60dB, Tung, and RadioPublic: three unique podcasting apps deserving of your love (maybe)
Podcast apps can be like a bad relationship: the more you spend time with them, the more you notice little things that bother you.
My time spent with the native iOS podcast app will always be remembered fondly. It introduced me to the incredible podcast landscape and made searching for episodes simple. But then I subscribed to dozens of shows and little negative traits started showing themselves. It crashed constantly. The UI was clunky and didn’t feel organized. I got that familiar itch to look around. After searching the App Store and reading reviews, it became clear that Overcast and Pocket Casts were the next most popular. Both were much better designed and had additional features like shortening silences, but after hearing about some interesting waves being made in the podcast app space, my loyalty is drifting once again.
I worked with fellow Bello writer Matt Williamson to check out three relatively new and unique takes on podcasting apps. This is your chance to start a new, healthier podcasting relationship.
60db
Everything wants to be the Netflix of their platform, but when you’re a project from Tiny Garage Labs, founded by Netflix alums John Ciancutti and Steve McLendon (as well as long time radio journalist, Stephen Henn), you have a real shot.
After you fire up 60db, you choose broad categories of at least three interests — news, science, food, politics, etc. — and it automatically subscribes you to specific shows. It then gives you a feed of short radio stories, or “quick hits”, as well as longer audio, or “in depth”. You quickly get a tailored feed based on your choices and the app will adjust as you go based on what audio you like.
You can import your iOS podcast subscriptions, but the intention of 60db isn’t to be a better mousetrap than other podcasting apps when it comes to organization, but to become a hybrid of sorts between a place for podcasts you know and love and a place to sit back and be fed short, high quality radio reporting. The discovery process is unique because of the behind the scenes algorithm, but there is also a surprisingly well crafted “discover” tab. On top of the usual suspects like “business” and “comedy”, you’ll find interesting categories like “social justice” and special collections that correspond with big events, like “Golden Globes”. If you look through all the categories, you’ll notice they are positioning the app as a place to get original news content, with major outlets like The Guardian, Vox, and FiveThirtyEight providing some short stories exclusively on 60db.
When it comes to sharing what you’re into, you have to rely on Twitter. You can easily share a link to an episode that will open up within 60db or will bring you to a browser version of the audio for anyone without the app. There are no social features that live within the app, so the trust is in the 60db editorial team and the algorithm to find new content.
The biggest downside to the whole experience for me is that there is no way to download content directly to your device. I reached out on Twitter to 60db about this and they assured me they are working on it. I listen to most of my audio away from home, and I much prefer to download everything ahead of time with wifi instead of streaming over my phone’s data plan. This won’t be an issue for everyone, just something to keep in mind.
Use it if you want: tailored recommendations on short radio pieces that fit your interests; but, it’s not a game changer for someone who listens to 100+ podcasts and wants a better way to handle them all. There is a lot of talent behind this app, so I anticipate several interesting features and improvements over the next year. As proof of this, they JUST announced integration with the Amazon Echo. I’ve tried it, and it works great. (Erik)
Tung
Tung is a unique take on the podcasting experience from Jamie Perkins, a developer who wanted to put his ideal version of a podcast app into the world. If you combined basic versions of Twitter, Pocket Casts, and an audio recorder, you’d get something similar to Tung.
The killer feature of using Tung is the way you can share and provide context around an episode. There are a couple of cool things you can do as you listen to an episode that would then show up in the feed of anyone who follows you. You can hit the thumbs up “recommend” button, or you can go further and post comments and even sound clips (up to 30 seconds each) for any episode. There are a few things I love about this. First, as someone trying to find new stuff to listen to, it allows you to find people who tend to like similar shows to you, and check out what else they’re into. This is how Spotify’s discover weekly playlists work, and it leads to a high probability of finding something new you’ll like. Second, it solves a major problem I have with podcast selection. I tend to subscribe to dozens of shows that sound great, and then quickly get overwhelmed with what to check out next. But if I see someone posts an interesting clip from a show on this ever growing list, I’m definitely going to start there. It’s like asking the server what to order on a menu that all looks good. Third, sometimes you hear something, and you just REALLY want to share it. It’s satisfying to grab a clip of a show you love and basically sell others on why they need to check it out.
If you don’t want to mess around with finding tons of people to follow, there is also a feed where you can see what the most popular recommendations are across the whole platform.
