AudioNotes

Easily record and share audio messages from your Mac menubar

4 followers

Easily record and share audio messages from your Mac menubar

4 followers

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AudioNotes is a macOS menu bar app that helps you record and share audio messages really easily.

Launch tags:Email•Productivity•Messaging

Launch Team

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Promoted

This is one of the type of Product Hunt launches I really like. @hitdelete launched Audio Notes today and tweeted about it here @rrhoover suggested him to hunt it. @mubashariqbal hunted it for him and here he is, sharing his great and useful side-project with the Product Hunt community 🙌 Congratulations on the launch @hitdelete and good job on Audio Notes 👏 Btw I love the simplicity of the landing page, well done 👌

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@mrcalexandre @rrhoover @mubashariqbal - that's community right there! Thanks for the awesome comment Alexandre 🙏

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

Hey Product Hunters 👋 Wow this initial response has left me all warm inside 🤗 Thanks @mubashariqbal for the Hunt and @rrhover for reaching out on twitter. To answer a few questions about the MVP tech, it's simply a 5 minute AudioNote that expires in 7 days. I experimented a bit with formats and decided on 32kbps @ 44100 Hz - perfect for simple voice audio (and fast uploads). As you hit Stop Recording, the note is transcoded into AAC, then wrapped in MP3 (so there is no funny business playing on browsers) then uploaded to S3. But before any of this happens a share link is generated and copied to clipboard. This was absolutely inspired by how Instagram used to upload in the background while you wrote the caption. So by the time you paste into an email, it's already uploaded and the AudioNote page is ready and playable. **So why 5 min, why 7 days expiry, why 32kbps?** As much as I wanted to get the MVP out quick, I really wanted to have a semi-clear way to monetize before green-lighting the idea. AudioNotes must be sustainable. If 1mil people are recording notes all day, I'm in big trouble, despite Amazon costs relatively low. My monetization plan right now (without overthinking too much) is a recurring model: Free - 5mins, 32kbps (good), 7 day expiry $5/mo Pro - 60mins, 96kbps (better), no expiry Simple. The above also excludes any additional rad features of course eg. drag in an audio file to menubar (well produced, edited, with jingles etc.) and it transcodes for you and creates a share URL. But that's maybe v8 haha 🤓 So yeah, the MVP is to gather real feedback, understand how users are using it, and validate creating a Premium tier if X people are using the app. Shout if you have any questions what-so-ever and thanks for the love ✌️

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9yr ago

@hitdelete great work Rob! One suggestion, a big one at that, is to make the audio social network sharable in some type of format like NPR, and others have tried to do. That boils down to something like making the mp3 a mp4 showcasing a companion image or something. Would make for a great upsell in the paid version!

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@clarkcovington cheers Clark and great suggestion! Right now the audio is actually AAC wrapped in an MP3 so it plays nicely on majority of browsers. I'll consider NPR for sure, had to look it up TBH 😜 The way I see AudioNotes going is simple user accounts, meaning: - You login on multiple machines/phones and all your AudioNotes are there - Having the AudioNotes assigned to a profile means there is an image, author and perhaps a bio + user link we can add below the playable note within the webpage (this creates a bit more validity to the note as well) - Meaning when you share on any social network, the social meta tags should create a fairly good looking "card" with your info Having the note playable within the social network timelines and emails is definitely an end goal I hope we achieve. Not to overthink things too much but having user accounts on the free tier (and not just Pro) would mean allocating AudioNotes to a user... which lands up being a great upsell to "un-expire" all their AudioNotes by upgrading. Just thoughts for now:)

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9yr ago

Clyp

@hitdelete Neat product! We actually thought about building something similar for Clyp, but never got around to it. Maybe there's a way for us to work together? Would love to bounce around some ideas if there's any interest.

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@whattheferguson Thanks Tyson - Clyp looks interesting! (TBH I tried to not look at too many competitor apps while building, I've made that mistake in the past and can throw me off) - I'm going to focus on just improving this tiny MVP the best I can right now. But keep in touch ok!

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9yr ago

Love the idea, but don't have a mac. Are you planning to build for other systems like chrome extension or Android?

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@pitman_mark Cheers Mark! I definitely want to go that route but need to validate the idea with numbers of users on macOS to start. Definitely got plans to create the AudioNotes on iOS and Android - these phone app would of course sync with the desktop app:)

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9yr ago

Ahey

Great idea and simple execution. Kudos.. But I got one question. Why Mac app and not web app? I know you are a big one page website lover, so what stopped you from creating a web app?

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@vsnthv Hi Vasanth - great question, I plan to blog about the obstacles down the line. The idea was originally a web app, we even got it working on your default browser on Android:) The 2 big issues were: 1 - The audio recording is raw WAV in browsers so the upload is huge vs AAC/MP3 hence your upload is way longer vs macOS app. 2 - Security issues on iOS. To not get into too much detail, the browser and mic access don't play so nice:) I'm hoping Apple allow some sort of easier access in future. If things take off, it will definitely be a goal to get AudioNotes working on all devices and browsers 🤞

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9yr ago

This seems interesting for me. Going to try it. Love all things that can move load from my eyes to other sensors of organism. Thx

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@t0ha666 Thanks T0ha! Well put 👆🏻->🗣 and 👀->👂🏻.. let me know what you think needs improvement once you've tested a bit:)

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9yr ago

@hitdelete First impression: HotKeys are must. Searching for icon is sometimes very confusing thing. Thx.

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@t0ha666 So Hotkeys is right on top of the v1.1 release, user custom keys too. The icon will also change, was a very quick branding for the MVP, I'm considering soundwaves but microphone is actually cleaner in the menubar. (of course hotkeys solve this.) Thanks for the feedback, I really do appreciate it.

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@t0ha666 HotKeys are waiting for you T0ha in your AppStore update centre 😉

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9yr ago

@hitdelete Thx, already seen. That's awesome.

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9yr ago

Duelin' Agents: AI Chat Face-Off

Nice MVP, Rob. Been a longtime fan of One Page Love. Being able to pair it with a screenshot or Dribble shot is potentially how I'd see using this.

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9yr ago

Gvouchers

Maker

@jessekorzan Hey Jesse! ...from the EUX submission;) I have a massive pool of ideas but wanted to get the MVP out quick and first see what people use the app for. Then make moves. But yeah, I've jotted down attachments and also white labeling the domain and page branding - also need to be careful not to clutter things. Speed and Ease are huge priorities.

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9yr ago

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