a16z Podcast: A Podcast About Podcasting

0:00:04 >> Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6NZ Podcast. I’m Sonal.
0:00:06 So I’m super-duper excited today,
0:00:07 even way more than usual,
0:00:10 because this episode is all about podcasting.
0:00:12 For newer listeners, we actually did an episode
0:00:15 called “A Podcast About Podcasts” about four years ago,
0:00:18 which you can find on our website, A6NZ.com.
0:00:21 But today, we’re focusing this podcast about podcasting,
0:00:23 since the podcasting ecosystem has
0:00:25 evolved and changed quite a bit since then.
0:00:26 By the way, I had hoped that Roman Mars,
0:00:27 who was on that episode,
0:00:29 would join us again, but he lost his voice,
0:00:30 so couldn’t.
0:00:33 Our special guest today is Nick Kwa, who writes “Hot Pod,”
0:00:35 a newsletter that I’ve been following since very early on
0:00:37 and has grown to be a go-to source
0:00:39 all about the podcasting industry,
0:00:41 with analysis insights and more.
0:00:45 He also publishes and contributes to Vulture on similar topics.
0:00:46 Also joining us for this episode
0:00:49 is A6NZ General Partner Connie Chan,
0:00:51 who covers consumer, the future of media,
0:00:54 and Gen Z social, as well as trends from China,
0:00:56 and has observed the podcasting phenomenon there
0:00:59 and shares ideas on what more platforms can do here,
0:01:01 and the three of us do a hallway-style jam,
0:01:04 taking a longer pulse check on where we are right now
0:01:06 in the podcasting industry.
0:01:08 Speaking of, since we do mention some companies,
0:01:09 please note that the content here
0:01:11 is for informational purposes only,
0:01:14 should not be taken as legal business tax
0:01:15 or investment advice,
0:01:18 or be used to evaluate any investment or security,
0:01:20 and is not directed at any investors
0:01:23 or potential investors in any A6NZ fund.
0:01:27 For more details, please also see a6nz.com/disclosures.
0:01:29 So we begin with the latest stats on the industry,
0:01:31 touching on structural factors and more
0:01:33 for about the first 15 minutes.
0:01:35 Then we do a bunch of lightning round style takes
0:01:38 on how other content and entertainment models
0:01:40 may or may not apply to podcasting
0:01:41 for about the next 30 minutes.
0:01:44 And finally, we go into monetization platforms,
0:01:45 analytics, and more,
0:01:47 which we also touch on throughout the episode,
0:01:49 including impacts on creators.
0:01:52 And we end on recent news and moves in the space,
0:01:54 such as Spotify, Gimlet,
0:01:56 how to think about terrestrial radio, and more.
0:01:59 But we begin by defining a podcast,
0:02:01 which seems obvious, but isn’t,
0:02:03 and is a rather existential question.
0:02:05 So guys, what is a podcast?
0:02:07 – So, I mean, the real interesting thing here is,
0:02:10 we’re in the midst of a really interesting moment of change,
0:02:11 and there is internal conflict
0:02:14 within the podcast community about that question.
0:02:17 So historically, it’s been largely tethered
0:02:18 to the notion of the RSS feed.
0:02:23 It’s basically an audio file or a medium of distribution
0:02:26 that largely happens through the technology
0:02:28 that was carried over from blogging.
0:02:31 And now with the entrance of Spotify
0:02:33 and Pandora stepping up,
0:02:36 and Google beginning to do whatever they’re going to do
0:02:37 on the search engine side.
0:02:39 – And Apple already is an entrenched player as well.
0:02:41 – Yeah, absolutely, I heard media.
0:02:46 And Luminary just announced their big 100 million fundraise
0:02:49 and the fact that it gonna launch in July a couple days ago.
0:02:50 – With a lot of exclusive content, right?
0:02:53 So how does exclusive podcasts fit in
0:02:54 with the old definition?
0:02:56 – Especially with the Luminary announcement
0:02:57 that was like a strong pushback
0:03:00 from parts of the community that’s been around for a while
0:03:04 and generally folks who really believe in the open ecosystem.
0:03:06 And so we have a situation in which like,
0:03:08 the technical definition is not
0:03:10 the popular definition anymore.
0:03:11 And if we go from the perspective
0:03:15 of what the ordinary consumer thinks of a podcast,
0:03:17 that is, it becomes a cultural question,
0:03:18 not a technical question.
0:03:20 – Which by the way, I wanna say parallels
0:03:22 the history of the web,
0:03:24 because this to me reminds me very much of early blogging.
0:03:25 – Absolutely.
0:03:27 – And debates about what is a blog,
0:03:29 what is an article, what is a website.
0:03:32 And there was this almost religious existential debate
0:03:33 between the early kind of,
0:03:35 in fact, some of the same people,
0:03:36 because Dave Weiner,
0:03:36 one of the people who invented–
0:03:39 – Who also was important to the development podcast thing.
0:03:40 – Right, he’s exactly.
0:03:42 He’s, but I think he was technically the first person
0:03:45 to do a podcast like in 2003 or something,
0:03:47 or one of the early people.
0:03:49 And he’s also been to specify the RSS feed,
0:03:51 which drives the pipes
0:03:53 and plumbing and ecosystem of podcasting.
0:03:56 But today, users don’t even think of podcasts that way.
0:03:59 It’s like, if it’s just recorded audio of people talking,
0:04:01 oftentimes we’ll just call that a podcast.
0:04:03 – Yeah, one of my favorite things
0:04:05 when people always call our videos podcasts.
0:04:06 – I mean, that’s a holdover, right?
0:04:08 Like Joe Rogan still does that.
0:04:11 There’s a lot of people who still do all video, audio,
0:04:12 and still call it a podcast.
0:04:14 I mean, the way I see it is that the tension
0:04:17 has always been between people who see podcasting
0:04:19 as the future of blogging
0:04:22 and people who see the podcasting as the future of radio.
0:04:25 And we’ve seen that tension cross many, many times.
0:04:28 And I think we’re in a place where that no longer matters
0:04:31 because ultimately the mass consumer will lead
0:04:32 as where do you want to go?
0:04:34 – Yes, and like the web, the analogy that I would draw
0:04:38 is to the advent of the graphical user interface
0:04:41 and how browsing, computing, et cetera.
0:04:42 There’s always a phase in every technology
0:04:44 where there’s a gooey phase
0:04:45 where once you have an interface
0:04:47 that’s user friendly and easy to navigate.
0:04:50 And what’s interesting about this is that we’re in the phase
0:04:53 where the listening has become easy to navigate.
0:04:54 – And more accessible.
0:04:55 – More accessible.
0:04:57 – Through various kinds of hardware too.
0:04:59 For example, listening to podcasts on their drive to work
0:05:02 because the cars are enabled with podcasts.
0:05:04 – Right, like the smartphone connected cars essentially.
0:05:06 – Or AirPods making it so easy
0:05:08 to listen to something while multitasking.
0:05:10 – And in that sense, podcasts are different
0:05:12 than audio books obviously just for the sake of definition.
0:05:15 – But I would say like you can argue over time
0:05:16 that even that definition may blur.
0:05:18 – Of audio books and podcasts.
0:05:20 – Right, like one day a podcast might just be thought of
0:05:22 as like a self-published audio book.
0:05:24 – I have long believed that audio books
0:05:26 should be central to the conversation as well,
0:05:27 especially a couple of years ago
0:05:30 when Audible built sort of an original programming team
0:05:33 that took after podcasts out programming.
0:05:35 And in fact, the matter is that these are all distributors
0:05:37 and platforms of the same kind of good.
0:05:40 It’s just that we think of them and we class them differently
0:05:41 and they also sort of are products
0:05:43 of different economic systems.
0:05:44 – I do want to add to this mix though
0:05:46 that I would not confuse music into this.
0:05:49 And the reason is first of all, from a creator perspective,
0:05:53 every tool until now has been very music creator centric
0:05:55 for podcast editing, creation, et cetera.
0:05:59 And so there’s a really bad structural legacy effect
0:06:00 of equating podcasting.
0:06:01 I mean, we’re essentially bootstrapping tools
0:06:03 tailored for music for podcasting.
0:06:07 So the new wave of podcast native tools is really important.
0:06:09 Full disclosure, we’re investors in Descript
0:06:11 and it democratizes the editing of podcasting
0:06:14 because you can essentially edit audio like a word doc.
0:06:15 But the main point here is that
0:06:18 I do think music should be treated very differently
0:06:19 than podcasting. – I completely agree.
0:06:21 I got to me like it’s audio with spoken word.
0:06:23 – Yep, versus sunk.
0:06:26 So I guess what we’re agreeing on
0:06:28 just to recap the definition of podcasting.
0:06:32 It is audio, it could potentially blur into including books
0:06:35 if not in a content perspective, then to Nick’s point,
0:06:40 then even in a distribution and business model perspective.
0:06:42 But we agree that music should be treated differently.
0:06:45 – And the common denominator here is spoken word.
0:06:47 – That was actually the infinite dial study
0:06:49 which is sort of an annual survey
0:06:51 conducted by Edison Research.
0:06:53 They just announced their latest results
0:06:54 earlier this afternoon.
