Audio Asset Management for Family Historians

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A surprising thing: there aren’t really any personal-focused audio asset managers out there.

Yeah, music managers a-plenty, but thinking for managing stuff you’ve recorded on your phone, etc. Something like this, but not commercially-focused: https://www.sourceaudio.com/catalog-manager/

And Tropy is fantastic for documents, but doesn’t support audio yet (it may in the future).

The ideal service wouldn’t need to be complicated: name, filename, description, date, tagged people/topics, automated-but-editable timecoded transcription, and a snappy player (preferably synced with the transcription a la Google Recorder).

Google Recorder actually does a pretty decent job, but is limited to Pixel devices and lacks some pretty simple organization features like folders or tags. And searching only applies to the current file; there is no way to search the transcripts across your recordings.

There are plenty of DAMs where this content could fit: museum collections databases, etc. It looks like the professional audio-specific ones I see are for game development, radio, TV, etc. I, of course, approach this from a family history standpoint primarily, but it would be useful for any interview-based project or set of non-music personal recordings.

Other services to investigate: