Producing audio is a quicker and more efficient way that allows listeners to consume content. Our modern lifestyle forces nearly everyone to multi-task, so listening on the go is a judicious way for many people to use their time. Plus, it is more convenient to listen to audiobooks, audio courses, or podcasts than reading through written content.
Soundwise is one out of the many platforms that deliver audio content to listeners. But what makes it stand out from the rest? And why should you, as an audio content creator, consider using the solution?
This Soundwise review aims to answer that, so let’s dig in.
What is Soundwise?
Soundwise is a content management software program created to help users record, sell, and share content with listeners. It is complete audio selling and delivering solution both for online and mobile users. The platform delivers audio content smoothly and securely, allowing listeners to easily consume content on the go.
Content creators looking to increase their listener engagement and retention will find Soundwise an ideal choice. It comes with built-in user interaction tools that make it easy and convenient for even the most novice user to effortlessly consume audio content with a couple of clicks or taps.
The platform has an extremely clean look with tools, features, and functions well organized. This makes it easy to navigate and find what you are looking for, even if you’re completely new to Soundwise.
The interface allows administrators to upload or import audio tracks using different file management tools, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, and neatly organize them in one place.
In addition to the ability to listen to audio content on a computer browser, listeners can access their favorite content through the Soundwise mobile app on Google Play and Apple Store.
Who Is It For?
The platform is an ideal solution for entrepreneurs, coaches, trainers, and audio creators who put time and effort into producing worthy-listen content such as paid podcasts, audiobooks, audio courses, and private recordings for clients.
While it can be used to deliver and sell just about any audio content, Soundwise is mostly used for podcast hosting, training, content management, membership management, and learning management systems. Freelancers, small to medium-size businesses, as well as large enterprises all make up the typical customers of the content management program.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- All-in-One Platform: Soundwise combines audio hosting, distribution, and selling in one platform, so you don’t have to pay extra to host your podcasts or audio course on a separate platform.
- Simple Purchase Options: The options are pretty straightforward and quite intuitive, making it easy for administrators to create audio content and set up membership or bundles very easily. Plus, the landing and check-out pages are pre-built and easy to navigate. In addition, administrators can easily attach bonus material to audios, providing more value to listeners.
- Quality Listener Experience: Plenty of control features to improve the listeners’ experience, including looping, sleeper timer, fast forward, rewind, speed control, and more. Moreover, it comes with a free app that is easy to use. It allows listeners to download your audio for offline listening within the app.
- Ease of Use: Overall, the platform is streamlined and easy to use for the newbie and experienced administrator as well. In addition to this, Soundwise comes with instructions materials on how to create your audio content, so there is a very short learning curve for the complete novice.
- Cross Platform: Listeners can access audio from multiple platforms, including web browsers, Android devices, and iOS devices. That way, content creators can reach a wider audience and listeners can consume content wherever they are, regardless of their device type.
- Customizable: You can add your cover art and even remove the Soundwise logo to make your course, podcast, or training material uniquely yours.
Cons
- The member management feature is pretty basic. This can be a bit frustrating when adding multiple members to a membership level, as the tool continues to reset to the original level after every addition. The member management setup can easily create confusion if you have several levels to manage.
- Your content is hosted on a platform or app that also hosts thousands of similar content from other content creators. This means you could lose some of your listeners in a heartbeat to your competition.
- It doesn’t offer audio editing features, which would be a great addition to make the platform a complete package.
- The program is only available in the English language, which can pose a barrier for non-English speaking audiences.
Key Features
This part of the Soundwise review quickly highlights a few of the impressive features of the program. Some of these features include:
Smooth Content Delivery
Listeners can easily consume your content wherever and whenever they are, thanks to how the platform makes it easy to access audios.
In other words, listeners don’t have to worry about going through RSS feeds because your audios are immediately available on their mobile devices as soon as they buy them. This leads to increased engagement with your content and grows your popularity if you are running a podcast show.
But most interestingly, all updates to your audio are immediately available on your listener’s devices. In fact, they get push notification alerts for all new audio updates.
