Welcome to The Podcast News, a weekly recap of the latest & greatest podcast news and helpful tutorials curated specifically for podcast producers. My name is Aaron Dowd.

Here are the most interesting news articles and tutorials for the third week of December, 2019.

1

Beyond Download Numbers: 3 Ways Your Organization Can Measure Podcast Growth

From Jenna Spinelle on PodcastMovement.com:

There’s More to Life than Downloads

It can feel depressing to refresh your analytics dashboard and not see the gains you were hoping for. Instead of asking the question that every podcaster seems to these days — about how you can grow your audience — focus on how you can use the podcast as a stepping stone to grow in other ways.

At the end of the day, your podcast is a unique way to communicate your mission, vision, and values to an audience who actively wants to hear it.

As your influence and connections grow, your downloads might just follow suit. Even if they don’t, you can feel confident knowing that your organization is making an impact in its respective field.

Too many people are still looking to download numbers as a way to determine if they're doing a good job with their podcast.

Some of the excellent takeaways from this article:

Simply put, a podcast gives you a reason for reaching out to people you would have no business connecting with otherwise.

Establishing a relationship through a podcast can lead to future collaboration opportunities down the road.

In the words of Jay Acunzo at Marketing Showrunners, good marketing isn’t about grabbing someone’s attention, it’s about holding it. And a podcast is the perfect way to hold that attention, as long as you pick a release schedule and stick to it.

I’ve had listeners tell me that they look forward to starting their Monday morning commute with my cohosts and I (our show publishes around 5 a.m. ET on Mondays). That level of dedication and quality of engagement is something that no amount of advertising dollars can cultivate. It’s difficult — if not downright impossible — to achieve through a newsletter, webinar, or other medium.

You don’t need to gain a lot of attention for this to be worthwhile. I would rather have 100 consistent listeners who love what we do than 10,000 who might see our organization in a traditional advertising channel and forget about us the next minute.

The quality of engagement from a podcast is way higher than a newsletter, webinar, or other form of media. Your listeners are letting you into their ears during their commute, workout, household chores, or other parts of their lives. Even if it’s only a small number, the connections you make will be far deeper.

A podcast gives you a platform to speak to your constituents, as well as anyone else in the world who is interested in what you do. Other types of media do this, too, but a podcast strikes the right balance of connecting with the listener (you’re coming directly into their ears) and relative ease of production.

I put this article in the #1 spot for this week's episode because this is a shift in mindset that so many people making podcasts need right now.

We need to stop using download numbers as the main indicator of success or failure.

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2

Are Podcasts Threatening the Growth of the Music Industry?

From Tim Ingham on RollingStone.com:

It’s been a comfortable year for the major record companies – but alarm bells may be starting to ring in the distance.

Rolling Stone first reported in October that streaming revenue growth is slowing down this year at the world’s biggest music rights company, Universal Music Group. Now, further number crunching on Music Business Worldwide shows that the same trend is true, collectively, across all three major record companies.

Spotify founder Daniel Ek let slip on an earnings call in February that Spotify believes podcasts can help it “shift [our] cost base from variable to fixed.”

In less investor-y speak, that simply means: When people play music on our service, we have to pay out royalties; when people play podcasts on our service, we do not. So the more that people play podcasts instead of music, the more money we’ll ultimately retain.

A lot of podcasters are giving away their hard work for free. I don't see a clear solution for this yet, but it's something we should be paying attention to and thinking about.

I hope that we'll see continued investments in tools that help listeners and fans pay the producers directly (Substack and Patreon are good examples that come to mind), and I think we're going to continue seeing larger aggregators like Spotify and Apple paying producers directly and then monetizing those shows through paid subscriptions and ads.

To the question of podcasts threatening the growth of the music industry: All forms of media are locked in an epic struggle for attention and funding. Many of us have access to everything through our phones and larger screens: Music, movies, podcasts, books, audiobooks, tv shows, YouTube channels, etc. It's not just podcasts versus music, it's everything versus everything. The attention and money will go to the best of the best.

While we (podcast producers) are competing with everyone and everything for attention, you also have to remember that many people are looking for niche shows too. Sure, lots of people love the Star Wars TV show from Disney, but there are also lots of people looking for shows from independent producers.

It's both a challenging and a great time to be a podcast producer, is what I'm trying to say. Both music and podcasts will continue to exist and be hugely important for many people.

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3

How public radio can build on its hidden strengths to solve podcasting’s biggest challenges

From Eric Nuzum, Co-Founder of Magnificent Noise, on current.org:

Everything is just booming and perfect in podcasting, right?

Audience and downloads for many leading podcasts and networks have grown 25–50% this year — again. The infusion of capital into the industry hit record highs. With creators entering the space every week, new exciting content is emerging. These are all great signs for the medium, aren’t they?

Well, kinda.

