For USD 149, Artifact turns interviews into chaptered family history podcasts

A tidal wave of podcasts has renewed our collective interest in audio. To unlock and share spoken stories from the lives of family members and other loved ones, Artifact created an easy process for people who don't want to start a podcast of their own.

For USD 149, anyone can schedule an interview. During a 30-minute call, a professional interviewer has a conversation with the subject to uncover their stories. Each interview is edited to an episode of roughly 20 minutes, with coughs and pauses fixed, audio levels adjusted, and intro and outro music added. Interviews are hosted on a personal webpage that users can share and upload photos to, adding context to their audio heirloom.

While recording the histories of older folks is a natural fit, allowing them to look back at their life, Artifact offers an additional service for those at the other end of the age spectrum: babies. A My Child Subscription ranges from one interview per year for USD 8 per month to 12 interviews per year for USD 34 per month. For that fee, parents talk about their children, and Artifact turns the recordings into annual videos. Parents are also texted questions each month — What's her favorite song right now? What did he do over the summer vacation? — and their voice memo answers are added to the child's story.

Launched in 2020, Artifact raised USD 5 million from GV (Google Ventures) and Spark Capital in December 2022.