🎙 Briefings.fm

A simple podcast player for brief daily shows.

In the spirit of brevity:

Briefings is a new web-based podcast player that makes it easy to quickly listen to bite-sized podcasts, without having to manage subscriptions.

You can check it out at briefings.fm.

…and here’s the more detailed story behind it:

At Cooperpress we’re always thinking of ways that we can make it easier to quickly get at the best content the web has to offer.

Bringing you this curation takes several forms: be it our weekly email newsletters, topic-based Twitter accounts or various Medium publications. For the most part we focus on sharing the best from a range of programming niches, but we thought we could also do something for the sprawling podcasting space (and sprawling it is, with estimates suggesting that there are more than 100,000 active shows in production today).

So what problem is briefings.fm trying to solve?

My ever growing list of stuff to listen to in Overcast.

Well, if you’re like me, you probably subscribe to a ton of podcasts and know all too well the very real FOMO that can come along when you don’t listen for a few days (or weeks). Before you know it you’ve got several hours worth of podcasts to catch up on.

If you’re mixing in daily shows with more long-form stuff (like a three-hour Gruber epic), it’s very easy for the smaller stuff to pile up and get lost along the way.

This is where briefings.fm comes in. It’s designed to bring you a collection of fleeting daily shows and short, but regular updates on a variety of topics.

For example, if you go to briefings.fm right now, and you’ll no doubt see a quick, five minute news bulletin from the BBC, along with a whole host of other daily/frequently updated podcasts. Daily news shows like this are a great way to catch up fast, without the cruft. No subscriptions to manage, just tap and play. In and out, and your up-to-date. Every time you visit the site, it will update with whatever is new.

Here’s how its creator Peter Cooper explained it:

“I have a podcasting app full of long-form podcasts but this setup doesn’t suit brief, ephemeral podcasts I’d rather listen to ‘on-the-fly’ (and away from Alexa or Google Home).

Briefings.fm makes it easy to quickly listen to a brief update whether working at your desktop or waiting in line (or sitting on the toilet?) with your cellphone.”

It’s early days right now, and we’re still on the lookout for great shows which fit the bill of: great, short (under 20/30 mins), and frequently updated. Tweet us (@cooperpress) using the tag #briefingsfm to suggest any shows and we’ll be sure to take a look.

Let us know if you like it, and be sure to share what you think of the format/setup. It’s all pretty experimental at this stage — so any feedback is welcome. 😊