My Mission for HyperCatcher – the Podcast app is to be the best podcast app for “Listeners” by being the best podcast app for “Podcasters”.
In order to deliver on that mission I built HyperCatcher Studio to give podcasters a level of control over their space in the HyperCatcher app that no other podcast app can deliver.
One of the many unique aspects of the HyperCatcher app is that it can display interactive content directly in the user’s podcast player and deliver notifications to the user at specific times during a podcast. This combination means podcasters can deliver important content to distracted listeners exactly when they want to receive it. What does that mean? Imagine this scenario:
The average listener to your podcast is probably doing something while listening: driving, folding laundry, doing the dishes, doing yard work. But you have some great content for them to enjoy later. So you tell them about your newsletter, or your Patreon page or your Twitter account and tell them to “sign up now”! But most likely, your listeners are busy with whatever task they’re doing while listening and don’t have time right now. They might even really want to donate or sign up for your newsletter, but by time they get time to go back… open the app… find the old episode they were listening to… find the show notes for your podcast… and find the link buried in all the other show notes they may never actually take that action you hoped they would take.
HyperCatcher already solved this problem by allowing you to add podcast chapters with links at specific times in the podcast where users could take actions. I wrote a blog about this back in April here: https://hypercatcher.com/2020/04/blog-post-1/
Unfortunately, podcast chapters are hard to use for Podcasters. Almost no Podcasts use them and even fewer apps support them.
Podnews even wrote a blog asking if Podcast Chapters are a waste of time?
https://podnews.net/article/chapter-points-a-waste-of-time
I think Podnews was on to something back in 2018 when Podcast Chapters were declared dead, but that’s because they don’t really make sense for podcasts. Podcast Chapters are an adaptation from the old days of downloadable Audio Books where chapters needed to be embedded in the MP3 File itself. Today that means podcast chapters can’t be loaded until the entire MP3 file has been downloaded. Only then can you parse out the bits of text data from between the audio data… it’s messy and takes forever.
HyperCatcher will continue to support MP3 Podcast Chapters, but today we’re introducing a better way to deliver timely and actionable information to your podcast listeners! HyperCatcher Studio allows podcasters to supplement their podcast on HyperCatcher with links, images, gifs, newsletter subscriptions, videos, donation buttons and much more!
HyperCatcher Studio is simple and easy to use and doesn’t require modifying your MP3 File in any way so you can add HyperCatcher Studio content to any of your old podcasts immediately. Also HyperCatcher doesn’t care where your podcast is hosted. Any podcast can be supplemented with podcast chapters now for FREE!
The Future and Podcasting 2.0
This new feature fulfills a small part of the long term vision I have for HyperCatcher. Ultimately, HyperCatcher studio has a long way to go and this Beta release is only a tiny step in a long journey towards better podcasts for everyone.
I think a large part of this future will be driven by the PodcastIndex.org project.
HyperCatcher currently hosts the Podcast Chapter content in it’s own databases but there is some discussion already of including podcast chapters as a part of the new Podcast Namespace introduced by developers at PodcastIndex.org
This is something I’ll be paying close attention to in the future because I think this is the best approach for keeping this information open and available to all platforms… they way podcasting should be.
In the meantime, checkout studio.hypercatcher.com for the current best way to share your content with podcast listeners!