BBC's Adaptive podcasting - ushers the age of personalised podcast experience

Lined Circle

24  Sept 2022

news

A  new podcast format that enables producers to make parts of their audio flexible - personalised to each listener, using data from listeners’ devices.

BBC's Adaptive experiment 

What if stories you listen to could adapt to your surroundings or to the time of day you’re listening to them, or if they could stretch or contract in length to fit with how long you’ve going to listen to them 

Architecture 

Adaptive podcasting is a key example of object-based media (OBM), an approach to media development pioneered by BBC Research & Development.  

OBM at heart

OBM puts personalisation at the heart of creation. By producing media made up of many small, interchangeable assets or objects creators can tell stories that flex and adapt to their respective audiences. 

2 tools 4 U

First technical explorations into this concept launched in September 2022, with release of adaptive podcasting player app and a web editing tool.  

Prototype  

A web-based editor now allows creation of adaptive podcasts, with no coding experience. It provides podcasters with a platform to compile and organise their audio objects, setting various parameters to control the changes to their content 

Player app 

The app interacts with data and sensors on a user's device, as programmed by the podcast creator. The requested data is available only if the user allows. This way, app can change a podcast's content and length using this information to provide a unique personalised version. 

Collaboration 

A community-focused approach has always been at the heart of the vision for adaptive podcasting.