Breaker — The social podcast app 🎧

Breaker (YC W17) replaced Overcast as my default podcast player a few weeks ago when I got into the beta. The app has many of the same features as other podcast apps (e.g. sleep timer, skip forward, subscriptions) but with community and focus on episode-level discovery. I'm excited to see it grow as a product and community. Find me in the app (username: rrhoover) to see what I'm listening to. 😊

I was able to try the beta of Breaker thanks to Product Hunt 🙏and I really like the app. The social aspect might not work for everyone but IMO it can be a great way to democratize podcasts. I am currently try it instead of Overcast to see if it could replace it. I have some feedback. User onboarding for login could be better if It would open the Twitter app instead of Twitter.com on Safari. The experience would be better 😃Otherwise really great app 👏

Really nice app so far. Well done! Unfortunately I keep getting "Request failed with error: Internal Server Error" over and over. I type or click on anything and it pops up. Any idea why?

Really great app, but is there a way to remove the wifi auto-download, but still be able to download as many episodes as I want? (I only download over 4G)

The import feature is sweet; Wish there was a way to quickly mark all / a large number of episodes as already listened. Seems like the only way to do that right now is to go into each individual episode and mark it. The Apple Podcast app does have some fundamental flaws, but with all my listening history in the Apple app already, and it is better integrated (did you know that you can control podcasts with Siri?), plus my being so used to the Apple interface, I find it pretty hard to justify switching to a 3rd party app. The socially oriented podcast apps like Breaker all have this issue, and if your friends aren't already on the app, you have less incentive to make the switch. I've played around with Breaker, Overcast, Podly, and other options, but there's always something missing that makes me go back to the Apple app. Meanwhile the whole Podcasting architecture is still so antiquated.

Seeing a trend towards products that get enhanced by the community (e.g., Refind, Anchor, Glitch). I haven't been a regular subscriber to any podcasts yet, just single episodes. Breaker may help me start listening regularly!

This is the app that I'm not crazy enough to make but I've been waiting for someone to develope for a very long time. Great job!

Very cool! As a podcaster myself, I've been thinking a lot about podcast discovery since PH doesn't do podcasts anymore. I noticed some shows have "credits," wherein a user who is on the show is credited. Is this something podcasters have access to, or is that currently an internal feature?

I've been using Breaker for the last couple months and it's my favorite new app in a long time. Before Breaker, I would rarely listen to podcasts. Overcast and other apps were lacking discovery tools, making it difficult to find new shows/episodes. Breaker brilliantly solves this by adding a social layer, allowing you to see what friends are listening to, liking and commenting on. I'm now exposed to shows that I never heard of before, and listening to podcasts is now part of my daily routine. Add me! Username: @jack 🎧

Any plans for an AppleTV version? I use my AppleTV for some video podcasts as well, would be great if everything stays in sync :-)

As mentioned previously , it seems a recurring bug that the wrong podcast is playing . You guys aware of this ? @leahculver

I've never jumped on the podcast wagon, but this is so easy to use! Really love I can listen in the background while messing around on my phone 👏

I've been trying this for the last few weeks and love the community they've built – it was the missing link in podcasts for me, since it often felt like you were living in a vacuum – there are so many likeminded listeners out there!

Breaker recommended the single best podcast episode I have listened to. EVER. Naval Ravikant on Reading, Happiness, Systems for Decision Making, Habits, Honesty and More (Follow me @tom)

@Leahculver and @sferik let us know when it is available overseas (just looked on the app store and figure it is US-only at this point). Upvoted and can't wait to try it.

I've listened to 70 podcasts with Breaker so far.

Pros:

social aspect is well done. playlist (queue) is *incredible* listen and like history easy to add shows

Cons:

doesn't have audio adjustment that overcast does branding/marketing could be improved? one show I tried to add wouldn't

Would love to see a comparison of this new app vs the Podly app which was launched just two months ago. I've been a big Overcast fan and I'm so excited to finally see the Podcast social community and see what my friends are listening to. But I'm not one that likes to constantly switch between podcast apps. Should be a fun race for these apps to see which one comes out on top with the largest community in the long-term.

