Museumspodden

Museumspodden is a podcast distribution service in which museums collaborate to publish podcasts, providing the public with year-round distribution of knowledge-based and diverse listening experiences, regardless of geographic affiliation.

Østfoldmuseene wanted to join the growing podcast craze, but we concluded that producing a podcast episode takes a significant amount of time and resources. People have to meet and be interviewed. Facts and information must be double checked before publication. Each podcast episode must be digitized, trimmed, edited, compressed, and distributed before it is made available to the public.

I estimate that we can produce four to eight podcasts per year, which is insufficient to make it into iTunes’ top ten list. We may not have enough subscribers or a high enough production frequency to justify the time spent on each episode.

It led me to the idea of a service where museums could collaborate to publish podcasts, providing the public with a year-round distribution of knowledge-based and diverse listening experiences, regardless of geographic affiliation.

Consider the possibility of listening to a podcast from the Justice Museum about, say, emergency law enforcement. Or how about the Norsk Teknisk Museum’s podcast featuring Betzy Kjeldsberg (Norway’s first female factory inspector), both in the same week?

I began programming and the first generation of Museumspodden on March 7, 2019, and the service was approved by the majority of podcast providers, including iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Pocketcast, Player.fm, Podtail, and Blubrry.

When museums collaborate, we will be able to increase the depth and visibility of our network by making our content available on a single distribution channel.

By August of 2021 Museumspodden have published 90 episodes and ten museums are producing content on a regular basis.