Parcel. An audio resource for founders
We’re launching a little experiment in sharing audio.
As anyone in the audio business knows sharing audio is hard. At betaworks we have been thinking about it for some time. We were early investors in the podcasting company, Gimlet Media, pre-seed investors in Anchor, a great new app that lets you broadcast short audio clips, investors in Unmute, a twist on conference calls and also worked on text to speech on Instapaper. All the way through this audio investigation and podcasting explosion people have grappled with the question of how to share snippets of their favorite shows. Let me clear, we do NOT think we have solved that in any meaningful way. But, last summer we had an idea for Parcel and in the spirit of ‘betas work’ we spent some time building a prototype of this idea. We hope it’s in some way helpful.
What is Parcel?
Parcel allows anyone to pick their favorite pieces of audio content from the popular podcast Dorm Room Tycoon and then put them into one audio file. A little bit like making a mixtape but with spoken content. William Channer, the host of DRT, has amassed a formidable treasure trove of audio content covering the start-up and design world. He has interviewed many of the key figures. On Parcel anyone can search these archives, grab the best clips and drag and drop them into one neat ‘parcel’.
For example, if you are interested in funding you search ‘Funding’ to see all those clips. You can make your own ‘podcast’ about funding. (Possibly in the future audio clips like this might just be called ‘Podcasts’, even if you are not actually broadcasting?) It can be as long or as short as you like. But the idea is that hearing from all these different people about the same subject in one session could potentially be useful. You could tee-up 20 experts’ views on Series A, create your parcel, get on a plane and by the time you have landed, while you’re probably not yet an expert, you’ve had a pretty decent crash course in that subject.
You don’t have to create your parcel all on one subject. You can chop and change. You are the editor, it’s up to you. Parcel is the audio version of raw cliff notes.
How Does it Work?
Each interview on DRT has been processed through a speech analyzer, chunked into smaller segments, and indexed with searchable keywords. What’s good about this format is that it makes the editing manageable. So, for example, if there is a 30 second clip about investing it cuts that up based on the next question and answer break. There is a natural break. Otherwise it’s impossible to create smaller snippets that make any kind of sense. To be clear, there are still some bits that don’t make complete sense. Often a clip might start with a question that is not as ‘clean’ as we might like, but this is raw content that you curate.
Where normally you are used to a podcaster curating content, giving it context and placing it in order that tells a coherent story —complete with nice background music — you’re on your own here. I’ve no doubt given some time you can all make some pretty interesting edits yourselves. The drag and drop functionality makes it very easy to experiment in this way.
Once you have made a parcel it is saved on the site. You can also share it on social. Have a go — it’s easy. (BTW top tip — to change the title of your parcel just highlight the text and write over it.)
What’s next?
We wanted to get this out there and see how (if) people use it. We know there are a lot of holes and some bugs. Right now we are only focusing on content from DRT that covers the start-up sphere. We could certainly add more subject matter from DRT and the wider audio community. So if you wanted to search all podcasts for jokes about Donald Trump and put them in one parcel, in theory, that could happen. We have not made any user profiles, that could also be something in the future.
The Team.
I had an idea for something like this a while back last summer. But ideas are cheap, it’s being able to build these things that matters. Greg Leuch, Alex Companioni, Suman Deb Roy and Alex Baldwin did the building. Allison Behringer helped with the audio editing and Dom Butchello helped with design. Josh Auerbach tried to keep us honest. These guys all have day jobs, mostly on Poncho, The Intern and Scale Model. This was always a side project. We had a hunch that the reason that no one has figured out how to take their favorite bits from podcasts and share them is that it’s really hard. This project proved that thesis :)
Please check it out. We know it’s by no means perfect but if you find it useful or it acts as a stepping stone for someone else to figure out the audio conundrum then it will be worthwhile.
Please leave comments below or email parcel@betaworks.com
