Cross-Platform Podcast Episode-Level Discovery That Surfaces Small Shows
With 4.5 million podcasts and most being dead feeds, discovery is fundamentally broken. Listeners do most of the heavy lifting because algorithmic recommendations skew toward bigger shows. Industry surveys confirm discovery is nonlinear, fragmented, and chart-dependent. No tool exists for episode-level cross-platform discovery that surfaces quality niche content regardless of show size.
The episode-level angle is critical. Show-level recommendations are a solved-ish problem. Episode-level is not. Transcription costs have cratered, making it feasible to index episode content at scale. The business model is likely affiliate commissions from podcast platforms plus premium features, not subscriptions. Start with a single niche (tech, true crime) and prove the recommendation quality before going broad.
landscape (3 existing solutions)
Discovery is platform-siloed (Spotify recommends Spotify, Apple recommends Apple) and show-level rather than episode-level. A cross-platform engine that indexes episodes by topic, transcribes content, and recommends specific episodes (not just shows) based on actual interests would be genuinely novel. a16z flagged this exact opportunity.