0:06:56 The most interesting thing is that there were increases
0:06:58 in both audiobooks and podcasting.
0:07:02 So podcasting had a significantly like large leap this year,
0:07:05 but on audiobooks, like after a couple of years
0:07:09 of largely being flat, it’s been increased again.
0:07:11 And I think that’s a sort of really interesting question
0:07:13 because I can’t quite think of a structural reason
0:07:14 why that would be the case,
0:07:16 other than sort of like tethered effect.
0:07:17 – In addition to that,
0:07:19 you have all kinds of really easy to set up
0:07:20 wireless speakers at home.
0:07:24 They also make it more easy to consume this kind of content.
0:07:26 – It reminds me of like what people say
0:07:28 about the Kindle and romance novels.
0:07:30 It helped sales increase
0:07:33 because it made people like more willing to buy it
0:07:35 and consume it because then nobody would judge them.
0:07:37 – Oh, the judgment side, interesting.
0:07:38 For me, it’s actually ease of access
0:07:40 because I used to be really embarrassed
0:07:42 and admit this publicly.
0:07:46 I used to subscribe to the Harlequin Romance on Demand service
0:07:48 where you’d get like the books a month
0:07:51 and you’d pay like $11 or I can’t remember what it was.
0:07:54 ‘Cause I’ve always been a huge reader of romance novels
0:07:56 as a very nice lightweight thing to do.
0:07:58 But what’s the analogy to podcasting?
0:07:59 What’s the connection?
0:08:00 – To me, I think it’s more ease of access
0:08:02 around better hardware.
0:08:03 – On demand, get it quickly.
0:08:04 So speaking of the data and you mentioned
0:08:07 that the Edison research study came out today
0:08:08 and that’s sort of the definitive
0:08:10 and longest running survey of digital media
0:08:12 consumer behavior in America at least.
0:08:15 But I hear a lot of mixed messages.
0:08:16 I see like people cite this stat
0:08:18 and that stat out of context.
0:08:20 So why don’t we just do a quick pulse check
0:08:21 on what are the key stats?
0:08:22 And Nick, maybe you could recap for us
0:08:25 what the key stats or big trends to know are here.
0:08:27 – So I think there are a couple of big takeaways here.
0:08:29 One is when it comes to the familiarity
0:08:30 of the notion of podcasting
0:08:33 and this doesn’t mean people who heard the word
0:08:34 actually know what it is.
0:08:38 It’s officially hit 70% of all Americans.
0:08:40 And when it comes to the number of people
0:08:42 who’ve actually tried out podcasting,
0:08:43 maybe they didn’t stick around a bit
0:08:44 but they just tried it at least.
0:08:46 It’s gone over 50%.
0:08:49 So about an estimate of 144 million Americans.
0:08:51 Retention rates are sort of like really interesting.
0:08:53 Like monthly podcast listening has also went up.
0:08:56 It’s now 32% of all Americans up from 26 from last year.
0:08:57 That’s a pretty big leap.
0:08:58 – I mean, just that’s one third.
0:08:59 That’s a lot.
0:09:00 – Yeah.
0:09:01 And there’s also a really interesting slide in here
0:09:04 attributing some of the increase to Spotify.
0:09:06 There is a stat here that shows
0:09:09 amongst Spotify listeners between the ages of 12 to 24,
0:09:12 monthly podcast listening went up to 53%.
0:09:15 And so there’s a lot going on.
0:09:17 I think currently it’s such a moment of flux.
0:09:21 It’s a little unclear what the structural pillars are anymore.
0:09:22 And I think there’s one of those things
0:09:24 where we’re just gonna have to like look back
0:09:25 at this moment and figure out where we turn.
0:09:28 – So what’s a high level recap on that summary of the stats?
0:09:30 – The high level is that this past year
0:09:31 has seen an unprecedented growth.
0:09:33 For the longest time podcast growth
0:09:35 has been steadily and slow.
0:09:37 And now it feels like it’s taken some sort of a leap.
0:09:40 And so I feel like this past year has been the moment
0:09:44 where it’s tipped into some form of mainstream.
0:09:45 – That’s fantastic.
0:09:47 So potentially a quote inflection point
0:09:49 as people like to say in the business.
0:09:51 – The usage of podcasts and the consumption of it
0:09:55 has risen dramatically in the last year or two.
0:09:57 But what always shocks me is that the revenue
0:10:01 that podcasts generate is still such a small amount
0:10:04 given how many hours people are spending
0:10:05 consuming this kind of content.
0:10:08 – So there is a study out there from the IAB
0:10:11 that caveat being it was funded and financed
0:10:13 by a constellation of podcast companies
0:10:17 that puts the number at around 600 million plus plus
0:10:18 this past last year.
0:10:20 And it’s projected to keep growing of course.
0:10:22 Monetization is a serious issue.
0:10:24 And it largely has to do with the fact
0:10:26 that podcasting is a technology
0:10:29 hasn’t quite caught up to how the rest of the internet
0:10:31 kind of works in terms of dynamic insertion.
0:10:33 And it doesn’t allow like heavy increases
0:10:36 in inventory and swap outs in inventory
0:10:38 in a way that a lot of advertisers are now accustomed
0:10:41 to getting from marketplaces like Facebook.
0:10:44 – And then even that like from an advertiser standpoint
0:10:46 you’re paying per download
0:10:50 ’cause you aren’t getting like these per listen metrics back.
0:10:52 So from the advertising standpoint
0:10:55 it’s still really hard for them to measure the ROI
0:10:57 from sponsoring a podcast.
0:10:59 – Yeah, and that’s why historically we’ve seen
0:11:01 a bunch of the activity among advertising
0:11:03 from direct response advertisers
0:11:06 because they have a secondary metric of conversions
0:11:08 under promo codes and whatnot.
0:11:10 And what they’re able to find is that
0:11:12 the conversion rates are good.
0:11:13 But when it comes to something like a brand advertiser
0:11:16 or an advertiser that needs to lay an impression
0:11:19 on a consumer over a five, 10 year period
0:11:20 they need to know that they’re hitting
0:11:22 the people that they’re hitting.
0:11:23 There are a lot of movements right now
0:11:26 towards standardizing what even a listen means.
0:11:28 And this will become increasingly complicated
0:11:30 as Spotify and Pandora.
0:11:31 – Everywhere.
0:11:32 I mean, right now you don’t know if it’s a,
0:11:33 is it a download?
0:11:34 Is it a click?
0:11:35 Is it open?
0:11:36 Is it a fee?
0:11:37 I mean, who the fuck knows.
0:11:38 – Or like how long did you listen to it, right?
0:11:39 – Right, the engagement I care very,
0:11:41 so that’s actually what I care most about as a creator.
0:11:42 ‘Cause when I was at Wired,
0:11:44 Chartbeat changed me as an editor
0:11:47 and I need to know where people drop off.
0:11:48 That is a number one thing.
0:11:50 So I don’t know if you even know this, Nick.
0:11:52 We were in the launch set for when Spotify launched
0:11:55 their first move into podcasting in 2015.
0:11:58 They selected us as part of one of their media outlets
0:12:00 because our podcast was one of the very few
0:12:02 that covered tech in a thoughtful way.
0:12:05 And the reason I was so excited about Spotify,
0:12:07 because Spotify didn’t really have much
0:12:09 of a podcasting audience back then,
0:12:12 was they showed me this really beautiful dashboard
0:12:15 that showed you the potential and where people drop off.
0:12:18 – But you don’t get that from all the other places
0:12:19 our podcasts are distributed.
0:12:21 – It’s still limited because not all of our listeners
0:12:22 are listening on Spotify.
0:12:23 They’re on SoundCloud, they’re on iTunes.
0:12:24 They’re in a bunch of different apps.
0:12:25 And iTunes, by the way, also announced this,
0:12:27 I think, what last year, James Boggs,
0:12:30 announced that you can actually have drop off.
0:12:33 – Yeah, they rolled out a more granular
0:12:34 in episode analytics.
0:12:35 – Another thing I’d push back on though is like,
0:12:38 I don’t actually think advertisements
0:12:40 are the only way you can monetize podcasts.
0:12:41 – Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.
0:12:43 – I feel really, really strongly about that
0:12:46 because even as someone who consumes podcasts,
0:12:48 ads are extremely annoying to listen to.
0:12:51 And this is where I look at other business models
0:12:53 that are working in Asia for podcasts
0:12:56 that I think could very much translate here.
0:12:58 – Yeah, so a couple of points on that.
0:13:01 It’s a situation in which there are behaviors
0:13:05 in internet usage, in gaming, in media consumption,
0:13:10 in China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore,
0:13:12 that doesn’t occur here,
0:13:14 maybe through a path dependency reasons,
0:13:17 maybe through sort of technical habituation reasons.
0:13:20 And yes, we’ve already seen like a really healthy growth
0:13:23 of the number of podcasts using Patreon as maybe not a primary,
0:13:26 but a strong supplementary business model.
0:13:28 Chatbot, ChatPos is an example of this.
0:13:30 There are a bunch of podcast collectives
0:13:32 that rely on Patreon for this.
