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Show HN: A Reddit style site to discuss podcast episodes

247 points by wolframhempel 4y ago

ushakov 4y ago
you can never grow a project like this if you demand money for entry as much as i hate ads, i'd say that for this type of project it's better to leave it free but show some relevant podcast ads
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- atentaten 4y ago
  >you can never grow a project like this if you demand money for entry How are you categorizing this project? What about it makes you think demanding money for entry is not feasible for growth?
- deleted 4y ago
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bigbillheck 4y ago
For the podcasts I'm interested in talking to other people about, there's already community discords full of listeners.
drpancake 4y ago
Interesting idea. You should send this to the Podnews newsletter - I'm sure they would feature it.
jatinkrmalik 4y ago
Pardon my skepticism but how is this any better than r/podcasts/ - an existing community of ~2Mn+ people?
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 4y ago
  How do people discuss specific podcasts there? Never visited that subreddit before but the top entries seems to be discussion about podcasts, not discussions about content in podcast episodes.
  - MarcellusDrum 4y ago
    Popular podcasts have their own subreddits that discuss each episode. Having a separate app/platform for this is going to be hard to sell.
    - pHollda 4y ago
      Exactly. CC r/PKA for example. It's like how TV Shows have their own subreddits, not just r/television.
    - tuwtuwtuwtuw 4y ago
      The person I replied to was comparing it to r/podcasts and bringing up the subscriber count there.
- soneil 4y ago
  It looks like it'd work pretty well if you're listening to them at the same site - so comments are tagged with the timestamp, soundcloud-esque. I can kinda see the logic - unfortunately sitting in front of my computer is my least favourite way to consume podcasts - and the workflow seems to break down quickly once you disassociate the two.
- janmarsal 4y ago
  The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.
- bin_bash 4y ago
  I haven't looked at this product but as a listener of podcasts I can think of 2 obvious reasons. First, r/podcasts is for all podcasts, I'd be more interested in a community for a specific podcasts (say my favorite one: Dithering). But also a r/dithering wouldn't really work that well since I might not be listening to a particular episode right when it came out. I'd prefer to talk to people about only the most recent episode I listened to. Of course a r/dithering could simply have a meta post for each episode but that isn't that easy to find.
tuwtuwtuwtuw 4y ago
I think the host sign-up flow is a bit odd. I can enter any podcast name and have that trigger an email to the authors of that podcast (multiple times? I hope not). Seems like it would make more sense that an author could create an account on the site and then link podcasts to it. Triggering an email to podcast authors because I selected their podcast in a drop down feels a bit spammy.
twistedcheeslet 4y ago
Promising once it has a volume of users. At first though, I imagine it would attract relatively new podcasts that don't yet have established communities. That said, until it reaches some critical mass which adds value to creators in terms of discovery and community, asking small time creators to fork out 360USD per year is quite a big ask.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > …asking small time creators to fork out 360USD per year is quite a big ask. Especially given that (1) podcasters would be the primary driver of users to this service, and (2) podcasters will also be doing all the moderation work.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  It is not very reddit like to charge money to post.
calpar111 4y ago
SheddingPattern 4y ago
Would it be interesting to do this for all knowledge artefacts? Books, articles, blog posts, blogs. It would create a graph of all these works after all they/respond to each other but also who reads what.
gman83 4y ago
I've been using Podchaser, it's less about comments, more about community reviews: https://www.podchaser.com/ https://www.podchaser.com/
pHollda 4y ago
This is unnecessary. The Reddit for podcast episodes is Reddit.
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  Some podcasts have reddit boards, some are mainly discussed on Twitter, some run Slack Channels, some publish on Youtube and use its live commentary in the chat - most use a mix of these. I appreciate this is a bit like the "we have 14 competing standards" XKCD, but there's a deeper, underlying problem that Podbabble tries to tackle: The majority of podcast discussion is either too general (i.e. debating the hashtag of a show as opposed to a specific episode), ephemeral (i.e. Twitter or live chat where discussion only happens within a few hours of episode release) and its almost always distributed (some on Reddit, some here, some there.) Podcasting - albeit still comparatively tiny) is the fastest growing medium and I am confident that having a central, purpose built place for listener engagement will add value to the ecosystem.
  - carabiner 4y ago
    /r/redscarepod /r/JoeRogan These aren't just discussion groups for the podcasts - many of the users in these subreddits don't even listen to the podcasts. The subreddits for these podcasts have evolved as their own, independent communities. Why would they just up and leave for yours?
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  >The Reddit for podcast episodes is Reddit. Yes and this is the problem, reddit is reddit and the comment-quality is terribly low, often toxic and dominated by a certain ideology that is particularly dominant and vocal on reddit in particular. I think this has potential if they manage to keep the comment quality higher, somehow.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    This is highly dependent on the moderators. If you have good moderators, you can have a subreddit with quality posts and comments rivaling HN. If you have bad ones, it can (and will) devolve into toxicity and ideological bubbling. I've seen both and I've seen ones in between. That said, maybe I'm just not in the loop, but I'm not aware of any subreddit dedicated to reviewing podcast episodes. Also, I'm not sure the Reddit format lends itself to creating a database of user reviews for certain episodes without heavy moderation and a heavy-handed approach to posting (for example, to avoid duplicates). A lot of this needs to be formulated into an automated system that only a custom-made site can offer.
newsclues 4y ago
rnernento 4y ago
