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Whooshkaa is a self-declared ‘powerful audio content management’ platform that offers an all-in-one solution for hosting, managing, distributing, promoting and commercializing your podcast. An Australian based company that was recently acquired by Spotify, Whooshkaa pitches itself a wide range of audio creatives including companies who make internal podcasts, educational institutions, creative podcasters and radio broadcasters. Since pricing is only available on inquiry, it’s hard to tell if it's within your budget or not. This review and walkthrough offers you an insight into the platform and whether it’s really what you’re looking for.
TL;DR
- Whooshkaa was acquired by Spotify in 2021 and has a wide range of features including monetization, transcription, and more.
- Whooshkaa supports video podcasting and lossless file formats.
- Whooshkaa’s pricing is only available on inquiry.
How we’re reviewing Whooshkaa
Reviewing podcast hosting services requires a framework of key criteria so that we know what we’re looking at and how a platform compares to its competition:
Pricing
Budget is always a key consideration. Whether you’ve got a lot to spend or a tighter budget, getting your money’s worth is always a priority. We look at how a service prices its subscription tiers and what features are available to each plan.
Analytics
Being able to track your podcast’s performance and listeners is absolutely essential. We look at what kinds of stats and podcast analytics platform gives you, how detailed they are, and whether they’re easy to understand and use.
Media Player
An embeddable media player is a non-negotiable. On top of the basic player, we look at how customizable the podcast player is and whether podcasters are able to brand it and change it to match their look.
File Hosting
We look at what kinds of files a platform supports, searching ideally for services that are compatible with lossless file formats that don’t force pdcasters to sacrifice audio quality. A bonus for any platforms that support video podcasting.
Distribution
A podcast hosting platform should make publishing your podcast a breeze. It should be effortless to distribute your podcast to the major directories.
Monetization
Being able to monetize your podcast in a variety of ways is super important for maximizing your podcast revenue. We look at platforms that allow users to place ads, include sponsor placements or create exclusive content for paying subscribers.
Useability and Additional Features
Finally, we look for platforms that are easy to use at a fundamental level. This means that the interface is well designed and the range of features is thoughtful and structured to help podcasters do what they do best.
Whooshka: Quick Takeaways
Whooshkaa is a tech-driven podcast host that caters to a broad audience. Some of its most unique features include broadcast to podcast recording, as well as an in-browser podcast recording suite.
What is Whooshka
In December 2021, Spotify acquired Australian company Whooshkaa. Whooshkaa is a powerful podcast hosting platform and more, that caters to a professional audience rather than hobbyists or amateur podcasters. It has a whole range of features that help it focus on the needs of broadcasters and enterprise podcasters looking to scale their capabilities.
How much does Whooshka cost?
Exact pricing is only available on inquiry, however, a subscription includes:
- Publishing and distribution
- Reporting and analytics
- Unlimited podcasts and users
- Promo insertion
- Embeddable podcast player
- Episode importing
- Campaign creation
- Dynamic ad insertion (including back catalog)
- Geotargeting
- Ad copy management
Advantages of Whooshkaa
Monetization
Whooshkaa allows its users to monetize their content using dynamic ad insertion or by creating private content for subscribers. They also have a dedicated sales team that can help to support you in monetizing your content.
Recording capabilities
Though this isn’t a main feature of Whooshkaa’s platform, you can actually record directly into the Whooshkaa dashboard if you want to. This flexibility may come in useful at some point.
Social media
Whooshkaa is the only podcast host that allows listeners to play the audio of full episodes natively in their Facebook timeline. This will encourage organic listening and more engagement across socials.
Transcription
Whooshkaa has an automated or manual podcast transcription feature that allows publishers to ensure their content is repurposable and accessible.
Supports video
Whooshkaa is fairly unique amongst other mainstream podcast hosts in that it actually supports video podcasts. Note, however, that this feature isn’t available for all plans.
Supports lossless file formats
Whooshkaa supports MP3, M4A, OGG, MP4, WAV and WMA files. This means that you don’t need to sacrifice your stellar audio quality in order to host your podcasts with Whooshkaa.
Disadvantages of Whooshkaa
Lack of transparent pricing
Though all of Whooshkaa’s abundant features most definitely tick all the boxes, their lack of transparent pricing means it’s difficult to gauge how much value for money you’re actually getting.