0:13:35 And there’s also like Slate Plus being sort of a central model
0:13:38 to Slate as a digital media publisher
0:13:40 that also heavily indexes on podcasting.
0:13:43 But I think I’ve always found this lack of data conversation
0:13:47 a little interesting because whether or not advertisers
0:13:50 feel confident in the measurement
0:13:52 and what the data is sort of trying to reflect
0:13:55 in terms of reality, the world continues to spin
0:13:59 and people do end up converting as a promo code.
0:14:02 And so there is a strong sense that podcasting
0:14:05 is a very powerful driver of consumers
0:14:07 and it’s a powerful advertising driver,
0:14:09 even though we’re not able to tell specifically
0:14:11 how many people that gets hit
0:14:13 in terms of just the analytics of it.
0:14:16 And so there’s this fear among a lot of people
0:14:19 that the analytics side will end up driving
0:14:20 way too much of the conversation
0:14:24 and ends up dictating the behavior of creators and publishers
0:14:26 in a way that might end up being unhealthy
0:14:29 or counterintuitive to the relationship
0:14:31 between a listener and a creator.
0:14:33 – The problem with that I think is like,
0:14:36 yes, analytics may skew what kinds of content they put out
0:14:37 and how they engage with their audience.
0:14:41 But like really analytics is just a nicer way
0:14:45 of saying revenue because at the end of the day
0:14:46 your analytics are a reflection
0:14:48 of how many listeners you’re getting, right?
0:14:51 – I don’t agree actually completely.
0:14:53 I agree with you from a business perspective,
0:14:57 but as a creator the analytics tell me about community.
0:14:59 And one of my favorite talks on the early days
0:15:02 of resurgence of podcasting was Marco Arment gave a talk,
0:15:04 I was at XOXO in 2013.
0:15:08 And it was basically about the resurgence of podcasting,
0:15:13 the early signaling of that and podcasts as a movement.
0:15:14 Because what’s really unique for the first time
0:15:16 when you think about the first wave of podcasting
0:15:18 with all the indie bloggers,
0:15:20 we now have brands podcasting.
0:15:22 And sometimes they’re not actually looking
0:15:23 for direct revenue through that.
0:15:26 It’s a way to really connect intimately with your audience.
0:15:28 I mean, it’s essentially a movement
0:15:29 brought live in audio form.
0:15:31 – So I mean, there are types of content
0:15:34 where it’s not about monetization.
0:15:35 But for a lot of creators,
0:15:37 I do think revenue is one kind of proxy
0:15:39 for how much value they’re providing their listeners.
0:15:44 And I also think that we’re in such, such baby phases
0:15:47 of how podcasters should be able to monetize.
0:15:48 Like honestly, they shouldn’t be having
0:15:51 to ask their listeners to go to other sites
0:15:52 to pay them like a monthly fee.
0:15:54 – You can’t do it in app.
0:15:55 – I mean, this is where the platforms
0:15:57 are gonna start rolling out subscriptions.
0:16:00 I think some are gonna roll out like other ways
0:16:02 of paying for packages or bundles of content.
0:16:04 And I think that’s when you’re gonna see creators
0:16:08 really unleash like much better content
0:16:11 where they don’t have to focus on mainstream audiences,
0:16:13 but they might focus on smaller audiences
0:16:14 that are willing to pay for that.
0:16:15 – So actually, I’m like really fascinating
0:16:17 in terms of the concept of analytics
0:16:20 is being the sort of like proxy for revenue here.
0:16:22 It’s strange because I’ve always sort of viewed analytics
0:16:26 as a certain kind of representation of reality.
0:16:28 And it just so happens that advertisers
0:16:31 at this point in time are really reliant
0:16:34 on a certain expectation of a kind of analytics
0:16:36 in order to discern whether a media product
0:16:38 is effective in a way that they want it to be.
0:16:40 And there’s this larger conversation
0:16:43 about platforms in general, switching metrics
0:16:47 or tweaking metrics or in some cases ballooning them
0:16:49 in order to control and manage that narrative
0:16:51 and relationship with the advertiser.
0:16:52 – No, I completely agree.
0:16:55 Analytics matters for an advertising model.
0:16:57 But what I’m saying is like the advertising model
0:17:01 is actually not a good model to monetize podcasts.
0:17:03 – No, that we could be agree with.
0:17:08 But it’s a situation in which like it is the revenue
0:17:10 that a lot of people, a lot of publishers
0:17:11 and creators feel most comfortable with
0:17:14 because that’s all they know right now.
0:17:16 – I think it’s actually also a legacy.
0:17:17 This is where I think we need to think again,
0:17:19 very native and a new medium.
0:17:21 This is where we make, we do ourselves a huge disservice.
0:17:24 Like the early days of the web
0:17:27 when media outlets would put like a fricking,
0:17:29 you know, homepage analog on the website.
0:17:31 Right, exactly.
0:17:34 Like we need to think very natively in this medium.
0:17:36 And we have a huge opportunity for the first time
0:17:39 because we have such an intimacy, a slipperiness,
0:17:42 a connection with podcasting that’s visceral.
0:17:43 That’s, I mean, personally,
0:17:45 I think it’s unlike any other medium I’ve ever seen.
0:17:47 I feel like I found my voice on this medium quite honestly.
0:17:49 But so I do think that we have an opportunity here
0:17:51 because we’re so stuck on the legacy.
0:17:53 And in fact, this goes back to something we started with,
0:17:54 which is what is the definition of a podcast?
0:17:56 So I think the thing to revisit here
0:17:59 is that the underlying pipes and infrastructure.
0:18:00 And I know people don’t expect this
0:18:02 when we’re talking about an episode about podcasts.
0:18:03 But I think it’s really important
0:18:04 because it informs this conversation.
0:18:06 It is RSS feeds.
0:18:07 It is literally an ecosystem
0:18:09 of pipes that are connected by feeds,
0:18:11 talking to feeds, talking to feeds.
0:18:14 This is both a structural, huge limitation,
0:18:17 causing major fragmentation in the industry,
0:18:19 major limitations on what’s possible
0:18:22 with what creators can do to even connect the dots.
0:18:23 Because the unit of analysis is limit
0:18:26 to what you can actually send in a feed.
0:18:27 And that has certain trade-offs to it.
0:18:29 And this actually reminds me of container ships,
0:18:32 like physical, large shipping ships,
0:18:34 like Merck, et cetera, that you see in the ocean.
0:18:36 And one of the novel things about container ships
0:18:39 is about what they did to creating trade across the world.
0:18:41 And because they’re multimodal,
0:18:45 they go from airplane to ship to truck to yard.
0:18:47 They allowed so much collaboration
0:18:49 and connection around the world.
0:18:52 That’s what feeds are doing for the podcast ecosystem.
0:18:55 What’s missing, however, is just like a container ship.
0:18:57 Containers are rectangular boxes
0:19:00 that are very limited in what you can actually fit into them.
0:19:03 And people therefore need to fit the shape of their goods
0:19:05 to fit in those boxes.
0:19:07 And the entire ecosystem for physical container ships
0:19:10 is architected around being able to lift things out and in.
0:19:11 That is the same thing
0:19:13 that’s happening in podcasting right now.
0:19:15 The containers are connecting all of us
0:19:16 in this feed ecosystem,
0:19:19 but they’re also dictating what information
0:19:21 travels where and in what form.
0:19:22 And I just want to point this out,
0:19:23 no matter how wonky it seems,
0:19:25 because that structure both dictate so much
0:19:28 of what the current batch of tools can and can’t do
0:19:30 when it comes to analytics, to discovery,
0:19:31 and more, all across the board.
0:19:34 And it’s where platforms and tool builders
0:19:36 have a huge opportunity to cleverly address
0:19:39 or even bypass those containers
0:19:40 once we get past this phase
0:19:44 of where the podcasting industry is structurally right now.
0:19:46 – Yeah, I just think like we are in such
0:19:48 early, early, early innings of what podcasts can be.
0:19:50 Because if you think about it,
0:19:52 again, this is not using the technical definition
0:19:54 of a podcast, but using this cultural definition
0:19:57 of like audio recorded content, right?
0:19:59 Most of the time you’re consuming that kind of content
0:20:01 on an internet enabled device.
0:20:04 It’s not like you’re downloading it onto your computer
0:20:05 and then like using a USB stick
0:20:07 to transfer it to your phone, right?
0:20:11 And so therefore, like we are not monetizing this stuff
0:20:12 or even creating features on top of it
0:20:14 that are internet native.
0:20:16 There’s just so much stuff we’re not even tapping into.
0:20:19 And it’s such a shame because we’re consuming these things
0:20:20 on internet enabled devices.
0:20:22 And yet we’re using the same business model
0:20:24 as televisions.
0:20:25 – Where you can’t even do anything.
0:20:28 – Which is not meant to be interactive.
0:20:30 And there’s like right now very little interaction
0:20:32 with the podcast, which I think is such a shame.
0:20:35 – So I want to ask you guys kind of lightning round style
0:20:37 on a couple of neat things that are artifacts
0:20:39 of the existing world of content
0:20:41 and how we think they’re going to play out with podcasting.
0:20:42 So let’s just–
0:20:43 – And I think you should give your take too
0:20:45 ’cause you have more expertise on podcasts
0:20:46 than anyone in the software.
