My six-month dive into podcasting’s very chaotic 12 months

That is Sizzling Pod, The Verge’s publication about podcasting and the audio trade. Join here for extra.

Effectively, this can be a bizarre electronic mail to write down — at this time is technically my final day at Sizzling Pod. However you’ll nonetheless see my byline round infrequently as a result of I’m becoming a member of The Verge’s information group in November. Beginning subsequent week, the publication will solely be again within the very succesful arms of lead Sizzling Pod reporter Ariel Shapiro. Though I’m unhappy to go away, I’m additionally actually excited to see her take the reins once more and proceed to churn out the protection that Sizzling Pod is understood for. 

It’s most likely not a shock to most of you that I knew little or no about podcasts earlier than taking this job again in April — a time that additionally coincided with some seismic modifications within the podcast trade itself. Though my background is in tech reporting, I’m usually recognized for writing tales like this and tales like this. Weirdly sufficient, I additionally covered Spotify’s acquisition of Podsights and Chartable means again in 2019 for Engadget — a narrative that I’ve no reminiscence of really writing. I discovered a ton in a brief time frame by counting on the work of my Sizzling Pod predecessors, which embody Ariel, Ashley Carman, and Nicholas Quah — in addition to the assistance of my editor, Jake Kastrenakes. However I additionally relied on the information and experience of quite a few Sizzling Pod readers. So thanks on your assist over these previous a number of months — in addition to trusting me to inform your tales. 

A few individuals at Podcast Motion famous that the entire Sizzling Pod writers have had very distinct types. Clearly, we’re all completely different individuals — however all of us took over throughout very distinct intervals for the trade at giant. In my opinion, Nicholas and Ashley lined the guarantees and failed hopes of the “golden” period of podcasting and the push of dumb cash that made it potential. For me and Ariel, our problem appears to be easy methods to doc an trade that’s in the course of a contraction — but additionally determining easy methods to survive and reinvent itself. 

Through the time I used to be in command of Sizzling Pod, Spotify laid off a whole lot and successfully killed its in-house podcast manufacturing items, Gimlet and Parcast. It appeared like each entity, from public radio to news publishers, made cuts to their podcast items. Corporations folded, and left their creators hanging. The movie trade successfully went on hiatus this summer time as each the unions for screenwriters and actors went on strike, which, residing in Los Angeles, I noticed firsthand. The lack of Hollywood advert {dollars} led to actual penalties for public radio — each WNYC’s president LaFontaine Oliver and former Southern California Public Radio chief Herb Scannell cited it as a consider layoffs. A couple of celebrities misplaced podcast deals — but it surely looks like each day, a brand new well-known individual will get a podcast. 

To that finish, it’s nonetheless a thriller to me why hottest podcasts received that means. I don’t know why Joe Rogan’s weekly drop of three hours of unedited babble is all the time one of many high podcasts within the nation. I don’t know why so many individuals like Morbid or Alex Cooper. Once I take a look at the highest podcast charts, I see a mixture of disposable true crime, information podcasts from main media retailers like NPR or The New York Instances, and buzzworthy celebrity-led efforts like Strike Pressure 5 or SmartLess or that one hosted by Taylor Swift’s boyfriend and his brother. However whereas the titles which have extensive attraction could also be a thriller to me, they clearly resonate with others.

I used to be heartened to see Heavyweight, a former Gimlet podcast hosted by Jonathan Goldstein and now made by Spotify Studios, do effectively now that it’s accessible broadly on all gamers — it presently ranks quantity 36 on Apple Podcasts. Nevertheless it was additionally type of stunning, on condition that many interpreted Spotify letting go of Gimlet and Parcast as an indication that narrative podcasts had been over. I’m positive Goldstein’s ties to the early days of Gimlet and This American Life little doubt performs a consider its success. 

However on the finish of the day, I do assume individuals nonetheless have an urge for food for good tales. It’s simple to neglect that, I suppose, throughout an age the place “all the pieces is content material” and virality is the important thing to survival. The variety of views or streams on a video or information article or a publish typically looks like the one factor that issues. Whereas algorithms may be tweaked — I do assume sure ideas are timeless. 

Can audio-only podcasts really thrive on YouTube? Regardless of an ongoing effort by YouTube to cater to conventional podcasters this 12 months, the reply to that query remains to be unsure — and YouTube’s idiosyncratic method to advertisements and RSS stays the large motive why. 

Google sundown Google Podcasts this 12 months and introduced plans for these customers emigrate to YouTube Music, which is able to successfully double as each a video platform and a traditional audio podcast participant by including RSS assist later this 12 months. Many standard conventional podcasts have already made the transition to YouTube and YouTube Music, with very combined outcomes. 

Rob Walch, vp of podcaster relations at Libsyn, advised Sizzling Pod that he considered a webinar on Thursday that YouTube Music hosted for podcasters. He stated that because the webinar progressed, a Slack channel he was part of for podcasters “stuffed with expletives.” The general response was very adverse.

“Nobody I talked to goes to advocate [YouTube Music] to podcasters,” stated Walch. 

A sizeable dilemma for audio-only podcasts is how YouTube will deal with their advertisements. Neither YouTube nor YouTube Music permits dynamically inserted advert spots. YouTube’s phrases of service explicitly state that podcast content material can’t contain ad formats that compete with YouTube’s personal. Technically, there’s an exception that applies for host-read advertisements or baked-in advertisements — podcasters can disclose them by checking the paid promotions field. However even when podcasters are capable of preserve their unique advertisements, YouTube will still run its own ads in opposition to the movies, splitting income with the creator, slightly than the dynamic ones a podcaster might want served and that might pay out solely to themselves.

“No person will settle for advertisements on their content material that they haven’t any management over,” stated Walch. 

