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It’s March 2020. A new virus known as COVID-19 has led to a worldwide pandemic, forcing governments to call for full-scale lockdowns that shutter all but essential services. You’re bored in the house and you’re in the house bored, talking to your volleyball and drawing smiley faces on your fingers. The gang’s all here. But it’s quiet.

From the ashes of this silence rises an app called Clubhouse, giving way to the hottest trend in social media: real-time conversation with anyone around the world. As someone who hasn’t seen a person in years (weeks, actually), you and a million others jump at the chance to join this trend. This marks the beginning of social audio.

The Beginning of Social Audio

Social audio describes a segment of social media where users primarily engage through audio, and in particular, their voices. The main players in this space have focused on live conversation. You join a room and get a front-row seat to a conversation happening right before your very ears, and if you’re lucky, you get to speak as well. If not, you’re always free to host your own room. Under this structure, people are able to exchange ideas, build connections and friendships, learn new things, and just be…human. That desire to be human clearly scratched an itch for millions of people forced into solitude.

To understand why social audio exploded during a lockdown is to understand the very essence of being human. I’m not trying to be hyperbolic in saying that. Communication is at the heart of the human experience, to the extent that a lack of communication leads to negative consequences. Just ask any marriage counselor. According to a study by Ohio University, we spend 70% of our waking hours communicating. Generally speaking, we humans crave it. 

Communication serves many purposes, from our need for companionship to our desire to vent or be heard through our struggles. In the words of the late psychologist Dr. Rollo May, “Communication leads to community, that is to understanding and mutual valuing.” So when a lockdown comes along and strips us of so many avenues for contact, an app like Clubhouse truly shines.

But the lifting of lockdown mandates has seemingly coincided with social audio taking a backseat to the usual social media suspects. To some, this means that social audio was a product of the pandemic, gaining traction because people had few means of conversational contact. It then begs the question: did humans ever really need social audio? Put another way, does social audio have a future or will it be a footnote in the greater scheme of audio? To answer that, let’s take a brief walk down history.

The Big Three of Audio Communication Inventions

While social media largely functions on visual media, don’t let this distract you from the fact that humans are first and foremost creatures of audio. As babies, we learn to listen and speak before we learn to read and write. That emphasis on the audible continues as we go through life. That same Ohio University study found that of the time we spend communicating, 45% is listening, 30% is speaking, 16% is reading, and 9% is writing. Undoubtedly, audio is important to our daily lives.

To facilitate this largely audible form of communication, humans throughout history have invented various gizmos and contraptions. Perhaps none is as important as Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in 1876, which allowed for distant two-way communication. Not long after, in 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, a device that could record sound and then replay it. Rounding out the 19th-century explosion of audio technology was Guglielmo Marconi, who in 1895, invented the radio. The telephone, phonograph, and radio set the stage for several other key inventions that followed in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Bell’s telephone opened the door for inventions that further enabled our ability to hold conversations from a distance. From the kids who embark on a secret mission, connected only by walkie-talkies, to the 86% of the world’s 8 billion people who own a smartphone, we have all gained from two-way communication devices. The distance, too, has come a long way from the days of Bell. People can now call someone across the world with the tap of a button.

Edison’s phonograph opened the door for inventions that further enabled our ability to record and replay ourselves. This is a utility that comes in handy in a variety of ways. You can record a school lecture for future study, record a voice note in lieu of a text, record a Zoom meeting at work for those who can’t attend, and more. The proliferation of devices that can store and play recordings, such as MP3 players, has been instrumental in transforming the recorded music industry into one worth $29 billion and counting.

Marconi’s radio opened the door for modern broadcasting methods as we know it. Radio plays a pivotal role in the sharing of news, music, entertainment, and more, but it doesn’t stop there. One-way communication extends beyond radio and into the world of podcasts, audiobooks, and more. So whether you’re listening to NPR in the morning on your way to work or following along with a true crime podcast, the ability to broadcast across a slew of devices has helped people all around the world stay in the know. 

All of these inventions lead back to one single human desire: the want to communicate. I posit that the social audio space, and the inventions therein, join a tradition of continuing to satisfy that desire. So while the pandemic may have accelerated the adoption of digital conversation, I believe that social audio in all its potential has been 150 years in the making. Or if you’ll allow me to be hyperbolic again, it's been brewing since the first time a human uttered a word. The question, then, isn’t if social audio will fade; rather, where does it go from here?

The Future of Audio

Social audio is very much in its infancy. Less than five years since its advent, the landscape has largely stayed the same in terms of focusing on live conversation. This may suggest it has hit a wall, but it is precisely this lack of expansion that leads me to believe more is possible.

Most modern-day audio inventions are essentially some combination of the big three: the telephone, phonograph, and radio. These three inventions make possible conversation, recording, and broadcast. I will creatively refer to these as the Triangle of Audio. Given that social audio apps largely revolve around a combination of conversation and broadcast, this means the space is not satisfying one-third of the human desire to communicate (recording). To me, this means that there is plenty of room to invent new wheels.

Of course, there are plenty of apps that focus on recording. You can send voice notes through most messaging apps. What we have yet to see, however, is recording in a social media context. The reason this is important is the same reason why Instagram succeeded even though everyone already had a camera app and the reason why Twitter succeeded even though everyone could already blog or send texts. A social bend to communication has proven time and again to satisfy our wants in ways that non-social apps cannot. 

To be blunt with a touch of the obvious, communication is more satisfying when you can reach more people. It then follows that the app or invention that masters all three of the audio hallows will set the tone for the industry and perhaps even win the day in this social audio space where the sun is only beginning to rise.

Sunday Blog is a series where we discuss the many facets and functions of the human voice.