Audio Platform Research Articles

Buying Future Endorsements from Prospective Influencers on User-Generated Content Platforms

Excessive monetary compensation and existing contractual agreements of influencers limit the ability of many firms to engage in effective influencer seeding. The authors suggest a forward-looking approach of targeting prospective influencers—while they are still largely unknown (e.g., a few months after their platform registration)—and signing them to endorse the firm in the future (e.g., more than a year later). This approach has the potential to significantly reduce costs. However, as only rarely do newly registered users ultimately become influencers (and as signals are weak), the authors propose a novel framework to cope with this rare-event problem. For empirical demonstration and application, the authors conduct data-based simulations using a data set from a worldwide leading audio platform. Every wave of newly registered users is associated with a profit potential stemming from future endorsements by prospective influencers. With knowledge about the order of magnitude of the return on successful influencer spend, managers applying the framework can extract around 20% of this profit potential (if the return is around three times the spend).

Dissemination of Traditional Chinese Culture: A Comparative Analysis of Yunting and Ximalaya FM

Traditional Chinese culture has gradually become a trend in national mainstream media especially on new media platforms. Based on the Chinese mainstream media Yunting and the commercial audio platform Ximalaya FM, a comparative content analysis was conducted on the top 10 “humanities and history” channels on Yunting and Ximalaya FM. It was found that from the comparison between the interfaces, while both platforms had more subsections, Yunting’s humanities and history channel interface were more concise and clearer. Addressing the production teams, Yunting adopted the Professional Generated Content (PGC) mode, which was more authoritative, while Ximalaya FM adopted the Professional and User Generated Content (PUGC) mode and self-media mode. In terms of content, both platforms covered various contents, although users listened to the five topics on Yunting that were more diverse, whilst Ximalaya FM included four topics. Moreover, it was found that serialised and completed programmes were featured in the episodes. However, more drama slots were found on Ximalaya FM, while the contents released on Yunting were limited due to its status as mainstream media. In terms of listening volume, higher listening volume was recorded from Ximalaya FM due to the higher number of episodes on Ximalaya FM compared to Yunting. Overall, Yunting and Ximalaya FM each effectively played their role, guaranteeing the development of Chinese traditional culture. Keywords: Traditional culture, online audio, humanities and history, Yunting, Ximalaya FM.

Analysis of the Characteristics of Mobile Audio Payment Platform

With the popularization and development of the Internet and mobile devices, the forms of knowledge production and dissemination are increasingly rich. Mobile paid audio platform has become one of the carriers of high-quality content due to its fragmentation, accompanying, social and other characteristics. As the largest mobile paid audio platform in China at present, Himalayan FM adopts the content production mode of "UGC+PGC+exclusive copyright" in terms of program content. The audio program content is mainly "fast, short and flat", which is more in line with the current fragmented scene environment. In 2016, the Himalayan FM took the lead in trying to produce and disseminate knowledge-based audio pay programs, creating a premium pay program zone, and playing a leading role in the mobile pay audio field. Although Himalayan FM is the "leader" of mobile pay audio platform, there are also some problems that must be solved in the development. Therefore, understanding its characteristics can provide some suggestions for the future development of Himalayan FM.

The Long Slog Through the Virtual Swamp: Making a Wetland Podcast in Spanish

The Long Slog Through the Virtual Swamp: Making a Wetland Podcast in Spanish

‘You can't walk through water without getting wet’ UK nurses’ distress and psychological health needs during the Covid-19 pandemic: A longitudinal interview study

