I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
1–10 of 14 posts
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#2A la carte is annoying when everyone starts doing it. Subscription fatigue is already setting in for music and video streaming services. No reason the podcast space would be different.
Still, kudos to Tim for trying.
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#3Not sure how well it’s working for them, but for 3+ years i’ve been subscribed to a podcast that has two feeds, one for shorter abridged episodes with ads, and one for longer ad-free episodes for paid subscribers.
Clearly most people don’t want to pay, but if your content lends itself to this kind of basic/premium situation, I think it makes a lot of sense.
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#4A la carte is annoying when everyone starts doing it. Subscription fatigue is already setting in for music and video streaming services. No reason the podcast space would be different. Still, kudos to Tim for trying.
A la carte works remarkably well with Patreon. Personally I support 11 different video, podcast, and writers.
Perhaps that’s the real takeaway: make it easy to do a la carte, and people will.
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#5Of course, podcast ads are also the opposite of almost all the other ads on the Internet: They don't send your personal data and web browsing history to hundreds of shady companies, they don't slow down your webbrowsing, they aren't a vector to install malware on your system.
Thus, I have absolutely no problem with podcast ads, and if they allow a great podcast I like to be produced sustainably, that's awesome! The same way I also don't have a problem with ads in printed magazines or on billboards (yet; some of them already do track you, of course).
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#6A few tidbits:
18k respondents to his survey offered up $30k per month in donations .. but ads are better .. for a podcast.
He has 400M downloads from ~300 episodes.
One subscriber paid $1k per month.
Despite respondents to the survey saying they'd pay $5 or $10 he tested $9.95 and $19.95 payment levels as the minimum and 83% paid whatever the lowest was. So, prior to the subscription 24% said they'd pay $5, and only 4% that they'd pay $10 but he still managed to only lose 17% (off the subscription page) when the minimum was $19.95 .. that's kinda crazy.
#iveneverheardofhim #isheahypnotist
Edit: People listen, then go away and hunt down the products, enough that companies will pay him more than [ 30k/(1M/5) ] ~$6 per subscriber per month??
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#7A la carte is annoying when everyone starts doing it. Subscription fatigue is already setting in for music and video streaming services. No reason the podcast space would be different. Still, kudos to Tim for trying.
A la carte works remarkably well with Patreon. Personally I support 11 different video, podcast, and writers. Perhaps that’s the real takeaway: make it easy to do a la carte, and people will.
It works well for Patreon, but Patreon content creator earnings seem to follow the same power law that afflicts much of the economy. Almost nobody makes more than a couple bucks until they have network effects strong enough to fuel orders of magnitude higher earnings outside of Patreon with traditional (annoying) merch/advertising.
That's not to shit on Patreon. I think it's the right idea but still far from effective enough to consider creative funding a "solved problem" yet.
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#8> That’s why I have a closet full of Mizzen & Main shirts and drink Four Sigmatic. Not sure I would have known about those without you.
Four Sigmatic?
> Four Sigmatic is a US company specialized in superfoods, functional mushrooms and adaptogenic herbs.
Ok. To each their own, I guess.
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#9Of course, podcast ads are also the opposite of almost all the other ads on the Internet: They don't send your personal data and web browsing history to hundreds of shady companies, they don't slow down your webbrowsing, they aren't a vector to install malware on your system. Thus, I have absolutely no problem with podcast ads, and if they allow a great podcast I like to be produced sustainably, that's awesome! The s…
I find podcast ads to be far worse than every other type of ad because it's the only one that forces you to engage in the ad at 1:1 speed. My podcast app allows me to skip forward 15s but that requires interaction and I'm often in a situation where my hands are not free enough to skip through ads.
I pay for ad free versions of every podcast I listen to that offers it. If you calculate the amount of time you spend listening to the ad, multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate, then paying to make the ad go away generally makes sense. Podcasts that don't offer an ad free version, I'm much more likely to leave it lowest on my priority queue of podcasts to listen to.
Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment
#10Subscription-based media (almost) only works for niche publications. NYT is an exception but it's only partially funded through subscriptions. The New Yorker took decades to turn a profit, and has ads as well.
Based on the fact that his user base is so large, it makes sense that advertising works best. Especially considering how many listeners he would lose if he only released it to subscribers. The user base may be more valuable to advertisers, than the podcast is to subscribers.