Audioburst Brings Audio News to Flipboard

For around a month now, Audioburst has been growing its presence on Flipboard, the text-based news aggregator. Audioburst releases short audio clips from podcasts and online radio, curated by topic into ‘magazines.’ While the company began with just one magazine in late March, today Audio burst hosts ten different magazines. Flipboard’s users have listened to more than 300,000 of the company’s “bursts” and more than 600,000 minutes of targeted bursts on various topics, including news, sports, and entertainment. Registered Flipboard users can subscribe and view original-voice audio bursts through the magazines.

How Audioburst Creates Audio Magazines

Audioburst is essentially a search and discovery engine for audio. To create audio magazines, the company listens to over 6 million minutes of audio a month. It then transcribes and segments the audio content into short clips that can be easily digested. From there, these clips are indexed so they are searchable in the future. The process allows users to find audio clips of a certain topic based on their questions or curate a playlist of topics to hear about. The audio clips are short enough that users are able to hear critical information about a story without listening to an entire podcast or radio show. For example, a user could request a playlist of clips about general news, science, and technology. The most popular category of content is News & Tech, says Audioburst’s VP Product Rachel Batish. Users can choose from ten different Audioburst magazines to hear news about:

Flipboard Provides Audioburst the Perfect Platform to Expand Its Reach

I had the chance to speak with Audioburst’s VP Product, Rachel Batish, about Audioburst’s partnership with Flipboard. The partnership between the two companies just made sense according to Batish:

We see it as an on-the-go experience of Flipboard. Maybe you need to go screenless in a jog, you are walking or maybe driving to work, and don’t have the time or option to read through Flipboard. Audioburst acts as an expansion to the Flipboard natural experience. With more and more people consuming audio content it only makes sense, and we are very happy to be pioneering the world of audio content with people like Flipboard.

Since Flipboard’s launch in 2010, its user base has grown to over 100 million monthly active users who flip through snippets of stories to curate their own news feed. Audioburst aims to achieve the same thing, but with audio clips.

The company has made headlines in the past through its partnerships centered around making use of their audio content APIs. For example, Audioburst and LGE partnered in December 2018 to integrate the Audioburst Deep Analysis API for Live Audio Streams into in-car infotainment systems for leading automakers. The company has also released several other APIs that allow third-party developers to use its library of audio content to deliver a personalized listening experience for the user. Audioburst has an Alexa skill called “News Feed” and a Google Assistant action called, “Audio Burst.” Both voice applications allow users to ask about news, curate news topics to hear about, ask about the traffic, weather, and more.

Next Steps

Batish says that Audioburst will continue to grow their magazines on Flipboard, in addition to growing the company’s exposure on the site. It also wants to grow its audio strategy on the platform as a whole. Claus Enevoldsen, VP Growth and Business Development of Flipboard commented on the partnership,

Flipboard allows you to discover content across all your interests and we’ve seen an increasing demand for audio on our platform. So we’re very excited to partner with Audioburst to utilize their vast audio library to make our experience better and more complete.

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