Studio Microphone Emoji

A classic chrome-and-grille studio microphone, the kind that hangs in front of a podcaster, singer, or broadcaster. Emojipedia describes it as a studio microphone, which is technically true but dramatically undersells what the emoji actually means in 2026.

🎙️ is the podcast emoji. That's its first, second, and third meaning. When Unicode approved 🎙️ in Unicode 7.0 (June 2014), podcasting was a niche hobby. Now 584 million people listen to podcasts globally, with 55% of Americans age 12+ listening monthly, the first time that number has crossed 50%. The emoji outgrew its original "radio studio" frame before most phones had even shipped it.

The design is a visual reference to the classic broadcast mics of the 1930s and '40s, specifically the RCA Type 44 and RCA 77, the ribbon mics that dominated film scoring, big-band radio, and TV through the '50s. Those RCA mics were so iconic they became the symbol of "studio." Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash all sang into one. The mic you picture when you think "old Hollywood radio show" is almost certainly an RCA 44.

Modern podcasters don't use ribbon mics. The actual podcasting workhorse is the Shure SM7B, a dynamic mic released in 1973 that quietly became the industry standard after Joe Rogan, Marc Maron, and basically every major podcaster adopted it in the late 2000s. But the emoji design stayed with the retro ribbon-mic silhouette, because that's the universal mental image of "pro audio."

🎙️ is broadcasting culture in one character.

Podcasts. The dominant use. "New episode 🎙️" is standard podcast promotion across Instagram, X, and Substack. Podcast host bios, episode threads, "now streaming" tweets, and audio content marketing all run on 🎙️. It's so associated with podcasting that using it outside of audio contexts feels slightly off.

ASMR. The ASMR market hit $1.8B in 2025 and is growing 14.7% a year. YouTube hosts over 12 million ASMR videos, and the studio-mic silhouette is central to the ASMR visual vocabulary. Close-mic whispering is a genre now.

Voice work and music. Voice actors, singers, and ADR engineers post 🎙️ when recording. It also shows up in music drops ("new single out now 🎙️🎶").

Broadcasting and journalism. TV news reporters, live radio, interviews. Less common than podcasts, but present.

The 🎙️-vs-🎤 distinction matters to audio people and almost no one else. 🎙️ = recording, hanging, stand-mounted. 🎤 = handheld, karaoke, live performance. Most casual users grab either one, but podcasters strongly prefer 🎙️.

The Studio Microphone emoji arrived in Unicode 7.0 in June 2014, alongside 🎚️ (Level Slider) and 🎛️ (Control Knobs) as part of a music-production cluster. The character sits at U+1F399U+1F399 in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block.

The physical object it represents goes back much further. Harry Olson, an RCA acoustic engineer, designed the RCA Type 44 ribbon microphone in 1931. It used a thin aluminum ribbon suspended in a magnetic field to turn sound waves directly into electrical current. The 44-BX model (produced from 1932 to 1955) became the defining look of broadcast audio for a generation. Original 44-BX units still sell for thousands of dollars on Reverb.

Podcasts didn't exist when 🎙️ was approved in 2014, at least not at mass scale. Apple's iPod-plus-broadcast portmanteau had been around since 2004, but the industry was still niche. Then two things happened. In 2008, the Shure SM7B went viral among podcasters: a 1973 broadcast mic that had sold about the same amount every year for 35 years suddenly became the podcasting standard. And in 2009, Joe Rogan launched his podcast, which would eventually reach Spotify and hundreds of millions of downloads. By the time 🎙️ shipped to phones, the emoji had found its real home.

The Shure SM7B is now used by The Joe Rogan Experience, My Favorite Murder, WTF with Marc Maron, 99% Invisible, Song Exploder, and Robin Quivers on The Howard Stern Show. The same mic recorded Michael Jackson's Thriller vocals in 1982. The emoji still depicts the older ribbon-mic style, but the actual object in most podcasters' homes is an SM7B on a Rode PSA1 boom arm.

