RadioPublic adds “Stations” for lean-back podcast discovery

RadioPublic has announced a new feature called Stations. Stations are RadioPublic podcast playlists, ready-made for one-click listening across a topical range of programs.

Kyle Mitchell, Lead Product Designer at RadioPublic, said the feature resulted from querying users about their habits and challenges. “One thing we heard quite often was that they didn’t have the time to plan out what they were going to listen to, and they didn’t want to manage a queue of episodes,” Mitchell said in an announcement post. “They were jumping in the car or late for work, and didn’t have time to select a podcast to listen to.”

The lists fall into categories such as News, Cooking, and Sports that could match up with daily activities (e.g. driving to work, making dinner, working out).

Each podcast episode in any Station is the most recent, except for serial programs which are offered from the bottom up, starting with the first episode. User can easily bail out any Station for a deep dive into an included show.

RadioPublic Stations are arriving in iOS first, delaying release in Android, the world’s dominant mobile platform — perhaps reflecting a strategy to scrape users away from Apple Podcasts app.

Brad Hill