Player FM

Player FM has been around long enough to have weathered several generations of podcast apps and remains a quietly useful option, especially as a web player when somebody needs to listen to an episode at their desk without installing anything. If a listener clicks through from your website and doesn't already use a podcast app on the device they're on, opening the episode in Player FM on the browser is friction-free in a way that Apple Podcasts and Spotify don't really match on web.

The curated channels surface, run by humans rather than algorithms, still occasionally puts niche shows in front of new ears, which is increasingly rare in a podcast app market where discovery has been gutted in favour of personalisation feeds that mostly serve back what the listener already knows. The cross-device sync, from phone to watch to car infotainment, also still works well in a category where it should be table stakes but often isn't.

For podcasters, the practical question is whether to do anything specific about Player FM, and the answer is mostly no. The app indexes the Apple Podcasts directory, so submitting to Apple automatically gets you in.

The user base is small relative to Spotify and Apple, but engagement among regulars is high. Worth a mention in any directory-submission checklist; not worth losing sleep over or building campaigns around.