When we started Zencastr, podcasting meant one thing: two people, two microphones, and an RSS feed. You made a show, you dropped it into Apple Podcasts, and if people found it, they found it through word of mouth or a lucky spot on a charts page. It was a somewhat niche, long-form, audio-only medium.
A decade later, it’s a whole new world.
Podcasting is now an estimated $50B market with roughly 584 million monthly listeners. But the bigger shift isn't the size of the audience, it's where and how they're showing up. People now don’t just listen to podcasts, they also watch them. YouTube is the most popular destination for consuming podcasts (that’s right – more popular than Spotify or Apple Podcasts.) Short clips move shows across TikTok, Instagram, and X faster than any RSS feed ever could. And a growing percentage of listeners are discovering their next favorite show from a 60-second clip before they ever hit play on a full episode.
In other words: podcasting used to be one format, distributed one way, discovered one way. Now it's audio and video, long-form and short-form, and discovered everywhere your audience already spends their time, not just in a podcast app.
That's a lot more opportunity. It's also a lot more work.
Built for how podcasting actually works now
We designed the new Zencastr around one idea: your job is to make a great show, not to become a full-time video editor, social media manager, and distribution strategist on top of it. So we rebuilt the platform to help you expand your reach: record once, and show up everywhere your audience (and your future audience) already is.
Here's what's new:
Unlimited 4K Video Recording - Have we mentioned video’s really important now? That’s why we’re giving you access to the highest quality video format for free.
Easy Clipping: We’ve improved our clipping technology, and now you can easily pull the best moments of your show and edit them simply by chatting with your new chat-based personalized Producer.
HD Live Streaming — Go live straight from Zencastr to Twitch and YouTube Live, no extra platform required. When you're done, we turn the recording into a full episode and a set of clips automatically.
Visual Templates — If you've been audio-only, you know it's held you back from an entire generation of video-first listeners. Now you can pick from a library of visual templates and turn your audio-only show into something people can watch. Soon, you’ll also be able to record in video and turn yourself into an avatar if you don’t want to show your face.
Publish everything, everywhere — Directly publish your podcast to listeners and watchers across every major podcast platform. Schedule and post social clips across every major social platform, too. Do it all from Zencastr.
A Network — Meet other podcasters in the Zencastr community. Find guests for your show, and get booked as a guest on shows that reach new audiences.
New monetization opportunities — Discover new ways to earn, including ways that don’t rely on audience size (read more on this below.)
More, for free
With this update, we’ve beefed up our free tier – which we’ve renamed the Vibecastr plan –to include a lot of features that used to be paid:
- 4K video recording and 48kHz audio
- Unlimited hosting, transcription, shows, episodes, and clips
- Advanced analytics
- Multi-platform distribution, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, and Facebook
- For a limited time: unlimited production credits
Enterprise customers who need custom plans and contracts can reach out to build something tailored to their needs.
A new way to get paid
In 2022, we raised money from the Zencastr creator community with the clear mandate to develop new avenues for podcasters to monetize their work.
We’ve spent the past three years in R&D, investing significant time and resources experimenting with many different new options for creators to monetize, always with an eye toward scalable, sustainable creator benefit.
We knew that almost every way a podcaster earns money today scales with downloads. That works if you already have a large audience, but it can be demotivating for those who don’t. A show with a thousand deeply engaged listeners can be enormously valuable, yet nearly impossible to monetize. So we built a monetization option that isn't about your reach.
Your personal Producer gets better the more you use it. When you correct a transcript, teach your Producer a pronunciation, or flag vocabulary specific to your subject, you're helping it better understand the nuances of your conversations and your areas of expertise. This not only makes it work better for you but also for everyone in the Zencastr ecosystem. And that has real value, so we pay you for it. So for the first time, podcasters can start monetizing their expertise from day one, regardless of audience size.
And rest assured, Zencastr will never clone voices or generate AI podcasts. We firmly believe that AI should help humans make podcasts and not the other way around.
Share your story
Our mission has always been to unlock conversation at scale. Whether you're a longtime podcaster looking for an easier way to reach new listeners, someone who's been meaning to start for years, or part of the friend group that's been saying "we should really do a podcast" since 2019, the new Zencastr is built to help you meet your audience wherever they are.
— The Zencastr Team
