audioBoom (formerly audioBoo) has re-launched on a new domain (www.audioboom.com) and with new branding. Visitors to the previous website are automatically redirected. At the same time, the company rolled out a renovated iOS iPhone/iPod app that overhauls the previous version’s navigation and features. (audioBoom sponsors RAIN’s weekly podcast, Internet Radio Rewind.)
audioBoom is an audio sharing platform, most often compared to SoundCloud. But where SoundCloud’s main focus is music, with talk programming on the side, the formula is reversed in audioBoom, which looks and feels like a podcast platform. In that respect, audioBoom can be compared to Stitcher (and Swell Radio, which was recently acquired by Apple and is not publicly available at present.)
The company was founded in January, 2009, so this rebranding comes nearly six years in. We spoke to VP Stuart Last when the re-launch was imminent, and he described the challenge of thinking differently about a “boo” — the legacy nickname for an audio clip. Indeed, we discovered a reference to “boos” in the new app, so the historical connection has not been completely scrubbed.
With the launch announcement comes a raft of usage metrics:
- 3-million registered users
- 260-million pageviews in August
- 36% American listeners for the London-based company
According to Crunchbase, the company received a funding round of 4-million Euros earlier this year.
The new app leans heavily on swipe navigation, with some interesting tech behind the scenes — the app discerns how quickly you swipe away a program you don’t like, and uses that indication to customize what appears in the stream.
Importantly, the audioBoom app supports recording on the fly, trimming the file, and uploading it, sharply distinguishing itself from SoundCloud’s most recent iOS update, which eliminated a previously included record-on-the-fly feature. Below, we test audioBoom’s record button in the app:
audioBoom’s most promoted content is institutional, with the BBC and The Guardian listed as content partners, but the company’s mission is to allow all users to easily record and share audio.