In this episode, AMT Lab guest contributors Devyn Hinkle and Helen Hejran review the popular audio-based social media app Clubhouse as well as the community-focused platform Discord, which recently released a new stage channel.

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Angela: Hello, AMT Lab listeners, and welcome to a special episode brought to you by the Arts Management and Technology Lab. My name is Angela Johnson, and I’m the Podcast Producer. In this episode, AMT Lab Social Media & Marketing Manager Devyn Hinkle and AMT Lab guest contributor Helen Hejran discuss, review, and compare the two applications, Clubhouse and Discord. Hope you enjoy.

Devyn: Today we are talking about two different audio apps. I'm going to be talking about Clubhouse and Helen is the expert on Discord. So to start off, we just want to introduce what these apps are, sort of explain to you the features, the benefits, how much they cost, things like that. And we're going to start with Clubhouse. So, Clubhouse is an audio app that was originally created for Silicon Valley people. It currently is an invite-only app and has 12.7 million downloads as of March 16, 2021, with a $1 billion valuation. Some people have called it the Twitter podcast that you are sort of inside of. Other people have aligned it to a convention center where you come in, you sit down, and you raise your hand. But obviously all virtually. All of the audio is in real time. It's not recorded or stored unless something is flagged, and to participate, you join or host rooms that are moderated. The panelists that the moderator has assigned can talk or people can raise their hand and ask questions, but most people come in and they are just listeners. There are no DMs, so there are no sort of direct messages. You can follow people and people can follow you, but you can't really interact directly with them. You would have to take that off platform. And then one of the major things is that there are clubs. So, I'm part of a film club or a TV binge watching club, so you can align your interests to other people and, from there, you can get notifications on when that club is hosting meetings, other people in that club may be hosting meetings.

The target group for this app is . . . it's a wide range of users. I've seen older users, I've seen younger users, but it's mostly young adults and professionals, so, college-aged kids and young professionals. There are lots of networking opportunities. A lot of the major topics covered are Bitcoin, some of the tech stuff, there is some Covid-related things that they have presented. I've also seen a lot of things on businesses, so there's a lot of professional advice, some self help. It feels very Silicon Valley in that you're always networking; you're always talking to people and looking for other professionals to connect with. It's great for people who are busy and want to multitask; you can turn on your phone and leave it on like a podcast, so you don't really have to interact. There's no camera. I think the main benefit, as I mentioned, is the information, so, the wealth of it. There are professionals on there, there are music industry professionals, film professionals, doctors, self help professionals, so the networking is immense. You can sort of connect with people you might not have already and you connect without cameras. So, we all know how Zoom is these days, and it's really nice to be able to connect without having to have your camera on. There have even been more professional rooms created by different businesses. Most recently, I attended South by Southwest, and they were hosting meetup rooms on Clubhouse. It's currently free. They are talking about doing a subscription, tipping, and ticket-type things to sort of support the creators on the platform, but it's currently free. And they don't really want to expand to selling ads or data. The main thing is that it is currently invite-only. So, I'm going to turn it over to Helen and she's going to talk about Discord.

Helen: Thanks, Devyn. When it comes to Discord, it first launched in 2015 and it was actually geared for PC gamers to be able to communicate with one another. They did rebrand in 2020 as "Your place to talk." So, they've moved away from being a gamers communications forum to being a place for all users. They have 70% of their active Discord users who are using it for either non-gaming purposes or a mix of gaming and everyday use. Discord is unique in that it has text and voice channels. So, in fact, they have four different types of channels you can make after you create your initial servers, which is how they use their communication feed. You'll be able to create a server and it can be for whatever topic you want, and this allows smaller groups to communicate easily. Within the servers, you can make your text channel, your voice channel, announcement channel, and a very new thing is that they now have a “stage” channel, which actually is a bit similar to Clubhouse and we'll go into that a little bit later.

Discord is available for all different types of platforms. You can do it on your iOS or Android if you're on your phone. You can do it for Windows or Mac if you're on your laptop. In fact, even if you don't want to download the app, you can use Discord through the web. They definitely have made it very easy for users to access discord in order to be able to communicate with one another. Discord stands out from its competitors because they are a social media program, but they're also, in a way, very different from the rest. Like, they don't really have a fee, there's no algorithm, they're not really creating ways for people to go viral. So, it's not what a lot of traditional social media apps have become. In fact, there's sort of this idea that this is what people are going to turn to when they're exhausted from the way that, you know, Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all those different social media channels have really just become this thing of, like, advertisements and influencers sort of dominating your feed. And so Discord really focuses on how it can be more intimate and more, really like, back to the basics of, you know, communication. Discord also is unique from other social media sites as their income is not coming from advertisements but actually from sources like their Discord Nitro, which is this paid upgrade that Discord users can buy. And these users are purchasing this upgrade. They have 140 million users as of 2020 and their revenue of $130 million, which is up from the $45 million of 2019, is coming from selling this subscription access that have these exclusive perks for their users. And so they've really been able to make this subscription service for social media work for their benefit and it's been a real asset for Discord because not only are they making money through subscriptions, but they're also not flooding the users with ads, which a lot of us are obviously not a fan of. Now we're going to go into the pros and cons and talking about different alternatives, especially comparing Discord with Clubhouse.

