What’s missing: Podcast Snippets Platform
This is the first installment in my series in which I publish product concepts.
Why not keep the idea for myself? I believe in the power of open communication. There’s a great chance somewhere, someone has a related thought — if so, or in case you have other feedback, let’s connect and learn from each other. Contrary to public perception, ideas on its own are worthless if not paired with the right execution (hard).
Most of those ideas had some incubation time to think things through. This particular thought was on my mind since September 2018.
Idea
Build a platform where everybody can create and share a certain segment from a given podcast. Those snippets can be searched for by full text, by speaker(s) or tag/topic. Snippets can be liked, commented on and ranked — basically like Reddit for audio snippets.
Macro trends
I see three waves that could bring this idea to float.
- Podcasting is on the rise
- Available listening time is growing
- Atomisation of content is happening everywhere
Podcasting has become despite being “plain old MP3 files” a big market — with stellar growth rates:
The number of young podcast listeners is also on the rise. Forty percent of people between the ages of 12 and 24 listened to a podcast last month — a 10 percent jump from 2018.
(More about the reasons in my standalone article about Podcasting.)
Not only are listener stats exploding, also the amount of good content. It’s almost too much to digest.
What happens when there is too much to consume? There’s an opening for curators who sift through the raw source files to extract the gems.
As always, the written word shows how it’s done. There are dozens of blogs who got famous for only linking to other stuff. And that’s OK. Since old gatekeepers are gone, curation is valuable on its own.
Thanks to AirPods and other Wearables, the amount of available listening time grows. Setup and therefore friction costs of listening got minimised.
iTunes split the album in songs. The internet split newspapers in articles. Twitter split the article even further into thoughts. What YouTube or Gighy did to Video is still missing for Audio.
Josh Constine called it “snackable audio”. We need short content that fits in the small spaces in between our busy lives (I know it’s not good to be always busy, but it’s a reality. It’s the whole reason services like Blinkist exist.). Granted, his observation is already three years old, but we’re starting to see evidence.
Here’s what you get if you combine the mentioned trends (emphasis my own):
With wireless earbuds going mainstream thanks to the unveiling of Apple’s AirPods, we’re poised to see an explosion of shorter audio content consumption and creation.
First, it will become much easier to consume short snippets of audio during the in-between moments of life, similar to how we consume visual content today. Waiting in line at the coffee shop, during pauses between public interactions, or whenever we have a spare couple seconds, many of us reach for our phones. We pop open our favorite apps like Twitter or Imgur, and relax with a few scrolls or swipes.
Wireless earbuds unlock this behavior for audio.
Use cases
The comparison to YouTube and Giphy also shows what content is to be expected: From very short punchlines to song-like “snacks”, up to maybe 10 minutes (which is long, but also short in comparison to hour-long podcast episodes).
Imagine such a database of properly tagged material would exist — I think it’s no stretch to see lots of new users who wouldn’t have time for whole episodes to get to know Podcasting content.
On top of that: If you follow me, you already know that I’m kind of obsessed with the possibilities that would arise.
From my advice to SoundCloud:
There’s a lot of knowledge hidden in Podcasts as of 2019.
Somebody (I’m looking at you SoundCloud) could transcribe and therefore lift that treasure chest. Naturally it wouldn’t be a perfect translation from the get-go, but the creator or fan could alter the output Wikipedia-style.
What is needed: The money to invest in a unique semantic audio search, either by doing it in-house or with a cloud service.
Hunter Walk has his own words for why transcripts are a good idea:
- Makes sharing key passages/quotes so much easier on social
- Gives additional SEO data to the pod URL, which hopefully turns into evergreen search traffic, especially for mid/longtail queries
- Is an additional piece of content to provide related links, show notes, promotional material, newsletter sign-up.
The result is a new content type that could also be re-used in other contexts. Spotify’s Daily Drive tries to mix Podcasts with Music. Of course, given the length of Podcasts, it only works with a chosen few.
Now, imagine Spotify’s curators would select a few tailored snippets for you to catch up. Sounds like a value proposition.
We’re still only scratching the surface here. From Googler Zack Reneau-Wedeen:
There’s this great episode of You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes, where [Green Bay Packers’ Quarterback] Aaron Rodgers talks with Pete about all sorts of things, including that he tried ‘The Impossible Burger’ and thought it was very tasty.
Suppose you’re a Packers fan and you asked a smart speaker, ‘How does The Impossible Burger taste?’ What if you actually got Aaron Rodgers telling you what he thinks of The Impossible Burger?
