Riverside.fm is a new startup with an easy-to-use platform for recording professional-quality video podcasts.
In fact, although the company only recently came out of stealth, it already has a number of high-profile customers, including TechCrunch’s parent company (Verizon Media) and Hillary Clinton, who’s using Riverside.fm to record her new podcast “You and Me Both with Hillary Clinton.”
“Just imagine, we needed a recording platform that could help us make a podcast during a pandemic, and, boy, did they step up,” Clinton said in a statement.
The startup was founded by brothers Nadav and Gideon Keyson — Nadav, who serves as CEO (Gideon is CTO), explained that they first created a platform where politicians could participate in video debates, but then realized there was a more promising business model for a broader podcasting tool.
In addition to officially launching, Riverside.fm is announcing that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Oren Zeev.
Gideon gave me a quick demo of the platform, showing me that it’s a fairly straightforward recording experience — the host just shares a link with the guests, no software installation necessary. There are plenty of other browser-based podcasting tools (for example, Zencastr recently expanded beyond audio with video support), but the Keysons suggested that they’ve spent a lot of time solving common technical issues for podcasters.
For one thing, each participants’ audio and video is recorded as a separate track on their device, so that a bad internet connection won’t affect recording quality. The recording is uploaded during the session, so you don’t have to have a long wait for files to upload. And there are automatic backups, in case someone’s browser or computer freezes.
“Stability … is so important,” Nadav said. “[Otherwise,] you could spend half a year to get a certain guest and then you lose their recording.”
Despite its simplicity, Riverside.fm supports 4K video and uncompressed WAV audio. It also includes an interface where podcast producers can monitor each guest’s equipment and adjust audio levels.
“We do really make it easy for the beginner and faster for the professionals,” Nadav said.
Gideon added that Riverside.fm isn’t interested in getting involved in the podcast distribution, but instead focuses on being a reliable production platform, as well as providing cross-platform analytics.
“We don’t want to start competing with Spotify and YouTube,” he said — in fact, Spotify is already a Riverside.fm customer.
The brothers also suggested that even if you’re not interested in creating a full-fledged video podcast, Riverside.fm is still the right choice for recording audio. Plus, you could still use the video recordings to create promotional clips for YouTube and social media.