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Show HN: An app to create asynchronous micro podcasts

roadsaudio.com

72 points1manstartup56 comments

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Do you have some user research you could share?

I remember thinking about this exact problem (branching conversations, in particular audio), but I couldn't find a reasonable consumption pattern.

Looking at how I consume podcasts, it's a completely passive experience - I probably have something in my hands and can't talk. Choosing paths is just too much interactivity.

I figured that maybe that's just a wrong mode to look at it and people can consume the whole thing differently, not as a podcast. Ok then, I'm an obsessed power user/fan, I consume the whole thing, all branches. Given how human attention/memory works, that means returning to earlier parts of recording after listening to branch at least some of the time, multiple times experiencing 'where did we start? Let me go back a bit. Oh, that topic was the starting. Let me forward a bit now that I know it'. That's horrible, I think. You were at least more reasonable than me when thinking about it and decided to have only 1 level of branching ; )

In similar vein, what happens when comment gets added after I already listened/how do I know which parts are 'the definite experience'? Unlike previous two issues, those questions are answerable, but I'd still like to hear what you think the answers are!

I think there can be several ways to use it. I think passive listening can and for most will be how it's used. But people who want to discuss and "add to a conversation" will have the option.

Definitely will be modifying the experience to be fully handsfree.

I think the context issue is what can make this actually work or not. Currently it's not built out but my thinking is to have a short context of what was commented on i.e. 10 seconds before the comment. That way you can jump back into the conversation from a new comment left.

I think the context can also be determined by how long it's been since you listened to the last audio - meaning a comment left after a week might have 60s of context vs a comment after 10 mins might just have 5s.

And yes, the UI isn't great at showing what you already listened to now but that needs to be obvious too.

General tendency for internet content tends to be strong separation between creators and consumers, in particular limited interest of consumers in other consumers (think twitch chat. Each message is valued very little compared to the streamer, to the point where they always read out messages they respond to). That means unless there's something nudging people to default outside of central path of audio, adding to conversation isn't part of canon content.

There could be a way for responder to signal where the content they are answering starts, with some sort of fuzzy automation in the future. I have strong doubts about the actual experience of this for the listener, but maybe that's solvable.

I meant situation, where I already consumed the whole recording, but it gets response later on.

I do not have mental model for context being logically attached to the response. Do you think about it as response+context being a valid piece of content?

Yes I think of it as a response being a valid piece of content. For example if you recorded the above message in audio and I wanted to respond after your first paragraph then my response maybe:

[context] (your audio) "adding to conversation isn't part of canon content."

(my audio) "I disagree I think adding to the conversation can be just as valuable especially if content is filtered correctly meaning you'd only see comments from people you followed"

Something like that. But yes I do agree this is a huge issue and basically if it can't be solved then the app will fail.

I think the use case won't be to replace a typical podcaster but imagine if we're both in a group and discussing a podcast on the podcast - that's more how I see it

I could see it working a bit better if the original podcast had fixed points where they allow comments. So they can say something like "ok now we will open this section up for comments, and afterwards we'll continue on to...".

Then as comments come in they can follow a dialog structure, or the original poster can come in and add some clarification as a reply.

edit: If there are a lot of comments coming in, you could set it to autoplay only the top X comments and their replies or whatever.

For reviewing afterwards, it would also be really helpful to have an auto transcription so you can quickly scroll through for anything you missed or want to go back to.

I like this idea, give people control over where they allow others to comment. I'll think more deeply into this thanks

When I was reading the website, I thought "oh, I misunderstood: this is a threaded voice memo app, that's cool".

Threaded voice memos would be cool. I have some friends who send voice memos like emails and I like it a lot. If we could converse more like email that would be cool. Maybe there's even something like a blockquote in threaded voice memo universe? (Low pass filtered sample of the original memo?) :-)

I agree with other commenters who are confused about the use case for this though. Podcasts are passive in my understanding. I don't listen to them but the people I know who do listen to them in situations where they really wouldn't want to be doing something interactive. (Like working on a car, or walking the dog.)

