Anchor’s redesigned app focuses on podcasting

From The Verge: If you’ve always wanted to start a podcast, Anchor’s new update is for you. The shortform audio app is fully embracing podcasting today with the launch of Anchor 3.0, which includes a redesigned app, the service’s debut on the web, and tools to distribute a show and track its success.

Anchor’s app used to be a bit like Snapchat for audio: you’d record a bunch of brief audio clips, and they’d disappear from your channel after 24 hours. Now, that format’s gone in favor of longer shows that stick around as long as you want and are meant to be listened to outside the app.

With the new update, creators will be able to string their audio clips together into one long recording — aka a podcast — and distribute it to Apple’s and Google’s podcast platforms, as well as Spotify, Overcast, and Pocketcasts. Anchor will handle hosting the podcast, and it says the service will be free, no matter how popular a podcast gets or how many podcasts you want to host.

The app has now been redesigned to focus on podcast creation. When you open it, you’ll launch right into a recording screen. All you have to do is pick the phone up to your ear and start talking to get a recording going. There are a bunch of other really nice features for making the podcast feel richer and more interactive, too: Anchor includes built-in sound effects and transitions, it lets you pull in music clips from Spotify and Apple Music (though you can’t export these for listeners outside the Anchor app), and there’s a neat feature that lets listeners send you messages, which you can drop right into a podcast to respond to.

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