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Don’t make too many assumptions about Stern just because he dropped off your radar in ‘06. His show on SiriusXM continues to be renewed (though it might actuall

by nlh 6y ago

Don’t make too many assumptions about Stern just because he dropped off your radar in ‘06. His show on SiriusXM continues to be renewed (though it might actually end soon - he’s getting exhausted). As of 2015 his contract was worth $80 million PER YEAR and the estimates were that his audience is around 3.5 million highly engaged listeners. Yes, a fraction of what JRE gets in downloads, but hey...$80 million per year. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/media/howard-stern-and-siriusxm-reach-new-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/media/howard-ste...

skohan 6y ago
Not to say that $80 million/3.5 million listeners is anything to scoff at, but it's hard to argue that his cultural significance is vastly diminished. Others have said he was reaching 25 million listeners at his peak so 3.5 million is quite a step down from that. Now that might be just fine for Howard Stern, like it might be just fine for Joe Rogan, but I think it's fairly likely that this kind of deal does come down to trading cultural cache, and one's status as a household name for cold hard cash at the end of the day. In that sense, Rogan's move to spotify might be more like a popular touring act being put to pasture as a headliner in Vegas than it represents him taking on the mantle of mainstream media. I suspect Rogan will see somewhat less of a drop-off than stern since the barrier to entry for Spotify is significantly less than satellite radio, but I suspect we will see that the medium has been a major component of his success: his show is pretty good when it's free and when it's everywhere. In other words, like Howard Stern was the best thing you could find when flipping channels on the way to work, Joe Rogan's content is often worth a click in a sea of mediocre content. Whether people will actively seek it out remains to be seen.
- scarface74 6y ago
  As much as I hate to admit it, I think more casual users use Spotify than use podcasts. Anything that isn’t available in my podcast player is invisible to me personally. But I’m probably in the minority. Just like anything that doesn’t have an RSS feed is invisible to me. But again, I realize that I’m in the minority.
  - skohan 6y ago
    I sort of wonder if I would like using Spotify for podcasts. One thing that I like is that I have one button on my phone which I press when I want to listen to music, and another when I want to listen to podcasts. If I have mixed content, and for instance if autoplay will sometimes play music and sometimes a podcast I feel like this will make Spotify worse for music as well.
    - joshvm 6y ago
      This isn't an issue on Spotify. You can't heart/star a podcast in the same way you can add music to your library. Podcasts have a separate library tab. The playback interface actually changes as well, instead of shuffle/repeat you have skip forward/back 10 seconds like an audio book. I have premium, so one gotcha maybe whether you can download podcasts for free? I would be annoyed if I had to sit through both Spotify's ads and the product placement in podcasts. (does Spotify insert inline ads into podcasts as well?)
      - scarface74 6y ago
        From what I understand, no. The initial purpose of getting podcast is not for advertising, but every minute someone spends listening to a podcast is a minute they are not spending listening to music that Spotify has to pay the music industry. They won’t embed advertising in third party podcast - for now. It’s assumed that the second phase is to allow podcasters to embed ads to allow them to monetize their podcasts, but it will be opt in.
        skohan 6y ago
        I feel like generic embedded advertising would be a step backwards in podcast monetization. It seems to me that interstitial adds in podcasts are incredibly powerful because they are usually in the voice of the pod-caster, so on average the listener is probably going to be much more attentive to the add since it's closely related to the content they're actively paying attention to. Without that people will just tune them out like every other ad
dntbnmpls 6y ago
> As of 2015 his contract was worth $80 million PER YEAR Yeah and stephen marbury went to china and made millions, but he became irrelevant. We all know why stern went with sirius, for the money. But he became culturally irrelevant in the process. But the writing was on the wall. He was getting old and "shock jock" is a young man's game. So he was going to get irrelevant no matter what.

by nlh 6y ago

skohan 6y ago

Not to say that $80 million/3.5 million listeners is anything to scoff at, but it's hard to argue that his cultural significance is vastly diminished. Others have said he was reaching 25 million listeners at his peak so 3.5 million is quite a step down from that. Now that might be just fine for Howard Stern, like it might be just fine for Joe Rogan, but I think it's fairly likely that this kind of deal does come down to trading cultural cache, and one's status as a household name for cold hard cash at the end of the day. In that sense, Rogan's move to spotify might be more like a popular touring act being put to pasture as a headliner in Vegas than it represents him taking on the mantle of mainstream media. I suspect Rogan will see somewhat less of a drop-off than stern since the barrier to entry for Spotify is significantly less than satellite radio, but I suspect we will see that the medium has been a major component of his success: his show is pretty good when it's free and when it's everywhere. In other words, like Howard Stern was the best thing you could find when flipping channels on the way to work, Joe Rogan's content is often worth a click in a sea of mediocre content. Whether people will actively seek it out remains to be seen.

scarface74 6y ago
As much as I hate to admit it, I think more casual users use Spotify than use podcasts. Anything that isn’t available in my podcast player is invisible to me personally. But I’m probably in the minority. Just like anything that doesn’t have an RSS feed is invisible to me. But again, I realize that I’m in the minority.
- skohan 6y ago
  I sort of wonder if I would like using Spotify for podcasts. One thing that I like is that I have one button on my phone which I press when I want to listen to music, and another when I want to listen to podcasts. If I have mixed content, and for instance if autoplay will sometimes play music and sometimes a podcast I feel like this will make Spotify worse for music as well.
  - joshvm 6y ago
    This isn't an issue on Spotify. You can't heart/star a podcast in the same way you can add music to your library. Podcasts have a separate library tab. The playback interface actually changes as well, instead of shuffle/repeat you have skip forward/back 10 seconds like an audio book. I have premium, so one gotcha maybe whether you can download podcasts for free? I would be annoyed if I had to sit through both Spotify's ads and the product placement in podcasts. (does Spotify insert inline ads into podcasts as well?)
    - scarface74 6y ago
      From what I understand, no. The initial purpose of getting podcast is not for advertising, but every minute someone spends listening to a podcast is a minute they are not spending listening to music that Spotify has to pay the music industry. They won’t embed advertising in third party podcast - for now. It’s assumed that the second phase is to allow podcasters to embed ads to allow them to monetize their podcasts, but it will be opt in.
      - skohan 6y ago
        I feel like generic embedded advertising would be a step backwards in podcast monetization. It seems to me that interstitial adds in podcasts are incredibly powerful because they are usually in the voice of the pod-caster, so on average the listener is probably going to be much more attentive to the add since it's closely related to the content they're actively paying attention to. Without that people will just tune them out like every other ad

dntbnmpls 6y ago

> As of 2015 his contract was worth $80 million PER YEAR Yeah and stephen marbury went to china and made millions, but he became irrelevant. We all know why stern went with sirius, for the money. But he became culturally irrelevant in the process. But the writing was on the wall. He was getting old and "shock jock" is a young man's game. So he was going to get irrelevant no matter what.