One-Sentence Reviews of the Entire Podcast Listening Landscape

An excuse to diversify your podcasting app folder (or to create one)

Note: This is the first round of quick one-sentence reviews of podcast listening apps. Click here to see the second round.

Have you noticed that hardly a week goes by where a new podcasting or audio app isn’t released? It used to be that an occasional big profile release would try to dethrone the Apple Podcast App as the One App to Rule Them All. But lately there has been a pretty consistent release of smaller profile apps that are trying to do one or two things really well, like being great at social, discovery, or even search.

After recently taking an in depth look into three unique approaches to the podcast experience I decided it’s time to look at the entire big picture, and I’m here to tell you that it’s worth poking your head into the App Store (or Google Play) and seeing what’s up.

I tried to be as exhaustive as possible and to simplify things I limited myself to one sentence per app. Each link brings you to the app’s website but in some cases there is no website (😐) and I just linked to the iOS App Store. I split the different types of apps into broad categories and noted when the app is not free to use.

View this as your handy cheat sheet for catching up on the explosion of different ways to get audio into your brain.

The boring but useful default

Apple Podcasts: Has excellent search and still has the best directory, but quickly feels lacking when you subscribe to dozens of shows and want something a little more flexible.

Podcast apps 1.0

Usually similar in overall functionality to Apple Podcast App– with a basic main feed, but with various improvements to UI, settings, and features.

Overcast (free with ads, $10/year for premium): Slick and speedy UI with great playlist options as well as plenty of useful listening settings like being able to remove silences.

Pocket Casts ($4): Seems to be the most popular choice among podcast super nerds, with the ability to handle 100+ subscriptions better than most, a beautiful UI, lots of useful options, and the option to set up filters.

Stitcher: Well designed with most of the features you would want, the main page puts heavy emphasis on being able to jump right into some audio, and has a search function for episodes (rejoice!)

Acast: Meets your basic podcasting needs, offers premium content, and has its main selling points as a place for podcasters to be able to host and distribute their shows.

Podbean Podcast App: A hosting service that also has a decent podcast app, with easy playlist creation, the ability to see comments people have about each podcast, and easy access to public domain audiobooks.

Podcast apps 2.0

You can still get your favorite podcasts from these apps but their approach is unique or specific enough that they feel fresh. These are the next generation that are trying something a little different.

Otto Radio: News and podcasts tailored to your tastes within the time you have to listen, and a dead simple “create a station” feature that allows instant access to a playlist of stories around that theme.

Castro 2 ($4): You can easily deal with large amounts of subscriptions and episodes with the truly smart “triage” design, and is overall a great player for people who have a variety of listening needs with an overwhelming onslaught of shows to sort through.

Stabl: A barebones player where you simply tell the app your interests and how much time you have to listen, and it will spit out a few suggestions you can jump right into or refresh for more.

Audioboom: An app that tries to do a lot– an algorithm serves you news, sports, and podcasts based on your interests and you can upload your own audio directly to their servers.

Listen Notes: Has an amazing search function where you can actually search for keywords and EPISODES (!) and has a super streamlined listening experience (maybe too much so) that has just one big “listen later” list of shows.

Leela: Very similar stripped down feel to Listen Notes, with great episode and within channel search and the ability to set alerts for any term you want.

Breaker: The Twitter of podcast apps, where you can see what people you follow are listening and commenting on and your followers can see what you are into.

Podly: Pretty basic listening experience and similar to Breaker where you can see what your friends from Twitter or Facebook are listening to with the added fun of seeing a leaderboard of who has listened the most minutes.

60db: A hand curated (by Mr Algorithm) collection of short and timely news stories brought to you by ex-Netflix employees who know a thing or two about content selection (and was just redesigned last week).

RadioPublic: A well designed app that focuses heavily on human powered discovery with loads of interesting playlists from interesting people with good taste (including us!), and on top of all that– an actual podcast librarian who will recommend something special just for you.

Tung.fm: Decent as a podcast player but killer as a social network where you can both comment on and share audio clips of shows you love as well as see what people you follow are recommending.

Spreaker: The added bonus on top of being a typical podcatcher (also offers hosting options for podcasters) are curated “channels” that mix episodes from different podcasts that fit within a theme, like “Travelers Talk” or “Science Exploration”.

Clammr: The whole app is built around being able to share short clips of podcasts (up to 24 seconds) to followers and curating your own playlist of clips.

Spoke: This didn’t sway me from my preference to human curation but you can join the beta of this intriguing new podcasting app from SiriusXm where you tell the app what kind of audio interests you and it attempts to match you up with different “paths” (aka playlists).

