Is This Thing On?

Have we buried Clubhouse yet? How about Twitter Spaces or Spotify Greenroom or Facebook's Whatever or Mark Cuban's thing -- has that even started yet? Is social audio already dead? Was it a flash in the pan? Does social audio have a future? Or has it gone the way of the telephone party line, which it resembles?

I don't know the answers. I do know that the questions aren't quite on target.

Successful media platform launches aren't successful because of the technical aspects. It's about the content. Give people what they want and they'll embrace the platform unless it gets in the way.

We see it over and over. Radio was a hobbyist thing until it offered music, news, comedy, drama, all delivered to your home. Television was a novelty, something futuristic, and then it offered boxing and baseball and Milton Berle, and people who only saw TV at bars and in store windows decided, yeah, we should save up and buy one of those for our living room and make the neighbors jealous. FM was around for decades until separate and better programming appealing to more than just easy listening and Classical fans and unavailable on AM turned the band from an afterthought to dominant. The personal computer took off because you could do spreadsheets and word processing on them, and then because you could access the web and play games on them. HDTVs looked great, sure, but they only took off when there was sufficient HD content to justify the purchase. TikTok's ascendancy came because of a succession of "you gotta see this" viral videos, not because it was really all that different from Snapchat.

And then there were the failures. 3D TV? Remember how they pushed 3D at CES year after year, the Next Big Thing in video? But besides the cumbersome technology that didn't really look that great, there was practically no 3D content to watch. The history of video gaming is littered with discarded platforms that were technically fine or even advanced but had no compelling games to offer. And if you're like me, you still have a bunch of social media apps for platforms that were hot for a few minutes and withered because you'd go to them and find nothing of interest. Remember Peach? What was that, anyway? I just found that Vero still exists, and I'm not sure WHAT it is now, but Zack Snyder and Madonna are there, according to the home page. And if you used Meerkat or Periscope, take a moment to contemplate how fleeting our time can be.

Which takes us back to social audio, and Clubhouse, with which I went through a few stages. First, it was a cool idea, impromptu talk radio, instant broadcasting. Then I thought it was like live podcasts, but without the best feature of podcasts, the ability to listen when you want. Finally, the content, and the biggest problem: Any time I had available to check it out, there were no rooms that offered anything even remotely of interest to me. It was all hucksters and crypto touts and singles meet-ups and earnest lectures on esoteric topics, each with maybe a few dozen people in the room -- a convention center filled with panels, none of which pertained to my interests. I'm sure there are rooms that I might like, but they're never at a time I'm able to listen. And as for hosting a room myself, I haven't really determined what I'd get from that. That's why I turned off notifications from the app and haven't checked in much lately. And as for the clones, I can't even FIND Greenroom in my Spotify app or whatever Facebook is doing with audio, and I rarely see any Twitter Spaces chats come up, either.

You might think this means I've crossed social audio off the list of contenders for The Future Of Our Industry. Maybe I have, to some extent. But not entirely, because it's not the platform, it's the content, and this is where you come in. Like radio, like podcasts, like social media in general, social audio is viable only if it has content people want. Right now, I don't see a lot of that happening, but all it takes is one creative person who takes that platform and does something unusual with it, something way different and good and unavailable in other forms, a "you gotta hear this" thing. Isn't that the same for radio? Anyone can slap a playlist onto an FM signal (or stream, or Spotify), but to break out and do the big numbers, it requires a real talent and content people can't get elsewhere. If you're in radio or podcasting, your job is to create something so compelling and unique that people will go out of their way to find you. That's not different from Clubhouse or Greenroom, is it? These are open platforms, and anyone can use them to "do a show." Someone might look at these platforms and think of something to do with them that nobody else has thought, and then they'll take off, or nobody will do that, and they'll further recede into the background.

You fancy yourself a creative person? You got ideas? Okay, then, a challenge: Use one of the open platforms, whether Clubhouse or podcasting or streaming, and make something happen. Do stuff people will seek out. Be the pioneer, the driver of adoption, the Milton Berle. Worry about monetizing later. Hell, if it becomes good and big enough, maybe Spotify or Amazon will throw money at you. Worst case scenario, you don't lose anything. And most importantly, I'll have something good to listen to. I do so love being entertained.

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Whatever the platform, for material that'll help you do your best work, you oughta click here for All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep section, and you can also follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics and find every story individually linked to the appropriate item. Also, since it went up a little late last week, I'll repeat the recommendation that you read "10 Questions With..." podcaster, former Miami Marlins President, "Survivor" contestant, and weekly "The Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz" contributor David P. Samson, because it's a good one.

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Here's another reminder that I'll be moderating a panel at Podcast Movement in Nashville August 3-6 for Audioboom, and you can click here to register for either the in-person event (Vaccinated? Come on down!) or the virtual version. Mark Cuban will be there and he IS scheduled to talk about his social audio platform. That might be interesting.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
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Twitter @pmsimon
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