Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Philipp S. | Delivered January 5, 2021

Audio Innovations News

Goals

Detail new happenings in the audio innovations market over the past week. This market includes spatial audio, audio as a driver of social network usage, changes in the roles of sound effects in AR/VR, investments and innovative offerings from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and/or TikTok, and more. This information will be used to evaluate competitive moves, new technologies, and startups in the audio and sound design area. 

Early Findings

January 5, 2021MOK introduced Filtryg to the market, which is a device plugin that allows users to create dual filter effects, mix sounds, and more. The device regularly costs $49 (on sale for $34) and is compatible with AAX, AU, and VST on Macs, PCs, and Linux devices. 
According to data published by , downloads of audio podcasts by U.S. consumers dipped over the holidays in 2020 as they did in 2019, but are already up by 5% for the week of December 28, 2020-January 3, 2021.
Salem Media Group recently created Salem Podcast Network, which will publish its first podcast called "Pardon Me!" by Dinesh D'Souza on January 11, 2021.
Twitter acquired Breaker, a podcast listening app. Breaker will officially shut down on January 15, 2021, and the acquisition will allow Twitter users to tweet audio clips that are up to 140 seconds long through the platform. 
PBS Speakers is looking to work with Audiodo and their Personal Sound algorithms to create personal hearing profiles for users that consider both sound perception and hearing abilities to increase a user's experience with headphones and speakers.

January 4, 2021Steve Brown, the UK producer of major music hits by Freddie Mercury, Manic Street Preachers, Thin Lizzy, and more died at age 65 after a major fall in December 2020.
JBL launched a mentor program called JBL Campus SoundSessions that will provide educational insights, scholarships, and experience opportunities for students to gain experience in the field.

December 31, 2020After Apple released their first over-ear headphones, AirPod Max for $549, the company announced that the goal was to create a more immersive listening experience for users by offering a spatial audio system with built-in gyroscopes and accelerometers to track head movement during listening. 

December 30, 2020Amazon finished a three-month-long process to buy Wondry for $300 million; this was Amazon's largest investment in the podcast sector to date. Wondry was a podcast publishing company, which Amazon will use to continue building their own podcast business via Amazon Music. 