I’m stepping down as CEO of RadioPublic and Podfund as both companies move to their next phase with new leadership, and as I take on a new role in the industry. There’s more exciting developments to be announced soon on all these fronts, but I wanted to take a moment to share some reflections and appreciations.

I’m immensely proud of what RadioPublic and Podfund have accomplished so far, and grateful for the extraordinary and essential contributions of our team members, our backers and stakeholders, and, most significantly, my cofounders — Matt MacDonald and Chris Quamme Rhoden at RadioPublic and Nicola Korzenko at Podfund.

I’ve spent the last 20 (!) years helping create a set of building blocks for podcasting and public radio, at the intersection of talent and technology. Some of these efforts have flourished, some have floundered, but all of them have pointed in the same direction — building a healthy media ecosystem from the ground up.

We launched RadioPublic in 2016 with a clear mission:

To help listeners discover, engage with, and reward creators of stories, podcasts, and other audio.

We share public media’s educational, artistic, and journalistic mission, and the democratic values of open access to information.

We are committed to operating a platform that fairly values creators’ work, respects users’ privacy and information rights, and benefits all participants.

And we followed through on that vision, bringing on the world’s first podcast librarian (hey Ma'ayan Plaut!), pioneering new tools like HearMarks, PaidListens, and Podsites (Matt’s brainchild), and proposing PodPass (all credit to Chris), an open protocol to enable direct listener relationships.

Last year we branched out even further, launching Podfund — a new resource dedicated to helping “creator-led, audio-first media companies” gain access to startup and growth capital; with terms, funding, and support aimed at amplifying independent voices. Expertly shepherded by Nicola, the portfolio of Podfund creators is a testament to the exceptionally vibrant, diverse, ambitious and creative community that podcasting has become.

There is so much more to be done, and I have no doubt that the next phase for both RadioPublic and Podfund will bring innovation and impact to the edges of podcasting’s expanding universe.

I may be moving on from my role, but not from our mission.

Stay tuned!

As we stream towards 2020, podcasting is now a priority for tens of thousands of creators, publishers, and businesses — from indies, to media and entertainment companies, to Fortune 500 firms. Not all of these new entrants have a solid strategy, but as with previous waves of blogging, video, and social media, there’s a coalescing of attention and value in podcasting that is impossible to ignore.

The Next Industry Gap

Between RadioPublic and Podfund we have a clear view into the evolving tactics and practices of podcasters — from enterprise, to studios, and across the long tail. They all face a missing ingredient in the podcasting ecosystem: the marketing technology to reliably grow and engage audiences.

As the stakes get higher and pressure mounts to differentiate, podcasters are still lacking tech-enabled solutions for marketing their shows to new audiences, and bringing listeners into a deeper relationship than an ad impression reflects.

To date most podcast marketing has focused on three things:

• Ads for podcasts on other podcasts as cross-promotion;
• Vying for attention from Apple Podcasts, their charts, and featured rotation on other apps, as platform promotion;
• Direct marketing and PR, to drive word of mouth promotion.

But these marketing strategies mostly guide podcasters to fish where they know audience already exists, rather than wading into the largest pools of discovery: on the open web and social.

Audience development tools exist in abundance in other domains — where platforms like Salesforce, Hubspot, Mailchimp, and Wistia lead a crowded field of “martech” solutions. But none of these services is built for podcasting, previously considered too small a market to tackle, and where RSS/MP3 and native app-based consumption create unique challenges.

The Missing Middle Layer

To date, investments in podcast tech has understandably been concentrated at the bottom of the stack (hosting) and the top (players/apps). This makes sense in an industry where major platforms have not (yet) been driving monetization. Hosting solutions tend to build into adjacent adtech and analytics, since the lion’s share of revenue is still sourced, sold and placed in the MP3 episode itself. And innumerable apps (including our own) have taken a swing at improving discovery and monetization, with scant few making a real dent next to Apple and now Spotify.

