
Ask HN: What features do you want from a podcast app? - thetanuj
I&#x27;m building an open source podcast app for Android, mostly for learning purpose. Data will come from listennotes.com and the app design and features will be heavily inspired from Spotify because I&#x27;m a big fan of Spotify UX.
I was wondering if I can add any specific feature to make it more interesting for frequent podcast listeners. Thank you.
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chupoamatik
So remember to add what Spotify failed miserably

\- Mark an entire Podcast as heard/listened

\- Disable recommendations needs to be an option

\- Start screen needs to be whatever the user want, so make it adjustable in
settings

\- Auto download and auto erase of played episodes

~~~
thetanuj
Great! All of it can done. The start screen will be filled with your recent
activities and podcasts related to the topics you choose. Why do you want to
disable recommendations though? Recommendations seem like a good for
discovering new podcasts.

~~~
chupoamatik
It's about not having the option

For instance Spotify always tries to make us listen to irrelevant podcast
makers, connected to political Fighting

There's no problem having recommendations The issue comes when you can't
disable then

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niyare
It may be a good idea to add pop-up games. How do I explain this. If I am
recording a podcast and say the first 10 listeners to click the pod-up on
their screen can claim a prize, that'll encourage people to open the app and
click the pop-up. I'm not technical so its hard to explain but yeah.....just a
way to make interactions between hosts and listeners etter

~~~
thetanuj
I like the gamification aspect and I know at least one big music/podcast app
which has really great click rates on their pop-up banners. Having said that,
this doesn't seem to fit well with what I'm trying to build, which is a no-
nonsense open source podcast app. Some might like the pop-ups you're talking
about but I'm sure that more than enough people will complain about it.

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bruceb
The apple podcast can put the newest episode first, so annoying. You look at
recently updated of the podcasts you have it shows some episodes, but you have
to click on available episodes to see by date order. Maybe I just haven't
figured it out.

I also use Podcast Republic. I subscribe to podcasts but I can't arrange the
order of which they show (the podcasts, not the episodes). I want to drag some
to the top. I don't have it set to auto download because I want to check out
the episode description before downloading.

~~~
thetanuj
I have used apple podcasts and I know what you're talking about. The UX of
that app is unbelievably bad. I'm sure that none of those issues will be in
this app.

~~~
bruceb
I meant The apple podcast CANT put the newest episode first, so annoying. but
you understood my point.

Yes hard to be worse than apple one.

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niyare
It may be a good idea to add pop-up games. How do I explain this. If I am
recording a podcast and say the first 10 listeners to click the pop-up on
their screen can claim a prize, that'll encourage people to open the app and
click the pop-up. I'm not technical so its hard to explain but yeah.....just a
way to make interactions between hosts and listeners easier. Happy to explain
this in detail (cultureclasspodcast@gmail.com) reply

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pctutor
Yes. One big button on the player that, when tapped, will take the last 30
seconds of audio and send it to me by email. When I'm out walking or driving
and something comes up in a podcast that I want to remember or take note of,
there is no easy way to do this currently. I use Podcast Addict now, but a
feature like that would be enough for me to change players.

~~~
thetanuj
This is really interesting. Although I was thinking that instead of emailing,
I can create a bookmark like feature. It will save the timestamp of the
episode which you can easily visit later. I'm definitely going to add this
feature.

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John_47
Search capability is key. I really like the ability to search for keywords in
episode titles and show notes that is provided by the Castbox app. Something
like this is super important to me. I fully support open source and would
prefer an app that is free and open, however. Linux user here.

~~~
thetanuj
I'll be using listennotes.com apis and it allows you to search podcasts,
episodes and descriptions. Overall, looks good.

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razkaplan
Hi, Check out [https://Audioburst.com](https://Audioburst.com), we offer tools
for both podcast creators and app publishers. You can freely use our SDK for
your app to get sound-bites from podcasts.