Reddit never started by taking me to a giant signup page for a paid subscription. As someone who was mildly curious and might have checked it out of you presented something interesting I immediately left, maybe think about making the base landing page more interesting in hopes of gaining traction with users and then make another landing page for people you want to sell the service to.
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  Podbabble is free for users. It only charges you if you want to become a verified host and moderate your podcast boards. To me, this is preferable to selling your data and advertising to you. (https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021-09-12 https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021...)
  - Sakos 4y ago
    I think it's odd to give sole control of moderation to podcast creators. It quickly leads to creators sanitising feedback to prefer only positive feedback.
    - wolframhempel 4y ago
      That's fair and its something we will have to get right over time. But its also tricky to find an ethical monetization model for social media. You can sell your user's data to advertisers, or you can sell control or you can find some other channel. We're e.g. playing with the idea to add a live podcasting feature that allows user's to comment and tip during a show a la Twitch.
      - PogoPuppy 4y ago
        Your latter idea is golden, in my opinion. Some of the podcasts I subscribe to regularly complain about their live cast options.
      - sjostrom7 4y ago
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
There is only one episode of the largest podcast so looks like you have some work to do still.
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  that's not good - which one is that?
jamil7 4y ago
I couldn't find a way to delete an account, so signup with a burner if you want to check it out.
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  You can comment anonymously if you wish
  - jamil7 4y ago
    I didn't realise that thanks, however you still need to give people a way to delete their account.
    - troika 4y ago
      Absolutely, of course. We've just launched and there are a number of features missing
      - Kwpolska 4y ago
        In the times of GDPR and CCPA, there is no excuse for not having a simple way to delete your data. You should be able to revoke consent and remove your data as easily as you provided consent.
probably_wrong 4y ago
I like that I can read a comment for a podcast I've never heard of before and jump into the exact timestamp being discussed with a single click. I also like that I can read comments without logging in, so I can judge the quality of the discussion before deciding to sign up. Things that could be improved: the site is a bit slow and I got at least one broken image - I imagine it is getting HN'd right now, though, so I'll check again later. I also agree with the main page being unfriendly - if it weren't for the side bar, I would have probably never tried it. I also wanted to go to a show's full list of discussions, but I didn't find a way. Overall I like it.
maweki 4y ago
Somehow the podcast library is a bit mixed up with multiple podcasts of the same name. If you look for the "Greatest Generation" Star Trek podcast, the preview indeed shows the Star Trek podcast but clicking it brings you to a completely different podcast of the same name. Not a good look in terms of data quality here.
ekpyrotic 4y ago
Huge well done on launching. I can see a significant amount of scepticism in the comments, and I think that much of the feedback is valuable and important, such as the lack of a 'point of difference', interface, value-add above existing solutions, etc. But, a little disappointed with the pessimism in the comments in general. Someone has gone out of their way to build something from scratch and, regardless of whether it ticks all the boxes at the moment, I think that deserves positivity and a big 'well done'. Projects rarely ever launch 100pc perfect -- or even 20pc perfect. It is best to launch, adapt, and iterate. Note to poster: try to imagine that all the comments here start with 'Well done for launching, but something you might want to think about is...' Lots of the points are valid and require your attention, but they have been presented in a defeatist and negative way -- as if your launch is the end of matter and, as a result, it is all doomed to failure rather than providing a springboard to change, improve, and pivot as required.
- jayroh 4y ago
  I really appreciate this comment. Thank you for framing it this way, sincerely. Doing the work is hard. Putting yourself out there in a vulnerable state and hoping for the best is almost AS difficult. So, the best of luck to the OP. Adapt and grow.
- tacoluv 4y ago
  Agreed with all points. Also, look at the comment histories of most of the negative commenters. Haters gonna hate.
- pvg 4y ago
  But, a little disappointed with the pessimism in the comments The comments change as the thread develops so if you really want to help a Show HN out, just write your positive comment (or whatever other comment) about the thing without the meta. It ends up being either inaccurate or generating more meta. Let the Show HN be about the thing showhn.
- deleted 4y ago
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qhrrrasd 4y ago
To give it a try i typed "sceptics" and selected Sceptics Guide to the Universe which results in redirection to https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined and an error "Error: could not handle the request"
- unholiness 4y ago
  I got the same searching "mindscape" but tried again and it worked. I think it's a race condition in the search-as-you-type system (which also appears to have some flakiness, with searches from previous searches showing up after the latest search arrived).
deleted 4y ago
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swal_ 4y ago
I love the idea and monetization model, trawling through the rest of a subreddit to find the thread for a recent episode can be tedious. Congrats on the launch, I have a couple of questions. Is it only for discussions around recent episodes? Or is it just that the specific podcasts i've searched for don't list all episodes?
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  It really depends on the podcast. We run it of the podcast's RSS feed, some of which include the entire archive, some just a number of recent episodes. Some podcast players create their own archive to patch this which is something we might need to do as well.
peanut_worm 4y ago
Very cool idea but the website seems awfully slow with all the animations and loading screens, and the audio player seems to keep resizing and lagging.
falafelite 4y ago
I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I think this is really really cool. Would certainly become a better and better experience (I think?) as more people leave comments on episodes.
robotjosh 4y ago
I-M-S 4y ago
