9 ms·

The Future of Podcasting

148 points by jcurbo 10y ago

rememberlenny 10y ago
Repost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856391
- dang 10y ago
  Reposts are allowed on HN if a story hasn't had significant attention yet (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). Links to previous submissions aren't helpful if there's no actual discussion at the other end, which explains the downvotes here. Your post beat this one in time but this one won the luck of the draw. Sorry about that. We're hoping to change the duplicate detector in a way that gives the original submitter credit more often, but for the time being there's still a lot of randomness in which post gets traction. For now, the way to mitigate that is to submit many good stories; it evens out in the long run.
  - rememberlenny 10y ago
    Thanks for heads up!
6stringmerc 10y ago
Comparing Podcasting with Blogging is a neat approach. I think there's more overlap than the article might be able - or willing - to address when discussing monetization. To wit: In order to monetize, a lot of what is appealing about Blogging/Podcasting would be diminished - paying is the opposite of free content, commercials interrupt the listening, and authenticity corrupted by advertising perogatives. Or, in other words, a lot of what the "Mommy Blog" sector seemed to try and keep under the surface: http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-blogger/ http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-blogger/ Just like in music, there will be a few case studies with large revenues, and thousands barely making anything, if not actually going into the red for their troubles.
- theseatoms 10y ago
  In arts and entertainment, the lines are blurring between content creation and recreation, at least for the lower 99%.
fluxquanta 10y ago
>publishers should offer podcasts through their own app that measures listens, and either sell ads themselves if they have the scale or outsource it to a company like Midroll. Midroll, for their part, should leverage their new player technology to offer skinnable apps for publishers who can’t build their own. Here's my problem with this idea: I, like many people, listen to a lot of different podcasts. Dozens, in my case. I have a podcatcher app that puts them all in one place. That makes it easy and convenient for me. Some of the shows I only listen to maybe once per month when there's a guest on that I enjoy, or if I run out of new episodes of everything else. If each show required its own app for me to listen, I'd only listen to the ones I really, really enjoy and support, and the rest I'll do without or bootleg. So, in a sense, the individual app per show idea would be limiting the potential audience. I'm already seeing this happen with Libsyn custom mobile apps[0]. There are a number of shows I listen to that have paywalls for old episodes which can only be accessed through subscription plans available in individual apps. $1.99 or $2.99 may not seem like much by itself, but if it's 10 or 20 shows you're listening to this becomes an unjustifiable bill. The only viable alternative I see is the further growth of podcast networks, where multiple shows are available for one price. But, currently, this model is still too small and fragmented. Until the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts comes out, I'll be left to pick and choose which deserve my support enough to justify buying into their distinct "ecosystem". Edit: I see that my points here were addressed in the paragraphs following the one I quoted, but I'm still not buying the idea that siloing is the best way to monetize podcasts. [0] https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-apps/ https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-apps/
- wj 10y ago
  Regarding your point about "the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts" it is important to remember that by far the majority of their content is at least a full season old. They are able to secure the rights to it for less than the cost of producing it because the networks are receiving ad dollars the first time around. Most of the podcasts I listen to aren't timely so listening to them a year after they "air" isn't a big deal. I'm not sure if I am in the majority there though. My suspicion is that podcasts are going to borrow from the music industry in the form of podcasts being something they give away in hopes of making money through merchandise, events, additional media such as books or subscriber-only episodes, or more likely, broadcaster access in the form of communities. (Off of the top of my head I can think of four entrepreneurial podcasts that have their own membership communities: Startups For the Rest of Us, Tropical MBA, Entrepreneur on Fire, and Chris Ducker. I imagine there is a lot of audience overlap but not membership community overlap and maybe a different method would be to have a single entrepreneurial podcast membership community that shows can join for a portion of the subscription fees. A smaller piece of a bigger pie...) And like music some people will still create them out of a labor of love.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Podcasts are hot right now. Big Money is coming. Big Money isn’t going to sell nicely designed, hand-crafted, RSS-backed podcast players for $2.99 or ask you to pay what you want to support them, because that doesn’t make Big Money. They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue. Hats off to that guy for succinctly summarizing why we can't have nice things.
- busterarm 10y ago
  We're already sort of in that state now. There a few podcast networks that have their own software but if you want good data on your listeners you're basically stuck between Blubrry & Libsyn and they're both severely outdated platforms. And you pretty much have to use iTunes. I've been toying around with building my own open platform for podcast hosting/analytics for a while since I could use it for my own podcast and I have friends who would use it.
  - avn2109 10y ago
    Honest question, why are podcasts not just platform independent .mp3's or Ogg Vorbis audio for the purists? Note that I don't understand how a podcast is different from a radio show that somebody recorded on a computer, so maybe I'm missing key functionality.
    - MBCook 10y ago
      Right now? They are. A podcast is really just an RSS feed of episodes in MP3 or AAC format. That's it. You can barely track how many people download, let alone listen, when they stop, etc. All the things advertisers want to know.
      - busterarm 10y ago
        Right. It's still a hard thing to integrate an RSS feed into a modern website...RSS is only really popular with podcasts and hasn't had much development in a while. Working with XML sucks. Libsyn and Blubrry manage this part for you (having an RSS feed that is also a site's content and does tracking) but you're limited to hosting on their sites, wordpress or needing a developer. There's a lot of room for improvement here.
michaelwww 10y ago
> A major challenge in podcast monetization is the complete lack of data: listeners still download MP3s and that’s the end of it; podcasters can measure downloads, but have no idea if the episode is actually listened to That's not exactly true. Marc Maron always encourages his listeners to use his offer code (often "wtf") to get discounts. Surely they have data on that.
- dasil003 10y ago
  The point is that the real money is in brand advertising, not direct marketing, and offer codes won't work for that.
- bestnameever 10y ago
  True offer codes are pretty common so I'm sure they offer some value. Having said that, I'm sure it still leaves a lot mystery to those who are looking at the data.
- aganders3 10y ago
  That's addressed in the article. Direct marketing with offer codes or special URLs is only applicable to certain products. Brand (awareness) advertising is where the real money comes from.
  - michaelwww 10y ago
    Thanks for the clarification.
- DasIch 10y ago
