Tom Barrasso Reveals How PodLP Unlocks 3B+ Listeners Beyond Smartphones

Have you ever wondered how people without smartphones can access your podcast—or how big that untapped audience might be? Podcasts are a valuable source of information, education, and entertainment. If you are interested to know how to make your Podcast accessible to billions across the globe beyond smartphones you don’t want to miss this episode. If you want to claim a piece of the 3 billion–plus listeners not using iPhones or Androids, this episode is a must-listen.
Today on episode 50, of the PodcastingTech Show, host Mathew Passy chats with Tom Barrasso, founder and developer of PodLP , the innovative app that brings podcasts to feature phones (“dumb phones”) around the world. If you’ve ever assumed your listeners all have iPhones or Androids, this episode will seriously open your eyes!
Tom Barrasso is a software developer and entrepreneur based in New Zealand who created PodLP out of a desire for digital detox—and a personal challenge to prove that even “dumb phones” could be smart about podcasts. His unique expertise bridges podcast technology and truly global access.
We discuss exactly how PodLP makes podcasts accessible to listeners in emerging markets in India and beyond. Tom unpacks how PodLP is breaking Podcast barriers with feature Phone technology,, the surprising size and diversity of the feature phone landscape, and why Western podcasters should be paying attention.
You’ll learn about the technical challenges Tom faced building for this underserved audience, how PodLP works on devices most of us never think about, and what this means for your show’s global reach.
IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER:
- Why Tom built PodLP: How a pandemic project turned into a worldwide feature phone podcast platform, and why digital detox was the spark. (1:00)
- The size of the feature phone market: India, the U.S., and beyond—find out who’s actually buying feature phones in 2024 (hint: it’s not just seniors!). (5:20)
- Why and how feature phone users matter for podcasting: Tom explains why emerging markets are the next frontier for English (and non-English) podcast consumption—and what makes audio perfect there. (7:00)
- How PodLP works: What’s different on a tiny screen, what features you’ll recognize, and why every PodLP download equals a real listen. (8:55)
- How to get your podcast listed: Good news—if you’re in Podcast Index, you’re already there. If not, you might be missing out on millions of potential listeners. (11:20)
- Technical tips & improvements for podcast accessibility: Why high-bitrate audio or huge artwork isn’t always best, and how thinking globally can help your show grow. (15:10)
Links and resources mentioned in this episode:
- PodLP (explore the platform, check if your show is listed!): https://podlp.com/
- Podcast Index (ensure your show is included): https://podcastindex.org/
- NPR Planet Money (Tom’s recommended listening): https://www.npr.org/sections/money/
- How I Built This (Tom’s pick): https://www.npr.org/sections/how-i-built-this/
- Learn more about KaiOS: https://www.kaiostech.com/
- Read more on IPv6 and why it matters: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/network-layer/what-is-ipv6/
- Follow with PodLP on Social Media: Linkedin - @PodLP
Instagram - @podlp_app
Facebook - @Podlp App
Don’t miss this episode if you care about podcast growth, global access, and the next billion listeners! For more insights and tech tips, subscribe to podcastingtech.com to listen to previous episodes of the PodcastingTech Show.
**As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases of podcasting gear from Amazon.com . We also participate in affiliate programs with many of the software services mentioned on our website. If you purchase something through the links we provide, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The team at Podcasting Tech only recommends products and services that we would use ourselves and that we believe will provide value to our viewers and readers.**
For additional resources and insights visit podcastingtech.com or follow us on social media:
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EQUIPMENT IN USE:
- Rodecaster Pro 1st Gen (No longer available). Consider the Rodecaster Duo or Rodecaster Pro II
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Well, from what I understand, our guest hears this often, but we are chatting
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with someone who's probably the furthest away from me possible,
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with the exception of one other we we did, in Australia. We are in New
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Zealand chatting with Tom Barrasso. He is the founder and developer
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of Pod LP. And I don't think I'm gonna
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do it justice by explaining it, but, he basically, has created
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software that helps bring podcasts to non smartphones
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around the world. And, you know, probably most of the listeners don't know how many
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are out there, but I'm sure we're gonna get some really good information about that.
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Tom, thank you very much for joining us today. Yeah. Thank you very much for
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having me. So were you in the
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podcasting space? Like, did you have interest in podcasting
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before PodLP? Like, what kinda led you
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to wanna develop this software? Yeah.
