For the past 3 months we’ve been busy growing the Caribbean Podcast Directory – a hub to discover podcasts created and hosted by people of Caribbean Heritage whether they live in the region or in the Diaspora.
How the Directory began
CPD started out in February 2018 as an article on Carry On Friends called 10 Podcasts Hosted by Caribbean Americans. In May 2018 at the launch of Breadfruit Media the article was updated to a directory and given its own page. Now over a year later Caribbean Podcast Directory has its own website dedicated to the discovery of Caribbean Podcasts.
According to the 2019 Podcast Trends Report, the biggest challenges facing podcasts today is Podcast Discovery. This is especially true for small and niche podcasts. Finding shows isn’t always easy as smaller shows are competing with more popular shows and networks with bigger marketing budgets. As of Oct 10th Apple has over 750k podcasts with this volume of podcasts, even with good content it’s going to be harder to get noticed or discovered.
The Customers
The Directory has two customer bases:
- The listener and
- The podcaster.
The first and key promise is to the listener – that when the listener goes to the directory, they are finding active and current podcasts to listen to.
In order to fill that promise, the podcaster plays a very important role. Podcasters can submit to the directory for free however they have to meet certain criteria before shows are added.
The promise to the podcaster to provide a platform where they can be featured as well as resources and opportunities that might get shared with us.
Directory Criteria
The first criteria for submission is at least one host must be of Caribbean Heritage. This means born in a Caribbean country or have parents, grandparents who were born in the region.
The second criteria requires that the podcast must be active for at least 6 months with a new episode every month for the past 6 months. Why this criteria? Well this criteria is helpful in fulfilling the first and key promise to the listener. A podcast that is not current or inconsistent reflects poorly on the directory and the other podcasts listed in the directory.
Think about it this way – imagine going to a supermarket and every other item or two you pick up in the store is expired; you would start to question ‘what type of supermarket is this?’ Let’s say you give supermarket another chance and go back on a different day but the same thing happens. You then make a decision not to go back right?
That is why criteria two is important. The submission details outlines how the Directory plans to support podcasters who seem to be podfading.
Now for new podcasters who are less than 6 months old it doesn’t mean that they can’t be celebrated and supported for being launching a podcast. The submission details also outlines the Directory’s plan that new shows.
Our Commitment
Breadfruit Media is invested in Caribbean Culture and committed to elevating the stories and voices of the Caribbean one podcast at a time.
Through the Caribbean Podcast Directory we are focused on transforming the way people discover podcasts hosted by people of Caribbean Heritage.
