Introducing the all-new Anchor: Podcasting for everyone. (2024)

With nearly 70 million Americans now listening monthly, podcasts have officially crossed over into the mainstream. Yet like radio, podcasts are incredibly difficult to make, distribute, promote, and monetize. Despite the increasing demand, expensive tools, confusing software, and fragmented, friction-filled workflows have held creators back.

So we built Anchor, originally launched as a social audio platform for voice. The early versions of Anchor gave creators tools and a platform that made it easier than ever to be heard: by letting them create their own personal stream of audio, filled with music, sound effects, and voice captured by the high-powered microphones we all have in our pocket (our smartphones). But we heard time and time again that what creators truly wanted was to make a real podcast and have it heard everywhere people are listening. And that’s where Anchor 3.0 comes in.

Coming off the heels of our Series A funding, Anchor 3.0 removes all of the difficulty of getting a high quality podcast made and distributed everywhere people listen to audio.

With a brand new mobile app, a suite of powerful web tools, and 100% free podcast hosting for everyone, Anchor is now the absolute best place for anyone to create and distribute a podcast, whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out.

A redesigned mobile app, built for podcasting

Anchor’s free app for iOS and Android has been entirely re-imagined specifically for making a podcast, right from your phone. The moment you fire up the app, you’re taken straight into creation, where the app automatically builds a new episode for your podcast every day you use it. From there, you can easily record (by yourself or with up to 10 friends), add full songs from Apple Music or Spotify for your Anchor listeners, add a wide range of transitions, or broadcast voice messages from your listeners.

Speaking of voice messages, this entire experience (previously called call-ins) has been redesigned to enable direct, private conversations with the ability for either party to publish the audio to an episode. It’s a whole new way to create great audio for your podcast.

Episode management is now painless, too. Rearrange segments in your episodes, and build episodes from new or previous content. We’ve also updated the listening section of the app to better provide great audio for you to listen to, talented new creators to discover, and inspiration when you’re looking for ideas for your own podcast.

Powerful web tools that make podcasting easier for everyone

With Anchor 3.0, you can now make or manage your podcast using brand-new web tools both easy enough for new creators and powerful for veteran podcasters and professionals. The web tools sync seamlessly with our app, making it easy to switch back and forth between experiences.

There’s a ton you can do with the new web tools, including:

• Upload existing audio, like an episode you produced outside of Anchor using Garage Band, Audition, or Pro Tools.
• Create a new episode using Anchor’s handy Episode Builder, which lets you add audio from your Anchor history, browse and add voice messages from your listeners, add transitions, and even record new audio right from your web browser.
• View straightforward analytics that let you know how your podcast is doing without having to be a data scientist, pulling data from everywhere your podcast is being heard.
• Manage all of your Anchor episodes right from your desktop. Edit, delete, update metadata, and view episode-specific analytics all from the convenience of you your favorite web browser.

Anchor 3.0 also gives every user a beautiful landing page for their podcast on the web. Now you can send people right to a custom URL built specifically for your podcast, like anchor.fm/relayfm. This page will feature all of your episodes, your podcast information, plus links to all of the major podcast listening apps so your listeners can easily subscribe wherever they prefer.

Seamless distribution everywhere…and now including Spotify!

In addition to being the easiest way to make your podcast, Anchor lets you seamlessly distribute episodes across top podcasting apps with one tap of a button, including Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Google Play, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, and more. But that’s not all…

Today, we’re super proud to announce that you can now distribute podcasts made with Anchor to Spotify. Through this new partnership, Anchor creators can have their podcasts heard by Spotify’s 70 million global subscribers.

There’s never been an easier way to get your podcast on Spotify.

With the power to push your content everywhere podcasts are heard, we believe you should be able to manage every aspect of your podcast from one platform. To that end, Anchor also surfaces helpful analytics that show how your podcast is doing across all platforms where people are listening. We even allow you to make changes to already-published episodes and instantly push those edits out everywhere your podcast lives.

Unlimited podcast hosting for everyone, 100% free

Once you’ve created your podcast — in the Anchor app, with the Anchor web tools, or somewhere else entirely — you can host all of your episodes, no matter how long they are or how many downloads they get, 100% free at anchor.fm. Since our mission is to democratize audio, we believe in removing all friction that stands in the way of you creating your content and getting it heard — that includes paying for hosting.

Love the sound of Anchor 3.0, but already podcasting somewhere else? No problem: We make it really easy to transfer your existing podcast over to Anchor with the tap of a button. After that, all you have to do is redirect your feed and cancel your existing plan so you never have to pay for podcast hosting again.

Podcasts you can find on Anchor today

We know you’re going to love Anchor 3.0. In fact, it’s already been tested by some of the best creators in the world: our incredible launch partners, who we’ve worked with to ensure podcasts made on Anchor sound great. Check out their podcasts available on the new Anchor 3.0:

• Brave, Not Perfect from Reshma Saujani & Girls Who Code
• Reporting to You from BuzzFeed
• Subnet from Relay FM
• Ask A Manager from Penguin Random House author Alison Green
• Multiple Tabs from Tiffany Zhong and Zebra Intelligence
• Seeker+ from Seeker
• The Fatherly Podcast from Fatherly
• Seed to Scale from Eniac Ventures
• Let Me Google That from author Abby Norman
• The Outline World Dispatch from The Outline
• The Cheddar Briefing from Cheddar
• A new podcast from Atlantic Records

We’re also excited to welcome The Players’ Tribune who will be using our new tools to help athletes create new content for their fans.

If you’ve ever wanted to make a podcast, there’s really never been a better time to get started. No more dealing with the hassle of buying expensive equipment, learning confusing software, paying for file hosting, fumbling around with RSS feeds, or any of the other annoying aspects of podcast creation and distribution.

Anchor is simply the easiest way to make a podcast, ever. No more excuses.

Start making your podcast now by visiting anchor.fm, or download our free app for iOS or Android. Already tried Anchor 3.0? We’d love to hear what you think! You can always find us on Anchor, on Twitter, and via email. We can’t wait to hear from you.

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