The middle layer of marketing tech is missing, and RadioPublic is addressing this gap with the industry’s first turnkey Listener Relationship Management (LRM) platform. We recently introduced the first building blocks like Podsites and the PodPass protocol. Today we are introducing updates and a new piece of the puzzle — an updated audio embed player with listener email acquisition as part of RadioPublic PRO.

All of these tools work across all platforms, not just within RadioPublic’s apps, because podcast discovery, listening, and engagement is ubiquitous and evolving.

Ultimately this LRM platform will give podcasters a full suite of tools to manage the top and middle of the funnel for audience growth and engagement, as the industry trends toward more direct listener monetization and engagement.

Depth Drives New Strategies

Podcasting may seem like a reach medium, with significant audiences for the biggest shows, but it really shines as a depth medium: the most valuable quality is listeners’ deep connection to the voices and stories in their ears.

LRM helps podcasters expand the range of listener touch points beyond the ad impression alone, diversifying revenue and business models to encompasses other strategies such as crowdfunding, email newsletters, live shows, fan clubs, surveys, and experiments with personalization and interactivity.

The eternal tug of war between platforms and publishers will inevitably play out in podcasting, much as it continues to do elsewhere in digital media. But ultimately we know it’s in the interests of creators and listeners to have a hand in shaping and managing the direct relationships that emerge from this most intimate of experiences, the spoken word moving at the speed of light, and sound.

More information about RadioPublic’s Listener Relationship Management can be found at podcasters.radiopublic.com and on Product Hunt

[ read the draft tech spec] [ see an example listener experience]

Summary

As podcasting develops new services that require direct relationships with listeners — such as exclusive content, membership, and private feeds — we believe there’s a need for a new protocol that provides a better listener experience, more control for podcasters, and a standardized method for apps to offer access to their users: PodPass.

Imagine a listener wants to hear bonus content from her favorite show as a benefit of being a supporter. The podcaster’s hosting provider offers access to extended versions of episodes appearing in the same feed for any logged-in members.

This scenario is possible in a PodPass future, but today requires separate feeds, copying and pasting urls, logging into separate websites, and losing your listening history when membership lapses.

There’s a trend toward direct listener relationships

There is an industry trend toward more direct listener monetization and engagement in podcasting. This includes crowdfunding, membership, tipping, donations, as well as exclusive and premium content.

This is a healthy development, expanding the range of touch points with listeners beyond the ad impression and helping publishers diversify their revenue and business models. The trend speaks to the depth of experience that spoken word audio elicits and encompasses other podcast engagement strategies such as live shows, email newsletters, fan clubs, surveys, and experiments with personalization and interactivity.

Identity-based access is increasingly required

A common need across all of these developments is to authenticate or change permissions based on the listener’s level of access. The listener usually needs to sign in to participate, and often the podcaster seeks more of the listener’s information to develop a more valuable relationship.

To clarify, when we talk about “identity” we are not necessarily talking about personally identifiable information. In the world of access control, the responsibilities are broken into Authentication, Identification, and Authorization.

Authentication is the job of ensuring someone is who they say they are, and Authorization is the job of determining what a given person (or pseudo-anonymous user id) should and should not have access to. Identification is like the glue between these steps, allowing an authenticated person to make a request which requires authorization.

PodPass offers a way for apps to trigger both the Authentication and Authorization steps, controlled by the podcast host, with the apps offering the Identity “glue” over time.

This crucial authentication step introduces obstacles and opportunities for the podcast industry.

There’s a risk that listening apps become the default brokers of identity verification and authenticated access in podcasting. In other words, as a listener you may find yourself installing five apps to get your favorite shows exclusive to a platform, and copying/pasting private feed urls to access others.

But more problematic is that as a podcaster, you may find yourself locked out of a direct relationship with your truest fans, relegated to the role of a content supplier to platforms controlling their experience. And ultimately, listeners themselves are asked to trade control and privacy for access and participation.

