Il (almost) podcast boom it is triggering important trends and phenomena. Like the blaze of Clubhouse, a platform where today a bellicose handful of diehards survive, but which at the beginning of 2021 kicked off the dance, certifying the recovery of the voice in the social and digital ecosystem. Obviously without forgetting the digital assistants with which we interface every day, from Alexa to Siri, passing through that of Google: we talk to them, their artificial intelligences are becoming more and more refined and often reproach us because we are not polite enough. And then how to overlook the audio messages we exchange every day via chat? On WhatsApp alone, there are about 7 billion a day.
April 16 is World Voice Day, World Voice Day, and after the writing phase that characterized the first era of social networks, made up of endless textual posts, followed by that of videos incubated by YouTube, still in progress with the explosion of TikTok and gaming streaming, it is now the moment of orality. Indeed, of a new orality.
Although this anniversary would actually be an appointment mainly dedicated to the health side: born in Brazil in 1999, the Day of the Voice was born above all to raise public awareness against vocal pathologies. But somehow it also shows off a psychological, creative and technological side, which in fact involves our daily media diet, now invaded by more rumors than it was just a couple of years ago.
“I’ll send you a voice”, but 30 minutes: the latest news of Messenger is for those who have so much to say
by Emanuele Capone
Podcasts, a boom in costume and culture
Thanks to podcastsfor example, on which giants like Spotify are aiming more and more, so much so as to multiply the corporate acquisitions (the latest of Daniel Ek’s group are Podsights and Chartable), the original shows and the tools to try to monetize a world still far from finding true financial sustainability. According to an Ipsos research, in 2021 31% of Italians listened to at least one podcast in a span of 30 days and the monthly listeners reached 9.3 million, compared to 7 in 2019. daily listening is very high, about 40 minutes, a stay that many digital publishers dream of on written content: if 11% listen for up to 10 minutes a day, a full-bodied 28% spend up to half an hour and 6% more than an hour. Above all, according to the study, podcasts are building a new audience, made up of an audience characterized by qualified socio-cultural profiles. Which, if you think about it, could also open up some discussion on its actual popular potential in an absolute sense. The fact remains that a generation of authors is growing who, more than the face, want to put their voice in it.
The chats and the thousand features for audio messages
On the chats we have already seen incredible numbers, and proof of the success of the voice (with all due respect to those who hate that format) is testified by updates that WhatsApp is dedicating to audio messages in recent times. These include the acceleration of playback by 1.5 times or twice the speed, playback before sending, the ability to pause the recording. Again: listening to the message in the background, while we jump to other conversations, or the ability to pick up where we left off. Even the choice of provide a faithful indication of the shape of the sound wave it gives the idea of how much orality has returned to the center of daily communication dynamics.
Vocal assistants, orality that dialogues with AI
For years now, voice assistants have led the way, who have colonized every home environment and follow us wherever we go, live in the smartphone or car system, giving instructions to the smart objects we use or, more simply, providing us with information, allowing us to use smartphones and other devices by superimposing them on other activities. Last year Italians have interacted with Alexa more than 5 billion times, using the thousands of skills (the voice apps) proposed by partners and third party developers. In 3 years, since the arrival of the voice assistant in Italian, the interactions have been 10 billion, the hours of music listened to 450 million and the calls 28 million. All without lifting a finger, with a simple “Alexa” or, on other fronts, “Hey Siri” or “Hey Google” (Microsoft’s Cortana is now retired). Worldwide, Siri receives 25 billion voice requests every month (the data comes from Cupertino and is from a couple of years ago, therefore to be revised upwards) via iPhone, other ecosystem devices and HomePods. Within 3 years, the global smart speaker marketwhich after the phones are the devices in which these intelligences that enrich our lives live, will be worth 35 billion dollars.
In principio fu Clubhouse
Not really in the beginning, since Twitter had even started early on the audio discussion spaces that on the social network that ended up in the aims of Elon Musk still survive. But in the second year of the pandemic this orality hangover found 3 months of excitement in Clubhouse, the platform founded by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth and strongly supported by the powerful Andreessen Horowitz fund. For months he has lost the attention that surrounded him and in order not to fall into oblivion he made his debut several new features (chat, Music Mode, Wave to quickly open private rooms, even before the payments to creators) and still made school: for instance, Amazon created Amp, a social network (still in beta) where users can create audio rooms and play songs live from a catalog of over 10 million songs. Apple has instead included We Stroll in the Fitness Plus platform package: is a podcast for the Watch starring big names in entertainment, activism and sport dedicated to inspiring people with stories halfway between memories and music. Even if on that front the big platforms are putting order in the chaos and in the frenzied chases of last year: Bloomberg speaks for example of a divestment of Meta related to news presented in a hurry in the spring of 2021 to Facebook, such as live audio rooms, openness to podcasts, and the ability to publish short audio tracks as posts. And maybe that’s right, like the calm after the storm.
Musica
Spotify: a new car mode with voice commands is coming
by Vincenzo Borgomeo
Audio books, a story reinvented in the 21st century
Similar to podcasts, but distant in fruition, they are audiobooks. A format born in the 1930s in the United States as a support for the blind (they were called Talking Books) which then experienced, through the post-war period and later the spread of Walkman in the Eighties, a much longer and more interesting story than is believed and which deserves a service all for himself.
The first dedicated player was invented by Audible in 1997, that is 4 years before the first iPod: the German group born in 1995 would then end up 13 years later in the hands of Amazon. Also audiobooks, perhaps the oldest of all audio formats of this new orality, they have in some way enjoyed this dragging: many have discovered and appreciated them in the first year of the pandemic. In 2021 the use has grown not a little, registering a + 11% (for a total of 10 million listeners) compared to 2020. For the data of a NielsenIQ research for Audible (one of the two main players together with Storytel, alongside platforms such as AudioTeka, Librivivi, LiberLiber and LibriVox), Italy is the second country in Europe for use of audio content: 46% said they had listened to it in the last year, ahead of us there are only the Spaniards with 55%, behind the United Kingdom (35%), Germany (42%) and France (37%).
Among other things, Italians appreciate the original contents, that is, the stories written precisely to be narrated in voice by the author (or by an actor) especially in literature and fiction, audio books for children, biographies and memoirs. And there are few who do anything else while listening: audiobooks and podcasts are dedicated to relaxing. The merit? Tackling the so-called screen fatigue, display fatigue of smartphones, tablets and PCs: 64% of respondents say they spending too much time in front of screens. And activating a speaker, or wearing a pair of headphones, still allows you to get information, get distracted or get to know new things accompanied by the thousand shades of a voice.