Apparently, everyone’s plan is to be a podcasting app eventually. The latest app with a desire to break into the podcast industry is, as weird as it might seem, TikTok. In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Brett Dashevsky posted an image of documentation that the company is apparently starting to share with some creators on the platform. The feature, which has yet to roll out to everyone, would allow a creator to link their posts to an episode of their podcast.
In order to enable this, users will need to link the RSS feed of their podcast to their account. Once linked, they’ll be able to choose an episode and then choose posts to link it to. Once linked, users who watch a post will be prompted to listen to the episode of the podcast. According to Dashevsky, users will be able to listen to the entire episode while staying in the TikTok app.
This is, of course, great for TikTok if it can convince people to stay within its app when listening to podcasts. TikTok is definitely not feature-rich when it comes to podcasting, and it’s still unclear if your audio will cut off if you close the app, so I’ll personally stick with Apple Podcasts or Spotify when it comes to following and listening to podcasts. Of course, TikTok could add features over time to try and bake a podcast app into the currently video-heavy experience.
There is one thing that linking posts to podcast episodes can do for creators, and that has everything to do with discovery. While podcast apps are great for organizing and listening to podcasts that you already follow, none of them are fantastic at suggesting more podcasts that you might be interested in.
Podcasters commonly struggle to have their work discovered, and TikTok is one of the best discovery machines ever built, so this could help them get their podcasts discovered. A ton of creators have been making video versions of their podcasts as well, so you do the math:
- Record podcasts in both audio and video
- Post video clips to TikTok linked to the episode
- Profit
TikTok isn’t the only one trying to get a piece of the podcasting industry. Apple continues to roll out features for creators to get them paid, Spotify keeps increasing the presence of podcasts in its formerly music-only app, and YouTube has even recently brought podcasts to the YouTube Music app instead of just Google Podcasts. With TikTok entering the fray, the competition is heating up.
