Podcasting has grown to new heights in recent years, but that doesn’t mean everything is perfect inside the industry. In a recent story, The Hollywood Reporter asked many of the genre’s top talents what the biggest challenges and issues facing podcasting are, with many speaking candidly about their feelings.
Responses were, obviously, varied, with some talents arguing the podcast apps are not good, while others pointed to discoverability and oversaturation as some of the biggest issues facing the medium.
With those wildly different responses, we thought we’d talk to a few experts in the podcasting space to get their reactions to the points made by Ben Shapiro, Rachel Maddow, Bill Simmons, and others in The Hollywood Reporter’s story last week. Here’s what they told us.
- John Goforth: Hubbard Radio VP/GM of Podcasts
- Steven Goldstein: Amplifi Media CEO
- Rob Walch: Libsyn VP of Podcaster Relations
- John Wordock: Former Westwood One SVP and Executive Editor of Podcasts
Ben Shapiro believes the biggest challenge facing podcasting is marketing, particularly in news, where government pressure has resulted in social media platforms cutting off traffic for news shows. For brands not possessing a large budget, how do they overcome a marketing problem?
JG: By brand, I’m assuming we mean media brands (vs brand advertisers) and for them the simple answer is building community. Whether it’s a Facebook group, Discord channel, Twitter X space, or something else, establishing a place where your community can come together and have a conversation in and around your content and more is a really effective way of maintaining and growing an audience. If someone is part of the community, they’re going to engage with the content and invite other folks into the community whom they think would enjoy it.
SG: Discoverability tops the list of issues for just about every podcaster below the top 1%. It’s true on the web, streaming services and podcasting. There are roughly 400,000 active podcasts. How should a person know which ones are good? Maybe AI can help. We are seeing services like Audible amp up their own AI filtering. Early days, but we will see more effort to address Ben’s issue. More “You listened to this, you might like that.”
RW: Podcasting is a lot like the movie industry in that word-of-mouth marketing will always trump big marketing budgets. Many of the biggest shows in podcasting will sheepishly tell you they did not do anything to promote their show. They let their audience do all the promoting. Yes, having a marketing budget is great for getting word out for a new show. But if once you stop marketing the show the numbers fall off a cliff then that show was not very good to start with.
Just like with movies the big blockbusters are what they are not because of marketing spend but because the audiences told their friends and family to go consume that content. Ben Shapiro’s show is an example of this – regardless of all the deplatforming and algorithm bias towards his show in social media his show was still in the top 5 in the news category for July according to Podtrac well ahead of shows from ABC and MSNBC that have a much more favorable bias in Social media.
JW: Podcasters on limited budgets should use their listeners as evangelists for their shows. It all starts with the content so make sure you are producing the best quality possible. Your show should be top-notch, appealing, and yield a dividend for the listener. Then use your audience as messengers. Like what you heard? Then please get the word out. Word of mouth still plays a major role in discoverability. Every episode you publish should include a call to action: Please recommend this show to a friend. And let’s build this show together.
Rachel Maddow says that none of the apps for podcasting are great. We don’t just need curation and charts, we need rational organization, and a meritocratic way for the best and most relevant shows and episodes to circulate efficiently. How can that be improved?
JG: Most studies agree that YouTube is actually the largest consumption platform for podcasts. So, one could argue the problem Rachel points out has already been solved, just not in podcast endemic apps. YouTube ultimately has the same core challenge, there are no gatekeepers for UGC. They solved it with good search and an insanely smart recommendation algorithm. You can go down the rabbit hole of the algorithms’ negatives, but in terms of “relevant shows and episodes circulating efficiently”, I would argue the YouTube playbook of great search and recommendation is the answer.
SG: All of the apps have issues, and in some ways it is much the same as TV streaming apps – there is so much content and people are exhausted finding what they want. And another thing, we used to think people chose a single apps for all of their podcast listening and now, especially with younger demos, we know they have great dexterity and move from app to app. YouTube has rocketed to the top and is a giant content search engine.
RW: Apple already uses a meritocratic method for featuring shows in top charts and in search results. I doubt highly Rachel has any understanding on how Apple Podcasts works. Apple has done a great job in helping shows get a chance to be seen. The algorithms they use rewards new shows and existing popular shows. If you are a show old or new that starts to get a following you will move up in the charts. And if you are a show that has been around a long time and had many people follow your show over time you will get better placement in search results.
Apple definitely rewards those that get an audience but they still allow for new shows building an audience to be seen right next to more established shows. Apple has implemented a very thoughtful and fair system for both new and existing shows that is focused on the listener being able to discover great content regardless if it is from a big-name network or from an independent podcaster.
JW: Don’t discount the charts. They are, in many ways, serving as the best way to find the hottest and most relevant shows right now. As I tell show creators, Apple and Spotify are giving you free advertising with their charts. So use their links, QR codes, audio players, and other marketing tools they provide. Play to their ecosystems. And find a way to bust onto those charts.
Apple Podcasts has also made considerable progress in improving discoverability through more categories and collections. We saw improvements under iOS17 thanks to the Search page. That’s the tab that looks like a magnifying glass on the Apple Podcasts app. At the end of the day, podcasters should practice sound publishing habits. Is your show really in the right category? Are you using subcategories properly? Are your episode titles strong, timely and eye-catching?
And get ready for more improvements under iOS18. Apple is rolling out the ability for listeners to highlight parts of transcripts and then share audio clips with friends. It’s a pretty cool feature that I’m testing in beta. All iOS users should get into the habit of sharing audio clips with family and friends. “Hey Mom, here’s a clip from my podcast.”