This can be an intentional strategy for apps to gain adoption — most visibly playing out at Luminary. Some podcasters are clearly comfortable making this trade off. Others, not so much.

Meanwhile, more podcasters are turning to third-party hosting and payment solutions that help support bonus, exclusive, or private content, such as Patreon, Supporting Cast, Acast Access, Glow.fm, RedCircle, Substack, and Memberful. But these services are constrained by available user experiences (primarily, providing a link to a fan, who then has to copy and paste the feed into their listening app), and can face significant friction pursuing app-by-app integrations.

Apple, Google, Spotify, and perhaps other new entrants could “solve” this at scale by driving a dominant platform-based identity layer and monetization approach of their own, as they have done in other markets (alongside Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix). Even in that scenario, there may still be room to sustain a handful of smaller vertical or community-focused paywalled apps.

But at the logical extreme, app-based identity results in either winner-take all platform hegemony, or further fragmentation of distribution, discovery, and monetization. At a moment when podcasting is still reaching new audiences and diversifying its business models, that kind of bundling comes at a cost to growth in podcasting.

Right now, it’s important to recognize that these choices and trade-offs are still in play, and podcast publishers retain significant leverage in shaping the outcomes.

The Problems to Solve

To recap: authenticated podcasting is coming, and current approaches face a set of problems:

• Listeners need to manage multiple feeds for the same show, such as “free” and “paid.”
• Listeners don’t have a way to keep track of heard episodes as they transition from unauthenticated (public) feeds to authenticated (private).
• Publishers need to initiate authentication and have no standard methodology, whereas interested listeners want to provide authentication where they already listen to podcasts.
• Publishers have to maintain two (or more) feeds, public and private.
• Publishers can’t monetize exclusive content cross-platform.
• Podcasts can’t be personalized in their production or distribution (for example, a personal fitness podcast tailored to your goals).
• Apps/platforms can’t offer simple access to exclusive/member content from multiple publishers without negotiating separate deals or integrations, or building and offering their own vertical solution.

To be clear, we are not suggesting that short of PodPass adoption, podcasting is in imminent danger. The vast majority of current listening and monetization via advertising remains untouched by these new needs and opportunities. But the trend towards authenticated podcasting is unstoppable, and PodPass can help ensure it leads to more shared value and growth, and avoid a “tragedy of the commons.”

PodPass supports existing solutions and new experiences

PodPass is a simple protocol that uses RSS and HTML to enable both existing and new identity-based interactions for podcasting across platforms.

The PodPass protocol provides two main elements:

1. A simple set of rules to manage user identity implemented by podcast hosts and listening apps. This entails a method of indicating support, a one-way message-passing API allowing webpages to send, and client apps to receive, updates to a podcast subscription, and a standard way for client apps to request feeds and enclosures with a bearer token. (Here’s the tech spec for more detail.)
2. A consistent user experience framework for listeners to interact with in any client app. (Here’s an example of a possible listener experience.)

The introduction of a lightweight, web-like identity layer to podcast subscriptions on an opt-in basis can support new and better options where identity can enhance the experience for listeners and align with publishers’ business needs.

Imagine:

A loyal listener opens her podcast app and sees a new member-only show from her favorite network. She listens to the free pilot episode, and is prompted to activate her account to hear the rest of the season. She logs in and keeps listening.

A podcaster decides to offer an ad-free version of her show to paying fans. Her hosting company offers special access without ads injected for logged-in backers.

A new podcast app wants to provide a universal catalog of podcasts, including private, member-only, and premium feeds from podcasters.

An organization decides to offer a staff-only podcast. After a quick verification, the employee gains access to the private feed.

You have probably encountered something similar already: PodPass is akin to activating your cable or HBO account on Hulu or Amazon Video, or storing your credentials in your web browser for sites you sign into frequently.

PodPass makes these and many other scenarios possible.

Here’s how it works:

What is PodPass not?