0:20:47 – Right, I forget to do that as a host sometimes.
0:20:48 – Okay.
0:20:50 – So I want to ask you guys about seasonality.
0:20:52 Like what do you guys think of this trend
0:20:54 of people dropping podcast seasons?
0:20:56 – So I love seasonality.
0:20:58 It gives, like it gives me a feeling of momentum
0:21:00 and also we’re currently living in a moment
0:21:02 where there’s all things happening all the time.
0:21:04 So many things to consume.
0:21:06 I would like things to have definite ends.
0:21:09 And I’m a big fan of seasonality personally.
0:21:11 – I think it also makes it easier for bundling
0:21:13 and different pricing down the line.
0:21:14 – Absolutely.
0:21:15 – Oh, fascinating.
0:21:16 So for me, seasonality is,
0:21:19 so when I think of the long tail of content
0:21:21 and Chris Anderson wrote the fundamental piece
0:21:24 and book on this, it’s this idea of an infinite shelf space.
0:21:26 And to me, things being in software and being digital,
0:21:30 it’s unbounded to the point of being pointlessly infinite.
0:21:33 And forcing a false scarcity is my favorite thing
0:21:36 that like box in a month companies do,
0:21:38 like stitch fix and makeup, whatever.
0:21:42 It’s a way of curating and creating a scarcity
0:21:43 in a world of abundance.
0:21:45 And I think that’s a really interesting packaging thing
0:21:47 for any kind of content across the board.
0:21:49 And especially for podcasting because there is no,
0:21:51 you’re essentially in an infinite scroll
0:21:52 in the audible world.
0:21:54 You don’t know where you are.
0:21:55 You have no context.
0:21:57 You’re not plugged into a specific thing
0:22:00 ’cause you’re living in this weird ecosystem of voice
0:22:02 and show or episode, depending on how you’re listening.
0:22:04 So that’s my quick take on seasonality.
0:22:05 – Love it.
0:22:05 – Okay.
0:22:08 So binge watching, this is related to seasonality.
0:22:09 One of the most fascinating things
0:22:14 about Netflix phenomenon in the space of visual content
0:22:16 is they realize like, wait a minute,
0:22:18 we don’t have to do weekly things.
0:22:20 We can drop everything at once,
0:22:22 not release it as a season that spreads out once a week
0:22:24 or whatever the pace is.
0:22:26 And allow binge watching.
0:22:27 – I think binge watching is great
0:22:30 and it’s natural human behavior for any kind of content.
0:22:32 I suffer from it myself.
0:22:33 Like I was the kind of person,
0:22:34 I would watch the series 24.
0:22:38 I would watch a season in like 30 hours.
0:22:38 – I did that too.
0:22:39 It’s stranger things and everything.
0:22:40 – Yeah, yeah.
0:22:42 And it’s just natural human behavior.
0:22:43 And so I think it’s great.
0:22:44 – That we wanna just be addicted
0:22:46 and go deep all at once and we can’t stop ourselves.
0:22:49 – And actually in terms of, for the creator,
0:22:49 I think it’s a good thing
0:22:52 because you don’t want that listener
0:22:53 to kind of forget about it.
0:22:54 – Yep.
0:22:55 – I binge watch all the time.
0:22:57 So I’m just gonna take “Devil’s Advocate”
0:23:00 that I only like believe about 80% of.
0:23:03 One is I actually think that binge watching
0:23:05 or binge dropping has actually caused attention
0:23:08 to a given show to deteriorate, right?
0:23:11 It used to be the case where when a TV show drops weekly,
0:23:13 there’s sort of a pulse of conversation
0:23:14 that is drawn out over a longer period of time
0:23:16 if that show has hit.
0:23:17 I thought about–
0:23:18 – You mean like the water cooler conversation?
0:23:19 – Absolutely.
0:23:21 Like true detective, game of thrones,
0:23:23 same thing, basically everything that HBO,
0:23:25 like that sort of structure of it,
0:23:27 I really like that water cooler conversation
0:23:29 and I like to be on the same sort of page
0:23:31 as other people when I’m having that conversation
0:23:34 and that’s something that I’ve never gotten with a binge show.
0:23:36 I loved “Russian Doll”.
0:23:38 I can’t find a single person to talk to about it
0:23:39 who falls in love at the same time
0:23:42 and I can guarantee in about a month
0:23:43 I’m gonna forget about that show.
0:23:45 To use a torture metaphor,
0:23:48 the thing about binge TV that I enjoy really doing
0:23:51 but I feel a little bit sick of doing afterwards,
0:23:53 it reminds me of that thing when parents say
0:23:54 that they do to certain kids
0:23:56 where if they catch that kid smoking one cigarette,
0:23:59 they make that kid smoke the entire pack of one cigarette.
0:24:02 That’s kind of how I feel after when I binge a season.
0:24:04 I feel like I don’t wanna watch TV for like a month.
0:24:05 – But it’s like inevitable.
0:24:08 I feel like this is a behavior you count.
0:24:09 – Well, there is a lot of,
0:24:10 so my whole thesis about this
0:24:12 which is similar to screen time and kids
0:24:13 ’cause people always have these stupid religious debates
0:24:15 over it, it’s not so much the act of doing it
0:24:17 or not doing it, it’s why you do it.
0:24:18 So if you’re someone who’s binge watching
0:24:20 ’cause you’re depressed, that’s not good.
0:24:21 But if you’re someone who’s binge watching
0:24:23 ’cause you just can’t stop watching the show, that’s great.
0:24:24 I will say to push back on your point, Nick,
0:24:26 ’cause I know you’re taking the devil’s advocate,
0:24:28 but I think that what you’re describing this problem
0:24:31 of the water cooler thing that Connie that you labeled,
0:24:33 it’s actually an artifact of technology,
0:24:36 not quite being there because there is a movement
0:24:39 of second screen technologies that are allowing more,
0:24:42 there’s forums online like Reddit that aggregate.
0:24:43 To give you a perfect example of this,
0:24:45 when I finished the Ubrati problem,
0:24:47 the first thing I did was go trawl the web
0:24:49 to find all the forums and all the people talking about it
0:24:51 so I could find my people and talk about it
0:24:53 and find other people who loved it.
0:24:55 And so there are tools that are emerging
0:24:58 that allow conversations to then to your point,
0:25:02 the water cooler to be aggregated asynchronously.
0:25:05 And there will be, I think, a second screen phenomenon
0:25:09 happening with pod listening and binge listening
0:25:11 as we start having the technology ecosystem grow.
0:25:15 – I can see how you don’t want to spoil the ending.
0:25:16 So you won’t actually go to that forum
0:25:17 until you finish your book.
0:25:18 – You’re absolutely right.
0:25:20 And actually, I like that you can have a choice
0:25:21 because in spoiler alert culture,
0:25:23 which Nick is slightly hinting that he misses,
0:25:24 at least on the devil advocate.
0:25:25 – I do.
0:25:27 – There is sort of like a thing
0:25:29 where you can actually choose to check out of things.
0:25:31 Luckily, so you’re not like stuck in a room
0:25:33 with everyone talking and then you are screwed
0:25:35 ’cause you missed like the closing season of Dallas
0:25:36 or whatever show it was.
0:25:38 The other point I want to make about binge listening
0:25:41 in this context is with binge watching,
0:25:43 new types of narratives are happening.
0:25:45 I’m very curious about what will happen
0:25:48 as we start seeing binge listening of podcast seasons
0:25:50 or podcast episodes to narrative
0:25:52 and how that’s gonna change that category of podcasts
0:25:56 where a serial change the way it tells stories
0:25:57 because people are binging it.
0:25:58 – Well, then it becomes an audio book.
0:25:59 – Oh, interesting.
0:26:00 Then it becomes an audio book.
0:26:01 Oh my God, I would have argued
0:26:02 to almost the opposite item in the spectrum
0:26:05 because it’s sort of going through a book very quickly.
0:26:06 But the flip side of it is
0:26:08 when I’m thinking the analog with binge watching
0:26:10 is that you can watch an entire season
0:26:13 and it changes the way you don’t have to have a cliffhanger
0:26:14 at the end of every episode.
0:26:15 Whereas even in a chapter,
0:26:17 people still have a little bit of these things.
0:26:18 – Right, narrative.
0:26:20 – I will say, I think serial would have made a lot more money
0:26:22 if it allowed people to pay.
0:26:26 I think on the margin, binge listening helps creators
0:26:28 because if you can make someone pay
0:26:29 for like a whole season at once
0:26:32 and maybe give them like one or two episodes for free,
0:26:33 it’s better than hoping
0:26:35 that they’re gonna come back every week, right?
0:26:37 – The serial example is actually really, really interesting.
0:26:40 Serial itself was an innovation of the form
0:26:42 because it stuck to what podcasting
0:26:44 was able to do at that time.
0:26:45 Prior to the existence of serial,
0:26:48 it was incredibly difficult to tell a serialized story
0:26:50 over the radio in the form that they did it.
0:26:52 And secondarily to that,
0:26:55 they told that story in real, in semi-real time.