BackgroundPre-COVID-19 research highlighted the nursing profession worldwide as being at high risk from symptoms of burnout, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicide. The World Health Organization declared a pandemic on 11th March 2020 due to the sustained risk of further global spread of COVID-19. The high healthcare burden associated with COVID-19 has increased nurses’ trauma and workload, thereby exacerbating pressure on an already strained workforce and causing additional psychological distress for staff. ObjectivesThe Impact of COVID-19 on Nurses (ICON) interview study examined the impacts of the pandemic on frontline nursing staff's psychosocial and emotional wellbeing. DesignLongitudinal qualitative interview study. SettingsNurses who had completed time 1 and 2 of the ICON survey were sampled to include a range of UK work settings including acute, primary and community care and care homes. Interviewees were purposively sampled for maximum variation to cover a broad range of personal and professional factors, and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, including redeployment. MethodsNurses participated in qualitative in-depth narrative interviews after the first wave of COVID-19 in July 2020 (n = 27) and again at the beginning of the second wave in December 2020 (n = 25) via video and audio platform software. Rigorous qualitative narrative analysis was undertaken both cross-sectionally (within wave) and longitudinally (cross wave) to explore issues of consistency and change. ResultsThe terms moral distress, compassion fatigue, burnout and PTSD describe the emotional states reported by the majority of interviewees leading many to consider leaving the profession. Causes of this identified included care delivery challenges; insufficient staff and training; PPE challenges and frustrations. Four themes were identified: (1) ‘Deathscapes’ and impoverished care (2) Systemic challenges and self-preservation (3) Emotional exhaustion and (4) (Un)helpful support. ConclusionsNurses have been deeply affected by what they have experienced and report being forever altered with the impacts of COVID-19 persisting and deeply felt. There is an urgent need to tackle stigma to create a psychologically safe working environment and for a national COVID-19 nursing workforce recovery strategy to help restore nurse's well-being and demonstrate a valuing of the nursing workforce and therefore support retention.

Challenges in Service Provision to Children and Families from Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds.

The purpose of this study was to examine and describe experiences and perceptions of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) serving children and families from culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Twenty SLPs were interviewed using an online audio platform regarding common practices, resources and supports, challenges, and communication. Participants' responses to the semi-structured questions were transcribed and analyzed to identify themes in experiences. Results suggested six overall themes including: considerations for assessment; cultural impact; linguistic access and barriers; professional preparedness; impact of COVID-19; and helpful tips and resources. The discussion includes recommendations and resources to address obstacles.

Open-source baby monitor

New parents often want to know everything that their new little one is up to, even while they are sleeping. The easiest way to accomplish this task is to install an audio baby monitor, comprised of a baby monitor receiver unit near the child’s bed and a parental unit which can be carried about the house. These monitors can alert the parents when their bundles of joy are quite upset, but they can also alert the parents with annoying audio from white noise sound machines, lullaby tunes, as well as transient passing motorcycles and landing airplanes. Too much unwanted noise transmitted to the parental unit could lead to the parent turning down their receiver volume and later missing the true alert of their crying little one. The ideal baby audio monitor alerts the parental unit via real time audio only when the baby needs attention, and does not transmit or amplify the received audio for all other noise sources. This presentation outlines the efforts undertaken to develop and test a smart baby monitor using an open-source audio platform and includes performance comparisons of the developed system to commercially available baby monitors.

Public Benefits or Commercial Gains: Chinese Museums’ Online Activities in the Covid-19 Age

During the Covid-19 lockdown from the end of January to March 2020, museums in China were forced to temporarily close, consequently devoting more attention to online activities. Apart from official websites, many museums increased their online activities on China-based video livestreaming platforms such as Kuaishou, Douyin and Bilibili, etc., as well as on the audio livestreaming platform Himalayan. Other online activities were carried out via social media and e-commerce platforms including WeChat, Vlog, Taobao, Tianmao, Jingdong, Meituan and Tencent. Shaanxi History Museum (SHM) represents one of the typical examples of cultural institutions that bolstered their online activities during the pandemic. This article explores the effects of Chinese museums’ livestreaming activities, which constituted the core of their online initiatives during the pandemic. By reviewing different types of livestreaming activities carried out by museums, as well as conducting online surveys, face-to-face interviews and analysing data surrounding the Shaanxi History Museum, it will critically discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Chinese museums’ livestreaming activities, with potential implications for museums in China and worldwide. Ultimately, it suggests that Chinese museums’ development of online activities relies on applying a systematic, diversified and digitalisation-driven communication strategy.

Design and Evaluation of a Web- and Mobile-Based Binaural Audio Platform for Cultural Heritage

PlugSonic is a suite of web- and mobile-based applications for the curation and experience of 3D interactive soundscapes and sonic narratives in the cultural heritage context. It was developed as part of the PLUGGY EU project (Pluggable Social Platform for Heritage Awareness and Participation) and consists of two main applications: PlugSonic Sample, to edit and apply audio effects, and PlugSonic Soundscape, to create and experience 3D soundscapes for headphones playback. The audio processing within PlugSonic is based on the Web Audio API and the 3D Tune-In Toolkit, while the mobile exploration of soundscapes in a physical space is obtained using Apple’s ARKit. The main goal of PlugSonic is technology democratisation; PlugSonic users—whether cultural institutions or citizens—are all given the instruments needed to create, process and experience 3D soundscapes and sonic narratives; without the need for specific devices, external tools (software and/or hardware), specialised knowledge or custom development. The aims of this paper are to present the design and development choices, the user involvement processes as well as a final evaluation conducted with inexperienced users on three tasks (creation, curation and experience), demonstrating how PlugSonic is indeed a simple, effective, yet powerful tool.