There is understandable confusion about the evolution of standards in podcasting, and competing efforts to advance the medium. It is important to clarify what PodPass isn’t:

• PodPass is not a new product from any one company.
• PodPass is not a replacement for existing third-party membership/payment services like Patreon.
• PodPass is not a CRM or payment system.
• PodPass is not limited to paid access use cases.

What’s next?

PodPass emerged from a series of conversations that the RadioPublic team has been having with stakeholders in podcasting across publishers, hosting providers, and platforms/apps (Chris Quamme Rhoden, RadioPublic co-founder and CTO, is responsible for the core PodPass idea and technical insights behind it). There is widespread agreement that the concept is compelling, along with the caveats and hesitation that comes with any bold idea at a moment of change.

We believe that the PodPass concept can spur industry dialogue, lead to immediate prototyping and testing, and that the protocol has the potential to gain adoption as the gains of managing listener relationships in a more effective and decentralized way becomes clear.

We have posted an open draft technical specification, and we welcome comments and feedback. We are also cross-posting this to Syndicated Media and Open Podcast Analytics Working Group to discuss further. We also welcome direct communication about PodPass through email:

Jake Shapiro: jake.shapiro@radiopublic.com

Matt MacDonald: matt.macdonald@radiopublic.com

Chris Quamme Rhoden: chris.rhoden@radiopublic.com

Ultimately we hope that a critical mass of podcasters, hosting providers, and apps/platforms will help shape and adopt PodPass as a generative strategy to expand podcasting, creating more value for listeners and creators alike.

Thank you!

Originally published at http://about.radiopublic.com on August 9, 2019.

PodPass: Proposal for an Open Protocol to Enable Direct Listener Relationships was originally published in RadioPublic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the most exciting opportunities in podcasting is the growth of the medium internationally, as we see the pioneering of new voices, languages, and formats develop globally. RadioPublic is a leading showcase for diverse independent podcasters, supporting discovery, engagement, and monetization to help them build creative and impactful businesses.

So we are excited to announce our partnership with Súbela, the leading digital radio and podcasting platform of Chile, the country with the fastest growing podcast audience in the world . Since 2011, Súbela has provided Latin American listeners with fresh new audio, and their music and talk programming received over two million downloads across their ten shows last year.

As podcast listenership grows outside of the United States, Súbela’s understanding and network of Latin American podcasts brings new podcasts and new listeners to the ever-expanding podcast landscape.

On a personal note, I’ve long known Súbela’s remarkable co-founder Felipe Heusser through our shared Berkman Center orbit and am happy our collaborative aspirations have finally started to blossom!

We’re kicking off this partnership on a few fronts:

Our first Podsites in Spanish. 30 of them, to be exact. Browse some of Súbela’s podcasts like:

• Café Con Nata
• La Vida de los Otros
• FOMO
• El Giradiscos
• No Sabes Nada

Working with the Súbela team also means that we’ve made Podsites localized in Spanish available for all.

A curated collection of culture podcasts from Latin America. Read the article in English on RadioPublic’s site and in Spanish on Súbela’s blog, and listen to all the podcasts in this collection on RadioPublic.

Originally published at http://about.radiopublic.com on June 19, 2019.

Expanding Latin American podcasting was originally published in RadioPublic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At a moment when charting your own course as an independent creator is fundamental to long-term success and healthy growth of the podcasting medium overall, we are launching Podfund, the industry’s first dedicated source of funding for podcasters.

Read our creator-friendly terms and apply to Podfund.

Podfund is born from insights we’ve gained at RadioPublic as we’ve worked with thousands of podcasters who face a common set of aspirations and obstacles. Beyond our pioneering tools for creators and listeners, we realized there was a gap in the ecosystem for helping emerging podcasters who have ambitions to build creative, profitable, and impactful businesses.

