Podbay - A fast, easy, and powerful podcast player built for the Web.

Hey Product Hunt! We just shipped Podbay: a fast, modern podcast player built for the Web. As podcast fans that listen primarily while working on our laptops, we felt that even with the variety of podcast apps available there weren't really any created with desktop users in mind as a priority. Podbay offers everything you'd expect from a modern podcast player, including the ability to listen to any podcast from our large catalog or your own RSS feeds, search through episodes, discover new podcasts, and more. You can even subscribe to shows and maintain a queue / playlist without needing to sign up or log in - although doing so will allow you to synchronize everything automatically. The site is 100% free to use, and we'll be expanding soon with features strengthening the relationship between podcasters and listeners, some of which will be 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚕. For those interested in a little backstory: The first Podbay launched over 7 years ago after my partner @davidmancherje and I left our jobs on the founding team at the Earwolf podcast network. It was built with the two of us FTPing into a server and editing live PHP code, having to let each other know which files we were working on so we wouldn't overwrite each other's changes. It was a terrible way to build, but we shipped something, and by being early and just kinda good enough, we managed to gain a few hundred thousand monthly users quickly. Here's the last 7 years of our Google Analytics. 𝖬𝗈𝗇𝗍𝗁𝗅𝗒 𝗎𝗌𝖾𝗋𝗌 𝖿𝗋𝗈𝗆 𝖩𝗎𝗇𝖾 𝟤𝟢𝟣𝟤 - 𝖠𝗎𝗀𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝟤𝟢𝟣𝟫. 𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝗍𝗐𝗈 𝖽𝗂𝗉𝗌 𝗐𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝗏𝖾𝗋𝗒 𝖻𝗋𝗂𝖾𝖿 𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗂𝗈𝖽𝗌 𝗈𝖿 𝖽𝗈𝗐𝗇𝗍𝗂𝗆𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗐𝖾 𝗆𝖺𝗇𝖺𝗀𝖾𝖽 𝗍𝗈 𝗋𝖾𝖼𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗋 𝖿𝗋𝗈𝗆 𝗊𝗎𝗂𝖼𝗄𝗅𝗒 𝖾𝗇𝗈𝗎𝗀𝗁 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝗍𝗈 𝗅𝗈𝗌𝖾 𝖺𝗅𝗅 𝗈𝖿 𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗎𝗌𝖾𝗋𝗌. 😬 The site went unmaintained for years as David and I worked on other ventures (like the recently shut-down Super Deluxe 😭), but as we were starting our new company Fancy Soups (which we'll be sharing more on soon), we realized we could market to our existing Podbay audience. Instead of just tossing house ads on the old product, we decided we'd upgrade the experience for all those loyal users first. We rebuilt the entire product using a modern tech stack (built on ZEIT's Next.js and Now. thanks @rauchg, @timneutkens, @lmprht! 🙏). The result is a much faster, more scalable and maintainable product that we'll be able to support and expand upon easily in the coming weeks and months. We'd be happy to answer any questions about Podbay, what we learned over those 7 years of non-maintenance, our process of building the new one, or how we envision a brighter future with tastier and healthier soups you can enjoy at home.

Love the platform! Really enjoy the function to search by popular episode - a great way uncover popular episodes of new podcasts. Looking forward to using this 👍

It's honestly looking pretty good. Nice work, man.

Congratulations for not abandoning what you have built! It's hard to push through but you did it! Love it! I giggled at your FTP comments....same experience. Glad those days are over. I "re" found podbay as I received alerts that my shows are on the platform. We have a slate of shows deploying through Q1 2020 and look forward to them being on your platform. Best wishes! Exciting times!