0:26:56 And that’s something that they sort of looked
0:26:59 at the structure of what the distribution format was
0:27:00 and they go, we’re gonna try that out,
0:27:01 we’ll see what happens.
0:27:03 And so this is a little bit
0:27:06 of like them playing perfectly to the form there.
0:27:07 And I wanna sort of go back a little bit
0:27:10 to the point about like the second screen experience
0:27:13 and the sort of the death of the water cooler.
0:27:14 So I love second screen experiences.
0:27:17 I live for NBA Twitter, I live for Bachelor Twitter,
0:27:21 but I gotta say, I do like that experience
0:27:25 with physical people and that I miss hanging out
0:27:26 and watching TV with my friends sometimes
0:27:28 at the same pace, that’s all I got to say.
0:27:30 – I just think like ever since DVR arrived,
0:27:32 like we kind of lost it already.
0:27:34 – I think you guys are both being very falsely nostalgic
0:27:37 for a past that never was because I actually think,
0:27:40 I mean, yes, there’s a reality to be physically present.
0:27:43 But again, we’re in the early innings with all of this.
0:27:45 We’re investors in a company called Big Screen
0:27:48 where you can essentially share in this ambient intimacy,
0:27:51 like hang out in VR, like when there is a digital overlay
0:27:54 over the physical world, just like people connect on Twitter
0:27:57 for ambient intimacy, the cocktail party of the web,
0:27:59 there will be a physical like experience
0:28:01 that you have similar level of satisfaction
0:28:03 and hanging out in real time with your friends.
0:28:04 And it’s just an artifact of technology
0:28:05 that we’re not 100% there yet.
0:28:06 That’s what I would argue at least.
0:28:08 But back to the binge watching thing,
0:28:11 I was gonna add that when a season drops all at once,
0:28:12 I add it to my playlist, but I never watch it
0:28:14 because what’s also missing in this space,
0:28:16 and this is again why I love the idea of binge watching
0:28:20 slash listening for podcasting, is the concept of virality.
0:28:22 The viral hits don’t happen instantly
0:28:23 unless you’re like a Joe Rogan experience
0:28:25 and Elon Musk smoking pot on air.
0:28:27 Like it’s sort of a cult of personality show,
0:28:29 it’s slow burn type of virality.
0:28:30 And so seeing what people are talking about
0:28:34 and what resonates is hugely important for creators,
0:28:35 not because you freaking want to crowdsource
0:28:37 what you want to say, but you do want to know
0:28:38 it doesn’t go in a black hole.
0:28:40 – I would love a world where in the future
0:28:42 you’ll know which parts of the podcast
0:28:44 the audience like the most.
0:28:45 – My proxy for that, by the way,
0:28:47 is I do Twitter searches all the time for the commentary.
0:28:49 So it’s a very skewed sample, but it’s helpful.
0:28:52 And I push the editors to do this to close this loop,
0:28:53 even if they’re not active on Twitter,
0:28:56 because there was no other way to see what resonated.
0:28:59 – But can’t you see like a platform just like saying,
0:29:01 tap your screen if you like this part?
0:29:01 – Oh, totally.
0:29:02 Well, I don’t know if this is public.
0:29:03 Do you know this, Nick?
0:29:07 But is doing screen shot, audio shots of podcasting?
0:29:09 – Yeah, I love this, yeah.
0:29:10 – Is it public, do you know?
0:29:12 Okay, but there will be sort of podcasts,
0:29:14 sort of screen shotting and sort of audio clips.
0:29:17 And I’m curious to see with or without
0:29:18 the transcript, Connie, to your point
0:29:19 about the importance of that,
0:29:21 whether those will go viral.
0:29:23 – It’s crazy to me that these things
0:29:27 don’t have automatic transcription on the top hits.
0:29:29 Like that’s such an easy technical thing to do.
0:29:31 And for a listener, that would mean
0:29:33 that I don’t have to just pause and say like,
0:29:34 oh yes, remember, like go back
0:29:37 to the one minute 30 mark later on and take notes.
0:29:38 – Well, I actually love that too,
0:29:40 because one of the biggest limitations of podcasting
0:29:42 is the lack of a quote screenshot equivalent.
0:29:44 – But that exists in China already.
0:29:46 Not only can I see the transcript,
0:29:48 I can then comment on it and I can make it
0:29:50 so only my friends can see it
0:29:51 or I can make it so the entire public can see it.
0:29:52 And then there’s a discourse.
0:29:53 – That’s amazing.
0:29:54 Right now we have to manually upload transcripts.
0:29:56 – And you basically have redded conversations
0:29:58 around parts of your podcast.
0:30:00 And so it’s okay if the listener doesn’t even get to the end
0:30:01 ’cause you can have a highlight speed,
0:30:05 all kinds of stuff right now that we just are not doing.
0:30:07 And so I think this is like where the platforms
0:30:09 can get much better at creating.
0:30:12 Like even if they just chunked up the best clips, right?
0:30:13 Or maybe you as the creator,
0:30:15 you can like throw out which clips you think are the best.
0:30:19 Make it easy for them to repost on other social mediums
0:30:21 or make us like background music to whatever.
0:30:23 – You can do that actually now on some of these tools,
0:30:25 but to your point, it’s fragmented.
0:30:26 It’s not central on a single user experience.
0:30:28 – Fragmented and I think like the main platforms
0:30:29 don’t allow that, right?
0:30:33 – Currently no, Spotify and iTunes and others don’t.
0:30:35 In fact, this is again where the ecosystem is so fragmented
0:30:36 ’cause the side players are,
0:30:38 there’s a whole budding ecosystem of tools
0:30:39 that are doing this kind of thing.
0:30:41 – So again, like it goes back to like,
0:30:43 you know, like likes and comments and payments,
0:30:46 like on tips like that’s just like a form
0:30:48 of showing how much you like something.
0:30:51 Creators don’t know which pieces of their podcasts
0:30:52 were the best parts of the episode.
0:30:53 They don’t know where that ends for it.
0:30:54 – They don’t know any of it, it’s a black hole.
0:30:57 But on the metrics, I do wanna say that one of my favorite
0:30:59 analytics for podcast success,
0:31:01 ’cause I do think that we need to think about
0:31:03 what you’re measuring for, for the type of show you are.
0:31:06 And in our case, what I care about as editor for the show
0:31:09 is insights per minute.
0:31:10 And this is the same thing as insights per inch
0:31:14 in terms of like going down a verbal post.
0:31:16 Because when you have a brand collective
0:31:19 and not a cult of personality driven show,
0:31:21 this is again where the metrics for the type of show
0:31:23 need to vary as well in my view.
0:31:24 For our kind of show,
0:31:26 if you’re not like a famous personality,
0:31:28 then the insights per minute matter a lot
0:31:31 to get people to stick and stay.
0:31:34 And then secondly, when you think of audience discovery,
0:31:36 audience and movements of people and fans
0:31:39 aggregating around a piece of content,
0:31:44 then I care about if a show has say a drop off halfway,
0:31:45 as a drop off point,
0:31:48 if the first half are people who are mainstream interested
0:31:50 in learning about quantum computing,
0:31:52 and then they drop off 50%,
0:31:54 I consider that a huge metric of success.
0:31:56 And if the remaining 50% that stick around,
0:31:59 a much smaller subset of people who are developers
0:32:01 in quantum computing are interested in building
0:32:03 quantum computing are physicists,
0:32:05 then that’s a huge metric of success.
0:32:07 So for me, again, this is again another granular way
0:32:09 of thinking about the type of show,
0:32:11 the type of content, et cetera.
0:32:12 Now we can’t do any of this right now,
0:32:13 but as we introduce new storytelling
0:32:15 and forums and podcasting,
0:32:16 I think we’ll be thinking a lot more differently
0:32:18 than the obvious on those fronts too,
0:32:20 and about podcast engagement.
0:32:22 Which by the way, one quick factoid for you guys,
0:32:24 the number one thing I hear from all of the publisher network,
0:32:26 ’cause one of the things that I did when I came here
0:32:28 was reach out to various people to beg them
0:32:29 to put their authors on the podcast.
0:32:31 So before authors became,
0:32:33 like going on podcasts became the thing to do.
0:32:36 And yeah, there’s nothing that moves books
0:32:37 the way podcasts do.
0:32:40 I’ve heard this over and over and over again
0:32:42 from all of my publishing industry friends.
0:32:43 – I heard the exact same thing.
0:32:45 The way that the podcast experience
0:32:48 is currently constructed, it drives sales.
0:32:51 But the question is, is that when other platforms
0:32:53 or when the experience changes
0:32:57 due to technical innovations or new features added,
0:32:59 would it fundamentally change that relationship?
0:33:02 Will there be the same kind of sales push
0:33:04 that we experience right now?
0:33:05 I think it’s an open question.
0:33:07 – I think it’s a totally work.
0:33:09 I mean, like to me, it’s like the same way QVC
0:33:10 is a great way to sell stuff.
0:33:12 Like podcasts is a great way to sell content,
0:33:14 written content that people don’t want to read.
0:33:16 But I think this is a bigger problem
0:33:18 with the book publishing industry.
0:33:20 Meaning that they’re not selling books
0:33:21 in an internet native way.