To give Podfund running room and leadership for transformative impact of its own, we are excited to announce two foundational developments: we’ve closed a $2.3M seed round, which includes investment from Bloomberg Beta, Zelkova Ventures, TechNexus, Pascal Levy-Garboua and Weave Capital; and we have brought on Nicola Korzenko as Podfund’s General Manager. Based in New York City, Nicola is joining Podfund from Amazon Prime Video and making her debut in the podcast industry, bringing a mix of skills and experiences (including stints at Creative Artists Agency, Signpost, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, HBS, and Amazon) that are ideal for establishing and leading Podfund. Podfund is founded in partnership with and operated by RadioPublic, but it is also an independent company at the start of its own contribution to the field.

“Podcasting has exciting growth ahead, fueled by compelling content and audience interest. Podfund is uniquely positioned to support the emerging community of creators, and founders Jake and Nicola have the vision, talent, and network to lead the way.” — Karin Klein, founding partner at Bloomberg Beta

Over the past several years the podcast industry has accelerated in audience growth, revenue, and new podcast talent. A new class of creator-led media company is emerging, with podcasts as the foundation for building a brand, a fanbase, and revenue across a growing number of sources (including advertising, crowdfunding/membership, licensing, live events, and other ancillary extensions of intellectual property). At the top end of this growth we’ve seen studios like Gimlet and Stuff Media acquired by major media companies, with a rising tier of independent creators forging their own paths to sustained success.

Many of these creators also face a common set of challenges:

• A steep learning curve for podcasting best practices. The podcast industry is undergoing rapid development, and few are able to stay on top of new strategies and go-to resources.
• A lack of tools and tactics for audience growth. From top podcasts to the long tail, marketing and audience development is still poorly understood and lags behind other digital media practices — an area where RadioPublic is ahead of the curve.
• Access to startup and growth capital. Ambitious creators starting to get traction need capital aligned with their goals, whether to expand production, invest in marketing, add business operations capacity, or address other gating factors to their growth.

There has been a significant uptick in investment by major platforms, new startups, and legacy media who are all recognizing podcasting’s immense-yet-nascent value. Despite this influx, prior to Podfund there has been no dedicated source of funding for creators building independent podcast businesses. Apart from grant funding and training programs, current funding models require joining a network or a platform, or turning to venture capital’s aggressive expectations for the kind of pace and scale that are not a good fit for most creators.

Podfund represents an alternative, providing creators the flexibility and independence to assemble best-in-breed solutions and valuable partners, across many definitions of success.

In coming months we will find, fund, and support dozens-and eventually hundreds-of podcasters by establishing Podfund as the go-to ally for creators. We’ve recruited friends from the industry to join us in this mission as mentors, and they are as excited as we are to contribute to this next chapter in podcasting. We will be adding to our roster of partners going forward so if you have a resource you’d like to offer to Podfunded creators, get in touch.

A special shout out to the pioneering creators joining us at launch: Hebah Fisher (Kerning Cultures), Erica Mandy (theNewsworthy), Jake Brennan (Disgraceland/Double Elvis Productions), and Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg (Pushkin Industries).

“I see Podfund as a huge opportunity to collaborate with some of the best in the business, continue to grow theNewsWorthy, and support other podcasters.” — Erica Mandy, host and creator of theNewsworthy

“Podfund has been instrumental in helping chart the future for Double Elvis Productions and the greater Disgraceland universe. The podcast industry is fueled by relationships and insights and no one has more than Jake and the Podfund / RadioPublic team.” — Jake Brennan, host of Disgraceland and founder of Double Elvis Productions

Podfund owes its inspiration to many exceptional efforts around us. Matter Ventures, the accelerator for media startups, paved the way for fostering a mission-driven approach to entrepreneurship. PRX is a champion for independent voices. Indie.vc is changing the model for tech investing. Zebras Unite is leading a movement to create a more ethical and inclusive startup culture. Every day we draw inspiration from podcasters in our midst and in our ears, and can’t wait to help more of them do even more of what they do best.

Applications for Podfund are now open, and you can find us on Product Hunt, too.

Originally published at http://about.radiopublic.com on May 7, 2019.

Introducing Podfund was originally published in RadioPublic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s working!

