A system and method for network recording and speech analytics wherein a recording system receives media exchanged between first and second communication devices during a telephony call. The media is received by the recording system over a wide area network. The recording system bridges a media path between the first and second communication devices, and replicates media exchanged in the media path for storing the replicated media in a mass storage device. The recording system further captures metadata associated with the call, and stores the captured metadata in association with the stored media. The stored media and metadata may then be provided to a requesting device over the wide area network. The recording system may also be configured to analyze the call recording along with the associated metadata for detecting key words or phrases and/or triggering actionable events.