Too late? Clubhouse launches feature to download, listen later

Clubhouse creators have a new way to distribute their content.

The news: Clubhouse recently launched Replays, a long-sought feature that allows creators to record rooms that users can listen to whenever they'd like.

Why it matters: With Replay, creators can now share their conversations on other platforms like Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. It creates additional opportunities for creators who can now connect with fans outside of Clubhouse, however, it may dampen the tips they receive in live-only chats.

Replay 101: Replays is an optional feature, and when toggled on, anyone can replay the entire conversation. It acts like a podcast discovery feature and allows for the best content on the site to find an audience on other channels. Replays also allows creators to pin links to specific segments, skip to the next speaker, see who’s joining the conversation and see total attendee counts. Listeners can tune in at 1.5x or 2x speed, pause, and create 30-second clips from the recording.

Too late? While creators are thrilled about the Replays feature, it may be too late to reverse Clubhouse’s downward trend. The app was downloaded roughly 900K times in April, down from its peak in February at 9.6M. The company, which lacked an Android app until May, had about 10 million active weekly users in April, but that dropped to 2 million in August.

The background: Clubhouse exploded onto the scene in early 2021, earning top spots in the App Store and a $4B valuation in April. Fast forward 6 months, and now the headlines say the party is over, shifting from the narrative of a disruptive platform to a flop that couldn’t keep pace with well-heeled competitors.

Clubhouse’s challenges

Clone wars: As quickly as Clubhouse attracted ears around the world, clones of its product took the market by storm. Twitter flew out Spaces, Telegram offers Voice Chat 2.0, Instagram and Facebook both launched audio rooms, Spotify has Greenroom, Discord debuted “Stages,” and even LinkedIn got in on the action. Most, if not all, of these competitors, also benefited from having millions of more users to start as well as bigger budgets.

Android delays: For over a year, Clubhouse was only available for IOS users, which cut out tens of millions of would-be users. It finally debuted its Android app in May, but by then downloads had fallen off a cliff.

Invite only: While Clubhouse’s invite-only approach added to its exclusivity and allure, it likely prevented many would-be users from joining. Clubhouse reversed course on its invite-only strategy in July, but that may also have been too late.

Live only: Up until the Replays feature was launched, Clubhouse was for live-only conversations. This made it nearly impossible, even for uber-fans, to hear their favorite Clubhouse creators unless their schedules happened to align.

Moderation: The Anti-Defamation League and other observers criticized Clubhouse for its seeming lack of moderation that allowed hate speech, racism, misinformation, and anti-Semitism. The ADL found a number of extremists and Holocaust deniers on the app as well as proponents of COVID-19 misinformation.

Waning quality: While largely anecdotal, many Clubhouse users complained of how the quality of conversations seems to have dropped off from its early days.

What do you think about Clubhouse’s future? Please share your thoughts below.