Podcasts are great, but they are even better together! Cooler is making podcasting fun, social, and interactive— with comments, reactions, leaderboards, streaks and shareable clips of your favorite moments.
What's up Product Hunters! This is Mike, CEO and co-founder of Cooler. On behalf of our small but mighty team of five, I'm excited to introduce Cooler to you!
Ever felt like podcasting is weirdly... lonely? Even though millions of people are listening, it still feels like this: 🦗🦗🦗—when really, it should feel more like this: 😂👏❤️🔥💬?
That's why we built Cooler—a podcast player designed to make listening more social, interactive, and fun.
With Cooler, you can:
Join the Conversation – Drop comments, react, and see what others are saying.
Show your fandom – Rack up streaks, compete on leaderboards and flex your listening stats.
Sharing is Caring – Turn your favorite audio clips into beautiful videos to share everywhere, recommend episodes, and see what your podcast communities are into.
And we're just getting started.
You see, the podcast industry is dominated by three players (Apple, Spotify, and YouTube), none of whom are actually podcast companies. Podcasts are not their primary source of revenue. So innovation has come at a glacial pace. The rest of the players are all fighting for the remainder of the market. While there are some really great players (shoutout Overcast!), it's been incredibly hard to break user's habits. That's why we need early adopters like yourselves to help us break through and usher in a new wave of innovation. Download the app, use it as a your primary podcast player for a couple weeks, and send me any feedback you have at mike@cooler.fm. We want to build this with and for podcast lovers like yourself!!
Cooler sounds like such a fun and innovative way to bring more social interaction into the podcasting world—it's about time podcasts became more engaging! How do you plan to expand the social features to make the experience even more collaborative, like community discussions or live interaction with creators?
@jonurbonas Thanks for the kind words Jonas! We started with the foundational stuff to community building - comments, reactions, leaderboards, streaks, and sharing. While it's currently all built around asynchronous interactions, we definitely think there's opportunity to incorporate live interaction and live content like you suggest once we've reached a level of critical mass.
One area we're spending a lot of time thinking about is how to make the comments section even better. We have purposely stayed away from reactions to comments because what we've seen with most social media is that because the reactions are such an easy way to respond to a post, people often write comments that "chase" these reactions to get that dopamine reward. But the comments that tend to get the most reactions are the comments that are more bombastic, brash, and less constructive to meaningful conversation. So that's an area we're keen to figure out how to build in a healthy way.
We have a very robust roadmap, but want to also build alongside our users and take it where the community goes!
Report
Exciting to see social features added to podcasts! 👀
I am a huge fan of this idea. It is like "social-medialing" podcasting and broadcasting. If I understood correctly – people can rate and create communities over podcasts from Spotify and big players on the podcast market, right?
If the podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, it is already on Cooler.
For now people can "rate" podcast episodes in the form of reactions. You can leave as many reactions as you want while you listen to an episode. Others can judge if an episode is popular or not by how many reactions it gets.
Communities are created automatically when you follow a podcast and each episode is a space for the community to comment and interact with each other.
Love the vision, Mike! 🎧 Turning podcasting from a solo echo chamber into a live concert vibe is genius.
Report
Cooler sounds like a game-changer for podcasting! The social and interactive features are exactly what podcasts need to become more engaging. How do you plan to integrate feedback from users to improve the app over time?
@viktoriia_vasylchenko We love getting user feedback and are big believers in building alongside our community. We get people writing in with ideas, but also look at the data and how people are using the product in interesting and unexpected ways and follow that for ideas. But we also try to talk to people we meet who are podcast listeners and just better understand how they engage with podcasts today, and use that as inspiration.
@viktoriia_vasylchenko This is also something @aleeee has been on the front lines of as our Head of Design, so she might be able to weigh in more on this as well!
@viktoriia_vasylchenko this is something we're still figuring out. One of the ideas we want to test out is having a Cooler Podcast where we share product updates and open up the convo on upcoming features. We think this can be a great way to use our own product to build alongside the community and get valuable feedback.
Report
Cooler sounds like a great way to bring podcast communities together! The leaderboards and streaks will really motivate listeners to stay connected and keep up with their favorite shows.
@chrismessina Yes I know!!! We've had that integration built and ready to go, but are just waiting for them to approve our app. Unfortunately it's been several months!! 😭 (and thanks for the kind words on design!!! That's the work of the amazing @aleeee )
@emmanuelmchan Thanks for the support. Check out the Clips feature and let us know what you think!