Key features of Whooshkaa
Embeddable media player
The Whooshkaa embeddable web player is fully customizable and includes integrated social sharing features. To customize you’ll need to change up its embed
Text to speech
Whooshkaa has a feature that allows users to create audio content from written text using synthesized speech. It can do this for short audio pieces for your media library or whole episodes, depending on what you’re looking for.
Media library
Whooshkaa offers its users a media library which they liken to a personal Google Drive or DropBox. This is where you can store media for later use, and they can be audio, video or image files.
Private Episodes & Podcasts
Creating exclusive content for your subscribers is easy with Whooshkaa. All you need to do is create a private podcast show or simply make certain episodes private.
Broadcast to podcast
Another unique feature of Whooshkaa is the ability to take radio broadcasts and make them ready for on-demand-listening. You can automate the platform to capture a one-time broadcast or to repeat recordings on a certain schedule.
Its hand-free editing features mean that you don’t have to manually go through and prepare the recording for distribution. Instead, the AI powered tech will automatically identify segments that include ads, songs or newsbreaks and flag them for removal or to be replaced with other audio or ads depending on your preferences.
Whooshkaa Play Portal
The Whooshkaa play portal is where private audiences can access exclusive content through invite or single sign-on access keys. The ability to grant SSO means that podcasters have far greater control over who can access their content and when.
The Play Portal works on both mobile and desktop, and your audience can enjoy video and audio content to their heart’s desire.
Whooshkaa is best for serious podcasters
Whooshkaa is, without a doubt, a platform for serious podcasters. The heavy weight features are designed for business podcasters, entrepreneurs, or big networks that know their stuff when it comes to podcasting. Though the features would cater to amateur podcasters too, the mysterious pricing suggests that Whooshkaa charges a premium to use its platform. As a result, we’d point hobbyists and podcasters early in their journey to a more beginner (and wallet) friendly podcast host such as Spotify for Podcasters.
First look at Whooshkaa
How to get started
Step 1: When you first sign up click ‘Create a Show’
Step 2: Fill out your show’s title, sub-title, description, summary, language etc.
Step 3: Toggle your settings around whether the podcast will be visible in Apple Podcasts, whether you want to insert dynamic content, and whether it’s public or privately available. You’ll also need to choose whether you want to enable video content on the podcast.
Step 4: After you’ve filled in all the required information, upload your cover art and then press ‘Select categories’
Step 5: Click ‘create’ when you’re done!
How to add a new episode
Step 1: When you’ve created your show, you’re ready to upload your first episode
Step 2: From your dashboard, head to ‘Shows & episodes’. Click on the show you’re going to upload an episode for and click ‘create an episode’.
Step 3: Upload media files or drag and drop your episode media files into the upload area.
Step 4: Fill out your episode’s information including its title, description, summary etc. Press ‘Create’ when you are done.
You should now be able to see your published episode under your show.
How to migrate your podcast to Whooshkaa
Step 1: From your Whooshkaa dashboard, head to ‘Shows & Episodes’ and then click ‘Import a Show’.
Step 2: Paste your RSS feed into the box and then click ‘Create’.
Step 3: Sit back and let Whooshkaa do the rest.
How to distribute your podcast
To distribute your show to the major podcast directories, head to your podcast overview in your dashboard. You’ll see at the bottom a section called ‘podcast directories’. Click on the podcast directory you want to submit to.
Whooshkaa has specific tutorial articles about submitting to some other mainstream podcast directories too.
How to monetize your podcast with Whooshkaa
Whooshkaa’s campaign manager is the ultimate hub for managing your podcast monetization. Here, you can create, monitor, refine and analyze your dynamic ad performance.
To add a dynamic add to a podcast episode follow these steps:
Step 1: Make sure your show has advertising enabled. Do this by heading to your show’s page in your dashboard, clicking ‘Enable Advertising’, and then ‘update’.
Step 2: Ensure you’ve pin-pointed cue-points for your mid-roll ads to play. This tells the campaign manager where to dynamically place ads.
Add cue points by heading to ‘Shows & Episodes’ in your dashboard. Click on ‘Episodes’ and then ‘edit’. Here, head to the ‘Audio’ section and click ‘Annotate’.
