When COVID-19 arrived in NYC in March 2020, Headliner decided–as did most of the rest of the world–to go fully remote. As we adjusted to the new tempo and trajectory of our lives, more people than ever before turned to podcasting as a creative outlet to stay connected and share information. And the Headliner community grew right along with it.
To help put podcasting’s growth into perspective, 383,678 new podcasts debuted in the first half of 2020, which is more than in all of 2019. That represents nearly 30% of all the podcasts in existence. (Insider Radio)
Headliner’s user base also grew a ton along with the increase in podcasting’s popularity. In 2019, a little more than 90,000 people signed up for Headliner. By comparison, in 2020, more than 272,000 people from nearly every country in the world joined the Headliner community. That’s an increase of over 200%.
The number of videos exported from Headliner also grew by nearly 280%. In 2019, 900,000 videos exported from Headliner, and in 2020, that number grew to over 2.5 million videos. We’ve come a long way thanks to you and have a lot left to do!
How it all started
Headliner was the result of a pivot in early 2018. We had released a call recording and sharing app called SpareMin a few years prior, and while it never got to the level we had hoped, we did get to meet and talk to a lot of podcasters. These podcasters helped us figure out what to work on next.
There was a feature within SpareMin that allowed you to create a video version of your recordings. So many of you told us that you just wanted to use that embed and would happily throw out the rest of the app. So, that is kind of what we did. We took your advice and started focusing on making it easy to share your audio on social media as a video.
Originally, we hosted an open-source audiogram generator from WNYC for anyone to use. Neil (our CEO) said, “If this thing starts getting more usage in a day than our app, it’s prob time to kill our app.” That’s exactly what happened a few months later. So we stopped everything on our app and started building Headliner.
The whole point of that story is that Headliner exists and has grown into what it is today because we listened to you. We base a lot of what we do on what we hear from you via email, phone demos, Twitter, or in person at things like Podcast Movement and Podfest. In fact, we built automation, our video caption tool, and the full episode wizard based on your feedback.
We want to hear what you like and don’t like about Headliner, what you wish it could do, and how you use it in real life. We are amazed at the creative ways you’ve figured out to use Headliner. So thank you!
As we continue to grow, we’re working hard to maintain the same direct lines of communication with all of you that has made Headliner into something special. We want to continue to get your thoughts and feedback and hope you’ll drop us a line.
You can send general and support related questions, comments, concerns, and feedback to us at info@headliner.app. If you’re interested in co-marketing or promotion, I’d be the best person to get in touch with and can be reached at oliver@headliner.app.
Thank you for making Headliner Awesome!
– Oliver
