Announcing Parrot for Podcasts
Tl;dr
I’m really excited to announce that Parrot for Podcasts is now live on the App Store for iOS. You can listen to podcasts and easily save clips right when you hear them. Then you can share your clips with anyone, even if they don’t have Parrot. It’s a powerful tool for you, but we also think it’s a great way for the community to discover new podcasts. In many ways, you can think of it as Pinterest meets SoundCloud for Podcasts. We’re just getting started, so there’s a lot more to come.
Clips are the difference
It was more than five years go that I had the idea for Parrot. In that time, I’ve seen many new podcast apps, and many updates to the big players in the market. And yet none of them seem to be doing what is so obvious to me — saving clips.
The thing is, podcasts are great, but they are also really long. One episode can easily last an hour and cover a wide range of topics. How are you supposed to find that one clip you liked later? Add on top of that the fact that sharing audio that’s so long is just plain hard, and we’re left with a podcast ecosystem that doesn’t allow us an easy way to share podcasts or to see exactly what friends or tastemakers are listening to.
Simply put, we think podcasts are too long to share. So we are focusing on clips. Clips allow you to save just the part of a podcast that stands out to you. That may be 30 seconds, or 30 minutes, but it’s often not the whole episode—or a whole podcast.
By focusing on clips, we are hoping that we also generate a really interesting layer of data that doesn’t really exist in the podcast world. A layer of data that tells you exactly what people are listening to, what they are liking, and what they are sharing. This is a layer we think is critical for recommending content to our listeners. If we connect this with your friends, we can make recommendations that may be niche shows, or a small part of a podcast that you’d otherwise never listen to. In short, podcast clips will help you find the corner of the internet that resonates with you.
Why you need it
Parrot is by far the easiest way to save clips that we’ve ever seen. In fact, we spent a lot of time making the clip creation extremely easy—and we’ve got even more coming. The way it works is that you always have a button to create a clip while you’re listening. This button is always available inside the app, but also on the lock screen and control center on your iPhone and even from inside the Now Playing app on your Apple Watch.
That means that you don’t even need to open Parrot in order to save a clip. Hear something you love? Save it immediately. Tapping to create a clip will automatically save the last 30 seconds. We’ve found this is a good default that captures the last thought, but we know you may want a different length, so you can always trim the length from your profile (more edit options coming soon).
Easy, right?
What it does
Parrot allows you to listen to virtually any podcast. We integrate with powerful 3rd party search engines that allow us to have one of the biggest catalogs of any podcast app out there. So find your favorite show, subscribe and listen. We’ll even send you notifications of new episodes.
As you listen, save clips from podcasts. Creating a clip automatically saves it to your public profile. You can add comments and get a unique share URL so you can share it with anyone on the web. They don’t even need Parrot to listen to your clip.
But one of the things we are most excited about it the ability to discover new content. We’ll be doing a lot more here over the next few months, but for now you can see clips that are popular on the platform, or see clips just from friends you follow, or even see clips just from podcasts you subscribe to.
We hope clips are a really great way to help you answer the question of what to listen to next.
How to get it
Parrot is now available for iOS on the Apple App Store. If you have any feedback, we’d LOVE to hear from you. Email us at hello@parrot.fm.
What’s coming next
We’re just getting started and we know we’ve got lots of work to do. There are lots of improvements to the performance of the app and some important features in order to be up to speed with the apps you’re probably using now. Plus, we think we will keep doubling down on clips and how they can change how you interact with podcasts.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the things on our short to medium term roadmap.
- We know you may be coming from another app so we plan on making it easier to import your podcasts from a variety of other podcast apps.
- We want saving clips to be even easier and more powerful, so we have big improvements planned for the saving and editing flows.
- And if you have a bunch of good clips, you may want to organize them, so we are working on playlists and public profiles, so sharing all your clips is even easier and can reflect your listening tastes. In fact, we think clips are so powerful, that we plan to put clips in more places throughout the app.
- Android anyone? We think so. In fact, we know so. It’s just a matter of time.
- Lots, lots more. There are loads of features in modern podcast apps. We’re looking closely at the important features that make a great podcast app for our listeners and are thoughtfully adding things that keep Parrot extremely easy to use. We’re always looking for input, so let us know what’s missing for you.
Just the beginning
I’m so happy to get to share Parrot with you, but this is just the beginning. Come along with us on the journey. You can follow along on twitter or drop us a line at hello@parrot.fm.
Download Parrot for Podcasts now on the App Store.