Like any social network, the experience is largely tied to how many other users there are. The user base seems to be on the smaller side, and the ability to find people outside of your Twitter network or those who appear on the main feed is underdeveloped. In spite of that though, following even a dozen people introduced me to some podcasts I wouldn’t have otherwise given a chance. With most social networks, it’s easy to only care about how many followers you have. With Tung, I was more concerned with finding the right people to follow than anything else. Or maybe that’s just what someone with only four followers would say. (C’mon, I have good taste, people!)
After playing around with Tung for a few weeks, I found myself enjoying the sharing and discovery process and even downloaded episodes I heard on other apps just so I could share and comment on them. There are a few things I found lacking, but every single one is high on Perkins’ to do list, and I am patient with independent projects like this.
Use it if you want: a podcast app with a social network that makes it easy to share recommendations and audio clips on shows you love. For anyone with a group of podcast loving friends, this has the potential to be a game changer in how you get each other excited about shows. (Erik)
Radiopublic
RadioPublic, from the Public Radio Exchange, seeks to solve the problem of discovering great episodes through a playlist-based system (full disclosure: a couple of Bello-created playlists are available here and here).
First off, the app opens insanely fast. And in they have a great “explore” section filled with playlists and algorithmically recommended shows, plus awesome recommendation feature where you can “ask a librarian” and get a bespoke recommendation.
Little secret: the librarian is actually Ma’ayan Plaut (full disclosure: she’s also a Bello Collective member. Want to join her?). Ma’ayan also has a dedicated section within the app where you can view & listen to playlists she’s curated.
Their playlists are top-notch (again, we are a smidge biased). RadioPublic’s done a great job of reaching out to top producers, starting with those within the PRX community, from what I could tell, and using their recommendations for timely, relevant playlists.
I hope Josh Schwartz’s playlist curation is a regular feature: he’s employed full-time by PRX to do just that: curate some of the best podcasts from the PRX network. Frankly, if I weren’t so tied to certain podcasts, I’d love to bounce around playlists by topic, just to learn more about a given topic. I’m anticipating RadioPublic will expand this section to include playlists by category (such as history, science, etc) and allow you the ability to create your own and share them with friends, while potentially submitting them for syndication within the Explore section to the broader RadioPublic audience.
Dana Gerber-Margie & I have been on the beta version for a while now (thanks to meeting the creators at Podcast Movement in July), but, sometimes it still feels like it’s in beta, in some regards.
At first, there were a couple of quirks I was willing to overlook because I felt they were working from a different premise than I was coming from, and maybe I’m just not their target listener, so I waved off the inability to add an episode to my queue automatically.
But you can’t listen to an episode shared from the app to someone on either iOS or Android who doesn’t have it (unlike Overcast).
I had a glitch where an episode reloaded completely when I paused and came back to it a few hours later — but that’s been fixed in their latest release (1.1.2)
In fact, I tested this with Radiolab’s most recent episode by listening to the first 5 seconds of Robert Krulwich’s ad read, killing the app, then reopening and resuming the episode…only to hear the ad continue to be read by voiceover artist George Washington III in Charlotte, NC.
Seems like that’s due to how WNYC handles ad reads, though, and not the app.
One other minor quibble: I don’t like having to add episodes to my queue manually, but if you’re a casual listener, then it’s probably not a big deal.
I think Radiopublic does a great job of curating fresh, new content within well-curated playlists. I’m going to be using Radiopublic as one of my discovery tools, but just not my dedicated podcast app.
Use it if you want: to listen to curated playlists (or one-off episodes) as a casual listener and don’t want to listen to the same podcasts every week.
PS: When they update the app, you really should take a gander at the release notes. I promise they’re worth your while. (Matt)
Conclusion: It’s refreshing that this new batch of podcasting apps are more than iOS clones, with each having its own unique take on what listening to podcasts should mean. The upside is a more interesting set of choices and the downside is that as these apps become more different, you’ll find it difficult to have one app to rule them all. I’ve already found my listening experience to be splintered across different apps for different purposes. If you check the above apps out, you’ll probably find yourself keeping 60db for great short radio stories, keeping Tung for its easy to use social features, and keeping Radio Public for its excellent curation of playlists. So maybe instead of breaking up with your old app completely, it’s time to have an open relationship and spread the love.
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
