
Is the podcast bubble bursting? - ohjeez
https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/podcast-bubble-burst.php
======
sonnyblarney
Podcasts are enjoying a renaissance possibly due to the legitimization of the
medium by semi-famous people, and due to some proper distribution outlets
finally appearing. Possibly even some vanguard entities such as Joe Rogan and
This American Life.

It's an alternative to Radio, and an alternative to YouTube for celebs who
don't want the production hassle.

Also, you need enough momentum to convince advertisers as well.

It was a slow and bumpy ride but I think that all the pieces are now in place
and so we'll see a lift.

My belief is that this is going to be more or less permanent a secular shift,
not a pop, because the nature if it is just not very pop-sugar or hype-ish.
NPR listeners are not faddish.

Obviously, content is still going to be important, and you can't just slap up
BuzzFeed crap. NPR has a loyal following. Joe Rogan makes basically the
perfect pop-culture podcast. Celebs have star power and invite other celebs
for their love-ins. There's some popular specific podcasts on things like the
'Roman Empire'.

I don't think it will be a huge boon and I don't see any massive companies or
takeovers, but it's a real shift.

~~~
scott_s
I don't see podcasts as an alternative to radio, but just the _new_ radio.
Like how Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu are just the new tv. Perhaps this is
because I have always listened to a lot of NPR podcasts, such as This American
Life, which are also broadcast on NPR radio stations. Of course, I also listen
to a lot of other podcasts, some by people who mainly do podcasts, and quite a
few others affiliated with some publication.

~~~
sonnyblarney
The reason I believe it's an overlapping substitute at least is because I
listen to NPR 100% on podcast. I haven't tuned into a live NPR broadcast in
years. I don't think I'm the only one.

But I agree it's kind of a new format, with new behaviours, much like Netflix.

~~~
emodendroket
My favorite show was always Prairie Home Companion, which they could never get
on podcast anyway. But I stopped listening to it after Garrison Keillor left
anyway.

~~~
mikestew
I'm with sibling comment, give it another go. Thile carries his weight, and
frankly I thought Keillor was getting old, cranky, and past his expiration
date. The music is better, Thile can actually sing (in contrast to the
previous host), and the skits are just as funny as always.

And though a bit niche, if you enjoy world-class mandolin playing, you'll do
far worse than Chris Thile. Man, mandolin or not, if you just enjoy good
musicianship, give it a listen.

------
ghaff
Like so many things today, this mostly seems to be about the podcasting _as a
business_ bubble bursting. Which does indeed (unsurprisingly) describe a lot
of podcasts with higher production values that are the product of professional
producers and editors. Others are effectively subsidized by other aspects of
the creator's "product" but not all.

Again, as with many types of content, there's so much of it that it's hard to
monetize. Squarespace can only keep so many podcasts afloat.

~~~
VLM
As a clickbait business bubble. Possibly its more a side effect of the overall
clickbait bubble, not specifically spoken word podcast vs written text.

I would not think clickbait journalism would be a natural fit for podcasts in
that the barrier to entry is much higher than clicking on a ribald hyperlink.

~~~
ghaff
Really? There's no shortage of outrage/clickbait on traditional radio. You've
pretty much just described talk radio. I'm sure there's some of that in
podcasts with political commentators. But podcasts as a whole seem to skew
toward a fairly different demographic.

------
dalbasal
I hope podcasting keeps growing. It's unique in some important ways, from
other "new media" mediums.

It's decentralized & private. No one owns podcasting. Being protocol-centric
rather than service-centric (eg youtube) has left it relatively free (as in
speech). Being subscriber-centric has made the medium resistant to clickbait
and spam and encouraged quality... Some of these are qualities remind me of
the web circa 1998 or blogging circa 2004.

That doesn't mean there aren't problems. Discovery is poor, for example.

Turning popular into profitable... that's always been tough for online
content. Same goes for youtube, blogging, etc.

