The room where the community speaks.
A durbar is a live audio room. Someone opens it, a few people speak, everyone else listens, and the recording stays afterwards so nobody has to be free at the right hour. Built for the connection you actually have, not the one a demo assumes.
About 14 MB an hour to listen, and the room says so before you join
Recorded by default, and the replay is free to anyone
Ten people or ten thousand, at the same cost to you
What a durbar is for
Voice carries what text does not: hesitation, agreement, the thing somebody was not sure how to write down. A durbar is for the conversation that needed to be heard rather than read.
Anyone can listen, from anywhere
No account and no invitation: a durbar has a link and the link opens in a browser. The app does the rest of it too, hosting and speaking included, with nothing the website can do that a phone cannot.
The host decides who speaks
Listeners raise a hand and the host invites them up. Nobody arrives already holding a microphone.
It attaches to what it is about
Open one on a petition, an event, a campaign, a job or a community, and it appears on that page rather than floating loose.
The replay outlives the room
People join late, run out of data, or are asleep. The recording is the durable half, and it stays reachable.
Scheduled, with a reminder
Put a time on it and the people who follow you are told, then reminded before it starts.
Built for a bundle, not a broadband line
Voice only, at a bitrate chosen for speech, on a tier that costs the same whether ten people listen or ten thousand.
How it works
01
Open the room
Give it a title and decide whether it is recorded. That is the whole form.
02
Go live, or schedule it
Start straight away, or put a time on it and let the reminder do the inviting.
03
People arrive by link
They see what it is about, whether it is recorded and what an hour of listening costs, before any audio plays.
04
Hands go up, you decide
Invite a listener to speak, mute anybody, remove anybody, end the room. Every one of those is one tap.
05
The replay does the rest
When you end it, the recording becomes a page anyone can play, share and find.
What we will not do
A live room is the hardest thing on this platform to be honest about, because most of what could go wrong happens in real time and cannot be undone. So here is the exact shape of it.
We do not charge for a durbar, take a cut of one, or let anyone pay to enter. There is no tipping, no paid entry and no gift. If a session is paid for, it is an event with a ticket, and that money never touches us.
We cannot stop somebody saying something harmful while they are saying it. Nobody can. What we can do is make it recorded, attributable, reportable and consequential, and we would rather say that plainly than imply a filter that does not exist.
A recorded durbar becomes a public replay that search engines can find. We tell you that before you join and again before you speak, because the second one is the moment it starts to matter.
Automatic transcripts get a lot wrong, especially names. Every one is labelled and every line links back to the audio, because the recording is the record and the text is only a way into it.
We do not sell what is said in a durbar, train anything on it, or hand it to anyone. If you are erased, the rooms you spoke in go with you.
Questions, answered
About 14 MB an hour, which is less than one song. The room prints that figure before you join, and shows what you have actually used while you are in it. Voice only, and at a bitrate chosen for speech rather than music.
No. A public durbar opens from its link. You need an account to speak, to open one of your own, or to be reminded before a scheduled one starts.
By default, yes, and the room says so before you join. The host can turn recording off when they open it. If you only listen, your voice is not in the recording, though your presence in the room is recorded as participation.
Whoever the host chose: everyone, only followers, only connections, or only a single community. An unlisted durbar is reachable by its link and is deliberately left out of every listing and every search engine.
It becomes a replay page anyone can play and share, and it stays up. A recorded durbar is announced to the host's followers when it is published, and the people who were in the room are told it is ready.
Thousands. Past a certain point listeners are served a broadcast stream that runs about 10 to 15 seconds behind the live conversation. That is not a downgrade so much as the reason a large room stays affordable to run, and raising your hand moves you into the live room where there is no delay.
Yes, and speak in it. The app does everything the website does: open a durbar, schedule it, take it live, run it as host, speak, and end it. On Android you are asked for the microphone at the moment you take the stage and never on the way in, because listening does not use it.
Yes. Paste the link into WordPress or anything that reads oEmbed and a card appears, or use the embed script for a card you control. There is also a free read-only API for listings, speakers and transcripts. The card links back rather than playing audio in your page: listening to a live room needs a sign-in and, for a recorded room, agreeing to be recorded first.
Say it out loud
The conversation that changes something is rarely the one somebody had time to write down. Open a room, say the thing, and leave the recording where people can find it.