SoundCloud Voices

SoundCloud Voices is a 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.

 

Here at SoundCloud we’re all about innovation, in every sense of the word. Our community is full of creators  breaking new ground in music, spoken word, and beyond. We’re proud to help support such creative minds, and we get excited and inspired watching other organizations foster similar creativity elsewhere.

                                                                                                                               

One organization constantly working to encourage innovation in the journalistic space is the Knight Foundation. Dedicated to promoting quality journalism and innovative media, the Foundation has provided training for thousands of journalists around the world and has invested millions of dollars in supporting new journalism projects and technologies.

The Foundation is currently winding down one of their yearly Knight News Challenges. The Challenges invite innovators to submit proposals for projects aimed at changing the face of modern journalism.

 

A great example of a past Knight News Challenge finalist is Blank on Blank, a project that preserves, restores, and reshapes old, unheard interviews. The project takes hours of conversations journalist have recorded with notable figures, and reshapes the raw audio into fantastic and engaging pieces.

Here’s one interview they recovered and produced of Bono, talking about the time he spent with his father during his final days.

Blank on  Blank is currently running a campaign to collect 30 interviews in 30 days, as well as raise funding to take their amazing project even further! You can find out more and support the project on their Kickstarter page.

 

We’re also currently watching a contender in one of this year’s Knight News Challenges: The Data Show is the brain-child of veteran radio-journalist Andrea Seabrook and author/researcher Clay Johnson.

While most journalists identify interesting stories and then collect information on the issue, The Data Show will tell stories driven by data already collected, turning many conventional journalistic practices on their head.

We’re itching to hear the stories they produce, but for now you can check out Clay Johnson’s SoundCloud page to listen to interviews he’s done on data, information consumption and beyond.

Pretty cool, right? We think so too! You can find out more about all of this round’s Knight News Challenge proposals here.

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