You’d think a greater array of choices would make us happier, but studies have found just the opposite. Walk into a deli with 57 sandwiches on the menu or a cafe with thousands of drink combinations, and you’re likely to flounder and order what’s familiar. The same goes for entertainment. How many times have you scrolled through Netflix only to put on the sitcom you’ve watched ad nauseam? Probably more than you care to admit. An unwieldy amount of options overwhelms. That’s why mountain athlete Mike Chambers launched Moonbeam, a new podcast discovery app he co-founded with Paul English, the mastermind behind flight search engine Kayak.
The app helps users discover new podcasts using a combination of machine-learning technology and a team of curators (yes, real humans). Rather than thumbing through directories, the app surfaces the best curated snippets from podcasts and plays them on the app’s main feed, known as “Beam.”
If you don’t like the content, you can simply swipe up. But if you do, you can listen to the episode all the way through, save it, then share with their friends and subscribe. Moonbeam logs all these actions, which influence its algorithm, letting it curate content that’s more pertinent and interesting to your personal taste.
What’s more, the platform also gets show creators in on the action. The Moonbeam Console provides a pedestal for podcast hosts to create content (think short episode clips) that can be shared on social media.
Moonbeam is currently available on the App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android).
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