Castro leans into indie (Changelog Interviews #589)

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This week we’re joined by Dustin Bluck to discuss his acquisition of the well known (and beloved) Castro podcast app to take it indie-focused once again. As previous users of Castro, we were excited to dig into the details behind this popular podcast client to see what’s next, how the deal was done, a peek into the code, and where exactly this indie and creator focused podcast app can go.

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Sponsors:

• Sentry – Code breaks, fix it faster. Don’t just observe. Take action. Sentry is the only app monitoring platform built for developers that gets to the root cause for every issue. 90,000+ growing teams use sentry to find problems fast. Use the code CHANGELOG when you sign up to get $100 OFF the team plan.
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Featuring:

• Dustin Bluck – GitHub, Website
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• A Fresh Start for Castro
• Podcast app Castro now owned by indie developer Bluck Apps
• I am the owner of Castro Podcasts. Ask me anything!

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chapters

1. Disclaimer. (00:00:00)

2. This week on The Changelog (00:00:09)

3. Sponsor: Sentry (00:01:18)

https://sentry.io/

4. Start the show! (00:02:39)

5. What is Tiny? (00:03:58)

6. Why did Andrew/Tiny sell? (00:06:07)

7. Why buy? (00:08:09)

8. The right time, right moment (00:10:19)

9. How do you value this? (00:12:06)

10. Sponsor: Cloudflare (00:14:35)

https://www.cloudflare.com/developerweek

11. What is your ambition? (00:16:56)

12. Did you see the source code? (00:21:05)

13. The acquisition process (00:22:43)

14. Are you bleeding users? (00:23:51)

15. Any regrets? (00:25:04)

16. Lean into indie. Tell your story. (00:25:33)

17. The indie roadmap (00:29:52)

18. Sponsor: Notion (00:32:38)

http://notion.com/changelog

19. Podcasting 2.0 (00:34:12)

20. Discoverability / YouTube algorithm (00:39:31)

21. The money path (00:41:59)

22. Serving Android (00:43:17)

23. Will this be open source? (00:45:02)

24. Where is the money? (00:46:24)

25. Selling to the listeners (00:50:28)

26. Closing thoughts (00:54:11)