Neat idea! As a podcaster I would love to be able to get feedback on my episodes this way. Have you ever considered adding the ability to embed it on external websites? Also, I tried claiming my podcast and commenting but neither seems to have worked for me. Perhaps because of high traffic?
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  Really sorry. I can see repeated attempts for a podcast verification email sent out to a*@**o.org, but the email seems to bounce. If this is you, could you let me know at team@podbabble.com and I'd be happy to help sort it out.
dangoor 4y ago
I like the idea of this! I don't feel like I'm unusual in that I listen to my podcasts in a player app (Overcast, in my case), and always away from a computer. It would be really cool if this had an API that podcast apps could talk to for comments (maybe the creator of the feed has the ability to include a link to the API in the metadata, making an open ecosystem of podcast comment tools)
costcofries 4y ago
I wish your homepage made it easier to more quickly engage in podcast discussion. Right now, my feedback is that it takes too long to get to proof of value, your UI is confusing and it's not clear to me what, or how, I can get to 'discussing podcasts'.
- waylandsmithers 4y ago
  My thoughts exactly... I'm not sure if you can call it a reddit for podcasts if there's no logged out view
  - wolframhempel 4y ago
    I'm not sure I'm following. You can jump into any podcast discussion via the homepage, either by clicking a comment or by searching for a podcast. You don't need an account to see discussion boards and you can even comment anonymously.
    - giarc 4y ago
      You are referring to those comments in the top right of the page? If so, that isn't obvious, it looks like a demo image.
      - wolframhempel 4y ago
        fair enough :-)
    - zeven7 4y ago
      > I'm not sure I'm following Sign out of reddit and take a look at the homepage. You will see something very different from your homepage. It is a much easier interface to get started with. I lurked on reddit's homepage for a year before I ever created an account or looked into specific subreddits that might interest me.
- causality0 4y ago
  Yes, loading is quite slow. I typed in a name and the search result showed almost instantly but it took over thirty seconds to actually get to the comment section. There's no reason you need to embed a player for the episode on the comment page. If I'm going to go to a web page and comment on a podcast I've already listened to the podcast.
Shadonototra 4y ago
the only audio oriented comment system that i appreciate was the one from soundcloud you select the exact time, and you put your comment everyone listening to that music could see what people say about that very specific moment, as they listen encouraging podcast creators to time their podcast would allow platforms to offer precise comment system that users can consume and contribute to consistently but nobody cares, because the people who build the platforms are not users, it's not built organically, therefore they don't understand these kind of special things
- okr 4y ago
  yep, soundcloud popped up in my head immediately. Another missed chance by soundcloud.
CaptainJustin 4y ago
So glad to see this. There is a real opportunity to create a decent space for these discussions. Allowing the podcast host to determine the governance model could get interesting and the possibility of allowing podcasts to monetize their /r/ could make it attractive to them
- CaptainJustin 4y ago
  On the other side of things, I wonder if you could create a decent value prop for podcast clients to embed your chat bit inline or similar
float4 4y ago
First podcast on the right: Ben Shapiro. So I scroll down to check out the second podcast: Jordan Peterson. Not really in the mood to join such a community.
- husainfazel 4y ago
  They're using some kind of API to get the podcasts since a very rare pod that I followed showed up - so maybe that's just due to the listeners that BS and JP have.
  - wolframhempel 4y ago
    That's right. There is no sophisticated feed algorithm (yet :-). It literally just pulls the most recent comments on the platform -
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Yeah, I'd probably not highlight political podcasts on the front page if I was going for a general audience. Risks snowballing and becoming a partisan site (I'd also not highlight, say, a Crooked Media podcast there, despite being a fan...)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TameAntelope 4y ago
  Those are two of the most popular voices in this medium, it'd be needlessly limiting to exclude them if you're trying to launch a business around discussing podcasts. For every one of you, there may be a dozen people who are attracted to the platform for the fact that these two are included.
Zren 4y ago
There's no way of going from a podcast (/podcast/SHOW/EPISODE/UUID) to the show (/podcast/SHOW). I had to manually edit the URL. Visually, this is more like SoundCloud than Reddit, though that's probably because there's no discussions more than 2 comments deep to notice the difference.
gnicholas 4y ago
I’ve wanted to find a podcast app that would allow me to easily pause, select a segment, and then tweet (preferably with auto transcript) or share on FB. I assume that I could make an anon comment here and then share a link to my comment on social media? EDIT: someone mentioned that podcasters have to pay for access — if this is true, would it mean that I could only comment on certain podcasts? This would be a huge limitation for me, and would make me very unlikely to spend much time on the site. I would recommend letting people comment on any podcast, but if podcasts want to show up on your topical lists then they have to pay. There are probably other better ways to feature gate; this is just one idea.
shreyshnaccount 4y ago
Why not just r/podcadts?
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  Genuine question, cuz i wanted to build something similar, but didn't cuz looking at that subreddit it seemed it was not very active and all the podcast communities were very fragmented
unholiness 4y ago
The biggest thing missing for me getting started is a reddit-like "feed" showing where discussion is actually happening. Like the reddit logged-out homepage (/best, not /new). The value of Podbabble is the intersection of podcast episodes that 1) people are talking about and 2) I have listened to. Right now the only way for me to find that intersection is to start from (2), searching for every podcast I can think of, looking at several of the latest episodes and seeing there's no comments. It would be great to start from (1), so I can see right away which episodes people are discussing and see which ones might be relevant to me. Also, it seems like the only way to add a podcast to "my podcasts" is with an RSS feed link? Not from a link on the podcast's page I searched for? I'm unsure on what the desired setup workflow is.
- cheriot 4y ago
