Castro leans into indie (Changelog Interviews #589)

Changelog Master Feed

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.

Leave us a comment

Changelog++ members get a bonus 3 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!

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.
• Cloudflare – Read the Developer Week 2024 wrap-up or tune into Developer Week on Cloudflare TV.
• Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs.

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!

Kapitel

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)