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If you enjoy listening to any kind of Catholic content — podcasts, music, audiobooks—you’ve probably wished you could find all of those great listens in one spot.
We’ve got some exciting news: A new streaming platform for Catholic content is now available. It’s called Fio, and it launched on the Apple App Store in late 2023, with the Android app scheduled to come out later in 2024.
Right now, you can find on Fio over 600 Catholic podcasts and over 50 Catholic-specific podcast categories. Music by Catholic artists from all over the world is being added daily, too.
We had a chance to catch up with Fio’s founders, Will Hickl and Peter Buonincontro. Here’s our conversation.
What inspired you to create Fio?
Buonincontro: Catholic music and Catholic podcasts have played a beautiful role in my faith for years and I've seen countless examples of how they can bring people closer to God, help someone find answers to their questions, or help Catholics fall more in love with the Church.
My background is in design, specifically designing for technology companies. I’m a creative person and I love exercising my creativity in a way that brings glory to God. I’ve always looked for ways to use my skills for Christ. This background and my desire to help other Catholic creatives inspired me to begin working on Fio with Will.
Catholic media has been growing rapidly and in recent years we’ve been seeing more and more Catholic podcasts pop up and grow in popularity, but most Catholic podcasts find it very difficult to be discovered and don’t have much support. We wanted to find a way to support the growth in Catholic media that we’ve been seeing lately and help Catholic musicians and podcasters flourish. That’s really at the heart of this, helping Catholic creators.
Hickl: I have been running a Catholic record label called NOVUM RECORDS for over 10 years, and my passion has been to see artists thrive by pouring into their gifts for the sake of building God's Kingdom. My favorite quote is from St. Irenaeus "The Glory of God is man fully alive," and this is what inspires me.
We all have friends or family members who are blessed with incredible talent, but sadly many artists do not know how to get their music properly recorded and distributed. This is the problem NOVUM RECORDS seeks to solve — giving artists a high-quality team that is collaborative but supportive of their vision.
Having worked with so many artists (and being one myself), we have experienced the pain points of streaming royalties being very small, as well as being lost in the ocean of content found on the major platforms.
With my experience and passion for software development, the Lord placed it on my heart to solve this problem. Having had a decade of experience serving a small set of artists, I now get to try to serve all artists throughout the world.
Some ways we hope to enrich creators' lives is providing greater discoverability, the best royalty rates compared to the major platforms, and the best technology to deliver analytics and other valuable data for creators to connect with audiences.
What is the most important thing you want people to know about Fio?
That Fio is truly a creator-first platform, and that we mean it.
There are lots of exciting features and partnerships that we are working on that will make the experience richer for the Church, but beyond the product itself we genuinely care about the people who pour their heart and souls and time and energy and even hard-earned money to make the things they love.
We see Fio as the vessel for a modern renaissance throughout the world, giving Catholic culture the opportunity to have a positive impact everywhere — but that starts with individuals feeling supported and championed, and that is our core focus.