Devyn: Clubhouse is really special because it's sort of an audio-based connection, which we haven't really seen before. Twitter is trying to bring in Twitter Spaces, which is very similar, where they have places where you can talk with just audio. But Clubhouse was sort of the first place where they have been able to do this in a way that has really reached a lot of people. And the cool thing is that you can talk in these spaces. It's not recorded at all. It's very natural. It's almost like a podcast where it's a conversation and you have the moderators, but it's really a place where you can talk without having the pressure of a video or other things. How does that sort of relate to Discord, Helen? Like, how does that compare?

Helen: I think one thing you made very clear about how Clubhouse is reaching so many people, and that's actually one thing that Discord wasn't doing. Because Discord has the text, the voice, and it even does video calls, but for their voice calls, there are limitations in how many people are in each of those calls. And so it wasn't until Clubhouse came out and they did their, like, voice-only, we’re doing so many people to have such a large audience listen to so few people speak. And that's actually what's then spurred Discord to now do a new channel, which is called "stage" channel. And that's their way of doing an audio only to a larger audience, which will only have a select number of speakers. It's essentially a Clubhouse function on Discord now, but they weren't doing that. Their voice-only initially was just a small, smaller group.

Devyn: Yeah, and the other thing we should note is that Clubhouse is currently only on iOS, so Androids do not have Clubhouse. And they're working on it, but it's probably going to take a little bit. They just hired the engineer for that. But that's just something else to note, is that Discord is available to Android users, right?

Helen: Yeah, Discord is for Android, for iPhone. They're available like everywhere, which is maybe kind of like the point where Discord can use this moment to their advantage because they're already on both. They already have so many subscribers. Now that they're creating this new channel that's essentially Clubhouse, this is kind of maybe their way to be like "Okay, Clubhouse isn't on Android. Now it's time to try to swoop in and like take over that sphere and try to dominate there."

Devyn: Well, I think what Clubhouse and Discord do so well that, like, platforms like Zoom or like even Twitch and sort of Twitter Spaces. Well, Twitter Spaces we don't know very much about. It's not mainstream. It's still like very much in beta. We can't get access to it. But, other things like Twitch and Zoom and YouTube, is that they're all recorded. So, like, I can go back and watch a Twitch stream whenever I want. And I can get on my Zoom and I can even record my Zoom or watch YouTube videos, live streams on Instagram, all those things. But these channels really have that aspect of FOMO that I think is so big in our society right now. There's so much content out there and you want to see it all at once. So, to get that notification on Clubhouse, I'm like, "Wow, I really need to, like, log in to this meeting. Otherwise, I'm never going know what they're talking about ever again."

Helen: That is very true. I mean, there is such a FOMO aspect to what they do. It's also kind of great, because, you know, when Twitter came out 10 years ago, there were a lot of people who just said a lot of dumb stuff. And they would tweet it out all the time. And they said a lot of things that I'm sure they really regret and they did not think through at all, and it's out there on Twitter for everyone to remember. And I feel like there is a certain aspect of, like, people are gonna say things that are stupid, and you know, to have a platform like Discord or Clubhouse where you're able to just speak a little more freely because it's going to be to the audience and you don't have to think about like, "Is what I'm saying public consumption-worthy?" Because, yes, the public is listening, but you don't want it to necessarily be, like, branded forever, for everyone to always remember and see and turn back to. Because we are, like, developing people, right? Like, part of Clubhouse is to, like, expand your thought, right?

Devyn: Absolutely and I think, like, the professionals on there are incredible. I mean, like, Elon Musk is on there. You can network with real people in real industries. That goes right into one of the cons of both of these platforms, compared to Twitter or I think I was reading about even Reddit sort of has this self-moderation thing that Clubhouse uses, where it's really the users who are moderating them. They have to flag the content, which works on Reddit, in some ways. I mean, there are lots of problems...

Helen: To an extent.