Now you should be able to move the audio marker to pin-point the exact moment at which you want any mid-roll audio to play.
When you are finished, click ‘update’.
Now you are ready to start creating your ad campaign which will be placed in your podcast episodes. The above steps are especially important if you're creating a mid-roll ad but you also have the option to create pre-rolls as well. Follow these steps to create your advertising campaign:
Step 1: Head to Campaigns and then click ‘create a campaign’.
Step 2: Name your campaign and label your advertiser (this is a reference for yourself).
Step 3: Select how long this specific ad campaign will run for.
Step 4: In impressions, fill out your target impressions and your CPM.
Step 5: Select which shows you want to run the campaign on by selecting the show and then clicking ‘target show’.
Step 6: Click ‘Create’. Though this means the campaign has been created, it’s not quite up and running yet. You first need to create what Whooshkaa calls a ‘flight’.
Step 7: Click ‘Add Flight’ and fill out the form. Here you’ll give the flight a name, tell the campaign manager where to place the ads (pre, mid or post-roll) and how many impressions it should serve.
Step 8: Select which audio file you want to run and upload it.
Step 9: Click save and then publish. The campaign should start ‘serving’ straight away.
Whooshkaa Analytics
Whooshkaa calls its podcast analytics ‘insights’. Depending on your pricing plan, you’ll have access to a different level of data.
You can find your podcast stats in your dashboard under the ‘insights’ tab. You can filter the specific date range, locations, show categories, and more for which you want to see data about your podcast’s performance.
You can also see a grand overview of all your podcast data pertaining to your show’s performance and listener behaviors:
- Total listens
- Listens per day
- Busiest day of the week and of the period
- Total number of listeners
- Geographic location of listeners, top countries, top cities
- Devices, operating systems and clients (sources)
Alternatives to Whooshkaa
Whooshkaa vs Omny Studio
Omny Studio and Whooshkaa are both very similar platforms in that they are both aimed at radio broadcasters and bigger podcasters. However, both platforms ask prospective users to get in touch for more information about pricing and also offer a broadcast to podcast feature.
In order to get a clearer idea of which platform offers better value for money, you’d need to reach out to both respectively.
From what we do know, however, both Whooshkaa and OmnyStudio offer users a ‘broadcast to podcast’ feature which allows radio broadcasters to transform their live content instantly into podcast-ready material. Both platforms also offer users a campaign manager from which they can monetize their content using ads, although only Omny Studio offers dynamic ad insertion.
Whooshkaa vs Spreaker
Whooshkaa and Spreaker, though both podcast hosts, are very different platforms. Though their range of features mirror each other, Whooshkaa is targeting a much higher caliber of podcaster or broadcaster, whereas Spreaker caters to the beginner and mid-level audio creative. For anybody looking for an all-in-one creation, recording, hosting and management tool that is affordable and easy to use - Spreaker is a great option. But if you’re any bigger than that, or operate specifically between radio and podcasting, Whooshkaa is the obvious choice.
Whooshkaa vs Soundcloud
Soundcloud and Whooshkaa don’t really compete on the same plane. Soundcloud is, by definition, not designed specifically for podcasters, whereas Whooshkaa most definitely is. So if you’re a hobbyist looking for a low intensity podcast host, Soundcloud is definitely the better option. But if you’re a radio broadcaster or pro podcaster, then you should head straight to Whooshkaa.
Final Thoughts on Whooshkaa
Whooshkaa’s lack of transparent pricing may put some podcasters off, and we’d understand that. However, when you look on surface level at what the platform has to offer, it’s definitely a strong contender. Plus, the fact that it was acquired by Spotify indicates a bright future for the service as the music streaming giant expands more into the podcasting world.
FAQs on Whooshka
What is Whooshkaa?
Whooshkaa is a podcast hosting platform that offers podcasters hosting, management, and monetization tools.
Does Spotify own Whooshkaa?
Yes, Spotify owns Whooshkaa after acquiring the platform in 2021.
How do you use Whooshkaa?
In order to make an account with Whooshkaa, you need to contact the platform directly to find out about their pricing and subscription packages.
Want to read more on podcast hosting platforms? Check out our other reviews:
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