1. 1931[Harry Olson](https://audiohertz.com/2017/05/18/the-story-of-the-man-behind-the-rca-44-and-77-ribbon-microphone/) designs the RCA Type 44 ribbon microphone, establishing the visual language of "studio mic."
2. 1932[RCA 44-BX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_Type_44) goes into production. It will dominate film, radio, and TV studios for 23 years.
3. 1973[Shure SM7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shure_SM7) launches. Initially marketed for broadcast, sales are stable but modest.↗
4. 1982Michael Jackson records *Thriller* vocals on a Shure SM7, cementing the mic's music-production credibility.
5. 2008[SM7B goes viral among podcasters](https://www.20k.org/episodes/sm7). Word spreads peer-to-peer, and the mic becomes the podcasting standard.↗
6. 2014Approved in Unicode 7.0 as `U+1F399` STUDIO MICROPHONE.↗
7. 2020Pandemic home-recording boom triples podcast production. 🎙️ use in social bios spikes.
8. 2025Global podcast listeners reach [584 million](https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-podcast-consumer-2025/), up 6.8% year-over-year. 🎙️ overtakes 📻 in Google Trends search interest.↗

• •The RCA Type 44 ribbon microphone (1931) is the visual DNA of 🎙️. Original RCA 44-BX units from the 1930s still sell for thousands of dollars on Reverb, 90+ years after they were built. Voices that used them include Sinatra, Elvis, Ella Fitzgerald, and Johnny Cash.
• •Michael Jackson recorded Thriller's vocals on a Shure SM7, the same mic Joe Rogan now uses for his podcast. It's the single most culturally dense microphone ever made, and its design barely changed from 1973.
• •🎙️ overtook 📻 in Google Trends search interest in mid-2025. The new medium's emoji now outpolls the old medium's emoji, a small digital milestone that mirrors the real shift in how people consume audio.
• •Global podcast listenership hit 584 million in 2025, with 55% of Americans age 12+ listening monthly, the first time that number crossed 50%.
• •YouTube is now the #1 podcast platform, with ~31% of weekly listeners watching podcasts there instead of listening in an app. The emoji predates video podcasting by about a decade.
• •The global ASMR content market reached $1.8B in 2025 and is projected to hit $6.2B by 2034. YouTube alone hosts over 12 million ASMR videos, most featuring a studio mic prominently on screen.
• •Podcast comedy is the #1 genre in the US, followed by News, Society & Culture, True Crime, and Sports. 🎙️ covers all five.
• •The emoji exists largely because Unicode 7.0 (2014) was preparing for a coming podcast wave, even though podcasting hadn't yet broken into the mainstream. It's one of the few emojis whose usage grew faster after shipping than the category it was designed for.

• •The Joe Rogan Experience (launched 2009). Rogan's choice of the Shure SM7B made it the default podcast mic, which in turn made 🎙️ feel like the default podcast emoji.
• •WTF with Marc Maron, recorded in Maron's garage on an SM7B. The "garage podcast" aesthetic, casual, long-form, one mic, was the model for thousands of shows to follow.
• •Serial (2014). Released months after 🎙️ was approved. Serial turned podcasting from a hobby into a media category, and 🎙️ found its most popular meaning.
• •ASMR on YouTube. The close-mic whisper genre collects over 12 million videos and billions of views, with 🎙️ as its visual shorthand in thumbnails and channel art.

• •🎙️ is a two-character sequence: U+1F399U+1F399 STUDIO MICROPHONE plus U+FE0FU+FE0F variation selector-16. Without the selector, some platforms render it as a monochrome text glyph.
• •Shortcodes: :studio_microphone::studio_microphone: works on Discord, Slack, and GitHub.
• •Audio workflow UIs sometimes use 🎙️ to mark "record" or "input source" controls. Pairs cleanly with 🎧 for "monitor" and 🎚️ for "level."

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.