
The Future of Podcasting - jcurbo
https://stratechery.com/2016/the-future-of-podcasting/
======
vitd
As an extremely heavy listener of podcasts, there's no way I would listen
anymore if I had to have 20 different apps to run to listen to them. It's an
absolute non-starter. And then to have ads on top of that. Fuck that.

Maybe the author's right that what works for current users won't work for the
masses. I don't know. But I do know that I will not listen to more ads (that's
why I stopped listening to radio and I suspect I'm not the only one), and I
will not go to the trouble of using more than a single app.

~~~
rhizome
Are you willing to pay the ads away?

~~~
erispoe
You are implying that the current ad model, with a small number of high-value
crafted announcements, doesn't work. I suspect it does. Gimlet has been pretty
open about how their revenue exceeds their expectations and put them under
pressure to grow their offering faster than planned.

~~~
hcal
It probably works for the listners, the direct advertisers and the podcasters.
It doesn't work for the advertising industry as a whole because the middle men
are cut out.

They want a cut and will work really hard to take it. L

~~~
cmdrfred
I agree, I mostly hear ad's with promo codes on podcasts. The companies paying
for the exposure know exactly what they are getting. It works out quite well
as is.

------
fluxquanta
>publishers should offer podcasts through their own app that measures listens,
and either sell ads themselves if they have the scale or outsource it to a
company like Midroll. Midroll, for their part, should leverage their new
player technology to offer skinnable apps for publishers who can’t build their
own.

Here's my problem with this idea:

I, like many people, listen to a lot of different podcasts. Dozens, in my
case. I have a podcatcher app that puts them all in one place. That makes it
easy and convenient for me. Some of the shows I only listen to maybe once per
month when there's a guest on that I enjoy, or if I run out of new episodes of
everything else. If each show required its own app for me to listen, I'd only
listen to the ones I really, really enjoy and support, and the rest I'll do
without or bootleg. So, in a sense, the individual app per show idea would be
limiting the potential audience.

I'm already seeing this happen with Libsyn custom mobile apps[0]. There are a
number of shows I listen to that have paywalls for old episodes which can only
be accessed through subscription plans available in individual apps. $1.99 or
$2.99 may not seem like much by itself, but if it's 10 or 20 shows you're
listening to this becomes an unjustifiable bill.

The only viable alternative I see is the further growth of podcast networks,
where multiple shows are available for one price. But, currently, this model
is still too small and fragmented. Until the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts comes
out, I'll be left to pick and choose which deserve my support enough to
justify buying into their distinct "ecosystem".

Edit: I see that my points here were addressed in the paragraphs following the
one I quoted, but I'm still not buying the idea that siloing is the best way
to monetize podcasts.

[0] [https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-
apps/](https://www.libsyn.com/custom-mobile-apps/)

~~~
wj
Regarding your point about "the Netflix or Hulu of podcasts" it is important
to remember that by far the majority of their content is at least a full
season old. They are able to secure the rights to it for less than the cost of
producing it because the networks are receiving ad dollars the first time
around.

Most of the podcasts I listen to aren't timely so listening to them a year
after they "air" isn't a big deal. I'm not sure if I am in the majority there
though.

My suspicion is that podcasts are going to borrow from the music industry in
the form of podcasts being something they give away in hopes of making money
through merchandise, events, additional media such as books or subscriber-only
episodes, or more likely, broadcaster access in the form of communities. (Off
of the top of my head I can think of four entrepreneurial podcasts that have
their own membership communities: Startups For the Rest of Us, Tropical MBA,
Entrepreneur on Fire, and Chris Ducker. I imagine there is a lot of audience
overlap but not membership community overlap and maybe a different method
would be to have a single entrepreneurial podcast membership community that
shows can join for a portion of the subscription fees. A smaller piece of a
bigger pie...)

And like music some people will still create them out of a labor of love.

~~~
fluxquanta
>My suspicion is that podcasts are going to borrow from the music industry in
the form of podcasts being something they give away in hopes of making money
through merchandise, events, additional media such as books or subscriber-only
episodes, or more likely, broadcaster access in the form of communities.

