Lighting a š„
The Itch
About 6 years ago I was listening to a podcast and found myself constantly pulling up the browser on my phone to search for details of the podcast. Pictures, stories, dates, etc. It was an historical podcast called āHardcore Historyā from Dan Carlin.
It was then that I first thought, I wish these links, texts, or images were right there in whatever I was playing this on as Dan was talking about them.
The Meat and Potatoes
That thought kept on coming back to me over the years and I put off getting past the dreaming stage due to not having enough skills to implement it or not enough time. Finally, last summer, I started getting into the meat and potatoes of it; a media player that displays relative content in context as the audio or video is playing.
The Editor
A fair amount of coffee, tea, early mornings, and keystrokes have gone into getting where itās at now. I have a workable editor that can take in a publicly available video/audio link, a SoundCloud embed, or a YouTube link and put the media in a player, then allow you to create content from a rich text editor that can be displayed within specific start and end times.
Iāll leave it at that for the moment, as being able to just show you would be so much more satisfying for all involved.
The Listening/Watching
Thatās what I have for the creator side of things, and on the listener side there is, of course, the media player. But also the content that will show and hide as the audio or video plays, according to its start and end times. Multiple regions of content can be displayed at the same time and can be linked to directly. There is region navigation with titleās the creator will add for each region. Viewed regions are marked as such and clicking a link in the region navigation will bring the audio or video to that timestamp. Also, full screen, use the real estate as much as possible and allow your content to take front and center.
The Recognition of What This Isnāt
This is not a fast no code implementation of a researched and tested market by any means.
Which brings me toā¦
Other Motivations
Iām a web developer and I work full time at a company called EasyRx. So, while the original itch was to be able to listen to podcastās full of external references and relevant content in all the glory that the web can allow, I also found it giving me the opportunity to expand my experience and skills.
To that end Iāve developed it in and learned how to use Svelte/Sapper, AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, Cognito, IAM, CloudWatch), and the Serverless Framework. My professional/jobby-job experience has been mostly WordPress, some Drupal, and the last year and half with EasyRx has been using Symfony with a Dojo/jQuery/Vanilla front end. All LAMP stack all the time. This branched me out into the Node JS, JS framework land, and serverless concepts. Lotās of ramping up; new concepts and while no new languages as of yet at least a better understanding of JS and the Node ecosystem.
I listen to Start Ups For the Rest of Us and I hear how people can spend years on an unproven product in an unproven market and go nowhere. Finding that product and niche market is not my interest right now. Even if I spend a year on this I believe I will still have learned a lot and scratched my itch. I can always use it myself!
Where Iām at Now
I need to give myself some concrete goals. I need to keep myself focused on those and finding the minimum steps to get there and not get distracted by making a different feature.
Hereās my thoughts:
Ordered Stuff
- A landing page with a set of demoās of the listener/watching side of things showing ways I imagine this could be useful and fun.
- When number 1 is done and out I will clean up and get the editor to a place it too can be demoād.
- MVP!
Each of those items has more subtasks, questions, and more work as the numbers get bigger, but each one would be a good step.
MVP has the least amount of words because it has so much work I didnāt want to think about it too much. š
Unordered Stuff
- See if I can get feedback and thoughts, not just on the demoās but on future paths and non development stuff too!
- I find thereās a lot of information on IndieHackers and podcasts so that has and will stay ways I get ideas.
- Find a podcast that seems like it would be a good fit for this and see if it's creators would allow me to create a ShowNote set for their episodes.
- Start my own podcast/audio blog?
- It would be a good way to show what's possible and dog food my own product.
What My Future Thoughts For This?
How Could People Use This
- Podcasts: use this as your living show notes. Instead of a wall of links and text, have them show as your listener is listening. Differentiate your podcast from others. Show ads?
- Teaching: if you are teaching online in an asynchronous recorded way, perhaps while students watch your video you could have regions of references, texts youāre reading from, relevant images, charts, etc.
- Blogging/Vlogging: tell your story and show pictures of the trip you went on (pre Covid, of course), food you ate, 10,000 piece puzzle you just put together, etc.
- Commentary/Reviewing: Get a link from a modern dance video on YouTube and set regions of comment at the actual pieces of the dance piece you are commenting on. They could even be recorded audio or video in the regions themselves. Get a recent YouTube link from a political speech and add your own fact checking (or just be snarky, sometimes we need a little snarky poking at our incongruities).
- Video/Audio editing tool to show to clients: I did some work for a āEditorial and finishing boutiqueā (their words not mine). One of the things they did was edit commercials. I could see them using this to tell clients how decisions were made and point out key aspects all while the client was watching the video and as the client had time to get to it.