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But, basically the story starts with the pandemic. Like a lot of
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people, I no longer had a commute. I had a lot less, to do,
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a lot more time on my hands. And, I've been getting into this idea
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of, as a lot of people are and we'll talk about the types of users
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that that are drawn to feature phones. But, I
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wanted one basically for digital detox purposes. I wanted to take it camping,
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for weekend trips. And the issue that I had, my my girlfriend made
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fun of me at the time. She was like, you'll never be able to do
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that because they don't have a podcast app. And because I was a developer, I
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was like, okay, great. Challenge accepted. I'll go ahead and build one. It can't be
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that hard. So that was more or less when I got started. The
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the big issue for me then, for folks who are probably aware of the timeline
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was the podcast index hadn't yet launched and so probably the hardest thing as a
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developer back then was just getting the feeds together, figuring out how to build a
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directory. That was definitely the the biggest,
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challenge to overcome. And then I I launched pretty quickly. I think it took me
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under a month to actually get it shipped. Although granted, I'll say the very first
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version of PodLP was about as unglamorous as you can
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get. Didn't even have thumbnails, because I couldn't figure out how to shrink the
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images to fit the screen without running into memory issues. So there were a
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lot of, issues trying to wrangle the world of podcasting to fit,
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feature phones. Interesting. I'm I'm surprised you
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say that it's hard to get information on podcast
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because, you know, everybody classically, when somebody signs up, you
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say, alright. You sign up for Apple, then you'll you'll find yourself on, you know,
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a few dozen, other platforms who basically go into their directory.
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Is Apple's API, difficult, expensive? Like, what
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what made getting the content from Apple more difficult than waiting for
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a pod to cast index to come along and, you know, provide this this great
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resource? Yeah. So at the time, I think one of
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the biggest challenges with the Apple dataset was,
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or or the Apple APIs were, they're they're
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obviously not geared towards this type of
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user segment, and there are a lot of criteria that mandated the
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need for a, an API that was specific to
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this market segment. I'll give you a couple of examples. I I
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gave the one of thumbnails first off. So So that's something Apple actually does pretty
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well, but, you can run into restrictions. I know people say
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like the Apple API is rate limited. When we go into talking about the the
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version of PodLP that runs in CloudForm, I'll talk about why that was a
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concern. But perhaps one of the bigger ones
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was, for PodLP specifically especially launching in India it
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needed to support IPv6 only use. Something that podcasters
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probably don't think about. Basically there's two versions of the Internet protocol. In the good
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old days you had, IP addresses, IPv4. It basically had
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four numerical segments between zero to two fifty five. So a number like
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+1 92 1 6 8 0 1. There were I think
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4,000,000,000 give or take IPv4 addresses which is a problem because there's more than
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4,000,000,000 people, not excluding all of the devices that we all have today.
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So, you can imagine that eventually hit a limit and
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IPv6 solves that. It has, far more IPv addresses.
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The the addresses themselves are far more complicated.
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But, and something I get from a lot of podcasters is, well, why why should
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we care about this? Right? Because in Western markets, the telecommunication operators will
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handle backwards compatibility with technologies like NAT six four and
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DNS six four. They basically make it so that IPv four devices
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connect to IPv services and vice versa. In emerging
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markets like India, they don't do that. It's just too expensive. It's not worth their
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time. And so podcasters don't know what they're missing out on.
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And importantly, the user doesn't know because they don't, the
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user gets an an ambiguous error and the podcast hosting company
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never finds out because the user is never able to reach their service, so there's
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no error for them. They can't see how much, potential they're missing
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here. So I basically had to have an API that was able to account
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for things like this and allow me to suppress certain feeds based on the host
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that they were on. And had I relied solely on Apple, I wouldn't have had
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the ability to to do things like that. Gotcha. Alright. So they they
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come along, make it a little bit easier, and and therefore PodLP is
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born. I think for some folks, I don't think they
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understand how big the feature phone market is. And and I
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guess another way people think of feature phones are dumb phones. Right? Not big,
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tall screen phones like an Android or an Apple device. What are
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we looking at? How many are out there? Where are they popular?
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Yeah. How big is this market still? Yeah. It's a great question. So
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you heard me mention India. The market for feature phones is still quite
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large. It's stable in countries like The United States
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where it has resisted declining probably
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because of a combination of factors. So right now the Piedl P
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market specifically, India makes up the lion's share of use probably about
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80% give or take. The United States is actually the second largest
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market for feature phones worldwide. I think, last year
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almost 3,000,000 units were sold across The United States. So that's one
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that surprises a lot of people. Who's buying them?
