Three versions of the same episode
A podcast club works like a book club, with one uncomfortable difference: with a book everyone can point to the same page. In a two-hour episode, each person listened at a different time, at a different speed, and came away with a different sentence. Sharing podcast notes as a group usually ends up as a message thread with screenshots and hand-typed timestamps.
And then somebody says "the guest said that does not work" and somebody else says "he did not say that". Both are certain and neither can prove it, so the conversation spends twenty minutes arguing about the quote instead of the idea.
Step by step: the episode as shared material
1. The episode comes in by link. Paste the Apple Podcasts URL or the RSS feed and the specific episode is resolved. That is the Podcast note origin, one of the six AudioMap distinguishes. Nobody has to download or upload a file.
2. It is transcribed with diarization. In an interview that separates host from guest, which is exactly what you need in order to quote correctly. Half of any podcast club argument is settled by knowing who said the line.
3. It is analysed with the Podcast template. It returns premise, guest, standout quotes, chapters and questions. The standout quotes and the questions are, literally, the agenda for the club meeting, and they appear without anyone preparing them.
4. The note lives in the team library. With the team plan there is a shared library: whatever any member imports lands there and the rest can see it. It is not a shared folder somebody has to remember to fill, it is where notes land by default.
5. Everyone annotates the same audio. Point and segment markers and timestamped highlights all go on the same note. And with per-note collaboration you invite a specific person with view, comment or edit permission, so whoever only wants to read touches nothing and whoever wants to argue comments at the exact spot.
6. The discussion happens with citations. Chat with citations answers about the episode giving the minute the answer comes from. "What exactly did he say about the second experiment?" stops being a question of memory.
Sharing podcast notes as a group without maintaining an archive by hand
There are two ways to share and they serve different purposes.
A public link with an expiry date. For showing a note to someone outside the club. You share it, set an expiry (up to a year) and can hide the audio, so the other person reads the analysis and the quotes without downloading the episode.
An invitation to the note. For people who do take part. You invite them by account with a role: viewer, commenter or editor. Comments stay on the note, not in a separate chat where they get lost.
Above both sits the team library, which is what makes the club's archive exist without anyone maintaining it. Every imported episode stays, with its transcript, its analysis and everyone's annotations.
What shows up once there are thirty episodes
A club that has been running a year has thirty episodes in the library, and that is where it gets interesting.
Global chat queries all of them at once. "Which guests talked about the same study?" or "where was the opposite claimed?" are questions no individual summary answers, because they cut across the whole library.
The knowledge map cross-references notes and shows which episodes share concepts. It is the view that turns a chronological list into a map of topics, and it usually reveals that two guests from different months were arguing with each other without knowing it.
The year in review closes the loop: how much was listened to and what it was about.
And what a personal device cannot do
An AI recorder or a pendant is a personal account tied to a gadget. It serves one person. What a club needs is the opposite:
- A library that survives departures. If whoever imported the episodes leaves the club, the archive stays.
- Annotations from several people on the same audio.
- One shared quota, not six individual ones of which five go unused.
- One invoice, not six.
On the team plan minutes, storage and credits are per seat but pooled: a club of six shares 14400 minutes a month instead of handing 2400 to each, which is what you need when one person imports half the episodes and two import none.
What it does not do
- It does not listen to the podcast for you. It gives you the transcript, the analysis and the citations. The discussion is still the good part and still yours.
- It does not grant you rights over the episode. Transcribing to work on something is not the same as republishing. The podcast's licence is still the podcast's licence.
- It does not import a whole feed at once. Episodes go in one at a time.
- There is no group chat inside the product. There are comments on the note, at the exact point in the audio. To agree on meeting at eight you still need your usual group.
- It does not retain a video you did not upload. For an imported episode the work is done on the audio.
- It does not guess whose voice is whose. Diarization separates speakers; naming them is your job, and that is what the cross-recording voice fingerprint on the Power plan is for.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum group size for the team plan?
The minimum is 2 seats. The quota is pooled across every seat you contract.
Can each member still have private notes?
Yes. The shared library is where the team's material lands; each member has their own identity and their own material.
Can I invite someone to a single episode without adding them to the team?
Yes, with per-note collaboration: you invite them to that specific note with view, comment or edit permission. And if you only want to show it to them, a shared link with an expiry date and the audio hidden.
What if the club listens to podcasts in English?
The transcript respects the episode's language. The analysis is generated in Spanish or English, so an English episode can be analysed in Spanish.
What happens when someone leaves the club?
The library belongs to the team, not to the person. That is the reason the plan exists: in a personal account, the archive leaves with whoever held it.
Where is the audio processed?
On servers in the European Union.
Which plan you need
To try it, the free plan comes with 300 minutes per month and three analysis templates, and one of the three is Podcast. A club can start there with one episode and see what changes at the meeting.
To actually work as a group, the right unit is Team (€15/month billed annually) per seat, minimum 2: shared library, 2400 minutes and 5000 credits per seat pooled, per-note collaboration and a single invoice. It is covered in detail in the [team mode](/blog/modo-equipo-audiomap) article.
If there are two or three of you and what you want is your own material rather than a shared library, Personal (€9/month billed annually) with 1,200 minutes per month and all thirteen templates covers the individual case.