in Business, Podcasting |

The end of podcasting, chapter 57

The recent news of Joe Rogan moving his podcast to Spotify has started a predictable stream of posts about “the death of independent podcasting” or “the podcasting world is now Spotify versus everyone else“. I think Wendy Grossman is more on target saying “it will be much harder for their creators to find audiences and revenues as Spotify becomes the primary gatekeeper…”. And, of course, Dave Winer rightly  points out that “Podcasting is booming.” and “It’s open, no platform vendor, anyone can use it.”

I think this points up several topics. The first is “why am I making a podcast?” (hat tip to Simon Sinek). If it is to make money, then sure, go ahead and make a deal with a company (like Joe Rogan). Anyone who creates content or a body of work can choose how they want to monetize that (think Patreon, subscription based-sites, etc.). The semantics of calling that “a podcast” could be debated (John Gruber had a good post on that topic when Luminary bought up some content last year).

If some makes a podcast because they have a topic they are interested in, or for fun, or some other non-money-based reason, go ahead! (See Dave Winer comment above…). Also, see blogging…nobody keeping anyone from starting a blog out there….

If someone wants to get/grow an audience for a podcast, the solution is simple (although not necessarily easy). Do good work, create value, market yourself – this hasn’t changed with the Spotify deal. After the Luminary deal, I commented in May 2019 that there were some areas that there were some ways to compete on distribution:

  1. Innovate on features and discoverability
  2. Find ways to help podcast producers know more about their listeners

To me, it looks like those are still good areas to work on – anyone working on that? If not, get busy on it – or just get on with making the best podcasts you can make!

 

Published

Write a Comment

Comment

Webmentions

  • This week, a Substack newsletter was posted about problems that podcasts from former podcast studio Gimlet Media were experiencing (getting cancelled). In 2019, Spotify purchased Gimlet Media for $230 million dollars (more here on other Spotify podcast acquisitions). Why did people think being acquired by a big company was going to allow them to keep their artistic freedom and continue to do things the way they had done them? Demonstration of control of the channel (a la CBS/NBC/ABC of the 60s/70s/80s – you had to convince them to approve your show to get on the air) – maybe go back to producing podcasts yourself? After all, you must have a lot of money after that acquisition. Chapter 57 of this story discusses the Joe Rogan move to Spotify, and I wrote in 2019 about how to avoid the corporate takeover of podcasting. As Joel Grey and Liza Minelli sang in the musical “Cabaret“, money makes the world go around. If people want to produce podcasts to make money, there are ways to innovate, but the best place to start is to make great podcasts.

  • The way ahead for RSS and podcasting – Andy Sylvester's Web October 15, 2022

    […] of the world can overcome the juggernauts of Spotify and others (which I have written about here, here, […]

  • The end of podcasting, chapter 58 – Andy Sylvester's Web October 15, 2022

    […] chapter 57, Joe Rogan had just done his licensing deal with Spotify. In today’s chapter, John Sullivan […]