Devyn: Yeah, I mean, Reddit has lots of problems in and of itself. Where it works is because anything you post on Reddit is there until they take it off. And, even then, it's documented somewhere. And Clubhouse is not like that. So, like, I think one of the biggest problems in Clubhouse—I don't know much about Discord—is this idea of moderation. And there's been a lot of things about misinformation, racism is obviously a big thing here, and they've been working on building a "trust and safety" team, which I think is such an interesting term. Like, trust is like the first part of their, like, safety team. And they've been working on building this, but it's really done by users. It's sort of an echo chamber, almost. Like, you have people reporting things, and it sort of goes back, and it's the people reporting things that are the people who are moderating it. But the only way they can report it is if you're listening to something and you report it during it, it will be recorded and saved. And if you don't report it in that time, the recording is gone forever. They don't save that encrypted recording, so there's no way for them to sort of go back and be like, "Hey, that conversation was flagged" afterwards. There's not really any way to do that, which is hard, especially in times of, like, Covid and racism and I guess there's been a lot of anti-Semitism on the platform, which is unfortunate.

Helen: On Clubhouse? Really?

Devyn: On Clubhouse. There was, like, a room that was people who didn't believe in the Holocaust, which ultimately resulted in a Holocaust survivor coming on and doing a 16-hour stream on different rooms where he told his experience. So it's great in that you can bring it right back around and really get that information out there. But at the same time, there's no way to really—I mean, I think it's the problem across all social media platforms. Like, how do you regulate misinformation? And on this platform, specifically, there's not a lot of ways to moderate it because it's live audio. The other thing I ran into personally is I was on a room and there was this one girl who wouldn't shut up. And eventually the moderators just left because she was just blabbing on. She was trying to pitch her music to everyone, and that was, like, a lesser thing of moderation. But it was also, sort of, how do you moderate a panel so that it stays productive? And, you can sort of involve the audience, but without them taking over? Because you don't know the people you're inviting in these rooms. So, did you read anything about that on Discord or find anything?

Helen: Discord announced the launch of Stage channel the first week of April, so it's still very new and there's a lot more to learn about it. But it did come with moderator tools that is going to allow control for the moderator to mute and unmute people and make sure the conversation is staying on topic while still allowing people to voice their opinions in front of such a big virtual crowd. I'm curious how that's going to evolve. When it comes to these other channels, a lot of what's happening often on Discord is, you know, you're playing games or you're with, like, your own social circle already.

Devyn: Which I think is cool because, like, they're direct competitors in that they do the exact same thing, but the way that Clubhouse is set up is really a networking place. I mean, I've gone to so many professional talks that have really helped me in my career path, but if I wanted to just, like, have a talk with all my friends—I know somebody was talking about they have a really fantastic book club on Discord—maybe they use that sort of thing for that. So, it's more of, like, a hobby type thing whereas I feel like Clubhouse has been like geared towards this very professional—I mean, South by Southwest used it as like part of their platform and, like, a lot of publishers, like Insider, their reporters are using it to like give talks and stuff like that.

Helen: Yeah, I think there's a little bit more of an informal leisure aspect to Discord. Like, because Discord actually you can compare it to Slack, as well, but it's not seen quite as workspace-like. So it's a lot more of a relaxed environment that you could have when you're on Discord. And I think it's a lot more of just, like, maintaining connections. And part of the reason why they had such a boom in the past year or so is, you know, during Covid, people kept downloading Discord because that was how they were going to watch, you know, they were going to do game nights with their friends, they were going to watch movies together. You can share your screen and you can see things and you can have a bunch of people on a video call together. And it's not quite the same sort of networking thing that Clubhouse has been doing. But I do think that they've seen Clubhouse, and they're like, "We want to make sure they don't take on our turf and we're going to take on theirs instead."

Devyn: Yeah, like, I've joined a couple study rooms for Clubhouse, but I think at the same time, it really just, maybe it's just that it's still so in beta. So, like, even though I have a decent amount of friends on it, it's not, like, mainstream. And it's not, like, I mean, the Android thing sucks, too, because you're an Android-user and, like, I can't communicate with you on Clubhouse. So I think it's harder to sort of have that community and the other thing is, I think Discord already had these communities to begin with, right?

Helen: They initially started out as the gaming community, and so in 2015, when they came out, it was a lot of gamers who went on it and they started using it. And so they built up a user base at first before expanding to say, like, "Everyone should use this for leisure. Everyone should use this for communication."

