PodLP Migrates to Podcast Index

PodLP for KaiOS has migrated to The Podcast Index, expanding its catalog to over 4 million podcasts and eliminating the need for manual submission to a separate index.

Why Migrate?

PodLP launched in June 2020, a few months before The Podcast Index launched in September 2020. At the time, Listen Notes was one of the only available podcast indexes, but at $180/m for just 5,000 requests, it was completely unaffordable. Since PodLP serves a large global community of listeners on budget feature phones, it doesn’t monetize at the same rate as listeners located primarily in the US or Europe. As a result, PodLP was built on its own podcast index and application programming interface (API) optimized for low cost.

Acquiring the initial list of RSS feeds was difficult, but maintaining and growing this list even harder. Shows get acquired and switch networks, get cancelled and stop producing updates, or change hosting companies and (hopefully) configure RSS redirects. Four years after launch, maintaining an affordable, up-to-date index without inadvertently dropping podcasts, displaying duplicates, or going out-of-sync has proven challenging. Not to mention, there’s a financial and environmental cost to running servers that poll for RSS updates. Systems like Podping help consolidate the otherwise decentralized podcast landscape, but incomplete adoption mean its still necessary to poll RSS.

For these reasons, PodLP has migrated to The Podcast Index and transitioned to just-in-time RSS conversion. This maintains compatibility across all published versions of PodLP without requiring users to update. Now PodLP users can search and discover from a growing catalog of 4M+ podcasts, and listen to the latest episodes of their favorite shows without delay.

PodLP and Podcasting 2.0

PodLP is the #1 podcast app for flip phones. It surpassed 10M+ downloads in 175+ countries. PodLP freely available for KaiOS on both the KaiStore and JioStore, as well as CloudMosa’s Cloud Phone. Since June 2021, PodLP supports many Podcasting 2.0 features that are part of the “podcast” namespace, including:

Although adoption across hosting companies is mixed, Podcasting 2.0 features like <podcast:alternateEnclosure> and <podcast:images> are uniquely valuable to PodLP. For example, most podcast artwork is optimized for quality and served at sizes of 3000x3000, while most flip phones have 240x320 (or smaller!) screens. While servers can downsize and compress artwork into thumbnails, often this leads to illegible text. Tags like <podcast:images> let podcasters tailor their artwork to devices ranging from flip phones to 4K televisions.

Sponsorship

PodLP has a unique audience comprised of first-time internet users and “digital detoxers” around the world, and dumb phones are making a comeback. Podcast sponsorship helps grow your listener base globally, and funds PodLP’s mission to make podcasts accessible to the next billion listeners. PodLP offers numerous sponsorship opportunities to get your podcast in front of new listeners. Contact sales@podlp.com to learn more.

#Podcasts #PodLP #Podcast Index #Podcasting 2.0