Recording a voice reading with SoulCast Studio

Overview

SoulCast lets you read your poem out loud and attach the recording right to the poem page, so readers can hear the piece in your own voice — your breath, your pauses, the inflection no on-page formatting can carry. The whole flow lives in the poem composer, next to title, categories, and banner.

Recording happens right in your browser. There’s no app to install, no separate file to drag in, and no editing tool to learn. You press Start Recording, read the poem, press Stop Recording, listen back, and either keep the take or discard it and try again. One reading per poem is supported in this version — to swap an attached take, remove the old one first and record a new one.

What you’ll need

• An active GS Pro subscription. If yours lapses, recordings you’ve already attached keep playing on your poems — you just won’t see the SoulCast Studio record button in the composer until you resubscribe.
• A working microphone on the device you’re using — built-in or external — and permission for GS Poetry to access it. Your browser will ask the first time.
• A supported modern browser. SoulCast works in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari on desktop, and on most mobile browsers that allow microphone access.
• A take under 15 MB. That’s comfortably long for the vast majority of poems — typically 15–20 minutes of speech at MP3 quality. If yours runs over, record a shorter version (or split a very long piece across multiple poems).

Step-by-step

Record a reading on a new poem

1. Go to Compose a Poem from the global header or your poems tab. Write your poem and fill in title, categories, banner, and any other settings the way you would for a normal publish.
2. Scroll to the SoulCast Studio panel. The header chip reads IN STUDIO when the studio is idle.
3. Click/tap Start Recording. The first time you do this on a device, your browser will ask for microphone access — allow it.
4. The chip switches to ON AIR and a live waveform appears, drawing what the mic is picking up in real time. A red dot pulses next to the elapsed timer so you always know you’re still recording.
5. Read your poem out loud. Take your time — pauses are part of the performance.
6. When you’re done, click/tap Stop Recording. To throw the take away and start fresh without saving anything, click/tap Cancel instead.
7. The chip switches to REVIEW. A playback bar appears so you can listen back to the take. From here you have three choices:
   • Use this recording — keeps the take. On a new poem, the clip travels with the poem and attaches the moment you publish, save as draft, or schedule. On an existing poem, it uploads and attaches immediately.
   • Download MP3 — saves a copy to your device as soulcast_<your-poem-title>.mp3 so you have it offline too.
   • Discard — throws the take away. The studio returns to idle and you can record a fresh one.
8. Finish creating your poem the way you normally would — Publish Now, Save Draft, or Schedule for Later. The recording rides along with whichever action you pick.

Add or replace a recording on an existing poem

1. Open My Poems and click/tap the poem you want to record for.
2. On the poem’s page, click/tap Edit to open the composer.
3. Scroll to SoulCast Studio. If a reading is already attached, you’ll see the attached row with Listen and Remove buttons. To swap it out, click/tap Remove first — the old take is permanently deleted from storage, freeing the slot for a new one. Then click/tap Start Recording and follow the same steps as on a new poem.
4. If no reading is attached yet, the panel shows the Start Recording button directly. Record, review, and choose Use this recording to upload and attach.

Listen back to your own attached reading

1. In the composer or on the live poem page, click/tap Listen on the attached row (in the composer) or press the play button on the slim player bar (on the live page).
2. An inline player expands — or starts streaming — and you’ll hear what readers will hear.
3. In the composer, click/tap Hide when you’re done. The player collapses but stays loaded, so reopening is instant.

What listeners see and hear

On your published poem page, a slim amber player bar appears near the top of the poem body with a play button, the words “SoulCast by <your name>”, a scrub track, and the elapsed/total time. Pressing play streams the reading on the spot — no download, no extra clicks, no signup.

Listening is open to everyone. Logged-out visitors can play it, free members can play it, other GS Pro members can play it. SoulCast is a creator tool gated behind GS Pro on the recording side — never a paywall on the listener side.

A note on the format

SoulCast captures audio in whatever format your browser supports natively, then re-encodes the take to MP3 right in the browser before it’s previewed, downloaded, or saved. That means every reading attached to a poem — and every clip you download for offline keeping — is a universally playable .mp3, no matter which browser or device you recorded on.

If something goes wrong

• “The Start Recording button isn’t showing.” If you see a green “SoulCast Studio” teaser card with an Upgrade button instead, your account isn’t on GS Pro. Check Settings → Membership to confirm your subscription is active. If it just lapsed, previously attached recordings still play on your poems — you just can’t record new ones until you resubscribe.
• “Microphone access was blocked.” Your browser refused or remembered an old “deny” choice for this site. Open your browser’s site permissions for GS Poetry (the padlock icon in the address bar is the usual entry point), switch microphone access on, then reload the page and try again.
• “We didn’t detect any sound in that recording.” The take captured silence end-to-end — usually because the wrong microphone was selected at the operating-system level, or because the mic was muted. Check your system audio settings, pick the right input, then record again. The studio shows this warning instead of letting you save a silent take.
• “Recording is over the 15 MB limit.” Long takes can outgrow the file size cap. Re-record a shorter version, or split a long piece across multiple poems and record one per piece.
• “Your browser doesn’t support voice recording.” SoulCast needs a modern browser with microphone support — current versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari. If you’re on an old browser or a stripped-down in-app one (like the embedded browser inside some social apps), open GS Poetry in your regular browser instead.
• “My poem saved, but my voice reading could not attach.” If the network drops between save and audio upload, you’ll see a yellow toast telling you the poem published but the clip didn’t make it. Open the poem from My Poems, click/tap Edit, and record again in the SoulCast Studio panel — this time it attaches directly.
• “Playback stopped working a while after the page loaded.” SoulCast refreshes its playback links automatically when they expire. If a reading ever fails to play even after a moment, refresh the poem page and press play again.

Where to go next

For the rest of the poem composer — including formatting, drafts, auto-save, and visibility settings — see Drafts and auto-save, Tagging, categories, and forms, and Understanding poem visibility. To queue your poem (with its SoulCast reading) for a future release, see Scheduling a poem for later. For everything else that comes with GS Pro, head to GS Pro pricing.