Podbean Podcasting 2017: Onwards and Upwards!

2017 was a busy year here at Podbean. Our Podbean podcaster community now exceeds 160,000 podcasts! The Podbean app continues to grow in popularity, with over 1.5 million installs and 350,000 active weekly users (make sure you’re building engagement with your listeners there).

We continually improve our service and did a lot of feature optimization and behind-the-scene improvements throughout 2017. Here are just a few highlights:

More Social Share Options

You can now connect your podcast to Youtube to publish it in video format. We also created a video option for Facebook. In addition, we added auto-publish to Tumblr and WordPress.

The Power of the Email List

Email’s one of the best ways to ensure content gets seen (and heard). So, we made things even simpler for you this year by integrating MailChimp with our Podbean platform. Now, you can automatically send new episodes to your mailing list (and don’t forget to add a Mailchimp signup widget to your site—those email addresses are valuable!).

Growing Monetization Opportunities

We launched our dynamic ads insertion technology as a means to maximize your ad efficiency and revenue. Look for PodAds coming in 2018, which will further expand the podcast advertising landscape with opportunities for shows of all sizes and more targeted campaigns.

Better Data on Your Podcast

Podcasters can get an in-depth look at user listening behavior with User Engagement Intel. To understand how your audience consumes your podcast, simple download numbers aren’t enough. Now you can see how often users listen to an episode, how long they listen, what they skip and more.

Special Features and More Customization

We opened our API to developers, so more services can integrate with Podbean and you can fully customize the Podbean player. With this came the new Podbean app marketplace, offering special features like auto-upload from Dropbox, Time Bomb, and User Engagement Intel. Our designers also added various options to our podcast site themes and players.

Mobile Podcasting

We make it easy to podcast on the go right from the Podbean app on your mobile phone.

Keeping Your Podcast on the Cutting Edge

This year we got ahead of the curve by preparing the Podbean platform in advance of the iOS 11 new feed tags. We see the future in smart speakers and connected cars, so we developed the Podbean skill for Alexa and our app supports Android Auto.

Expanding Your Audience: Spotify Partnership

In response to podcaster requests, we signed on as a Spotify partner. You can now directly submit your show for Spotify through your Podbean dashboard. And, our team completed integration with Spotify’s API so you can view their stats in your dashboard.

The Pod Future is Bright

Everyone is predicting big things for podcasting in 2018. We’ve seen top brands, countless celebrities, and even TV shows/networks get into podcasting recently. We feel proud to see the breadth and depth of content our podcasters are creating. Special congratulations go out to our top podcasts from 2017! In 2018 we’ll be bringing you more monetization options, expanded features and new opportunities. Stay tuned.

Happy podcasting and thanks for being part of the Podbean family!

Make sure to join us on the Podcasting Smarter Facebook page and tune into our podcast.