Podcast Are Mainstream - Now What?

While there’s been a small and super engaged group of podcast fans for years now — thanks to the likes of Leo LaPorte, Adam Carolla and Bill Simmons — podcasts didn’t really hit the mainstream until 2014 (thanks Serial). A quick look at Google Trends for the search term “podcast” shows that interest is the highest it’s been since 2007, and almost double what it was at this time last year:

But there’s so much room for podcasts to get better — and that has nothing to do with the quality of the content that is being produced. After working on a podcast of my own for the last few months, here are a few thoughts on the future podcasts and how they can improve.

Over time, platform becomes irrelevant

Apple software currently makes up about 65 percent of all podcast downloads according to Libsyn. That’s important to know, but in reality, I don’t really care where or how people listen, as long as they’re listening.

Plus as a publisher, I get no data from Apple. I would rather push people to my website where I can provide them with a variety of options to listen (iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, etc.) and actually be able to understand who they are and where they came from with tools like Google Analytics.

Also, I think the terms download, stream, play and listen should all be used interchangeably. The days of having to download something in order to listen are over. In many cases, it’s easiest for someone to just go directly to my site and hit play. Who cares if the file was actually downloaded?

Opportunities outside of iTunes

The platform that’s currently in the best position to move the needle on the shift away from iTunes is SoundCloud.

They make it really easy to browse before subscribing and they do a much better job of brining social into the equation, but there are two things in particular that really make the experience better than iTunes.

First, their audio player looks great and is super easy to embed anywhere. Two of the biggest brands in podcasting right now (StartUp and Grantland) are already taking advantage of this and using SoundCloud’s player on their own websites.

Second, when you share a link from SoundCloud on Twitter, people are able to play it with one click from their Twitter stream. For comparison, here’s the difference between sharing a link to iTunes and to SoundCloud on Twitter (not to mention that there’s no way to link to an individual episode from iTunes):

Traditional media should take advantage of the format

The main reason that podcasts have become so popular is because of the format: it’s on-demand audio. As a publisher, audio gives you the opportunity to capture attention in so many other places that TV, radio and print don’t. You can listen to a podcast in the car, on the T, at the gym and going for a run.

There’s a huge opportunity for traditional media with podcasts. A great example of this is Felger and Massarotti, a sports radio program here in Boston. They’re on air weekdays from 2–6PM and have, like most radio stations, published the full audio of their show in one hour chunks to iTunes. But recently, they started chopping up those big chunks of content into smaller, more digestable sections and putting them out as podcasts whenever they had a an interesting topic or big name guest. Now instead of having to listen to hours of content, I can easily find the 8–12 minute chunks that are often the highlights of the show. As a result, I can keep up with the program without actually having to tune in from 2–6 everyday.

Improved sharing for publishers and consumers

In today’s world, sharing is essential to the success of any medium. Right now, sharing a podcast just plain sucks.

As a publisher, one of your main goals is to get people to subscribe to your podcast because if people are subscribed, they will automatically get a push notification when a new episode is released. iTunes makes this really hard for you. There’s no way to deep link to the subscribe button. Instead, your favorite podcast host has to tell you “go to iTunes, search for the podcast and then in the top right, click subscribe!” and people have to put a CTA on their site that says “subscribe on iTunes” but it really just opens iTunes on your phone or your browser. You still have to hope people make that additional click and hit subscribe. I bet Apple could double podcast subscriptions just by letting pubslishers link directly to the subscribe button.

As a consumer, if I am listening to a podcast and there’s a great nugget or quote, I want to tweet it. But that’s really freaking hard. I would need to remember the quote, look up the person’s Twitter handle and then somehow try and share all of that while finding the link to the podcast (which again, you can’t link to a specific episode in iTunes).

There should be a way for publishers to pick 2–3 times during the podcast where there’s a notable nugget and send a push notification to the listener with all of the information they need (Twitter handle, time-stamp, etc.) to share that piece of information.

Medium and Pocket are two great examples of services that make it super easy for people to share — all you have to do is highlight the line of text that was interesting and you can tweet it. I wish there was an equivalent of that for audio (or at least the ability to share a specific nugget inside of a podcast).

Better tools and data for publishers

Podcasts present a great opportunity for advertisers because the content/theme is often very niche. Advertisers have the ability to reach a very specific group of people. Most podcasters currently sell three types ads: ads that they read in the intro, middle, and end of their podcast. But no one knows how long people are actually listening. That would be incredible data for publishers to get their hands on — and not just for advertisers, but for creating better content (what if you knew that 75% of listeners on a particular episode dropped off after 10 minutes in?)

Stop listening to the podcast experts

Just like any other new trend (think of social media marketing) there’a always a group of “gurus” and “experts” that pop up and tell you there’s a certain way to do things — and that’s only going to grow with the popularity of podcasts. Don’t get caught up in what the so-called experts are saying (especially since most of them are writing things based on what was true 5 years ago when podcasts were relatively new). There’s no right or wrong way to create a podcast. As long as people are listening and your audience keeps growing, you are doing something right.