SoundCloud courts public radio in effort to be "YouTube for audio"

"As part of its effort to 'unmute the web,' SoundCloud is courting radio news professionals, podcasters, and indie storytellers," reports the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. "A year-old team of about a half-dozen people is focused on spoken-word content. The company just hired Jim Colgan, formerly a producer and digital experimenter for WNYC public radio, to manage partnerships with audio providers."

SoundCloud gives music and spoken word creators an easy way to publish and share their audio online. Its efforts can be seen as an attempt to rectify the "neglect" of sound on the web and establish a standard to make it easy to share audio, the way YouTube did for online video: by providing free hosting, an easy-to-embed player, and by building a huge community of users and creators.

"SoundCloud, of course, wants to be that standard. Think of it as an aspiring YouTube for public radio," suggests NJL.

Boston’s WBUR and the WGBH program "The World," L.A.-based KPCC and KCRW, North Carolina’s WUNC, St. Louis Public Radio, CNN Radio, and "99% Invisible" are traditional radio outlets or productions that are now actively uploading to SoundCloud.

Read more in Nieman Journalism Lab here.