I've been using breaker for a bit. One of my favorite new features is the ability to comment...As a podcaster it drives me crazy that I can't hear directly from people listening to my podcast. To the point where I used to go e out a phone number that they could text and it would feed into my slack channel to answer.

This app has replaced Overcast for me as well. Lucky to have participated in the beta for a few weeks!

As a precursor, I’d like to say that this is turned into a bit of an accidental rant and is by no means directly aimed at the Breaker Podcast app as product, so apologies if perhaps this is not the right platform. However I’d like to consider it feedback in the sense that I believe the app makers are the ones with the opportunity to change things up a bit. An at the high risk of sounding like an ass, I’d love to offer some more constructive feedback and suggestions to any podcast app makers out there that would like to chat! ---- So… unfortunately I feel like Breaker still doesn’t approach the fundamental issues with podcasting apps I’ve observed to date. *Discovery and value of Podcasts (imagine browsing Netflix as a spreadsheet)* Tiny little album covers? No Episode specific imagery? Aww man can’t we push things a little bit further? I don’t want to restrict the production of podcasts or any other media to only getting noticed if they have fancy cover art — but it’s just un-inspiring right now. I mean, I was almost tempted to watch iBoy the other day because the artwork and featured placement on Netflix was so strong. I’m yet to find a platform that puts discovery before tech, so right now word of mouth or blind chance is surely the main way that people discover new shows. That seems mad. I’ve heard ‘Freakanomics’ is a great show, right? But if I were to look for that on Breaker or any other app, what I see is an illegible 100px piece of artwork with the truncated caption ‘In their books ‘Freakanomics’ and ‘Think Like a…’ … that’s it. That’s not going to make me listen now is it… Now it’s not the fault of the creator, but there is literally nothing about that metadata that’s going to draw me in. Podcast discovery is 100% word of mouth right now for me, which just seems like a huge missed opportunity that no platform seems to have focused on. However, if you had presented me with some nice imagery, an elevator pitch on the show and maybe a 30 second edited preview, that changes everything… only at that point would I contemplate social aspects like followers, and schmancy recommendations. I’m sure that a ton of podcast creators would love to have to opportunity to boost their content by providing these kinds of assets.  *Different structures — is the show chronological? Reverse? Non-sequential?* Right now it looks like everything is being treated the same, so If I want to start listening to ‘Welcome to Nightvale’, I’m going to have to scroll through hundreds of episodes with varying naming conventions to get to the first episode… and I’ll get a notification when a new episode is out, despite the fact I’ve still got 100 or so episodes to get through before I’m going to listen. This isn’t specific to Breaker, but the lack of structure makes getting into a new podcast a bit of a cognitive thud. It’s pretty baffling also that seasons don’t yet exist? Yes, it requires work from both the platform and the creator… but oh my that would solve a lot.  I’ve definitely had situations where I’ve been on Episode 3 of 50, then episode 51 comes out and is jumped to the top of my queue… I’m guessing a lot of this may be down to old-school podcast metadata requirements, but this for me is a big reason why people outside of the tech space are going to struggle start really getting into podcasting as a medium. The contrast in that use case vs. something like ’99% Invisible’, where I just listen to random episodes, justifies a bit of work on the platform’s side to differentiate between the two. With the non-sequential podcasts, I have the issue of not knowing which episodes I’ve listened to, so marking something as played definitely is a step forward, but the ability to filter by listened or not and sort by recency would help. Or… seasons! The majority of these features do exist on various platforms, but honestly I don’t think I’ve seen a good example of a well structured and laid out podcast app that just makes it simple for users to keep up to date with their progress on various shows. This is why I’ve gone from podcast addiction to drop-off so many times, because the thought of the process is just… confusing. ahem… so, to conclude; I’d love to see more of a focus on discovery, whether it’s through previews, Kickstarter-esque pitches, imagery or even just description text that isn’t 8pt small print. Secondly to simplify the structure and presentation of different ordering types to allow people to listen to the right episode at the right time. I don’t believe the focus should be on commenting systems, ‘liking’, ‘call-ins’ and other social features like sync’d listening right now… it should be getting the basics in order. Would love to hear others input on the subject. Apologies for the long message.