Riverside adds newsletter publishing to its podcasting and video recording tools

Video and podcast recording tool maker Riverside is giving its users a new way to reach their audiences: newsletters. Riverside isn’t aiming to directly take on established newsletter platforms like Mailchimp, Substack, Beehiiv or Ghost, however. Instead, recognizing that its userbase already generates a lot of content, the company is giving the users of its recording tools an AI tool to turn their existing videos and podcasts into newsletters, and send them directly from within its app.

Users can also create and send newsletters from scratch without using the AI conversion feature. "Substack and Beehiiv start you at a blank page. But our creators and business customers are already producing rich, information-dense spoken content on Riverside.

For most people, speaking is easier and more natural than writing from scratch, and the ideas are already there, in the conversation. So instead of asking them to start over in a separate tool, we help them turn a recording they’ve already made into newsletter-ready content with far less effort," Riverside’s founder and CEO Nadav Keyson told TechCrunch. The company is also updating its recording suite to support multi-camera recording setups.

It’s also giving users the ability to add remote guests to recordings. The update brings new AI features as well. Users can use AI to draft a first cut of a recording as soon as it’s finished, and the assistant can also create hooks and content for various social media platforms.

The company is also adding an AI video enhancement feature, trained on conversational video podcasts, that it says can improve lighting, depth and sharpness of recordings. Riverside, which has raised over $60 million in funding , joins a host of platforms that have been trying to enter alternative publishing avenues to either diversify or expand their revenue streams. For instance, Substack in March launched a built-in recording studio that competes directly with Riverside, and in April, newsletter platform Beehiiv ventured into podcasting as well.

In June, social network Mastodon said that it will allow users to publish their posts as newsletters . Why this matters: Riverside's move into newsletter publishing has significant implications for the creator economy. By integrating AI-powered newsletter creation into its recording app, the company is making it easier for users to repurpose their existing content and reach their audiences through multiple channels.

This development could lead to a surge in newsletter adoption among podcasters and video creators, who can now leverage their existing content to build their email lists and diversify their revenue streams. As the lines between different types of content continue to blur, Riverside's integration of recording and publishing tools positions it as a major player in the evolving creator economy. However, questions remain about how this move will affect the competitive dynamics between Riverside, Substack, Beehiiv, and other platforms, and whether users will ultimately prefer an all-in-one solution or separate specialized tools for different types of content.