Top 3 Android Podcast Players With Listener Reviews
As Podcasters, we often say “subscribe/follow and review my podcast.” But, far too often, we mention Apple Podcasts as the main place to write reviews. Unfortunately, this podcast player is available to only about half of our potential global audience. Half! The other half uses Android podcast players. The more you know about Android podcast players, the more you can encourage your listeners to leave YOU reviews in them, and engage with them in these spaces.
As a Podcaster, you need to know:
- what Android podcast players your listeners can write reviews in
- where in the podcast players the reviews are located
- what your listener reviews look like in these podcast players
Top 3 Android Podcast Players That Support Podcast Reviews
There are many search results when you search for “podcast player” in the Google Play store. However, few of them allow listeners to write podcast reviews. I selected these three Android podcast players because they are popular, and support listener reviews and feedback, but in different ways.
I also need to clarify what I mean by “podcast review” in this article. I’m using it in a big umbrella way. It will include listener feedback like comments, star reviews or written reviews about your episode or podcast. We all want podcast reviews. But, what that means is changing, so I’ve reviewed these 3 podcast players with this flexible goal in mind.
Goodpods: Podcasts Are Better With Friends.
Goodpods is a relatively new podcast player. Even so, it has a lot of buzz around it already. This could be because Kim Kardashian West tweeted about them in August 2020, but who’s to say if that’s why.
Goodpods Podcast Player Feedback: Reviews, Comments & Star Ratings
Right now there are a few ways that your listeners can give feedback about your podcast: write a review, write a comment and give a star rating.
Star and Written Reviews on Episode Pages
Below is an example review from an episode page. Like most podcast players, the Goodpods app has episode pages and podcast pages. Episode reviews on episode pages can include a star rating and/or a written review. I was a bit brief on my own review below, but you can write more if you want to. Goodpods confirmed that the review length is 400 characters. That’s almost twice as many characters as a tweet.
Comments on Podcast Pages, Group and People You Follow Spaces
On the podcast page you can also see the star rating information. It’s on the top right side and shows the average star rating and how many ratings that includes.
On the group pages, and in the “people your listeners follow” feed, they can also reply to reviews. They’ve got 180 characters for each comment.
Goodpods Podcast Player Superpower
Goodpods groups are a game changer that is likely to shift our review focus sooner than later. This is a feature to keep an eye on.
Podbean: Listen, Learn, Watch, Enjoy;
Anywhere, Anytime!
Podbean Podcast Player Feedback: Comments & Replies to Comments
Podbean is a podcast host with a very popular podcast player as well. You don’t need to host your podcast with them to read and moderate comments for your podcast on their podcast player. They refer to reviews on the podcast player as “comments.”
Comment Number on Podcast Pages
Podcast page in the Podbean podcast player are where you can see how many reviews there are. These are in two places: next to “Comments,” just above the episodes, and under the episode title. You can see the number “1” in both of these places in the image below.
Comment Text on Episode Pages
Clicking on “Comments” button on the podcast page lets you read your listeners comments. All of the comments for your podcast appears on this page. Here is an example of what one review looks like.
Your listeners can write a review, and they can reply to other listeners’ reviews as well. To make things even easier, you can set up new comment notifications in the Podbean podcast player, so that you don’t miss a new review.
Podbean’s Podcast Player Superpower
Podbean rolled out their podcast audio live streaming service, called Podbean Live, in 2019. This was years before the current surge of social audio platforms.
Podhero: Podcasts Are Better When We’re Together
Podhero Podcast Player Feedback: Recommendations
Podhero has a lot of interesting podcast sharing goodness in its podcast player But, we’re only going to focus on the review functions in this article. They call them “recommendations.”
Recommendations Symbols on Podcast Pages
From the podcast page, you can see reviews by looking for reviewer profile images, with a green thumbs up symbol on top of it. In the below image, it’s just below the episode title, “Bandrew Scott” and above “June 2, 2021.”
Text Recommendations on Episode Pages
On an episode page, you can see the reviews that your listeners write. The blue thumbs up shows you that there are reviews for your episode. Just below the blue thumbs up symbol, there is a green thumbs up symbol with the number of reviews next to it. In the below image, this review number is “1.” Finally, below these blue and green thumbs you won’t find plants, you’ll find written reviews for your podcast.
The written reviews are at the top of the episode pages. We all know that word of mouth is much more persuasive than self promotion, right? Surely seeing these recommendations first will have a positive impact on whether a listener will hit play for this episode.
Podhero’s Podcast Player Superpower
The notifications tab on this podcast player is familiar and inviting. It looks like a Facebook feed, but has updates about their friends’ podcast listening and reviews. These are word of mouth recommendations at their finest!
The Future of Listener Reviews
Much of what podcast hosts, social audio and the above podcast players are doing right now redefine how podcast feedback can expand. It doesn’t matter what the feedback is called. What matters is that there are a variety of ways that your listeners can leave ideas, thoughts and comments about your podcast in a way that suits them and other listeners are you, the podcaster, can find and engage with. When you ask for reviews, make it easy for your audience to share their reflections on your content.
Reviews are a good way to get audience feedback, but there are others. In Podcraft Academy, our Growing Your Podcast Audience course provides 30 days of actions you can take to connect with your audience, and generate good word of mouth. Plus, our book, Podcast Growth can help you find new ways to cultivate your audience.