I primarily listen to podcasts from stand-up comedians, and this exactly what
most of them do now, and I agree that it may be the best (or at least more
realistic and palatable) option for everyone involved.

My favorite podcasts are the "comic hang" type. They're basically an hour or
two of funny people being funny, and producing these podcasts seem to benefit
the hosts and guests in a few possible ways:

1\. As an avenue to gain fans who will attend live shows or buy albums and
other merch (which are in turn promoted on the show)

2\. As a platform to publicly work out new stand-up material in a
conversational setting (giving us "civilians" a glimpse inside their creative
process -- probably my favorite part)

3\. As a direct revenue stream through
donations/subscriptions/advertisments/sponsorships

I've been listening to comedy podcasts since probably 2007, and,
unfortunately, I've seen more than a few take a nosedive in quality when point
3 becomes the priority.

~~~
lutharvaughn
These are my favorite type of podcasts as well. Do you have any
recommendations, I'm always looking for new stuff?

~~~
infogulch
'giving "civilians" a glimpse inside the creative process'

One of my favorite podcasts is Song Exploder. Artists talk about how they
create a specific song, including the thought process, context, and history
behind specific sounds and segments that make up the song, and then the song
is played in full at the end. It covers quite a variety of genres.

I don't object to any genre wholesale, but there's only a couple that I really
like listening to. But the story and creative process that is broken down in
Song Exploder is completely agnostic from the genre it was produced under and
is interesting enough for me to drop any other podcast I'm playing to listen
regardless of the genre.

~~~
fluxquanta
I'll give that a shot, thanks.

------
randomname2
Obligatory mention for the No Agenda podcast [1], by the "father of
podcasting" Adam Curry and tech broadcaster John C. Dvorak. They have an
interesting model in being 100% listener supported, with no advertisers or
sponsors, and yet still managing to make a living off their show, putting out
2 shows every week (today show #832):

"Their funding model is strictly listener supported, and it's working. The
premise being that keeping outside influences away from content development
gives listeners untainted news, opinion and entertainment... they refer to it
as a "value-for-value" proposition -- listen to the show, if you get something
worthwhile from it make a donation. This model should change the face of
podcasting.

More and more independent podcasters will probably take note of this new
model, and they should. Open, unsullied content creation and delivery should
be the goal of everyone in the media -- a free exchange of ideas, opinions and
content is the cornerstone of a free internet and a free society.

Podcasting has always been a medium searching for a successful funding model.
Curry was a pioneer in getting podcasters to band together to try and attract
funding from advertisers and sponsors. Curry started a couple of companies to
support this model -- he would probably be the first to admit that the main-
stream media model is not the best one for podcasting... but his constant
tinkering and experimentation with the medium he created is starting to pay
off. Curry and Dvorak may be the first "professional" podcasters to make a
living doing a show that is truly independent, insightful and listener
supported."

[1] [http://www.noagendashow.com/](http://www.noagendashow.com/)

[2] [http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-
podcasting-r...](http://www.examiner.com/article/no-agenda-makes-podcasting-
relevant-and-profitable)

