Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 240, dated January 6, 2020.
Good lord, it’s 2020. I didn’t life plan this far ahead! What happens now??
Anyway, we’re fully back in business, and we’re going to spend our first public 2020 issue going over the major story threads we think will be important in the coming year. Then again, you never really know, you know? We could be ashes by Friday.
The year in preview [by Nick Quah and Caroline Crampton]. I’m something of a gambling man — though Uncut Gems might’ve sworn me off sports betting forever — and if there’s anything I feel confident enough to throw my house down as collateral on, it’s this: 2020 is going to be busy as hell. Between whatever’s happening with the platforms, the increasing inflow of money and eager new participants, the fact that there is still so much to do, and the 2020 presidential election cycle (among others), I imagine we here at Hot Pod will need to take out an insurance policy on our fingers.
Here’s how this preview issue is going to work: First we’ll go over, in some depth, the 10 major story buckets that we believe are important going into the year. Then we’ll throw out an assortment of a few smaller story threads that are tugging on our curiosities. And finally, you’ll find a short blurb on creative/content-related things on our minds.
Okay, let’s jump in.
Yes, yes, okay. Look, I know it’s a tired framework. I know it’s hacky — like, sports-talk-radio hacky. And I know there’s a genuine argument you can make about how the podcast landscape’s on-going transition from a “benign monopoly” into a legitimately competitive duopoly can actually be interpreted as a story about growing the whole pie. Non-zero-sum game and all that.
But I mean…come on. I’m still reticent to call it a ~Platform War~ — sorry, Nilay — but you can’t view what Spotify’s doing as something that doesn’t directly affect Apple.
Take a broader perspective and consider how this isn’t a strictly podcasting matter. One completely feasible reading sees Spotify’s podcast push as a way to orthogonally bolster its position on the music front. At the end of the day, the competition is about getting users, audiences, and listeners into their respective ecosystems; every casual Apple Podcasts user that gets flipped into a power Spotify podcasts user is potentially one fewer who could become a power Apple Music user.
The year begins with fundamental questions for both sides. How will Apple respond to Spotify’s loud efforts to deepen its podcast position? The mind recalls the possibility of some push into original programming, per the summer Bloomberg report, though there may well be alternative ways for Apple to engage in this competition.
And what comes next in Spotify’s on-going advance into podcast territory? I don’t think we’ll have to wait too long to find out.
—Nick Quah
How the Apple/Spotify competition plays out will have widespread ramifications for the ecosystem at large: deal-shaping, launch approaches, the way we think about audiences, the universe of analytics, where and how monetary value is extracted, and so on. But the most significant ramifications, historically speaking, will likely be on podcasting’s openness. By the end of the year, will podcasting remain largely open and free, or will it be mostly mediated by platforms that assume gatekeeping behavior? Will openness remain the norm and ideal?
I’m aware that there’s substantial room for discussion around what “openness” specifically means, down to a granular technical level — client agnosticism, RSS feed primacy, so on and so forth. But I tend to be an end-goal kind of guy, and so from a big picture perspective, I view the question in terms of power and opportunity: To be open means to be able to self-actualize without needing to be directly mediated by a centralized governing authority. (Feel free to punch me in the face for overly simplifying the discourse.)
How this story works out will depend on the podcast community’s predominant operating culture — i.e. the default manner in which the majority of podcasters publish works and access audiences — and how it changes as the shape of opportunities evolve. It could well be the case that a majority of podcast publishers will choose to put all their eggs in a single platform basket; it’s equally possible that enough publishers will opt to spread things out.
Whatever the case, it’s worth noting that nothing is fait accompli. I still believe things can end up in any number of ways.
—NQ
With an increasing number of corporations spending real money on podcasts, the independent podcaster faces turbulent times ahead. An entity like Spotify may truly believe that its machinations will expand listening for all — rising tides and all that — but it doesn’t change the fact that small operations are increasingly competing against outfits with significantly deeper pockets.
Still, there are plenty of creators exploring different ways of being independent, from new business models to a quiet rejection of the idea that success only comes in the form of copious downloads and eager sponsors. Inhabiting a niche has long been a worthy goal for a small podcast; now it can potentially be a profitable one too.
I’m intrigued by a movement towards further collaboration. I’ve seen this in the U.K., where the market is smaller, but also in the U.S., where some podcasters are choosing to form collectives or networks that suit their artistic or financial aims, or both. (In a way, it’s a callback to an earlier time, when we had outfits like The Heard.)
—Caroline Crampton
A brief and incomplete rundown of various other podcasting constituents, plus associated questions:
—NQ
We’ve already hit the ground running on this, with Nick’s coverage of the gig worker AB5 law in California last week. That’s an unfolding story in its own right, with audio freelancers among those facing uncertainty and potential difficulty as the notion of who is a contractor and who is an employee in that context is thrashed out.
