Ready for the Sound Revolution

Podcasts are becoming more and more qualitative and more adapted to our lifestyles every day. — Dollar Gill/AFP

This year, with our eyes constantly glued to the screens, we sought escape in sound. Listening to podcasts exploded across the world. And the whole universe of voice has expanded as well, with more sophisticated headphones and smarter voice assistants heralding the widespread use of voice commands. Welcome to the age of social audio.

At one time, one could still meet on restaurant patios. And they were heated. That was in Paris, a thousand years ago. We were talking to Joël Ronez, who had just created Binge Audio, one of the first podcast studios in France. He already had the faith, but not yet the numbers to back it. It was in 2017. He was predicting the dazzling development that audio content creation was about to experience, freed from the constraints of radio programming. There would be something for every temperament, every eardrum. Cheap to produce, this native audio medium would let voices that were muted until now be heard.