  There is some value in that because an advertisers knows how much they invested and what they return is. This tells you very little about the actual size of the audience and nothing about the conversion rate.
1ris 10y ago
Podcasting right now seems to working wonderfully. It's one of the most expensive ways to advertise. If it's not broken don't fix it. Tracking and the targeting didn't save online advertisment, it won't safe podcasting.
- erispoe 10y ago
  That is spot on. Advertising works great on podcasts, and is expensive as a result, because listeners develop a great amount of trust for the podcasts they listen. Anything that undermines that trust is likely to just create a regression to the mean of the value of podcast advertisement: just as valuable as a random online ad.
jldugger 10y ago
> Stitcher is thought to be the 2nd most popular podcast player, although it has long been controversial in some circles for its default practice of hosting podcasts itself (instead of directing users to download them directly from a podcaster’s server) and inserting ads. Why would a consumer install such a program, when AntennaPod exists?
- MBCook 10y ago
  If the podcast you want is only available through Stitcher. And it's only on Stitcher because that's Midroll's service and only Midroll ads pay well enough (this is hypothetical-future). And they only pay well enough because of all the tracking in Stitcher.
  - jldugger 10y ago
    I'm just curious how this walled garden bootstraps. Are there Stitcher exclusives?
    - MBCook 10y ago
      I don't know, but they could use Midroll's money to entice (or flat out buy) desirable content for bootstrapping.
ssharp 10y ago
I think the article's ideas on advertising, particularly the idea that brand advertising HAS to come to podcasting because direct advertising won't scale is a bit flakey. Why won't direct advertising scale? Direct advertising opens up the long tail of companies. Small Business X can't spend money on branding but can spend money on acquiring paying customers. In fact, direct advertising has become so popular thanks to things like AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc. that companies need to find new places to address their target audiences and podcasts might just be a great place to do that. The stuff with coupon codes, special URLs, etc. are pretty trivial to set up and a company like Midroll is going to coordinate between you and the podcast so you can line up that stuff well ahead of time. There was also this: "The not-so-secret reality about podcast ads, though, are that advertisers are quite concentrated: a FiveThirtyEight intern heroically listened to the top 100 shows on the iTunes chart and counted 186 ads; 35 percent of them were from five companies. More tellingly, nearly all of the ads were of the direct marketing variety." I did not read the 538 article on this, but it makes a lot of sense for a company to carpet bomb their advertising. So if you're listening to all the top 100 podcasts in a one-week period, you might have an advertiser hitting a lot of those podcasts in a one-week period. However, if you listened to the same 100 podcasts three weeks later, you might hear another set. Presumably, the companies finding routine success are the ones who you hear all the time. On the carpet-bombing strategy, if you deploy in relative isolation, you should be able to measure the real effect of the advertising and not just the people who came through a URL or used a coupon code. If I normally sell $100 per week and the week I advertise I sell $200, I don't have to rely on campaign tracking to assume attribution. Wait a few weeks and advertise again and see if the effect holds up.
esonderegger 10y ago
I've been wrestling with the idea of how to enable monetization for smaller podcast producers since I decided to start building an AppleTV app for playing video podcasts this past winter. What I think could work is namespaced tags for specific players that offer ad-insertion. This allows for the platform to remain default-open and opt-in for publishers who want to go this route. For example, much like <itunes:explicit> is not part of any RSS spec, a publisher could choose to include a tag like <castanet:monetize>yes</castanet:monetize>, which would tell the Cast-a-net app that the publisher of that podcast would like ads to be inserted. The publisher would then need to setup an account with Cast-a-net to share the ad revenue, verify ownership, etc. There is a significant chicken and egg problem, of course. The player needs to have enough users for the publishers to consider setting up an account to be worthwhile. The ad experience also can't get so obnoxious that users move to other apps. This approach allows publishers to gain monetization and metrics without ceding ownership and control to the platform. By the way, my player, Cast-a-net, doesn't yet offer this feature. I've been working on making the UI good enough to attract real users first, then hoping it can grow to be something worthy of specific attention from video podcast producers. (edit: as was pointed out in a reply, Marco is very anti-ads, so I swapped the example tags. I had only meant to use Overcast as an example of a popular independent player that doesn't want to become a walled garden for just a subset of the total podcast universe.)
- starik36 10y ago
  This is actually pretty cool. It lets publishers just focus on content, while the podcast apps offer the opportunity to monetize. Kind of like YouTube. As long as the apps don't start doing stupid stuff like unskippable commercials.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rackforms 10y ago
  One possible alternative/addition is what I've done for my Podcast app, SkipCast (http://skipcast.net/ http://skipcast.net/). I worked with Blubrry to create a new donate tag: http://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced-tools-and-options/syndicating-a-donate-link-in-your-podcast/ http://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced-tool... If the feed supports this tag, a simple donate link appears in SkipCast and when tapped, takes you directly to the donate page. This tag can be supported by any Podcast client. To me this is a clear win-win situation, though the feature depends heavily on adoption of simple, easy to use and deploy donation services, and of course the user supplying the tag. One good example of the donate model working is the Crate and Crowbar podcast (PC Gaming). They created a Patreon and literally shut it down after a few months. The reason: they got hundreds in weekly, recurring donations and simply didn't need that much money. Donations can work, and could be a huge boon to smaller, independent Podcasters. This could in turn ensure a healthy ecosystem that's more resilient to monolithic entities.
jaysonelliot 10y ago
I run a small podcasting network called TSRPN. When I talk to non-listeners about podcasts, I hear two things: ---- 1. "I don't know how to listen to podcasts." 2. "I don't know what to listen to." ---- There are many great podcatching apps out there, and for those of us who "get it" and are motivated to listen to podcasts, it seems like Pocket Casts, Overcast, even the default Podcast app for iOS are easy to use and understand. Yet apparently they aren't. Discovery is another issue altogether. NPR One, Pandora, Stitcher, et al have tried to do some level of podcast recommendation, but the lack of thorough metadata and text transcripts make it difficult to apply the kind of algorithm that works for blogs or music. What makes it easy for the average non-techie to use a browser to read blogs, an app like Spotify for music, or their Facebook app, but not to use a podcatcher app? Is it simple lack of familiarity? Or do we need an entirely new approach? I wish I knew the answer.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > it seems like Pocket Casts, Overcast, even the default Podcast app for iOS are easy to use and understand. Yet apparently they aren't. That boggles my mind, at least in the case of Pocket Casts, with which I have experience. It has a "Discover" section, which makes it fairly easy to find at least a few that should interest anyone, and I find the best way for me to find new podcasts are recommendations by hosts of other podcasts (or better yet, where a segment of the podcast in question is replayed). Once you're in the ecosystem, I think the available interesting (to you) podcasts increases exponentially over time, as you listen to more podcasts and get more recommendations. I imagine people complaining about being unable to find anything to listen to are more likely having problems committing a small portion of time to actually try something new, which is not a new problem.