That debate is all around one state’s law and where the line between “exploited gig economy worker” and “thriving flexible freelancer” can be drawn, but it’s a broader discussion touching other areas and countries too. We saw several pushes toward unionization in U.S. audio-related companies in 2019; fair compensation and conditions are by no means guaranteed in this industry. Growth creates opportunities, but it also produces pain points.
While some of the factors affecting this strand are specific to audio — the arrival of more big platforms wanting original podcasts means trickier contracts to work out, for instance — this is also an area where wider economic and political situations matter a lot. The U.K., for instance, just elected a government from a party historically at odds with labor movements and state subsidies. That’s going to have an impact on if and how people organize, for sure.
—CC
Two of the more interesting stories that stuck with me from last year was (1) the founding of Podfront UK, Stitcher and Wondery’s joint venture that seeks to build a revenue bridge between the U.S. and the U.K., and Art19’s incursion into South Korea via the acquisition of BirchSound, a podcast advertising firm that was subsequently rebranded as Art19 Korea. Both represent a particular thread of the global podcasting story: how American podcast companies are building the foundations for structural expansions abroad.
They also represent, in my view, the roots of how we can begin to effectively talk about podcasting globally using a shared industry language. In the past, I’ve found that the fundamental problem when talking about the podcast business within an international context is a matter of epistemology: When we talked about podcasting in Asia, Latin America, and so on, were we talking about the same thing?
As such, any analytical comparisons between “podcasting” in the two countries would be inappropriate to make — unless you take the broader view that all on-demand audio systems compete along the same frontier. Perhaps we should, in which case the conversations we’re having about podcasting and on-demand audio in America must necessarily include discussions about things like Audible, Libro.fm, Headspace, and so on. That requires an understanding of how podcasting is a specific entity, with specific definitional traits, that is nonetheless connected to a wider network of on-demand audio supply chains…which, in turn, requires a further understanding that all audio plays compete for the same global pool of earballs.
~ it’s all connected, man ~
—NQ
Last year, more hosts and publishers moved towards compliance with the current IAB standards, a.k.a. version 2.0. There seems to be increasing agreement that this is the way to move forward in terms of ensuring clarity right now; it’s more of a technical hurdle for those who have yet to be certified than anything else.
Two more things. First, as more radio-first companies push their way into the podcasting arena, they face a challenge in how they measure the success of their new content. (I’m thinking mostly of the BBC on this, but it applies elsewhere too.) Second, as per the discussion of independence above, there are many and varied attitudes to numbers beyond just “more is better.”
—CC
Of course, live events have been big business for bigger shows for a while now, but as with all of these models, it’s when they start becoming viable for smaller podcasts that things get interesting. A show with a million downloads an episode can sell out a 10-date tour, sure, but it can also sell all of its ad inventory. It’s the evolving mechanics that can open up these options to smaller shows that I’ve got my eye on.
—CC
Spotify has been trying out different ways of extending its playlisting strategy around music to podcasts, most notably so far with the personalized “Your Daily Podcasts” and “Your Daily Drive” features we saw launched late last year. There was cautious optimism around this rollout at the time — I think mostly owed to the feeling that any potential mass-market solution to the so-called podcast discovery problem was worth a look.
Which is all to the good, but I think we’ve yet to see much of the creative fallout that widespread listener adoption of these playlists could produce. What is essentially a business decision — using algorithmic tools to push podcasts to more users, justifying major expenditure on acquisitions and so on — could end up reshaping how podcasts are made and marketed, just as they have with music.
Analysis showed that podcast episodes got shorter in 2019, and there are non-artistic reasons we might suggest for that — including the rise of daily podcasts, algorithmic playlists, and the desire to have material selected for curated smart-speaker bulletins. You know how YouTubers keep making longer videos, especially pushing them over the ten minute mark, because then the platform lets you place more than one interstitial advert? That’s the kind of cause-and-effect we may well begin to see in the audio world, too.
—CC
The time will probably come when that last point will no longer hold true — sooner rather than later — and so the question will be where else along the stack will we see investment interest and attempts at technical innovation. Shapiro believes it will be in the marketing/listener-relationship-management end of things. Maybe, perhaps, I have no idea, but I suspect we’ll probably see a decrease in interest around enterprise-level hosting (too many players) and third-party podcast apps (see Apple vs. Spotify).
Anyway, this question shouldn’t be exclusively posed to technology within podcasting. It’s probably useful to pay attention to all sorts of investments and technology in the broader audio world that could reasonably impact podcast consumption, discovery, and creation — stuff like audio-first AR products, wearables that push the boundaries of audio-first computing, and other technical experiments that seek to expand the general listening experience. After all, the biggest changes tend to come from the places we least expect.