Devyn: Well, the other thing I wanted to go into is the sort of addiction side of it, because we talk about screen time, and we're like, "We need to get off our screens, we need to get off our screens." And this is a way to do it, right? Like you get on an audio call and you're off your screen, but I think what I've been reading is that there's been a 17% increase in podcast listening across 2020, and there's 7 million more teens and adults who tune into audio online since 2020, which is incredible. Like, that's a huge increase and, I mean, Covid is a huge part of that. So, the screen time is like an addiction, right? But the other fear is that audio is an addiction. I mean, the difference between listening to music and listening to a podcast or, I mean, Clubhouse is even a step above a podcast because in a way you're interacting with those people and it's also something that's not recorded. Like, when I listen to podcasts, I'm like, I used to listen to it all the time when I worked in an office, and somebody would walk up and talk to me and I'd just pop out my earbuds or turn it down way low and then I'd go back and listen to it again. And with Clubhouse, you can't do that. You really have to be engaged, and I think Discord's the same way. It's like a person-to-person interaction, even if you're tuning into a channel.

So the fear is that you're really creating this new type of addiction where it's like, you're depending on audio, but unlike screen time, you could be anywhere. Like, I could put in my air pods and walk around the grocery store and listen to Clubhouse, which is sort of scary because there's really no time I would not be. I could be in class and listen to it on the side, so it's this fear that it really becomes a coping mechanism for anxiety or bad habits. I read an article about a husband where the wife made him stop using it for 30 days, because she was like, "You're not interacting with your child anymore. You're not coming to dinner," because he was moderating Clubhouse meetings all the time. Which is terrifying to think that this isn't something we really think of as an addiction, but it's definitely something that becomes an addiction because I get notifications on Clubhouse every 30 seconds or something like that. It's crazy.

Helen: Yeah that really is a concern, I think. Especially with these both being private servers that, it's not public information, they're not saving it, you can't just go back and like—like, a podcast, you can listen to it later, and so it also kind of attaches you to whatever electronic device, like your phone or your laptop, it really starts to make you attached to it, makes you attached to the notifications. And aren't we addicted to screens and our phones and all those things enough? And this is extending it. Because it's the same thing as, like, back when texting and phone calls first started. It was like, "Oh, I want to be able to connect," and, like, I used to be a lot more disconnected and I was better back then. I wasn't quite as hooked on my phone. But I do remember I had a few people, they would get a little upset at me. They're like, "You didn't reply for, however many hours?" and I'm like, "I'm not on my phone all the time." But people expect that and especially nowadays, like, people truly expect that.

Devyn: With Covid, like, there's really, like, no home/alone time where it's, like, I could be on Clubhouse all day. I could be on my phone all day. I mean, we're recording a podcast late at night and there's no sort of distinction of when work time becomes work time and home time becomes home time.

Helen: Exactly, and I feel like things, like, with Clubhouse that's a little more networking focused, that's truly what's happened, especially, like, with Zoom and everything. There's no off time now, because, well, what's your excuse? You always are going to have an electronic device, you're going to have internet, you're going to be able to be in contact. We're still mostly not supposed to leave our homes. I can see it fostering this, like, negative attachment, and it makes me think of, like, WALL-E.

Devyn: But it's really interesting to hear about these different apps and how they're competitors, and I think there's lots more competitors coming in. I think, I have to assume Facebook/Instagram will find some way to incorporate this into their app, because that's what they do. And we'll see how Twitter Spaces sort of infiltrates this audio space. I think the other thing that we didn't mention at all yet is Spotify has their whole podcast app, and while it's not directly like Clubhouse where you're interacting, I mean, this is very similar to the podcast space and I could see other streaming companies like Spotify sort of integrating this into their platform as well. So, I think looking towards the future, the ways that Clubhouse, particularly—and I'll let you talk about Discord—what it's facing is: a.) the gap, I think there's still, like, there's 12.7 million users as of middle of March of 2021. They still have a long way to go to catch up with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and what happens when they get there? Like, what happens when this is mainstream? Does it become more scary? Does it become more integrated? And the other thing to mention that we haven't talked about at all is Helen mentioned how Discord has been profitable, but Clubhouse isn't profitable at all right now, so they really need to figure out: are they going to do a subscription? Are they going to do a ticket type thing? Are they going to do tipping? And is that just going to be for creators? Or how are they going to fund the app? Obviously, people aren't really worried about it because they love the app, but how does that sort of fit in? And then I think the final thing is, like, the moderation of it all and the addiction on the user side, how are you moderating yourself? And on the platform side, how are they moderating the users? And who owns the audio? And who owns that? And how do we help creators sort of profit off this? They're putting out a lot of information and valuable resources, and that shouldn't become a commodity. So those are sort of the challenges. I think the benefits are the exact same thing, though, like, there's just a wealth of information. There's so many ways to connect with people. There's ways to connect with people who are already in your network but also outside of your network. The reviews have been good, like, people love this app and they love what's going on on the app. But there's other people who hate it because of the addiction thing, because it's just overwhelming. There's too much content. There's too much connecting. There's too much going on. I know some weeks I don't log into it at all, because there's just, like, I don't know what to click on. I don't know who to talk to. But I think overall, there are so many benefits. In some ways, it really combats the issues we have on other platforms like Twitter, Facebook. You don't necessarily know these people, but you are hearing people talk and you are hearing actual voices talking about things. It's a better way to sense if someone has valid information and having discussions so it's not just one sided, and being able to decide for yourself if it's real or not. I think part of the problem with Twitter and all these text-based things is you have to search for the other side; you have to search for the flip side. So, I think that's a really interesting and beneficial thing.

