The idea of a podcast platform had been brewing since my time at fizy. Strategic priorities shifted, and the project remained on the back burner. However, when I joined Dergilik, the concept resurfaced, and I was excited to finally bring it to life! 🎉 This marked the beginning of the “Podcast Studion” project.
Bringing Podcast Studion to fruition was a truly collaborative effort. It was an incredible opportunity to work alongside talented colleagues and supportive managers from across various departments — development, quality assurance, design, business strategy, operations, security, legal, marketing, and more. The success of this project is a testament to their collective expertise and dedication. 🙏
Our initial strategy evolved as the project progressed. The refined plan was ambitious: to launch a dedicated podcast platform under a new brand, “Podcast Studion,” and then seamlessly distribute these podcasts through both the Dergilik and fizy applications. Furthermore, during development, new content regulations emerged, necessitating a moderation process. We proactively adapted our architecture and workflow to incorporate this crucial step. The diagram below illustrates the core components of our final architectural design.
Podcast Studion — Building the Foundation
Our first priority was to build a robust foundation with Podcast Studion itself. This platform needed to be ready to onboard podcasters and facilitate early adoption. We meticulously considered the entire podcaster journey: from streamlined registration and podcast ownership verification to comprehensive customer support. Once a podcaster was verified, our platform intelligently parsed their RSS feed, automatically extracting essential metadata and episode audio files. To optimize performance and security, we hosted these audio files on our Content Delivery Network (CDN). Importantly, we built a flexible “switch” feature, allowing us to either host the audio files directly or deliver them from the podcaster’s original source, giving us control and adaptability. After four months of focused effort, the team proudly launched Podcast Studion! 🚀
Dergilik App Integration — Enhancing User Experience
With Podcast Studion live, we shifted our focus to seamless integration with the Dergilik mobile application. Leveraging the Audio Article and Auto-list improvements we had previously implemented (as discussed in earlier articles), we extended these functionalities for podcasts. This resulted in a dynamic and intuitive podcast experience within the Dergilik app. Beyond the user-facing features, we also integrated comprehensive analytics into the podcast platform. This crucial step laid the groundwork for providing podcasters with valuable performance insights directly through their podcaststudion.com dashboards.
Review and Moderation Process — Adapting to Regulations
During development, new content regulations mandated a podcast review process. Adapting to this requirement meant developing an efficient content approval workflow. We integrated an approval phase into the podcast publishing process, defining essential editor roles within Podcast Studion and building tools for editors to listen to, search for, and approve episodes. This adaptation, integrated into an existing workflow, presented a unique development challenge. Furthermore, in collaboration with our AI team, we implemented a Speech-to-Text (STT) based analysis process for all episodes. The AI platform now automatically analyzes each episode and flags content requiring editorial review, ensuring compliance and content quality.
Addressing Challenges and Optimizations — Refining the Platform
As podcasters began populating the platform, we encountered real-world challenges and identified opportunities for optimization. The lack of standardization among podcast hosting providers initially caused some integration issues. Once these were resolved, we proactively focused on platform optimization, even without immediate performance bottlenecks. We meticulously refined our content crawling process, optimizing the frequency for adding, updating, and removing podcast episodes. By implementing solutions like e-tag and hash-based checks, we systematically addressed these issues, ensuring a robust and efficient platform.
Podcast Analytics Dashboard — Empowering Podcasters
Providing podcasters with insightful data was paramount. Therefore, we developed a comprehensive analytics dashboard within Podcast Studion. This dashboard provides key metrics such as follower counts, unique listener numbers per episode, average listening time, and more. To further empower podcasters, we also designed a monthly insights newsletter, delivering a summary of their podcast performance directly to their inbox.
fizy App Integration — Expanding Reach
The final stage was integrating Podcast Studion with the fizy application. Following architectural alignment, we established a data pipeline using Kafka to deliver podcast metadata and updates to fizy. fizy then leveraged the same analytics infrastructure to populate their podcast dashboards. With the fizy app launching podcast support, podcasters now have the exciting opportunity to distribute their content across two major platforms, significantly expanding their reach to millions of potential listeners! 🎉
Conclusion — Success and Future Potential
The Podcast Studion project exemplifies the power of collaboration, adaptability, and a user-centric approach. From initial concept to multi-platform launch, we navigated evolving requirements and technical complexities to deliver a robust and valuable podcasting platform. Podcast Studion not only provides a seamless experience for podcasters but also expands Dergilik and fizy’s content offerings, opening up new avenues for audience engagement and growth. We are incredibly proud of what the team accomplished and excited to see Podcast Studion continue to thrive and evolve.