~~~
trvr
I suspect that Adam and John don't need the money they make from the podcast
to pay their bills, so I'm not really sure what "it's working" means to them.
The article you linked to doesn't mention any specifics.

~~~
teekert
Maybe Dvorak doesn't need it but Curry blew all his money from the MTV days I
believe. He is not exactly living a glamorous life.

I like the show, the model seems to work although the newsletter is constantly
pushing people for more donations. Their wording makes it seem like they are
on the edge of being sustainable all the time. This could be true of course.

If you take the time to listen to them longer , > 10 podcasts or so your start
to pick up on the type of thinking they have, it really can be refreshing and
No Agenda should certainly be part of a healthy news diet, as they call it.

By the way, strange to see nobody mention TWIT, I enjoy it every week, they
seem to do very well. Also, the Jupiter Broadcasting network (Linux Action
Show, Linux Unplugged, Unfilter, etc) is an absolute joy to listen to. Very
motivated team that exists by doing ads and using patreon. They prefer not to
use ads and gladly take donation but I think they hit a nice balance.

My app of choice is Pocket Casts, works very well.

Oh, I also used to be a fan of Linux Outlaws, they had a fan made foss app
that integrated with Indenti.ca (foss twitter clone based on status.net), you
could automagically chat using a hashtag unique to the current episode. That
was a nice experience and worth using the app for.

------
jaysonelliot
I run a small podcasting network called TSRPN.

When I talk to non-listeners about podcasts, I hear two things:

\----

1\. "I don't know how to listen to podcasts."

2\. "I don't know what to listen to."

\----

There are many great podcatching apps out there, and for those of us who "get
it" and are motivated to listen to podcasts, it seems like Pocket Casts,
Overcast, even the default Podcast app for iOS are easy to use and understand.
Yet apparently they aren't.

Discovery is another issue altogether. NPR One, Pandora, Stitcher, et al have
tried to do some level of podcast recommendation, but the lack of thorough
metadata and text transcripts make it difficult to apply the kind of algorithm
that works for blogs or music.

What makes it easy for the average non-techie to use a browser to read blogs,
an app like Spotify for music, or their Facebook app, but not to use a
podcatcher app?

Is it simple lack of familiarity? Or do we need an entirely new approach? I
wish I knew the answer.

~~~
petra
I'm not convinced by what people say. It might be partially true, but i think
there's something deeper behind it: blogs, music and video are addictive for
the right people. Hence they'll spend a bit of effort to ask around what app
to use, and ask about good tv, etc. Also because they're addictive and the
barrier for sharing is much lower, they'll get shared much more often, talked
about much more often - so you get discovery.

Podcasts aren't addictive(and i like podcasts). Lectures are boring by nature,
and demand tons of focus(something we we may have more than the average guy).
And even in fields that could be addictive(and don't demand great focus), like
comedy, the quality is terrible - most comedy podcasts don't even come close
to professional comedians doing standup.

Here's one idea: build a podcasts comedy site that curates only consistently
great podcasts, and enables extremely easy sharing including sharing of very
short segments.

Make the transition from the using the site to using it while driving easy and
habit forming.

I think doing that you can get users "addicted". And once they are, they'll
get your app, they might listen to other podcasts, etc.

~~~
eric_cc
> Podcasts aren't addictive

Speak for yourself.

------
1ris
Podcasting right now seems to working wonderfully. It's one of the most
expensive ways to advertise. If it's not broken don't fix it. Tracking and the
targeting didn't save online advertisment, it won't safe podcasting.

~~~
erispoe
That is spot on. Advertising works great on podcasts, and is expensive as a
result, because listeners develop a great amount of trust for the podcasts
they listen. Anything that undermines that trust is likely to just create a
regression to the mean of the value of podcast advertisement: just as valuable
as a random online ad.

------
esonderegger
I've been wrestling with the idea of how to enable monetization for smaller
podcast producers since I decided to start building an AppleTV app for playing
video podcasts this past winter. What I think could work is namespaced tags
for specific players that offer ad-insertion. This allows for the platform to
remain default-open and opt-in for publishers who want to go this route.

For example, much like <itunes:explicit> is not part of any RSS spec, a
publisher could choose to include a tag like
<castanet:monetize>yes</castanet:monetize>, which would tell the Cast-a-net
app that the publisher of that podcast would like ads to be inserted. The
publisher would then need to setup an account with Cast-a-net to share the ad
revenue, verify ownership, etc.

There is a significant chicken and egg problem, of course. The player needs to
have enough users for the publishers to consider setting up an account to be
worthwhile. The ad experience also can't get so obnoxious that users move to
other apps. This approach allows publishers to gain monetization and metrics
without ceding ownership and control to the platform.

By the way, my player, Cast-a-net, doesn't yet offer this feature. I've been
working on making the UI good enough to attract real users first, then hoping
it can grow to be something worthy of specific attention from video podcast
producers.

