Fixing podcast discovery
As some of you know I've been working on a new project that hopes to solve the problem of podcast discovery.
Pod Hunt (https://podhunt.app) focuses on individual episodes, not the podcast itself.
It's built in the same model as Product Hunt, users submit an episode, and users
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As some of you may already be aware, I've been diligently working on an exciting new project called Fix my speakers. This project aims to tackle the issue of podcast discovery in a unique way by focusing specifically on individual podcast episodes rather than the entire podcast.
Inspired by the popular platform Product Hunt, Pod Hunt allows users to submit their favorite podcast episodes, making it a community-driven platform. By sharing and curating outstanding podcast episodes, we hope to make it easier for people to find and enjoy high-quality content that aligns with their interests.
Just like Product Hunt, Pod Hunt relies on user participation to flourish. Users are encouraged to submit their favorite episodes, and the community votes and discusses them, helping to surface the best and most captivating content. This dynamic interaction between users fosters a vibrant and engaging community that fosters podcast discovery.
With Pod Hunt, our goal is to create a platform that sparks the "aha" moment for podcast enthusiasts, where they stumble upon remarkable episodes that resonate with them deeply. By promoting the sharing of exceptional content, we aim to minimize the struggle of discovering valuable podcast episodes and make the process more enjoyable.
I invite all of you to explore Pod Hunt, submit your favorite episodes, and join in on the discussions. Together, let's revolutionize podcast discovery and enhance the podcast listening experience for everyone!
Love what you're doing.
Are there any plans to categorize podcasts / episodes?
The range of episode topics that could be submitted is massively diverse. Which (for me anyway) would make the daily homepage less useful if I have no interest in a lot of the content.
I agree with this. There are so many different topics for podcasts. Product Hunt is built for new tech. there are way more podcasts then that. the voting would get a little confusing I think without categories. Plus there is probably not as many new podcasts coming out every day as there are businesses. So it could be hard to keep it interesting.
Definitely, working on that now.
I didn't expect wider traction so soon, figured submission would come from pool of friends and make the content kinda self selecting.
As it seems to be spreading wider, I'll be changing the submission process to include category/topics to organize the content better.
The homepage will likely stay the same, but you'll be able to view the episodes filtered by topic or perhaps build a profile of topics that interest you and only see those on your homepage. 🤔
Sounds good 👍
Deployed an update last night to enter a category/topic during submission. Once I have a bit of categorized data, will be able to do more with it in terms of letting people filter and customize their experience on the site!
Saw it when I submitted an episode earlier - didn’t take you long to add it 😂
Really like your launch cadence @Mubs
Though I think podcast discovery is a really interesting problem to work on, the way PodHunt is trying to fix it seems a bit too simplistic.
Slaping the same concept that ProductHunt has (user submits podcasts -> others upvote it -> a leaderboard is created) feels a bit to derivative and not actually fixing too much from the discovery problem.
I'm sure you also have some other things in mind and I know it's early days so I'm really interested to see where this project is going.
Definitely starting simple, but the "interesting" approach here is to focus on the episode and not discovering podcasts as a whole.
Most existing attempts just slap the same 10-20 podcasts as recommendations.
Zooming into the actual episodes I hope provides a better way to find content you might interesting.
Agreed! Also, I think the issue with Product Hunt is that it was all tech/entrepreneurship focused.
I love this because there is user generated content every day, competing and getting voted on. Every new podcast EPISODE is content on your website, rather than the podcast as a whole.
This is also amazing for something like Starter Story, where I'm looking for new people to interview on my site all the time.
Thanks Pat. Definitely seeing that with the initial behavior. Had 30+ episodes submitted yesterday, will be interesting to see how that looks moving forward.
Why only audio? You should extend this idea to post and video and create Content Hunt 😀
Oh man, let me to get to version one before expanding out of my niche! 😂
Hello @Mubs, Congratulations on shipping it! I think the commenting in for each thread could be more intuitive as how it's on HN / Reddit. Right now, it feels more like Disqus.
Hey. Not sure I understand, can you explain what the difference is? (Functionality or visual changes?)
Sorry, What i meant was the commenting seems almost it's not there.
Got it and agreed! Thanks for the feedback, will definitely work to improve how the comments are integrated into the episode page.