Personally, I'm hoping it evolves into a youtube alternative.

~~~
ghaff
It's interesting how podcasting has evolved as this very decentralized medium.
At least part of it is that hosting and serving audio is a lot cheaper than
video. Not that my occasional podcast has a huge number of listeners but my S3
bill is trivial.

But, yeah, podcasting looks a lot like blogging--especially earlier on. Very
easy to get into but hard to discover and hard to directly monetize. Those who
keep doing it are mostly doing so because 1.) It's a fun hobby and/or 2.) It
supports and is subsidized by some other activity. Which is often the case
with a lot of things including writing technical books for example.

~~~
robterrell
Alrighty, I'll bite, what's your podcast?

~~~
ghaff
Cloudy Chat. Just tech-related interviews I do now and then. (Unfortunately I
haven't added anything new for a while.)

------
chadash
> _" Also, podcasting doesn’t really have an established way of measuring
> success that advertisers can get comfortable with, apart from just tracking
> raw downloads."_

What's wrong with tracking raw downloads? This seems like a _great_ way to
measure a podcast's success since the number of downloads probably tracks
pretty closely to the number of listeners (sure, I might download an episode
or two of a new podcast to try it out, but I generally only download later
episodes of podcasts I actually listen to).

As an aside, I think that podcasts are to radio what netflix is to television,
in that netflix is able to profit off of shows with niche audiences. With
users _pulling_ content rather than producers _pushing_ content, you end up
with a lot more niche content. In the past month alone, I've listened to
podcasts about:

* Analysis of supreme court decisions (First Mondays)

* A history of the watergate scandal (Slow Burn)

* A history of the English Revolution (Revolutions)

* Political interviews (various podcasts)

* Improvisational comedy (Improv4Humans)

* Random historical figures with a comedic twist (The Dollop)

Some of what I listen to is meant for a mass audience, but some of it is
targeting a pretty specific audience, which I think is awesome. Personally, I
love finding podcasts that get into the nitty-gritty details of whatever the
subject is. I almost don't care about what the subject is, as long as the
presenter is passionate about it.

~~~
CharlesW
> _What 's wrong with tracking raw downloads? This seems like a great way to
> measure a podcast's success since the number of downloads probably tracks
> pretty closely to the number of listeners…_

I mean, that's one assumption you could make. Another equally-valid assumption
is that 50% of downloads are listened to (depending on your definition of
"listened to").

The metric is surely different for different shows — I'd hypothesize that most
Hardcore History downloads are listened to, but for many shows this is likely
guest-dependent.

Without data, we can only guess.

~~~
yoz-y
The advertisers have better data though as they usually switch promo codes
quite often. Also, as with most advertising, you only see the effect of the
aggregate campaign.

------
2sk21
I'm spending more time than ever listening to podcasts, most of which are
monetized either by advertisements, subscription or Patreon. Podcasting
appears to be a medium that actually benefits the smaller players over the
bigger ones.

~~~
pfranz
Not sure what the growth rate is, but The top Patreon podcast makes just over
$100k /mo (although, most don't list income). Assuming that's consistent
that's only enough to pay 10-20 people, ignoring health insurance, taxes,
401k, Patreon's cut, or any operating costs.

I've always heard ads were the most reliable approach, though.

[https://www.patreon.com/explore/podcasts](https://www.patreon.com/explore/podcasts)

------
emodendroket
I think the business model for ad-supported podcasts is tough -- people can
only buy so much underwear and so many stamps.com subscriptions. That is
probably bad news for podcasts with high production values that are part of
major for-profit organizations (like the Slate one), unless they're primarily
prestige projects (which is how I perceive some of the New York Times ones).
However, the medium will still have podcasts based on radio shows (including
from stations like NPR or Sputnik which are government-supported and not run
for profit, and so will continue doing it even if they're not making money)
and smaller, independent podcasts whose more devoted fanbases support them
directly through means like Patreon.

~~~
Eridrus
I'm curious what you mean by high production values. I do notice podcasts
thanking their audio engineer, though I'm not entirely sure what is involved.
I assume some amount of editing goes on, but is it that expensive to edit an
hour of conversational audio?