- petra 10y ago
  I'm not convinced by what people say. It might be partially true, but i think there's something deeper behind it: blogs, music and video are addictive for the right people. Hence they'll spend a bit of effort to ask around what app to use, and ask about good tv, etc. Also because they're addictive and the barrier for sharing is much lower, they'll get shared much more often, talked about much more often - so you get discovery. Podcasts aren't addictive(and i like podcasts). Lectures are boring by nature, and demand tons of focus(something we we may have more than the average guy). And even in fields that could be addictive(and don't demand great focus), like comedy, the quality is terrible - most comedy podcasts don't even come close to professional comedians doing standup. Here's one idea: build a podcasts comedy site that curates only consistently great podcasts, and enables extremely easy sharing including sharing of very short segments. Make the transition from the using the site to using it while driving easy and habit forming. I think doing that you can get users "addicted". And once they are, they'll get your app, they might listen to other podcasts, etc.
swifterthenthou 10y ago
I've been using the Remarks social podcasting app for the past week. They are trying to address the retention (for sure) and monetization (I assume they're going to roll out an ads platform) problems mentioned in the article. I've been posting my thoughts as I listen and really like when the host is on the platform and I can react to their posts. Only challenge for me is that I listen to a lot of my episodes while driving and can't scroll through posts.
- adamontherun 10y ago
  Founder of Remarks here. Currently, we're focussed on building a great platform for people to discuss the podcast their listening to with other fans and the host. We're trying to get as many hosts as possible on board. An ad platform is something we've talked about, but I'd need to see a huge upswing in usage before building that out.
vitd 10y ago
As an extremely heavy listener of podcasts, there's no way I would listen anymore if I had to have 20 different apps to run to listen to them. It's an absolute non-starter. And then to have ads on top of that. Fuck that. Maybe the author's right that what works for current users won't work for the masses. I don't know. But I do know that I will not listen to more ads (that's why I stopped listening to radio and I suspect I'm not the only one), and I will not go to the trouble of using more than a single app.
- Arcsech 10y ago
  Yeah - and there's a bunch of great podcasts that I can't really see switching to their own apps exclusively (all of Radiotopia, of which my favorites are 99% Invisible and Criminal, for example, and many independent podcasters), so any podcasts that want me to go through a custom app would have to be truly mindblowingly good.
  - davidsawyer 10y ago
    I think you're right in that a lot of established and independent podcasts will tend to stick to the main channels of podcast distribution, but if it becomes too financially tempting to go through a custom app, they'd probably choose to do that. There definitely doesn't seem to be a ton of money in podcasting right now. Many of the heavy hitters in that world regularly ask for donations from listeners.
  - chipotle_coyote 10y ago
    I wouldn't at all be surprised if PRX releases a Radiotopia app. (They already have one for the Apple TV, in fact.) Any podcast network that has more than, say, a dozen shows, and some data to support the notion they have listeners who subscribe to multiple shows on their network, might be very inclined to at least try an app. It doesn't have to be the only way to listen to their popular podcasts, but it might offer exclusive content. And maybe it'll be the only way to listen to older episodes, or to listen with fewer (or even no) ads. I don't think this is a good idea in the long run, but I could certainly see it happening in the not-too-distant future. I think we're already moving toward a future where we get the unbundled cable service we thought we wanted in the form of a dozen separate streaming video apps, and I don't doubt that streaming music services are going to push for ever-greater numbers of exclusive premieres, back catalogs and even original content. The question isn't whether producers will try this with podcasts, the question is how many producers will try it--and how successful it will be.
arrakeen 10y ago
for another perspective, here's an interview with two early podcasters working outside of this recent race to monetization http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-dude-about-why-its-better-to-be-happy-than-rich http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-du...
- ents 10y ago
  uyd is one of the best podcasts, strange but great to see them here, and in a relevant monetization context
nealrs 10y ago
podcast stats, amirite?! I don't trust feedburner, libsyn, or blubrry -- but i've been _thinking_ about using keen.io redirects in my rss & itunes feeds so i can collect ip/agent info and analyze that. i distribute my podcast (well, it's a video show, but still podcasty) via YouTube in part because I can actually get view/retention/source/subcriber stats + use links/annotations + I can also feed it into itunes. I even made a little jekyll repo that helps you make landing page & video/audio feeds: https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-Show https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-Show
deleted 10y ago
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hijp 10y ago
That's a super depressing future. My imagined future involves serving podcasts with different ads each time you download the episode. Maybe a subscription to ad-free versions. There's no need for a separate player for subscriptions, Rss feeds can already be password protected. If anyone is working on the above, hit me up - I'd love to talk.
randyrand 10y ago
Now THIS is podcasting!
randomname2 10y ago
Obligatory mention for the No Agenda podcast [1], by the "father of podcasting" Adam Curry and tech broadcaster John C. Dvorak. They have an interesting model in being 100% listener supported, with no advertisers or sponsors, and yet still managing to make a living off their show, putting out 2 shows every week (today show #832): "Their funding model is strictly listener supported, and it's working. The premise being that keeping outside influences away from content development gives listeners untainted news, opinion and entertainment... they refer to it as a "value-for-value" proposition -- listen to the show, if you get something worthwhile from it make a donation. This model should change the face of podcasting. More and more independent podcasters will probably take note of this new model, and they should. Open, unsullied content creation and delivery should be the goal of everyone in the media -- a free exchange of ideas, opinions and content is the cornerstone of a free internet and a free society. Podcasting has always been a medium searching for a successful funding model. Curry was a pioneer in getting podcasters to band together to try and attract funding from advertisers and sponsors. Curry started a couple of companies to support this model -- he would probably be the first to admit that the main-stream media model is not the best one for podcasting... but his constant tinkering and experimentation with the medium he created is starting to pay off. Curry and Dvorak may be the first "professional" podcasters to make a living doing a show that is truly independent, insightful and listener supported." [1] http://www.noagendashow.com/ http://www.noagendashow.com/ [2] http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-podcasting-relevant-and-profitable http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-podcasting-r...
