Facebook will announce a suite of audio products on Monday, including a Clubhouse-like app, a podcast discovery product connected to Spotify, and more (Sources Monday Clubhouselike Spotifykafkavox)

Sources Monday Clubhouselike Spotifykafkavox: Facebook will announce a suite of audio products on Monday, including a Clubhouse-like app, a podcast discovery product connected to Spotify, and more.

The announcements are part of Facebook’s efforts to stay competitive in an increasingly crowded social media space dominated by other companies who have fleshed out their audio offerings.

It might seem like Facebook is moving too fast in the media realm, but those who know around here know that it’s just following the rest of tech. A few years ago, the company’s advertising executives were inventing and experimenting with a range of new ad formats. From that came the creation of Timeline, its news feed, and the addition of paid ads to the social network.

On Monday at its F8 developer conference, Facebook will announce a trio of audio products — an updated version of Clubhouse which will be known as “Timeline Chats”, a podcast app called “Podcasts”, and “high quality audio” as part of Instagram.

Clubhouse first launched in 2016 as a private community where Facebook employees post 10-minute audios. It’s sort of like a Facebook-focused version of The Moth, the live storytelling event and podcast. The feature will be open to the public starting Monday (for those willing to signup for one of this thing).

Facebook is also launching a new podcast app called “Podcasts” that will be available on iOS and Android and connected to Spotify — a first for Facebook. The feature could be a competitor to the likes of Apple’s Podcasts app. Facebook is also integrating podcast listening with its main app. So people will be able to listen via their news feed, of course.

The third product is high-quality audio, which is said to be “a new format optimized for sound quality and created with the latest in audio technology”. I’m just going to say that it’s probably a way for Facebook to easily differentiate its audio products from rivals.

Facebook already has a lot of tools for recording and editing audio, especially video. With standalone products, the company can increase user engagement and promote vertical video content over horizontal videos.

Facebook has been investing in several other audio products as well.