested in what you wrote, I wasn’t at all interested in what you said.
I read a lot faster than you speak.
It also seemed as though you were reading text, but trying to make it sound as if it was off the top of your head. I found myself listening, not so much to what you were saying, but to how you were saying it.
I don’t see how audioblogging could work, or, really, why we would want it to. Unless we were blind, I suppose.
Rob: Interesting feedback, and fair criticism. Particularly that I “seemed as though you were reading text, but trying to make it sound as if it was off the top of your head”. That’s exactly what I was doing.
Check out some of the audio on Adam Curry’s site for better examples.
Perhaps audio could work on a site like this if it weren’t tied so closely to the text-based content. Maybe as a separate feature altogether, if at all.
If someone tells you that you have a good radio voice, then you should probably take that as an insult. Maybe it means that you are ugly.
You mean I’m not good enough for TV?
Ever since I bought a webcam last week, I have been tinkering with the idea of creating a webcamblog: short video clips of me talking about whatever is on my mind. Video files would be much larger than audio files, but I’m so damn handsome that it would be worth the extra download time. Would anybody care to host me?
You wrote above:
Audio runs on the timeline of the speaker, rather than listener. This just isn’t how the web works.
For a web radio nut like me that does not seem correct. The web both works and does not work like that now. Unlike radio, the user is in control most of the time. Web radio, however, is not just radio over a wire. What you do get with web radio over broadcast is immediate response: I have had feedback over BBC Scotland to questions or requests within 5 minutes twice in the last year. Combined with other web text aspects, such as polls, interaction increases.
I still think of the intranet as being similar to 1932 radio – been through both the early hobbiests and an investment bubble. How it will evolve now may have less to do with the nerds and the fools with cash and more to do with the user and their needs than the producer. “Radiophone” a pre-radio wired audio feed failed because no one in cities here it was offered could be bothered in the 1920’s sitting around the house with headphones on. Come the 1930’s and better amplifiers, speakers and a depression and radio hit its stride. Like the intranet as a whole, web radio is still to new and undefined to have its future told.
That being said, could web audio become predominantly less like broadcast and more a means to provide a single person an audio voice? I can’t think of any social phenomena other than dictatorship that has supported that form of presentation in another medium…well, that and the sophmoric interest in poetry reading at coffee houses. Thankfully we live in a post-dictatorship / coffee house world.
What web audio/radio might become is an on-demand opinion service. Indexed ideas placed in a repository for later listening. Unlike text blogs now, the most recent clever line might not be the intended first entry into the set of thoughts. In the 1600’s and 1700’s there were books of thoughts or impressions which were meant to be dipped into rather than proceded through from cover to cover. Web audio could become like that – the more control of time is placed into the hands of the listener, the likelier that is to become true.
I have seen this concept on a few sites recently (dont think it was Adams and I didnt listen to it either) but I’m going to agree with Rob on “I read a lot faster than you speak.”
1. Like Steven said in the original post, a complete AudioBlog would prevent users from skimming through to see if it’s something their interested in. In most cases, it would require each reader/listener to sit through the entire topic at the speed of the reader.
2. Would eliminate users with no speakers or users that read the blogs in a quit location. Sure we could set up headphones but still wouldn’t be that usable in a library or at work etc.
3. I’m at my parents place at the moment on a dialup connection. Not only will it take longer to listen, but I’m still waiting for the file to download as I type this.
On a positive note, this is a good way to express sarcasm or expressions in your writing. A speaker can have a much bigger impact on a listener then a having a reader read the post.
Ok, now that I have heard it I do think it adds to the original post but not sure if it could stand alone without the typed version. Radio is one thing, opened discussions are another and for me or somebody else to go back to review a specific comment, I would need to listen to the entire thing over.
But still, I would look forward to aov radio.
“Captain’s Blog, stardate 0346.234.23.52314”
I’m pretty sure the first audioblog was done by Chris Prillo, but his site doesn’t seem to be working right now, so I can’t check the exact date.
It’s cool to be able to get thoughtful feedback (and criticism) to an idea like this. Thanks – keep it coming.
For a much better example of the potential of personal audio publishing (a better name, maybe?), check out http://www.jish.nu/vox/.
In particular, read I pee’d in pants (MP3) – an amusing personal anecdote – and from a Canadian.
Jish is obviously not reading from a script – it sounds more like he’s has a list of talking points, and he’s just talking off the top of his head – to good effect.
That “pee’d in pants” bit makes really good use of the idea. Rather than have entire, boring blog posts in audio, just record specefic events or short stories that could really benefit from the emotion a voice can convey. That little story wouldn’t be half as amusing if it were in written form.
To be totally honest, I listened to this until the start of the second paragraph, stopped, raised an eyebrow and deleted the file. This is by no means an insult to your voice or anything, Steve, but going back to Rob MacD’s comment, “It [also] seemed as though you were reading text, but trying to make it sound as if it was off the top of your head.” This factor, combined with the “I read faster than you speak” point, discouraged me from continuing – it sounded too much like a recorded university lecture.
It seems like this type of post – an short essay, one might say – would be more fit to read for a newsy type online publication (opinion columns, “zines”, and whatnot). The “write what’s on your mind in an semi-unformatted jumble of words” style of most blogs doesn’t quite fit with this experimental post.
Forgive me if this didn’t make any sense; typing out what comes to you about something very quickly will do that.
I’ve posted a longer essay about audio blogging that starts from listening to Steven’s experiment. Just based on my experience with text and audio, I think there are a lot of faulty assumptions about what audio can and should do….
Wow,. I haven’t read any of the text you posted, I played the mp3 and went about my browsing. It was actually rewarding.
I am somewhat versed in this I realize, I listen to talk radio (and actually listen) while I do a lot of things, one of those is often work. I work best when there are a few thoughts trickling in my head and sometimes I need someone else’s ideas to let that happen.
Listening to your post (which, IMHO, did come across as a little forced and plasticky — but your aren’t trying to be a radio personality, at least not year) worked then way I think it should. What you read was audio-friendly, you explored the idea in a discourse that made it all more something of your own, and not something composed of a bunch of links. I don’t think it is something I would ever do, mainly because I blog in much shorter bursts, but for a site like AOV which is a venue for slightly stronger writing, something like this could supplement nicely.
(excuse spelling, in a rush)