"The experiment of a paid subscription didn't work. Do I think we're going there at some point in the future? Maybe five years, maybe 10 years? I agree with that, but we were early."
The next two years will almost certainly bring another seismic change. It could be technological, it could be cultural, and it could come from outside the podcast industry entirely.
"This consolidation reflects a broader shift happening in the industry: the move away from high-cost, narrative-first podcasting toward more scalable, monetizable, and creator-driven formats."
"Podcasting is the most versatile medium, and I think more and more we're learning that the same people will dip back and forth between audio and video versions of their favorite shows. And I think that's a message that we haven't really talked about in podcasting."
"I think one of things we have to unlock in this business is continuing to make it easy, and frictionless, and risk free to buy the smaller shows at scale with the kind of targeting that podcasting enables."
"To see what it's grown into now, it's outstanding. There's a need for the industry for it to have become this. I credit the entire BSM team and Jason [Barrett] for growing it to what it is now. The results every year get bigger and bigger."