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We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

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Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#11

Post by scarface74 »

mijustin wrote: post #3

Has 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…

There biggest issue was that all of their podcasts are expensive and overproduced while the most profitable podcast are unscripted, with interesting hosts. Relay FM isn’t struggling and the most popular Apple related podcasts - The Talk Show and ATP bring in enough money for their hosts to make a good living.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#12

Post by miguelrochefort »

Yet the user experience is a mess.

Podcasts need to be published on so many different platforms manually. Ratings and reviews appear to be non-existant outside of the Apple ecosystem. You still can't export your subscriptions from some major applications, and good luck exporting your listening history from any.

I feel like creating something 10x better is such a low hanging fruit, I'm surprised nobody has done it. Make a player that syncs across devices and platforms, exports/imports to/from other podcast apps/platforms (using scraping if necessary), aggregates and gather reviews, provides a basic recommendation system, allows subscribing to keywords (people, topics), etc. If it supports audio books, YouTube subscriptions (those channels with long talks and conversations and lectures that aren't strongly visual), and saved bookmarks/Pocket/Evernote article via text-to-speech, that's even better.

When I commute, walk, exercise, cook, wash dishes, stretch, brush my teeth, take a shower, do laundry, mow the lawn, shovel snow, stop looking at a screen and go to bed 1h before sleep, I want to hit play and be fed a customized audio diet.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#13

Post by nerfhammer »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #8
bearcobra wrote: post #2

I 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.

the mechanical cash register sound effect is still used to represent money in media despite the fact that the kids these days have never seen a mechanical cash register and have no reason to be able recognize that sound from real life.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#14

Post by paulcole »

adwi wrote: post #9
mijustin wrote: post #3

Has 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 licen…

> How do you spend $4M+ every year per podcast?

I mean the same way any big company blows unfathomable amounts of money. Too many people doing too little (or doing the wrong things), paying too much to consultants/outside agencies, thinking the money will never stop flowing.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#15

Post by dvtrn »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #12

Yet the user experience is a mess. Podcasts need to be published on so many different platforms manually. Ratings and reviews appear to be non-existant outside of the Apple ecosystem. You still can't export your subscriptions from some major applications, and good luck exporting your listening history from any. I feel like creating something 10x better is such a low hanging fruit, I'm surprised nobody has done it. Ma…

I think you would love PocketCasts.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#16

Post by ericol »

To be honest, I can't comment on if there's a "big era of podcast" ahead. But I live in a non English speaking country, and what I'm observing is that podcasts _are_ percolating the news, specially in HN, that's where I consume quality content.

I had recently, after getting tired of listening to music on my commute (A 12 minute bike ride, or a 25 minute walk) from home to work started to listen to podcast that I find normally here (My other source of content is reddit, but the quality is not the same).

What I see, is that usually what gets named is really, really good; or at least very interesting. the other thing that I like a lot is that the duration of the episodes is more or less my commute. If it were longer I'd have the possibility of listening to a couple of them, or listening to a longer episode. When I tried to consume podcasts before they were always long, and that was annoying because they demand too much attention from you, and the UX of a podcast is not the same as television.

I wont provide links but as probably is going to be asked I'll provide the episodes that got me hooked on different podcasts:

"This American Life": Episode about a guy and his years long enterprise of outrunning an antelope.

"Planet Money" and the Indian non-cash experiment.

"99% invisible" and an interview with the writer of "Invisible women" a book about gender bias in daily life (This one was so good that made me scream in anger several times in the street!)

Sorry but I don't remember much about another one, that was about a dirty cop that decided to go live in the wild because he was going to jail, and ended up living alone for more than 20 years (And hr got pardoned when he turned himself up)

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#17

Post by ericol »

ericol wrote: post #16

To be honest, I can't comment on if there's a "big era of podcast" ahead. But I live in a non English speaking country, and what I'm observing is that podcasts _are_ percolating the news, specially in HN, that's where I consume quality content. I had recently, after getting tired of listening to music on my commute (A 12 minute bike ride, or a 25 minute walk) from home to work started to listen to podcast that I find…

> But I live in a non English speaking country, and what I'm observing is that podcasts _are_ percolating the news

Sorry but my comment is crap here. This 2 ideas are separated one from the other. I live on a non english speaking country so I can comment on that (The big era thing).

But even then, all the rest and blah blah blah. sorry about my lack of writing skills (And proofreading).

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#19

Post by atoav »

bilbo0s wrote: post #6
mijustin wrote: post #3

Has 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?

Many of the bigger German podcasters earn finance their podcasts entirely without ads by their listener’s contributions. The podcasts are usually people talking about topics they really enjoy with people they like.

Why do people do open source software for free at times?

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#20

Post by acjohnson55 »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #12

Yet the user experience is a mess. Podcasts need to be published on so many different platforms manually. Ratings and reviews appear to be non-existant outside of the Apple ecosystem. You still can't export your subscriptions from some major applications, and good luck exporting your listening history from any. I feel like creating something 10x better is such a low hanging fruit, I'm surprised nobody has done it. Ma…

This exists, several times over. I use Podcast Addict.
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