It’s a couple of weeks since we published our article Remote Audio & Video Collaboration Software Choices In 2024. In this article we offered a round up of what we saw as the most significant alternatives out there in the rapidly growing area of software for remote collaboration.
In that article we conducted a survey of the community asking what people used and which features they regarded as most important. In this follow up article we present the results and comment on the data.
How often do you work remotely?
In this first question we try to ascertain the prevalence of remote working. As we all know, since the pandemic there has been a very pronounced uptick in remote working. While its anecdotally clear to say that this has let to a permanent change in employment habits, this data strongly suggests that almost no-one is unaffected by remote working.
If you work remotely, what is the nature of the work?
1- Post production mixer streaming audio to clients for review - 24%
2 - Post production mixer recording ADR/voiceover and streaming audio to clients for review - 20%
3 - Post production mixer recording ADR/voiceover - 19%
4 - Music mixer streaming audio to clients for review - 16%
5 - Music mixer recording artists and streaming audio to clients for review - 12%
6 - Music mixer recording artists - 10%
In trying to assess more precisely what kind of work is being done, the results. suggest a wide spread of work being accomplished remotely, with no single area standing out as best suited to remote workflows. Considering mix review is more easily achieved than recording this is possibly unexpected.
If you work remotely, do you use dedicated remote collaboration software or a workaround with multiple solutions such as Zoom/email/file sharing services?
While pre-pandemic it was probably safe to say that many people were relying on a combination of file sharing, email and messaging to work remotely. This data suggests that the more streamlined and complete approach of using dedicated software has established itself among users, with none of our sample saying they use workarounds. This might be due to a bias among our self-selecting sample but it’s still a striking result.
Do you work mainly in audio post or music?
Our sample, which wasn’t large compared to our usual sample size in surveys, we only had 188 respondents, shows a split between music and post which runs contrary to our data on our overall audience. We think that overall out audience is about 75% music and 25% post production. This is probably a reflection of the comparative popularity of collaborative workflows in post compared to music.
Post Users - Whose product(s) do you use?
The popularity of Source Elements in the post sector isn’t a surprise to us. They have been around a long time and have always targeted Post users, offering a variety of products which fulfil their specific needs.
Post Users - most and least valuable features
The chart above truncates the options so they are listed below:
Talent recording
Audio comms/talkback
Mix review for clients
Secure collaboration invites
Video calling
Additional multichannel audio support
Text messaging
Timestamped comments/notes
Overall the ability to leave timestamped comments is no surprise. In our experience this is a must have for clear notes and revisions.
Music Users - Whose products do you use?
For music users the prevalence of Audiomovers was also no surprise, developed in partnership with Abbey Road Studios it’s a product created by people who understand the needs of music mixers.
Music Users - What are the most and least valuable features?
Again we see the provision of timestamped comments as the most useful feature. the relative importance of talent recording remotely for music users is a surprise considering how much less ciomplec recording ADR and VO is compared to recording music.
Are there any signs of a return to in-person working?
Lastly the question about trends in remote working was something of a surprise to us, with a permanent shift to remote working being the least popular result.
Conclusion
What do you think about these results? Our biggest takeaway is that while we covered what we saw as the most popular choices, the popularity of Other coming number 2 in both music and post responses means that we’ve missed something important. The fact that we didn’t include a text box to find out what that ‘Other’ was means we have a clear gap in our data. We’ll definitely bear this in mind next time we do a survey of this sort.