• Millions of new and die-hard podcast listeners rely on RadioPublic for their favorite shows, to explore what’s new, and support the podcasters they love.
• Thousands of podcasters use RadioPublic to grow and engage their audience and help build their business.
• And the dozen folks on our incredible team have moved mountains to make podcasting better for everyone.

Some things never change

As we said when we first launched, openness is core to our values and to our strategy.

Even as we roll out an ambitious set new features and tools, there are important things have not changed: RadioPublic is free, protects your privacy, is universally accessible to listeners worldwide, and supports independent podcasters.

Ring in the new

Now in 2019, we’re at the forefront of an industry undergoing transformative growth. And much as I believe podcasting is media’s slow food movement, things are moving fast, and RadioPublic is, too.

Over these past few weeks, we’ve announced an expanded set of tools for podcast creators that draw on insights from building RadioPublic over the last few years (and we’ll be announcing a game-changer a few weeks from now that will knock your socks off).

Here are the highlights:

Podsites™ — the simple, beautiful, customizable, and affordable website builder for podcasters.

• Podsites automatically update whenever a podcaster publishes a new episode.
• Trailers, starter episodes, and reviews are all front and center.
• Our persistent audio player keeps visitors engaged, and ties into Google Analytics to track traffic and audio play events.
• Podsites are designed to convert casual visitors to new loyal listeners.

Check out these new Podsites from Iconography or other5billion.

Sonar Podcast Marketing™ — the industry’s first and only method to track marketing attribution for podcasts.

As podcasters get more sophisticated about marketing, we built a tool that measures how effective your campaigns are — from first click to podcast playback. How much actual listening results from that email newsletter you sent? We’ll tell you.

HearMarks™ — save and share moments inside a podcast episode.

With just a tap on your headphones or the HearMark™ button in the app, listeners can leave notes for themselves and mark a starting point for new listeners to dive in. We are excited to be partnering with Bose to introduce HearMarks on their new augmented reality equipped devices.

Podcast Stations — a lean-back continuous listening experience.

Stations are powered by our Podcast Librarian’s hand-curated and guest curated show collections, and it’s now even easier to pick a collection and listen forever. Check out some examples:

• FT Alphachat’s Slightly Wonky Economics Shows
• Our monthly audio fiction debuts in partnership with the Bello Collective
• Minneculture’s Intimate Stories from the Middle of Somewhere

Some apps with that?

And on top of all that, we’ve just upgraded the RadioPublic iPhone, Android, and web app with an entire refresh of the design and user experience, including some cool features that deserve a shoutout:

• Chapters: hop to predesignated moments in a show selected by the podcaster.
• Trim Silence: save a few extra seconds with intelligent pause removal.
• Seamless onboarding: the same podcast you start with remains front and center through downloading RadioPublic for the first time and opening the app.
• Featured episodes: select the best episode for a new listener to start with.

Under the hood, RadioPublic has enhanced the listening experience, including automatic downloads for offline listening, personalized organization with Smart Folders, and notifications that alert when new episodes are published.

Get paid

With RadioPublic 2.0, we are also improving ways for podcasters to make money. We’ve started building a marketplace that supports a variety of podcasters’ business models and listeners’ preferences, starting with:

• Paid Listens: Whether a podcaster has ten listeners or ten thousand, we pay participating podcasters at a $20 CPM for every listen on the RadioPublic app for iPhone and Android. Thousands of podcasters are participating in Paid Listens, get started here.
• Listener Tips: What if any listener could show support seamlessly, right where they’re enjoying the podcast? Fans can tip a podcaster for any amount up to $100, right in the app, and it goes directly into their bank account. It’s a frictionless, quick, and simple way to give money to a podcaster. Listener Tips are another expression of our direct listener support Call To Action, making it easier for podcasters to earn money from their podcast audience.

