SoundCloud Voices

SoundCloud Voices is a new weekly Community feature focusing on new spoken word creators found on SoundCloud. It might be a podcast, radio show, audio book, interview, audio messages, a poem, anything! Keep an eye out every Thursday for a new post.

This week we’re taking a time to think about the victims of 9/11 and the memorial weekend that has just passed. It was a time of reflection and tribute. Many news organisations and charities were involved in these retrospectives, some using SoundCloud to document the accounts, voices and messages from people affected by the tragic events. The following are a few examples we came across.

The Robin Hood Foundation, a charity targeting poverty in New York, set up a 9/11 relief program, taking donations and distributing them to family members of the victims of 9/11.  Ten years laters, many, many thank you letters have been sent from families who received donations.  The Robin Hood Foundation wanted to document these letters and so recorded the likes of Chris Rock, Arianna Huffington and various members of the Robin Hood staff reading some of them out.  Take a listen below and visit the 9/11 Relief site.

ABC News Radio set up a voice message machine and called out to their listeners to phone up and leave their accounts of the terrorists accounts in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania.  They named it Voices of September 11th and had a tremendous amount of response, which you can listen to below.

Radio station WNYC also used SoundCloud to document the occurrences during 9/11.  WNYC’s FM transmitter was actually on the top of the World Trade Center that day take WNYC FM off air.  So they switched to AM and continued to broadcast throughout the day.  The following audio is a collection of early details of the attacks, including eyewitness reports from WNYC producers and reporters.

If you are interested in trying out SoundCloud as a spoken word podcast platform we are currently running a beta program which you can sign up for via this form. Successful candidates will be emailed with further details.