Podbean Announces Latest Innovations in Social Audio and Livestreaming

Podbean Live launched in 2019 and has released several new features to advance social audio and live podcasting

New York, NY (July 1, 2021) -Podbean is one of the pioneers of social audio, launching their Podbean Live platform in 2019 based on the needs of their podcasters and podcast listening community. Since that launch, Podbean’s development team has sought feedback from customers and continually developed the product with features and enhancements.

Podbean has just announced several innovations coming to the platform. Podbean Live will offer a Fan Club option in the next version of the app, allowing livestream fans to attain special privileges and providing a new source of revenue for hosts. Additionally, “sound check” will give hosts the opportunity to hear their audio playback when testing their livestreams. The app version has recently included a feature allowing hosts to send a prepared greeting to the audience when they enter the live room, and this will be coming soon on the web interface.

Additional 2021 Podbean Livestream upgrades:

• Along with sending gifts (virtual gifts that have cash value for the recipient) to the host, listeners can send gifts to co-hosts and call-in speakers.
• In the live room chats, users can @ other users to tag them in comments.
• Enhanced scheduling features, with a new scheduling layout and “add to calendar” option.
• The ability to replay recently finished live shows in the app.
• Hosts can invite co-hosts when scheduling their livestreams and the workflow was simplified for setting up live rooms and inviting speakers.
• Added a call-in waiting list.
• Made it easy for hosts to invite listeners as speakers directly.
• Quality optimizations: improved audio quality for hosts and call-in speakers, optimized the live room layout, call-in process, and mute/unmute workflow.

Additionally, Podbean has recently added private livestreaming for their business clients (mainly companies creating private, internal podcasts) so that only authenticated members of their organization can join.

About Podbean Live

Podbean Live is a robust audio livestreaming and social audio platform that runs on the Podbean app, tapping into Podbean’s strong listener community. Some of the features include:

• Free to anyone
• Hosts can run live rooms from their computer or the app
• Social audio: up to 8 speakers can call in at any one time, interactive chat
• Bonus engagement features for fans: super chat, virtual gifts, fan club
• Monetization made fun with virtual gifting
• Automatically recorded in the cloud and locally; Podbean hosted podcasts can also publish directly as a podcast
• Public livestreams promoted to the Podbean listener community
• Unlisted mode for remote recording or members-only/invite-only live rooms

Podbean Live has continued to grow since launch, with expansion in the number of live rooms being created and the audience. Top livestreamers are now earning significant revenue from the monetization features. In May, the top host made over $1900 and the average for the top 10 hosts was just over $400. 

Podbean has also been running virtual, interactive events on the platform. The Podcast Week live events bring podcasters and audiences together with live streamed panels, live episodes, and exclusive podcast episodes around specific topics. Storytelling Podcast Week is coming up in July.

To learn more about Podbean Live, visit https://www.podbean.com/livestream

Press contact: Shannon Martin, shannonm@podbean.com