  100% this ^. I listen podcasts daily, am interested in discovering new ones, and do not create any podcasts. Looking at the home page I'm not sure how to find any content. Definitely not interested in creating an account just to see what's there. I recommend reading Reddit's origin story. There needs to be interesting content to get the first users to create content. Maybe the goal is to sell podcasters and get them to bring their audience? Even then I think you need a good home page experience to hook those listeners.
  - leobg 4y ago
    Any URL recommendations for reading up on Reddit’s origin story?
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Why would anyone want to recreate Reddit? Discovery can be its own app that is very good at recommending podcasts. This can be for discussions, like how forums used to be. Keep them separate, because the world needs to get back to what we had with forums where people interested in subjects sought ought a place to discuss them. Back then actual discussions happened and the entire world wasn’t a giant flamewar.
    - 4y ago
owlbynight 4y ago
Great idea, but bad execution. UI is not good. I expected examples of popular podcasts on the front page that I could immediately engage with. However, I was met by confusion. It took me way too long to realize that the search bar was the only method of discovery. In my opinion, this isn't even at the beta level yet, let alone at a point where you should be asking for a subscription fee that high. I'll keep an eye on this because this interests me, but the initial red flags give me pause. You need a talented UI/UX person pretty badly.
- deleted 4y ago
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mcluck 4y ago
This looks like it's still in the early days but are there any plans to integrate with other podcast providers? I usually listen to podcasts via Spotify and it could be cool to see the comments streaming by like they were lyrics or the chat on a Twitch stream.
Kwpolska 4y ago
The discovery experience is terrible. There’s a feed of recent comments, but the largest and most noticeable piece of content is the podcast artwork, not the comment text (and the layout feels a bit unintuitive). To find podcasts, I would need to manually copy all podcast names into the (very slow) search box. And then most of them would have 0 comments, since the service is new, or my podcast taste is niche. It might be better to have a list of shows, sorted by comment count (or otherwise popularity on your site).
- deleted 4y ago
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tomschwiha 4y ago
As you target also European users you should look into the cookie consent - continue browsing the site as accepting cookies is no consent.
- tasuki 4y ago
  I'm European, and don't want to see any cookie consent banners/popups ever. They are awful. If you don't want cookies, your browser has a perfectly fine setting to disable them.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    And IANAL but AIUI most of those banners are illegal anyways; just browsing the site isn't consent and you're generally not allowed to force the issue unless the cookies in question are actually functionally useful to the user. At least I think that's how it works, I'm really not a lawyer and this isn't something that I pay much attention to.
getpost 4y ago
Site QC: I clicked on the Twitter link in the footer. It references podbabble1, an account that doesn't exist. https://twitter.com/podbabble https://twitter.com/podbabble exists though.
getpost 4y ago
$29/mo seems high for the vast majority of podcasts, which are labors of love run on shoestring budgets. Of course, it's peanuts for the high traffic sites. Did you consider a Dropbox-like pricing model, e.g., free for low-traffic sites?
- cheriot 4y ago
  Especially if podcasters will bring their audience a free tier can boost growth. Then charge for power tools. Find the things that professional podcasters need that amateur podcasters don't and charge for those.
npollock 4y ago
A few challenges I think you should consider: 1. People do their podcast listening on other platforms/players - what's the incentive for them to comment/post on Podbabble? 2. Podcasts have existing community/discussion on other platforms (FB, Discord, etc) that are free - what would motivate them to pay this service? 3. Could you demonstrate that Podbabble drives growth/downloads? That would motivate hosts and podcast marketers
jjwiseman 4y ago
Also see FanFare, the metafilter site for discussing podcasts (and movies, TV, and books): https://fanfare.metafilter.com https://fanfare.metafilter.com. Costs $5 for a lifetime membership.
shafyy 4y ago
When I search for "Absolutely Mental" and click on any season, it leads to this error page: https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined
rc_mob 4y ago
its amazing you tracked so many episodes somehow. i think one small thing to add is just a 5 star rating of each episode or something
alaxsxaq 4y ago
I searched for two podcasts; one failed with an error ('Error: could not handle the request) [No Agenda]. I tested another one, [eggchasers], and that worked reasonably well. My main criticism is that, when a search returns something meaningful, there is not a lot there to compel me to create an account and drill in deeper. If I were designing this, I would seed the 'sign up' presentation to new users with some relevant bits from the conversations which are happening on your site. If there are no current conversations, then some message which would spark my desire to start one. Also, what value does the acast privacy link for each episode provide that wouldn't alternatively be provided by some header element?
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
Reddit's design is based on IRC. Subreddits are channels. You could just say your site is like that.
Aachen 4y ago
How does this work? I went to an episode of Nerdland, posted a comment, saw a brief loading icon and the input area emptied itself and... poof, nothing happened. Reloaded page, no comment. Tried posting again, but no comment appeared. Is the commenting system overloaded? Do I need to login first (it doesn't say so)? Does it need to be able to talk to Stripe the payment network to place comments (TrackerControl app shows that as the only detected tracker while using the site)? I didn't include links or markup, so if it was detected as spam (again: there's no mention of that, no error, no nothing) then I'd not know why.
japhyr 4y ago
Are there any licensing issues here? How are podcasts loaded? I'm having a hard time believing everyone who produces a podcast is happy to have their shows played through a site that is looking to make money from their content.
jasonjmcghee 4y ago
Small bit of feedback! I wonder how it would impact the homepage to inset the thumbnails within the comment and shrink them. It could make a pretty big impact on use of real estate. On mobile, i had to scroll pretty far between comments.

