Apple has Acquired Pop Up Archive

Apple logoNicholas Quah reported in his Hot Pod Newsletter on Nieman Lab earlier this month that Apple has acquired Pop Up Archive. It was the parent company of Audiosear.ch. Both of them shut down on November 29, 2017.

Pop Up Archive focused on building tools to transcribe, organize, and search audio files. Audiosear.ch was among Pop Up Archive’s suite of tools. Audiosear.ch was its podcast search engine. Nicholas Quah shared the following insight:

That said, I’m pretty sure you can put two and two together with what’s on paper: Apple, long the dominant hands-off steward of the podcast universe, has acquired a technology dedicated to increasing the knowability and sortability of the hundreds of thousands of shows distributed through its Apple Podcast platform. This, as you can imagine, has widespread implications for the ecosystem.

Exactly how Apple will use its newly acquired tools is unclear, or if they are already using them in some “behind-the-scenes” way. I searched for a press release from Apple about this acquisition, but was unable to locate one.

Audiosear.ch is Shutting Down

Audiosear.ch is a one-stop search and recommendation engine for podcasts. They transcribe, timestamp, tag, cluster, and collect ratings and reviews for thousands of shows. Audiosear.ch announced that they will be shutting down on November 28, 2017.

If you visit the AudioSear.ch website right now, there is a bright pink line at the very top with important information. It says they will be winding down support operations and ending support for Audiosear.ch on November 28, 2017. The Audiosear.ch team also posted a blog that says:

Audiosear.ch will be winding down operations on November 28, 2017. As of that date, you will no longer have access to our API endpoints, the website, or features such as Audio Alerts, the Clipmaker, Buzz Score, and more.

We welcome you to contact us at info@audiosear.ch with any questions. We will do our best to reply in a timely manner based on the volume of emails.

We’ve loved watching the projects you’ve built with this technology over the past two and a half years, and we appreciate your understanding.

Rain News reported that Pop Up Archive is Audiosear.ch’s parent company. Pop Up Archive will also be closing operations on November 28, 2017. Pop Up Archive posted helpful information about how to download your transcripts and audio files.