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It’s Just a Podcast Player
Isn’t this just Airr?
Snipd is the Airr for Android. But so much more. You’ve probably hear of Airr right? It’s an iOS only application that lets you clip sections from podcasts and save them for later. It’s a great little idea and I really wanted something like that, that didn’t require selling both of my kidneys to Apple. This is where Snipd comes in.
So Snipd is a podcast player. Does everything that you’d want a podcast player to do. Well, sort of everything. There’s a few minor features missing that apps like PocketCasts do a little better but they truly are minor features. Snipd hits every main feature perfectly and sprinkles a bit of AI fairy dust on top of that podcast formula, to make itself a true podcast app competitor.
So I mentioned Airr. The snipping feature of Airr is it’s biggest selling point. No one listens to a podcast and takes notes on it at the same time. Like honestly who’s got time for that? Airr solved that by allowing you to just tap an earbud or tap a button in their app to mark the section of the podcast you’re listening to and create a little snippet you can come back to if you want to revisit it later down the line. This is super handy especially when you’re on the move. But Airr is iOS only and although the way they allow you to make little snippets out of podcasts was clever, there’s a new Sheriff in town when it comes to getting truly useful insights out of your favourite podcasts.
Snipd is the New Sheriff in Town
It’s like podcasts have just been put on AI enhanced steroids. Airr is dead and Snipd killed it. Taking clips from podcasts? Snipd does that. Linking the audio from the podcast to a transcript from said podcast so you can read it as well as listen to it? Snipd does that. Not got time to listen to a full 2 hour podcast to gain all the valuable insights so you would rather just read a quick summary generated by an AI? Snipd does that too. Maybe you don’t like reading AI generated stuff and would still rather hear you favourite podcast host giving you valuable information, and would rather just listen to the most popular clips other users have made for your podcast. Well surprise, surprise Snipd does that too. It’s like podcasts have just been put on AI enhanced steroids.
Hitting the Major Podcast Targets
Okay to really compete in the land of podcast apps you need to hit the big features that everyone expects. Snipd hits all the big ones. Queue up podcasts you want to listen to (add them to the beginning or the end of the queue). Skip through chapters of a podcast (even if they’re not specified by the creator, through the magic of AI). Set a default listening speed for all those slow (or fast) talkers. Skip forward and back a few seconds (set these up however you want, the default is 10 seconds rewind and 30 secs forward). Read the show notes provided by a podcast creator. Set a sleep timer, so you can doze off listening to the sweet voice of Joe Rogan. Download podcasts for offline listening. Listen to podcasts in the car with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto (extra handy when you can take snips on the go). Discover new podcasts by searching or using the discovery pages. The only minor feature I could find that Pocketcasts supports that Snipd doesn’t is the “trim silence” feature that removes any dead space in between people talking. But like honestly how much time does that save like 45 seconds per podcast. That’s a small price to pay for salvation.
Just use ChatGPT?
Hey ChatGPT Can You Summarise This for Me
Sure you could just take all your little quotes from Airr and paste them over into ChatGPT and tell it to make a nice little summary for you. But if you can’t even be bothered to take notes while listening to a podcast you’re sure as hell not going to spend the extra time doing that. We’re all suckers for a bit of convenience and Snipd is about as convenient as it gets.
When you first select an episode of a podcast, without even listening to it, Snipd can give you an AI generated summary (for most episodes; older episodes are occasionally not summarised, but the ability to select specific episodes to be summarised is coming soon, if you pay for premium of course). So you’ll never waste time listening to a podcast that it turns out just isn’t really interesting to you. Say you’ve listened to that super interesting podcast and you make a big pile of snips from it. Well now Snipd knows what parts of that podcast you specifically found valuable and it can work it’s AI magic yet again to generate a summary tailored specifically to the parts of the podcast that you thought were worth remembering.
So yes, you could copy all this with ChatGPT if you had all the time in the world. But just like the rest of us. You really don’t have all the time in the world.
But I Already Have All My Podcast Notes Saved in Notion, Obsidian, Evernote
I bet if you’re reading this you’ve probably already got bunch of notes from podcasts, books, articles, maybe even from school or work projects. Maybe you like keeping all of your notes in the one app. I’m a sucker for Notion when it comes to that kind of thing. I’ve written about Notion before and I’ll likely write about it again because every time I think I’ve mastered it some other feature gets dropped that somehow makes it an even better app. So why do I mention Notion you may ask. Well that’s where all my notes live. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could have all my notes from Snipd in Notion. Well Snipd allows just that. They support a handful of apps for this feature.
For me, Snipd can create a Notion database and have all of the episodes I take snips of me saved right in my workspace. Now this is pretty cool, kinda handy. But I already use Readwise to sync together all my notes. Readwise takes my notes from Kindle, Twitter, there own app Reader and now, even from Snips. That’s right Snipd can export all of your notes into Readwise and via Readwise into Notion as well if you like. So that nice little workflow I already had going, it just slots right in. Readwise can even surface notes from Snipd in the daily review they give you. So you’re notes from all these podcasts actually get read again at some point.
You Need to Pay for It?
AI Isn’t Cheap You Know
Now Snipd is free. Mostly. Up until recently Snipd was entirely free as it was relatively new and still had occasional bugs and hiccups. But now it’s a full fledged podcast heavy hitter. And AI isn’t cheap. So Snipd now offers a premium membership that allows you instant access to all of their AI features. If you were an early adopter like myself, they give you this at a discount, which ends up being around £42.00 a year for the annual plan (£3.50 a month). This is just around the top end of what I was willing to pay for Snipd. Just before announcing premium they sent out a survey asking questions about how much people would pay for Snipd if they introduced a subscription and this I expect is how they decided to price it. For non-early adopters you’re looking at £9.99 a month which is a little steep if you ask me. I actually very glad I got Snipd for the £3.50 price because I think the app is brilliant but I probably wouldn’t be paying £9.99 for it.
Do You Need Premium?
No you really don’t need the premium version. Although the AI features are nice, even the basic snipping, syncing and general podcast experience of Snipd would be enough for me to continue choosing it over the competition. It’s ability to connect to Readwise had me instantly interested as somehow Readwise really has no competition in the syncing from multiple sources space right now. If you’re one of the early adopters absolutely get it for the £3.50 a month as I think you’re paying the correct price. But £9.99 is a bit of a tough sell. If you’re a podcast addict and you make hundreds of snips every day and you also use Readwise like me then that £9.99 might be well worth it but for the more casual listener just stick to the free tier and wait and see if they adjust their pricing a little. Oh and Snipd, my biggest gripe right now is that little “Transcript may be out of sync” error you sometimes get when a podcast uses dynamic ads. Like seriously it’s my only inconvenience in this app. Please fix it and I’ll love you.
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