Edit: thinking about it a bit more, I suppose you're trying to set up a broadcast platform, not a communication platform. In those terms I think it makes more sense, but maybe using the words "conversation" and "friends" leads the mind in the wrong direction. You might try appealing to podcast authors directly?

Yes, the idea is to be like a threaded voice memo. Currently you can only comment one level deep but fully nested comments will be coming soon.

And yes I think some of the language is confusing, thanks for the feedback I'll be modifying some of the copy shortly

Looks nice, the “tree” visualization gives the UI a pretty unique look.

Why did you decide to work on this specific idea? I don’t quite see what problem this is meant to solve and for whom, which makes it a little hard to understand the app.

I hope that doesn’t come across as discouraging an interesting experiment.

The demo video focuses on how the UI works, but it might be more helpful if it showed a situation someone is in where they have a use for this. Basically, “real” people doing real recordings, not just the same person talking for a few seconds to show that the app is recording.

Good suggestion about the demo, thank!

The idea came when a few friends and I wanted to "start a podcast" but ultimately didn't want to actually share what we were talking about. We also were spread out all around the world so we started uploading short audios to a google drive.

When I saw this app I immediately thought of it as a better way to record podcasts together.

It’s always a hassle to combine separate audio streams, and simply using the zoom recording isn’t usually good enough (the quality is quite low).

So having an app that records on-device but later merges those audio streams seamlessly is very useful.

So here is one potential application: consulting, advising and/or one-on-one tutoring/teaching.

There could be a parent script on a particular topic-call it a mini-lecture-which can then be “forked” by each user (or team). Then there would be a private and unique version of that interaction which is uniquely identified and stored for the advisor as well as the user.

The advisor might want to monetize these “forks” somehow-so that would need to be considered.

A side-by-side comparison of this with an asynchronous “zoom” experiment would be interesting to test the value of audio alone.

Cheers! Looks interesting!

I hadn't thought about the consulting use case much yet but I think for lectures/ education this could be a potential game changer. I suppose any Q&A style talk could benefit form the format - thanks for the ideas!

Isn't the async part redundant, otherwise you'd call it "live", and the "micro" part wouldn't make sense (blink and you missed it!)?

No, the main idea is that this isn't an app for creating podcasts with friends in real-time. While you might equate "asynchronous" with "not live", the actual contrast is between asynchronous and synchronous. The decision to stream a podcast live or make it available for playback later is separate from whether it's recorded in real-time or not. The "micro" aspect emphasizes the app's focus on short conversations, not extensive podcast recordings.

yes exactly

all I think when I see async is JavaScript promises

haha yeah I wonder if async is not a great work especially to market to a more general audience

My cousin and I talk regularly and we often go down long branching tangents. We joke that we wish we had a git version control setup for our convos so we could keep track of all the branches and find our way back to the main branch. Roads seems like it's going to be a pretty good fit for us. What would really be awesome is if roads could have roads.

Edit: I see from the comments that nested roads are on the way. Excellent!

Yes, nested comments are coming very soon, hopefully this month. It will make it a lot more like a git branching system!

I think this is excellent. Maybe what Clubhouse should have been! The onboarding is pretty slick. My only comment is the speaker is too slick/perfect. Think it would be cool after her to have a second more “typical person” speaking to get a feel for what it is like talking to friends.

Also audio upload time was a bit slow.

I like how add friends just lists everyone on the platform! Quaint!

Could this be a place to make friends?

But an interesting idea.

Thanks for the feedback! I agree the into audio sounds a bit robotic. And yes the speed of the app in general is horrible - a lot of low hanging speeding optimizations on my list tho

Add some localization features to this and you are golden. Such as find roads around where you are. People can leave comments on restaurants and bars, or hook up in new ways. Also add some rough categorizations, such as "review" or "blog". There are communities that form around such things. Think Pokemon Go or nature observers. Or tourism for that matter

I agree location based features would be awesome, thanks for the suggestion!

Interesting idea. Well done and good luck with it.

IMHO, the use case for async audio notes is not entertainment "podcast". People listen in a passive and linear way.