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Yeah, who's buying them? That's a great question. I see probably three primary
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markets here. One are seniors, a lot of these devices are geared towards
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older folks. The second are children. Parents buying them for their kids that
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they want to have restricted use and it's a lot easier to restrict a feature
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phone that only has say a hundred apps than it is to restrict, an
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iPhone with 3,000,000 apps potentially. And then the third is
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digital detoxers, you know, Gen Z, Millennials, people who are, trying to get
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away from scrolling addiction and, probably the easiest way that they
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found to accomplish that is to remove the temptation by moving to feature
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phones. Interesting. Alright. So so you those three populations
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in The US, India, so it sounds like a lot of emerging markets,
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and a lot of underdeveloped countries where
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maybe the networks aren't as strong, but, obviously, they still want and
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need, you know, reliable communication.
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I guess for a lot of podcasters, we probably don't think a lot about
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them, especially, you know, ones based here in The US.
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Do you see them being like a burgeoning podcast consumption
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market and one that more people should be paying attention to?
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Oh, absolutely. I I think probably the single biggest reason why you
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should pay attention to markets, especially ones like India, is that India is the largest
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English speaking country if you take into account English as a second language.
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So, you know, there's over 400,000,000 in English
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speakers in India, well more than those in The United States.
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And then it's just a faster a very fast growing market. Many
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people are coming online at a much faster pace than in other parts of
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the world. If you think about the, digital divide for those who
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have access to mobile connectivity, you still have about two and a half to
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3,000,000,000 people around the world who do not have access to any type of
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mobile Internet connection. That includes basic two g, like, if you're gonna
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do SMS or calling, like, you get on a a really basic feature phone.
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There's a huge huge potential in these markets. And
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audio has a a a really strong potential because it overcomes a lot of the
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linguistic barriers that you would get in a country like India where if you
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exclude English, it's a very fragmented market where you
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have more than a dozen regional Indic languages that,
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all sort of compete for, you know, pretty large sizes of
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population. Right? There are languages in India that have more than a hundred million
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speakers that I bet you most people have never heard of before,
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and audio is just a much easier format to distribute that information in
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because it's easier to, for the user to consume. It's more familiar.
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A lot of them are familiar with radio today. So it's something that they're easy
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cognitively easier to adapt to. So what's the
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what's the feature phone version of a podcast store like?
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What is like, what's the experience like on PodLP? Are there,
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you know, limitations that
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smartphone podcast consumers would would visit, or is it really
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just you were able to shrink all that UX and UI
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into that smaller screen typically? Yeah. You can
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shrink quite a bit. PodLP is a long way from when it first
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launched. There's there's definitely thumbnails now, rich search,
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categorization for podcasts, feeds that are
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adapted based on a number of indicators including geography and language.
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But beyond that it's got a lot of the basic features you would expect. So
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if you were to open Paddle P today, it'll take you to the home page.
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You'll see, a set of podcasts that include,
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sponsored content. So that's how Paddle P is able to sustain its
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operations, as well as, organic content that is,
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ranked based on, as I mentioned, language, geography, and a few other factors.
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And, then you'd click into a podcast. It would look like you would expect today.
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You have the ability to subscribe. You can change the sort
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order. You can download individual episodes, on the
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KaiOS version. In CloudFront, that's not possible, and I'll I can talk a little bit
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about why that's not possible, technologically. And then,
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yeah, you can play, you can scrub through a podcast, you can do seeking, there's
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a sleep timer functionality. So a lot of the things that you might expect
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are there, but I'll say probably the biggest thing that isn't there,
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would be automatic downloads. The platforms today don't have that
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capability and that's something that probably shocks a lot of people in the podcasting world,
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certainly shocks, subscribers to PodLP. Because, if you think
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about it, if you have an iPhone or Android today, when you click subscribe, you're
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so used to having that episode ready there for you. But what that also means
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is that when a user clicks subscribe, your, download
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numbers are pretty tightly correlated to,
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the number of subscribers that you have. It doesn't mean that and a problem that
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I'm sure everyone in the podcasting world knows, listens are not downloads.
