The many ways to make audio with Anchor

As we add more and more features to Anchor (we’re currently at a breakneck pace of approximately one huge new update every week), we’ve been receiving lots of requests for a single tutorial or walkthrough of everything that’s possible to do with Anchor’s many innovative features.

So here it is… the definitive list of all the cool and crazy things you could never do before, that you can now do with Anchor. Right from your phone!

1. Record and broadcast your voice in seconds.

Anchor’s the easiest way to capture your voice, period. Try recording yourself, a conversation with friends, or the world around you. Here’s a few of the ways we make this a breeze:

Just hold the phone up to your ear to record!

• Telephone mode: Just lift the phone up to your ear like you’re talking on the phone. It’ll start recording automatically and end when you lower it.
• Hands-free recording: Swipe up from the recording button to lock it into place, so you can record hands-free.
• Segmented recording: If you need to pause while you’re recording (either to gather your thoughts, or if a large truck happens to go by), just stop recording. You’ll be able to pick right back up where you left off.

2. Share any full-length track from Apple Music or Spotify.

Thanks to our integrations with Apple Music and Spotify, you can add any song from their libraries to your Anchor station. By default, listeners will hear a 30 second preview; anyone with a premium account with one of those services can hear the full length song.

We’re seeing people use songs as transitions, create entire radio shows where they DJ playlists, and add songs in between music commentary. A couple stand-out examples:

Add any song you can think of to your Anchor station.

• Medicine Remixed’s “Audiotopsy” series, where a duo of doctors examine medical lyrics in rap and hip hop songs and reveal how accurate they are.
• The Beatbox’s “Damn son, where’d you find this?” recurring feature, in which Bay Area rapper Frak breaks down the origins of famously sampled beats.
• Veteran music journalist Jonah Bayer shares his favorite songs, along with insider commentary and stories about the bands who made them.

3. Interview anyone, wherever they are — even if they don’t have Anchor.

Co-hosting a show or conducting an interview has literally never been easier. You can call anyone from the Anchor app (all you need is their phone number; all they need is to answer), record the conversation, and add it right into your Anchor station.

Some fun facts about Interviews:

Interview anyone you want, even if they don’t have Anchor!

• The recipient does need to opt in (they’ll hear instructions to press 1 when they’re ready to record), so don’t worry — it can’t be used to surprise people who don’t know they’re being recorded.
• Unlike normal segments on Anchor, interviews don’t have a time limit, so you don’t need to worry about getting cut off.
• If you want to edit your Interview before posting it (or if you just want to keep the original audio file), we’ll email you the file so you can do whatever you want!

We’ve seen a ton of really creative Interviews done on Anchor; one of our favorites in recent weeks was when MADE From Scratch called Noam Chomsky and got to ask him about the cult-like culture of modern businesses.

4. Take call-ins from friends or listeners.

Anchor makes audio social in a lot of ways; one is that anyone who hears your show can call in with their thoughts, questions, and suggestions. It’s incredibly easy; they tap a button, record up to 1 minute of audio, and send it your way. If you like what they had to say, you can add their call-in to your station with one tap so your listeners can hear it too!

Because you can also export your call-ins, we’ve seen a lot of podcasters take advantage of Anchor as a way to interact with their existing listeners — something which before now just wasn’t possible.

Here’s a few examples of stations doing creative things with call-ins:

Take call-ins from listeners of your Anchor station!

• Shan Boody answers questions and gives advice about sex and love to her listeners.
• 10 Minutes of Magic uses call-ins to conduct live, audio-only games of Magic: The Gathering (“Mental Magic”) every Monday.
• Sara Dietschy uses call-ins with her YouTube audience, who previously didn’t have a way to talk to her directly.
• Maya from Team Anchor regularly answers support questions and responds to feature requests.

5. Share or embed audio wherever you want.

Your station can be as long as you want it to be (it’s made up of individual segments), but each segment in Anchor is limited to 5 minutes. The great thing about this is it forces each segment to have its own topic, and when it’s shared on social media it’s much more likely to convert to listeners because they can get straight to the part that’s relevant.

With Anchor, you have a couple options for sharing your audio outside of the app:

• Share a segment link to Twitter; it’ll play right in the app as an audio card.
• Share your station link to Twitter or Facebook; it’ll show a nice custom card with your station information and link to your station. Existing Anchor users will be able to deeplink right into your station in the Anchor app; everyone else will be taken to your web profile so they can listen without needing to install the app.

You can also embed your station or a specific segment at any time; just grab the embed code from the web player of that audio.

6. Transcribe your audio and share it as an animated video.

Generate an automatic transcription for any of your segments and export it as a video, which will autoplay on social media and which is a very eye-catching way to get your stuff heard. Here’s some more info about how to create your own videos, right from your phone.

7. Upload pre-existing audio from your desktop.

If you have existing audio (like a podcast, a captured conversation, a song you recorded, etc), you can upload it to your station by visiting anchor.fm/clip on your desktop. If you want to bypass the 5 minute segment limit, one trick is that you can upload a longer piece of audio here. We’ll still chop it up into 5 minute chunks so it’ll work natively in the Anchor app, but it’ll play through seamlessly for anyone listening.

The Anchor Clipper at anchor.fm/clip

8. Create audio that disappears in 24 hours, audio that lasts forever, or a traditional podcast.

With Anchor, you have unprecedented flexibility with the format of your audio:

Turn your segments into permanent episodes at any time.

• By default, any audio you add into your station expires in 24 hours. This means your listeners always hear your most recent, most relevant content; a side effect is that it also takes the pressure off when you just feel like sharing casual audio.
• At any point, you can turn any audio in your station into a permanent episode. People can listen to it whenever they want, and if you share or embed the episode link it’ll last forever.
• You can also turn your Anchor episodes into a podcast, with a single tap on your phone (really). We’ll handle all the details of publishing for you, and once it’s set up, any episodes you create in Anchor will be automatically synced to your podcast in places like Apple Podcasts and Google Play Music, so people have even more ways to discover and hear your audio!

For an example of a podcast that was created entirely on Anchor, check out Newest Latest Best in Apple Podcasts. (You may remember NLB from it’s successful Kickstarter campaign a few years back; we — and all its fans — are very happy we were able to help bring it back to life!)

9. Get your voice heard in people’s cars with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Your voice, in cars everywhere.

If you have an Anchor station, people can automatically listen to whatever you have to say right in their car with our integrations for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Your radio DJ dreams are finally coming true.

Read more here, or launch Anchor in your car now to try it out!

10. Get realtime data on your audio.

As soon as you add audio to your station, we start tracking (and reporting) how many people are listening, who they are, and even which parts of your audio they’re enjoying. If you have a podcast set up, we import your listeners from there too — so you’ll always have an up to date understanding of exactly how many people are hearing you and reacting.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with Anchor; we hope you’ll try it out if you haven’t already, and discover all the incredible things you can do with audio on our platform. If you want one more shining example of a station that we think consistently takes advantage of all these features, check out The Great Everything.

If you ever have any questions, feature requests, or suggestions, let us know! You can always reach us by email at [email protected] or on Twitter at @anchor.