But the use case is team planning and note taking for on-the-go and hybrid WFH teams.

Add some ability to "call-in", listen and add comments and you've got something like an audio Kanban board.

Also add voice2text to dump a threaded transcript.

Very good point, thanks for the feedback!

I think this is a cool idea and well done. I've thought about it myself a few times over the decade that I've been listening to podcasts. Most podcast conversation is passive but at times I want to say something to a creator when I'm listening or talk about a specific point, but can't do it because ... well it's passive.

Yes same! I also want to set it up so I can create a comment and then send it to my friend. Meaning I'm listening to a podcast think of an idea I want to share, record my comment, share with a friend/ friends now we're talking about the podcast on the podcast. This is one of the major plans for app.

Hey cool idea to explore, often feel audio is sync only and text more async. One idea is to mix both, like you could automatically label branches so people have an idea what the comments are about before listening to them. I feel not having topics mean a user have to listen for a while just to decide if they wanted to in the first place.

Good point, yes I think even the ability to title a comment could be a huge addition - thanks for the suggestion!

Hmm, that landing page and the screenshots within are unbelievably slick looking. I'll download it and give it a try.

Appreciate it! let me know what you think

Looks interesting. I feel like this might replace few of my group "chats" where we're too lazy to write and prefer sending voice messages most of the time. But not sure yet if that needs a long recording to keep the commenting going, or if you can comment on a comment to make tree deeper.

For sure, when nested comments are added audio will link to each other more easily and the distinction between a "new recording" and a "comment" will be less. Instead audio will just be linked to where you recorded it.

I've already replaced a few group chats, it's good for conversations that aren't urgent like talking about ideas.

there's been a few similar products that you could learn from, for example: https://www.producthunt.com/products/lava-beta

I'll check it out thanks for the link!

Also check out Airchat and Clubhouse (their new pivot to async)!

Nice, I have been working on something similar and really nice to see how you have approached the UI.

My approach was to focus on the tuition market with the voice comments for feedback from the tutor.

Always impressed seeing ideas come to market.

Yes I think something like this in education can be great, group projects/ discussions seem like a good use case

Slick. It just need public channels or some kind of categorized discovery feed.

Yes 100%. This is definitely planned.

My thinking with delaying it was this the following:

- Launch with only private channels and get a decent sized user base recording content.

- Once the app has a decent size of active users allow public channels/ episodes. Then their will be people who will record & post daily.

BUT I'm learning that most people would rather consume content than create it - which makes sense so I need to come up with a better way or partnership to get creators to create the public content.

My biggest "fear" is having a public feed that rarely is updated because no one is posting haha.

Castini is an app-free, browser-based alternative:

https://castini.frequal.com/

No bloated download. No upgrade treadmill. Just short podacsts with no install.

Castini-hosted podcasts include:

* Castini Show: https://castini.frequal.com/cast/show/Castini%20Show/2394171...

* Flavourcast: https://castini.frequal.com/cast/show/Flavourcast/f7e171e8-2...

Interesting, similar in the micro podcast sense but what makes Roads unique is the commenting system.

I was working on a similar idea for a bit. I wanted to support a tree-like structure for branching conversation but never figured out a good UI for it. I really like your approach!

Thanks! I think it still has a ways to go, my bigger concern now is how to make the non visual experience feel/sound great. Auto playing, notifying the transition to a new comment, etc.

Is it possible to upload existing recordings to the app or is that a planned feature? That would be especially cool for people commenting on lecture recordings.

It's not yet possible, but is planned. I haven't thought too much about it but you're right for lectures that would be extremely helpful.

Thank you so much! I have been wanting something like this for a long long time!

Can you add a monthly GoCardless subscription so I can help this service continue to exist?

Glad to hear! Let me know what you think and how I can make it better

This would make for a very interesting nostr use case.

I'll keep an eye on nostr, I've been playing with the idea of doing something with the block chain but not at the position to do that yet

I do not work with podcasts but i would give it a serious try if i did! nice work.

Thanks!

Cool. Reminds me a little of audio recordings in Marco Polo.

nice work

Thank you!

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