Things are certainly exciting and evolving quickly. But podcasting, as an industry, is starting to recognize and address some new emerging systemic problems that will become growing concerns over the next few years — problems that public radio has been working on with a decades-long head start. And public radio has a unique opportunity to lead, innovate and win — if it wants to.

Here are three key areas to focus on:

1. Need for diverse revenue

2. Lack of innovation in storytelling

3. Creating listener value

Eric makes a lot of compelling points in this article, and digs into why podcasters can learn a lot from the people with experience in public radio.

I like how he opens the section about the need to diversify revenue and stop relying so much on advertising dollars:

Podcasting is predicted to generate more than $650 million in advertising revenue this year, which is a staggering nearly 20-fold increase from when people started to track ad sales about six years ago. Some view this as thrilling; others grumble and compare it to radio’s nearly $19 billion in revenue. Regardless of how you see it, with this rapid growth the podcasting industry has become too reliant on advertising revenue.

Actually, I’m concerned that podcasting has become too reliant on one source of revenue. In addition to being foolishly imprudent, over-dependence on one source of revenue also creates a risk-averse culture of sameness and an artificial ceiling for ambition.

I love this paragraph from the 3rd section about creating value for the listener:

Many podcasters continue to believe the pathway to success is the act of doing the podcast, rather than making something of value. Ask every successful podcaster and they will tell you that their success doesn’t lie in the work itself, but in the community that grew around it. Successful podcasts become the hub of a community of people. They’re connected not only by the act of listening, but because they care about a certain issue, subject or perspective.

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Notable Mentions:

Why the Internet Is Worth Fighting For

From Lee Schneider, Podcast Producer at FutureX Podcast Network, on ThriveGlobal.com:

Jonah Peretti, CEO at BuzzFeed, said, “I know it’s popular to quit social media or say the internet is terrible, but we can’t give up. We have to keep fighting to make a great internet.”

It’s hard to create good content. We need to create models to help the good content survive. This requires utopian thinking, the kind of thinking that got the internet invented. The original intent of the web was to enable government, scientific, and military communication. The creators and early users were an oddball mix of freewheeling hippie programmers, digital philosophers, and government folk who wanted to be sure their research money was being spent well.

That money ended up funding civilization’s most powerful communications network, a network that had, and still has, the potential to include everyone. If only we would behave ourselves.

I like the optimism in this article. The internet is an incredibly powerful thing, but I don't think we had any way to prepare for what it would enable and allow us to do. A lot of people are under-educated about it and overwhelmed by the internet, and don't know how to use it to the best of its potential or protect themselves while they do.

It's a big problem to tackle for sure, but hey, we sent a man to the moon 50 years ago. I think we can figure this one out too.

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Podcasting’s Crystal Ball With Jack Rhysider

Podcast Business Journal has this Crystal Ball series where they ask podcasters questions like “How would you summarize podcasting in 2019?”.

I've been seeing love for Jack's podcast Darknet Diaries all over the internet for at least a year now, but I've been sleeping on it. I finally checked out an episode this week, and so far I'm pretty into it.

Anyways, I've seen Jack answering questions about podcasting on Reddit, and he's always got good tips and advice and observations to share, so check out this quick interview.

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Podcast Promotion: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Audience

From Matthew McClean on ThePodcastHost.com (I swear I link to this blog every single week):

Podcast promotion is something that's on the minds of many podcasters, even before they've launched their first episode.

It's true that the best way to grow an audience is to create great content. But it's rarely as simple as that. If you never do any podcast promotion, then it's unlikely your show will fulfil its true potential.

Some of the topics covered include:

• Figuring out who exactly you want to reach
• Calls to action
• Optimizing your website
• Collaborating with others
• In-person promotions
• and more

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Closing Thoughts

Well, it's almost Christmas time again, which means I have to make some time to watch Elf, Die Hard, and Bad Santa (as tradition dictates).

It's also the end of a decade, which isn't freaking me out as much as it could. Just try not to think about it too much. Let's get excited for 2020!

Just a reminder, starting in January I'll be offering a shorter version of these episodes for free, and making the full episodes available for paying supporters (which I will also be referring to as members moving forward.)

I also have some other perks planned for members, I'm thinking a live monthly recap and Q&A call on the last Saturday of every month would be cool.

You can head to thepodcastnews.substack.com to sign up to support me and this show, and there will be a 50% off discount available until the first of the year.

To the folks who have already signed up, a huge thanks from the bottom of my heart. I greatly appreciate your support and knowing that this show is valuable for you means a lot to me.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you. Just a reminder: While the next few months might be be cold and miserable, springtime and summer are not too far away. Get yourself a cozy little spot and take some time to relax if you can.

I'll probably do another episode next weekend, but it will probably be a short one.

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Have a great week, happy holidays, and happy podcasting.

Aaron Dowd

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