Both Anchor and Descript have made their names as being among the most significant Podcast creation platforms of recent times, but hoving into the rear-view mirror recently has been Podcastle, an all-in-one platform that can cover off recording, production and publishing, all on the one platform.
It’s now raised $7 million in an early-stage funding round co-led by RTP Global and Point Nine Capital. S16 VC and the company’s previous investors Sierra Ventures and AI Fund also participated.
Podcastle is tapping into the booming creator economy, valued by one report at around $104.2 billion, with there being at least 2 million podcasts out there these days.
Podcastle says it has around 150,000 creators so far, but says it’s adding to that number quickly with easy-to-use tools for podcast creators such as enabling studio-quality remote interviews using consumer-grade mics, multitrack recording and editing, and the ability to isolate the speech in the podcasts and improve it. It can also convert text to speech and vice-versa, allowing creators to edit their audio like text documents.
Artavazd Yeritsyan, founder and CEO of Podcastle and former VP of Engineering at Picsart, said: “In 2022, the average time spent listening should rise to 1 hour and 37 minutes per day, meaning the industry becomes one of the most influential categories in storytelling. We at Podcastle strive to remove all technical barriers and allow creators to focus on the thing that really matters — producing and delivering content they’d like to share with others”.
He says that while Descript is an editing tool, Podcastle is closer to a “creation” platform where creators can start with the remote interviews and continue editing without leaving the platform. “It’s like comparing Microsoft doc with Google Docs. Or Sketch versus Figma. In those cases, we are Google Docs and Figma,” he told me.
Alexander Pavlov, managing partner at RTP Global said: “The podcasting market reached $11.46 billion in 2020, and Podcastle offers a unified solution to satisfy aspiring hosts and creators. We see the huge potential behind the platform and are happy to further support Podcastle on its way to success”.
Louis Coppey, partner at Point Nine Capital said: “At Point Nine, we’ve invested in several creative software over the past few years such as PlayPlay in Paris, GravitySketch in London or Shapr3D in Budapest. These three businesses are radically simplifying the creation of videos and designs in VR or 3D. Podcastle is paving the way for the democratization of audio content production.”
Podcastle offers four pricing plans and its base features are available for free.
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