Hey Openbeta, 

It’s Matt Hartman here. I’m a partner at Betaworks Ventures and right now (slash always), we’re really excited about audio. We’re going to do a day-long conference on the topic, and I also have a newsletter HearingVoices.xyz where I write about this weekly(ish). In this edition of Openbeta, I thought I’d share my perspective on the third wave of audio a bit more broadly.

Firstly, let’s provide some context on the first two waves of audio. The first wave of internet-connected audio started with iPods and RSS feeds and people creating podcasts in their garages. Today, we are right in the middle of a second wave: The number of opportunities for people to listen to internet-powered audio has increased substantially since the first wave. I think of this as “surface area” of when we can listen to audio-powered Internet content. 

In the first wave, we had to download music and podcasts to our iPods and then carry them around until they died. But battery life increases, cell phone coverage improvements, and connected cars all increased the surface area of time during which we could listen to internet-powered audio. And that’s before smart speakers and airpods arrived. This enabled a podcast renaissance and companies such as Gimlet and Anchor have led the way in this second wave of podcasting, creating excellent content, user experiences, and infrastructure for listeners and creators. 

We are now entering into a third wave of audio. It can be more personalized through data-driven algorithmic discovery of content, as well as synthetic voice which allows the content itself to change to be personalized for that specific listener. Additionally, behavior is changing as people leave their airpods in. This opens up an opportunity for AirPod-first design and the potential for AirPods to be an entirely new platform. Finally, as the podcast sector grows and matures, new monetization models are emerging beyond advertising.

If you’re building something in the audio space, please get in touch. Otherwise, let’s continue the conversation online when I remember to write my newsletter or offline at the Hearing Voices conference. 📞