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That that is the exact opposite in the future phone market without the ability to
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do automatic downloads. Every download that you get from an app like
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Paddle P is an organic, listen that is triggered by a
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direct user action. Right. So it's it's down not all
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downloads are listens, but all listens are downloads. Right? Because there are
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some services that, you know, list the
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their stats differently, and and it's you know, for a lot of people, it gets
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very confusing. What so
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because you have access to the podcast index, should folks hearing this who
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are like, oh, that is a, you know, big market and my content would actually
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make a lot of sense there. Do they have to get themselves onto
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PodLP, or are you already kinda grabbing those those
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feeds from the big directories? Yeah. Not
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anymore. Since the migration roughly a year ago now, Podolpi is using
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the podcast index for its back end, so there's no need to submit your feed
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directly. I think there's an old landing page for that, but it basically is just
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grayed out and says there's nothing that you need to do here. But if, of
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course, if you're excluding your feed from the podcast index, then,
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it's very likely it won't get picked up by PodLP, and there currently isn't really
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a way to manually override that. What would
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downloads on PodLP look like in my
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stats on, you know, standard hosting platforms?
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Oh, the short answer is it really depends on what host you're
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using. From the very beginning, I've had hosts that were very proactive. For
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instance, Buzzsprout, I think they added support for the PYDLP user
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agent fragment back in probably 2020, not long after it
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launched. Many posts have been reluctant since then.
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So if you're looking at PYDLP download today, you're gonna see probably,
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I could think of at least five or six different things. So
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it comes from and it's stemmed from the two platforms that PodLP is currently,
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supporting, KaiOS and CloudPhone. KaiOS is a mobile
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operating system based on Firefox OS. So if you
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get downloads from PodLP, and your host doesn't support the user agent, it's
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probably gonna look like either Firefox, browser, Linux,
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or occasionally Android because some, KaiOS devices will
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put Android in the user agent fragment to force websites into a mobile
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view, so it's sort of a workaround that ends up misattributing
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downloads. And then if you're on Cloud Phone, it's a little bit different
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it's going to look like browser, Google Chrome, or Linux and
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that's because the CloudPhone user agent,
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CloudPhone is a remote browser basically like Opera Mini, but it
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runs using the Chromium engine. And so, yeah, hosts will misattribute,
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Pinelp downloads, pretty much all over the place. And CloudPhone's
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even more difficult because they use, like Opera Mini, they
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have a fleet of servers that does transcoding, on the fly to be able
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to serve content to these types of budget devices. And so the
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IP address ranges that you're gonna be seeing traffic from is much narrower on
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Cloud phone as well. Gotcha. So I I have
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to ask, are you a primarily feature phone
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person, or are you on smartphones and you're just making sure
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podcasts are accessible to everyone? I'm on the smartphone
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for a variety of reasons. But, yeah, it's obviously they're
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quite difficult to use. There's a number of services that I unfortunately need,
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on a bit more regular basis. And these
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devices, because they're so budget tend to have a narrower
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frequency band and because I'm traveling in places like New Zealand, it just
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gets quite difficult to be able to have a phone that actually works in multiple
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countries. You end up sort of buying a new phone everywhere you go. Although I
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do have a very extensive collection of these phones, I probably have, I don't know,
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fifteen, twenty of them at this point. That's great. Yeah. You know,
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I I just wrapped up watching a series that was, you know,
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supposed to take place, like, late nineties, early '2 thousands, and everybody in the
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show is using a flip phone. And I'm watching that going, you know,
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I I don't wanna get rid of my iPhone. Right? It is powerful. It is
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important. There's a lot of things. But sometimes I wanna leave that at home and
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just carry a flip phone for people to call me on. I think that would
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be so awesome. So we have been chatting with Tom Barrasso,
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founder developer of PodLP. You can, take a look at what they're up to at
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podlp.com. Tom, before we let you go, some other questions we
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wanna ask you about, you know, podcasting in general. The first is, you
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know, you have solved a problem for folks who are
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not who do not have access to smartphones in bringing podcasts to
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them. Are there other places in podcasting where
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you would like to see improvement or you're thinking about, you know, maybe solving problems
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for us? Yeah. I actually submitted a
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couple of recommendations to the podcast index when they were coming up at their,
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the namespace, the RSS namespace. Unfortunately, I don't think they
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got widely adopted. Alternate enclosures was a big
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one. I know the podcasters like to record in the highest quality possible
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and it makes sense for the types of markets when you're prioritizing, say,
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Apple. But obviously for accessibility, it's just a waste.
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People streaming, high bit rate podcasts on a four g feature
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phone that outputs to a really grainy speaker are not benefiting from that
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quality. If anything, they're just wasting their data on it. So I
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think that was one. Similarly with, thumbnails like I mentioned, it was always
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unfortunate to me but, because we always focus in the largest possible
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device categories, most album most podcast artwork
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is 2,000, three thousand pixels in size. That is
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10 times the size of the screen that these things render on. And
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so, again, it's just wasting pixels here. In fact, I've
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had many people when they come to put do a sponsor on PaddleView, they ask,
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you know, what does it look like? And they see the scaled down version at
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a 28 pixels and like, what? I can't read any of that. Like, yeah that's
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the point, you can't read it because, you you you
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couldn't, you know, how could you possibly read on on a half an inch, a
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quarter of an inch of screen real estate. So yeah I think just getting
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people aware, I think that's the biggest thing being aware that there's millions of people
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who would like to consume this content and finding ways to make it more accessible.
