To stave of growing competition in social sound-sharing, AudioBoo is now offering third parties an application programming interface they can use to add audio upload functionality in to their own mobile apps.
A German broadcaster, Irish news publication and UK radio station have been testing the feature, which can be got by applying for an API key in AudioBoo settings.
It’s not a paid service. “It’s a big push in to trying to own the space,” CEO Mark Rock tells paidContent:UK. “SoundCloud are coming in hard with speech sharing now, and CinchCast are big in the States. So this is a push for brand dominance.”
AudioBoo gained rapid popularity as a quick and easy way to record and publish audio clips. Daily plays are up to 80,000 from 65,000 last year.
But AudioBoo’s challenge is commercialising that affection. Take-up of its paid AudioBoo Pro service – targeting media companies with analytics and moderation – has been slow. Since landing funding last summer, it’s now redefined the Pro service in to merely “working with” such media orgs, including The Guardian, BBC and Al Jazeera.
“The listening side is how we can monetise it,” Rock says. He sees potential for content like audiobooks to be bought with micropayments.
So the API idea is to offer AudioBoo as infrastructure, growing AudioBoo’s content library by enabling people to submit audio from more apps than just AudioBoo’s own.
Via TechCrunch.