2019 – a year of visual storytelling for audio creators
This time last year I said 2018 was going to be the year of the podcast and it certainly seems to have been for some of us at least. Nearly six million adults in the UK now regularly tune into podcasts every week, according to media regulator Ofcom.
This year again audio will be strong but now its about spreading the word to people who don’t know where to find podcasts. It's the year of audio visualisation.
Webcams are now a permanent fixture in BBC Radio studios in the UK so broadcasts can be viewed later on channels such as YouTube.
It’s the social media platforms where the untapped audiences for audio lie and, in order to get onto these channels where content is searchable and shareable, podcasts need to be videos not audio files.
Audio for social media platforms
Podcast
A podcast version of this article can be found on our YouTube site here
Audio into video
The video tool on mobile phone app Anchor allows you to share your audio to platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
The short podcast created for this article was produced on the desktop social media video editor, Headliner, an update on the Audiogram Generator which was developed by the public radio service WNYC in New York. Headliner is open source which means it’s free to use and has some powerful features.
The audio for the "prediction" podcast was recorded using the Voice Record Pro app on an android smart phone and then transferred to Headliner video editing app where it was converted into a video file.
The editor creates a "dynamically generated wave form" to which you can add background still images and video. It also automatically transcribes the podcast script into captions with only minor adjustments needed, at least as far as this podcast was concerned. Once completed, the finished video can be exported to social media platforms or stored.
Podcasts grew in popularity in many parts of the world in 2018. Visualising audio may get the content to those who are not yet audio fans and create a greater podcast "Buzz" in 2019.
The "Visual Storytelling for audio creators" podcast was produced by Deborah for the Thomson Foundation's e-learning platform Journalism Now.
