If meme stocks can be a thing, what should we do to stop audio meme sharing? Voicy is a Netherlands-based startup that is building a platform for user-generated audio snippets and offering tools to create them.
It's not hard to guess where this idea will go: Straight to gross out farts and troll clips, which are plentiful on this platform for user-generated audio. Is there any audio that anyone is interested in?
There are other noises available. For example, or Squid Game sounds. There is a lot of Internet meme in audio form. John Oliver screamed "GOOGLE IT!" repeatedly.
The typical Voicy user is young and happy, according to the startup which hopes to build out a stream of social integrations. It has one integration with messaging app, Viber, but it is offering a simple universalAPI to encourage other platforms to sign up.
Voicy wants to do for sound clips what Giphy has done for GIFs.
Fanhouse was built by creators, for creators (and they mean it)
We want to create a new way for people to express themselves. There is a huge gap in audio to really enhance the experience in areas such as gaming, where communicating with images or text doesn't work as well.
People love to create their own very creative content. Audio can have a bigger impact on modern communications. One of the things we all have in common is that we all want to experiment with and have fun with how we communicate. All of the platforms and apps are working hard to make their offerings more engaging and sticky. This is where Voicy comes into play.
They say that they have developed a platform to give users the ability to create. Our approach has been to connect our platform with other platforms to give users more access to sharing content. We believe our impact can be exponential, with the addition of public API, further integrations and a strong foundation within the platform.
The platform was fully launched in October 2020 and has grown usage to 1.1 million monthly active users.
Users have created 145,000 sound clips so far, with an average of 10k added per month, and other usage metrics they share. A Voicy user plays on average 20 sound clips and shares one per visit.
Users there have sent over 20 million audio messages, which have been played 100 million times.
A pre-seed raise of 1.2 million dollars will be announced today by the startup, which is planning to build out a series of third party integrations to drive further growth. There might be an appreciative audience for noisy meme.
There are a lot of potential integrations within social messaging, for example WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, social video, and gaming.
The pre-seed raise is led by Oliver Samwer of Global Founders Capital, with a number of tech senior execs also participating.
Voicy is a very exciting new startup according to Soheil Mirpour. Their strong team has grown a huge community of very active users who are creating hundreds of pieces of new audio content every day. There is a lot of potential for short audio in social communication. Billions of people use short audio in their videos on TikTok, while a user of Discord spends an average of 300 minutes a day in a voice chat. We knew we had to invest in a new concept, which was ready to disrupt an enormous market.
When there are already audio GIFs, why do web users need audio meme? Isn't this a rather niche proposition, given that consumers can easily use shareables to express themselves, from ye olde emoji to customized stickers?
Soundless reaction formats are an advantage to the sizeable mobile crew, whose silence-loving existence explains why even short video clips are made to be. An audio meme with the sound off is just some sad looking pixels, right?
Gen Z or Gen Alpha are the most popular users of Voicy so far. Most users are located in the USA. The majority of users are under the age of 35.
Voicy's founders argue that a sound clip is more applicable than a sound GIF. Due to user experience and practical constraints, you can't do this with an audio GIF.
Audio meme are funny, unique and shareable audio bites that can be used in any form of online communication to express thoughts or feelings in a specific context.
Is there any risks around copyright? How are they handling that issue? The founders of Voicy suggest that they may license audio content in the future. For now they rely on fair use to recirculate samples and their platform supports a DCMA reporting and takedowns procedure. They use a third party service to stop protected samples from being piped onto any third party platforms.
The team says they are building Voicy as a marketplace to focus on the needs of the creator community.
We believe that our long term opportunity is to enable creators to monetise their content. Voicy can monetise its library and integrations with a large network and platform. Voicy can provide a lot of value for both the supply and demand sides.
Our business model will be focused around the sub-licensing of clips, and by providing additional premium features for creators to do what they do best: creating content. Content can be sub-licensed to integration partners, fans, other creators, and premium consumers.
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