247 points by wolframhempel 4y ago

you can never grow a project like this if you demand money for entry as much as i hate ads, i'd say that for this type of project it's better to leave it free but show some relevant podcast ads

deleted 4y ago
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atentaten 4y ago
>you can never grow a project like this if you demand money for entry How are you categorizing this project? What about it makes you think demanding money for entry is not feasible for growth?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bigbillheck 4y ago

For the podcasts I'm interested in talking to other people about, there's already community discords full of listeners.

drpancake 4y ago

Interesting idea. You should send this to the Podnews newsletter - I'm sure they would feature it.

jatinkrmalik 4y ago

Pardon my skepticism but how is this any better than r/podcasts/ - an existing community of ~2Mn+ people?

tuwtuwtuwtuw 4y ago
How do people discuss specific podcasts there? Never visited that subreddit before but the top entries seems to be discussion about podcasts, not discussions about content in podcast episodes.
- MarcellusDrum 4y ago
  Popular podcasts have their own subreddits that discuss each episode. Having a separate app/platform for this is going to be hard to sell.
  - pHollda 4y ago
    Exactly. CC r/PKA for example. It's like how TV Shows have their own subreddits, not just r/television.
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 4y ago
    The person I replied to was comparing it to r/podcasts and bringing up the subscriber count there.
soneil 4y ago
It looks like it'd work pretty well if you're listening to them at the same site - so comments are tagged with the timestamp, soundcloud-esque. I can kinda see the logic - unfortunately sitting in front of my computer is my least favourite way to consume podcasts - and the workflow seems to break down quickly once you disassociate the two.
janmarsal 4y ago
The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.
bin_bash 4y ago
I haven't looked at this product but as a listener of podcasts I can think of 2 obvious reasons. First, r/podcasts is for all podcasts, I'd be more interested in a community for a specific podcasts (say my favorite one: Dithering). But also a r/dithering wouldn't really work that well since I might not be listening to a particular episode right when it came out. I'd prefer to talk to people about only the most recent episode I listened to. Of course a r/dithering could simply have a meta post for each episode but that isn't that easy to find.

tuwtuwtuwtuw 4y ago

I think the host sign-up flow is a bit odd. I can enter any podcast name and have that trigger an email to the authors of that podcast (multiple times? I hope not). Seems like it would make more sense that an author could create an account on the site and then link podcasts to it. Triggering an email to podcast authors because I selected their podcast in a drop down feels a bit spammy.

twistedcheeslet 4y ago

Promising once it has a volume of users. At first though, I imagine it would attract relatively new podcasts that don't yet have established communities. That said, until it reaches some critical mass which adds value to creators in terms of discovery and community, asking small time creators to fork out 360USD per year is quite a big ask.

CharlesW 4y ago
> …asking small time creators to fork out 360USD per year is quite a big ask. Especially given that (1) podcasters would be the primary driver of users to this service, and (2) podcasters will also be doing all the moderation work.
quickthrower2 4y ago
It is not very reddit like to charge money to post.

calpar111 4y ago

SheddingPattern 4y ago

Would it be interesting to do this for all knowledge artefacts? Books, articles, blog posts, blogs. It would create a graph of all these works after all they/respond to each other but also who reads what.

gman83 4y ago

I've been using Podchaser, it's less about comments, more about community reviews: https://www.podchaser.com/ https://www.podchaser.com/

pHollda 4y ago

This is unnecessary. The Reddit for podcast episodes is Reddit.

wolframhempel 4y ago
Some podcasts have reddit boards, some are mainly discussed on Twitter, some run Slack Channels, some publish on Youtube and use its live commentary in the chat - most use a mix of these. I appreciate this is a bit like the "we have 14 competing standards" XKCD, but there's a deeper, underlying problem that Podbabble tries to tackle: The majority of podcast discussion is either too general (i.e. debating the hashtag of a show as opposed to a specific episode), ephemeral (i.e. Twitter or live chat where discussion only happens within a few hours of episode release) and its almost always distributed (some on Reddit, some here, some there.) Podcasting - albeit still comparatively tiny) is the fastest growing medium and I am confident that having a central, purpose built place for listener engagement will add value to the ecosystem.
- carabiner 4y ago
  /r/redscarepod /r/JoeRogan These aren't just discussion groups for the podcasts - many of the users in these subreddits don't even listen to the podcasts. The subreddits for these podcasts have evolved as their own, independent communities. Why would they just up and leave for yours?
raspberry1337 4y ago
>The Reddit for podcast episodes is Reddit. Yes and this is the problem, reddit is reddit and the comment-quality is terribly low, often toxic and dominated by a certain ideology that is particularly dominant and vocal on reddit in particular. I think this has potential if they manage to keep the comment quality higher, somehow.
- Sakos 4y ago
  This is highly dependent on the moderators. If you have good moderators, you can have a subreddit with quality posts and comments rivaling HN. If you have bad ones, it can (and will) devolve into toxicity and ideological bubbling. I've seen both and I've seen ones in between. That said, maybe I'm just not in the loop, but I'm not aware of any subreddit dedicated to reviewing podcast episodes. Also, I'm not sure the Reddit format lends itself to creating a database of user reviews for certain episodes without heavy moderation and a heavy-handed approach to posting (for example, to avoid duplicates). A lot of this needs to be formulated into an automated system that only a custom-made site can offer.

newsclues 4y ago

rnernento 4y ago

Reddit never started by taking me to a giant signup page for a paid subscription. As someone who was mildly curious and might have checked it out of you presented something interesting I immediately left, maybe think about making the base landing page more interesting in hopes of gaining traction with users and then make another landing page for people you want to sell the service to.

