Why Is It So Hard For Audio To Go Viral?
Last year, Stan Alcorn wrote a piece for Digg about why audio doesn't go viral. He joined us yesterday for a Dialog about what's changed since then.
Check out our favorite thread from the Dialog below — or read the full thing here.
Esra Erol: I find it curious when people react well to audio that has been uploaded to YouTube like a lyric video. There's no visual—except for the words. And sometimes, there are no words, just a brief description at the beginning of the video. Do you think these videos perform well because YouTube is such an easy platform to share unlike, let's say, Sound Cloud?
Guy Licata: great point, I think Youtube has just become the default easiest (while also being the hands down largest) platform to digest streaming content in general, so in that regard it has an edge. When a YT clip embeds it seems to have a more frictionless pavlovian response, like, I'm going to see something and that in itself might be a more appealing interface. Also, the view count is much more upfront and that in itself feeds many times into virality. That along with the fact that YT as a platform pretty much birthed the popular concept of content going viral.
Esra Erol: I agree with you 100%. If audio platforms were more shareable, I would love to send them to my friends without them having to open the link, scroll down to the sample, and then—finally—get the chance to listen to it. It's a shame because there's so much great content out there!
Guy Licata: Yep. It's tough, I come from the music industry so I've seen the issue come from both the UI/UX side as well as the copyright/legality side (and one informs the other a lot). At first glance the difference between Soundcloud, Pandora and Spotify might seem menial, but the laws that govern the use of content in turn the functionality is very different between the three.
Stan Alcorn: the power of YouTube is strong. There are many people listening just to podcasts (podcasts!) on YouTube. Beyond technical sharability, I'd give plenty of credit to the community, but IMHO there's something to be said for just having a visual distraction. I make radio for a living and when I'm listening back to tape, if I don't have something to do visually, my mind is prone to wander
Esra Erol: I've always wondered: Can Spotify possibly help audio go viral? Personally, I share a lot of the songs I listen to. I don't know if that helps, but it's easy to do, you know?
Guy Licata: yes 100%. The music industry is slow to accept change, but when we see streaming charts show up on Billboard you know that there's a sea change happening. Other places like Big Champagne aggregate this info along with other related consumption. Though, we're still trying to figure out how much of it is actionable, and what virality really means in the long run for the creators and the ecosystem in general.
Julia Furlan: The thing that gets me when somebody has a really good idea is how the litigiousness of the music industry holds audio back as a medium, in general. It's hard from a producer's standpoint to understand and give value to audio as a whole when there are so many boundaries from the music side.
Guy Licata: I hear you, and the reality that gets swept under the rug a lot of times is that the music industry is built off of 100 year old laws that are still held up to this day (copyright & ownership of master recordings and their compositions). In short, it's a mess and really needs to be reworked from the federal level down. Music is being effectively de-commodified (or perhaps re-commodified). What was once a durable good is much less so, and the major labels that control 70% of the recorded music in the world, so they will do whatever they can to keep things the way they were. A lot of artists and creators decry the tech, but in most cases it's the labels and their parent companies who create the most friction.
Esra Erol: I know Spotify gets a bad rep because some musicians don't particularly like it, but I think it's a great way to get their music—audio, in general—out there. And most of them time, if I listen to an album and I like it, I go out and buy it (usually on vinyl because, you know, I'm old-fashioned).
Stan Alcorn: I interviewed people at Spotify for this story (though it didn't make the cut), and they definitely wanted to make the case for a kind of viral popularity occurring on Spotify. Specifically, they claimed that Lorde's popularity arose from Sean Parker's "Hipster International" playlist, and people finding the song there and then sharing it. That said, someone at SoundCloud made a near-identical argument, also claiming Lorde's rise in popularity. Someone should do an article determining if either has validity
Guy Licata: very interesting. I just found this timeline that shows a few more elements that def had to do with her rise.
Check out more from the Dialog here.