- lurkinggrue 10y ago
  I can respect that show but man I can't sit though it. Dvorak just grates on me and Adam is a bit too conspiracy centered for me. They are being successful though and that's really cool to see narrow programming do well for a specific audience.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- trvr 10y ago
  I suspect that Adam and John don't need the money they make from the podcast to pay their bills, so I'm not really sure what "it's working" means to them. The article you linked to doesn't mention any specifics.
asgardiator 10y ago
If you're looking for a free, hyper-functional podcast app that will search _thousands of RSS feeds_, allow me to introduce [PodcastAddict](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.podcastaddict https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...). I've been using it for some time now, and every day I discover something new to enjoy. It's indisputably the best podcast app for Android, and it's leagues beyond iOS's native app.
lifeisstillgood 10y ago
tl;dr - facebookization of podcasts (one discovery process in one app) is the worst outcome for publishers (who already have this for actual text) So the least worst alternative is for each publisher to have their own app for listening to their podcasts and drive folks to download said app by using star power and marketing. To get there we will see some podcasts bribed with huge gobs of cash. Ok - seems plausible but frankly as a podcast listener I prefer the Facebook solution, and am unconvinced by his arguments that most people wont
lifeisstillgood 10y ago
My take - snippets will drive discovery. Take a ten second snippet of a podcast and you can find a hundred "keyword" searches or Facebook headlines that it will fit perfectly. This can drive subscriptions to the podcast That might actually make a workable business ...
ukyrgf 10y ago
"They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue" This made me realize that Midroll/Earwolf already tried this to an extent last year with Howl.fm. It was an iPhone exclusive app/service that launched with a ton of exclusive podcast series, some old comedy albums, and the thing that really showed how little they cared about their listeners-- Earwolf was taking down all the old episodes of their podcasts and putting it behind the Howl paywall. Many people might not be familiar with Earwolf, but in the comedy world it's huge. improv4humans is hosted by a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade and it's basically like sitting in on a master class in long-form improv. Comedy Bang Bang has recurring characters that date back years and people love going back and listening to hear how they evolve by "yes and"ing their way through conversations. They don't get dated like maybe a tech podcast might, so taking them down just to help bolster some cash-grab podcast subscription service was just so insulting, and to make it only available on iPhones showed how out of touch they were.
- bufordsharkley 10y ago
  There was a big thread on Earwolf when this was announced. Everyone agreed that Earwolf was deserving of money for its wonderful products, but Earwolf never combatted the question: why not just a password-protected RSS feed? (Jimmy Pardo's podcast, which Earwolf acquired, had successfully used this model for years) Largely, it seemed to be paranoia of users sharing files (Earwolf was also unsympathetic to the concept of downloading shows locally for listening offline), which seems to be missing the big picture. ...I'm not a typical user (I don't own a smartphone, and I don't plan to), so their attitude was fairly disappointing.
DrJohanson 10y ago
What about the future of podracing?
shostack 10y ago
I'll take the (probably unpopular) advertiser-centric approach here... I agree with a lot of what Ben says (and his podcast is the highlight of my commute these days). What is fascinating is that the space has been the domain of direct response advertisers for a while, and only a handful. I was familiar with all of the ones mentioned, but was absolutely shocked that they were such a large percentage of the mix. Either podcasting ads are so nascent that only a handful of people are in on it, or there are performance challenges (whether it be attribution or overall poor performance). What I'd love to see is the # of advertisers to made a solid go of it and had dismal experiences despite having success in other channels. That would be very telling. The conversion tracking piece is a big missing chunk of the equation. I could see ads embed audio tags that any reader could parse, but I fear the tracking restricted to individual platforms. That puts all of the control on the sell-side of the equation, and also conveniently impossible to audit or compare numbers against. I'd LOVE to see DoubleClick/Turn/etc. get into the game with some tracking solutions here. They are the industry standard and would integrate well into existing ad stacks. Anyone who provides good tracking solutions might consider them for possible acquisitions. Beyond that, I think that podcasts make a lot of sense with the shift to native ads. Many people feel they have a relationship with the podcaster because it is in fact a real live person that you listen to because you like them. In speaking with Midroll for our own forays into podcast ads, it looks like you provide a list of bullets on your offering, and the podcaster works to craft the ad in their voice to make it more natural. That is a win for both the advertiser and the listener. The more natural format likely boosts receptiveness (and thus performance) for the advertiser, and the listener gets something that isn't horribly disruptive to the listening experience as good podcasters (like Roman Mars on 99pi) make them fun and have found that people stick around to even listen to the post rolls because he's so good at them. Anyway, that's my $.02. I think the space is nascent, and I hope that the inevitable power struggle between publishers and platforms doesn't kill it as it could be really powerful when done right. Advertisers have some challenges but that hasn't stopped them from testing before. I'm frankly just shocked at the lack of overall advertiser volume.
EvanAnderson 10y ago
It increasingly feels like we're living in the end of the "golden age" of podcasting to me. I've got my little homegrown podcatcher downloading files and sticking them on my server so I can stream them over my LAN or load them onto my devices for offline play. Presumably publishers will muscle into this market to "monetize" the entire thing and completely fuck it up. No more MP3s to load on my devices, etc. Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted. Maybe I'll end up breaking out the old rig I built back in the early 2000's to timeshift public radio shows to MP3s.
advertising 10y ago
Like pando for news, I'd rather pay for a podcast than get it free w/ ads.
fernly 10y ago
One more model: the guys at Partially Examined Life used their content-rich philosophy podcast to build a participatory community of listeners. Now you can pay a subscription to be a P.E.L "citizen" which gives you the chance to participate in "not school" seminars with other citizens. Also, of course, access to their back catalog which is behind a paywall. George Hrab leaves his 400+ episode Geologic catalog open, but pushes a subscription fee: be a "geologist" to get a weekly email and access to other subscriber-only material.
podcastrank 10y ago
I've tried to built something to solve the discovery problem. It was featured on HN a while ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835

