Or maybe he set podcasting back 5 years by giving up on it ;-)
If he was a true believer, he'd have realized Medium isn't the long-form content he was looking for. He didn't fully commit to Odeo, and that's why he gave up when Apple made its move. I still remember thinking "Fuck!" when I saw that "Try our new thing twttr" banner at the top of Odeo. I liked where they were headed.
Twitter + Podcasts are all you need. No one really wants to read long-form text on a computer.
Medium.com should have been Odeo 2.0
It's just so much richer to listen to a monologue, or socratic debate, in most cases. @ev should pivot Medium into being the biggest podcast publisher in the world, by sponsoring every high quality podcast and building a better version of patreon for podcasters. There's a lot of amazing people that should be podcasting and are not.
> Twitter + Podcasts are all you need. No one really wants to read long-form text on a computer. Medium was a bad idea.
LOL I would obviously prefer reading long form text on a book, but do you really prefer audio to digital text? Story telling is one thing, but for most of what I'm reading I think a low-bandwidth, search-free environment (audio) is a bad match.
I learn a lot more from audiobooks, podcasts, and youtube videos these days than from any other source. I listen at 1.5 or 2x speed and find it as close to an "I know kung fu" experience as it gets.
I'm hoping someone rolls podcasts into a music subscription service so that I don't need to listen to these ads. I know that Spotify has done this a bit, but iirc their selection is pretty limited.
It's easier to just have 10% of listeners pay $10/year and go ad-free. Advertising is a pollutant and no longer necessary in the new at-scale world.
When you have a small podcast, you can just do it for the love of it and not worry about money. If it gets big, you can get a small percentage of your listeners to give you money. The number of contributors should continue to rise for many years as more people discover how great podcasts can be.
The easier, and more lucrative, method is to setup some sort of Premium/Patreon/etc. method where you can either listen to the podcast, with ads, for free, or pay $X a month to support the show and get access to an ad-free feed.
There's no need for ads at all though. If you don't have many listeners, then there's not much ad revenue anyway. And once you have a lot of listeners, you only need a tiny percentage to fund the entire thing.
It's totally viable to have 10% of listeners voluntarily pay while 90% of listeners freeload. And there needn't be any NPR guilt trip about it because they're not blowing millions on office space and executives.
Any successful podcast can be a very financially successful business for a small number of people.
Sure, but once you have that large number of listeners, if ads only turn away a small percentage, there is no reason to not have them. They would just be refusing (nearly) free money.
I have no issues with ads being left in.. hit the skip button 3 times on the phone and you are past the ads.
JRE.. skip the first 5-7 minutes until you pass the "Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night all day!" and you are set as well. Same with Tim Ferriss.. but there it's about 4 minutes
But mostly I listen to the ads.. they are usually less than a minute anyway (especially since I listen to everything at 1.5 speed... some at 2.0)
I don't know if this will happen anytime soon. I think there are two main problems:
1. As the article mentioned, there is a lot of growth with advertising here. Until that starts to taper off the "big" players in the podcast market (either creators or networks) will be hesitant to sign those types of deals. When they keep getting more advertising dollars it seems silly to move over to a Spotify like system.
2. Smaller players (often independent creators) are less organized and harder to get into that sort of system. This was not a problem for Spotify, or other streaming services, because the music industry had a well established Artist -> Label setup that does not exist for huge swaths of the podcast market.
So, I would expect podcast ads to be roughly comparable to Spotify ads and, for Spotify, paying subscribers bring in 3x more revenue than those who get ads. And for me podcasts are a direct substitute for music, in that I listen to them on the train when I would otherwise be listening to music.
I see your point about onboarding. I wonder if one of them could just ingest all the podcasts on the internet, strip out ads and collect revenue for them, and then offer them a way to claim the revenue and/or opt-out.
The Talk Show by John Gruber and Accidental Tech Podcast are probably two of the most popular Apple centric podcasts but in the grand scheme of things are both pretty niche.
They have rates between $5500-$6500 per read and do three ads per episode. I doubt they would make $21000 per episode on Spotify.
The CPMs for podcast are currently much higher than any other type of media besides video.
They were both charging those rates before the "podcast boom".