~~~
DamnInteresting
Having done a lot of "audio engineer" type of work for my own podcast, I can
say that there is a lot to it, and it varies depending on the sound the
podcast is aiming for.

For example, if you listen to NPR interviews, you'll notice that questions and
answers are articulate and succinct, with very few "ums" and "ahs " and such.
This is because an editor removes most of the extra sounds, lengthy pauses,
stammering, intakes of breath, etc.

There is also capturing the audio in decent quality. Having good microphones
and equipment is just the first step. If recording indoors, one must account
for room noise and echo. If outdoors, one must consider wind and background
noise. Experienced audio engineers will be sure to record 1+ minutes of the
ambient sound at the recording location, so they can use this if they need to
insert any pauses. If recording multiple people, one must ensure they are all
captured at a similar volume, especially if the recordings are all mixed
together at capture time (if captured on separate mics/tracks this is easier
to deal with). Some people also have a lot of "mouth noise" that is amplified
by the mic, so you can hear clicks and squirts of saliva as they speak. It can
be kinda gross, and there are tricks to working around this.

Editing the audio for content is also a substantial task. It takes skill to
know what to leave in and what to remove, particularly if one wishes to be
true to the speakers' intentions. Real conversation, if you listen to it, is
messy. Lots of thought-switching mid-sentence, lengthy digressions, and things
like that. Those are hard to listen to in a podcast, so a podcast that wishes
to remain successful will need a skilled editor to smooth it all out. Often a
2 hour interview will become 25 minutes of usable audio. And it's especially
tricky if recording with background noise, which will often betray the editing
locations if one doesn't know how to mask them (usually with aforementioned
ambient recording).

"Sound design" is another facet; if your podcast has music, audio clips, sound
effects, etc., somebody needs to put them in the right place, set the volume
levels correctly (some art, some science), fade in/out, etc.

So, yes, proper audio engineering takes some skill and makes a big difference
in production quality.

~~~
tomcam
Really comprehensive answer. Thank you. User name definitely checks out.

------
nbardy
I don't think the bubble is bursting at all. If anything its maturing. It's
not working for large companies. But I now listen to podcasts more than I read
books and I learn more that way as well. Most of these podcasts come from
small independent sources. Human conversation was how stories were spread for
thousands of years, until the printing press. Now we have the technology to
share information through conversation, but with the same reach as written
language. Among my group of friends, talking about what podcasts we've read
has become very similar to the old conversations we had about boost. The best
podcasts are in depth often niche discussions similar to books. The don't
require the production level of TV, which is great because a lot of great
podcasts don't have a large enough audience to support that cost. They require
time, and expertise to produce, not much money.

~~~
ghaff
>They require time, and expertise to produce, not much money.

At some point though, time and expertise _are_ money. I'll do an interview-
style/conversational podcast as a hobby or as one of the many little side
things I do for my day job. But you start talking about multi-day production
efforts and that's not something I'm just going to do for free.

Conversational podcasts about some niche topic and Radiolab both have their
place. But there are real costs associated with production values.

~~~
nbardy
Agreed and I think the high production podcasts are definitely hitting a bit
of a bubble. But my favorite podcasts are ones that always have different
guests and I think that category has a lot of growing to do. The expertise
required for the guests is only the one they already have. For example a
nutritionist just has to come on and talk about nutrtion. Something they do
for daily anyway.

~~~
ghaff
For me personally, producing a 20-25 minute interview/conversation podcast on
some topic hits the sweet spot for my own podcasts. It's not a lot of work to
record, some light editing/automated intro/outro/posting, get a transcription
done, post that with some show notes on a blog. Done. It's no more than a few
hours of actual work.