0:33:24 There’s no great way to figure out the highlights of a book.
0:33:26 There’s no way for me to read the first chapter for free.
0:33:28 There’s no way for me to like get a sense of,
0:33:31 do I want to pay for this entire book?
0:33:33 – I do that all in a bookstore.
0:33:34 We’re just skimming though.
0:33:35 I mean like–
0:33:37 – In a physical bookstore, yes.
0:33:39 In a physical bookstore, you can do all these things,
0:33:41 but on Amazon, you still can’t.
0:33:42 – Right, this is another way where I think
0:33:44 we’re not thinking of the native medium
0:33:47 because it’s crazy to me that books,
0:33:49 which are self-contained with no context,
0:33:51 are still decoupled in audio book form.
0:33:53 And it’s equally crazy to me that podcasting
0:33:56 because of the structural limitation of the feed pipes
0:33:59 don’t actually have context built into them
0:34:00 where you can actually tie a podcast
0:34:02 into the context of a broader show,
0:34:04 more by this author, more on the topic,
0:34:06 to your point about PDFs and show notes
0:34:07 and related materials.
0:34:09 It’s crazy to me that there isn’t a web link ecosystem
0:34:10 for podcasting yet.
0:34:12 – Because none of this stuff is being sold
0:34:14 in an internet native way.
0:34:16 I just think like right now, the way we sell books,
0:34:18 it’s like if you had no movie trailer
0:34:21 and you only had the movie poster, right?
0:34:23 – It depends on the movie poster.
0:34:25 You’re like buying the book based off the cover
0:34:28 and maybe some quotes by people who’ve read it,
0:34:31 but you don’t get to even see the trailer.
0:34:34 And this totally actually skews the creator’s incentive
0:34:35 for what kind of content to create.
0:34:38 So like for a book, like are you gonna pay $20
0:34:40 for like a 20 page book?
0:34:42 Or will you feel better about paying $20
0:34:44 for like a 170 page book?
0:34:46 And then authors might have to write extra words
0:34:48 for the sake of selling a, you know–
0:34:50 – Well, that reminds me of the early days
0:34:52 of Charles Dickens where he was paid by the word
0:34:53 and that was like a funny artifact
0:34:55 of the way the monetization was happening.
0:34:57 But I would argue on the flip side of that,
0:34:59 on the creator side, I think it’s more important
0:35:01 to find your community because a beautiful thing about,
0:35:03 again, podcasts are movements.
0:35:05 Groups of people following either a show
0:35:08 or an episode or a topic, serial fans, whatever it is.
0:35:11 And so when you have thousand true fans
0:35:13 in the Kevin Kelly phrase that are following
0:35:16 a particular book author or a particular topic
0:35:19 or a particular podcast, in our case,
0:35:21 what we’re doing is we’re mobilizing the fan base,
0:35:22 not because of that author,
0:35:25 but because of the way that we do our take with that author.
0:35:27 Like it’s sort of the A6 and Z take on it.
0:35:29 So when we did Yuval Harari, it was me and Kyle
0:35:31 talking to him about all kinds of random stuff
0:35:33 that was probably not even related to his book.
0:35:35 The point is that it’s a way to mobilize your movement,
0:35:36 your fan base.
0:35:37 And this goes to Nick’s earlier point about Patreon
0:35:40 and fan bases or Mark Orman’s point
0:35:41 about brand as intimate connection.
0:35:44 – So my theory on this whole,
0:35:46 this sort of notion of like what people will pay for it,
0:35:48 people will pay as much for a thing
0:35:51 based on how valuable they think the thing is.
0:35:53 And so it’s equally plausible that a person looks
0:35:56 at a 20-page book and thinks it’s worth $20
0:35:58 as it is that a person looks at a 170-page book
0:36:00 and thinks that they will pay $20 for that.
0:36:02 It really depends on how that person
0:36:05 or how it’s messaged to this consumer what value is, right?
0:36:08 And so this ties back a little bit to the notion
0:36:10 of advertisers and analytics.
0:36:12 Analytics, as constructed by a technology company,
0:36:14 by a platform, by a data team,
0:36:16 is an effort to tell the advertiser
0:36:19 this is how valuable you should think this is.
0:36:20 And in the art world,
0:36:23 value is constructed in a whole different amorphous way.
0:36:26 And so I think it’s not a one-to-one objectivity
0:36:27 of what is the right metric
0:36:30 or how do we find the truth of the value of a certain thing.
0:36:32 These are socially constructed things.
0:36:35 And so I think that should be a consideration
0:36:36 when it comes to when we think about it,
0:36:37 even the book publishing industry.
0:36:39 I should argue that celebrity books
0:36:40 should be priced a lot higher than it is,
0:36:42 but that’s just me.
0:36:44 – Books is just one example, though.
0:36:46 Like if you think about like a YouTube video,
0:36:49 like the creator is incented to make it long enough
0:36:50 so you don’t put just what pre-roll ad,
0:36:52 but also put like another ad in the middle,
0:36:54 which means the video has to be long enough
0:36:57 to have enough gap time between the ads, right?
0:36:59 – Really, because the most popular videos on YouTube
0:37:01 that do really well are the short, quick takes,
0:37:03 or tutorials, or like in those cases,
0:37:05 it’s another example of,
0:37:05 I mean, I think that’s the reason why
0:37:07 tutorial culture is taken off
0:37:08 because people are self-selected
0:37:09 into like learning about X, Y, or Z.
0:37:12 – But like some creators will lengthen their videos
0:37:14 so they can put in a second ad.
0:37:17 – Yeah, I think those to me are the more old-school creators
0:37:19 that are doing that to monetize in that way.
0:37:21 They’re not the ones who are the influencer creators
0:37:23 because the influencer creators have their eye
0:37:24 in a much bigger ballgame.
0:37:27 They’re looking at moving their own freaking makeup lines.
0:37:29 Or like, you know what I mean?
0:37:30 Or like other things, but yes,
0:37:33 that is sort of like the early phase of every platform
0:37:36 and medium is that you have a quick way
0:37:38 to kind of game it to get what you need.
0:37:41 But I don’t know if that works for the long-lasting players.
0:37:44 – YouTube in that situation is the arbiter of like
0:37:47 how, of the data that tells advertisers what to value,
0:37:49 but it’s also the arbiter of the data that tells creators
0:37:52 how to value the way that they’re creating something.
0:37:54 It also becomes a situation where YouTube
0:37:57 is the thing that interprets human behavior
0:38:00 and makes assumptions based on those interpretations
0:38:01 as to what people are valuing.
0:38:04 And so this is like YouTube sort of defining that reality
0:38:06 and pulling levers in a bunch of different ways.
0:38:10 And they may be correct, they may not be correct.
0:38:12 In any case, it’s all a proxy of reality
0:38:13 that may or may not be aligned.
0:38:14 We don’t know necessarily.
0:38:14 – I agree.
0:38:16 I agree it’s socially constructed and value is created
0:38:19 and a lot of it is limited by the tools people have
0:38:21 for thinking about pricing and they have heuristics
0:38:22 for doing that based on those directors.
0:38:24 I would also say that there’s a really interesting
0:38:25 opportunity, especially with podcasts,
0:38:28 to flip the model where fans get paid.
0:38:31 And in fact, Kevin Kelly made this really interesting
0:38:33 argument in his book, Inevitable,
0:38:34 about how when you swap your paradigm
0:38:39 for thinking about attention in an abundant software world,
0:38:40 which is what we’re talking about here,
0:38:42 abundant digital world bits are infinite.
0:38:44 There’s no limit on airwaves in this context.
0:38:47 You can actually flip the model where fans
0:38:48 can monetize their attention.
0:38:50 So you actually reorient,
0:38:52 and this is actually the premise of crypto, right?
0:38:53 Or one of the premises of crypto,
0:38:54 at least in the notion of crypto networks,
0:38:58 where right now the locus of data controls the platforms.
0:38:59 With crypto, you can actually invert that
0:39:02 where you are the user is a container of the data.
0:39:03 So if you think about this in the context
0:39:06 of media creation and podcasting,
0:39:08 how interesting to think about a fan monetizing
0:39:09 their attention because if a fan is a sum
0:39:11 of all the shows they watch,
0:39:13 maybe an advertiser wants to buy that fan
0:39:14 and the fan directly monetizes.
0:39:15 That’s that attention.
0:39:16 I know that sounds crazy,
0:39:18 but I don’t think that’s impossible in a world like this.
0:39:19 You guys are looking me like that.
0:39:21 – I just think if platforms can do that,
0:39:24 like there’s all the stuff they need to experiment with
0:39:26 before they even can get to something like that.
0:39:26 – Yeah, yeah.
0:39:28 That is if you believe it has to go stepwise
0:39:29 ’cause sometimes technologies can leap.
0:39:30 I agree with you.
0:39:31 I think it’ll be in the middle.
0:39:33 – I’m like, if we can’t even get subscriptions or tips up.
0:39:35 – We can’t even get downloads for fuck’s sake.
0:39:36 – All right, I’m gonna do another quick,
0:39:38 I wanna hear your quick lightning round take
0:39:39 on interstitials and podcasting.
0:39:40 Any thoughts on that?