148 points by jcurbo 10y ago

rememberlenny 10y ago

Repost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856391

dang 10y ago
Reposts are allowed on HN if a story hasn't had significant attention yet (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). Links to previous submissions aren't helpful if there's no actual discussion at the other end, which explains the downvotes here. Your post beat this one in time but this one won the luck of the draw. Sorry about that. We're hoping to change the duplicate detector in a way that gives the original submitter credit more often, but for the time being there's still a lot of randomness in which post gets traction. For now, the way to mitigate that is to submit many good stories; it evens out in the long run.
- rememberlenny 10y ago
  Thanks for heads up!

6stringmerc 10y ago

Comparing Podcasting with Blogging is a neat approach. I think there's more overlap than the article might be able - or willing - to address when discussing monetization. To wit: In order to monetize, a lot of what is appealing about Blogging/Podcasting would be diminished - paying is the opposite of free content, commercials interrupt the listening, and authenticity corrupted by advertising perogatives. Or, in other words, a lot of what the "Mommy Blog" sector seemed to try and keep under the surface: http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-blogger/ http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-blogger/ Just like in music, there will be a few case studies with large revenues, and thousands barely making anything, if not actually going into the red for their troubles.

theseatoms 10y ago
In arts and entertainment, the lines are blurring between content creation and recreation, at least for the lower 99%.

fluxquanta 10y ago

>publishers should offer podcasts through their own app that measures listens, and either sell ads themselves if they have the scale or outsource it to a company like Midroll. Midroll, for their part, should leverage their new player technology to offer skinnable apps for publishers who can’t build their own. Here's my problem with this idea: I, like many people, listen to a lot of different podcasts. Dozens, in my case. I have a podcatcher app that puts them all in one place. That makes it easy and convenient for me. Some of the shows I only listen to maybe once per month when there's a guest on that I enjoy, or if I run out of new episodes of everything else. If each show required its own app for me to listen, I'd only listen to the ones I really, really enjoy and support, and the rest I'll do without or bootleg. So, in a sense, the individual app per show idea would be limiting the potential audience. I'm already seeing this happen with Libsyn custom mobile apps[0]. There are a number of shows I listen to that have paywalls for old episodes which can only be accessed through subscription plans available in individual apps. $1.99 or $2.99 may not seem like much by itself, but if it's 10 or 20 shows you're listening to this becomes an unjustifiable bill. The only viable alternative I see is the further growth of podcast networks, where multiple shows are available for one price. But, currently, this model is still too small and fragmented. Until the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts comes out, I'll be left to pick and choose which deserve my support enough to justify buying into their distinct "ecosystem". Edit: I see that my points here were addressed in the paragraphs following the one I quoted, but I'm still not buying the idea that siloing is the best way to monetize podcasts. [0] https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-apps/ https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-apps/

wj 10y ago
Regarding your point about "the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts" it is important to remember that by far the majority of their content is at least a full season old. They are able to secure the rights to it for less than the cost of producing it because the networks are receiving ad dollars the first time around. Most of the podcasts I listen to aren't timely so listening to them a year after they "air" isn't a big deal. I'm not sure if I am in the majority there though. My suspicion is that podcasts are going to borrow from the music industry in the form of podcasts being something they give away in hopes of making money through merchandise, events, additional media such as books or subscriber-only episodes, or more likely, broadcaster access in the form of communities. (Off of the top of my head I can think of four entrepreneurial podcasts that have their own membership communities: Startups For the Rest of Us, Tropical MBA, Entrepreneur on Fire, and Chris Ducker. I imagine there is a lot of audience overlap but not membership community overlap and maybe a different method would be to have a single entrepreneurial podcast membership community that shows can join for a portion of the subscription fees. A smaller piece of a bigger pie...) And like music some people will still create them out of a labor of love.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

Podcasts are hot right now. Big Money is coming. Big Money isn’t going to sell nicely designed, hand-crafted, RSS-backed podcast players for $2.99 or ask you to pay what you want to support them, because that doesn’t make Big Money. They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue. Hats off to that guy for succinctly summarizing why we can't have nice things.

busterarm 10y ago
We're already sort of in that state now. There a few podcast networks that have their own software but if you want good data on your listeners you're basically stuck between Blubrry & Libsyn and they're both severely outdated platforms. And you pretty much have to use iTunes. I've been toying around with building my own open platform for podcast hosting/analytics for a while since I could use it for my own podcast and I have friends who would use it.
- avn2109 10y ago
  Honest question, why are podcasts not just platform independent .mp3's or Ogg Vorbis audio for the purists? Note that I don't understand how a podcast is different from a radio show that somebody recorded on a computer, so maybe I'm missing key functionality.
  - MBCook 10y ago
    Right now? They are. A podcast is really just an RSS feed of episodes in MP3 or AAC format. That's it. You can barely track how many people download, let alone listen, when they stop, etc. All the things advertisers want to know.
    - busterarm 10y ago
      Right. It's still a hard thing to integrate an RSS feed into a modern website...RSS is only really popular with podcasts and hasn't had much development in a while. Working with XML sucks. Libsyn and Blubrry manage this part for you (having an RSS feed that is also a site's content and does tracking) but you're limited to hosting on their sites, wordpress or needing a developer. There's a lot of room for improvement here.

michaelwww 10y ago

> A major challenge in podcast monetization is the complete lack of data: listeners still download MP3s and that’s the end of it; podcasters can measure downloads, but have no idea if the episode is actually listened to That's not exactly true. Marc Maron always encourages his listeners to use his offer code (often "wtf") to get discounts. Surely they have data on that.

dasil003 10y ago
The point is that the real money is in brand advertising, not direct marketing, and offer codes won't work for that.
bestnameever 10y ago
True offer codes are pretty common so I'm sure they offer some value. Having said that, I'm sure it still leaves a lot mystery to those who are looking at the data.
aganders3 10y ago
That's addressed in the article. Direct marketing with offer codes or special URLs is only applicable to certain products. Brand (awareness) advertising is where the real money comes from.
- michaelwww 10y ago
  Thanks for the clarification.
DasIch 10y ago
There is some value in that because an advertisers knows how much they invested and what they return is. This tells you very little about the actual size of the audience and nothing about the conversion rate.

