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I'm hoping someone rolls podcasts into a music subscription service so that I don't need to listen to these ads. I know that Spotify has done this a bit, but ii

I'm hoping someone rolls podcasts into a music subscription service so that I don't need to listen to these ads. I know that Spotify has done this a bit, but iirc their selection is pretty limited.

blfr 9y ago
The podcasts I listen to have live reads rather than separate ads so removing them would be difficult.
Splendor 9y ago
Stitcher Premium has done this but it's not for all podcasts.
staunch 9y ago
It's easier to just have 10% of listeners pay $10/year and go ad-free. Advertising is a pollutant and no longer necessary in the new at-scale world. When you have a small podcast, you can just do it for the love of it and not worry about money. If it gets big, you can get a small percentage of your listeners to give you money. The number of contributors should continue to rise for many years as more people discover how great podcasts can be.
- WesleyLivesay 9y ago
  The easier, and more lucrative, method is to setup some sort of Premium/Patreon/etc. method where you can either listen to the podcast, with ads, for free, or pay $X a month to support the show and get access to an ad-free feed.
  - staunch 9y ago
    There's no need for ads at all though. If you don't have many listeners, then there's not much ad revenue anyway. And once you have a lot of listeners, you only need a tiny percentage to fund the entire thing. It's totally viable to have 10% of listeners voluntarily pay while 90% of listeners freeload. And there needn't be any NPR guilt trip about it because they're not blowing millions on office space and executives. Any successful podcast can be a very financially successful business for a small number of people.
    - WesleyLivesay 9y ago
      Sure, but once you have that large number of listeners, if ads only turn away a small percentage, there is no reason to not have them. They would just be refusing (nearly) free money.
RmDen 9y ago
I have no issues with ads being left in.. hit the skip button 3 times on the phone and you are past the ads. JRE.. skip the first 5-7 minutes until you pass the "Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night all day!" and you are set as well. Same with Tim Ferriss.. but there it's about 4 minutes But mostly I listen to the ads.. they are usually less than a minute anyway (especially since I listen to everything at 1.5 speed... some at 2.0)
- thanatropism 9y ago
  Then, Rogan has an entertaining way of reading the ads.
kevinmchugh 9y ago
Patreon has very nice support for podcasts, and it makes the ad supported ones seem clunky.
WesleyLivesay 9y ago
I don't know if this will happen anytime soon. I think there are two main problems: 1. As the article mentioned, there is a lot of growth with advertising here. Until that starts to taper off the "big" players in the podcast market (either creators or networks) will be hesitant to sign those types of deals. When they keep getting more advertising dollars it seems silly to move over to a Spotify like system. 2. Smaller players (often independent creators) are less organized and harder to get into that sort of system. This was not a problem for Spotify, or other streaming services, because the music industry had a well established Artist -> Label setup that does not exist for huge swaths of the podcast market.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  So, I would expect podcast ads to be roughly comparable to Spotify ads and, for Spotify, paying subscribers bring in 3x more revenue than those who get ads. And for me podcasts are a direct substitute for music, in that I listen to them on the train when I would otherwise be listening to music. I see your point about onboarding. I wonder if one of them could just ingest all the podcasts on the internet, strip out ads and collect revenue for them, and then offer them a way to claim the revenue and/or opt-out.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    The Talk Show by John Gruber and Accidental Tech Podcast are probably two of the most popular Apple centric podcasts but in the grand scheme of things are both pretty niche. They have rates between $5500-$6500 per read and do three ads per episode. I doubt they would make $21000 per episode on Spotify. The CPMs for podcast are currently much higher than any other type of media besides video. They were both charging those rates before the "podcast boom".
    - Eridrus 9y ago
      Accidental tech claims 75k listeners on average per episode, which brings them to about 7 cents per impression, or a $73 CPM, which is about 6x what Spotify charges. But accidental tech is a 2 hour podcast, in which time they run 3 ads, but Spotify probably runs at least 12. IMO the biggest challenge is not going to be finding the money to pay them, but negotiating with musicians who may not be happy dividing up the pie.