Accidental tech claims 75k listeners on average per episode, which brings them to about 7 cents per impression, or a $73 CPM, which is about 6x what Spotify charges.
But accidental tech is a 2 hour podcast, in which time they run 3 ads, but Spotify probably runs at least 12.
IMO the biggest challenge is not going to be finding the money to pay them, but negotiating with musicians who may not be happy dividing up the pie.
> the few listeners who do skip ads continue to remain engaged with the episode, rather than dropping off at the first sign of an interruption.
I'd bet that this is because fast-forwarding through podcast ads is pretty trivial. If podcast apps tried to do anything to make the midroll ads unskippable, you'd probably see a different pattern. (Here I'm thinking of things like online video ads and the TV networks' fight against the TiVo 30-second skip button.)
For my part, I often skip through ads that I know have no relevance to me, but listen to ones that might have relevance. It also helps that many podcasts bring their own humor to the ads rather than just reading the ad copy verbatim, so there's still some entertainment value even if I know I'm not going to buy what they're selling.
Some podcasts have relatively short ads at unpredictable times. I listen to those 90% of the time. Some podcasts do live reads that are predictably 3-4 minutes long, which feels like an eternity, especially when they're doing the same ads they did last week. I skip those every time.
It seems like many podcasts also have an unspoken agreement with the listener about ads and make them easy to skip. Two popular podcasts come to mind:
WTF with Marc Maron: always plays a guitar riff after the ad, which is easy to hear when skipping
MBMBAM: has a “shoutout” section (listeners sending messages to each other) immediately after the ads, so if you skip into it you don’t really care if you miss a minute or two.
MBMBAM does sponsor ads (read by the hosts), then the shoutout section which I hate, and then usually two ads by other podcasts in the network. Once the sponsor ads start, I can then simply skip ahead until I hear an unfamiliar voice, then more carefully jump forward until I get back to the show. This is pretty much essential for me, because both the shoutouts (jumbotrons) and the plugs for other podcasts are written with the "OMG QUIRKY!" knob turned up to 11 and I just can't handle it.
Edit: The Greatest Generation (Star Trek podcast) is on the same network and has a somewhat similar format, except they don't do the ads until they're almost done. They talk about the episode, then do sponsor ads and shoutouts, then they do one of two options: "Drunk Shimoda" segment followed by ads for other podcasts, or vice versa. I assume this is to prevent over-zealous ad skipping but really it doesn't take much effort.
I suspect why the majority of people don't skip is because the ads themselves aren't terrible. The worst aspect of ads is repetitiveness, which is why Hulu with ads is unwatchable. Of the podcasts I listen to which are typically rated high on popularity, the ads typically aren't repetitive: they feel ad-hoc since they are done differently per episode, where it's almost like it's part of the entertainment. The only repetive ads I'm aware of are from Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History, which start to get tiring because they are exactly the same episode to episode.
You're kidding me, right? It seems like every mainstream podcast is supported by ad money from mail-order mattresses or mail-order meals.
The NoSleep Podcast is the only one I've heard that dresses these ads up a bit. Even then, I still pay for the season pass so I don't have to listen to them.
I think at least some of it is how podcasts are consumed compared to other media. I (and I think most other people) listen to podcasts while doing something else, (jogging, washing dishes, driving, etc), which both makes pulling out my phone to fastforward through ads difficult, while at the same time, its easy to just shift my focus to whatever else I'm doing until the ad ends, making them less annoying.
Bill Burr (the comedian) has his own take on this problem.
He makes reading the ads so entertaining they become a part of the podcast -- a very entertaining part! Nobody skips that.
Though to be fair, sometimes he shits on the product he's "advertising" so hard that they pull their sponsorship. Oh well. The brands that stay reap the benefits -- his version of Dollar Shave Club, MeUndies, ZipRecruiter, or HelixSleep are totally contagious.
Don't forget Sharisberries, based on his read of that ad I always thought they were some small time etsy-esque store, turns out they're part of a gift selling conglomerate. Also his dyslexia makes the reads even funnier.
2017 for me was the year of the podcast. I came across podcasts such as The Daily from the New York Times, a 20 minute rundown of the day's biggest stories, and Hardcore History from Dan Carlin, 4-6 hour epics. Alongside podcasts on politics, tech, and more. Podcasts are consuming my TV, movie and music streaming time.
