I chose for our project to be centered around digital audio in the 21st century and how it has become a big part of the media. There are numerous types of digital audio out there, like music, but the form that seems to be making huge growth recently is podcasts.
A podcast is a series of audio or video digital media files which is distributed over the internet through Web. Podcasts can be listened to via media players, computers, phones, basically any device that has access to the web. Generally speaking it is a recording of a topic the author wants to discuss. It could be anything from an interview to a lecture and there is usually more than one episode. The best thing to compare a podcast to is a television series. There are a series of different episodes that make up a season. A podcast is broken up into different episodes.
This year we noticed a spike in podcasts throughout social media. In 2021, the number of monthly US podcast listeners will increase by 10.1% year-over-year to 117.8 million. Podcasts are mostly seeing traction among younger consumers—this year, more than 60% of US adults ages 18 to 34 will listen to podcasts monthly. However, as listeners get older podcast listenership drops.
Why are podcasts popular? One of the main reasons is because of how convenient they are. They are easily accessible and they can be listened to while multi-tasking as you do not have to watch anything. They are not time consuming because you can listen to them while cooking, working out, etc. For those who are sight impaired a podcast is a good way for them to be able to catch up on current events or a topic that interests them, because they are so easy to consume.
Podcasting ranges from people just having fun to people who specialize in this and make six figures. Pretty much anyone can make a podcast. As long as one has access to the web and some type of audio equipment you can make a podcast. The audio equipment does not have to be expensive. As long as you do not use any copyrighted material you do not need permission to post a podcast.
Additionally, I previously mentioned that the most popular form of digital audio is music. For this project, I decided to try and make some using GarageBand. I’ve always wanted to make music with GarageBand, and this project pretty much forced me to do so. I was able to compose both songs all on my phone, which I think is great that it’s so easily accessible.
For the first song that I made, I was just starting out and wasn’t too sure of what exactly I was doing, so I only used a few sounds. I think it turned out ok, and it was fun to continuously learn new tricks. This song is more of an upbeat, jumpy song with a few different synth and piano sounds, compared to the second one I made which is slightly slower and darker, with an almost haunting chorus in the background.
Stream Project Song 1 by Brady | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Stream Project Song 2 by Brady | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Overall, digital audio will continue to grow in all of its forms, from music, to podcasts, the possibilities are endless. Audio is so accessible, reacting to sounds is a natural human instinct, which always has a possibility for extensive growth.
I had a lot of fun experimenting with GarageBand, and I definitely plan on using it more and more to create plenty of different sounds and songs in the future. If anyone wants, if you listened to both songs, feel free to let me know if you liked them, and if so, which one(s)?
