Yet-to-launch Podango, based in Salt Lake City, is trying to corner the podcast market by aggregating popular, topic-specific podcasts into expert-driven channels. The goal is to combine multiple podcasts, which may only be publishing weekly, into a 3-5 shows per day channel with a single RSS feed. Just like old-style television and radio stations.
Podcast directories, like those created by Yahoo and iTunes, are very popular ways of finding new, good podcast content. Podango wants to take this a step further and mash the talent up into topic specific channels, taking some of the work out of finding good content by listeners. If they are successful, look for the established players to quickly follow suit.
Podango will recruite station directors, who in turn will recruit podcasters for their channels, manage the channel using an Ajax drag and drop admin interface, and help recruit advertisers. The hope is that listeners will gain from having a person select the best podcasts for a given category as well as avoid dead air time since shows will be queued one-after-another. Podcasters will gain an audience. Station Directors will have a chance to make “$25K to $250K a year or more.” Of total revenue, Podango will keep 30%, leaving 70% for station directors and individual podcasters.
If this works, I’ll be signing up for sports editorial and their equivalent of Comedy Central. Hurry up and launch, Podango.
A screen shot of how a channel will look is below.