My biggest issue are the ads, they are very generic and it seems the same types of companies dominate the space. Primarily services like zip recruiter, blue apron, and other subscription types. Also, the ad reads are very hit or miss when done by the podcast presenters.
I think there is big business for a pod casting platform that can get the ad model right (personalized ads, professionally read) along with suggestions and curation of suggested podcasts.
Audio only media being dominated by a few large players is nothing new, it's been done on talk radio for years.
Vermont Teddybear Company, Pajamagram (which I just found out is owned by Vermont Teddybear Company), and 1-800-Flowers ad reads are so burnt into my brain from years of listening to the radio and don't get me started about Cellino and Barnes or Foxwoods casino.
The ads have worked on me. My family gets two Blue Apron meals a week and we bought a Casper dog bed. Some ads I find genuinely entertaining. For example, one podcast has very long audible podcasts that I enjoy listening to. I don't subscribe to that service, but I have bought books that they discuss.
Most of the time though, I do skip through them.
> I think there is big business for a pod casting platform that can get the ad model right
No thanks. That means I'm being monitored beyond just counting my download of an MP3. I'm happy that the ads are about as personalized as the ads in a magazine.
My two favs also. I'm a big fan of planet money as well.
Another underrated show is Masters of Scale[0] I know it's a little more techie based which might be too much for people trying to escape that reality while listening to podcasts but I've found it very informative and I highly recommend it.
Duncan Trussell Family Hour,
Its All Happening - Zach Leary,
Radiolab,
Tangentially Speaking with Dr Christopher Ryan,
The Dr Drew Show,
The Joe Rogan Experience,
WTF Podcast,
Ari Shaffir's Skeptic Tank,
MAPS Podcast,
Forgot to mention, Android Podcast Addict is a great podcast app, and for windows is Groover Pro.
Both supports opml file that saves your subscriptions to the cloud. So you can sync on your devices.
Podcast addict supports youtube links also, both support video podcasts.
And why not use Itunes? Itunes likes to download all your podcast feeds, and can eat lots of disk space if you have many subscriptions, use a dedicated podcast app/program.
You mentioned a history podcast, so just remember, you asked for this. I don't think anybody matches Dan Carlin for presentation (although his historical accuracy can be lacking) but here are some that are probably the most approachable.
* History of Rome: A narrative history of Rome from foundation to fall of the western empire
* Revolutions: A long series of various revolutions around the world (American, French, Haitian, etc. etc.)
* The British History Podcast: Chronological history of the British Isles, very detailed, hundreds of episodes in and the Normans have not showed up yet.
* When Diplomacy Fails: Covers various political/military events throughout history. Currently doing a deep dive on the Korean war.
* The China History Podcast: Episodes on all topics from Chinese history from ancient times to the Mao era
* The History of Byzantium: Picks up where History of Rome ended and continues the story until (theoretically) the fall of Byzantium.
* The History of England: Similar to British History, but moves at a far faster pace, currently in the reign of Henry VIII
There are of course many many more, but these are probably some of my favorites.
Shameless Plug: I create a podcast on the First World War called History of the Great War. I think it is pretty good, at least the more recent episodes.
I came here to recommend (1), (2) and (6) - and frankly, I prefer both Mike Duncan's and Robin Pierson's style over Dan Carlin's, as the latter easily becomes grating to my ears. Give me Duncan's deadpan humor any day.
I also prefer Duncan and Pierson to Carlin, but I have come to accept that I am in the minority. I have not actually listened to the last few Hardcore History episodes because I can't handle Carlin's "quote voice"
I look forward to checking out your podcast! I'm just following Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast and he's nearly up to WWI historically, would be a nice segue to new content.
Those are always welcome, thank you. I know of (1), (5) and (6) but haven't started them yet.
I've dabbled a bit in the "History of Japan" podcast but since I encountered some episodes that weren't accurate (although they weren't strictly about history), I've lost trust and stopped listening. Apart from that, the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" podcast is ok, albeit a bit too comedic at times for my taste.
I think 12 Byzantine Rulers - The history of the Byzantine Empire (19 episodes) is what Mike Duncan cited as his inspiration for the History of Rome (191 episodes). I'd also recommend Norman Centuries - A Norman History Podcast by Lars Brownworth (20 episodes) as being in the same style.
