More people than ever are listening to podcasts, but as they soon find out, discovering new ones is a cumbersome process that lacks the serendipity users take for granted in other apps. CastBox wants to fix that by becoming “the YouTube of audio.” The podcast player for iOS and Android, which has raised $16 million in funding so far, is launching a new audio search feature today that uses natural language processing to let listeners search for keywords and topics across more than 50 million episodes.
Founder and chief executive officer Xiaoyu Wang wants CastBox’s in-audio search to make finding relevant sections of audio as easy as searching in text. The feature supports English, and Wang says the company wants to perfect it before expanding into other languages. CastBox’s funding includes a recently closed $12.8 million Series A round led by Qiming Venture Partners and IDG Capital, with participation from SIG China, GSR Ventures and ZhenFund.
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