Zeno Media Launches HLS for Podcasting, Delivering a Faster, Smarter Listening Experience
Zeno Media, the global streaming and podcast infrastructure company, today announced the rollout of HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) across its platform, bringing faster starts, smoother playback, and enhanced monetization and measurement tools to publishers worldwide. The deployment is now live, with several broadcasters already leveraging the upgrade to deliver higher-quality podcast and streaming experiences across their websites and apps.
Unlike traditional progressive downloads, HLS delivers podcasts as small, time-sliced segments. This modern approach improves start times, adapts audio quality to each listener’s connection (adaptive bitrate), reduces buffering on congested or low-bandwidth networks, and enables more flexible ad delivery and deeper analytics.
“Our mission is simple: make every play start fast and finish strong; on any device, any network,” said Cristian Onet, CTO, Zeno Media. “With HLS, we can adapt in real time to changing bandwidth, reduce stalling, and support modern ad formats, all while giving publishers segment-level telemetry they can trust. Broadcasters are already seeing the upgrade in reliability, quality, and revenue performance.”
What HLS on Zeno Unlocks
- Near-instant playback & fewer stalls: Segmented delivery starts quickly and adapts to real-world conditions.
- Adaptive bitrate (ABR): Right-sized quality for every connection, from mobile data to Wi-Fi.
- Modern ad options: More precise mid-roll opportunities and server-side insertion paths designed for seamless, context-aware placements.
- Richer measurement: Segment-level request data provides a clearer picture of consumption and completion.
- Future-ready: Support for emerging podcast standards and live/linear extensions as publishers evolve formats.
Zeno’s HLS support is available now, with video streaming capabilities coming in Q1 for partners and publishers on the Zeno platform.
For platform access or a technical overview, contact: cristian.onet@zenomedia.com.
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.