wolframhempel 4y ago
Podbabble is free for users. It only charges you if you want to become a verified host and moderate your podcast boards. To me, this is preferable to selling your data and advertising to you. (https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021-09-12 https://www.reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy-revision-2021...)
- Sakos 4y ago
  I think it's odd to give sole control of moderation to podcast creators. It quickly leads to creators sanitising feedback to prefer only positive feedback.
  - wolframhempel 4y ago
    That's fair and its something we will have to get right over time. But its also tricky to find an ethical monetization model for social media. You can sell your user's data to advertisers, or you can sell control or you can find some other channel. We're e.g. playing with the idea to add a live podcasting feature that allows user's to comment and tip during a show a la Twitch.
    - PogoPuppy 4y ago
      Your latter idea is golden, in my opinion. Some of the podcasts I subscribe to regularly complain about their live cast options.
    - sjostrom7 4y ago

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

There is only one episode of the largest podcast so looks like you have some work to do still.

wolframhempel 4y ago
that's not good - which one is that?

jamil7 4y ago

I couldn't find a way to delete an account, so signup with a burner if you want to check it out.

wolframhempel 4y ago
You can comment anonymously if you wish
- jamil7 4y ago
  I didn't realise that thanks, however you still need to give people a way to delete their account.
  - troika 4y ago
    Absolutely, of course. We've just launched and there are a number of features missing
    - Kwpolska 4y ago
      In the times of GDPR and CCPA, there is no excuse for not having a simple way to delete your data. You should be able to revoke consent and remove your data as easily as you provided consent.

probably_wrong 4y ago

I like that I can read a comment for a podcast I've never heard of before and jump into the exact timestamp being discussed with a single click. I also like that I can read comments without logging in, so I can judge the quality of the discussion before deciding to sign up. Things that could be improved: the site is a bit slow and I got at least one broken image - I imagine it is getting HN'd right now, though, so I'll check again later. I also agree with the main page being unfriendly - if it weren't for the side bar, I would have probably never tried it. I also wanted to go to a show's full list of discussions, but I didn't find a way. Overall I like it.

maweki 4y ago

Somehow the podcast library is a bit mixed up with multiple podcasts of the same name. If you look for the "Greatest Generation" Star Trek podcast, the preview indeed shows the Star Trek podcast but clicking it brings you to a completely different podcast of the same name. Not a good look in terms of data quality here.

ekpyrotic 4y ago

Huge well done on launching. I can see a significant amount of scepticism in the comments, and I think that much of the feedback is valuable and important, such as the lack of a 'point of difference', interface, value-add above existing solutions, etc. But, a little disappointed with the pessimism in the comments in general. Someone has gone out of their way to build something from scratch and, regardless of whether it ticks all the boxes at the moment, I think that deserves positivity and a big 'well done'. Projects rarely ever launch 100pc perfect -- or even 20pc perfect. It is best to launch, adapt, and iterate. Note to poster: try to imagine that all the comments here start with 'Well done for launching, but something you might want to think about is...' Lots of the points are valid and require your attention, but they have been presented in a defeatist and negative way -- as if your launch is the end of matter and, as a result, it is all doomed to failure rather than providing a springboard to change, improve, and pivot as required.

jayroh 4y ago
I really appreciate this comment. Thank you for framing it this way, sincerely. Doing the work is hard. Putting yourself out there in a vulnerable state and hoping for the best is almost AS difficult. So, the best of luck to the OP. Adapt and grow.
tacoluv 4y ago
Agreed with all points. Also, look at the comment histories of most of the negative commenters. Haters gonna hate.
pvg 4y ago
But, a little disappointed with the pessimism in the comments The comments change as the thread develops so if you really want to help a Show HN out, just write your positive comment (or whatever other comment) about the thing without the meta. It ends up being either inaccurate or generating more meta. Let the Show HN be about the thing showhn.
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qhrrrasd 4y ago

To give it a try i typed "sceptics" and selected Sceptics Guide to the Universe which results in redirection to https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined and an error "Error: could not handle the request"

unholiness 4y ago
I got the same searching "mindscape" but tried again and it worked. I think it's a race condition in the search-as-you-type system (which also appears to have some flakiness, with searches from previous searches showing up after the latest search arrived).

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swal_ 4y ago

I love the idea and monetization model, trawling through the rest of a subreddit to find the thread for a recent episode can be tedious. Congrats on the launch, I have a couple of questions. Is it only for discussions around recent episodes? Or is it just that the specific podcasts i've searched for don't list all episodes?

wolframhempel 4y ago
It really depends on the podcast. We run it of the podcast's RSS feed, some of which include the entire archive, some just a number of recent episodes. Some podcast players create their own archive to patch this which is something we might need to do as well.

peanut_worm 4y ago

Very cool idea but the website seems awfully slow with all the animations and loading screens, and the audio player seems to keep resizing and lagging.

falafelite 4y ago

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I think this is really really cool. Would certainly become a better and better experience (I think?) as more people leave comments on episodes.

robotjosh 4y ago

I-M-S 4y ago

Neat idea! As a podcaster I would love to be able to get feedback on my episodes this way. Have you ever considered adding the ability to embed it on external websites? Also, I tried claiming my podcast and commenting but neither seems to have worked for me. Perhaps because of high traffic?

