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Castro is a unique and productivity-focused podcast app for iOS, developed by a small team led by Dustin Bluck. The app has a dedicated user base that loves its differentiated features, and the team is working to bring it up-to-date with the latest podcast standards and functionality, including support for episode artwork, transcripts, and chapters. While Castro is currently iOS-only, the team is also working on an Android version to expand its reach. The app generates revenue through a subscription model and advertising, and the team is focused on improving the app's recommendation engine and cross-device experience to drive further growth and engagement.
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Hello and welcome back to Podnews Weekly. I'm joined today by Dustin Bluck. Dustin is the owner of Castro. Dustin, hello. How are you?
Dustin Bluck:
Great. Thanks for having me on.
Sam Sethi:
Now, you're not only the owner, the other lead developer, the head developer. I mean, how many people are in the company now? I mean, I'm the only full time employee. I have someone who helps out with design and then a couple.
Dustin Bluck:
Of sort of part time engineers. And we just added someone who's helping with some organization and supporting mallets, but we're just cobbling it together.
Sam Sethi:
Cool. Now tell me, what is Castro today? What is the platform? I mean, we think it's the.
Dustin Bluck:
Best podcast app on iOS. It's a uniquely differentiated podcast platform. It's a little more focused on productivity. The people emailed me, listened to a lot of podcasts. It's a niche product. The people who love it really love it, need to broaden their appeal a little bit, but I think it's tough for some people to grok that. It's a little bit more like Gmail and Spotify. It's a little bit different.
Sam Sethi:
It's cross-platform as well, though. Is it still on Android? It's not officially.
Dustin Bluck:
Castro is only iOS right now, but we have an Android app and we're slowly bringing them together.
Sam Sethi:
Okay, But it's on CarPlay and it's on Apple Watch still.
Dustin Bluck:
Yes. The CarPlay app was just rewritten. We didn't make the Apple Watch a little bit better. But yes, we support both.
Sam Sethi:
Okay. So the latest version, you've updated it recently with some new features. What are they?
Dustin Bluck:
Yeah, we have an update coming today. I just got the email that Apple approved. So we're releasing episode our work today. I think it's a very nice update. Actually started working on podcast apps because so few clients supported the episode artwork. So I'm very excited to bring this to Castro. In the intervening years, mostly because of Apple, other apps have started to add it, but I think it's really good that we're bringing it into line.
Sam Sethi:
So where are you in regard to supporting some of the podcasting 2.0 app features? In terms of sorry, I'm a little familiar with this, but when you say podcast to audio, do you mean the podcast tags or specifically like the blockchain portions? You know, I mean there are 27 tags, so I'm not expecting everything to be done and dusted. But do you support the person tag, do support chapters? Do you support transcripts? Do you support the funding tag some of those low hanging fruits?
Dustin Bluck:
Yeah, we support zero of those, but we have worked on the person. Talk a little bit and transcripts. I think transcripts is the first one that you're really going to see. I think if people are putting those into their feed, there's no reason Castro should not be displaying those. So I think that's going to come relatively soon. I think the person tag is a. Pretty nice feature to add a little character of the app. So that's something I really want to do. And then chapters in feed, I actually get a lot of email, lets. People listen to podcasts with. Chapters or like really into chapters. So I get a lot of emails about chapters and being able to spoil those right now or the way it works on Castro or most apps, you have to pull those out of the file if people are interested, if you like, we should be supporting that because it's easier for us and a better experience.
Sam Sethi:
Yeah, they're often put into the feed as a JSON file, so they're really easy to pull out and then displaying, especially if you're doing episode artwork, you can then get down to chapter artwork, which is really cool as well. Yeah. So let's take a step back. I mean, Castro has been around since at least 2016, 2017 as a product. He has gone through a couple of iterations. So it looked like it was closing down. Then it went back to a VCU or private equity company that was owning it. When did you then buy it and why did you buy I mean, why didn't you just start from scratch on a new product? Yeah, I don't know as much about the history of Castro as even some of our users do, but.
Dustin Bluck:
Bigger reason I bought it, I was working on podcast Anyway, it's very hard to get noticed in terms of new podcast app, especially if what you're doing is not really that differentiated. So I. Was working on an. Android podcast app. I think it's quite good Castro was available. It's a great app and it has a unique appeal and it has very passionate fans and it was available. I thought it made a lot of sense to sort of incorporate what we were doing. And for me personally, it made it more of a real project rather than a side project. So to be able to like incorporate that, I thought it made a lot of sense. Obviously, Castro has been around forever, but especially over the last couple of years, it hasn't really kept up with the things that the other major apps are doing. So we're really trying to bring that in line. I think we have a unique offering and I hope, yeah, I hope we can grow it and make it a more serious player.
Sam Sethi:
So in terms of monetization then, Dustin, how are you going to allow yourself to generate revenues through Castro?
Dustin Bluck:
Yeah, most of Castro's revenue right now comes from subscription. The people who like Castro, really like Castro. So getting over the paywall is not that we get really good conversion for people who understand the app and use it a lot. Our premium is really high. So you have that portion and then we sell ads on the other side. I think people who use our product, the entourage, are pretty happy with it. We've been getting a relatively high number of views for those and we have some changes coming up to make that a little better in terms of actually getting the people who would want to see this ad like actually in front of them. There's some low hanging fruit that we can do and we're starting to get there. So it's tough, right? Podcast apps are not the best business in the world, but if you have those two pieces and you have people coming back, the good thing that Castro has is the brand that people really like. And you have those users who really love it and they are coming back every day. So there's value there.
