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For me, the implosion of Gimlet Media was really the signal for the end of the era. They had a handful of amazing and popular shows. They used the success to p
by legitster 3y ago
For me, the implosion of Gimlet Media was really the signal for the end of the era.
They had a handful of amazing and popular shows. They used the success to plow money and resources into kickstarting other shows. But the other shows were never as good or successful. Eventually you had enough people bitter and resentful about the continued success of the golden gooses that they all ran the company into the ground together.
The barriers of entry to podcasting are too low so it's hard to rise above the noise. First mover advantage and network effects are/were everything.
- jszymborski 3y agoWhat is particularly irksome is that it imploded pretty directly as a result of the Spotify merger.
- legitster 3y agoYeah, what an embarrassing failure all around. It's hard to imagine what Spotify was even thinking with their strategy there. They paid all of this money for Reply All just to give it away for free, then made all of the tiny little shows exclusives? And started cancelling shows because they had no audience?
- jszymborski 3y agoI adored Heavyweight, but the moment they went Spotify exclusive, I stopped listening. I'm the sort of person who will donate to Maximum Fun, and I'd even pay for Heavyweight (e.g. Patreon or some other way that let's me have RSS feeds), but when you wall up your services is when I'll stop listening. I hope Jonathan Goldstein does some cool stuff for less shitty patrons.
- Kye 3y agoI think co-ops are the right model for podcasts. Maximum Fun got it right. There isn't enough money in podcasting for the quarterly earnings treadmill, but there is enough to keep a roster of niche shows running with the ad buying, fundraising, and cross-promotion power of a large network.