Updates for January ~ April 2023
Updates for January ~ April 2023
microfeed. Runnable code on API Docs. Publisher domain name.
Hi there!
This is the 67th full month (5 years and 7 months) that I worked on Listen Notes full-time.
What’s new?
1) microfeed
Our free podcast hosting solution microfeed is getting better and more popular:
Some exciting changes will be merged into the code base in the coming weeks.
2) Run code right on the API Docs page
Developers can easily try out PodcastAPI.com in different server-side languages right on our API Docs page:
What’s better, you can tweak and run the code without leaving your browser.
Previously we use RunKit.com to allow running nodejs code on our API Docs page. But RunKit doesn’t support other non-nodejs languages and it seems that this project has not been well-maintained - quite a few npm packages are not up-to-date, including our podcast-api.
Anyways, we had to develop our own RunKit alternative to support more server-side languages. And we did it.
3) Domain name of a podcast publisher
We added an important data point to the podcast database: the domain name of a podcast publisher.
Domain name is a great join key in the data world.
First, you can find the domain name of a podcast publisher on the listennotes.com podcast page (Example):
Second, you can use our API to fetch podcasts by a domain name -
GET /podcasts/domains/{domain_name}
Third, if you are a podcaster, you can update the domain name on your podcast page’s EDIT tab (Example).
Fourth, if you are using Listen Notes chrome extension, you can easily see a list of podcasts published by a specific website -
4) “subscribe on substack”
If a podcast is hosted on Substack, we’ll display “subscribe on substack” on the listennotes.com podcast page (Example):
5) Fair billing for API Pro Plan
The Podcast API PRO plan's pricing structure consists of two parts: a base fee US$180 and an overage fee (if any).
Previously (Dec. 2017 ~ Jan. 18, 2023), the base fee US$180 was mandatory even when 0 requests are used in a billing cycle (30 days).
From now on (Jan. 18, 2023 ~ now), the PRO plan subscribers will pay $0 if no any requests are used in a billing cycle (30 days). In other words, the base fee US$180 should be paid only when at least 1 requests are used in a billing cycle (30 days).
We try our best to be fair to both our customers and us:
And we hope other software vendors would follow suit.
6) Some experimental GPT projects
Of course, we’ve been experimenting with GPT for various product enhancements, but nothing is ready to launch yet.
Generally speaking, we launched only ~30% of what we’ve built. In other words, we abandoned ~70% of what we built.
7) Misc
More ops tools to support the rapid growth of our Podcast API business.
A lot of improvements related to “effective customer service communication”, including adding a payment modal to confirm terms for various paid products, sending extra emails to explain terms…
Thanks for reading! Drop me a line and tell me what you think about Listen Notes -- just reply this email or wenbin@listennotes.com :)