Sam Sethi:
Now, you've also launched the new self service classified ad tool. Tell me more about that. Yeah, so Castro's had ads.
Dustin Bluck:
For ever, as far as I know. And they work well. They do well in the product. People like them, but it was. A little bit difficult. To they were doing a lot of like one off deals or it was difficult to actually get your out in front of people. So we did that over the summer. We've been working on that. It works well. It works now go to Castro for him to promote or slash, promote and add your ad, but we're still working on some explore features. So the number one crossing about that is get it in front of the right genre or people who are already listening to my type of podcasts. So that's what we're working on right now and should have a little more to share in a couple of weeks.
Sam Sethi:
Now, a couple of other technical things. I noticed that Castro added support for Web sub recently. How's that going? Good. I mean, I don't have great numbers in terms of how much it helps, but it definitely helps. It's crazy. We get on.
Dustin Bluck:
The one end website, owners will email me and say You're paying too much. But then the number one complaint from users is always my podcast. Don't update fast enough. So if you can sort of alleviate both problems. Yes, the web sub. Is one way of helping to do that. And I think of the podcast people. Actually listen to. We're up to about a third with an active website, which is like a little more than I thought when we started working on it. So I think it's worked out well.
Sam Sethi:
Yeah, I mean to fans and Pocket PC both support website, which is pretty cool. I'm not sure how many of the other apps do. Are you going to support podcasting as well, which is another way of getting fast updates down to your users? Yeah, I've often thought a little bit. I don't know, maybe.
Dustin Bluck:
The stats. Of how many feeds would support pod ping and not so. But I think if like I said, you have the big problem of the pinging feeds and the user complaints. So if that seems like another way to get at that problem. So I'm all for anything that helps that.
Sam Sethi:
Now it is a good thing to look into, by the way. Dustin I highly recommend it. Now where are you going to be taking Castro next? What is the plan? So there's an Android app in the works. You're thinking maybe about adding some podcasting to the features. What are your plans? What's the roadmap look like? Yeah, the immediate roadmap is a better recommendation.
Dustin Bluck:
X4 Castro Castro's had this a very old fashioned sort of editorial page. It just doesn't get updated very often and it's super manual. And so within a couple of weeks, hopefully we'll have a much better page that really, you know, not just like trending podcasts, but like episodes, things relevant to you, like a lot of content in there. And I think that's really going to help the product. I think people will notice with this update we have coming out today, it's a little bit disjointed. You have parts of the app that are ten years old and haven't been touched in a long time, and you have other parts that are like you have this fancy new episode details with our work that looks a little shinier. So I know we're going to get some of that. We've already gotten some, but Castro hasn't shipped that much over the past couple of years. And so when you look at the dashboards, the thing that moves the needle is like new features. So we have this balance of we need to bring the app in line and up to date, but we also have to ship things. So this is like a big step in that explore. Will be a big step in that. And then there's just a. Long tail of things that Castro was never able to add. We need a better watch app. We need better thinking across devices. I mean, people, you know, about the iPad app a lot. I don't know where that isn't a priority, but people would love to see it. So just like I feel like just the basics of a podcast platform in 2024, like there's still a lot to do.
Sam Sethi:
Where are you on two things one, video and secondly, progressive web apps, because obviously Apple recently produced a progressive web app. So where are you, first of all, on video? What's your thoughts? Are you going to support it?
Dustin Bluck:
Yeah. So my Android app supports video of a decent number of people email and ask about video. I don't have like a strong I'm more of an audio guy. Obviously, but I don't. Have a strong ideological opposition or anything. I would like to support video. I don't know how many popular feeds actually have video feeds, but you have also a chicken and egg problem with not enough podcast apps supporting it. Right. But yeah, I think we'll bring video. One thing I know from Instagram is that video just moves the needle in a way nothing else does. So I'm sure it'd be good for engagement, but it's not like the top priority. But I yeah, I think we'll do video.
Sam Sethi:
Okay. Will you do a web app then, do you think as well? Yeah. It's not like that high on my list. We do get the occasional email about it, but I mean right.
Dustin Bluck:
Now Castro is so limited to one device. What we need to do is make it work well across devices and then adding things like that should not be as big of a lift. Right? It's just a lot of other problems I need to solve before we really get there.
Sam Sethi:
Now, there's a story out in the news that Spotify is integrating with Instagram. It used to do a pretty strong integration with Facebook, so you could say, Hey, I'm playing this music, and it would appear in your Facebook thread and your friends could click on it and then join you and listen to whatever you were listening to. I think they're looking at doing something now with Instagram. Pretty much Facebook is a dead dodo. So with Instagram and your background in Instagram itself, is there any ideas that you might want to integrate Castro with something like Instagram or threads? I don't know. I mean, I it's I feel like the way Castro's userbase.
Dustin Bluck:
Is very specific, right? So I don't get a lot of emails asking for more social features. I'm open to things like that. It's just not something we've really looked at.
Sam Sethi:
Okay, so if I wanted to get hold of Castro today, where's the best place for me to go and get hold of the new version? Yes. So we should have a new update.
Dustin Bluck:
In the App Store today. I mean. App stores, there's always a place to go download the app, but we're very active on email support if you have any. Question in support of Castro dot have.
