Acts including Little Mix, Michael Bublé and Paloma Faith have all created Alexa Skills and just about every pop star in the world has either been on a podcast or had a podcast made about them. So what if you could combine the appeal of podcasting with the technological possibilities of smart speakers?
That is what US singer and rapper K Flay is testing out with what she and Interscope Records are calling a “microcast” that is designed specifically for smart speakers. So what, exactly, is a microcast? It is classed as a podcast that runs for under 10 minutes, making it part of a nascent movement that stands in sharp contrast to the “boxsetisation” of podcasts where they were being stretched over multiple hours and seasons and became a Sisyphean challenge to get through. what am i doing here (their lack of capitalisation and presented as both a “geographical and philosophical question”) is there to promote K Flay’s new album, Solutions. It will be recorded on the hoof by her and promises “conversations, jokes, musical interludes, as well as special guests”. The rawness of being recorded in one take on her phone is obviously designed as part of the appeal, offering a peek behind the curtain of an act on the road.
“As an artist, I’ve always looked towards the future, musically, visually, and now technologically,” said K Flay in a statement. “Given my love of the traditional podcast, I felt it was the logical and creative next step to share another side of myself with my fans via the microcast. The quality and artistry of the shows, coupled with the ease of the smart speaker access, gives me another medium with which to speak to my listeners.”
Each episode is made available for a week on smart speakers and then will be archived on K Flay’s YouTube channel. What is perhaps most interesting is that, for now at least, they are not available on Spotify, especially given that podcasts are now playlistable on the DSPs. These microcasts would fit in neatly with a series of tracks from an act in a playlist, so we can only presume it will be a matter of time before music and microcasts are meshed together in one place.
