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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

#21

Post by jeffchien »

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 some of the shortcomings you point out, such as listening history sync and export to other apps, are caused by lack of financial incentives. Sync is a feature a lot of users would pay for (see Pocket Casts and PlayerFM). Export listening hisotry would just allow for other apps to take over their user base, though I think Podcasts Addicts has such a feature for backup/restore purposes.

As for reviews, podcasts are so decentralized that I'm not sure where one would start with aggregating reviews. And smaller apps probably don't want to deal with the trouble of moderating ratings and reviews on their own platform. See: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/28/20835812/podcast-review-b...

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#22

Post by winkelwagen »

I’m a longtime podcast listener. The podcasting world did change a lot. The last two years the companies I’ve worked for both decided that it would be a great idea to release something for marketing purposes.

The reason why podcasting works was because it was its own little internet within the internet. People with great stories, content that was just different en often more specific and niece then sites and video.

We’ll see where it’s going to end up, but I do worried about the current fight of who is going to be the podcasting platform. The power for me was the sense of independence the creators had making it feel more like a labor of love then a marketing machine.

Some of my current favorites:

S-town: powerful storytelling, makes you wonder how much power the storyteller has. It’s a non fiction story about an interesting individual, explaining more would be a spoiler.

White vault: thriller show, starts off a bit clunky with the voice acting. But as a horror lover the story itself is well written and it just works so well as a podcast.

Benjamin walkers - theory of everything: it’s on a league of its own. The creator is just as historied as the brains behind the npr and gimlet podcasts. It’s interesting because you start to understand that the lines between what is truth and what is fake is so thin. I think there is even an episode over this exact subject.

The big loop: great fiction storytelling most similar to the truth podcast but it takes more tune to tell the story, the little bit of extra space give the story a much deeper dimension.

Darknet diaries: fiction podcast about hackers, gentle deep dive in the hacker world with some amazing stories. The author really does understand the world and you just feel the amount of research that goes into each episode.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#23

Post by schnevets »

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…

Oh wow, I'll have to listen to this episode! I love when a podcast can go in depth to business going-ons.

Speaking of burning cash, the thing that baffles me about the investment in podcasts is the immaturity of the revenue stream. I'm a heavy podcast listener, but I'm only going to buy so many Casper mattresses, quip toothbrushes, and FreshDirect meal services in a year. It's always amazing when podcast episodes don't even post their promo codes with their episode descriptions. The likelihood that I will purchase something from a podcast episode is 1%, but the likelihood that I will retrace through the episode, pinpoint the ad read, and use the promo code that is also available online from 100 other sources is .001%.

For anyone keeping track, the number of mattresses, electric toothbrushes, and meal delivery services I have used in 2019 is 0.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#24

Post by pmuse »

atoav wrote: post #19
bilbo0s wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

A lot of podcasters make money off of live shows and merchandise too.

If they had a large, devout audience, but couldn’t make money, it seems their main issue was relying on the wrong form of monetization.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#25

Post by dirtyid »

Maybe selection bias, but as a long time podcast listener, ever since the medium exploded, I've noticed more and more old podcasts that predate popularity surge getting canned. Creators that regularly cast for years fail to pivot to monetization their passion into a career, get demotivated and burn out. Maybe they're losing ears to plateuing audience and ad money to competitors. Maybe they're just getting old, starting families, have busy careers. Kind of a bummer either way, patronage is good for the arts to a degree, but extrinsic motivation (money) is also less resilient than internal motivation (passion). Also I miss quirky geocities pages.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#26

Post by sjg007 »

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…

Spotify agreed to buy Gimlet for $230 million.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#27

Post by zaque1213 »

pcarolan wrote: post #18

We'll know we hit big podcast when they take away the 'skip forward 15 seconds' button. Advertisers will demand this like they did with video.

I'd be interested to see stats on how often people skip over the ads during a podcast. I admit I do occasionally, but most of the time when I'm listening to a podcast I'm simultaneously doing something - like driving, exercising, mowing the lawn - that makes it inconvenient open my phone, navigate to to the app, and press the skip button a few times. Coupled with the fact that the adds are generally not too long, I don't find it to be too intrusive to the episode.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#29

Post by ShteiLoups »

Gatsky wrote: post #4

One 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.

You're right. It's the perfect form of media in terms of consumption addiction. It's completely opt in, and easily opted out of.

I wonder what we can learn from that.

Re: We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting

#30

Post by TylerE »

nerfhammer wrote: post #13
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder what percentage of the world's population was born after new computers stopped shipping with 3 1/2" drives. Probably at least 25%.
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