1ris 10y ago

Podcasting right now seems to working wonderfully. It's one of the most expensive ways to advertise. If it's not broken don't fix it. Tracking and the targeting didn't save online advertisment, it won't safe podcasting.

erispoe 10y ago
That is spot on. Advertising works great on podcasts, and is expensive as a result, because listeners develop a great amount of trust for the podcasts they listen. Anything that undermines that trust is likely to just create a regression to the mean of the value of podcast advertisement: just as valuable as a random online ad.

jldugger 10y ago

> Stitcher is thought to be the 2nd most popular podcast player, although it has long been controversial in some circles for its default practice of hosting podcasts itself (instead of directing users to download them directly from a podcaster’s server) and inserting ads. Why would a consumer install such a program, when AntennaPod exists?

MBCook 10y ago
If the podcast you want is only available through Stitcher. And it's only on Stitcher because that's Midroll's service and only Midroll ads pay well enough (this is hypothetical-future). And they only pay well enough because of all the tracking in Stitcher.
- jldugger 10y ago
  I'm just curious how this walled garden bootstraps. Are there Stitcher exclusives?
  - MBCook 10y ago
    I don't know, but they could use Midroll's money to entice (or flat out buy) desirable content for bootstrapping.

ssharp 10y ago

I think the article's ideas on advertising, particularly the idea that brand advertising HAS to come to podcasting because direct advertising won't scale is a bit flakey. Why won't direct advertising scale? Direct advertising opens up the long tail of companies. Small Business X can't spend money on branding but can spend money on acquiring paying customers. In fact, direct advertising has become so popular thanks to things like AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc. that companies need to find new places to address their target audiences and podcasts might just be a great place to do that. The stuff with coupon codes, special URLs, etc. are pretty trivial to set up and a company like Midroll is going to coordinate between you and the podcast so you can line up that stuff well ahead of time. There was also this: "The not-so-secret reality about podcast ads, though, are that advertisers are quite concentrated: a FiveThirtyEight intern heroically listened to the top 100 shows on the iTunes chart and counted 186 ads; 35 percent of them were from five companies. More tellingly, nearly all of the ads were of the direct marketing variety." I did not read the 538 article on this, but it makes a lot of sense for a company to carpet bomb their advertising. So if you're listening to all the top 100 podcasts in a one-week period, you might have an advertiser hitting a lot of those podcasts in a one-week period. However, if you listened to the same 100 podcasts three weeks later, you might hear another set. Presumably, the companies finding routine success are the ones who you hear all the time. On the carpet-bombing strategy, if you deploy in relative isolation, you should be able to measure the real effect of the advertising and not just the people who came through a URL or used a coupon code. If I normally sell $100 per week and the week I advertise I sell $200, I don't have to rely on campaign tracking to assume attribution. Wait a few weeks and advertise again and see if the effect holds up.

esonderegger 10y ago

I've been wrestling with the idea of how to enable monetization for smaller podcast producers since I decided to start building an AppleTV app for playing video podcasts this past winter. What I think could work is namespaced tags for specific players that offer ad-insertion. This allows for the platform to remain default-open and opt-in for publishers who want to go this route. For example, much like <itunes:explicit> is not part of any RSS spec, a publisher could choose to include a tag like <castanet:monetize>yes</castanet:monetize>, which would tell the Cast-a-net app that the publisher of that podcast would like ads to be inserted. The publisher would then need to setup an account with Cast-a-net to share the ad revenue, verify ownership, etc. There is a significant chicken and egg problem, of course. The player needs to have enough users for the publishers to consider setting up an account to be worthwhile. The ad experience also can't get so obnoxious that users move to other apps. This approach allows publishers to gain monetization and metrics without ceding ownership and control to the platform. By the way, my player, Cast-a-net, doesn't yet offer this feature. I've been working on making the UI good enough to attract real users first, then hoping it can grow to be something worthy of specific attention from video podcast producers. (edit: as was pointed out in a reply, Marco is very anti-ads, so I swapped the example tags. I had only meant to use Overcast as an example of a popular independent player that doesn't want to become a walled garden for just a subset of the total podcast universe.)

starik36 10y ago
This is actually pretty cool. It lets publishers just focus on content, while the podcast apps offer the opportunity to monetize. Kind of like YouTube. As long as the apps don't start doing stupid stuff like unskippable commercials.
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rackforms 10y ago
One possible alternative/addition is what I've done for my Podcast app, SkipCast (http://skipcast.net/ http://skipcast.net/). I worked with Blubrry to create a new donate tag: http://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced-tools-and-options/syndicating-a-donate-link-in-your-podcast/ http://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced-tool... If the feed supports this tag, a simple donate link appears in SkipCast and when tapped, takes you directly to the donate page. This tag can be supported by any Podcast client. To me this is a clear win-win situation, though the feature depends heavily on adoption of simple, easy to use and deploy donation services, and of course the user supplying the tag. One good example of the donate model working is the Crate and Crowbar podcast (PC Gaming). They created a Patreon and literally shut it down after a few months. The reason: they got hundreds in weekly, recurring donations and simply didn't need that much money. Donations can work, and could be a huge boon to smaller, independent Podcasters. This could in turn ensure a healthy ecosystem that's more resilient to monolithic entities.

jaysonelliot 10y ago

I run a small podcasting network called TSRPN. When I talk to non-listeners about podcasts, I hear two things: ---- 1. "I don't know how to listen to podcasts." 2. "I don't know what to listen to." ---- There are many great podcatching apps out there, and for those of us who "get it" and are motivated to listen to podcasts, it seems like Pocket Casts, Overcast, even the default Podcast app for iOS are easy to use and understand. Yet apparently they aren't. Discovery is another issue altogether. NPR One, Pandora, Stitcher, et al have tried to do some level of podcast recommendation, but the lack of thorough metadata and text transcripts make it difficult to apply the kind of algorithm that works for blogs or music. What makes it easy for the average non-techie to use a browser to read blogs, an app like Spotify for music, or their Facebook app, but not to use a podcatcher app? Is it simple lack of familiarity? Or do we need an entirely new approach? I wish I knew the answer.