(edit: as was pointed out in a reply, Marco is very anti-ads, so I swapped the
example tags. I had only meant to use Overcast as an example of a popular
independent player that doesn't want to become a walled garden for just a
subset of the total podcast universe.)

~~~
rackforms
One possible alternative/addition is what I've done for my Podcast app,
SkipCast ([http://skipcast.net/](http://skipcast.net/)).

I worked with Blubrry to create a new donate tag:

[http://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced-
tool...](http://create.blubrry.com/resources/powerpress/advanced-tools-and-
options/syndicating-a-donate-link-in-your-podcast/)

If the feed supports this tag, a simple donate link appears in SkipCast and
when tapped, takes you directly to the donate page. This tag can be supported
by any Podcast client.

To me this is a clear win-win situation, though the feature depends heavily on
adoption of simple, easy to use and deploy donation services, and of course
the user supplying the tag.

One good example of the donate model working is the Crate and Crowbar podcast
(PC Gaming). They created a Patreon and literally shut it down after a few
months. The reason: they got hundreds in weekly, recurring donations and
simply didn't need that much money.

Donations can work, and could be a huge boon to smaller, independent
Podcasters. This could in turn ensure a healthy ecosystem that's more
resilient to monolithic entities.

~~~
esonderegger
SkipCast looks really cool! Nicely done!

I think there is a lot of potential for funding the production of great
content via donations. I think the "right" way to fund a particular piece of
content depends largely on the content itself. For example, PBS funds NewsHour
largely through donations and sponsorships, but NBC funds Nightly News via
advertising. Both are valid choices, and I believe everyone is better off when
publishers are free to decide how to monetize, and viewers/listeners are free
to decide what they want to give their money and attention to.

I'd love to support the <rawvoice:donate> tag in Cast-a-net, but unfortunately
AppleTV doesn't have a web view, so a link to a Patreon page wouldn't really
work. I may try to set up something like a <castanet:acceptdonations> tag that
uses in-app purchases, though. I think both users and publishers might like
that better than the first monetization options being advertising.

------
6stringmerc
Comparing Podcasting with Blogging is a neat approach. I think there's more
overlap than the article might be able - or willing - to address when
discussing monetization.

To wit: In order to monetize, a lot of what is appealing about
Blogging/Podcasting would be diminished - paying is the opposite of free
content, commercials interrupt the listening, and authenticity corrupted by
advertising perogatives.

Or, in other words, a lot of what the "Mommy Blog" sector seemed to try and
keep under the surface: [http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-
blogger/](http://josidenise.com/dear-mommy-blogger/)

Just like in music, there will be a few case studies with large revenues, and
thousands barely making anything, if not actually going into the red for their
troubles.

~~~
theseatoms
In arts and entertainment, the lines are blurring between content creation and
recreation, at least for the lower 99%.

------
AdmiralAsshat
_Podcasts are hot right now. Big Money is coming. Big Money isn’t going to
sell nicely designed, hand-crafted, RSS-backed podcast players for $2.99 or
ask you to pay what you want to support them, because that doesn’t make Big
Money. They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to
dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”,
and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of
everyone’s revenue._

Hats off to that guy for succinctly summarizing why we can't have nice things.

~~~
busterarm
We're already sort of in that state now.

There a few podcast networks that have their own software but if you want good
data on your listeners you're basically stuck between Blubrry & Libsyn and
they're both severely outdated platforms. And you pretty much have to use
iTunes.

I've been toying around with building my own open platform for podcast
hosting/analytics for a while since I could use it for my own podcast and I
have friends who would use it.

~~~
avn2109
Honest question, why are podcasts not just platform independent .mp3's or Ogg
Vorbis audio for the purists?

Note that I don't understand how a podcast is different from a radio show that
somebody recorded on a computer, so maybe I'm missing key functionality.

~~~
MBCook
Right now? They are. A podcast is really just an RSS feed of episodes in MP3
or AAC format. That's it.

