Flipboard Adds Audio to its Social Magazine with SoundCloud

Flipboard has released an update that seems to indicate its wishes to be the first magazine that will come to users with a soundtrack. The update which was released on Tuesday integrates music-sharing service SoundCloud in addition to radio programs from NPR and Public Radio International (PRI). The popular magazine application for the iPhone, iPad and for the Samsung Galaxy S3 (legally for now) collects articles, images, photo albums and videos that your friends on social networks share and it proceeds to reorganize them into a magazine specifically based on the collected data.

With the latest update bringing SoundCloud and other audio-related parties integrated into the system; its personalized pages will now contain tracks that your friends share using SoundCloud’s service as well as recordings or podcasts from famous publications such as The Economist. In addition to that, if you’re reading an article from either NPR or PRI, the accompanying audio from the programs will play alongside the article from the application itself.

With the newly implemented ‘Audio’ category, users will be led to articles and posts that will be accompanied by a podcast or something along that line. To control features such as Play/Pause as well as the volume of the accompanying audio, a menu that comes with the latest update that is located on the bottom left-hand corner of each page will perform those actions effectively. That said however, although users can access songs and podcasts through Flipboard, the ability to purchase them is still not available.

The Head of Marketing for Flipboard Marci McCue told Mashable, “It’s interesting to us. Not only integrating with popular music sources like iTunes, but also allowing new artists that are out there to have some social exposure and commerce related to their music. It’s not currently on the road map, but its stuff we’re looking at.” To allow for further development along those lines, the folks behind Flipboard hope to explore other options for its audio related endeavors. If you haven’t gotten your Flipboard for iOS yet, you can click here to head over to the iTunes App Store to get it for free. Apparently, the reason why Flipboard is free is because the company monetizes the content on it by selling advertisements within publications on its platform.

Image courtesy of Istock Photo domin_domin

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Apple, Audio, Cellphones, Photo-Video, Tablets
Tags: flipboard