0:39:42 The idea of like, you know, title slides or breaks
0:39:44 or segmentation, et cetera.
0:39:46 – I’m pro interstitials.
0:39:48 Like, you know, it’s really important
0:39:51 to orient your audience to teach them
0:39:52 how to listen to a thing.
0:39:53 It’s an important creative tool.
0:39:55 That’s a my view on it.
0:39:57 – Connie, I feel like you have a lot of thoughts on this
0:39:59 ’cause it feels so China native what people do and–
0:40:00 – Describe more what you mean by interstitials.
0:40:01 – I mean, more just like,
0:40:03 it’s kind of to your point about there being granularity.
0:40:06 Like you can actually break up a show into sub parts
0:40:07 by having little breaks or–
0:40:09 – I think interstitials is great because again,
0:40:12 it allows me to show you which parts of your episode
0:40:14 I value the most and which ones I’m willing to pay for.
0:40:15 – Yeah, for me, I will say that’s,
0:40:18 we tried some early experiments with segmentation
0:40:20 because I got this funny feedback from people
0:40:23 that they’re like, I listen to the podcast on the road
0:40:24 and my commute’s 10 minutes.
0:40:26 I wish they were 10 minutes long.
0:40:27 And then someone else was like, my commute’s 20 minutes.
0:40:28 I wish you were 20 minutes long.
0:40:30 And then someone else was like, my commute’s 30 minutes
0:40:32 or 40 minutes and they have this ideal time.
0:40:35 For us, at least 30 minutes has been a sweet spot
0:40:37 in terms of like the ideal podcast size.
0:40:38 But I don’t think there’s a rule of thumb
0:40:41 because some of our most popular episodes are an hour.
0:40:43 And also 20 minutes so I don’t know.
0:40:45 But I did because of that.
0:40:47 I wanted kids on campuses like at Stanford or wherever
0:40:49 to have a way of listening to an episode
0:40:51 and kind of have like a nice natural stop-off point
0:40:53 ’cause when you’re watching a show,
0:40:54 the ability to kind of pause.
0:40:56 So to me, interstitials are a way of creating
0:40:58 a little bit of those moments and breaks.
0:40:59 But then what I realized is that
0:41:01 as an artifact of this industry,
0:41:03 all the tools save your spot
0:41:05 in where you were playing last in your player.
0:41:07 Yeah, and so it kind of became a moot point.
0:41:09 So that experiment didn’t really work.
0:41:11 But the driver for it is this thesis
0:41:15 that Dixon says the internet’s made for snacking.
0:41:17 And podcasts can be beautifully long form,
0:41:19 but I also think that there’s a consumption mode
0:41:21 and very short micro-awaiting moments
0:41:24 to use a term from a park paper on this concept
0:41:25 that when you’re waiting in line,
0:41:27 can you listen to a quick bite of content?
0:41:29 Not just watch something on your thing,
0:41:31 not just listen to it.
0:41:32 Super interesting.
0:41:35 Yeah, and I wonder if we can fill micro-awaiting moments.
0:41:36 And so I wonder if interstitials
0:41:37 would play an interesting role
0:41:38 as a micro-awaiting moment.
0:41:40 To do that, I feel like you need really good discovery.
0:41:42 Oh yeah, because the likelihood of me
0:41:44 finding something, like hitting something
0:41:47 that I don’t like causes this fear in the listener.
0:41:48 Of course, unless you are then,
0:41:50 which currently is a model,
0:41:52 following a show or a personality.
0:41:54 You just have to have so much trust
0:41:56 that it’s gonna spin up the right thing.
0:41:57 Because right, ’cause in the cult of personality model,
0:41:58 people are following the person,
0:42:00 not necessarily the guests.
0:42:02 I’ll just say that the notion of short form audio
0:42:04 is one that’s constantly talked about.
0:42:06 It’s also, this is another reminder,
0:42:09 like what anchor essentially attempted to do
0:42:10 at the very beginning of the journey
0:42:12 and what audio tried to do.
0:42:16 And it’s one of those things where it didn’t,
0:42:17 both for those iterations, didn’t quite work.
0:42:20 We don’t know if it has anything to do with what people want
0:42:23 or if it’s the case that people were not ready for that yet.
0:42:24 I would argue the last one,
0:42:26 because we have seen over and over with technology,
0:42:28 there’s like five Facebooks
0:42:29 before there’s a Facebook that works.
0:42:31 I subscribe to the view of the world
0:42:33 in which human beings are generally plastic.
0:42:35 And so you could force a human being
0:42:36 to accept just about anything.
0:42:39 And so it’s a question of whether they are,
0:42:42 whether the right startup or the right platform
0:42:43 executes the right experiment
0:42:45 at the right time with the right group of people.
0:42:45 That’s just kind of how these things work.
0:42:48 – Yeah, human beings are creators of emergent behaviors
0:42:49 because this is where you can never predict
0:42:51 the second order effects of new mediums, right?
0:42:53 Like Twitter spawned all kinds of interesting
0:42:55 emergent behaviors and that is the fundamental truth
0:42:57 of the evolution of all kinds of technologies.
0:42:58 – But it’s all technically,
0:43:01 I mean, this is not like cutting edge science
0:43:03 or technology that doesn’t exist yet.
0:43:06 It’s just a platform hasn’t put all of these things in place.
0:43:10 But the fact of the matter is that stuff like social audio,
0:43:14 stuff like Anchor’s initial bit to be the Twitter of audio,
0:43:17 the stuff like audio, which is what Twitter was
0:43:18 before Twitter became Twitter,
0:43:20 which is essentially for audio,
0:43:25 is that we need proof that the consumer side
0:43:28 will lead the way that it will stick with them.
0:43:29 – But I think that’s the problem, right?
0:43:31 If we’re waiting to have like survey data
0:43:32 to see if this works,
0:43:34 then no platform is gonna experiment on it.
0:43:38 And this is why like new startups and new platforms
0:43:40 need to experiment with how to engage with podcasts.
0:43:43 I think it’s like a given that everyone would prefer
0:43:45 to have no ads in their podcasts.
0:43:48 And that’s why it’s up to all the platforms
0:43:50 to figure out how to create the tools
0:43:52 so creators can still make money
0:43:54 and make better money than I think what they’re making now.
0:43:57 I actually think creators are vastly underpaid in podcasts
0:43:59 and it’s up to the platforms to figure out
0:44:00 how to help them monetize
0:44:03 so we can get ads out of the podcast itself.
0:44:05 – I don’t think we’re disagreeing.
0:44:06 I think we’re sort of like coming at it
0:44:07 from opposite directions here
0:44:08 because my number one principle
0:44:09 when I’m thinking through these things
0:44:11 is that no matter what happens
0:44:13 in terms of feature development,
0:44:14 and no matter what happens to those
0:44:16 of whether certain platforms or tools
0:44:18 ends up innovating on these fronts
0:44:20 is whether creators themselves end up controlling
0:44:21 their destinies in this situation
0:44:24 and whether they control the means of distribution.
0:44:26 Like the entire wave,
0:44:28 the entire learnings of what happened of YouTube
0:44:30 and YouTube creators really haunts a lot of the people
0:44:33 that I speak to when I report week in week out.
0:44:36 That is the nature of the platform being capricious
0:44:38 and altering the way that they expect
0:44:40 their certain revenue projections over time.
0:44:44 And so I’m personally all for the ability
0:44:46 to create better tipping structures
0:44:50 to streamline Patreon and direct revenue sort of pathways
0:44:52 straight into the listening point.
0:44:55 But the fact of the matter is that all these pieces
0:44:58 connecting the listener to the creator
0:45:00 are all gonna be controlled by other people.
0:45:02 And I think this is the nature of things
0:45:06 that brings the most anxiety to the creator class right now.
0:45:07 Of course, the creator class would change over time
0:45:10 with changing expectations of how these things should work.
0:45:11 – Connie, I’m hearing you say
0:45:12 that there’s huge experimentation
0:45:14 that’s already happening in China
0:45:16 that we’re not even remotely seeing here.
0:45:18 That is also a case, however, where we have platforms
0:45:21 because to the point of tipping as an example,
0:45:23 Nick also mentioned Patreon is a good thing,
0:45:26 but clearly one of the big structural limitations in the US
0:45:28 is that people don’t obviously always
0:45:30 have their credit cards linked
0:45:31 and the way that you have in WeChat
0:45:33 or like that we’ve talked a lot about on the podcast.
0:45:34 – But like Apple Pay, right?
0:45:36 Or like in app payments.
0:45:37 – Right.
0:45:39 – Like people oftentimes will say like,
0:45:40 oh, our payment infrastructure
0:45:41 is why none of this stuff would work in the US.
0:45:42 – But you’re saying that’s not true.
0:45:43 – And I don’t agree with that.
0:45:44 – You’re saying that’s a cop out.
0:45:45 Okay, that’s fair.
0:45:47 So then maybe tipping needs to be done
0:45:47 at a more micro level.
0:45:49 – It’s not even just the money.
0:45:54 It’s also helping creators see who their real fans are.
0:45:56 – You want the 1,000 true fans.
0:45:58 – And right now it’s like a one-way conversation.