Publish Supplementary Materials
Soundwise allows you to add supplementary materials to help your listeners fully absorb your content. These materials include:
- Description: This is the written summary of your audio. You can also include relevant URL links and other important information here.
- Notes: This allows you to attach image or PDF files to audios for listeners to review in the app.
- Action step: This is particularly useful for training audios and audio courses. Content creators can use it to highlight action steps or homework the listener should take to properly integrate lessons.
In-App Messages and Email Notifications
Build and nurture your tribe with in-app group messages to your community. Communication is in real-time, and your community of listeners will receive push notifications so they can like and respond to your messages. This encourages conversations and dialogues around your content and ultimately increases audience engagement.
Optionally, you can send messages to your listeners via email anytime you publish new audio tracks.
Customized Listener Profiles
Individual listeners have their profiles similar to what’s available on social media. The profile includes an avatar image, a short bio, and a weblink. Plus, the profiles can be customized. This makes it easy for each listener to build a unique identity and for other listeners to know one another and build a stronger sense of community.
Enhanced Security
Content creators don’t have to worry about unauthorized sharing or copying of propriety audio files because the audios are stored in SSL-protected cloud storage. Soundwise authenticates each request to access your content to ensure that only your registered listeners have access to them.
Also, audios downloaded to the listeners’ mobile devices are part of the app’s memory. That means while listeners can listen to the audio even when they are offline, the audio files cannot be moved outside the app or accessed outside it.
Pricing
Soundwise offers a four-tier pricing plan where subscribers can pay either monthly or a one-time annual subscription fee.
The plans include:
- Essential: This plan goes for $10 per month but it currently has a limited time offer of $59 for lifetime access via AppSumo. This plan offers access to an unlimited number of audio content and allows an unlimited number of people to register for your public podcast. You can host up to 50 private podcasts on this plan.
- Plus: The Plus plan is offered at $39 per month and has a 15-day free trial. It comes with all the features of the previous plan and more, allowing up to 200 listeners for private podcasts and one TubeToPod channel. You can also schedule your episodes to be published at a later time.
- Pro: For only $79 per month (with a 15-day free trial), the Pro plan allows you to have an unlimited number of public and private podcast listeners, unlimited podcast feeds, unlimited TubeToPod channels, and up to five different administrators with access to your user’s dashboard. You can send bulk email notifications to your audience and send group messages to your listeners through the Soundwise mobile app for Android devices and iOS devices.
- Platinum: The Platinum subscription plan is $333 per month. In addition to all the features available with the Pro plan, this option allows you to remove the Soundwise logo or branding from your public pages to make the content uniquely yours. The plan also allows you to integrate seamlessly with more than 1,500 different apps to simplify your workflow. If you monetize your podcast, you can give subscribers multiple pricing options (for example, different subscription intervals, one-time purchases, etc). You can also give special consideration to some subscribers to bypass your paywall using the non-payment access link feature.
Customer Support
One of the areas where otherwise great brands fail is customer support. Thankfully, Soundwise excels in this aspect.
Overall, the customer support is very professional and highly responsive and offers help through email and phone support. Most users do not have any reason to use the customer support service since Soundwise does an excellent job as it were. However, users who had issues say the customer support was helpful and even offer insights and useful feedback for tackling business-related problems.
Although the podcast selling solution is not without a few hitches, just about any Soundwise review you see online rates the customer support highly, which says a lot about the company culture of putting their customers first.
In addition to the highly responsive customer support, Soundwise offers chat support as well as a forum for frequently asked questions.
Conclusion
For audio creators, coaches, and entrepreneurs who would love to quickly reach countless listeners, Soundwise is a viable online audio selling and delivering solution. You’re not charged any transaction fee, so you get to keep 100% of the revenue from your podcasts and audiobooks.
With the mobile app, your audience can access your content on the go, whether they use iOS or Android devices. We do not hesitate to recommend Soundwise to anyone serious about selling audio courses, private podcasts, and audiobooks. Join thousands of audio content creators and start selling your audio almost immediately and very fast, too!