Get educated

Our new portal for podcasters is at podcasters.radiopublic.com, and now includes a best-in-class set of tutorials for podcasters on core practices and knowledge:

• Start a podcast
• Improve your podcast
• Grow your podcast audience
• Make money with your podcast

We also launched a dedicated podcast marketing tutorial delivered daily via email, focused on tactical and strategic approaches to growing your podcast.

Stay tuned

Even though I first helped build a podcast app (shoutout to PRX’s Pubcatcher) in 2005 — a tad prescient — podcasting here in 2019 is still in its early days as an industry.

Fourteen years later, RadioPublic addresses the long list of gaps remaining in podcasting. We are influencing podcasting’s development as a healthy media ecosystem that treats listeners with respect, supports independent podcasters, and helps grow the resilient and creative medium of the spoken word.

And there’s much more to come.

Originally published at about.radiopublic.com on March 11, 2019.

RadioPublic 2.0 was originally published in RadioPublic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

2019 promises to be a game changer for podcasting, and even though I think we are the “slow food movement of media,” RadioPublic is moving fast.

You’ll be hearing soon about a remarkable roadmap of products, services, and partnerships — podcasters and listeners will be well served.

Before we step take our next steps forward, it’s a good moment to pause and reflect on 2018, our second full year here at RadioPublic.

Here are some highlights:

• Our talented tech team released 58 (!) updates to our Android and iOS apps. If you haven’t yet, make sure to read Matt MacDonald’s release notes — a master of the form.
• Our curation and editorial work, led by our content strategist and the industry’s first podcast librarian Ma’ayan Plaut, made a huge mark in featuring a diverse range of podcasts in 2018 — over 2,400 shows!
• We expanded our set of RadioPublic tools for podcasters and have seen remarkable growth in adoption, with thousands of podcasters signed up for RadioPublic accounts and enrolled in our Paid Listens program. Under the hood, we built a scalable system to streamline onboarding, verification, listening reports, and payment processing for participating podcasters.
• We made major UX and navigation improvements to the RadioPublic web landing pages and our Explore section (scroll down for some delightful curation).
• We introduced innovative new features, including in-app tipping, timestamping, and a new framework for Calls to Action (stay tuned for more of these arriving in 2019).
• On the partnership front, we introduced a new way to create and share playlists on RadioPublic with Podchaser, and introduced integrations with Libsyn and Anchor to give podcasters on those platforms a direct publishing, marketing, and monetization path into RadioPublic.
• Our partnership with Bose is hitting its stride as we’ve been selected as a launch partner for Bose’s new augmented reality SDK and platform, focused on RadioPublic’s forthcoming HearMarks™ feature for bookmarking episodes with gesture controls.
• Over the summer we ran a successful equity crowdfunding campaign on the Republic platform, raising $145,338 from 397 new ambassadors and stakeholders in the company. Thank you and welcome aboard!

We remain as excited and committed to our mission and vision and opportunity as ever. I am so grateful to our team, board, investors, partners, podcasters, and listeners for helping us make RadioPublic. Stay tuned!

Published January 12, 2019

Originally published at about.radiopublic.com on January 12, 2019.

We shorten the distance between asking for and receiving support from your fans

We’ve been excited to see the growing interest in direct listener support in the podcast community — something we’ve embraced in our mission and roadmap from day one at RadioPublic.

When we started working on this feature earlier this year, we set out to improve direct listener support as one piece of the podcast sustainability puzzle. With RadioPublic’s Calls To Action, we provide several ways by which a show can gain support from listeners, with the flexibility to expand to more forms of engaged audience activity in the future.

Calls To Action: listener support

You’ve been working tirelessly on your podcast, and it’s time to start seeking some financial support to keep your show going. Maybe you’ve mentioned it in your show credits, or added a link to your Patreon or PayPal account in your show notes, but what if it was even more visible: right there with your show, right where someone is listening and can click now.

Makes sense, right? We agree.

