The Podcast Rabbit Hole Doesn’t Exist. But it Should.
There is a frequent discussion in the podcast world about discoverability and how it’s not nearly as good as it should be. How it prevents people from finding your great content.
While some podcast apps do this better than others and some platforms exist just for discoverability alone, there isn’t any app out there that does this particularly well.
Case in point. I was scrolling through podcast twitter this morning like I do every morn- well, throughout the day and came across this tweet from Tyler Moody who had a great observation.
He then follows up with a clarifying statement:
So why isn’t there a podcast rabbit hole?
From me, the very casual and infrequent podcast listener who also happens to work in podcasting, it comes down to one thing. This is an audio medium and no platform (that I’m aware of) offers up additional content at the end of what I’m listening to. We are just served up the content that we are subscribed to. That’s it. You have to back up to the main interface and type in a search bar, or scroll and tap through a bunch of things to find new content.
But what if the podcast app also recommended content to you while listening?
This is what video-centric platforms do really well and it creates the inevitable rabbit hole that we all fall into. Even before you watch a YouTube video, you see recommended content. While you’re watching a YouTube video, you are seeing recommended content on the side. And when the YouTube video you are watching is coming to a close, there are overlays on the video of other recommended content. Welcome to the rabbit hole.
But how would this look (or sound) in a podcast app?
As an example, while listening to your favorite podcast, an audio prompt would be inserted by the platform that said something like, “You might also like these podcasts…,” and then followed that with say two or three 15–30 second clips. The podcast art would also show up on screen to manually select from.
OR, even better — there really should be an audio interface (like Siri, etc. that could be built into the platform) that asks and listens to your response, so you don't have to take your eyes or hands away from other activities. You know, like driving or some other task.
For me, this is the biggest reason I don’t listen to podcasts much while driving. Having to interface with my phone to find other content is too distracting, which often means I just listen to the radio instead. Otherwise, all I might hear are the last 5 episodes of Podnews when I go run to the grocery store. Don’t get me wrong, I love Podnews and the work James Cridland does, but I’d also like to hear and discover other options.
Maybe someday a podcast app out there will finally do this. If and when they do, will someone please let me know?
