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In November 2017, Spotify chose the Soundtrap online music studio as part of its efforts to offer more services to artists on its platform. Now that Spotify Increasingly interested in podcasts and the needs of podcast creators, Soundtrap is launching a new product for this market. Today, the company announced the launch of Soundtrap for Storytellers, a cloud-based podcasting platform with many advanced features, including the ability to transcribe and edit podcasts, collaborate with users, and collaborate with other users. other users, etc.
Soundtrap is not the only podcasting service that Spotify now has. He also purchased the lightweight Anchor podcasting app in February 2019 as part of his strong growth in podcasts.
Like Anchor, Soundtrap aims to facilitate podcasts. But unlike Anchor, which is free, Soundtrap is available by subscription, starting at $ 14.99 per month (or $ 11.99 per month, if billed annually).
Pricing represents all the differentiated features provided by Soundtrap. Although Anchor offers a lightweight podcast creation – it started as a mobile app – it now also provides hosting, distribution and monetization. Soundtrap, meanwhile, focuses on recording, editing and publishing mainly on Spotify.
When Spotify acquired Soundtrap for the first time, it focused on creating collaborative music – the same technology is now used for podcasting.
This includes built-in features such as recording, multitrack remote interview with video chat, interactive transcripts, full audio production capabilities, SEO optimization, and more.
For example, the new service will transcribe the podcast (only in English at the moment). This transcription is then published with the podcast to optimize its discovery potential in online search results. (As luck would have it, last week at the I / O developer conference, Google announced that it would now index podcasts in its search results, allowing users to play episodes from the browser. or save them for later listening.)
The platform also allows multiple podcasters to talk and record on separate tracks as they work together on the same podcast, sending a link to join the session to remote guests. This is similar to a number of existing solutions such as Zecastr, Ringr, Cleanfeed, Clearcast and Cast, for example. As well as some existing solutions, Soundtrap will offer sound effects. And like Simplecast, it offers a distribution.
The service shines however in his editing studio. Here you can edit the spoken word audio file in the same way as a text document, which makes things much easier. This is one of its unique features – and something that could make it an attractive alternative to existing solutions.
The added value of the service also lies in the fact that it is a one-stop shop. Today, many podcasters jump from one product to the other: one to record, one to edit and another to publish. Soundtrap includes all these options in its platform.
However, a big problem is that Soundtrap only publishes directly on Spotify, in addition to providing the transcription to the search engines. To distribute the podcast elsewhere, creators will need to download the podcast created with Soundtrap and then use another service for distribution.
Given the higher price of Soundtrap over competing solutions, it could be a stumbling block, as it can not fully replace all aspects of the podcaster workflow.
And since Soundtrap is not a hosting solution, podcasters will have to look elsewhere for analysis tools.
"The Soundtrap team did a fantastic job with this new product," said Charlie Hellman, Spotify's Creative Market Manager, in a statement. "Part of Spotify's mission is to increase the number of creators who can create podcasts around the world. Soundtrap for Storytellers offers podcast creators incredible editing capabilities, real-time collaboration and the ability to publish their podcast on Spotify, "he added.
The full suite of Soundtrap is available on the desktop, with a subset of its tools available on iOS and Android.
Additional report: Chris Gates
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