Frankly, the biggest job is scheduling the guests which is one reason I tend
to do the recordings mostly at events.

------
ericintheloft2
Seriously, who wants to listen to a Buzzfeed podcast? Podcasts are _amazing_
channels for independent makers, comedians, etc.

~~~
emodendroket
I think some of the Slate stuff, like Slow Burn, has been pretty popular (IMO
it was OK to listen to but by no means must-hear, but hey)

------
bunderbunder
I'm not surprised that mainstream media companies like Buzzfeed and Slate are
having a hard go of it in podcasting. I also don't see it as a problem, or
even a worrying sign.

I listen to podcasts specifically because the mainstream have been chronically
bad at keeping me engaged. I think the same is true for most my podcast-
listening friends. The podcasting I love is a quintessentially amateur
endeavor - my favorites are ones like _Singing Bones_ or _Uncanny Japan_ that
have low production values, irregular release schedules, and hosts whose deep
love for and fascination with the subject matter saturate every episode. I'm
never going to get that from Buzzfeed or Slate, or even NPR.

~~~
emodendroket
Arguably the most popular podcast was Serial.

------
TheCondor
Is anyone dynamically stitching in ads yet? Seems like a business waiting to
happen, content creators follow some guidelines and use a specific tool to put
their show together and then an ad distribution company distributes the
podcast and pastes in targeted ads based upon the downloader's profile at
download time.

As things are currently done, it seems like you have just incrementally more
information than radio does, probably smaller body of listeners, and it's run
very similar to radio. It's radio with downsides and fairly limited upside. A
lot of the content doesn't have an age, there are 2 year old comedy podcasts
that are still funny, splice in new ads and it's like syndicated TV instead of
radio; plus that potentially lets them monetize their body of work and not
just the newest stuff which might lead to better sustainability, their
affiliate code doesn't work 16months later and then the marketer doesn't know
how they got the lead and the podcasts doesn't get paid.. The pod catchers and
players can provide a ton of analytical data too, no reason to not know if
your ad was skipped or not. Just seems like a bit more technology is needed
and it could really boom. Likewise, if you have this targeted ad stitching
stuff working, you could easily have ad-free subscriptions and pay the content
creator directly.

I cut our cord and basically stopped listening to radio because of the ads,
tons of ads and ads that have little or no value to me. Lately, it kind of
pains me to say it, but some of the targeted ads on Facebook and some other
places are shockingly well targeted. Like they're hitting me up with things
I'm actually interested in. I dislike being marketed to all the time but I
hate these ads a lot less and I've actually bought some stuff because of it.
It's pretty advanced, whereas podcasts still seem to be mostly doing it the
old radio way with different distribution.

~~~
sonnyblarney
The ads currently narrated by the podcasters are gold.

If I was an advertiser I would want that more than anything.

The ads are generally very well suited/targeted to the audience, and they are
strongly legitimized by the podcaster.

When Joe Rogan hustles 'monthly razors' he makes it very personal, talks about
his own use, emotionally slams the 'dumb alternatives'. It's 10x better than a
pre-recorded spot.

It's much closer to sponsorship than ads, and it's worth it.

The issue is really one of scale ... but given the advertiser doesn't have to
do anything but write a few sentences of copy and then pick some podcasts and
negotiate a price ... I think the scale issue is not so bad.

~~~
sleavey
Ads where the presenter speaks them and says how they have personally enjoyed
the product make me suspicious. Is it really true that you enjoyed the razors
or the meal kits more than any of the competition? Or are you giving it false
legitimy for the sake of money? Unfortunately I feel it detracts from the
professionalism and journalistic independence of the shows.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"make me suspicious. " That's fine but they don't make most other people
suspicious. Is the point.

------
jumbopapa
A fine article and then you get to the last sentence of the fifth paragraph
and you can't help but to ask was that necessary?

~~~
HillaryBriss
To the author's point, I suppose one can make a strong case that too many
podcasts are merely low or zero-information commentary.

But, yeah, why the author decided to relate that statement to race, I can only
guess. What did that add, journalistically, to the overall piece, which wasn't
really about race?