Report
I love the idea! I downloaded the app and really enjoyed the copy and smooth onboarding.
Congrats on the launch!
Just a small suggestion: it would be great to have a search option in the “Import your podcasts” section instead of having to choose from the staff favorites.
@morgane_prr Morgane, so glad you’re enjoying the app! Appreciate the feedback—after onboarding, you’ll be able to search for any podcast. (If the podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, it is already on Cooler) Thanks for giving it a try!
Replies
Cooler
Fable Wizard
Cooler sounds like such a fun and innovative way to bring more social interaction into the podcasting world—it's about time podcasts became more engaging! How do you plan to expand the social features to make the experience even more collaborative, like community discussions or live interaction with creators?
Cooler
@jonurbonas Thanks for the kind words Jonas! We started with the foundational stuff to community building - comments, reactions, leaderboards, streaks, and sharing. While it's currently all built around asynchronous interactions, we definitely think there's opportunity to incorporate live interaction and live content like you suggest once we've reached a level of critical mass.
One area we're spending a lot of time thinking about is how to make the comments section even better. We have purposely stayed away from reactions to comments because what we've seen with most social media is that because the reactions are such an easy way to respond to a post, people often write comments that "chase" these reactions to get that dopamine reward. But the comments that tend to get the most reactions are the comments that are more bombastic, brash, and less constructive to meaningful conversation. So that's an area we're keen to figure out how to build in a healthy way.
We have a very robust roadmap, but want to also build alongside our users and take it where the community goes!
Exciting to see social features added to podcasts! 👀
Cooler
@shenjun Thanks Jun!! Check it out and feel free to send any feedback our way!
Cooler
@shenjun It's what everybody's been waiting for I guess :)
minimalist phone: creating folders
I am a huge fan of this idea. It is like "social-medialing" podcasting and broadcasting.
If I understood correctly – people can rate and create communities over podcasts from Spotify and big players on the podcast market, right?
Cooler
@busmark_w_nika yes!
If the podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, it is already on Cooler.
For now people can "rate" podcast episodes in the form of reactions. You can leave as many reactions as you want while you listen to an episode. Others can judge if an episode is popular or not by how many reactions it gets.
Communities are created automatically when you follow a podcast and each episode is a space for the community to comment and interact with each other.
minimalist phone: creating folders
Thank you for making your tool more clear by explaining the processes :)
Deamoy
Love the vision, Mike! 🎧 Turning podcasting from a solo echo chamber into a live concert vibe is genius.
Cooler sounds like a game-changer for podcasting! The social and interactive features are exactly what podcasts need to become more engaging. How do you plan to integrate feedback from users to improve the app over time?
Cooler
@viktoriia_vasylchenko We love getting user feedback and are big believers in building alongside our community. We get people writing in with ideas, but also look at the data and how people are using the product in interesting and unexpected ways and follow that for ideas. But we also try to talk to people we meet who are podcast listeners and just better understand how they engage with podcasts today, and use that as inspiration.
Cooler
@viktoriia_vasylchenko This is also something @aleeee has been on the front lines of as our Head of Design, so she might be able to weigh in more on this as well!
Cooler
@viktoriia_vasylchenko this is something we're still figuring out. One of the ideas we want to test out is having a Cooler Podcast where we share product updates and open up the convo on upcoming features. We think this can be a great way to use our own product to build alongside the community and get valuable feedback.
Cooler sounds like a great way to bring podcast communities together! The leaderboards and streaks will really motivate listeners to stay connected and keep up with their favorite shows.
Cooler
@hanna_kuznietsova Thanks!! That's the idea. It's fun for listeners, and for podcasters, it helps them build even more loyal fans!
Raycast
Cooler
@chrismessina Yes I know!!! We've had that integration built and ready to go, but are just waiting for them to approve our app. Unfortunately it's been several months!! 😭 (and thanks for the kind words on design!!! That's the work of the amazing @aleeee )
Cooler
@emmanuelmchan Thanks for the support. Check out the Clips feature and let us know what you think!
I love the idea! I downloaded the app and really enjoyed the copy and smooth onboarding.
Congrats on the launch!
Just a small suggestion: it would be great to have a search option in the “Import your podcasts” section instead of having to choose from the staff favorites.
Cooler
@morgane_prr Morgane, so glad you’re enjoying the app! Appreciate the feedback—after onboarding, you’ll be able to search for any podcast. (If the podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, it is already on Cooler) Thanks for giving it a try!