—NQ
(1) Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not sure we’ll see any more content-focused podcast companies backed by venture capital (à la Gimlet Media, Wondery, or WaitWhat) in the future. Not in the present iteration of the market, anyway. So what other financing models will we see bubble to the surface? Joint ventures seem to be coming into vogue (maybe it’s just Sony Music), and PodFund seems promising, but is there anything else out there? —NQ
(3) Over the past few years, the independent studio has been a pretty good model for producers looking to take control over their own fortunes…to some significant effect, I should say, given the recent acquisition of Pineapple Street by Entercom and the major investment in Neon Hum by Sony Music. Will budding podcast entrepreneurs continue to flock to this model, or has the value proposition for the independent podcast studio changed in the wake of those acquisitions? —NQ
(4) This year marks the third where the U.K.’s state-backed media watchdog Ofcom acts as the BBC’s regulator, producing a major annual report (expected in October) on how the corporation is using its public funding and whether it is meeting the required criteria for public service broadcasting. Although there was some demographic survey data about on demand audio listening in the 2019 report, the 2020 document will contain Ofcom’s first major assessment of BBC Sounds, the corporation’s new online home for all podcast and radio content, which was launched in 2018, and is a key part of the BBC’s strategy for winning back audience share among young people. —CC
(5) I spent some time last week asking various folks for podcast stuff they’re thinking about for the new year. The most common response, by far: How will the relationship between podcasts and music licensing change this year? —NQ
Headlines:
Tech memo: Triton Digital’s podcast reports. Shortly after we published the last newsletter of 2019, Triton Digital — the digital audio technology and services provider now owned by Scripps — announced that it will soon be launching public podcast reports in the United States. Powered by the company’s Podcast Metrics measurement service, those reports will provide rankings of participating U.S. networks and podcasts based on average weekly downloads and in accordance with the IAB’s technical guidelines.
The company says the reports will seek to “eliminate inconsistent measurement practices and self-reported data, providing content creators, marketers, media buyers, and the audio industry at large with validated and transparent podcast metrics for the first time.” (In the United States, that is. Triton has already been publishing similar reports in Australia and Latin America, and plans to do so for the Netherlands sometime this year.)
Participating publishers at the time of announcements include NPR, Stitcher (also owned by Scripps), Entercom, and Cumulus Media. At least a few others are expected to join before reports roll out in March.
Certainly, the introduction of the Triton ranker won’t completely solve podcasting’s knowability problem. It will have its own caveats to grapple with, some of which will be familiar — like how it will only be able to be reliably representative of participating publishers and therefore shouldn’t be taken as a comprehensive reading of the space.
But its very existence — as a second public ranker, one that derives credibility from Triton’s recognized authority in other formats like streaming audio — is already significant. It means that Podtrac will no longer be the default text on relative show size, and that further triangulation is possible now, which means our ability to tell better stories about various podcasts and networks can make a meaningful leap forward. That’s not nothing.
A few other specific points on the ranker, gleaned from a conversation I recently had with John Rosso, Triton Digital’s president of market development:
(1) Rosso tells me that the underlying goal of the Podcast Metric measurement service, which powers the rankers, is to solve two problems. The first is to “increase transparency and trustworthiness” in the analytics that inform podcast buys, and the second is to help streamline that buying process. “Advertisers still complain that podcast buying is still too fragmented,” he said.
(2) That first goal is expressed through the handling of the measurement service’s technical aspects, which assesses and validates listening data on the hosting-server side. Participating publishers would need to sign an agreement with Triton that would allow the company to implement its tracking solution directly on the platform. (It is thought that publishers would feel less wary about letting Triton into their analytics because Triton, unlike Podtrac, doesn’t have an associated direct advertising sales business.)
The big pitch for advertisers is that the tracking process happens completely “untouched by publisher’s hands,” thus eliminating the skepticism that comes when the audience data is self-reported. Triton describes its data collection approach as “census-based,” using four-week-cycle-based average weekly approach over a calendar month, meant to phase out timing-based variances.
(3) The second goal is expressed through a partnership that funnels the data from Triton’s podcast reports into Strata, a media planning and buying platform managed by FreeWheel (owned by Comcast). With that integration, agencies and advertisers using Strata — of which there are apparently over a thousand, according to this Broadcasting+Cable writeup — will be instantly exposed to podcasting as another available sales channel, in addition to their usual options like television, print, outdoor, and other digital channels.
(4) As mentioned, Triton’s rankers won’t display non-participating publishers, and for inclusion into the ranker, publishers have to subscribe to the Podcast Metric measurement service for a fee. This, of course, is Triton’s business model around this product, though Rosso tells me he doesn’t expect it to be a big moneymaker. “However, we all have a vested interest in seeing the podcast space grow,” he said, before mentioning that he does expect additional derivative products to roll out in the future that may end up being big revenue drivers for the company.