* Norman Centuries - A Norman History Podcast by Lars Brownworth
* 12 Byzantine Rulers- The History of The Byzantine Empire
* The History of Rome
Maybe it's just the scope or ambition of the projects but things like a season Serial Podcast or the Byzantine/Norman podcasts I mentioned here are more like miniseries.
I really enjoy "The Meateater Podcast", hosted by Steven Rinella. Great information about hunting, conservation, and public land, with guests including hunters, biology researchers, Joe Rogan, state Fish & Game employees, and authors. Even if you're not a hunter, the discussions are fascinating.
There's a few ads in the earliest episodes, but otherwise they keep it to the occasional "Hey ya freeloaders, go rate us on iTunes" at the start of the show.
I feel like there’s a lot of great podcasts coming out in the last years. Every time I tell myself I’m getting back into podcasts I usually subscribe to 10 of them, then the backlog gets too huge and I delete everything again.
My new strategy is just to subscribe to one or two. Usually ones with seasons and not weekly / monthly and one common topic which helps me stay attached to it.
The ones I enjoyed most in the last weeks are:
My best find this year, interviews with prisoners in San Quentin Prison produced by prisoners: https://www.earhustlesq.com/
Slow Burn is incredible. I haven't enjoyed a serialized podcast as much as that since the first season of Serial. I haven't been able to find many other serialized podcasts in the same vein. Sad that Slow Burn just ended.
People are dual broadcasting their video feeds in podcast version. Radio stations are also releasing their daily radio ep's in podcast form. Paid shows also release a audio only as a teaser to get people to subscribe.
Its basically free promotion of your show, just release it in mp3 as a podcast and let it trend.
Example, Joe Rogan has his 3 hour daily video show, but he also broadcasts his show in audio only. His mp3 podcast version is one of the most popular podcasts out.
I think there is a breaking point, but considering that most people who watch TV (at least here in America) seem to be okay with watching 20% advertisements....I think there is a lot of headroom in the amount of ads on podcasts.
What I really find interesting. The really big podcasts in Germany are all ad free. Maybe patreon maybe donations via sepa bank transfer but no ads at all.
There are exceptions yes. And that is ok. But what I find worse are platforms which try to hog the listeners to themselves. Spotify or Google play music podcast. The joy of using podcasts is the same as the internet you just need a podcatcher instead of a browser and can listen to anything you want anywhere anywhen. And also with apps with great user interfaces. How come someone would even want to listen to Spotify podcasts without 30 second skips, chapter marks and most importantly resumable playback where you stopped.
There might be something to that number but keep in mind watching 20% adverts probably has a lot of not really watching adverts but taking a moment to grab a coffee
Podcasts are right in your earholes whether you're making a coffee or not. After the 4th Blue Apron ad you might start skipping
I am a paying listener of Sam Harris's Waking Up - He has a lot of interesting guests and I get create book recommendations. I have also been enjoying the weeks and ezra klein's work, and heard "where it began" is good.
A little self-promotion here, but I've been working on an app for listening to, sharing, and talking about podcasts. I listen to well over 20 hours of podcasts a week and was always frustrated with how difficult it is to share episodes I've enjoyed.
We have a very tiny beta right now with < 100 users, but if you like podcasts you might like it! (you can sign up at https://banter.fm OR just email me, steve @ banter.fm)
63 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadIf he was a true believer, he'd have realized Medium isn't the long-form content he was looking for. He didn't fully commit to Odeo, and that's why he gave up when Apple made its move. I still remember thinking "Fuck!" when I saw that "Try our new thing twttr" banner at the top of Odeo. I liked where they were headed.
Twitter + Podcasts are all you need. No one really wants to read long-form text on a computer.
Medium.com should have been Odeo 2.0
It's just so much richer to listen to a monologue, or socratic debate, in most cases. @ev should pivot Medium into being the biggest podcast publisher in the world, by sponsoring every high quality podcast and building a better version of patreon for podcasters. There's a lot of amazing people that should be podcasting and are not.