It’s not a shock to many within the podcast trade that “placing your podcasts on YouTube” is tougher than it sounds. “It’s all the time been a bit unusual to me that folks perceive that video-only platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok work in basically other ways, and that content material between them will not be interchangeable, however nonetheless count on podcasts to routinely work on YouTube,” famous Bikram Chatterji, CEO of Most Enjoyable in an electronic mail to Sizzling Pod. Max Enjoyable has experimented with placing a few of its podcasts like FANTI on YouTube however notes that YouTube’s observe of inserting its personal advertisements “might be an issue” for them on YouTube Music. 

There’s a rising sentiment within the podcast world that YouTube’s podcast imaginative and prescient is (maybe unsurprisingly) designed for video-first content material creators. The corporate’s messaging doesn’t jibe with the day-to-day actuality of most individuals who make audio-only podcasts, in addition to the quite a few internet hosting, distribution, and monetization providers that type the standard podcast ecosystem in place for many years. Surveys from Edison Research and others that concluded that YouTube was the primary platform for listening to podcasts didn’t seize what sort of podcasts these individuals had been listening to.

Sizzling Pod reached out to various completely different podcasts and podcast networks to see what their plans had been for YouTube Music. Some nonetheless plan on making their podcasts accessible on YouTube and YouTube Music, if just for discovery functions. Others are taking a “wait and see” method for now. 

“We now have requested for more information, and gotten little or no so removed from our YouTube rep,” wrote The Vergecast’s supervising producer, Liam James, to Sizzling Pod in a Slack message.

The Vergecast solely makes use of YouTube’s advertisements for now — however desires to finally bake advertisements into its movies. The podcast solely began publishing on YouTube at first of the 12 months. “Proper now we make peanuts on YouTube. It’s a loss for us total however we’re it as an funding,” wrote James. 

Betches Media plans to place its audio-only podcasts on YouTube Music when it rolls out RSS ingestion. “We see any new distribution platform as a possibility to achieve new audiences, however as YouTube’s technique turns into clearer, we’ll proceed to guage and see what is true for Betches and our podcast community,” wrote David Spiegel, chief income officer of Betches Media, in an electronic mail. Betches presently depends on YouTube to run pre- and mid-roll advertisements. 

“Whereas YouTube’s determination to not permit podcasters to monetize their advertisements immediately isn’t what we’d choose, it isn’t stunning in any respect, on the finish of the day, proscribing podcaster’s capability to monetize will have an effect on their curiosity in selling the platform,” famous Spiegel. 

However the challenges with YouTube Music and RSS ingestion — in addition to YouTube and podcasts extra broadly — transcend simply advertisements. 

“YouTube makes use of a distinct language than us,” Bryan Barletta, the founding father of podcast analysis group Sounds Worthwhile, advised Sizzling Pod. 

One instance: when YouTube talks about podcasts on YouTube, what it’s speaking about is a cached video that’s audio-first that may have a full video element or static video. And even when YouTube provides RSS assist, it gained’t work as a standard podcast participant. “They’re pulling out of your RSS feed, caching it, so it’s one name from YouTube and that’s it,” stated Barletta. 

If a podcaster desires to vary the audio after an episode is revealed, they solely must replace the audio file on their internet hosting platform — which routinely carries over to all podcast gamers. Besides, it seems, for YouTube. Podcasters must manually update the audio on YouTube Studio. 

Listener stats are one other challenge with YouTube podcasts. In a video titled “Why YouTube Music ingesting podcast RSS feeds might be an enormous mess,” Justin Jackson, the co-founder of internet hosting platform Transister.fm, highlights a few of these issues. Every time a listener presses play in a podcast participant like Spotify or Overcast or Apple Podcasts, it requests the RSS feed from a internet hosting platform. Internet hosting platforms, due to this fact, maintain a ton of information on who listeners are and the place they’re coming from. However YouTube is doing one thing very completely different from different podcast gamers in that it’ll actually host the audio — as a substitute of redirecting listeners to the internet hosting platform. 

This additionally means internet hosting platforms gained’t be capable of entry any of a podcast’s YouTube listener stats. Whereas it’s true which you could see listener stats on YouTube Studio, the info provided by internet hosting platforms is far more detailed. 

“It will make it tougher for podcasters to research the place their listeners are coming from, which episodes are hottest, and the way episodes carry out over time,” wrote Jackson in an electronic mail. 

Jon Stewart and Apple are reportedly parting ways over artistic variations, together with the host’s intention to cowl subjects resembling AI and China. I’ll be curious to see what occurs with the podcast, contemplating it carried out so a lot better than the TV present. 

Talking of former Every day Present hosts, Trevor Noah’s podcast on Spotify is set to launch on November 9. The present, which is hosted and distributed by Megaphone, will likely be launched throughout podcast platforms as a part of Spotify’s shift away from exclusivity.

Audioboom remains to be making offers, saying yesterday that it has signed exclusive partnerships with Ladies Subsequent Stage, The Bulwark Podcast, We’re Right here to Assist, and Out of the Pods.

On October 26, Serial will debut The Kids of Rutherford County, a brand new investigative podcast that examines how a juvenile court docket in Tennessee abused its energy. The present was produced in partnership with ProPublica and WPLN Nashville Public Radio, and is hosted by WPLN reporter Meribah Knight.

Suge Knight is making a podcast from jail, and in line with TMZ, it’s all about personal beef. 

Triton launched its September podcast ranking, with Dateline NBC ranked primary. Two caveats to the rating, which is that NPR is excluded briefly due to a knowledge migration. The second is that it additionally doesn’t embody Spotify podcasts, so Joe Rogan (the true primary) will not be on there.

Spotify reviews earnings on October 24, and will likely be adopted by Cumulus Media on October 27 and SiriusXM on October 31 (spooky!).