Overview

Engagement overview

Stitcher, a pioneer in the US podcast industry, operated a 12-year-old podcast application across Android and iOS that lacked modern features like content discovery, offline viewing, and advanced player functionalities. To improve platform performance and deliver enhanced user experience, Stitcher sought to modernize its podcast streaming platform with new listener-centric capabilities.

TO THE NEW worked with Stitcher to revamp the user experience, introduce modern content discovery and personalization features, and modernize the underlying infrastructure to support the platform's evolution.

Our client

Media & Entertainment
 USA

Stitcher is a pioneer in the US podcast industry specializing in the creation, distribution, and monetization of podcasts. Headquartered in New York, the platform provides ad sales and distribution services to 300+ shows, giving listeners access to thousands of podcasts. In 2019, Stitcher generated USD 72 million in ad revenue, representing 10% of the entire industry's podcast ad revenue that year.

Media & Entertainment

Business objective

The engagement focused on modernizing Stitcher’s legacy podcast application and improving the listener experience across Android, iOS, and web platforms.

01

Modernize 12-year-old legacy app across Android and iOS platforms

02

Improve application performance and stability for expanding user base

03

Introduce modern content discovery and personalization features to improve the listener experience

04

Enhance offline viewing and advanced player functionality capabilities

05

Support 300+ podcasts and enable scalable content management infrastructure

06

Improve platform reliability and uptime for mission-critical listener experience

Business solution

The modernization effort focused on improving Stitcher’s application experience, introducing new capabilities, and strengthening the underlying infrastructure for scalability and performance.

  • Introduced genre-based content discovery and personalized recommendations to enhance engagement

  • Modernized media services and player functionality, integrating Android Auto and Alexa support

  • Created personalized My Podcast section for users to manage liked episodes and followed shows

  • Implemented content discovery features including episode info pages, filtering, sorting, and search

  • Enhanced offline listening experience for mobile users without connectivity requirements

  • Implemented customizable player settings to improve user experience and revenue optimization

  • Established service-based architecture with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform for environment standardization

  • Implemented CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and GitLab to support faster and more reliable releases

  • Developed custom deployment tools to streamline environment configuration and accelerate build processes

  • Containerized all services and optimized infrastructure, improving uptime from 75% to 99.99%

  • Implemented comprehensive infrastructure monitoring and alerting using Datadog to ensure platform reliability

  • Modernized application codebase architecture for improved stability and reduced application crashes

Business impact

The modernization initiative improved user experience, platform performance, and infrastructure reliability while supporting significant growth in listener engagement and acquisition.

99.99% infrastructure uptime across database access, network availability, and compute resources

827,000+ app installations on Android since platform launch

311,000 daily active users with average engagement of 7 minutes per session

5.6 million users onboarded across web, iOS, and Android platforms

Zero-downtime deployments achieved throughout release management cycles

100% iOS rollout completed with stable releases and improved app performance