You can barely track how many people download, let alone listen, when they
stop, etc. All the things advertisers want to know.

~~~
busterarm
Right.

It's still a hard thing to integrate an RSS feed into a modern website...RSS
is only really popular with podcasts and hasn't had much development in a
while. Working with XML sucks.

Libsyn and Blubrry manage this part for you (having an RSS feed that is also a
site's content and does tracking) but you're limited to hosting on their
sites, wordpress or needing a developer.

There's a lot of room for improvement here.

~~~
MBCook
You're right for websites. Other services can take care of both sides
(Squarespace, for example).

~~~
busterarm
The thing that I'm trying to avoid is forcing people into a pay-to-play
platform to host their podcast. You don't know if it's going to make money.
There is nothing open to compete with the paid services right now -- nothing
that's packaged for general use anyway.

------
ssharp
I think the article's ideas on advertising, particularly the idea that brand
advertising HAS to come to podcasting because direct advertising won't scale
is a bit flakey.

Why won't direct advertising scale? Direct advertising opens up the long tail
of companies. Small Business X can't spend money on branding but can spend
money on acquiring paying customers.

In fact, direct advertising has become so popular thanks to things like
AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc. that companies need to find new places to address
their target audiences and podcasts might just be a great place to do that.
The stuff with coupon codes, special URLs, etc. are pretty trivial to set up
and a company like Midroll is going to coordinate between you and the podcast
so you can line up that stuff well ahead of time.

There was also this:

"The not-so-secret reality about podcast ads, though, are that advertisers are
quite concentrated: a FiveThirtyEight intern heroically listened to the top
100 shows on the iTunes chart and counted 186 ads; 35 percent of them were
from five companies. More tellingly, nearly all of the ads were of the direct
marketing variety."

I did not read the 538 article on this, but it makes a lot of sense for a
company to carpet bomb their advertising. So if you're listening to all the
top 100 podcasts in a one-week period, you might have an advertiser hitting a
lot of those podcasts in a one-week period. However, if you listened to the
same 100 podcasts three weeks later, you might hear another set. Presumably,
the companies finding routine success are the ones who you hear all the time.

On the carpet-bombing strategy, if you deploy in relative isolation, you
should be able to measure the real effect of the advertising and not just the
people who came through a URL or used a coupon code. If I normally sell $100
per week and the week I advertise I sell $200, I don't have to rely on
campaign tracking to assume attribution. Wait a few weeks and advertise again
and see if the effect holds up.

------
jldugger
> Stitcher is thought to be the 2nd most popular podcast player, although it
> has long been controversial in some circles for its default practice of
> hosting podcasts itself (instead of directing users to download them
> directly from a podcaster’s server) and inserting ads.

Why would a consumer install such a program, when AntennaPod exists?

~~~
MBCook
If the podcast you want is only available through Stitcher.

And it's only on Stitcher because that's Midroll's service and only Midroll
ads pay well enough (this is hypothetical-future).

And they only pay well enough because of all the tracking in Stitcher.

~~~
jldugger
I'm just curious how this walled garden bootstraps. Are there Stitcher
exclusives?

~~~
MBCook
I don't know, but they could use Midroll's money to entice (or flat out buy)
desirable content for bootstrapping.

------
arrakeen
for another perspective, here's an interview with two early podcasters working
outside of this recent race to monetization

