Castopod
Podcasting in the fediverse
Castopod is an open-source podcast hosting solution for everyone, that can connect to the Fediverse through the W3C ActivityPub standard (Pixelfed, Mastodon, Pleroma…). Castopod is user friendly, and allows for easy discovery everywhere. Whether you are a beginner, an amateur or a professional, you will get everything you need: you can create, upload, publish, manage server subscriptions (WebSub embedded server). You can allow users to listen to your podcast directly, but just as easily connect to commercial directories (Apple, Google, Spotify…).
Take back control: interact with your audience on your platform (like, share, comment), the social network IS the podcast. In addition to supporting W3C ActivityPub, you can also export to proprietary social networks (Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook). Castopod is easily hosted on any PHP/MySQL server: unzip it and you and other podcasters are ready to broadcast professionally.
- The project's own website: https://castopod.org
Why does this actually matter to end users?
The internet can be a great place to discover new content, be it music, movies or podcasts. Cheap hosting and reliable streaming technology lets users listen or watch new content then and there as they discover it, almost like a candy store. Unfortunately major streaming services decide for users what candy they should and should not have, ranking and rating content based on who happens to be the best selling artist of the day. Both users and artists on these platforms are left with little control over search and discovery, content and privacy.
What if instead of handing over independently produced music, videos and podcasts to a few companies, artists and users watch and listen on their own terms? Like Mastodon, Pleroma and Pixelfed, Castopod offers a decentralized alternative to social networking, hosting and sharing content without some platform pulling the strings. Castopod allows users to host their own podcasts themselves and then easily share it for discovery with everyone on the federated social universe, better known as the fediverse. Anyone on Mastodon, Pleroma and elsewhere can seamlessly interact with podcasters on Castopod, follow their favorite channels and keep up to date through feeds. This adds yet another rich layer to the fediverse where users can search and discover content, artists and possible friends entirely on their own terms.
Run by Ad Aures
This project was funded through the NGI0 Discovery Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 825322.
