Updates for January ~ March 2024

Listen411.com, has_interviews & has_sponsors fields/filters

Hi there!

It's been some time since our last update! I've been thinking of creating a dedicated "changelogs" page for these updates, as writing a newsletter can be quite time-consuming :) Anyways, let's do one more issue.

What’s new?

1) Listen411 - A really fast podcast transcription & summarization tool, with on-demand pricing

We quietly launched Listen411.com in early January.

It's a dead simple web tool for audio transcription and summarization, distinguished by two key features:

• It’s super fast. Listen411 transcribes an hour-long audio in less than 60 seconds.

• It’s on-demand pricing. With Listen411, you pay only for transcribing one audio file. No subscription is needed.

Currently, we're in the process of redesigning the UI to give it a more polished look :)

2) Find Podcasts with Guest Interviews and Sponsors Easily

We've enhanced our podcast metadata with the addition of two new data fields on listennotes.com (using AI):

• has_guest_interviews: Indicates the presence of guest interviews in the podcast.

• has_sponsors: Reveals whether the podcast has sponsors.

These updates are integrated across various parts in the Listen Notes ecosystem:

First, on individual podcast pages, this information is now displayed.

Second, on our podcast search engine website, two new filters are added (Premium Membership required).

Third, these filters are also available for use in the batch dataset export tool:

Fourth, our Podcast API (PodcastAPI.com) now includes these filters in the GET /search endpoint, with corresponding new data fields in the API response.

Finally, users can suggest modifications to these data fields under the EDIT tab on any podcast page.

3) Misc

• Upgraded and replaced the majority of our servers with more powerful & cost effective Graviton-based EC2 instances. Sorry, Intel!

• Upgraded Elasticsearch to version 8.12, and Postgres to version 16 (from 13).

• Rotated SSH keys across all servers as part of our ongoing commitment to security.

• In response to AWS's decision to start charging for public IPV4 addresses from February 1, 2024, we've removed public IPv4 for over 50% of our servers.

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Thanks for reading! Drop me a line and tell me what you think about Listen Notes -- just reply this email or wenbin@listennotes.com :)