If Speech-to-Text is such a game-changer, why isn’t it widely used? Because it costs money. Here again, snippets have the upper hand: Shorter equals cheaper.
Maybe we’ll find a better name for this content type, too. ‘Microcasts’ is actually a good word for it.
Competition
Overcast and its creator Marco Arment made waves when he announced Clip Sharing. Basically you can export a few seconds as video to Twitter or other Social Media. While that’s a great feature, there is no platform or database that lists and (more important) ranks the created snippets.
Furthermore, the limit of 3̶2̶ 90 seconds per clip prohibits a whole range of content.
Another podcast client, Castro, added the same feature.
Both apps are only available on iOS. Most avid podcast listeners are on iPhone, but to be a real platform you need to be available to everyone.
Clammr tried something similar years ago — when those macro trends hadn’t yet materialised. And to me it looks as a tool for Podcast creators first and foremost (to promote their content) — and not tailored for listeners to find value.
Regarding missing metadata, BeenInterviewed is a nice site to find all interviews given by one specific person built by Mubashar Iqbal.
The same guy also is the coder behind PodHunt. I like the ranking by the community which is not based on the opinion of a select view — like Smash Notes and Mr. Podcast Notes handle it. I think the community part will be vital in getting a significant chunk of Podcasts analysed.
As I guessed, Google will do a foray in Podcast discovery by surfacing Podcasts and Podcast episodes in its search.
What those services have in common: They are still set to work with the episode as the entity that is getting ranked, transcribed or summarised. This is still one level above finding certain segments inside of episodes. Or put another way: These services will help you to discover new episodes (and therefore podcasts) to listen to, but they won’t help you if you already have too much content on your plate.
Listen Notes offers a very complete package as of today. You can register and save “clips” to your profile. But I can’t see all clips or rank them or search for them or even see clips made by others on a specific episode. Clip sharing seems to be more of a byproduct, while the creator, Wenbin Fang is more focused on selling on-demand transcriptions and access to the API.
In parts thanks to this article, I had conversations with other aspiring apps. Bitcast.fm offers a global feed and a very easy to use snippet creator. Airr and recently TL;DL by Vidy offer similar UX friendly iPhone apps.
Noteworthy about the latter: The iOS share sheet works as a bridge between Podcast clients and TL;DL. And never underestimate good marketing buzz:
- The app icon reminds one of Clubhouse
- The explainer video has its charm 😉
- Vidy was in the team that made the viral sensation it is what it is
What I miss from those apps: Being cross-platform & the aforementioned Speech-to-Text capabilities. That’s why Shuffle by Ada Yeo is my current favourite: Look at how easy it is to create snippets just by selecting text!
Unfortunately, having transcriptions shrinks the catalogue of episodes.
But you see, finally a heated game. Competition will get even more brutal the moment a big player enters the game. I saw Spotify as the ideal fit given they already have the users — and it seems the’re about to launch “Quotes”.
Spotify should really think about to open up to the community like I suggested.
Technology
Maybe I’m naive on this one, but the building blocks are already in place — you don’t need a PhD in ML to create such a platform.
What’s not transparent are the legal questions: Marco thinks his Clip Sharing falls under Fair Use. My assumption is that at least in Europe he would get problems if some rights owner goes to court.
Which is kinda funny, because it should be seen as free advertising for her Podcast. The written word behaves the same. You can copy a sentence or paragraph from somewhere else and as long as you link the source both authors are happy.
I would embed other files in the beginning, more or less like Overcast timestamp links (differs from Clip Sharing!) work. Overcast fetches the file directly from the Podcast’s server — RSS which still powers most Podcasts is an open medium. Should also be cost-wise the way to go regarding the MVP.
Business model
Like with all platforms, the most important factor is to get used by customers to get the flywheel going. That’s why making money shouldn’t be the top priority right from the start. (That’s also why known platforms like Google Podcasts or Spotify would have a massive head start.)
Nonetheless, such a platform would be a great fit for advertising. I could imagine selling ad space to other Podcasts or Podcatchers. You could roll your own app with the daily Top 10 snippets, where one of them is an audio ad. Or you embed affiliate links for mentioned products in the text transcription.
Don’t forget, this could be a new layer that sits on top of all Podcasts and Podcast apps, therefore being the first place someone interested goes to. Basically like tech folks who go to Techmeme first in the morning to check the news.
There is huge value in being that aggregator.
Out of curiosity I created a side Twitter handle to post interesting clips/snippets I found. If you want to contribute as editor, shoot me a message.