wolframhempel 4y ago
Really sorry. I can see repeated attempts for a podcast verification email sent out to a*@**o.org, but the email seems to bounce. If this is you, could you let me know at team@podbabble.com and I'd be happy to help sort it out.

dangoor 4y ago

I like the idea of this! I don't feel like I'm unusual in that I listen to my podcasts in a player app (Overcast, in my case), and always away from a computer. It would be really cool if this had an API that podcast apps could talk to for comments (maybe the creator of the feed has the ability to include a link to the API in the metadata, making an open ecosystem of podcast comment tools)

costcofries 4y ago

I wish your homepage made it easier to more quickly engage in podcast discussion. Right now, my feedback is that it takes too long to get to proof of value, your UI is confusing and it's not clear to me what, or how, I can get to 'discussing podcasts'.

waylandsmithers 4y ago
My thoughts exactly... I'm not sure if you can call it a reddit for podcasts if there's no logged out view
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  I'm not sure I'm following. You can jump into any podcast discussion via the homepage, either by clicking a comment or by searching for a podcast. You don't need an account to see discussion boards and you can even comment anonymously.
  - giarc 4y ago
    You are referring to those comments in the top right of the page? If so, that isn't obvious, it looks like a demo image.
    - wolframhempel 4y ago
      fair enough :-)
  - zeven7 4y ago
    > I'm not sure I'm following Sign out of reddit and take a look at the homepage. You will see something very different from your homepage. It is a much easier interface to get started with. I lurked on reddit's homepage for a year before I ever created an account or looked into specific subreddits that might interest me.
causality0 4y ago
Yes, loading is quite slow. I typed in a name and the search result showed almost instantly but it took over thirty seconds to actually get to the comment section. There's no reason you need to embed a player for the episode on the comment page. If I'm going to go to a web page and comment on a podcast I've already listened to the podcast.

Shadonototra 4y ago

the only audio oriented comment system that i appreciate was the one from soundcloud you select the exact time, and you put your comment everyone listening to that music could see what people say about that very specific moment, as they listen encouraging podcast creators to time their podcast would allow platforms to offer precise comment system that users can consume and contribute to consistently but nobody cares, because the people who build the platforms are not users, it's not built organically, therefore they don't understand these kind of special things

okr 4y ago
yep, soundcloud popped up in my head immediately. Another missed chance by soundcloud.

CaptainJustin 4y ago

So glad to see this. There is a real opportunity to create a decent space for these discussions. Allowing the podcast host to determine the governance model could get interesting and the possibility of allowing podcasts to monetize their /r/ could make it attractive to them

CaptainJustin 4y ago
On the other side of things, I wonder if you could create a decent value prop for podcast clients to embed your chat bit inline or similar

float4 4y ago

First podcast on the right: Ben Shapiro. So I scroll down to check out the second podcast: Jordan Peterson. Not really in the mood to join such a community.

husainfazel 4y ago
They're using some kind of API to get the podcasts since a very rare pod that I followed showed up - so maybe that's just due to the listeners that BS and JP have.
- wolframhempel 4y ago
  That's right. There is no sophisticated feed algorithm (yet :-). It literally just pulls the most recent comments on the platform -
bee_rider 4y ago
Yeah, I'd probably not highlight political podcasts on the front page if I was going for a general audience. Risks snowballing and becoming a partisan site (I'd also not highlight, say, a Crooked Media podcast there, despite being a fan...)
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TameAntelope 4y ago
Those are two of the most popular voices in this medium, it'd be needlessly limiting to exclude them if you're trying to launch a business around discussing podcasts. For every one of you, there may be a dozen people who are attracted to the platform for the fact that these two are included.

Zren 4y ago

There's no way of going from a podcast (/podcast/SHOW/EPISODE/UUID) to the show (/podcast/SHOW). I had to manually edit the URL. Visually, this is more like SoundCloud than Reddit, though that's probably because there's no discussions more than 2 comments deep to notice the difference.

gnicholas 4y ago

I’ve wanted to find a podcast app that would allow me to easily pause, select a segment, and then tweet (preferably with auto transcript) or share on FB. I assume that I could make an anon comment here and then share a link to my comment on social media? EDIT: someone mentioned that podcasters have to pay for access — if this is true, would it mean that I could only comment on certain podcasts? This would be a huge limitation for me, and would make me very unlikely to spend much time on the site. I would recommend letting people comment on any podcast, but if podcasts want to show up on your topical lists then they have to pay. There are probably other better ways to feature gate; this is just one idea.

shreyshnaccount 4y ago

Why not just r/podcadts?

shreyshnaccount 4y ago
Genuine question, cuz i wanted to build something similar, but didn't cuz looking at that subreddit it seemed it was not very active and all the podcast communities were very fragmented

unholiness 4y ago

The biggest thing missing for me getting started is a reddit-like "feed" showing where discussion is actually happening. Like the reddit logged-out homepage (/best, not /new). The value of Podbabble is the intersection of podcast episodes that 1) people are talking about and 2) I have listened to. Right now the only way for me to find that intersection is to start from (2), searching for every podcast I can think of, looking at several of the latest episodes and seeing there's no comments. It would be great to start from (1), so I can see right away which episodes people are discussing and see which ones might be relevant to me. Also, it seems like the only way to add a podcast to "my podcasts" is with an RSS feed link? Not from a link on the podcast's page I searched for? I'm unsure on what the desired setup workflow is.