Understanding podcast users: Consumption motives and behaviors

Through a large-scale national survey, this study provided the first comprehensive examination of podcast users in the United States from the perspectives of motivation and usage. It deepened our understanding of this new on-demand audio platform in the context of consumption drivers, behaviors, and competing media options. The results showed that entertainment, information, and audio platform superiority were the most important motivators for podcast consumption. In addition, motives were found to affect listening behaviors, including listening settings, width, depth, and routine of listening, and usage of competing audio media, such as regular radio, online radio, and streaming music. The findings revealed that podcasting is a distinct medium with unique characteristics rather than a mobile, on-demand extension of existing audio platforms like radio. Podcast consumption, especially on today’s complex media platforms, is multidimensional and should be measured from multiple aspects and examined in various settings.

Preemptive Resource Provisioning for Container-Based Audio/Video Encrypted Collaboration Applications

The massive industrial adoption of cloud technology has led to research into cloud-enabling traditional applications. The EMD research project proposes an elastic, reliable, and secure cloud-enabled Audio and Video (A/V) collaboration platform in replacement of a reliable hardware appliance based which had fixed constraints in terms of scalability. In this context, this article introduces heuristics and architectures that efficiently and preemptively allocate EMD’s A/V encrypted and container-based software components in the cloud. A software solution based on Kubernetes, a production-grade container orchestration platform, is compared with another solution focused on dedicated VMs. Both implement resource allocation heuristics that take into account the project’s requirements and location-aware encryption enforcement necessities: encryption is enforced for more sensitive data. A company training scenario with dynamically distributed instructors is modelled using existing A/V stream concepts, and component prototypes are extended to support encryption and containerisation, whose prototype performance evaluation drives the investigation of heuristics and architectures and feeds their larger-scale simulation-based assessment. Results show that container orchestration costs are at least 52% lower than dedicated VMs for this scenario, but rely on relaxing a project requirement: the time taken to establish a new streaming session was to be kept below 2 s. The switch to orchestrated containers raised this up to a maximum of 2.5 s.

THE IMPACT OF PODCASTS DESIGNED THROUGH AUDACITY ON IMPROVING GRAMMAR SKILLS

The situation with the pandemic in the world showed that education in Ukraine will never be the same. Isolation turned out to be a big challenge for both teachers and students. This is explained primarily by a lack of theoretical knowledge and practical experience in providing distance learning. According to the EU recommendations, the education institution will work effectively if it provides the best use of digital technology for teaching and learning and develops teachers' and students' digital competences and skills. Educational technology tools include content management systems, language learning apps, podcasts, and electronic discussion boards. The features of free, open-source, cross-platform audio software Audacity are described in the study. The paper analyzes how a university teacher can record, edit and export in MP3 format the language learning podcast through Audacity. To answer this question, we created 5 bilingual grammar podcasts based on the audio platform. The designed podcasts can be used as learning activities outside the class with the university students. The obtained results showed that even a beginner in the sphere of ICT can design a good-quality foreign language podcast. The difference between the scores in pre and post-test results suggest that self-designed podcasts can be used in teaching EFL to improve grammar skills. This study emphasizes the need for implementing ICT tools in the educational process to improve the quality of teaching and learning and to share the gained experience with the colleagues. Further research could determine the role of self-designed podcasts in an online language course for the students of technical universities.