What Features Am I Thinking About
- Content for the editor, besides the rich text.
- Images
- Videos
- Charts
- iFrame/oEmbed from other sites
- Tables
- Markdown editor
- Code display, tabbed
- etc
- More integrations with players like Vimeo
- Voice control
- Keyboard shortcuts
- In browser audio recording - fast audio blogging
- Commenting by others on your ShowNote/Annotations whatever weāre going to call this
- Iframe/oEmbed to your blog/website <- partially done as I want a share button for the demo
- etc
How to Make Money?
- Monthly/yearly subscription to use for individuals
- Develop a unique product for podcasters
- Develop a unique product for video/audio editors
- Develop a unique product and an API for white label use by podcasting companies
- Develop a unique product for teaching online through video/audio
- <Your idea here> š
If youāve made it here you are very committed!
This was a post for me to put a light a fire under my (āæ|āæ), keep me going and let it out (in this minor way) from inside mine own noggin.
Please give me a yell if you have any questions or thoughts!
I think this is a neat idea with lots of potential. I think you should focus on video rather than audio... I think most audio listeners listen on the go and aren't in front of a screen. But talk to potential customers to verify. Good luck!
I agree about the āon the goā part. Thatās why I listen to so many podcasts while walking, doing the dishes, or driving the car.
At this point Iām still in deep in the development and what Iāve gotten into so far both options can be used and I havenāt made any choices where I felt it benefited audio or video more. Iāll keep this in mind as I trudged along. When it comes to getting the word out and how itās marketed too.
Thanks for your feedback!
If there is a set of podcasters/Youtubers/etc. who are currently doing a bad job of providing their reference links to their audiences, ask yourself "why?". It's not hard for them to paste links in their own show notes. If they're failing to paste the relevant links into their show notes out of laziness or because they don't see the value in doing so, they're definitely not going to load a separate tool to do so.
So, I honestly think you'll get nowhere pitching them to use your tool up-front. I think you need to bootstrap the content for this yourself (at least for a while) to demonstrate the value to listeners of having this metadata. Think hard about how to quantify the value this metadata/experience creates!
I'd pick a niche (perhaps history podcasts?) and go to town creating these improved show notes yourself. I don't think you need permission for this. What's stopping you from starting a blog that talks about podcast episodes and including the links? This is effectively a structured version of that.
If you can demonstrate that listeners are getting value from these show notes, then you can approach the podcast hosts from a much stronger position. Instead of asking for permission, you can ask them to pay you and promote your app. They'll want to do both, if they can afford to and you really are making things better for their listeners.
A niche is valuable, because you'll get the same listeners from multiple podcasts. If a history buff notices that you're doing a great job on 2 or 3 of their favorite podcasts, that's a strong impression. Much better than having a weaker impression on e.g. the union of both history buffs and soccer fans (or whatever). You'll also learn to better organize and present the content for a given niche. I also suspect that some niches have much more need for a product like this than others... comedy podcasts probably not so much!
Importantly, picking a niche will also give you a stronger marketing hook for both podcasts and listeners. Forget for a second the fact that your tech can work with any podcast. The strongest way to initially position your product might be a laser focus on something like: "The best experience for consuming history podcasts"
Another benefit to picking a niche: your metadata becomes a tool for discovery and search. For instance (still assuming history as the niche), you could connect all episodes across all podcasts that talk about a particular historical event or period. Much harder to do that if your domain is the full expanse of all human knowledge!
These are really good thoughts. I donāt have a lot of time to respond right now but know Iām thinking of them this weekend and am very grateful!
Just saying putting links with images and/or vids used to be in youtube in the editor.
I think it was kinda used badly and probably rarely and got removed and replaced with the current just links with a small text and side bar
nowadays people tell you the links are in the description (and the side) commonly, at times where relavent like if there is a bunch with times on the vid, and people can note section on the vid itself
I get it's less interactive, but I'd look twice at suff that existed and got removed into why and did anything change to bring it back.
IDK if viemo or the others still have these features, I think they used to as well.
not sure if it was all just the flash era or something
personally I don't miss these as a watcher, but I get that for a niche it might matter more, but also wonder if it's just bad design / planning on the creator part, as the video is meant to be played not paused all the time.
Yes, I believe Vimeo has an option for this too. https://vimeo.com/features/video-collaboration. I think that starts at their pro level.
Actually, after first reading your comment I went and searched google and found this company, which I hadnāt seen before: https://www.timeline.ly/
So, it is out there, and maybe not so broadly used.
Iām going to think about this some more. Thatās a good point to riff on.
Thanks for your feedback!