Should You Build an Audio Tour or a Podcast?
These get talked about like they're the same thing, which makes sense because they’re both informative audio, but because they serve different purposes they really should be thought of as a different thing entirely. A podcast is built to be found anywhere, by anyone, whenever they want it. An audio tour is built for one specific moment: someone standing in front of something real, wanting more context right now. Those are different uses entirely, and knowing the difference will directly relate to how you build the piece and how successful it is.
What Separates The two
A podcast lives in a feed. Someone subscribes once and gets new episodes automatically, on a commute, at the gym, wherever they happen to be, with zero connection to a physical place. The relationship is with the show itself, over time.
An audio tour lives in a location. It's accessed on demand, usually through a QR code or an app like Bloomberg Connects, standing in front of the specific object or space it's describing. Nobody subscribes to an audio tour. They open it, listen to the one piece relevant to where they're standing, and move on to the next stop. The relationship is with the place, not with an ongoing show.
Who Is It For?
If your goal is to create a piece for someone who will never physically visit someplace — someone like a fan or a supporter of your work, a donor, a researcher, a general audience discovering your institution for the first time — that's a podcast's job. If it's for someone already standing in your building, wanting to understand what they're looking at right now, that's an audio tour's job. That specificity is the key because the content decisions will have to be dictated by that experience.
A lot of institutions have real material for both, and treating them as one project usually shortchanges each. A podcast episode padded with tour-guide-style object descriptions bores a listener with no visual reference. An audio tour stretched into a narrative arc with callbacks and running themes asks a visitor to remember more than they will while also looking at art.
You Can Do Both, But Not With the Same Script
Brooklyn Museum built its curator-led content specifically as audio tour material, tied to individual objects and exhibitions, accessed through Bloomberg Connects while visitors were actually on-site. Separately, some of that same underlying material and interview access has also supported public podcast content on their own feed. The two formats can draw from the same well of expertise and access without being the same production: one is written and paced for someone in the building, the other for someone who isn't.
A Quick Way to Decide
If you're not sure which one you're building, picture the actual listener. Are they wearing headphones while taking a tour and looking at a specific object, physically present in your space, then it’s easy to decide. Build an audio tour. Are they wearing headphones somewhere else entirely? Build a podcast. If the answer is "both, for different people," that's a sign you may need both formats eventually, built and scripted separately rather than one trying to do the other's job.
Seaplane Armada builds both audio tours and podcasts, and helps institutions figure out which one a specific project actually needs. If you're not sure which format fits your material, get in touch at theadmiral@seaplanearmada.com—
