Anchor adds podcast distribution to Apple and Google

Audio app Anchor announced that it now offers distribution to podcast platforms. The burgeoning audio program lets people record short clips onto their phone. Those clips were confined only to the Anchor app, but now users can choose to publish their audio recordings to Apple Podcasts and Google Play Music. This creates a permanent home for recordings made in Anchor, which still disappear from the app after 24 hours.

Since the app revolves around short clips of audio, currently capped at five minutes, users can upload several of them in a row to form a complete show. Anchor takes care of joining the clips behind the scenes, so all that appears on the podcast distributors is a single, unified audio file.

This move seems like a clever way for Anchor to have its cake and eat it too. The app has always focused on snackable short-form audio, and that is still the core of the app. But encouraging the creation of fully-fledged podcasts could help Anchor to build an audience in addition to opening up the discovery of new spoken word and podcast talent. The time limitations could actually help aspiring podcasters to learn early on about self-editing and structure.