~~~
dajohnson89
Perhaps, as the Internet diversifies, the podcast scene hasn't diversified
accordingly. It was definitely a jarring sentence, but the observation is not
inaccurate and worth considering.

------
strict9
The companies cited in this article that are walking back podcasting efforts
mostly repackaged existing content in audio form, and it was obvious. Or
worse, they had talking heads in a conversational format going on about the
week's news topics.

These two show formats are at best boring, but usually terrible.

The ones that were podcasts first (or radio shows) like Gimlet Media, This
American Life and its spinoffs continue to excel and provide the most engaging
media experience.

~~~
ghaff
In all fairness, I find there are plenty of interesting 2 or 3 person "talking
head" podcasts if the people involved are engaging, it doesn't go on and on,
and you're interested in the subject matter. That's not to say people will pay
for it but it's a perfectly viable format so long as you're not expecting to
make a living off it.

~~~
notfromhere
Pod Save is doing a great job with this, but other ones like the Ezra Klein
one are usually...tedious and you can tell when the host just loves the sound
of their own voice.

~~~
ghaff
Like many other things--such as many conference presentations--a lot of
podcasts would benefit from being trimmed from an hour or more to 20-30
minutes. If you listen to most professionally-produced hour-length segments on
radio or podcast, even those are usually broken into multiple segments in some
shape or form. An hour-long straight conversation is way too long IMO.

------
ColonelBlimp
I suppose for those who wanted to make millions of dollars selling podcasts to
advertisers, the bubble may well be bursting. For those who make podcasts
because they have something to communicate and believe it's the right medium,
I don't think the "bubble bursting" analogy is accurate.

~~~
emodendroket
Internet commerce didn't go away when the first dot-com bubble burst.

------
debacle
Is there a podcast bubble?

Is it more likely that there is an ad supported content platform bubble?
People who support their podcast with Patreon seem to be doing quite well.

~~~
ghaff
Survivor's or availability bias? I question whether, in general, donations
have proven a particularly sustainable way for people to be compensated for
creating content, whether podcasts, video, writing, or code.

------
richardknop
Maybe podcasts made for the sole purpose of advertising. Podcasts made by
interesting people talking about exciting topics like JRE aren’t going
anywhere.

------
malvosenior
> _In the case of podcasting, there are a lot of shows consisting of armchair
> pundits (mostly white men) talking about something they saw or read, without
> adding much insight._

Is the slight against white men really needed? Why drag this into the topic?

~~~
pqs
I stopped reading at that point. The article is bad enough, but this
unnecessary statement makes the author look really bad.

~~~
bachbach
Fortunately I didn't even read the article :)

------
megous
I used to listen a lot 10-13 years ago, but whenever I listen now to a
podcast, I find the information density really low. There's just a lot of
social blabber about nothing. Though me and my gf listen a lot to lectures
(TTC, etc.), audiobooks, etc. I find more polished content, much more
enjoyable, than off the cuff talk.

It may have to do with patience and free time. :) A lot of the time podcasts
take a lot of time to get to some point, and it's often times something that I
already know from other channels that are easier to consume, like tweets, or
whatever.

