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!