[http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-
du...](http://www.vice.com/read/we-talked-to-podcasters-uhh-yeah-dude-about-
why-its-better-to-be-happy-than-rich)

~~~
ents
uyd is one of the best podcasts, strange but great to see them here, and in a
relevant monetization context

------
asgardiator
If you're looking for a free, hyper-functional podcast app that will search
_thousands of RSS feeds_, allow me to introduce
[PodcastAddict]([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.podcastaddict)).
I've been using it for some time now, and every day I discover something new
to enjoy. It's indisputably the best podcast app for Android, and it's leagues
beyond iOS's native app.

------
ukyrgf
"They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the
market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build
empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s
revenue"

This made me realize that Midroll/Earwolf already tried this to an extent last
year with Howl.fm. It was an iPhone exclusive app/service that launched with a
ton of exclusive podcast series, some old comedy albums, and the thing that
really showed how little they cared about their listeners-- Earwolf was taking
down all the old episodes of their podcasts and putting it behind the Howl
paywall.

Many people might not be familiar with Earwolf, but in the comedy world it's
huge. improv4humans is hosted by a founding member of the Upright Citizens
Brigade and it's basically like sitting in on a master class in long-form
improv. Comedy Bang Bang has recurring characters that date back years and
people love going back and listening to hear how they evolve by "yes and"ing
their way through conversations. They don't get dated like maybe a tech
podcast might, so taking them down just to help bolster some cash-grab podcast
subscription service was just so insulting, and to make it only available on
iPhones showed how out of touch they were.

~~~
bufordsharkley
There was a big thread on Earwolf when this was announced. Everyone agreed
that Earwolf was deserving of money for its wonderful products, but Earwolf
never combatted the question: why not just a password-protected RSS feed?
(Jimmy Pardo's podcast, which Earwolf acquired, had successfully used this
model for years)

Largely, it seemed to be paranoia of users sharing files (Earwolf was also
unsympathetic to the concept of downloading shows locally for listening
offline), which seems to be missing the big picture.

...I'm not a typical user (I don't own a smartphone, and I don't plan to), so
their attitude was fairly disappointing.

------
EvanAnderson
It increasingly feels like we're living in the end of the "golden age" of
podcasting to me. I've got my little homegrown podcatcher downloading files
and sticking them on my server so I can stream them over my LAN or load them
onto my devices for offline play. Presumably publishers will muscle into this
market to "monetize" the entire thing and completely fuck it up. No more MP3s
to load on my devices, etc.

Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted. Maybe I'll end up breaking out the old
rig I built back in the early 2000's to timeshift public radio shows to MP3s.

------
fernly
One more model: the guys at Partially Examined Life used their content-rich
philosophy podcast to build a participatory community of listeners. Now you
can pay a subscription to be a P.E.L "citizen" which gives you the chance to
participate in "not school" seminars with other citizens. Also, of course,
access to their back catalog which is behind a paywall.

George Hrab leaves his 400+ episode Geologic catalog open, but pushes a
subscription fee: be a "geologist" to get a weekly email and access to other
subscriber-only material.

------
swifterthenthou
I've been using the Remarks social podcasting app for the past week. They are
trying to address the retention (for sure) and monetization (I assume they're
going to roll out an ads platform) problems mentioned in the article.