~~~
icebraining
History podcasts are pretty good, in my opinion. I currently listen to
Revolutions, The History of Byzantium and The History of the Twentieth
Century, and they're all quite well scripted, no babler at all.

~~~
megous
Thanks for the recommendadtion.

------
aurizon
Not bursting, maturing. I do not like activities that are, in essence, a waste
of time as well as boring. This covers most modern as well as classical music,
and most political, chat, talk and sports channels. I drive around, I exercise
and that time is also boring, so I listen to podcasts and audio books as I
bike, drive or exercise - 3-4 hours a day. Since I am a scientist, I listen to
technical podcasts in all manner of scientific and technical topics that are
geared to the post graduate mind. There are quite a few.
[http://www.microbe.tv/](http://www.microbe.tv/),
[http://omegataupodcast.net/](http://omegataupodcast.net/),
[https://twit.tv/](https://twit.tv/),
[http://www.mysteryshows.com/](http://www.mysteryshows.com/) \- all the radio
show of the 30's and 40's All the Sherlock Holmes novels are available as
podcasts, as well as the audio streams of most modern movies and detective
novels. Red October, David Bourne and so on. All available from free online
sources as well as torrents and the local library. Most radios can play an
audio CD, or I can copy it to an MP3 player.

------
iambateman
I think a huge drawback for podcasting is that the same sponsors sponsor ever
single show.

If I hear one more ZipRecruiter, Squarespace, or Mailchimp ad, I’m going to
cry.

I end up skipping the ad sections 95% of the time, and only hear a fraction of
the ad time.

By contrast, the Fantasy Footballers podcast has a product line which is
intimately tied to the podcast, and they talk about their products in an
integrated way with the content.

Which brings us to expectations...the Fantasy Footballers have what appears to
be a decent business at the scale of 3 hosts, a writer, a producer and an
intern. They do not have a decent Buzzfeed-scale business.

In podcasting, we can expect more native advertising building long term
brands, like Tyler Cowen whose book sales and event attendance certainly
benefit from his brilliant podcast.

P.s. the author mentioned short attention spans of social media, but I know
many people who will binge a season of Netflix in an evening and listen to 13
hours of podcasts in a single week of commuting. There is plenty of attention.

~~~
misiti3780
what is Tyler Cowen's podcast ?

~~~
bachbach
Conversations with Tyler.

~~~
misiti3780
thank you

------
JansjoFromIkea
I find it hard to imagine podcasting (among other things) not being hit
incredibly hard by a recession. Some of the podcasts I listen to get amounts
of money on Patreon that boggle the mind a bit, not ones like Chapo Trap House
where it's a very large number of people giving a fiver a month but ones with
a few hundred averaging over ten dollars a month.

Once you stop looking at that as ten dollars a pop and look at it as 120 a
year, when money is tight, a lot of people are gonna struggle to justify it;
especially when most things don't really give a whole lot of value in their
Patreons.

------
pandapower2
Rule of thumb. Whenever a headline asks a question the answer is no.

~~~
vinceguidry
It's called Betteridges's Law of Headlines and it gets quite annoying to see
it invoked in every single news article thread whose headline fits the
description.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

If you can't find something interesting to say about the article, then simply
invoking the Law is a contentless comment.

------
vcanales
At least from the initial paragraph, it sounds more like the companies laying
off their podcast _production_ teams just had shitty content. The medium
itself is hardly suffering.

------
P_I_Staker
I love podcasts, but they are likely to always suffer from monetization
problems. No one wants to pay for them; this is similar to issues faced in
news media. If the price was right, the quality issues would be fixed, or at
least improved. Currently, they seem to serve as platforms for semi-famous
people to advertise themselves, and build a brand. Also groups like NPR are
already setup to release content as podcasts, as they can just play them over
the radio.

~~~
replicatorblog
There are a bunch of niche media sites that are seeing huge chunks of revenue
coming from podcasts. E.g. the Ringer and Vox are both ramping up production
significantly, doubling in the case of Vox, because the CPMs are so high.
We'll see what happens when the venture capital streams propping up mattress,
toothbrush, and meal kit startups dries up, but business model seems to be the
least pressing issue at the moment.

------
ankitml
I have always preferred good indie storytelling over too much studio style
podcasts. Because of lower production costs they would be safer from this
bursting.

------
666lumberjack
I closely follow about five podcasts, but in every case I already enjoyed a
host's work in a different medium. That might be an artifact of the type of
show I tend to enjoy - I like finding out more about people whose work I enjoy
- but it would also explain why big media companies have a hard time getting
into podcasting.