The giants of other media dabbling in the podcast space

It’s inevitable that large tech companies that are in the audio world will push more and more into the podcasting space, and it’s interesting that as the two examples below show, they are currently more interested in basing their strategy on original content than competing with the 1.0 or 2.0 crowd above.

Audible Channels: Not a place to get all your usual podcasts, but if you are an Amazon Prime or an Audible member, it’s a no brainer to check out the Audible originals and curated special content.

Spotify: Wouldn’t work for me as a main podcast player (doesn’t have all the shows and too many hurdles to get to podcasts), but worth checking out for original content as well as the “word” genre, which has lots of amazing spoken word playlists including things like speeches, free audiobooks, and the lectures of Joseph Campbell.

When you don’t feel like using your phone

Most medium to large size podcasts have their own dedicated website where you can stream the show, but the below are increasingly popular secondary places to look.

Soundcloud: The YouTube of audio, where you can find a feed of almost every podcast.

YouTube: If you like YouTube functionality (especially if you have YouTube Red), don’t forget that many podcasts also post their feeds here, sometimes with extras.

Hard to categorize but important!

These are all fantastic apps/websites to know about but don’t fit neatly into the other categories.

Shortcut: An open source web app from This American Life that allows you to snip up to 30 seconds of one of their episodes (or any show if open source is taken advantage of) and share it with time-synced scrolling text.

Audiosear.ch Clipmaker: Similar to the Shortcut tool above, where you can easily turn an audio clip into a video that automatically overlays the correct text, but this includes all shows from the massive and endlessly searchable Audiosear.ch database.

Patreon: If you are a patron to any of your favorite podcasts, easily listen to the ad free version or bonus content through the app.

Audm (free trial, $8/month, $40/six months, $75/year): This has a monthly subscription fee but is an excellently curated selection of long form journalism that is read to you so you don’t miss out on the renaissance of excellent journalism.

Newsbeat (free with ads, $18/year, $2/month): Having the news read to you by humans is a great concept but this app would be more appealing with better design and a more user friendly way to control what stories you get (will be great with inevitable improvements).

Tunein: You can get podcasts, including an original true crime show, but this mostly feels targeted towards folks looking for a wide range of established genre radio stations like news (CNN, Fox, CNBC, etc), sports (MLB, ESPN, college football, etc) and music.

You are the feature

These are truly unique approaches to audio that allow for experimentation and community building where there are no big time established players (yet).

Anchor 2.0: Not a place to get the usual podcasts, but a fantastically designed and unique social audio experience that can best be described as a stylish mix between Snapchat stories and Facebook Live (but audio only).

Bumpers: Similar idea as Anchor where it’s all about recording yourself and following other people rather than traditional podcasts, but has a different user base and different design focuses that make it worth checking out.

Slick apps from large networks

I imagine you’ll see more major efforts like these, where large podcast networks will develop apps that are much more than simply a place to get all their podcasts in one spot.

NPR One: Listen to a tailored audio stream containing your local public radio station (or any other) as well as public radio or public radio-esque podcasts within this quick and well designed player.

BBC iPlayer Radio: A fantastic all in one app from the BBC, where you can stream all of their radio stations, listen to past programming, and check out all of their podcasts (a miss is no massive list, you’ll have to search to find certain shows).

Personal audio tour guide apps

These are the two big players in this space, and as soon as there are some tours in upstate NY, I’ll be all over these. The only self guided audio tour I’ve done was when I visited Alcatraz, and when done right, they can be incredibly effective.

TripScout: You can purchase walking tours of major metropolitan areas for $5 that includes many different locations within each city and seems like a great way to experience new or even familiar locations.

Detour: Very similar vibe to TripScout, with the added benefit of group sync and a high profile partnership with AirBnB.

Prominent shows that have their own app

The best example I could find is This American Life, where you can access the whole archive and search by contributor, but most of these types of apps are very basic that don’t offer compelling reasons to use instead of your main podcast player. If you want to explore some other examples from popular shows, check out the apps for WTF with Marc Maron (or for the whole Howl Network), The Moth, and On Being.

Hold on, I think another app just launched

Well that was A LOT, and the sad thing is I already know I missed at least a few. I think there is probably a large overlap between app developers and podcast fans, so I don’t see a slow down anytime soon of new and unique podcast apps hitting the market.

If you are reading this than you are probably in the power user category of listeners who have at least a few dozen shows you follow. I think the best strategy for capitalizing on the explosion of new apps as a podcast fan is to use one or two 1.0 apps, a couple different 2.0 apps that speak to you, and to keep playing with anything that seems cool like Anchor. Or maybe Apple will release some massive update, that you know, adds playlists and filter options, doesn’t crash, goes all in on social, allows comments and useful sharing, looks pretty, and generally doesn’t make subscribing to 100+ shows extremely painful. Unlikely, so I’ll keep hunting.

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.

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