Problem: Podcasts today are often (1) recycled from one another in various different languages or (2) are not translated at all so listeners do not get access to diverse views. A podcast on health in Brazil will be drastically different than one on health in Canada, however Canadians almost never get access to this information unless they speak Portuguese. Moreover Brazilian podcasts are limited to their local markets. How could a new business both expand the pie and create a service to grow podcast educational opportunities in the world?
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Solution: What if podcasts could instantly be translated into another language with the same voice as the original podcaster? This business would use tools to transcribe podcasts, translate them into new languages, and re-read them using the same voice as the original podcaster. Through combining tools like OpenAI’s Whisper or ElevenLabs.
One solution is described by serial entrepreneur Pieter Levels (who also inspired this post):
Many things will change once American podcasts can be instantly translated using AI with the same voice as the original podcaster but in 200+ local languages Could be a @Spotify feature.
A lot of Spanish, Brazilian, French, German, Dutch, Korean, Japanese podcasters are simply rehashing ideas they learned by listening American podcasts.
They essentially act like podcast interpreters for local people who aren’t good at or don’t want to listen English language podcasts.
For example everything Huberman says (a health podcast) 6 months later will show up on Brazilian podcasts… the US cultural influence on world is still dominant. In a way that’d force local podcasters to start getting more original ideas from their OWN culture, not US.
As a market, analysts predict that the global podcasting market will exceed USD 233.9 billion by 2032 from USD 21.4 billion in 2022, with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.8% between 2023 and 2032 (source).
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)