Nearly two months after Castro, the third-party podcast app, announced it was seeking new ownership, the company revealed today that it has officially been bought by Bluck Apps, an independent app studio that developed the Android podcast app Aurelian.
In November, Castro’s future was questioned when a former employee, Mohit Mamoria, posted on Twitter that the app would soon shut down. Then the website went down, appearing to confirm the report. However, Castro disputed the claim and explained the reason behind the app’s downtime in a December blog post, saying it was due to a complex issue that required “extensive work” to fix.
Dustin Bluck, a former Instagram employee who launched his podcast app Aurelian as a passion project, now runs Castro and promises users there are no plans to make any significant changes to the app.
Bluck assured users that the subscription price is staying the same for the time being, however, users should subscribe to “Castro Plus” now to avoid a future price hike. Castro is free for users but offers an annual subscription for $29.99, including playback features and other advanced settings like skipping repetitive intros.
Meanwhile, Aurelian is being moved under the Castro umbrella and will use Castro’s backend for search and other capabilities. However, Bluck tells TechCrunch that Aurelian isn’t “necessarily merging with Castro,” but would consider them as siblings.
Castro’s new owner also apologized for how the company previously failed to communicate well with users in recent months. From now on, all major changes will be announced to the public, and the team will let users know in a timely manner if/when an issue is being fixed.
Bluck definitely has his work cut out for him as he points out the “thousands of messages” from users that he and his very small team have to get through. While Bluck has hired a couple freelancers, he’s the only full-time employee as of now, so it will likely take some time before he can hire more people to help.
Castro has been a popular iOS podcast app for years, so it’s likely a relief to many that it’s not going anywhere. The app was acquired by Tiny back in 2018.
“I didn’t really expect people to be quite so passionate about the app. There’s a lot of work to do to make those fans happy, but the reception has been very encouraging,” Bluck admitted. “We are very committed to the open podcasting ecosystem, and taking over such a well-designed independent app is very cool for us.”