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Technically, finding ways to make it more accessible, in terms
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of, yeah, the the places that you distribute on, the the devices
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that you consider, and the markets that you, you
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know, target. Alright. Have you ever hosted a
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podcast or do you just like supporting it with, software?
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I haven't hosted. It's something I've definitely thought about. I've just I've
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always heard the advice from folks that if you're gonna, you know, start a
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podcast, it has to be something that you really love because, especially in the
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beginning, it's not a good business. If anything, it's probably more of an
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expense. So, yeah, I think I'm just waiting for that idea to come around, but
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I've always wondered because I have this platform. Right? Like, I have a place that
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I can promote my own material, that I don't have to pay for. So,
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it's certainly something that's crossed my mind. Yeah. I mean, with your with
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your level of technical expertise on podcast and, you
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know, coding, I'm sure you can provide a lot of value,
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to folks who wanna have a deeper understanding of what's going on and and, honestly,
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not just where we are, but where we could be going, especially with a lot
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of the, you know, RSS two point o stuff. So I I wanna ask you
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about tech on your wish list because usually people say, like, a microphone or whatnot,
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and, you know, you've already brought tech to the table for us. So I'll ask
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you this instead. What podcast are you listening to these
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days that your are your favorites? The kind that, you know,
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whenever a new episode comes along, you are gonna stop and go over there, or
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you are not going to miss an episode of that show. Are there, you know,
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a few that are just, you know, always on your, you know, regular
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playlist? Oh, yeah. And you can tell this probably from my
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website. They'll usually be the ones that I'm featuring, inadvertently in
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screenshots and other promotional material. So, yeah, I listen a lot to
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Planet Money from NPR, and, how I built
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this. Yeah. Just the inspiration of some of these stories, hearing other creators
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and how they were able to successfully come up with ideas, build,
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scale, and just the challenges that they faced. Like, for me going
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through Paddle P, I found a lot of curve balls. There's, like, legal
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challenges to operating in the Indian market. There's technical ones, like I mentioned,
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IPV six. There's a lot of things that you just wouldn't think about if your
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sole focus is, the Western world. And so, yeah, it
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sort of forced me, to to reconsider that that
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view and, yeah, expand my technical horizons.
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Gotcha. Well, once again, we have been chatting with Tom Barrasso, founder
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developer of PodLP. You don't have to go
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over there to submit your show, but you should check it out and find
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your show's link and start to put that on
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your website next to your other buttons and, you know, show
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that you are thinking about folks who don't have who don't necessarily
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have a smartphone. I think that'll be a really, you know I I
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it's interesting to see it would be interesting to see more of those,
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popping up in the coming in the coming days and and years and whatnot. Well,
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Tom, it has been a great pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank
Speaker:
you for having me.

Tom Barrasso
Founder / Developer
Tom Barrasso is the innovative founder and developer behind PodLP, a pioneering platform that brings podcasts to non-smartphone, or “feature phone,” users around the world. Based in New Zealand, Tom is passionately closing the digital divide and making on-demand audio accessible to millions who traditionally have been left out of the global podcasting ecosystem.
Tom’s journey toward transforming audio accessibility began during the pandemic. While exploring digital detox solutions and seeking alternatives to his smartphone, Tom encountered firsthand the lack of podcast support on feature phones. Driven by his technical expertise and a classic developer’s curiosity—coupled with a friendly challenge from his partner—Tom quickly engineered the first version of PodLP in under a month. While the initial rollout was minimalistic, Tom’s vision and persistence saw PodLP evolve into a robust, feature-rich platform designed for the unique constraints and needs of feature phone users.
Recognizing the vast untapped markets in regions like India—now PodLP’s largest audience—and understanding the diverse user base in the United States (including seniors, children, and digital detoxers), Tom has continuously optimized PodLP for global impact. He’s tackled complex technological challenges, such as IPv6 support and resource allocations for low-bandwidth environments, all while ensuring a user-friendly experience with rich search, podcast categorization, and language-targeted content. Tom’s innovations have effectively opened the podcasting world to hundreds of millions o… Read More