PopUp Archive

“To a search engine, untranscribed audio is invisible audio. With text, every keyword is a breadcrumb, leading new audiences to discover that material online. Yet with audio, these same keywords are hidden, making recorded voices inaccessible to the audiences they deserve. We’re here to make your audio visible to the web.

Pop Up Archive is a platform of tools for organizing and searching digital spoken word. We process sound for large archives and universities, media companies, radio stations, and podcast networks: if you’ve got recorded voices, we’ve got you. Drag and drop any audio file (or let us ingest your RSS, SoundCloud, or iTunes feed), and within minutes you’ll receive automatically generated transcripts and tags. By automatically extracting the information from audio, we help radio producers log raw tape, get audio stories online faster, optimize stations’ websites, and ensure that audio and video get indexed by Google for the most innovative digital media properties.”

TAGLINE: Searching speech should be as easy as searching text.

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life used the PopUp Archive’s transcription tools to describe and analyze its digital audio materials, which includes oral histories and rare audio recordings of Jewish communal events from the 20th century. The platform was discontinued in 2017, after being sold to Apple.

Digital sounds from The Magnes Collection are made available through a network of online platforms. Historical sound recordings are uploaded to the Internet Archive. Collections sounds (including the sounds of ritual objects) are shared via Soundcloud. Until it functioned, oral histories and rare audio recordings of Jewish communal events from the 20th century were further analyzed and transcribed thanks to the Pop Up Archive.

Since PopUp Archive is now defunct, this page is for archival purposes only.