kbenson 10y ago
> it seems like Pocket Casts, Overcast, even the default Podcast app for iOS are easy to use and understand. Yet apparently they aren't. That boggles my mind, at least in the case of Pocket Casts, with which I have experience. It has a "Discover" section, which makes it fairly easy to find at least a few that should interest anyone, and I find the best way for me to find new podcasts are recommendations by hosts of other podcasts (or better yet, where a segment of the podcast in question is replayed). Once you're in the ecosystem, I think the available interesting (to you) podcasts increases exponentially over time, as you listen to more podcasts and get more recommendations. I imagine people complaining about being unable to find anything to listen to are more likely having problems committing a small portion of time to actually try something new, which is not a new problem.
petra 10y ago
I'm not convinced by what people say. It might be partially true, but i think there's something deeper behind it: blogs, music and video are addictive for the right people. Hence they'll spend a bit of effort to ask around what app to use, and ask about good tv, etc. Also because they're addictive and the barrier for sharing is much lower, they'll get shared much more often, talked about much more often - so you get discovery. Podcasts aren't addictive(and i like podcasts). Lectures are boring by nature, and demand tons of focus(something we we may have more than the average guy). And even in fields that could be addictive(and don't demand great focus), like comedy, the quality is terrible - most comedy podcasts don't even come close to professional comedians doing standup. Here's one idea: build a podcasts comedy site that curates only consistently great podcasts, and enables extremely easy sharing including sharing of very short segments. Make the transition from the using the site to using it while driving easy and habit forming. I think doing that you can get users "addicted". And once they are, they'll get your app, they might listen to other podcasts, etc.

swifterthenthou 10y ago

I've been using the Remarks social podcasting app for the past week. They are trying to address the retention (for sure) and monetization (I assume they're going to roll out an ads platform) problems mentioned in the article. I've been posting my thoughts as I listen and really like when the host is on the platform and I can react to their posts. Only challenge for me is that I listen to a lot of my episodes while driving and can't scroll through posts.

adamontherun 10y ago
Founder of Remarks here. Currently, we're focussed on building a great platform for people to discuss the podcast their listening to with other fans and the host. We're trying to get as many hosts as possible on board. An ad platform is something we've talked about, but I'd need to see a huge upswing in usage before building that out.

vitd 10y ago

As an extremely heavy listener of podcasts, there's no way I would listen anymore if I had to have 20 different apps to run to listen to them. It's an absolute non-starter. And then to have ads on top of that. Fuck that. Maybe the author's right that what works for current users won't work for the masses. I don't know. But I do know that I will not listen to more ads (that's why I stopped listening to radio and I suspect I'm not the only one), and I will not go to the trouble of using more than a single app.

Arcsech 10y ago
Yeah - and there's a bunch of great podcasts that I can't really see switching to their own apps exclusively (all of Radiotopia, of which my favorites are 99% Invisible and Criminal, for example, and many independent podcasters), so any podcasts that want me to go through a custom app would have to be truly mindblowingly good.
- davidsawyer 10y ago
  I think you're right in that a lot of established and independent podcasts will tend to stick to the main channels of podcast distribution, but if it becomes too financially tempting to go through a custom app, they'd probably choose to do that. There definitely doesn't seem to be a ton of money in podcasting right now. Many of the heavy hitters in that world regularly ask for donations from listeners.
- chipotle_coyote 10y ago
  I wouldn't at all be surprised if PRX releases a Radiotopia app. (They already have one for the Apple TV, in fact.) Any podcast network that has more than, say, a dozen shows, and some data to support the notion they have listeners who subscribe to multiple shows on their network, might be very inclined to at least try an app. It doesn't have to be the only way to listen to their popular podcasts, but it might offer exclusive content. And maybe it'll be the only way to listen to older episodes, or to listen with fewer (or even no) ads. I don't think this is a good idea in the long run, but I could certainly see it happening in the not-too-distant future. I think we're already moving toward a future where we get the unbundled cable service we thought we wanted in the form of a dozen separate streaming video apps, and I don't doubt that streaming music services are going to push for ever-greater numbers of exclusive premieres, back catalogs and even original content. The question isn't whether producers will try this with podcasts, the question is how many producers will try it--and how successful it will be.

arrakeen 10y ago

for another perspective, here's an interview with two early podcasters working outside of this recent race to monetization http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-dude-about-why-its-better-to-be-happy-than-rich http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-du...

ents 10y ago
uyd is one of the best podcasts, strange but great to see them here, and in a relevant monetization context

nealrs 10y ago

podcast stats, amirite?! I don't trust feedburner, libsyn, or blubrry -- but i've been _thinking_ about using keen.io redirects in my rss & itunes feeds so i can collect ip/agent info and analyze that. i distribute my podcast (well, it's a video show, but still podcasty) via YouTube in part because I can actually get view/retention/source/subcriber stats + use links/annotations + I can also feed it into itunes. I even made a little jekyll repo that helps you make landing page & video/audio feeds: https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-Show https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-Show

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hijp 10y ago

That's a super depressing future. My imagined future involves serving podcasts with different ads each time you download the episode. Maybe a subscription to ad-free versions. There's no need for a separate player for subscriptions, Rss feeds can already be password protected. If anyone is working on the above, hit me up - I'd love to talk.

randyrand 10y ago

Now THIS is podcasting!

randomname2 10y ago

Obligatory mention for the No Agenda podcast [1], by the "father of podcasting" Adam Curry and tech broadcaster John C. Dvorak. They have an interesting model in being 100% listener supported, with no advertisers or sponsors, and yet still managing to make a living off their show, putting out 2 shows every week (today show #832): "Their funding model is strictly listener supported, and it's working. The premise being that keeping outside influences away from content development gives listeners untainted news, opinion and entertainment... they refer to it as a "value-for-value" proposition -- listen to the show, if you get something worthwhile from it make a donation. This model should change the face of podcasting. More and more independent podcasters will probably take note of this new model, and they should. Open, unsullied content creation and delivery should be the goal of everyone in the media -- a free exchange of ideas, opinions and content is the cornerstone of a free internet and a free society. Podcasting has always been a medium searching for a successful funding model. Curry was a pioneer in getting podcasters to band together to try and attract funding from advertisers and sponsors. Curry started a couple of companies to support this model -- he would probably be the first to admit that the main-stream media model is not the best one for podcasting... but his constant tinkering and experimentation with the medium he created is starting to pay off. Curry and Dvorak may be the first "professional" podcasters to make a living doing a show that is truly independent, insightful and listener supported." [1] http://www.noagendashow.com/ http://www.noagendashow.com/ [2] http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-podcasting-relevant-and-profitable http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-podcasting-r...

