Podcasts.ru
- The only media outlet about podcasting in Russian
- Runet Prize 2024
- Industry chat of 1,000+ people
The trade publication for the Russian podcast industry — news, market research, a job board, a studio database and live pitching sessions for new shows.
Why
In 2020 the Russian podcast market was growing fast, and nobody was covering it. There was no place to read the news of the industry, find out who was launching what, or see any numbers. I co-founded Podcasts.ru to be that place — and it is still the only media outlet about podcasting in Russian.
What I did
I ran the publication as editor-in-chief until 2023 and remain a co-founder. In those years it grew from a news site into the industry’s meeting point.
Research. We published our own market studies — how big the audience is, how many new podcasts appear each month — and ran joint studies with SETTERS, Yandex Music, RBC and Podnews.
Services. Inside the outlet we ran a job board and a database of podcast studios, the two things people in the industry asked for most.
Community. We held live pitching sessions where young podcasters presented new shows to studios and platforms — the Summer Pitching of 2022 among them. The industry chat around the outlet has more than a thousand members.
Along the way the publication worked with almost everyone in the market: major outlets (RBC, vc.ru, Meduza, Arzamas, BBC, Esquire, 2x2), streaming platforms (Yandex Music, Deezer, Zvuk, Apple Podcasts) and all the leading studios. One of its side projects became a product of its own: podcast.ru, the link service now used across the industry.
What came out
Six years on, Podcasts.ru is still running. In 2024 it won the Runet Prize, Russia’s national award for internet projects. The Telegram channel has 4,000 subscribers — small in absolute terms, but it’s the industry itself.