AudioProduction

This guide covers audio production and distribution. 

Audio Production

Audio recording can be an effective tool in campaigning and advocacy. This guide examines the uses of audio, what makes effective campaigning content, and how to use audio strategically in your organising work. Creating an excellent audio piece is no longer the preserve of media experts. Today everybody can potentially make an audio piece, so long as you have some basic equipment and a little background knowledge. Using audio for campaigning and advocacy is a growing phenomenon, but it takes planning to make a piece innovative and effective.

This guide looks at how you can create an audio work that is powerful and useful to you and your audiences. There are many different kinds of audio pieces, ranging from in-studio discussions, talk shows and phone-ins to field recordings of events such as rallies. Other popular formats are documentaries or features that combine various recordings – such as interviews, background sounds, music and narration.

All these types of programming can now also be distributed as podcasts, that is as downloadable audio feeds that listeners can subscribe to online. These segments can be used for many different types of campaigning or education. It is a great way to reach a mass audience – people who listen to radio stations and people who listen to audio online.

When someone listens to your programme, they are engaging with the content in an intimate way – just you and them. Radio/audio has the power to be both private and public; intimate and broad-based. It can reach large numbers of people who may not otherwise be exposed to your message and provide them with compelling and personal details.

Distribution

This guide will provide practical tips on how to get your audio published on the Internet, and how to use existing distribution channels to reach the audiences that will appreciate it most. Examples are also provided of nonprofit organisations who incorporate this technology into their advocacy work.

The human voice is powerful. It can be spontaneous, intimate and engaging. It can make people who are separated by thousands of miles feel as if they were in the same room. It can express mere content, but
also context, feeling, passion. Until recently, though, voice was usually restricted to local, personal reach. Only a few with access to expensive media tools were able to hear and distribute audio to a global audience.
Today technology makes it easier not only to record and edit audio, but also distribute it throughout the world using new technologies like blogs and podcasts.