The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson
Inevitable by Kevin Kelly
Host: Sonal Chokshi
Guests:
Connie Chan is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Nick Quanh (@nwquah) is the creator of Hot Pod, a newsletter all about the podcast industry
Technically it’s an audio file delivered through a RSS feed
But the definition is expanding – now anytime someone records the audio of a conversation you can call it a podcast
Perhaps one day a podcast might just be thought of as a self-published audiobook
The Infinite Dial Study from Edison research just found:
Both podcast and audiobook consumption is on the rise
Podcast consumption has been increasing for quite some time, with audiobooks flat-lining until this year – perhaps the popularity of AirPods really increased the amount of people listening to them? (or maybe it was the boom in wireless speakers)
70% of Americans have heard of podcasts
More than 50% of Americans have listened to a podcast (~144 million people)
One-third of the U.S. population reported having listened to a podcast in the last month (up from 26% last year)
Among Spotify listeners between the ages of 12 and 24, 53% of those listen to at least 1 podcast per mont
The ad revenue that podcasts generate is really a small amount given how many hours people are spending consuming this kind of content
“From the advertising standpoint, it’s still really hard to measure the ROI of sponsoring a podcast” – Connie
Let’s expand – Podcast advertisers currently pay per guaranteed download
This is fine for “direct response advertisers” who give out promo codes
But for brand advertisers who need to form an impression on the consumer over a long period of time, the current analytics aren’t sufficient
“We’re in such baby phases of how podcasters should be able to monetize. They shouldn’t be having to ask their listeners to go to other sites (like Patreon) to pay them.” – Connie
Instead – it should all be done in the same app
Things like Patreon and direct revenue pathways need to be brought straight to the listening point
Future monetization strategies:
Some platforms may roll out subscriptions
Other platforms may specialize in allowing people to pay for certain bundles of content
Something like this may allow creators to specialize, and shift their focus away from a mainstream audience to a niche audience
Perhaps you’re able to pay within the podcast app to unlock exclusive audio segments from the creator
Tipping:
What if it was possible to tip a creator within the podcast app?
Nearly every time you’re listening to a podcast, you’re doing it on an internet-enabled device
Think of all the possible interactive features you could build just knowing this
“Right now, there’s very little interaction with a podcast which I think is such a shame” – Connie
“I would love a world where in the future you’ll know which parts of the podcast the audience liked the most” – Connie
This is currently a huge problem – creators have no idea which segments are a listener’s favorite
Imagine a podcast platform rolling out a new feature, instructing the listener to just tap the screen if they like a certain part
Someone should create a platform that aggregates the best audio clips from all the top podcast episodes
Overcast just enabled the sharing of short audio clips (made by the listener)
“One of the biggest limitations in podcasting is the lack of a screenshot equivalent” – Sonal
“There’s nothing that moves books the way podcasts do” – Sonal
“The same way that QVC is a great way to sell physical stuff, a podcast is a great way to sell written content” – Connie
“It’s crazy to me that podcasts don’t have context built into them…it’s crazy to me there isn’t a weblink ecosystem for podcasting out right now” – Sonal
Show notes should be interactive – as you’re listening to an episode, the relevant books/reading materials should present themselves and you can then click on them if you choose
Another reason this might matter:
People have different commute times – if they have a 20 minute commute, they might prefer to listen to a 20-minute podcast/segment rather than something 30 minutes in length
It just serves a natural stop off point
Podcasts are great in long form, but what if you prefer to consume short clips while you’re waiting in line at the store
Connie adds that in order to incorporate a feature like this, you’d need really good discovery tools to increase the likelihood that the listener lands on a clip they’ll actually listen to
“This is not cutting edge science or technology that doesn’t exist yet, it’s just that a platform hasn’t put all these things in place” – Connie
New startups and new platforms need to experiment with how people engage with podcasts
“I think it’s a given that everyone would prefer to have no ads in their podcast. It’s up to all the platforms to figure out how to create the tools so creators can still make money, and make better money than what they’re making now. I actually think podcast creators are vastly underpaid.” – Connie
It’s not all about the money, we need better ways for creators to see who their real fans are:
“Right now it’s a one way conversation. Why can’t the platforms that allow you to listen to podcasts allow you to record a quick message back to the creator and then use algorithms to figure out which comments are valuable or not?”
A few months ago, Spotify acquired Gimlet – why?
They’re pulling their business model away from being completely tethered to the music industry
For the longest time, Apple has been the primary distributor of podcasts (upwards of 80% of them)
But now, their share has dropped to ~60-75%
The main players:
Sticher Premium
Luminary – they’re trying to be the Netflix of podcasts
“To do so is going to be difficult because they’re trying to build a private catalog of things that you could argue has free alternatives almost everywhere else”
Some history – 60db tried to be the Netflix of podcasts before they were acquired by Google
There are 3 types of shows:
“Cult of Personality based shows”
Ex. – The Tim Ferriss Show
Brands/Voices of Groups of People
Ex. – The a16z Podcast
Highly-Produced/Serialized Narrative Shows
Ex. – To Live and Die in LA
We need better ways of discovering and searching for podcast episodes by topic
Right now, we can only search for specific shows
We should be able to search for a specific topic (like real estate) and find every single podcast episode related to it
Note – Google is working on something related to this by transcribing pretty much every podcast episode in existence and indexing them all within their search engine
What does this mean? – You’d be able to search for something like “oura ring” and see which specific podcast episodes it was mentioned in
Know where you are in the taxonomy of shows
Attention is scarce – you HAVE to differentiate
The number one way to get a lot of listeners is to release a lot of episodes
Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in Descript
Connie and Nick are both proponents of podcasters releasing their episodes in seasons (just like a TV show does)
Food for thought: What if the advertising model for podcasts was flipped, and listeners got paid for their attention?
One reason ads work so well on podcasts is that they come from the voice of the creator rather than the brand (or some other random voice)