Remember when live audio suddenly became ubiquitous in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic? This trend has seen other online platforms imitate this feature. Before that, it was made popular by the short-lived phenomenon Clubhouse.
Since then, live audio has largely become a footnote to those strange times when we were all at home at the same time, with nothing to do, and listening to hours-long streams of strangers talking to each other for entertainment. Masu. Now, LinkedIn was a little late to the live audio party in 2022, choosing to do away with standalone live audio events.
In an update, the company announced that it will end support for native audio events starting next month. Starting December 2nd, users will no longer be able to create new events, and previously scheduled events will no longer work after December 31st. Instead, the company is using its live streaming feature, LinkedIn Live, to “put together” audio events. However, LinkedIn Live requires creators to use third-party tools to set up their streams. Therefore, audio-only streams can still exist on LinkedIn, but with a few extra steps.
LinkedIn isn’t the only company to change its live audio policies. Reddit, Facebook, Spotify, and Amazon have all shut down their pandemic-era live audio products. Even Clubhouse (yes, it still exists) moved away from this format last year. However, despite some high-profile technical issues, the feature is working strongly on X.
