Piqd Audio Launches: Our Solution To The Podcast Discovery Problem
This article is at least a year old
Even though we’re in a golden age for podcast production, discovering new, high-quality podcasts is often difficult and time consuming: The “top 100” lists on big podcast apps like iTunes tend to recommend all the same shows (This American Life, Serial, Planet Money, etc.) forcing listeners to spend hours combing the web for new content.
That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of piqd audio, a podcast and audio documentary discover platform. Our talented team of curators—hailing from more than 22 countries around the world—browses the web for you, delivering the best podcasts from around the world to your inbox each and every day.
Why do we do this, you ask? Because podcast discovery is broken—and finding new podcasts takes a lot of time! Also, unlike articles, you can’t skim audio. By providing high-quality summaries and reviews, we provide a sneak preview of audio content, so you can decide if it’s worth listening to. Our goal is to become the number one destination on the web for podcast discovery.
What is piqd?
Piqd is a “slow news” startup, aiming to curate the highest quality audio content from all around the world, through the recommendations of experts in their field. It’s basically a discovery platform for high quality podcasts, curated by experts in their respective fields, and served to your inbox every day.
How does it work?
The idea is pretty simple: Experts in various fields recommend an outstanding podcast or piece of audio journalism once per week, and accompany their recommendations with a short review, mainly summarizing the episode and (implicitly) answering the question “why should the listeners care?”
The bigger vision:
There are many, many new excellent podcasts just waiting to be discovered. Piqd aims to provide a place where audio junkies can find new content to enjoy, while also helping great new podcasters be discovered. We are also committed to creating a more diverse audio world, which is reflected by our commitment to hire curators whose views are traditionally underrepresented in media.
“We have more than 60 curators from 21 different countries—and about half of them are women,” said Malia Politzer, executive editor of piqd. “This is deliberate, and ensures that the content on piqd is truly diverse. That means listeners will be exposed to podcasts on our platform that they’re not likely to find on their own.”
Listeners can choose to follow individual piqers, other members of the community, or subscribe to the channels that interest them—which include “climate and environment”, “health and sanity”, “technology and society”, “globalization and politics”, “global finds” featuring podcasts from experts’ regions, investigative journalism channel “deep dives” and economics channel “boom and bust”. Finally, “doing good” highlights constructive, solution-oriented podcasts.”
According to Frederik Fischer, founding editor of piqd: “Piqd is like a TV guide for quality audio content!”
This is a press release which we link to from Podnews, our daily newsletter about podcasting and on-demand. We may make small edits for editorial reasons.