How to display a filter for a list of podcasts?

Question

We're working on this huge site that includes a podcast section. The podcasts are done by many different people (no repetitions), and there are like 70-80 podcasts so far, adding one per week.

Client wants to avoid scrolling, so we added pagination. But now they also requests that all podcasters are visible in some sort of "directory". Of course, 70-80 names and growing displayed at the same time would be a lot, so we need filters. But here is (are) the issue(s)...

1. visitors may not know the podcaster name, so adding a filter by name option may mean nothing for visitors
2. filtering by subject would require a dropdown. Since subject titles are long, it becomes really confusing, specially on mobile (we already tested it).
3. search is more or less the same than 1.: visitors won't know what to search for. I even though of some predictive search but I think it will be just cosmetics for a flawed approach
4. Client's option (a list) would be giant, as mentioned above
5. Alphabetic filtering would be the same as 1. and 3.

Is there an option that could help me achieve the desired result?

Answer 1

Wow. Lots of constraints. It seems that filtering by subject is still the way to go, which means you'd have to change your subject names. Can they be shortened? Generalized?

And think about using a filterable dropdown. Typing into it shows just the items that contain the entered text. Granted, the user has to know at least a little about the subject names, but at least they'd get a narrowed list. And it's pretty quick to start over with a synonym if they don't get expected results.

Answer 2

Some other filters:

• The most viewed or listened
• Best rated: if each podcast has a rating scale
• Most liked: if each podcast has a like button
• Trending: the podcast most viewed/listened at this time or week
• By Calendar: view the added podcasts in a time period (from xx/xx/xx to xx/xx/xx)
• Most commented: if each podcast has the option to leave a comment
• Duration: with some radio buttons options to choose like x min, xx min, xxx min, more than xxx min