Fathom Podcast Player 12+

Like Tinder for Podcasts

…But unlike “that” dating app, you’re much less likely to regret your matches.

I listen to a LOT of podcasts and assumed I’d run through all the best True Crime/Tech and Science/Pop Culture shows out there. Within seconds, the Fathom app had matched my interests to both popular podcasts in the genre I hadn’t considered, along with newer and less well-known shows.

I can be really fussy about the podcasts I like. Too low-energy, too HIGH energy, certain vocal qualities and I can’t get into the show. This app is really great for this in particular: Fathom will pull up a podcast with an audio sample most unique to the show so I can immediately get a sense of what the podcast is like. I can Like/follow if I like it and swipe up if I don’t.

No more scrolling through recommendation posts to find more podcasts, I’m just using Fathom from now on.

Beautiful and fancy but the future is bleak (since this from the future)

Lots to like and inspire here but as constructed this app comes off as a bundle of features and somewhat incomplete rather than a product that delivers on its pitch.

Pros: beautiful UI, episode preview feature.
Cons: in the future apparently there are no serialized podcasts. Everything is episodic. Should add an episode list view to resolve this. The preview feature is not explained well, it is just a little play button separate from the main play button. Hitting the preview button drops you into the middle of the episode which might be fine but then you miss the beginning of the episode. And you might hear an ad pretty quickly which sort of defeats the purpose. In the future your favorite podcasts might not exist! Missing a bunch of my favorite Audacy podcasts (just as an example); either that or search is not doing its job. The apple import functionality sounds promising but doesn’t work because it’s not possible unless you have episodes downloaded from those that you follow. I follow tons of podcasts on apple but the feature here returned zero podcasts.

All in all, beautiful and a nice start but not lots to improve on for me to consider a switch. But good luck Fathom crew!

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the helpful feedback! We're just getting started and working on all of the issues you mentioned. Next major release we'll be re-working the home screen a bit to provide a more cohesive daily-driver oriented pod listening app. I'm curious which Audacy pods you were unable to find - if you could provide a few examples to hello@fathom.fm we'd really appreciate it as we're still dialing in the pod search.

Magical

I was skeptical that the AI search capability could work, but it didn't just work... it blew me away. The ability to search in and across podcasts for topics I'm interested in is a game-changer. Not only will this help me discover new podcasts I might be interested in, but it allows me to find parts of podcasts I already subscribe to that I want to go back and listen to.