Helen: A quick clarification: Discord has been generating revenue, but they're not profitable yet because they are still expanding and growing and keep investing and trying to get bigger and better. But, I completely agree with you on a lot of those fronts about the different concerns that Clubhouse has are the same as Discord. And I will say, especially with Discord, they already have been having to monitor, of course, in terms of privacy but as well as ensuring that there's no hate or violating terms of conduct. And now that they're going to try to expand and really compete with Clubhouse to keep and grow some sort of domination when it comes to voice-only communication and just being a communication device that's different from the standard social media, it's . . . what do they do to make sure that they continue to be able to uphold things about their privacy, things about controlling this sort of user behavior? Yes, they use machine learning. Yes, they have employees and volunteer moderators. But the bigger you get and, especially as they expand to allow larger audiences for a new Clubhouse-style moderation and audience-holding, it makes everything riskier and that is something you have to look into. But I do think that Discord is in a great position to continue to expand, to grow what they have already, and just continue that domination in terms of having a lot of users constantly subscribing and being active on their platform. You know, it's going to be interesting to see as, you know, the Clubhouse craze has currently been dominating the news, and to see if Discord's able to compete and make sure that Clubhouse doesn't come up and beat them, as well as just making sure that they are able to, you know, evolve along with the times. They have their system as it is. They have their Discord Nitro, which is their subscription service, and how does that need to change if they're going to add in new features, like Stage channel?

Devyn: I think where we should leave it is sort of this question of can there be multiple platforms? I think there can be. I mean, there's Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, even Tumblr still exists for a lot of people and I see Tumblr as even a Discord-type thing. Obviously, Discord is a little more mainstream than that, but in terms of, like, building those fan communities and sort of having an off-base target.

Helen: Yeah, multiple things can exist and we see how they exist. There is, especially when things become too similar, there is something that's going to be on top. Like, Snapchat was doing so well, and then Facebook and Instagram kind of said, "Okay, we need to take this idea and integrate it into ours and so people won't use it." So, actually, who knows? Maybe the biggest thing that people have to worry about is Facebook and Telegram are actually trying to develop their own Clubhouse-like source. And so, the question is going to be, if they do successfully build their own, will they actually squash these other competitors? I don't know if that's necessarily true, because I think people are more and more uncomfortable with Facebook and what they do. They want to keep your data.

Devyn: That's one thing that's interesting about Clubhouse: everything I read is, they really want to close off the data. And I don't want to go too much into this, but China has a full ban on Clubhouse and France has had some issues with them selling contacts. But, overall, they're trying very hard to keep your data separate from what you do. The thing to watch out for in the coming year is: who steps up and how does Twitter react? How does Facebook and Instagram react? And Discord has a bit more of an establishment, but even still, I mean, Clubhouse is new. Like, there's no other way to put it. Like, it's brand new. They aren't established, even though we feel like they are because we hear about it all the time. There's still glitches. They're still in beta. Androids still don't have them. So, there's a lot of variables in I think both of our platforms before they can even get to a Twitter or Instagram or Facebook level mainstream and what happens when they get there.

Helen: Yeah, I would think, in a really short way to say it: Clubhouse, it's new and it's in beta, but it's got a shininess to it because it has, like, the celebrities. It has the famous people who are really into it. Discord is bigger. It's been around a little bit longer. But it started out as, like, this is what gamers use. So, they do have their own unique brands and that'll be also interesting to see how that plays out.

Angela: Thanks for listening to the AMT Lab podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and to leave a comment. If you would like to learn more, go to amt-lab.org. That is A-M-T dash L-A-B .org. Or, you can email us at amtlabcmu@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter at Tech in the Arts, or on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn at Arts Management and Technology Lab. You can find the resources that we referenced today in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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