A month ago, we wrote about Sasai Content Platform – Sasai’s attempt at becoming the hub for African content creators. Part of their big plan involved podcasting and the podcasts section which wasn’t available at the time is now live.
I don’t remember seeing an announcement regarding this issue so maybe the feature isn’t being marketed publicly as of yet. Anyway, if you’ve used a podcasting application before, Sasai Podcasts won’t be too different.
After opening Podcasts, you’re met with an array of different podcasts. There are also categories that you can use to search for topics that interest you. This feature is on the thin side at the moment since there aren’t that many podcasts and channels to choose from.
My gripe with Sasai Podcasts at the moment is that the UI is pretty confusing. Instead of having cards for a channel that you then click to access that content creators entire content selection, instead, the podcasts are listed as albums. This is confusing because you may open a content creators album with 5 podcasts and if you enjoy the podcasts you may never know they actually have other albums. This is the first time I’ve seen such an interface with podcasts and it struck me as an odd design choice.
On a positive note, I was happy that there are a few local podcasts at the time of writing. One recommendation, I would make is for Sasai to make a category for local content. That’s what I was most interested in finding and I’m sure many people will solely be interested in that too. I already have other apps for the rest of my podcasts so making it easy to discover the local content would make Sasai Podcasts more useful for me.
Sasai users can also upload their podcasts by opening the Podcasts section and going to profile. From here you, can upload, manage your and view a history of the podcasts consumed.
Whilst it’s cool that this exists, as with any other content platform – Sasai Podcasts will live and die by the content uploaded. If Cassava can get content creators to start uploading their podcasts on Sasai and to get their user base to start using the app to stream these, then they’ve got a hit on their hands.
The positive here for Sasai is that it’s easy to upload podcasts to Sasai and once a week (Sundays) Sasai is free to use which means even without data, people can still open the app and access this content. On the flip side, the ease of use means at the moment you’ll run into many Podcasts labelled test which have no meaningful content.
