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 Thursday SoundCloud Voices takes a look at some unique uses of SoundCloud for politics. We have the inspiring story of Congresswoman Giffords, San Francisco mayoral candidate David Chiu and the Daily Californian posting Robert Reich’s speech at Occupy Cal at UC Berkeley.

Firstly, congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford recently posted a heartwarming audio message to her South Arizona constituents via her Facebook regarding her recovery from a terrible gun shooting back in January. She was shot in the head while meeting with her constituents at a shopping center in Northwest Tucson. Six people were killed in the shooting and 12 others, in addition to Giffords, were wounded. The response to her message has been amazing and has even garnered attention from the LA Times and the Huffington Post. We wish her the best in her recovery. Take a listen to her here:

Next up is San Francisco mayoral candidate David Chiu who used his SoundCloud dropbox to source audio from his supporters on “Why do you support David?”. The response was amazing with 40 audio recordings submitted, which he was able to easily organise and embed on to his own site.  Take a listen to a selection below and try out the sound map, plotting some of his supporters by location!  Chiu even use SoundCloud to answer questions posted to him via Twitter, so instead of trying to fit his answer into 140 characters he simply recorded with the iPhone app.  Take a look at his answers which he then posted to his Facebook.

And finally the Daily Californian recently posted a speech made by political economist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich at Occupy Cal at UC Berkeley the other day.  He encouraged the continuation of the Occupy demonstrations and acknowledged the issues with higher education costs and the uneven distribution of wealth being the catalyst for the movement.  Take a listen to the entire speech below and read the full article including audio here.

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.