Scout FM

Hunter

Hey everyone! I’m one of the co-founders of Subcast and we’re psyched to share what we’ve been working on with everyone. We’ve created the simplest podcast experience so that listening to and discovering podcasts can fit easily into anyone’s life, even if they aren’t a podcast guru. My co-founders and I (shoutout @dmccartney and @saulcarlin) spent the last few years at Medium working to connect storytellers with their audiences. Subcast was born when we started brainstorming around the same goal for podcasts — how do you bridge the gap between podcasters and the people who should be listening, but aren’t? The result is that we launched a dozen Alexa skills that are smart radio stations you can play with a single command, and companion iPhone and Android apps that both sync with Alexa work great on their own. We would love for you to give them a try and let us know what you think!

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7yr ago

Lyondhür Picciarelli

@caramev hello there Cara, greetings from New Zealand. I Love the UX of your app. I think it’s a great concept and having tried it for half an hour I can say it’s really pleasant to use. This is great and innovative work as far as making it easy for people who are new to podcasting, simply sorting them out with quality pre-selected content in a radio-like form. However, for people who are already into podcasting (myself included) I still believe podcast app developers often times ignore a big and cumbersome problem: our - very long - OPML list of subscriptions. 1/2

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7yr ago

Lyondhür Picciarelli

@caramev Without import/export options, every time a new app appears and we want to try it, it’s the same ordeal. May all the gods forbid us liking it.. 😄 because if we do, we are looking at re-adding all the favourite shows. Again. It would be amazing if you guys considered an import/export, so that the user can build that streamlined radio version of their favourite shows. This would be the perfect podcast app for me. But I digress.. Thank you for the great work and for offering it for free. 2/2

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7yr ago

Cara Meverden

Scout FM

Hunter

@lyondhur Love that idea! We've talked about getting the OPML import into the onboarding so that we can recommend stations, and perhaps even creating a station that is just your favorites. What do you think?

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7yr ago

Lyondhür Picciarelli

@caramev that would be cool. I myself have a LOAD of podcast subscriptions (more than I’d like to admit). I could really use the ability to create my own “radio” by pairing shows in each, say, category and all. I understand we all have to keep our users and therefore, most projects are okay with on-boarding, but far from all are decent with off-boarding of data/history. That’s the reason why I still rely on Overcast. It keeps me there because it’s good enough (as a player), but doesn’t stop me from trying other things since I can easily export my long subs OPML. As far as Subcast goes, yeah to whatever radio-making capabilities on the user’s end. That’d be great.

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7yr ago

Nick Neuman

Casa

I love podcasts, but the huge problem with them currently is discovery. I've tried Breaker but couldn't stick with it, mostly due to a lack of friends using it as well. Subcast seems to be directly going after that problem, so I'm excited to check it out! It seems like Subcast's success will rely heavily on good podcast curation. - How is your team thinking about this? - I noticed on your website that there's two options: start your own station, or become a PJ (podcast jockey, nice). What's the difference between the two? - How will you incentivize good curation? Thanks!

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7yr ago

Saul Carlin

Scout FM

Maker

@nneuman Subcast founder and PJ here. Great observations! Top-notch curation is essential to Subcast and we plan to push the bar even higher as we launch more stations. Curation at Subcast is maybe 70% art, 30% science. First and foremost, Subcast's PJs are all experts in and/or passionate about the topics of the stations they curate. We hand-pick all the shows in each station and order the episodes each day to give you the best start to your listening in as short a time as possible. Then, we check in on how the shows and episodes perform in each station and adjust over time. We're informed not just by your actions - like that big, purple heart button that tells us you love a show, or when you skip past an episode that isn't quite grabbing you - but also what fans are saying on social media, what new shows are launching to rave reviews, and so on. As you noted, we're looking to recruit folks in the podcast community to help us curate stations on different topics, and we're partnering with podcast creators, networks, and brands who want to launch their own stations. The most visible difference is branding, but underneath there is a different set of listener needs being addressed. We're still learning about the curator incentives here and would love to talk more about this with folks who are interested.

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7yr ago