I'm hoping someone rolls podcasts into a music subscription service so that I don't need to listen to these ads. I know that Spotify has done this a bit, but iirc their selection is pretty limited.

blfr 9y ago

The podcasts I listen to have live reads rather than separate ads so removing them would be difficult.

Splendor 9y ago

Stitcher Premium has done this but it's not for all podcasts.

staunch 9y ago

It's easier to just have 10% of listeners pay $10/year and go ad-free. Advertising is a pollutant and no longer necessary in the new at-scale world. When you have a small podcast, you can just do it for the love of it and not worry about money. If it gets big, you can get a small percentage of your listeners to give you money. The number of contributors should continue to rise for many years as more people discover how great podcasts can be.

WesleyLivesay 9y ago
The easier, and more lucrative, method is to setup some sort of Premium/Patreon/etc. method where you can either listen to the podcast, with ads, for free, or pay $X a month to support the show and get access to an ad-free feed.
- staunch 9y ago
  There's no need for ads at all though. If you don't have many listeners, then there's not much ad revenue anyway. And once you have a lot of listeners, you only need a tiny percentage to fund the entire thing. It's totally viable to have 10% of listeners voluntarily pay while 90% of listeners freeload. And there needn't be any NPR guilt trip about it because they're not blowing millions on office space and executives. Any successful podcast can be a very financially successful business for a small number of people.
  - WesleyLivesay 9y ago
    Sure, but once you have that large number of listeners, if ads only turn away a small percentage, there is no reason to not have them. They would just be refusing (nearly) free money.

RmDen 9y ago

I have no issues with ads being left in.. hit the skip button 3 times on the phone and you are past the ads. JRE.. skip the first 5-7 minutes until you pass the "Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night all day!" and you are set as well. Same with Tim Ferriss.. but there it's about 4 minutes But mostly I listen to the ads.. they are usually less than a minute anyway (especially since I listen to everything at 1.5 speed... some at 2.0)

thanatropism 9y ago
Then, Rogan has an entertaining way of reading the ads.

kevinmchugh 9y ago

Patreon has very nice support for podcasts, and it makes the ad supported ones seem clunky.

WesleyLivesay 9y ago

I don't know if this will happen anytime soon. I think there are two main problems: 1. As the article mentioned, there is a lot of growth with advertising here. Until that starts to taper off the "big" players in the podcast market (either creators or networks) will be hesitant to sign those types of deals. When they keep getting more advertising dollars it seems silly to move over to a Spotify like system. 2. Smaller players (often independent creators) are less organized and harder to get into that sort of system. This was not a problem for Spotify, or other streaming services, because the music industry had a well established Artist -> Label setup that does not exist for huge swaths of the podcast market.

Eridrus 9y ago
So, I would expect podcast ads to be roughly comparable to Spotify ads and, for Spotify, paying subscribers bring in 3x more revenue than those who get ads. And for me podcasts are a direct substitute for music, in that I listen to them on the train when I would otherwise be listening to music. I see your point about onboarding. I wonder if one of them could just ingest all the podcasts on the internet, strip out ads and collect revenue for them, and then offer them a way to claim the revenue and/or opt-out.
- scarface74 9y ago
  The Talk Show by John Gruber and Accidental Tech Podcast are probably two of the most popular Apple centric podcasts but in the grand scheme of things are both pretty niche. They have rates between $5500-$6500 per read and do three ads per episode. I doubt they would make $21000 per episode on Spotify. The CPMs for podcast are currently much higher than any other type of media besides video. They were both charging those rates before the "podcast boom".
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    Accidental tech claims 75k listeners on average per episode, which brings them to about 7 cents per impression, or a $73 CPM, which is about 6x what Spotify charges. But accidental tech is a 2 hour podcast, in which time they run 3 ads, but Spotify probably runs at least 12. IMO the biggest challenge is not going to be finding the money to pay them, but negotiating with musicians who may not be happy dividing up the pie.