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How to Build a Podcast App That Will Be Ear-Catching?
21 OCT 2022

Podcasts are at the peak of popularity these days. They attract listeners with a convenient format and concentrated useful information. Someone listens to podcasts from their favorite brands or popular personalities, someone chooses an interesting topic for themselves. One way or another, ‘radio for millennials’, as podcasts are called on the Internet, collects a million audience every week.


To listen to podcasts, people use special applications in which you can not only listen to others’ podcasts but also create your own channel. If you want to know how to build a podcast app, check out this guide. We will figure out what the main features should be in such an application and what app development services a business needs to create it.

What podcasts are and how they work

A podcast is a series of audio tracks on a variety of topics available online for download and listening. Sometimes they say about podcasts like this: these are your favorite topics, personalities and shows, collected in one application and available to listen to anywhere – at home, in the car, at the gym, etc.

Podcasts have gained popularity due to the fact that they give users easy access to a variety of information. People can choose any topic they are interested in: cinema, music, psychology, relationships, science, technology and much more. Podcast topics are often related to users’ lives, which is why they resonate so much. Moreover, creating your own podcast in 2022 is also not a problem. Podcast apps have the ability to record a conversation or monologue and put it on a platform where it can be heard by many users.

To better understand how podcast apps really work with a very simple user flow, take a look at the scheme below:

User-side podcast app: download app → log in → listen to the podcast

Creator-side podcast app: download app  → log in → upload podcast audio

As you can see, the podcast app works seamlessly on both the user and creator sides. This is partly why podcasting apps are so popular. And more about the market and the prospects for development a podcast app in the next block.

Podcast apps market: statistics and perspectives

The podcast app market is steadily growing and there is no mystery about it. More and more companies and brands are choosing podcasts as one of the platforms for communication with the audience, along with blogs and social networks. Periodical publications, TV shows and serials, famous personalities make their own podcasts. All this affects the statistics of listening to podcasts:  
  • In South Korea, 58% of adults listen to podcasts every month; in the UK, 18% of adults listen to podcasts every week.
  • The audience of podcast listeners starts at the age of 18 and reaches people aged 65+. 
  • 62% of Americans have listened to a podcast at least once, and 26% do it all the time.
  • 88% of users listen to podcasts through their smartphone.
Since 2018, the podcast industry has doubled from $479 million to $1 billion. The number of listeners is also growing: in 2020, there were more than 450,000 users of podcast apps worldwide, and more than a million are predicted by 2025.

The podcast market is geared towards a younger audience, so creating a user-friendly mobile app is a vital step in such a business. If you have an idea on how to build a podcast app, leave a request on our website. Brivian experts will contact you and discuss the plan for creating an application, as well as give an approximate cost for your idea.

 

How to build a podcast app? Our step-by-step instruction

Why build your own podcast app when users can share and listen to content on music streaming platforms like Spotify? There are a number of benefits to building a podcast app both for creators and listeners.

Podcast creators are able to download the content to all streaming platforms via a podcast app. As for users, you can build an audience of like-minded people or even find customers among the listeners. Moreover, users won’t be distracted by other content — music or audiobooks — and will be able to focus only on listening to podcasts. 

After all, a podcast app is also an effective marketing tool. Inside it, you can promote your product or sell ads for other businesses.   

Podcast app development stages

  • Market research
Before you start developing a podcast app, you need to study the market. What players are there, what features they offer to customers. On the one hand, this will help you find inspiration, and on the other hand, you can stand out from the competition and come up with your own killer feature.  
  • Define the product
At this stage, you determine what functionality the application will have, for which platform it is being developed. Keep your budget in mind: the scope of the application is determined depending on the resources that you are willing to spend on its creation.  
  • Design and development
The design of an application determines how users will interact with it. It is important not to make a mistake here: the interface should work seamlessly, be intuitive and look good. And the development team that you hire for the project should implement all your ideas in the best possible way.  
  • Market tests
After the first version of the application is ready, it’s time to go to the market. Your users are your best critics. Carefully collect feedback because it will be useful for improving the app in the future.  
  • Updating
Based on feedback from users, draw conclusions about what can be improved in the application. At this stage, don’t be afraid to add new features or edit old ones if they get negative feedback. One way or another, the application can be improved indefinitely. In the future, you will still have to fix minor bugs or introduce trending features.

Trend features in podcast apps

🔴  Recommendations

Users like it when the app recommends content based on the podcasts they’ve already listened to. Make this algorithm as accurate as possible. The better the AI can pick up similar podcasts, the more trust your audience will gain. Listeners appreciate that the application understands their tastes and offers new interesting content.

🔴  Subscription to podcasts

Subscription is a cool feature for users and content creators at the same time. Listeners get access to exclusive episodes of their favorite podcast, and creators monetize their work. To make buying a subscription convenient, provide as many payment methods as possible.

🔴  Custom playlists

Another user-friendly feature. Add the ability to create your own playlists from different podcasts to the application. This is convenient when the listener has no time to search for the desired podcast. It’s cool if a custom playlist can also be downloaded. So users can listen to podcasts, for example, during an air flight. Users also want to share the playlist with friends — to do this, add the ability to send a link to it via social networks and messengers.

The time and money necessary to create a podcast app 

The cost of developing a podcast app depends on various factors. The most important of them are the following:

⚫️ Placement platform

You can create a podcast app for one platform, be it iOS or Android. This solution is suitable for those who want to test one market or get feedback from certain users. Another option is to develop a cross-platform application. This path is suitable for those who need to create an application quickly: for example, to show investors a working product or test an idea in the general market.

⚫️ Technology stack

Depending on the choice of platform, the app development services are also selected. To create a native mobile podcast app, you need two commands. The first one will write an application in Kotlin for Android OS, the second one in Swift for iOS. A cross-platform application can be developed by one team using the React Native framework. It will be cheaper than native app development.

⚫️ Number of features and design

The more features you want to see in the application, the more expensive it will be to create it. If you are on a tight budget, you can only get by with core features in the early stages. It’s the same with design. The more complex the user interface, the more money you will pay the contractor.

In general, the cost of developing a podcast app varies from $20,000 to $50,000. The detailed cost of the project should be checked with the development company with which you plan to make the app to choose appropriate app development services

As for the development time, an application with only essential features can be developed in 3-4 months. As a result, you will get a working and attractive app with a convenient user interface that can be shown to the audience. It will take more time to make a full-fledged podcast app. It depends on the complexity and number of features, and of course on the platform and technology stack.

If you are looking for a team to develop a podcast app, please contact us. Our experts will help you realize your idea. Leave a request in the form below!

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