Captivate Insider

We've been working hard with both the Gaana and the Podcorn teams to make life easier for podcasters so, to both teams, thank you!

We also released our brand new podcaster resources section that includes our recommended design, outsourcing, music (intro, outro, etc) and editing tools - all from partners that we know, trust and use ourselves.

Oh, we also updated the marketing section to allow you to use Google Podcast's new URL structure, too. Faaaancy.

It's a PRIME new podcast distribution integration release today!

But, because our new distribution partner is yet to announce their new podcast directory and listening platform formally, we're only allowed to announce that IF you were to log in to Captivate and head to "Distribution" you'd see something primed right there for your use.

Or, you know, gen up on the Distribution section in general (https://help.captivate.fm/en/collections/2315210-podcast-distribution) and who knows what you'll find.

All these Easter Eggs and it's not even Easter!

Imagine if there was an embeddable podcast player that translated its interface into your listener's language. Well, now there is with Captivate's embeddable player! Plus, we make it easy to add clickable audio timestamps to any website and smash a bug like a Starship Trooper.

Today we released annual pricing for all podcasters using Captivate, starting at $17 per month (paid annually). We also launched multi-currency options so that Captivate will detect USD, GBP or EUR pricing based on your location, AND tweaked the onboarding a little to give you a more useful, more relevant experience :)

This week we've introduced a few tweaks to keep giving you a gold-standard podcasting experience. From today, you can take advantage of MP4/M4A to MP3 auto-conversion, whilst we enjoy some internal reporting upgrades (pretty boring to you, VERY exciting for us.)

Introducing Clickable Timestamps!

As a podcaster, one of the biggest goals that you have is to drive people through to your website. That's why today we're introducing automatic clickable timestamps to make it easier for your listeners to navigate your audio in just one click!

All you need to do to add a clickable timestamp to your podcast show notes is to type a timestamp in the following format:

(03:41) - Example

04:26

10:31

etc...

Once you publish your episode, Captivate Sites or Captivate Sync™ will automatically turn those timestamps into clickable links that will take the listener to that point in your embedded Captivate podcast player. Magic!

Don't worry, if you type an invalid timestamp in (that doesn't exist, for example), Captivate is smart enough to know that it's not a valid one and won't turn it into a link.

This week it's all about showing love to Captivate Sync™ and our wonderful WordPress users - we have feature additions, bug fixes and code changes to lighten the load even more.

Episode-specific artwork upload now uses the WordPress media library for processing, providing better error handling of erroneous dimensions, etc.

Fixed a minor bug that popped up now and then when an episode status is different between Captivate and Captivate Sync™.

We’ll now alert you if there is something wrong with your MP3 file when uploading via Captivate Sync™.

On new installations of Captivate Sync™, sync will now run every 10 minutes make sure all episodes are swept up nicely.

Fixed an intermittent issue with episode date and timezones.

You can now add a custom WordPress excerpt per episode in Captivate Sync™. Shiny shiny.

We’ve also done a full code sweep and refactored lots of code to make things even faster. Love a good clear out!

Sweet, right? Right? Right!

See you next week!

It's weekly update time!! As always, we've worked hard to listen to what you'd love to see in Captivate and have put together the latest release as follows...

Updated playlist player for seasonal podcasts: For you beautiful seasonal podcasters, we've made the Captivate embeddable playlist podcast player most recent seasons and episodes first and made it even easier to navigate for listeners. It's pretty nifty, actually!

Expanded the use of automatic Apple banners on Captivate powered podcast websites: You know those fancy little banners that you see at the top of websites that send you to the app store or Apple Podcasts? Yeah? Well, Captivate sites automagically includes them on your Captivate powered podcast website so that visitors have one-click access to your show in Apple Podcasts from their device. Also pretty nifty!

All relevant help articles have been updated to reflect these changes.

The brand new "Collections" feature within Captivate is the perfect way to make your back catalogue more accessible and to increase listenership of your podcast through curation and collection of related episodes.

In this free upgrade, all Captivate podcasters can now exclude episodes from their RSS feed AND set auto-expiration dates on episodes!