Live audio events, which became popular during the pandemic period, were quickly adopted by many social media platforms. However, this trend lost its old charm over time. Particularly platforms such as LinkedIn noticed the decreasing interest of live audio events in the post-pandemic period and began to re-evaluate their investments in this field. LinkedIn announced that it will completely shut down the voice activity feature, which it introduced in 2022, at the end of 2024.
According to the statement made by LinkedIn, the audio event creation feature will be disabled on December 2, 2024. Previously scheduled events will no longer run as of December 31st. With this decision, the company plans to combine audio events with the LinkedIn Live platform. However, users who want to broadcast audio via LinkedIn Live will need to use third-party tools. This can make the process a little more complicated for those who only want to broadcast with audio.
With this transition, LinkedIn emphasizes that audio broadcasts have not completely disappeared, but will continue with new formats. On the other hand, it is a matter of curiosity how suitable LinkedIn Live is for this type of content and whether it will attract the attention of users.
Other platforms are also taking steps similar to LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s decision reflects a general trend regarding live audio events. Major platforms such as Facebook, Reddit, Spotify and Amazon have also terminated the audio activity features they introduced during the pandemic period. Clubhouse, which played an important role in making live audio broadcasts very popular for a while, is trying to attract user attention in different ways by changing its format.
On the other hand, X continues to operate in this field with its Spaces feature. However, technical problems and fluctuating user interest make X’s future in live audio events uncertain.
Live audio events, which became popular with the habits of staying at home during the pandemic period, stood out as a solution that met people’s search for social connection. However, as these needs decreased in the post-pandemic period, many platforms lost interest in these features. LinkedIn’s latest decision is also considered as a part of this general trend. Still, it seems possible for audio events to continue their existence on some platforms with new formats.