Like a lot of apps, Monle was born out of my own frustration. My day-job is at a radio station, where I've had the opportunity to produce a number of radio stories. Being in the field is great, and over the last decade, recording high-quality audio has gotten easier with better recorders and smaller mics. But I always needed to rush back to the station to edit the story. Now, if it's a highly-produced piece with a million edits and complicated sound design, then of course I want to sit in the studio for days crafting the perfect piece. But more typically, the piece was a quick story, a few talking heads, some ambient sound, and my narration, which didn't really need all the complication of a professional studio. For a while, I tried hauling my laptop around and editing in the field with that, which sort of worked, but I still needed to get back to the studio to hand the final audio off. To make a fully mobile studio, I'd need to carry my laptop, Pro Tools outboard gear, my recording rig (recorder/mic/headphones/etc.) and some phone tethering setup when free wifi wasn't available. There had to be a simpler way.

Right about then is when Apple's "There's an app for that" campaign started showing up. I didn't have an iPhone, but if there was an app that could allow me to record, mix, and send radio stories from the field, I'd buy one. Alas, there wasn't anything even close. There were a few 4-track recorders, but you need to be able to move tracks around to make a radio story, so those recorders wouldn't work. Looks like there wasn't an app for that after all.

In a previous career, I was a computer programmer, and just out of curiosity, I started looking through Apple's iPhone programming documentation to figure out why you couldn't make an app to do non-linear editing. After a month of reading, my conclusion was that it was possible, but crazy-complicated.

After stewing on that fact for about a month, I decided that I was up for the challenge, and for the next year, I worked on Monle, usually for just an hour or two in the wee hours after work and school. Twelve months later, almost to the day, Monle was complete.

Monle can easily be used for music production, and many friends have begun using it for such, but my use of the application is still for audio stories. It's turned out that I can do more of those complicated mixes on Monle than I originally planned. I love going into the studio, and still do when I have the time, but mostly, I just stay in the field, recording, mixing, and uploading the final mix to the station.

While my own frustration is a great motivator, it's not the only, or even primary one behind Monle. Public radio has, for years, suffered from two problems stemming from the same cause. The problems are 1) lack of new talent, and 2) lack of diversity of voices. The root cause, I believe, is the barrier to entry into radio production. To start producing radio today, you need at least three things: a recorder, a mic, and a computer with editing software. The typical starter recorder these days is a flash recorder with lower-end models costing a few hundred dollars. The cheapest mic you can use to get broadcast-quality audio is at least another hundred. And if you already have a computer, editing software is either free and really hard to use, or expensive but easier. This is just to get started. This is before you can complete your very first story. This is before you have any idea if doing radio is something you like, or something you're good at, or something you'd want to spend more time doing.

This barrier to entry means that you can't really dabble in audio storytelling. You have to commit on day one. Consequently, public radio only gets a trickle of new talent. If radio production was easier to try out, more people would give it a go. Maybe they'd only produce one or two stories. Maybe they'd be great. Or maybe they'd be not so good. But more people playing means that more people find the fun in storytelling, which means that more people might want to tell stories on a larger scale - maybe even professionally.

Monle provides an easier way to try out audio storytelling. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, one visit to the app store and you've got what you need to start creating your own audio stories. If you like the feeling of using audio to communicate ideas, maybe you'll upgrade your mic and plug it into Monle. Maybe if you keep liking it, you'll move to a Pro Tools rig, but still use Monle to record. If you keep going, you can then get a professional recorder. Instead of having to buy everything for your first story, you can use Monle, and upgrade as you go, in line with your growing interest and abilities.

The other problem to the current barrier to entry is that unless you have a few hundred bucks to shell out for start-up costs, you don't get to have your voice heard. Public radio is full of white middle-class voices because white middle-class people can more often afford to make their voices heard.

Monle doesn't completely eliminate the barrier to entry because of cost - not yet anyway. You still have to have an iPhone or an iPod touch, but those devices are much more widespread than flash recorders and mics and editing software. If you have an iPhone or an iPod touch, your barrier to entry went from at least a few hundred dollars, to ten bucks. And I'm working with partners to eliminate even that last $10. These partners work with kids, with minority populations, with various underrepresented groups. We're working together to get free devices with free mics and copies of Monle into the hands of those people whose voices are underrepresented on public radio, to the detriment of all of us.

If your organization would like to donate iPhones, iPod touches, or compatible mics, or if your organization works with a population that deserves to have their stories and voices heard, contact us at donate@monleapp.com.

I love making my life easier. But more than that, I love making my life better. I listen to the radio, especially public radio a lot. I believe the quality of my overall listening experience is directly proportional to the diversity of the content I hear. For my own selfish reasons, I want people to use Monle to make my radio experience better. I hope that at the same time, Monle can open up new opportunities to those people that have stories to tell, that deserve to be heard. I hope that Monle can make their lives better too.