cheriot 4y ago
100% this ^. I listen podcasts daily, am interested in discovering new ones, and do not create any podcasts. Looking at the home page I'm not sure how to find any content. Definitely not interested in creating an account just to see what's there. I recommend reading Reddit's origin story. There needs to be interesting content to get the first users to create content. Maybe the goal is to sell podcasters and get them to bring their audience? Even then I think you need a good home page experience to hook those listeners.
- leobg 4y ago
  Any URL recommendations for reading up on Reddit’s origin story?
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Why would anyone want to recreate Reddit? Discovery can be its own app that is very good at recommending podcasts. This can be for discussions, like how forums used to be. Keep them separate, because the world needs to get back to what we had with forums where people interested in subjects sought ought a place to discuss them. Back then actual discussions happened and the entire world wasn’t a giant flamewar.
  - 4y ago

owlbynight 4y ago

Great idea, but bad execution. UI is not good. I expected examples of popular podcasts on the front page that I could immediately engage with. However, I was met by confusion. It took me way too long to realize that the search bar was the only method of discovery. In my opinion, this isn't even at the beta level yet, let alone at a point where you should be asking for a subscription fee that high. I'll keep an eye on this because this interests me, but the initial red flags give me pause. You need a talented UI/UX person pretty badly.

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mcluck 4y ago

This looks like it's still in the early days but are there any plans to integrate with other podcast providers? I usually listen to podcasts via Spotify and it could be cool to see the comments streaming by like they were lyrics or the chat on a Twitch stream.

Kwpolska 4y ago

The discovery experience is terrible. There’s a feed of recent comments, but the largest and most noticeable piece of content is the podcast artwork, not the comment text (and the layout feels a bit unintuitive). To find podcasts, I would need to manually copy all podcast names into the (very slow) search box. And then most of them would have 0 comments, since the service is new, or my podcast taste is niche. It might be better to have a list of shows, sorted by comment count (or otherwise popularity on your site).

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tomschwiha 4y ago

As you target also European users you should look into the cookie consent - continue browsing the site as accepting cookies is no consent.

tasuki 4y ago
I'm European, and don't want to see any cookie consent banners/popups ever. They are awful. If you don't want cookies, your browser has a perfectly fine setting to disable them.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  And IANAL but AIUI most of those banners are illegal anyways; just browsing the site isn't consent and you're generally not allowed to force the issue unless the cookies in question are actually functionally useful to the user. At least I think that's how it works, I'm really not a lawyer and this isn't something that I pay much attention to.

getpost 4y ago

Site QC: I clicked on the Twitter link in the footer. It references podbabble1, an account that doesn't exist. https://twitter.com/podbabble https://twitter.com/podbabble exists though.

getpost 4y ago

$29/mo seems high for the vast majority of podcasts, which are labors of love run on shoestring budgets. Of course, it's peanuts for the high traffic sites. Did you consider a Dropbox-like pricing model, e.g., free for low-traffic sites?

cheriot 4y ago
Especially if podcasters will bring their audience a free tier can boost growth. Then charge for power tools. Find the things that professional podcasters need that amateur podcasters don't and charge for those.

npollock 4y ago

A few challenges I think you should consider: 1. People do their podcast listening on other platforms/players - what's the incentive for them to comment/post on Podbabble? 2. Podcasts have existing community/discussion on other platforms (FB, Discord, etc) that are free - what would motivate them to pay this service? 3. Could you demonstrate that Podbabble drives growth/downloads? That would motivate hosts and podcast marketers

jjwiseman 4y ago

Also see FanFare, the metafilter site for discussing podcasts (and movies, TV, and books): https://fanfare.metafilter.com https://fanfare.metafilter.com. Costs $5 for a lifetime membership.

shafyy 4y ago

When I search for "Absolutely Mental" and click on any season, it leads to this error page: https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined https://podbabble.com/podcast/undefined

rc_mob 4y ago

its amazing you tracked so many episodes somehow. i think one small thing to add is just a 5 star rating of each episode or something

alaxsxaq 4y ago

I searched for two podcasts; one failed with an error ('Error: could not handle the request) [No Agenda]. I tested another one, [eggchasers], and that worked reasonably well. My main criticism is that, when a search returns something meaningful, there is not a lot there to compel me to create an account and drill in deeper. If I were designing this, I would seed the 'sign up' presentation to new users with some relevant bits from the conversations which are happening on your site. If there are no current conversations, then some message which would spark my desire to start one. Also, what value does the acast privacy link for each episode provide that wouldn't alternatively be provided by some header element?

NaturalPhallacy 4y ago

Reddit's design is based on IRC. Subreddits are channels. You could just say your site is like that.

Aachen 4y ago

How does this work? I went to an episode of Nerdland, posted a comment, saw a brief loading icon and the input area emptied itself and... poof, nothing happened. Reloaded page, no comment. Tried posting again, but no comment appeared. Is the commenting system overloaded? Do I need to login first (it doesn't say so)? Does it need to be able to talk to Stripe the payment network to place comments (TrackerControl app shows that as the only detected tracker while using the site)? I didn't include links or markup, so if it was detected as spam (again: there's no mention of that, no error, no nothing) then I'd not know why.

japhyr 4y ago

Are there any licensing issues here? How are podcasts loaded? I'm having a hard time believing everyone who produces a podcast is happy to have their shows played through a site that is looking to make money from their content.

jasonjmcghee 4y ago

Small bit of feedback! I wonder how it would impact the homepage to inset the thumbnails within the comment and shrink them. It could make a pretty big impact on use of real estate. On mobile, i had to scroll pretty far between comments.