Caloroga Media Launches Linnet, an AI-Assisted Podcast Studio in the Browser
Caloroga Media launched Linnet, a browser-based podcast production studio with an AI assistant that handles scripting, editing and publishing under one subscription. An invitation-only beta gives testers 30 days of the Creator plan free; public pricing is undisclosed.
Linnet is designed to replace the stack of separate accounts that podcasters keep for scripting, voice work and editing. On the platform, that work happens in one workspace under a single subscription. The assistant is also named Linnet, and Caloroga refers to it as “she.” Before it touches a project, the assistant shows exactly what it plans to do and waits for the creator to approve the change, the company said.
“Linnet exists because we could not find a tool worthy of the work,” said Mark Francis, who co-founded Caloroga with John McDermott. Francis said the craft “was missing” from the first wave of AI production tools. He described generating episodes with those tools, then rebuilding every element by hand in a conventional workstation to get the result to broadcast quality.
The studio Caloroga built handles recording and mixing on 24 tracks, with a full plug-in suite. Video podcasts have their own multitrack editor, and scripts can be written in the platform or transcribed from a creator’s existing recordings. Publishing to Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube goes through whichever podcast host the user already has.
A feature called God Mode goes further. From a single prompt, it assembles a complete first draft of an episode, video and cover art included, which the creator can then rework inside the studio before anything is published. Caloroga calls that draft a “starting line.” The company is pitching that kind of control at a market it describes as “flooded with AI-generated content designed to be ignored.”
McDermott said AI “shouldn’t replace the person doing the work.” With the assistant handling the tools, he said, the creative calls stay with the creator, who gets back hours to spend on the rest of the business. Creators who would rather keep paying for AI services they already use can connect those accounts through a Bring Your Own Key option. Linnet applies no usage caps to them, and the vendor bills the user directly.
On privacy, Caloroga says creator content is off-limits for training AI models. The company also pledges not to sell user data or hand voice profiles to advertisers, and anything generated on an account is permanently deleted within 30 days of the account closing.
Francis and McDermott came to podcasting from radio, and each spent years at Sirius XM Holdings Inc. The company they started in 2023 went by Caloroga Shark Media until September, when it dropped “Shark” from the brand. Its catalog of mostly sub-10-minute shows, led by the royal family series “Palace Intrigue,” has passed 10 million downloads by the company’s count.
Linnet is not the company’s first AI product. Listeners can already buy personalized audio fiction from its Podbotz app, which writes each story with Anthropic PBC’s Claude. Some Caloroga narrative series also use AI narration, disclosed on air. Beta users get 30 days of the Creator plan free, and Caloroga has not said what the platform will cost once it opens to the public.