We’re happy to announce initial partnerships with podcast hosting providers Pinecast, PRX and Anchor on the first Call To Action. We worked closely with these first partners to make it incredibly easy for listeners on RadioPublic to hop on over to your donation or support pages. We’ve got integrations in the works with other major podcast hosting providers, too. If you are hosted elsewhere and want this financial support button to show up for your podcast, direct your hosting provider to this article.

Calls To Action: join an email list, fill out a survey, buy merch, and more

Rarely is there one way to get to where you want to go with growing and developing your podcast into a continuing venture; everyone’s version of success looks, feels, and executes differently. With RadioPublic’s Calls To Action, the opportunities for engaging with your fans in meaningful ways help podcasters create their own roadmap to podcasting sustainability.

Here’s a sneak peek into some of the Calls To Action we’ve got in motion.

Want to know what we’ve got cooking and get early access to these Calls To Action? Get in touch: help@radiopublic.com

Special thanks to Matt Basta at Pinecast, Andrew Kuklewicz at PRX, and Mike Mignano at Anchor for working closely with us on this.

(Are you a podcast hosting provider? We can help you add support to your feeds and add you to the above list. Get in touch at help@radiopublic.com)

RadioPublic is building the missing marketplace in a booming podcasting industry, and now you are invited to join us as an investor.

In partnership with Republic, we have launched an equity crowdfunding campaign which gives listeners, podcasters, and other stakeholders the opportunity to invest in the future of podcasting.

If you’re already a podcast believer, come read our pitch and invest.

Democratizing Investing in Podcasting

We’ve always advocated for alternative and more inclusive models for building mission-driven enterprises. RadioPublic was founded in partnership with the nonprofit PRX; we are incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation; and we have assembled a purposeful mix of institutional, strategic, mission, and angel investors who share our vision. Now, and for the next 2+ months, we are offering a way for anyone to join us and invest.

Two years ago, just as RadioPublic was first getting started, we watched closely as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enacted Title III of the JOBS Act, which allowed non-accredited investors — the majority of the U.S. population — to invest in startups.

Since then we’ve looked for the opportunity to invite the vibrant and growing community of RadioPublic listeners and podcasters, as well as the expanding circle of people excited about the future of podcasting, to join our journey as stakeholders.

To do that, we are proud to partner with Republic, a leading equity crowdfunding platform that focuses on mission-driven startups, and whose own mission is “to democratize investing and level out the fundraising landscape for founders and investors alike.”

Listening is an Act of Love

Our own journey was inspired by Radiotopia’s first crowdfunding campaign in 2014 when the network was launched. Even as the campaign became the most successful in podcasting history (21,808 backers pledged $620,412), we saw that the powerful connection between fans and creators was still not supported, enabled, or promoted in the place where it could have the most impact: within the listening experience itself. What podcasting has been missing is an open marketplace that leverages the act of listening into a deeper connection between creators and fans.

What I love about RadioPublic is that they understand, in their bones, that the best things for listeners is the best thing for creators
 — Roman Mars, host of 99% Invisible, co-founder Radiotopia

We have been building that missing marketplace for podcasters. For the last 18 months we have helped listeners discover, engage with, and reward the creators of podcasts. Over on our campaign page we describe in detail our accomplishments so far, our vision and strategy going forward, and what’s next on the roadmap — everything you need to know to invest in RadioPublic’s future.

We are still in the early days of building RadioPublic and of podcasting overall, and we couldn’t be more excited about what’s next. Whether you join us for $50 or $50,000, we welcome you as an investor in the future of RadioPublic and a healthy, vibrant, expanding podcast ecosystem.

Thank you!

Invest in RadioPublic was originally published in RadioPublic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The science behind sound reproduction has been studied for centuries. But what will research uncover in the centuries to come? One man made it his life’s mission to find out, and a gift he made to the world will continue that mission for the foreseeable future. Explore the extraordinary life of Dr. Amar Bose in this special holiday episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz.

Here’s more about the episode and the podcast: https://www.20k.org/episodes/thegift

The Bose backstory was originally published in RadioPublic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.