We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
vulture.com
We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
1–10 of 71 posts
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#2I remember when the folks at TWiT were still trying to make "netcasts" happen and shared they had hit over $1 million in revenue and it feeling like the medium was going big. Pretty crazy to look at the numbers 10 years later and seeing how much further it's all come.
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#3Has anyone here listened to the newest episode of Startup?
https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has...
Listening to that has made me doubt that we're in the era of "big podcasting."
Here's a quote from Alex Blumberg:
"Just nine months earlier, we at Gimlet raised a big round of funding, 15 million dollars. The plan was to invest a lot of that into making more shows, hiring more people. We wanted that big chunk of money to last for a while: two and a half years. Meaning, we wanted to burn about 6 million a year. But at this meeting, Jim is telling us that right now in early 2018, it's looking like we're going to burn a lot more than that: 10-11 million a month."
He goes on to explain why:
"And that's because a lot of the things we assumed would happen, didn't. We assumed audiences would grow, but instead they plateaued. Our launches had not done as well as they had in the past. And some of our biggest shows, with the largest audiences, still weren't making money because we couldn't sell ads on them."
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#4One of the things I like most about Podcasts is that they don't overtake my time. They are just interesting enough without being too involving. Games, TV shows and books seem able to really grip my attention and displace everything else including sleep, but podcasts not so much.
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#5Here's a great podcast by the creator of Javascript Jabber, Ruby Rogues (and ton of other popular ones) on the Future of Podcasting:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eaPmW2O5o1c (video version)
Or audio version:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasting-adventures-...
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#6Has anyone here listened to the newest episode of Startup? https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has... Listening to that has made me doubt that we're in the era of "big podcasting." Here's a quote from Alex Blumberg: "Just nine months earlier, we at Gimlet raised a big round of funding, 15 million dollars. The plan was to invest a lot of that into making more shows, hiring more people. We wanted t…
>And some of our biggest shows, with the largest audiences, still weren't making money because we couldn't sell ads on them.
Maybe I'm just thinking about this whole thing in too simplistic a fashion, but if the content is such that you can't make money on a podcast, why exactly are you spending money on producing it?
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#7Has anyone here listened to the newest episode of Startup? https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has... Listening to that has made me doubt that we're in the era of "big podcasting." Here's a quote from Alex Blumberg: "Just nine months earlier, we at Gimlet raised a big round of funding, 15 million dollars. The plan was to invest a lot of that into making more shows, hiring more people. We wanted t…
> And some of our biggest shows, with the largest audiences, still weren't making money because we couldn't sell ads on them. Maybe I'm just thinking about this whole thing in too simplistic a fashion, but if the content is such that you can't make money on a podcast, why exactly are you spending money on producing it?
Because you can dump the company on Spotify for $200m before running out of runway.
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#8I remember when the folks at TWiT were still trying to make "netcasts" happen and shared they had hit over $1 million in revenue and it feeling like the medium was going big. Pretty crazy to look at the numbers 10 years later and seeing how much further it's all come.
I did like their term of "netcast" because podcasts grew way beyond the iPod. But like with many terms nowadays it seems Podcast was the one to catch on as the generic term. Leo Laporte even mentioned that they gave up on "netcast" because it was obvious it would never happen and it was causing a lot of confusion with new listeners.
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#9Has anyone here listened to the newest episode of Startup? https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has... Listening to that has made me doubt that we're in the era of "big podcasting." Here's a quote from Alex Blumberg: "Just nine months earlier, we at Gimlet raised a big round of funding, 15 million dollars. The plan was to invest a lot of that into making more shows, hiring more people. We wanted t…
They list 30 shows on their site [0].
Wildly assume the number of shows in that list that aren’t being produced anymore (but are still creating revenue) is equal to the number of shows they’re currently paying to produce, but haven’t released.
How do you spend $4M+ every year per podcast?
And not to take anything away from them or their valuation—the ongoing value of the library they’re creating and IP they can license is huge—just want to understand the expense side.
Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting
#10Has anyone here listened to the newest episode of Startup? https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/6nhr5r/our-company-has... Listening to that has made me doubt that we're in the era of "big podcasting." Here's a quote from Alex Blumberg: "Just nine months earlier, we at Gimlet raised a big round of funding, 15 million dollars. The plan was to invest a lot of that into making more shows, hiring more people. We wanted t…
It's an interesting episode, and I've really enjoyed the previous Gimlet seasons' candor. He discusses part of the solution in that episode, though. Many of the really huge podcasts have much lower production costs, because they're just a compelling host (or small group of hosts) and they don't take a ton of time or money to make.