XAPPmedia Launches Voice Cast for Podcasts Enabling Podcasters to Get on Amazon Alexa in 5 Minutes

XAPPmedia, the leader in interactive voice engagement, today announced the launch of Voice Cast for Podcasts, a self-service offering that enables podcasters to create custom Amazon Alexa skills online in five minutes. From there, XAPPmedia reviews and tests the skills and when ready, submits them to Amazon for certification. The whole process typically takes just a few days until the podcast Alexa skill is live and accessible by listeners. Voice Cast is built on top of XAPP's One Voice AI software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana voice assistant platforms.

Bring Your Podcast to Alexa and Leave the Details to XAPP

The Voice Cast for Podcasts solution has already successfully launched over 50 podcasts on Alexa such as Sword & Scale, Kirk & Callahan, We Study Billionaires, The Totally Football Show and Zach Sang. It's now available to all podcasters and supports all English language markets supported by Amazon Alexa. These include the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Ireland, India and New Zealand. Podcasters can go to the Voice Cast for Podcasts webpage enter some background information on their show and click submit to start the process. Once the custom Alexa skill is live, XAPP continues to provide podcasters with the industry's leading managed service for voice app operation and management. Voice Cast for Podcasts is available on Amazon Alexa today and other platforms will be supported in the future.

"Podcasters are busy. Few of them have time to even consider building an Alexa skill. Voice Cast for Podcasts makes it easy. Taking five minutes to fill out an online form is the fastest way to get a podcast on Alexa. From there XAPPmedia takes care of the rest. That means we review and build the Alexa skill, ensure certification through Amazon and provide ongoing maintenance and support by email and phone to both listeners and the podcasters. Thirty-nine million U.S. adults have access to smart speakers and that is going to grow at least 50% in 2018. There are also millions more users in the U.K., Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and India that podcasters can reach today through Alexa if they launch a custom skill. Voice Cast is a podcasters' onramp to a global audience through Alexa," said XAPPmedia CEO and co-founder Pat Higbie.

"Podcast listening on Alexa is a subpar user experience today and we set out to fix it with Voice Cast for Podcasts. The first feature we implemented was session persistence. A listener can leave the podcast and when they return it will pick up where they left off. And, we implemented different user scenarios based on content type. For podcasters with content that is replaced frequently, they can opt to have listeners only hear the latest episode. Others can offer the listener the option to continue where they left off or start the latest episode. The podcaster can define the user experience based on their content and audience. We also enabled custom intros and listening through the Amazon app on iOS and Alexa app on Android. It's a lot of features that we designed based on input from the more than 50 podcasters, some of whom started using Voice Cast in 2016," said Michael Myers, XAPPmedia chief product officer and co-founder.

You can learn more about Voice Cast for Podcasts on Amazon Alexa and pricing for the service here: https://xappmedia.com/voice-cast-podcasts/.

About XAPPmedia

XAPPmedia is the leader in delivering interactive voice experiences for brands and media that create direct consumer connections through voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana. More than 750 voice apps have been launched using XAPP's One Voice AI software platform that accelerates voice app production, provides multi-assistant publishing from a single code base and is incorporated into a high availability managed service for media and brands. XAPPmedia was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Washington, DC. One Voice AI and Voice Cast are trademarks of XAPPmedia, Inc. Learn more at https://xappmedia.com.

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