Podcast Listeners Unite!
The Goodreads for Podcasts is finally here
It’s 2017. Podcasting is more popular than ever. And yet, if you’re on the hunt for new podcasts, you’re not alone.
24% of Americans listen to podcasts on a monthly basis. That’s more than the monthly users of Twitter (22% of Americans). Yet, Edison Research shows that 42% of podcast listeners are subscribed to three or fewer podcasts. So, why is it still so challenging to discover new podcasts?
Our mission at Podyssey is to change that. Podyssey is building a community of podcast listeners. It helps you find the very best podcasts and episodes. Download our iOS or Android app and discover a new podcast today.
How it works
The first thing you do when you download Podyssey is import your subscriptions from your podcast player. This builds a profile of your favourite podcasts. Our users have told us they love this feature.
When you open up your podcast player you get to see the podcasts you love. When you open up Podyssey you get to see the podcasts your friends are listening to and love.
Once you discover an episode you’re excited to recommended, you can “echo” it out to your friends and the community at large. It helps other listeners discover great content and it may even end up on our list of most echoed out episodes of the month. Moreover, podcast creators, who have been some of our earliest users, are using Podyssey as a platform to connect with their fans and see what they are saying about particular episodes.
So, why Podyssey?
We have taken a different approach to solving podcast discovery from any app out there. The biggest difference is Podyssey is not a podcast player, nor do we plan to, but we do connect to your podcast player. For us, it was a simple decision, we already had podcast players we enjoyed, we just wanted more podcasts to listen to. In doing our research we found out that we were not alone. There are at least 10 podcast players (across Android and iOS) with over 1 million downloads. That means, people are using a variety of apps to listens to their podcasts. However, the downside of this is that discovery and sharing of great content becomes hard when we’re all using different apps.
We built Podyssey to be the place where people share their favourite podcasts irrespective of which podcast player they use for listening.
Cool Tech
The most requested feature from our users has been to make it easier to listen to an episode discovered on Podyssey. Today, we have launched this feature allowing you to listen to any episode on your favourite podcast player with just one tap of a button. Now, every user of Podyssey will have their own unique podcast feed, generated with a list of every episode that they want to listen to. Try it out, it may seem magical but that’s because there is some cool tech behind it.
Similar solutions have been built, for instance, Patreon generates custom feeds for podcasts which include exclusive episodes available only to paid users. However, this is the first time users have the ability to generate a custom podcast feed, for themselves. It allows for the possibility of connecting Podyssey to your podcast app, giving you a seamless user experience for discovering new podcast and episodes outside your podcast player.
This is the first time users have the ability to generate a custom podcast feed, for themselves.
Traction
- We just crossed 2.5k users, and have been live on the App Store for 5 months.
- We have great reviews, check out our google play reviews. And check out these screenshots and more from the facebook group Podcasts We Listen To
- Podyssey has been featured in Product Hunt (as Echo Podcasts, our old name) and received over 400 upvotes in one day.
Team
Daniel Mathews is the founder of Podyssey. He’s a podcast fan, a coder, and an instructor at Lighthouse Labs — a local bootcamp that teaches students to build iOS apps. Fueled by his passion for community enrichment, Dan has taught over 120 students how to code over the past 3 years. He’s built over 10 iOS apps (from a social network for pick-up sports, to a baby registry powered by Amazon, to a bitcoin wallet). He is also an alumni of Hootsuite, one of Vancouver’s tech unicorns.
Steph Colbourn (EDITAUDIO) is a contributor and advisor as well as Carol Beltramini, who is the designer on the project.