------
matrixagent
No.

~~~
ourcat
Agreed. And headlines like this are complete and utter clickbait.

~~~
rabee3
I didnt even know there was a bubble!

------
ikeboy
Bubble has apparently lost all meaning now

------
bfuller
A lot of my favorite podcasts are moving to premium content on patreon. Which
is a little disappointing to me.

~~~
damontal
how does that work? do they keep episodes off of regular feeds and have you
log in or something? or is there some kind of authentication you have to do in
your podcast app?

~~~
noselasd
For patreon it's trust based. Each contributor gets a mail with a link to a
private rss feed they have to enter in their podcast app - and you're not
supposed to share that with anyone.

I would assume the platform has some measures if it discovers a lot of
downloads or requests from very different geolocations too - but that's just
me speculating.

------
mjdease
I would love to be able to pay to get ad-free versions of podcasts.

~~~
bhandziuk
Are the ads really so bad? they're skippable quite easily if you are really
annoyed.

~~~
icebraining
Not so easy to skip if you're doing something with your hands - cooking,
riding a bicycle, etc.

------
k__
Somehow I found most pod-casts boring to listen too. Never understood the
value.

What is your motivation to listen to them?

~~~
bhandziuk
Entertaining and educational. What kinds of things do you like? There's
probably a podcast for it. I listen to podcasts on subjects I dind't even know
I liked and now am much more interested in them (medical history: SawBones;
economics: Freakonomics, The Indicator, Planet Money)

~~~
k__
But when to listen to them?

~~~
replicatorblog
If you're at all interested in a new industry, there is usually a podcast
focused on that vertical where notable luminaries get interviewed. Listening
to a few hours of shows, while doing chores or commuting, can get you up the
learning curve fairly quickly.

And the tendency to prattle can be fairly helpful. It helps illuminate the
thought process of the subject in ways you wouldn't get in more formal
settings, or in the few sentences of quotations that appear in a press
account.

------
deusofnull
I am a patron of a handful of left-wing / comedy / education podcasts and all
I can say is that that "scene" has been steadily growing since I got into it
around 2016. Independent, patron based funding models really works for podcast
content.

Chapo Trap House, fueled by over 100k $5 dollar donations, is a great example.
Not all get to that level, but if you're a 1-3 person podcast making good
content for your niche, it only takes a few thousand listeners supporting you
with $5 a month to support the whole project. I think those podcasts are going
to continue to grow in number for a while as the community grows.

There isnt even a need for large scale curative organizational involvement for
these kinds of projects. I see the article mentions Slate, and NPR. While
those are fine orgs, there is a real appeal to the auteur style of small
scale, community driven media. Hosts go on each others shows, the listeners of
the various podcasts interact with one another on twitter, and a weird kind of
modular audio content network emerges out of the many moving pieces. Theres a
place for large-orgs curating podcasts, doing more extensive journalism
requiring resources, or providing larger content libraries for the un-
initiated, but the botique podcast is something here to stay.

------
dbcooper
Just as long as Cum Town keeps going.

------
bachbach
No, shut up, I love podcasts.

The best ones are Audio Dramas like Uncle Bertie's Botanarium and The Lost Cat
podcast or The Stuff of Myth.

The Mysterious Secrets Of Uncle Bertie's Botanarium:
[http://rss.art19.com/the-mysterious-secrets-of-uncle-
berties...](http://rss.art19.com/the-mysterious-secrets-of-uncle-berties-
botanarium)

The Lost Cat:
[http://thelostcat.libsyn.com/rss](http://thelostcat.libsyn.com/rss)

The Stuff of Myth: [http://www.radiodramarevival.com/rdr-vault-stuff-myth-
roger-...](http://www.radiodramarevival.com/rdr-vault-stuff-myth-roger-gregg/)

Nobody has heard of these and they are brilliant.