LOL I would obviously prefer reading long form text on a book, but do you really prefer audio to digital text? Story telling is one thing, but for most of what I'm reading I think a low-bandwidth, search-free environment (audio) is a bad match.
When you have a small podcast, you can just do it for the love of it and not worry about money. If it gets big, you can get a small percentage of your listeners to give you money. The number of contributors should continue to rise for many years as more people discover how great podcasts can be.
It's totally viable to have 10% of listeners voluntarily pay while 90% of listeners freeload. And there needn't be any NPR guilt trip about it because they're not blowing millions on office space and executives.
Any successful podcast can be a very financially successful business for a small number of people.
JRE.. skip the first 5-7 minutes until you pass the "Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night all day!" and you are set as well. Same with Tim Ferriss.. but there it's about 4 minutes
But mostly I listen to the ads.. they are usually less than a minute anyway (especially since I listen to everything at 1.5 speed... some at 2.0)
1. As the article mentioned, there is a lot of growth with advertising here. Until that starts to taper off the "big" players in the podcast market (either creators or networks) will be hesitant to sign those types of deals. When they keep getting more advertising dollars it seems silly to move over to a Spotify like system.
2. Smaller players (often independent creators) are less organized and harder to get into that sort of system. This was not a problem for Spotify, or other streaming services, because the music industry had a well established Artist -> Label setup that does not exist for huge swaths of the podcast market.
I see your point about onboarding. I wonder if one of them could just ingest all the podcasts on the internet, strip out ads and collect revenue for them, and then offer them a way to claim the revenue and/or opt-out.
They have rates between $5500-$6500 per read and do three ads per episode. I doubt they would make $21000 per episode on Spotify.
The CPMs for podcast are currently much higher than any other type of media besides video.
They were both charging those rates before the "podcast boom".
But accidental tech is a 2 hour podcast, in which time they run 3 ads, but Spotify probably runs at least 12.
IMO the biggest challenge is not going to be finding the money to pay them, but negotiating with musicians who may not be happy dividing up the pie.
> the few listeners who do skip ads continue to remain engaged with the episode, rather than dropping off at the first sign of an interruption.
I'd bet that this is because fast-forwarding through podcast ads is pretty trivial. If podcast apps tried to do anything to make the midroll ads unskippable, you'd probably see a different pattern. (Here I'm thinking of things like online video ads and the TV networks' fight against the TiVo 30-second skip button.)
For my part, I often skip through ads that I know have no relevance to me, but listen to ones that might have relevance. It also helps that many podcasts bring their own humor to the ads rather than just reading the ad copy verbatim, so there's still some entertainment value even if I know I'm not going to buy what they're selling.
WTF with Marc Maron: always plays a guitar riff after the ad, which is easy to hear when skipping
MBMBAM: has a “shoutout” section (listeners sending messages to each other) immediately after the ads, so if you skip into it you don’t really care if you miss a minute or two.
Edit: The Greatest Generation (Star Trek podcast) is on the same network and has a somewhat similar format, except they don't do the ads until they're almost done. They talk about the episode, then do sponsor ads and shoutouts, then they do one of two options: "Drunk Shimoda" segment followed by ads for other podcasts, or vice versa. I assume this is to prevent over-zealous ad skipping but really it doesn't take much effort.
The NoSleep Podcast is the only one I've heard that dresses these ads up a bit. Even then, I still pay for the season pass so I don't have to listen to them.
He makes reading the ads so entertaining they become a part of the podcast -- a very entertaining part! Nobody skips that.
Though to be fair, sometimes he shits on the product he's "advertising" so hard that they pull their sponsorship. Oh well. The brands that stay reap the benefits -- his version of Dollar Shave Club, MeUndies, ZipRecruiter, or HelixSleep are totally contagious.
My biggest issue are the ads, they are very generic and it seems the same types of companies dominate the space. Primarily services like zip recruiter, blue apron, and other subscription types. Also, the ad reads are very hit or miss when done by the podcast presenters.
I think there is big business for a pod casting platform that can get the ad model right (personalized ads, professionally read) along with suggestions and curation of suggested podcasts.
Most of the time though, I do skip through them.
> I think there is big business for a pod casting platform that can get the ad model right
No thanks. That means I'm being monitored beyond just counting my download of an MP3. I'm happy that the ads are about as personalized as the ads in a magazine.
