Podcloud, the podcast site, born in Toulouse, which wants to conquer the world
Born in 2014 in Toulouse, the Podcloud podcast platform is today one of the most popular in France. Their founders are keen to take advantage of the current enthusiasm for this broadcasting format.
Discerning podcast listeners are familiar with the platform Podcloud. Since 2014, it has hosted nearly 4,400 French-speaking programs, produced by nearly 3,700 creators, and now has 110,000 visitors per month. “We want it to be as easy to publish a podcast as a video on Youtube,” summarizes Thomas Forest, one of the two founders, a 36-year-old web project manager from Toulouse. He takes care of the management, the animation of social networks or the organization of events. While his partner, Giovanni Olivera, 29, who is also from Toulouse, spends most of his time, as a developer, “simplifying very complex things that only machines understand”. Thanks to it, content creators only have to fill out a few lines on a form to integrate their podcasts into any application or distribution platform. Subscriber podiators can find their entire catalog on Podcloud.fr, which they can listen to synchronously on any device.
Free and independence
The particularities of Podcloud are its free access and its independence, the structure being, at its origin, a non-profit association. “When we started, it was about giving a helping hand to friends who, like us, offered podcasts and had trouble getting them online,” says Giovanni Olivera. The two “geek”, as they call themselves, actually met a dozen years ago around their passions for audio programs and digital technologies. Since then, their common sound productions have been numerous, ranging from mood podcasts, recorded social dinners and direct marathon… broadcast, of course, thanks and on Podcloud. “We are driving forward the fact that we ourselves are independent podcasters. Our credo is to make them known ”, underlines Thomas Forest.
“We are two to three times cheaper than our competitors”
While, for three years, the sector has experienced strong enthusiasm, the two Toulouse residents have decided to move up a gear. They now offer a hosting service of 1000 hours of podcast for 6 euros per month. These revenues, for two years, of salaried Giovanni Olivera who are dedicated to “the modernization of the platform”. “We don’t want to be robbed of the spotlight by the big producers who are entering the market. Especially since we are two to three times cheaper than them ”, points out Thomas Forest. There is also talk of internationalizing the site which will host, from next April, non-French-speaking programs. Always with the idea of developing “the tremendous diversity of content available on Podcloud, the common point of which is to be the fruit of the work of enthusiasts”.