Pendelpoddar is a free service in Sweden that recommends podcasts based on users’ commuting times.
Podcasts have been around for years, but their popularity has recently exploded – listening grew by 23 per cent in the United States between 2015 and 2016, and 64 per cent of podcasts are listened to on a smartphone or tablet. In Sweden the statistics are even more striking: podcast listenership grew by 50 per cent in 2015 according to the annual media survey conducted by Orvesto. Typically, the average podcast listener was found to be aged 16–35, equally likely to be male or female, with 80 per cent choosing to listen on their mobile.
As take-up increases, audiences have become more discerning about the content they choose and a number of innovations have sprung up in response to this. One such example is Denmark-based Hyvi, which analyses a user’s tweets to recommend podcasts that match their profile. Now, Swedish Pendelpoddar is another recommendation service but it works using a different metric – journey time. It was found that metropolitan areas such as Stockholm and Gothenburg had the most listeners, indicating that there is a demand for podcasts that can be consumed on short, city commutes.
Based on this information, the Swedish construction and civil engineering company PEAB developed the free Pendelpoddar platform to highlight their new residential area Nya Råsunda’s proximity to Stockholm. Upon landing on the website, users are prompted to enter a ‘from’ address and a ‘to’ destination. The ‘from’ is automatically set to Nya Råsunda by default. Users can then enter their mode of travel (walk, bike, car or public transport) and, in response, the site generates a list of podcast episodes that match their journey time. These podcasts are drawn from Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Users can then click to listen to one of these matched podcast episodes on the Pendelpoddar website to get a sense of how long a commute from Nya Råsunda, for example, to their destination would actually feel.
The Nya Råsunda development is made up of 700 new residential properties alongside office and retail space, for which sales began in November 2016. And, although the Pendelpoddar platform is primarily designed to promote this development, it works just as well for journeys to and from anywhere in Sweden. Users simply need to change the default ‘from’ address when they arrive on the website.
In practice, the platform sometimes delivers inaccurate results – suggesting podcasts that are too long or too short to be a good match. But the premise remains a compelling one, and there is certainly potential to flesh out the idea – incorporating more countries, improving the matching algorithm and creating a standalone hosting app to support it. The commute is a huge consumption opportunity for media producers, and this will become only truer with the advent of driverless cars.
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Website: www.pendelpoddar.se
Contact: hej@annehellmavold.com
Innovation name: Pendelpoddar
Country: Sweden
Industries: Entertainment & culture