"Hardcore History" by Dan Carlin is such an example and I wish it was easier to find other such podcasts of similar quality.
* https://syntax.fm
* https://hasspodcast.io
- "The Daily" by the NYT - High Quality, but it is skewed towards "liberal ideas".
- "Who? Weekly" - This is a weird one for this crowd, but it's 2 people who are deep into celebrity culture and it's fun to get outside of my depth.
- "Limited Resources" - MTG podcast with great in depth coverage of the limited format
- "S-Town" - Fun narrative podcast, that opened some ethical questions by the end, but I think would def make this crowd cry.
* https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/
* http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/
Another underrated show is Masters of Scale[0] I know it's a little more techie based which might be too much for people trying to escape that reality while listening to podcasts but I've found it very informative and I highly recommend it.
[0] https://mastersofscale.com/
These are all A+ Podcasts.
Our American Stories is really good http://www.ouramericannetwork.org
Art of Maniless https://www.artofmanliness.com/category/podcast/
SOFREP Radio https://sofrep.com/radio/
Also Twit TV has a bunch of good ones, video/audio formats. https://www.twit.tv/shows?shows_active=1
Both supports opml file that saves your subscriptions to the cloud. So you can sync on your devices.
Podcast addict supports youtube links also, both support video podcasts.
And why not use Itunes? Itunes likes to download all your podcast feeds, and can eat lots of disk space if you have many subscriptions, use a dedicated podcast app/program.
* History of Rome: A narrative history of Rome from foundation to fall of the western empire
* Revolutions: A long series of various revolutions around the world (American, French, Haitian, etc. etc.)
* The British History Podcast: Chronological history of the British Isles, very detailed, hundreds of episodes in and the Normans have not showed up yet.
* When Diplomacy Fails: Covers various political/military events throughout history. Currently doing a deep dive on the Korean war.
* The China History Podcast: Episodes on all topics from Chinese history from ancient times to the Mao era
* The History of Byzantium: Picks up where History of Rome ended and continues the story until (theoretically) the fall of Byzantium.
* The History of England: Similar to British History, but moves at a far faster pace, currently in the reign of Henry VIII
There are of course many many more, but these are probably some of my favorites.
Shameless Plug: I create a podcast on the First World War called History of the Great War. I think it is pretty good, at least the more recent episodes.
Thanks for the other podcasts, by the way!
I've dabbled a bit in the "History of Japan" podcast but since I encountered some episodes that weren't accurate (although they weren't strictly about history), I've lost trust and stopped listening. Apart from that, the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" podcast is ok, albeit a bit too comedic at times for my taste.
* Norman Centuries - A Norman History Podcast by Lars Brownworth
* 12 Byzantine Rulers- The History of The Byzantine Empire
* The History of Rome
Maybe it's just the scope or ambition of the projects but things like a season Serial Podcast or the Byzantine/Norman podcasts I mentioned here are more like miniseries.
There's a few ads in the earliest episodes, but otherwise they keep it to the occasional "Hey ya freeloaders, go rate us on iTunes" at the start of the show.
My new strategy is just to subscribe to one or two. Usually ones with seasons and not weekly / monthly and one common topic which helps me stay attached to it.
The ones I enjoyed most in the last weeks are:
My best find this year, interviews with prisoners in San Quentin Prison produced by prisoners: https://www.earhustlesq.com/
Currently listening to this one and it feels like House of Cards as a podcast: http://www.slate.com/articles/slate_plus/watergate.html
The famous: https://serialpodcast.org/season-one
Its basically free promotion of your show, just release it in mp3 as a podcast and let it trend.
Example, Joe Rogan has his 3 hour daily video show, but he also broadcasts his show in audio only. His mp3 podcast version is one of the most popular podcasts out.
http://analytics.podtrac.com/industry-rankings/
Podcasts are right in your earholes whether you're making a coffee or not. After the 4th Blue Apron ad you might start skipping
We have a very tiny beta right now with < 100 users, but if you like podcasts you might like it! (you can sign up at https://banter.fm OR just email me, steve @ banter.fm)
As it stands my knee-jerk reaction when I clicked was "aw it's just a podcast app - I already got one of those"
Good luck though!