Like a Letter, You

Like a Letter, You is a collaborative investigation focused on the concept of ‘conversation as an object’. Originally recorded as part of a larger self-produced project titled hEar Pixels, this track manifests as an experimental soundbased reconfiguration of an original essay about handwritten correspondence: How might an analog essay be performed as a digital assemblage of sound? In what ways are the methods of a DJ tied to speech, literature, and dialog? The track is composed using a cut-and-paste process of ‘utterances’, which may be described as units of speech distinct from language that may be oral or written and are inevitably completed by a response[1] which inevitably forms a dialog. Further, these speech units may manifest through gestures associated with digital tools as a form of cultural production[2]. Like a Letter, You includes a reading of the essay aloud, snippets of informal spoken conversations between the authors, and musical bits generated with a touch-based audio mixing platform. In effect, Like a Letter, You embodies the concepts of writing, dialog, and gesture within the genre of sound literature, and it also speaks to the unpredictable nature of collaboration and human interaction.
 [1] BAKHTIN, Mikhail (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.[2] NOLAND, Carrie (2009). Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Covert digital manipulation of vocal emotion alter speakers’ emotional states in a congruent direction

Research has shown that people often exert control over their emotions. By modulating expressions, reappraising feelings, and redirecting attention, they can regulate their emotional experience. These findings have contributed to a blurring of the traditional boundaries between cognitive and emotional processes, and it has been suggested that emotional signals are produced in a goal-directed way and monitored for errors like other intentional actions. However, this interesting possibility has never been experimentally tested. To this end, we created a digital audio platform to covertly modify the emotional tone of participants' voices while they talked in the direction of happiness, sadness, or fear. The result showed that the audio transformations were being perceived as natural examples of the intended emotions, but the great majority of the participants, nevertheless, remained unaware that their own voices were being manipulated. This finding indicates that people are not continuously monitoring their own voice to make sure that it meets a predetermined emotional target. Instead, as a consequence of listening to their altered voices, the emotional state of the participants changed in congruence with the emotion portrayed, which was measured by both self-report and skin conductance level. This change is the first evidence, to our knowledge, of peripheral feedback effects on emotional experience in the auditory domain. As such, our result reinforces the wider framework of self-perception theory: that we often use the same inferential strategies to understand ourselves as those that we use to understand others.

A Conversation With Liz Dolan—Satellite Sisters: Conquering Every Audio Platform … One Cup of Coffee at a Time

Commercial talk radio was not always a male-dominated format. Crittenden’s (1971) foundational study of “open mike radio forums” in 1967 revealed that about half of the callers to Terre Haute, Indi...

Knocking at the door of cinematic artifice: Dolby Atmos, challenges and opportunities

This article explores the significance of Dolby's ‘new innovation in sound cinema’, Dolby Atmos. Introduced as a ‘cinema audio platform’, Atmos has been heralded by both Dolby and content creators as a highly significant development in the emerging field of immersive cinema technologies, promising to provide audiences with a ‘completely new listening experience’. In the article, Atmos is first framed as a historical evolution from Dolby's previous sound systems, then outlined in the way it functions and it deviates from established audio cinema technologies. Finally, the article outlines the significant opportunities and challenges the system presents to all cinema constituencies, from studios to filmmakers and from exhibitors to audiences. In particular, the article identifies key questions concerning the role Atmos is likely to play in redefining the way filmmakers structure their approach to the relationship between sound and image. The article is intended primarily to a) stimulate thinking and further...

“Beyond the Clouds”: Insider Perceptions on the Transmutation of Terrestrial Radio in Canada

This article seeks to understand how leaders in the Canadian radio industry perceive, and plan to react to, nascent personalized music streaming services. Recently, Internet-based music services like Jango and Rdio have launched in Canada, providing listeners with an alternative music experience to conventional broadcast radio. In this article, we analyze 5 interviews with experts from terrestrial radio, on-demand services, and government regulation to create a conceptualized listener profile. This profile supports the central finding of this research: should certain factors remain in place, conventional radio is likely to continue dominating as the leading commercial audio platform for Canadians in the years to come.

Design and Usability Testing of an Audio Platform Game for Players with Visual Impairments

This article reports on the evaluation of a novel audio platform game that creates a spatial, interactive experience via audio cues. A pilot study with players with visual impairments, and usability testing comparing the visual and audio game versions using both sighted players and players with visual impairments, revealed that all the participants played the audio platform game successfully.

A high-quality digital audio delivery bluetooth platform

The recent growth of home networking applications has raised the requirement for cable-free audio streaming. In this work, the "BlueDAT" digital audio platform is presented, which employs the Bluetooth wireless technology for real-time, CD-like quality, stereo reproduction. It is shown that, despite the strict throughput limitations imposed by the Bluetooth protocol, the BlueDAT application setup can efficiently accommodate cable-free, high-quality audio streaming and playback over one or two receivers for home environments, through the employment of a set of novel mechanisms for the automatic adaptation of both the transmission rate and the audio coding bitrate