lurkinggrue 10y ago
I can respect that show but man I can't sit though it. Dvorak just grates on me and Adam is a bit too conspiracy centered for me. They are being successful though and that's really cool to see narrow programming do well for a specific audience.
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trvr 10y ago
I suspect that Adam and John don't need the money they make from the podcast to pay their bills, so I'm not really sure what "it's working" means to them. The article you linked to doesn't mention any specifics.

asgardiator 10y ago

If you're looking for a free, hyper-functional podcast app that will search _thousands of RSS feeds_, allow me to introduce [PodcastAddict](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.podcastaddict https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...). I've been using it for some time now, and every day I discover something new to enjoy. It's indisputably the best podcast app for Android, and it's leagues beyond iOS's native app.

lifeisstillgood 10y ago

tl;dr - facebookization of podcasts (one discovery process in one app) is the worst outcome for publishers (who already have this for actual text) So the least worst alternative is for each publisher to have their own app for listening to their podcasts and drive folks to download said app by using star power and marketing. To get there we will see some podcasts bribed with huge gobs of cash. Ok - seems plausible but frankly as a podcast listener I prefer the Facebook solution, and am unconvinced by his arguments that most people wont

lifeisstillgood 10y ago

My take - snippets will drive discovery. Take a ten second snippet of a podcast and you can find a hundred "keyword" searches or Facebook headlines that it will fit perfectly. This can drive subscriptions to the podcast That might actually make a workable business ...

ukyrgf 10y ago

"They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue" This made me realize that Midroll/Earwolf already tried this to an extent last year with Howl.fm. It was an iPhone exclusive app/service that launched with a ton of exclusive podcast series, some old comedy albums, and the thing that really showed how little they cared about their listeners-- Earwolf was taking down all the old episodes of their podcasts and putting it behind the Howl paywall. Many people might not be familiar with Earwolf, but in the comedy world it's huge. improv4humans is hosted by a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade and it's basically like sitting in on a master class in long-form improv. Comedy Bang Bang has recurring characters that date back years and people love going back and listening to hear how they evolve by "yes and"ing their way through conversations. They don't get dated like maybe a tech podcast might, so taking them down just to help bolster some cash-grab podcast subscription service was just so insulting, and to make it only available on iPhones showed how out of touch they were.

bufordsharkley 10y ago
There was a big thread on Earwolf when this was announced. Everyone agreed that Earwolf was deserving of money for its wonderful products, but Earwolf never combatted the question: why not just a password-protected RSS feed? (Jimmy Pardo's podcast, which Earwolf acquired, had successfully used this model for years) Largely, it seemed to be paranoia of users sharing files (Earwolf was also unsympathetic to the concept of downloading shows locally for listening offline), which seems to be missing the big picture. ...I'm not a typical user (I don't own a smartphone, and I don't plan to), so their attitude was fairly disappointing.

DrJohanson 10y ago

What about the future of podracing?

shostack 10y ago

I'll take the (probably unpopular) advertiser-centric approach here... I agree with a lot of what Ben says (and his podcast is the highlight of my commute these days). What is fascinating is that the space has been the domain of direct response advertisers for a while, and only a handful. I was familiar with all of the ones mentioned, but was absolutely shocked that they were such a large percentage of the mix. Either podcasting ads are so nascent that only a handful of people are in on it, or there are performance challenges (whether it be attribution or overall poor performance). What I'd love to see is the # of advertisers to made a solid go of it and had dismal experiences despite having success in other channels. That would be very telling. The conversion tracking piece is a big missing chunk of the equation. I could see ads embed audio tags that any reader could parse, but I fear the tracking restricted to individual platforms. That puts all of the control on the sell-side of the equation, and also conveniently impossible to audit or compare numbers against. I'd LOVE to see DoubleClick/Turn/etc. get into the game with some tracking solutions here. They are the industry standard and would integrate well into existing ad stacks. Anyone who provides good tracking solutions might consider them for possible acquisitions. Beyond that, I think that podcasts make a lot of sense with the shift to native ads. Many people feel they have a relationship with the podcaster because it is in fact a real live person that you listen to because you like them. In speaking with Midroll for our own forays into podcast ads, it looks like you provide a list of bullets on your offering, and the podcaster works to craft the ad in their voice to make it more natural. That is a win for both the advertiser and the listener. The more natural format likely boosts receptiveness (and thus performance) for the advertiser, and the listener gets something that isn't horribly disruptive to the listening experience as good podcasters (like Roman Mars on 99pi) make them fun and have found that people stick around to even listen to the post rolls because he's so good at them. Anyway, that's my $.02. I think the space is nascent, and I hope that the inevitable power struggle between publishers and platforms doesn't kill it as it could be really powerful when done right. Advertisers have some challenges but that hasn't stopped them from testing before. I'm frankly just shocked at the lack of overall advertiser volume.

EvanAnderson 10y ago

It increasingly feels like we're living in the end of the "golden age" of podcasting to me. I've got my little homegrown podcatcher downloading files and sticking them on my server so I can stream them over my LAN or load them onto my devices for offline play. Presumably publishers will muscle into this market to "monetize" the entire thing and completely fuck it up. No more MP3s to load on my devices, etc. Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted. Maybe I'll end up breaking out the old rig I built back in the early 2000's to timeshift public radio shows to MP3s.

advertising 10y ago

Like pando for news, I'd rather pay for a podcast than get it free w/ ads.

fernly 10y ago

One more model: the guys at Partially Examined Life used their content-rich philosophy podcast to build a participatory community of listeners. Now you can pay a subscription to be a P.E.L "citizen" which gives you the chance to participate in "not school" seminars with other citizens. Also, of course, access to their back catalog which is behind a paywall. George Hrab leaves his 400+ episode Geologic catalog open, but pushes a subscription fee: be a "geologist" to get a weekly email and access to other subscriber-only material.

podcastrank 10y ago

I've tried to built something to solve the discovery problem. It was featured on HN a while ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835