Podcave
Plan, publish, and promote your podcast - all in one place.
The bulk of the details for the new launch are in the last milestone update. But, today, I'm pretty excited to be RE launching an entirely new version of Podcave on Product Hunt. If you're into it, and want to share some love, please do! 🚀
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/podcave-1
Yes... I made the video. SOUND ON! haha
- Brad Nolan
All along, Podcave has been built to serve the podcaster. Our initial release included some interesting features, and was able to help a few people out. We talked to those first users. We learned from them. Here’s what we found out:
You (the podcaster) were led to believe a good podcast hosting service was the key. The reality is uploading your audio to the hosting service is like half time. All the work happens before and after that moment.
You are paying for multiple services to handle the rest of the process (the planning, and the promotion parts).
The mini-website your hosting service provides is minimal at best, and doesn’t reflect the amount of professionalism you’re bringing to the table.
Managing guests on your podcast either requires yet another service or endless emails and communication struggle.
You are getting dinged by YouTube when you upload your podcast because of the music, and the royalty free music out there isn’t very good.
As we talked to more and more people, we realized Podcave is every bit as helpful as we intended, but the execution needed improvement. We went back to work.
Over the last couple of months we have been building an all new Podcave.com. This is truly Complete Podcast Management™. We expect to release this to current users (and anyone who signs up before the release) in the next couple of weeks. We will open it to the public shortly after that. Here’s what you’ll find in the “all new” Podcave (everything below is included in a Podcave subscription):
Powerful, secure, and rock solid hosting (powered in the background by industry powerhouse OmnyStudio.com). This includes IAB certified analytics.
A complete episode planning suite including: guest management, a rundown planner, a music library (powered by radio imaging powerhouse BenztownBranding.com), a trending topic/source finder, and the very cool - Record Assist™ focus module for while you’re recording an episode.
A complete promotion engine including: scheduling your social media, notifying guests of their episode release, email marketing, and of course, text/SMS marketing.
You’ll be getting a stable and completely customizable (including custom domain) website powered by PodcastPage.io.
I can say that, with this new version, I think we achieved the original intent - Complete Podcast Management™. You’ll also be able to add as many podcasts as you like. Some things we will be adding in the future include: adding collaborators, a mobile app, and a few other great additions to the list above.
Someone (a higher up at a podcast hosting company) said to me once, “you can have the same thing Joe Rogan has for $5 a month.” The statement upset me. It’s misleading and untrue. Yes - you can have podcast hosting for $5 a month. It doesn’t come with the planning, and the promotion of a juggernaut like Joe Rogan. The person who said that is interested in the most amount of money he can make. He isn’t interested in actually making the podcaster’s experience less stressful and more productive. But, that’s ALL I’m interested in. So, have at it. Have the planning infrastructure promotion tools you need. These are the tools I wish I had during my 20+ years in the radio industry.
The person mentioned above reminds me of all the radio managers who just cared about the advertisements. The ones who didn’t appreciate great content. I feel the radio industry gave up on talent. That’s why the founders of Podcave and I left that industry (after 40+combined years). We believe in tools that help, encourage, and ease the process of creation. It pisses us off that the established podcast services prioritize volume over making better podcasters. We will always prioritize the podcaster. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
The latest updates have been revolving around our website builder. We really feel like it's important for a podcast to have a website. Google likes that too. We have simplified the workflow for setting up a website, and will release even more improvements in the coming weeks.
We added a smoother text/email workflow allowing our podcasters to easily promote their podcast to fans who have subscribed to their show. Now, after a listener subscribes, the podcaster can send an email and text to anyone on their list updating them with the latest news.
An update to our guest booking feature brings about a new way to book other podcasters on your podcast. Thinking of the dating space, we implemented a way to pull every podcast in the world into the app. This allows us to broaden the possibilities for our users to other podcasters outside of the Podcave.
This is the day we got our first paying user. She isn't someone we knew, and had zero relationship with podcasting up to this point. She found us through social media, and some videos we were posting. She is our founding member, and we are so grateful for her feedback.
We launched our MVP into the world. The mission, to make an improvement every week. To constantly serve the user, and to constantly make decisions based on data. Within 30 days of launch, we have our first few users. There has been no marketing at this point, and we are relying on word of mouth.
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