NRC
Creating digital products that put readers—not third-party platforms—at the centre of its publishing strategy.
Helping NRC own its digital audience
NRC is a leading Dutch daily newspaper renowned for its investigative journalism, in-depth analysis, and cultural coverage.
Since 2017, we’ve helped NRC strengthen its direct relationship with readers. What began as a rebuild of its flagship news app evolved into a second product—NRC Audio—designed to give the publisher greater control over its growing podcast audience instead of relying on third-party platforms.
While the technical rebuild was straightforward, the strategic challenge wasn’t. Readers increasingly wanted to move between articles and podcasts, but without feeling like they were switching between separate products. At the same time, NRC needed to grow digital subscriptions while maintaining direct ownership of its audience.
The result was a news app designed around how people consume journalism today, bringing reading and listening together in a single, seamless experience. Articles and podcasts live within the same feed, making it effortless for readers to move between formats without disrupting their experience. Alongside breaking news, the app includes personalised content, saved articles, podcast playback and sharing, all built on a platform designed to evolve.
Delivered in agile sprints alongside NRC’s team, every new feature was prioritised around reader value, enabling the product to continuously improve long after launch.
The white-label architecture behind NRC Audio has been adopted across Mediahuis titles in the Netherlands and Belgium, turning a solution built for one newsroom into shared publishing infrastructure.
Results
Two products. One direct relationship with readers.
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320K+
daily readers using the NRC news app
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800K
weekly podcast downloads
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4.7*
App Store rating
A podcast platform that puts the publisher first
Podcast listening quickly became one of NRC’s strongest subscriber acquisition channels, attracting a younger audience and driving subscription growth.
The problem was that most podcast consumption happened on platforms NRC didn’t own, limiting customer insight and weakening its direct relationship with listeners.
NRC needed more than another podcast app. It needed its own destination.
Building NRC Audio
NRC Audio combines NRC’s own podcasts with more than 1.2 million external shows, while editorial curation helps listeners discover new content without relying on platform algorithms.
Native performance
Built natively in Kotlin and Swift to deliver the performance and platform capabilities expected from a premium listening experience.
Ready to scale
Designed as a white-label platform from the outset, enabling other Mediahuis brands to launch their own versions without starting from scratch.
Audience insight by design
Account registration gives NRC first-party audience data and listening insights that third-party podcast platforms typically don’t provide.
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