I've been posting my thoughts as I listen and really like when the host is on
the platform and I can react to their posts. Only challenge for me is that I
listen to a lot of my episodes while driving and can't scroll through posts.

~~~
adamontherun
Founder of Remarks here. Currently, we're focussed on building a great
platform for people to discuss the podcast their listening to with other fans
and the host. We're trying to get as many hosts as possible on board.

An ad platform is something we've talked about, but I'd need to see a huge
upswing in usage before building that out.

------
hijp
That's a super depressing future.

My imagined future involves serving podcasts with different ads each time you
download the episode. Maybe a subscription to ad-free versions. There's no
need for a separate player for subscriptions, Rss feeds can already be
password protected.

If anyone is working on the above, hit me up - I'd love to talk.

------
shostack
I'll take the (probably unpopular) advertiser-centric approach here...

I agree with a lot of what Ben says (and his podcast is the highlight of my
commute these days). What is fascinating is that the space has been the domain
of direct response advertisers for a while, and only a handful. I was familiar
with all of the ones mentioned, but was absolutely shocked that they were such
a large percentage of the mix.

Either podcasting ads are so nascent that only a handful of people are in on
it, or there are performance challenges (whether it be attribution or overall
poor performance). What I'd love to see is the # of advertisers to made a
solid go of it and had dismal experiences despite having success in other
channels. That would be very telling.

The conversion tracking piece is a big missing chunk of the equation. I could
see ads embed audio tags that any reader could parse, but I fear the tracking
restricted to individual platforms. That puts all of the control on the sell-
side of the equation, and also conveniently impossible to audit or compare
numbers against. I'd LOVE to see DoubleClick/Turn/etc. get into the game with
some tracking solutions here. They are the industry standard and would
integrate well into existing ad stacks. Anyone who provides good tracking
solutions might consider them for possible acquisitions.

Beyond that, I think that podcasts make a lot of sense with the shift to
native ads. Many people feel they have a relationship with the podcaster
because it is in fact a real live person that you listen to because you like
them. In speaking with Midroll for our own forays into podcast ads, it looks
like you provide a list of bullets on your offering, and the podcaster works
to craft the ad in their voice to make it more natural.

That is a win for both the advertiser and the listener. The more natural
format likely boosts receptiveness (and thus performance) for the advertiser,
and the listener gets something that isn't horribly disruptive to the
listening experience as good podcasters (like Roman Mars on 99pi) make them
fun and have found that people stick around to even listen to the post rolls
because he's so good at them.

Anyway, that's my $.02. I think the space is nascent, and I hope that the
inevitable power struggle between publishers and platforms doesn't kill it as
it could be really powerful when done right. Advertisers have some challenges
but that hasn't stopped them from testing before. I'm frankly just shocked at
the lack of overall advertiser volume.

------
podcastrank
I've tried to built something to solve the discovery problem. It was featured
on HN a while ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509835)

------
lifeisstillgood
My take - snippets will drive discovery. Take a ten second snippet of a
podcast and you can find a hundred "keyword" searches or Facebook headlines
that it will fit perfectly.

This can drive subscriptions to the podcast

That might actually make a workable business ...

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lifeisstillgood
tl;dr - facebookization of podcasts (one discovery process in one app) is the
worst outcome for publishers (who already have this for actual text)

So the least worst alternative is for each publisher to have their own app for
listening to their podcasts and drive folks to download said app by using star
power and marketing. To get there we will see some podcasts bribed with huge
gobs of cash.

Ok - seems plausible but frankly as a podcast listener I prefer the Facebook
solution, and am unconvinced by his arguments that most people wont

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michaelwww
> A major challenge in podcast monetization is the complete lack of data:
> listeners still download MP3s and that’s the end of it; podcasters can
> measure downloads, but have no idea if the episode is actually listened to

That's not exactly true. Marc Maron always encourages his listeners to use his
offer code (often "wtf") to get discounts. Surely they have data on that.

~~~
aganders3
That's addressed in the article. Direct marketing with offer codes or special
URLs is only applicable to certain products. Brand (awareness) advertising is
where the real money comes from.

~~~
michaelwww
Thanks for the clarification.

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advertising
Like pando for news, I'd rather pay for a podcast than get it free w/ ads.

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nealrs
podcast stats, amirite?! I don't trust feedburner, libsyn, or blubrry -- but
i've been _thinking_ about using keen.io redirects in my rss & itunes feeds so
i can collect ip/agent info and analyze that.

i distribute my podcast (well, it's a video show, but still podcasty) via
YouTube in part because I can actually get view/retention/source/subcriber
stats + use links/annotations + I can also feed it into itunes. I even made a
little jekyll repo that helps you make landing page & video/audio feeds:
[https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-
Show](https://github.com/nealrs/Jekyll-YouTube-Show)

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rememberlenny
Repost:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856391)

~~~
dang
Reposts are allowed on HN if a story hasn't had significant attention yet
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)).
Links to previous submissions aren't helpful if there's no actual discussion
at the other end, which explains the downvotes here.

Your post beat this one in time but this one won the luck of the draw. Sorry
about that. We're hoping to change the duplicate detector in a way that gives
the original submitter credit more often, but for the time being there's still
a lot of randomness in which post gets traction. For now, the way to mitigate
that is to submit many good stories; it evens out in the long run.

~~~
rememberlenny
Thanks for heads up!

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randyrand
Now THIS is podcasting!

