Podcasterium

Watch, listen to and read podcasts.

Comment

Inspiration

Long-form podcasts are where some of the best conversations happen, and they are almost impossible to skim. You cannot search inside them, you cannot quote them, and you cannot tell whether minute 74 is the part you care about.

What it does

Podcasterium processes each episode once and gives it back in three ways:

  • Watch or listen with a chapter list next to the player, background audio and speed control.
  • Read an article that retells the episode chapter by chapter, with the timestamp of every section one tap away.
  • Search the whole archive by keyword or by meaning, and open a person page that shows every episode someone speaks in or is talked about, with the minute of each mention.

The archive today holds 49 channels, 3,246 episodes and 3,112 hours of processed audio: mostly Croatian-language shows, plus English-language ones such as RevenueCat's own Sub Club (181 episodes) and Launched (116). Articles are currently written in Croatian; the interface is English and Croatian.

Podcasterium Plus is an optional subscription sold through RevenueCat: monthly or yearly, with a 7-day free trial. Today it unlocks 30 search results instead of 12 and a supporter badge. We list only what exists; the roadmap is shown separately and is never part of the purchase.

How we built it

One Flutter codebase for iPhone, iPad, Android, Android TV and the web. RevenueCat (purchases_flutter) handles the subscription on both stores, with one entitlement and one offering. Supabase handles accounts (Sign in with Apple, Google, email), Cloudflare serves the processed episodes as static files from R2 plus a Worker for server-rendered web pages, and Meilisearch powers keyword search.

The app is a white-label shell: all brand-specific material lives in one configuration object, and the same engine already runs a second, independent brand in production. Podcasterium is the open, brand-neutral edition of it. The shell is MIT-licensed on GitHub.

Challenges we ran into

  • Brand leaks a white-label app hides until you look at every screen: the app opening in the wrong language, a footer naming the other brand, a paywall offering a plan that did not exist.
  • Store consoles: an App Store subscription stays "Missing Metadata" until it has a price in every territory; App Review could not find our paywall and account deletion because both lived only inside the account screen, so both are now one tap from the home screen.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Reading as a first-class way to consume a podcast: chapters with timestamps, a speaker-labelled transcript, and a person hub that links every mention of a public figure to the exact second of the original recording.

What we learned

A paywall that promises two real things converts trust better than one that promises seven future ones. And a green store console is not a working app: verify sign-in and purchase end to end before every submission.

What's next for Podcasterium

Articles in the episode's own language for English shows, RSS ingestion beyond YouTube, and white-label instances for newsrooms, universities and podcast networks, each with its own RevenueCat project.

Awards

We are entering the RevenueCat Design Award and the RevenueCat Peace Prize (accessibility of spoken public debate for deaf and hard-of-hearing people and for long-tail languages).

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history