Bill Simmons points out the issue of oversaturation, which has a negative effect on advertising. Should platforms that feature podcasts have requirements for being featured on audio platforms or expectations that determine whether a show, brand or network can remain visible? For example, if a show doesn’t hit a certain number of listens or downloads, should it still be accessible on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart, etc.?
JG: Absolutely not. The wonderful thing about our industry is the lack of gatekeepers. The amount of choice isn’t the problem, it’s how we buy, sell, and serve the advertising. Done well, there isn’t a more valuable channel. Done poorly, well we all know where that leads. But as to how to solve for the perceived problem, I look at YouTube again. Depending on who you ask there are anywhere from 30-50 million channels on YouTube. Think of those similar to RSS feeds in that it’s a specific creator posting to a specific channel that is subscribed to by some number of people. That’s 10x or more the number of active RSS feeds.
Yet YouTube as a platform doesn’t gatekeep creators (though they certainly gatekeep on the advertising side, but that’s a separate conversation). They simply establish a base threshold for monetization for the creators. If we were to put up some sort of minimum for shows to be available on any given platform, how would new creators even reach that goal if they’re de-platformed from day 1? The amount of choice doesn’t harm advertisers, people buying and selling bad campaigns does.
SG: That would assume all podcasts are focused on box office. There are thousands of niche podcasts focused on specific areas that draw an audience in their speciality whether it be woodworking, real estate or sky diving. We work with an insurance company that makes a podcast just for chiropractors. All of this should be available.
RW: This is a very advertising-centric look at things. Most podcasts do not take advertising nor do they want to. The whole reason podcasting took off to start with was the ability narrowcasting to be practical. Shows about pig breeding or beekeeping or a minor league single-A baseball team are never going to be huge but they a very important to the hosts and their listeners.
To suggest there are too many podcasts – shows a lack of understanding of what podcasting is and also how many are really active. Sure there are 2.7 Million podcasts listed in Apple Podcasts – but only around 370,000 have 10 or more episodes and have released something in the last 90 days. 370k is far smaller than the 100’s of millions of blogs out there, the whole argument podcasting is too crowded is just not accurate.
Podcasting is not over saturated and advertisers don’t have an issue with this as they are being presented just the top 1 to 2% of shows for ad campaigns not the full catalog. Ad networks like LibsynAds work with Advertisers to make this an easy medium to buy into.
JW: The number one challenge right now is discoverability, hands down. Spotify just said it has over six million podcasts. That’s an enormous forest with awfully dense tree cover. But how many of those podcasts are still active? How many shows have published new episodes in the last month or in the last year? I would love to have an industry-wide discussion about retiring inactive shows. A supermarket doesn’t let bread sit on the shelf and rot for a year. So should podcast apps discard old and moldy shows after a certain amount of time? It’s worth a serious discussion.
Discoverability and navigating the transformation of an industry borne out of radio as it grows and converges with video, social media platforms, and the creator economy were also mentioned in the THR piece. How can the industry address these areas of concern?
JG: The key to navigating this ever-evolving landscape is to evolve with it. If in 2024, we’re still talking about “the definition of a podcast”, we’re missing the point. People consume the influencers, media brands, and personalities they want – regardless of the platform. I like Colin Cowherd. Maybe I catch part of his show on FS1 at lunch or maybe I’m busy and I stream it at my desk. Maybe I’m in a meeting and I listen to the podcast later that afternoon. Maybe I miss all of that, but I get 2 minutes of one of his takes from the day on TikTok.
The point is I’m not making platform decisions as a fan, I’m making a personality decision and using the channel most convenient to me at that moment. We, as an industry, should go to where the fan is rather than trying to force them to come to us.
SG: Audiences are on the move. Technology is getting better at a remarkable rate for a nascent business. Just a few years ago all one heard were baked-in ads for mattresses and now there is greater and evolving sophistication with measurement and ad serving.
Like any other business, it evolves. Netscape was great, then it was gone. I teach The Business of Podcasting at NYU and students talk about “watching a podcast.” That’s how fast things have changed.
RW: Podcasting is definitely not borne out of Radio. The vast majority of shows have nothing to do with Radio. Yes there are a small vocal percentage that come out to the radio world. But the biggest shows like Joe Rogan, Lore, WTF with Marc Maron, Viall Files, Joe Budden…have zero connection to radio. 98% of podcasts are not connected to radio.
The radio industry needs to realize Podcasting is not an extension of Radio – it is its own medium that is open and free for anyone including radio to partake in. There are no gatekeepers in Podcasting which means the shows listed next to you in Apple Podcasts are much more likely to be an indie podcaster working out of a basement or garage then a fellow Radio personality in a studio.
JW: Don’t fear YouTube and other video opportunities. YouTube is a massive search engine that has the potential to reshape the podcast industry for years to come. So learn to put this huge bullhorn to good use. You’re not making movies. You’re not making TV shows. But you should create memorable video clips that are timely and promote your podcast in a clever, seductive way. Got a smartphone? Then you have the ability to create video quickly and inexpensively, and without a Hollywood budget.
Any final thoughts that we haven’t covered?
JG: I think there’s a key point that was missed in the article when it comes to “biggest challenges facing the industry”. Unlocking local ad revenue. The IAB projects podcast ad revenue to be over $2b in 2024. Terrestrial radio is projected to be 5x or more of that depending on who you ask. A vast majority of which is generated on the local level.
Now I’m not talking about local reps selling national shows, that’s already happening to one extent or another depending on the company. But I’m talking about local and regional content, sold locally and regionally. That’s the backbone of the radio industry and if the podcast industry wants to play in the same ballpark, we’re going to have to unlock it as well.
