Podcasting has emerged as a major billion-dollar industry, with ad revenue in the U.S. alone expected to hit $2 billion this year — a figure that’s set to double by 2024. Against that backdrop, major players in the field are bolstering their podcasting armory, with Spotify recently doling out around $85 million for two companies specializing in podcast measurement and analytics, while Acast recently snapped up Podchaser — an “IMDb for podcasts” that gives advertiser deeper data insights — in a $27 million deal.

But as the big platforms lock horns in the hunt for podcasting riches, smaller players continue to arrive on the scene with their own ideas on how they can advance the podcast medium for creators and consumers alike.

One of these is Snipd, a Swiss startup building a podcast app that uses AI to transcribe content and synchronize with note-taking apps; automatically generate book-style “chapters”; and, as of this week, deliver podcast highlights in a TikTok-style personalized feed.

Beyond search and subscribe

Similar to other so-called “podcatcher” apps, Snipd works by users searching and subscribing to podcasts that are of interest to them — this could be anything from true crime to history and sport. But Snipd is striving to be much more than another podcatcher, in terms of how it analyzes the content of episodes to help listeners curate and get to the heart of the details that matter.

For example, Snipd can create “chapters,” which separates each episode into navigable segments with their own title, while it can also generate transcripts of entire shows.

On top of that, users can manually create “snips” as they listen to an episode, allowing them to save their favorite moments and add notes to each clip.

With Snipd’s latest launch, which is available on Android and iOS this week, the company is channeling its inner TikTok by presenting users with a highlights reel, of sorts, automatically pulling out what it believes to be the most memorable moments from numerous podcasts. It then allocates an AI-generated headline to each clip, and presents them in a feed that users can navigate by scrolling up and down.

From there, listeners can save each clip to their library, or — if they like what they’re hearing from the short segment that Snipd has presented — jump directly into the full podcast episode.

It’s worth noting that with the app’s latest update, users are now asked to select their favorite topics (e.g. “history” or “music”), which Snipd uses to generate these highlights. This means that the episode feed is not based purely on users’ podcast subscriptions, as it also pulls in content that Snipd thinks they will be interested in based on their chosen subjects, among other “signals.”

“The goal …read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/16/how-snipd-is-using-ai-to-unlock-knowledge-in-podcasts/