Getting more user engagement thru comments is an important part of the site, so appreciate the feedback!
That's my pleasure!
This is interesting to me because you're focusing on finding individual episodes, and that similar to what I'm doing with my metacast podcast. I'm more focused on a single idea from a single podcast, but something at the episode level is interesting, too.
I'd submit every single show I ever do a metacast for, if not for podhunt's restriction of them being new shows!
I'm being a little easy on the restrictions at the moment, trying to build up a database of great episodes. Feel free to submit something older!
Logo is schweet!
Thanks! I should thank @sethlouey for that! I've learned a lot working with him over the years.
Awe yea! I've learned a lot from you as well Mubs. :)
Are you going to make the contents of each episode searchable rather than just the title/description?
Yes! Integrating with Algolia for a more robust search is on the roadmap.
The descriptions in the feeds have no consistent format that is very frustrating.
I'm also hoping to get access to some sort of transcription of the episode, to really help with search.
Question for you. Why someone hasn't jumped on the opportunity to use AI transcription technology to convert and publish every podcast into an indexable database or whatever else use? If this is illegal to do since it's not your podcast, couldn't you just make a deal with every podcaster in exchange for free transcription service or something? Wouldn't the SEO value of the unique content be large enough to cover these costs?
I haven't looked into it but if Google Translate Voice is free (and the Dragon voice software has been around for years), it seems like there would be some type of opportunity however small it might be. Ever looked into this?
If it was legal (or even borderline) I'm pretty sure Google would be doing this themselves 😀
I've heard mixed results from automated transcription, it's pretty good, but not great, and often requires manual fixing before being it can be published.
Since there isn't a central union or something you could negotiate a deal with (the way music startups do) I imagine it would be too much work to do this at scale with each podcast individually.
For the larger podcast groups, it probably makes more sense for them to pay for the transcription and post it to their own sites for SEO purposes.
After thinking about this I guess publishing someone elses podcast would be an obvious copyright issue...haha. But it seems like a deal could be made with podcasters for the additional exposure and whatever other value you can entice them with.
Awesome! love the idea. Saw it in the Podnews email this morning and sent it around to my team.
Will think of some ideas. If you need to bounce ideas off another maker in the podcast space, hit me up
Thanks for sharing! Busy getting things ready for the public launch but will reach out for sure. Want to make sure I'm building something that works for as many people as possible.
From a podcaster who has interviewed you, thanks for making this! I'm stoked to see how things progress with this.
Thanks Josh. Definitely fun to see the response, a problem that people are very passionate about!
Realistically, if you get the per-episode recommendations figured out, I'd probably pay you for that service. My time is valuable, and with many podcasts I'm out to maximize ROI for the individual episode. Right now I'm using my own poor judgement combined with whatever available information there is (reviews, show notes on the episode, first 30s of listening, etc) to decide whether or not something has value. That's not ideal.
That's great to hear. Been thinking a lot about the revenue side of things to make Pod Hunt a sustainable business.
Ads are the obvious answer, but would prefer to keep the ads/sponsors to a minimum.
Signed up!
Awesome!
Recommending singular episodes makes it interesting for sure.
The problem is on Product Hunt you can quickly glance at a landing page. Is it cool or not then upvote. But it seems like too much effort to quickly glance at a podcast.
A 30 second audio clip accompanying each podcast would solve that problem. That way I could get a quick look at the feel of a podcast before committing.
Yeah that would be great, but it's hard to get that :) What is the interesting 30s clip from the podcast.
Would make the submission process much more complicated. Definitely something I'd like to do, but something post MVP :)
agree with mvp point.
one middle step is just making it optional.
with the hope that people start doing it cause they want to and cause will get more upvotes.
kinda like the product hunt gif. sure it's easier to upload a static png, but people like to upload gif cause then they get higher on the leaderboard perhaps
Actually might just make it a post submission step. Once the episodes is on the site have a "add clip" option available to the hunter or maybe anyone tagged in the post.
Oh man, jotted the same idea in my notes 2mo ago. https://ibb.co/x2Sm2Kb
Glad you're the one working on it.
That's awesome, great minds!
@mijustin has been suggesting I do this for over a year now!