0:45:59 Like why can’t the platforms
0:46:01 that allow you to listen to podcasts
0:46:04 also allow me to record a quick message back to you.
0:46:06 And then also like use algorithms
0:46:08 to figure out which comments are valuable or not.
0:46:10 – Yeah, I think we agree in that sense.
0:46:11 Like platforms should basically do more
0:46:12 for their users and experiment.
0:46:14 I also agree with Nick though
0:46:16 on the point that he’s raising.
0:46:18 I don’t like the assumption going right to platforms
0:46:20 as the default owners of this
0:46:22 and the default aggregators of this.
0:46:24 And this kind of goes to Ben Thompson
0:46:26 who writes about aggregation theory a lot,
0:46:28 which is just a fancy name for network effects
0:46:29 in a lot of ways.
0:46:30 I mean, he’s very much more nuanced,
0:46:31 but it is at the end of the day,
0:46:33 the tension between centralization,
0:46:35 between bundling and unbundling,
0:46:37 and these cycles that constantly go back and forth
0:46:38 and waves.
0:46:40 – Yeah, especially with the YouTube platform.
0:46:42 Like you look at how the influencers
0:46:44 who started YouTube channels 10 years ago,
0:46:46 they have massive followings now.
0:46:48 – Yeah, and they’re dependent on YouTube,
0:46:48 which is Nick’s point.
0:46:50 – Yes, but also it makes it really hard
0:46:53 for a newcomer to come in and create a YouTube channel
0:46:55 and get to that one million subscriber count, right?
0:46:57 And in the similar way, like even now,
0:46:59 I hear about so many friends even starting podcasts.
0:47:02 – Oh yeah, it’s very competitive.
0:47:04 Like there are people who barely get
0:47:07 to 10,000 listens per episode and that’s insane.
0:47:09 – And it can get more competitive, right?
0:47:10 – Yes, very crowded.
0:47:12 – And so that’s why I think all these new platforms
0:47:14 are kind of interesting because as they try
0:47:16 and pick off creators to have them exclusive
0:47:19 to their platform, this dynamic may change.
0:47:20 But it’s really interesting ’cause like for video,
0:47:22 it was like winner-take-all.
0:47:23 – Which is not true in podcasting.
0:47:25 So I’m curious then for your guys’ take,
0:47:27 because back to the point of centralization
0:47:29 is to give people a better user experience
0:47:33 and choice and variety and ease of use.
0:47:36 What do we think about the moves of Spotify
0:47:39 and Apple in this space, especially given Spotify’s news
0:47:41 a few weeks ago of acquiring Gimlet?
0:47:43 – So I think the necessary background here
0:47:45 is that for the longest time,
0:47:47 Apple has been a primary distributor of podcasting.
0:47:51 It used to be somewhere upwards of like 80%.
0:47:55 We believe it’s now somewhere between like 60 to 75 maybe.
0:47:58 But with today’s infinite dial, so studies,
0:48:01 it suggests that Spotify has grown their particular share,
0:48:04 but we’re nowhere seeing like 50/50 parity or something.
0:48:06 We’re just not seeing that just yet.
0:48:09 And so Spotify, the business case for Spotify
0:48:12 going to podcasting or spoken audio at large
0:48:13 is pulling their business model away
0:48:16 for being completely tethered to the dynamics
0:48:18 of the music industry.
0:48:20 Which is to say a music industry that’s very,
0:48:22 that’s been very costly for them to play in
0:48:25 and it’s been very costly for a lot of music platforms
0:48:29 to try to come in and take over essentially distribution power
0:48:30 from the music labels.
0:48:33 And so Spotify looked in the situation and go,
0:48:36 we see a category of content here
0:48:39 that is significantly cheaper, that is still unwieldy
0:48:40 and it’s still untamed.
0:48:42 And we can try to figure out our place in that world
0:48:45 and sort of push us off the narrative
0:48:46 of just being a music company
0:48:48 and giving ourselves other avenues of growth.
0:48:50 – And that impacts like the company’s branding
0:48:51 and positioning, right?
0:48:53 It’s no longer seen as just a music company
0:48:56 but like an audio destination for all kinds of audio.
0:48:57 – Absolutely.
0:49:00 – And in that same way that Spotify was also known
0:49:02 for helping you discover stuff you like.
0:49:04 I think this is also a reflection they’re realizing
0:49:06 like podcasting has gotten so large
0:49:08 in terms of how many new creators are jumping in.
0:49:12 – Can you guys address the exclusive shows angle?
0:49:14 – I actually see both models working really well.
0:49:16 I think if you have a platform
0:49:18 where anyone can submit a podcast, that can be great.
0:49:19 You can have long tail creators.
0:49:21 But I also think a podcast that says,
0:49:24 “Hey, I’m going to curate the top two, 300 podcasts,”
0:49:25 can also work really well too.
0:49:27 Both have great monetization potential
0:49:30 if they want to be niche or just long tail.
0:49:31 – Yeah.
0:49:34 And so, I mean, we have a couple of situations
0:49:36 that’s probably, that’s pretty interesting right now.
0:49:39 So there’s been a paid podcasting attempt
0:49:41 for quite some time called Stitcher Premium.
0:49:42 It’s a sort of exclusive layer
0:49:46 on top of a fairly popular third party podcast
0:49:48 I have called Stitcher, which is part of Mintroll.
0:49:49 And earlier this week,
0:49:51 I saw the formal announcement of a company called Luminary
0:49:53 that’s attempting to be,
0:49:57 they literally use the tagline sort of Netflix for podcasts,
0:49:58 which is going to be difficult
0:50:00 because the primary challenge there
0:50:03 is that they’re trying to build a catalog of things
0:50:06 that you could argue has free alternatives
0:50:07 almost everywhere else.
0:50:11 But I have made this argument a couple of times before
0:50:13 and I don’t think it’s stuck yet,
0:50:15 but I think we should be looking at Headspace
0:50:17 as a really interesting comp here.
0:50:18 – What do you mean by that?
0:50:21 – So Headspace essentially is an on-demand audio app
0:50:23 that performs a very specific function
0:50:25 that provides a very specific genre
0:50:27 of on-demand audio content.
0:50:30 It fits into one’s life in a very, very specific way.
0:50:32 You know exactly what you’re paying for it
0:50:35 and you can’t find quality alternatives elsewhere
0:50:37 of that platform generally speaking.
0:50:40 And so we’re in a situation where we,
0:50:45 there is some lane here to build a paid podcasting platform.
0:50:46 The question is like,
0:50:48 will there be a really, really big one
0:50:50 or will it be a series of smaller ones
0:50:52 that ends up being bundled over the long run?
0:50:53 And I think we are at the very beginning
0:50:55 of beginning to answer that question.
0:50:56 – Yeah, I agree.
0:50:59 I would also say it does work for people in the know
0:51:00 in terms of the history of podcasting
0:51:02 in the recent past five years.
0:51:05 I think I’ve seen versions of Netflix for podcasts
0:51:06 and one of them I remember,
0:51:09 I don’t even know if you remember this, Nick, is 60DB.
0:51:11 – I do, acquired by Google.
0:51:12 – Right, they got acquired by Google
0:51:14 and I don’t know what Google’s doing inside.
0:51:16 But the problem is like, it’s still a subscription, right?
0:51:17 – Why is that a problem?
0:51:18 I would love a subscription service.
0:51:21 – But I think I would rather pay for a specific podcast.
0:51:23 – Oh my God, yes!
0:51:25 So my number one complaint.
0:51:27 So everyone at A6 has either heard my whole thesis
0:51:29 on this a million times, which is first of all,
0:51:32 podcasting is such a homogenous word.
0:51:35 We’ve defined it technically and in user experience,
0:51:38 but when I think of the content side of podcasting,
0:51:41 I like to split it into a simple taxonomy
0:51:42 of three types of shows.
0:51:43 There are personality based,
0:51:46 what I call cultur personality based shows.
0:51:48 You know, like the Azure Klein show, the Tim Ferriss show,
0:51:49 and my God, by the way,
0:51:51 most of them are named after male names.
0:51:53 Let’s just go off on that one.
0:51:56 Then the next category besides cultur personality shows
0:51:58 is what I call like more collectives
0:52:00 or like brands or voices of groups of people,
0:52:02 which is what I would consider the A6 and Z podcast.
0:52:05 And then the third show is a much more produced serialized
0:52:07 like serial or narrative type of podcasting show.
0:52:09 That’s a very loose broad taxonomy.
0:52:11 But if you think of these three categories,
0:52:13 discovery for each of them,
0:52:15 it is so frustrating to me,
0:52:17 again, going back to this containerization model,
0:52:20 that discovery is limited at a show level.
0:52:22 Again, structurally, it’s terrible.
0:52:23 I keep bringing up structure
0:52:25 because while everyone is so caught up
0:52:27 in talking about discovery and monetization,
0:52:29 they’re missing the big opportunity here,
0:52:29 the bigger thing,
0:52:32 which is defining a new unit of analysis
0:52:34 of episodes versus shows
0:52:36 and possibly even more granular units within that.
0:52:37 I hate that we’re still stuck
0:52:39 in the legacy ways of thinking about this.
0:52:41 When we can bypass things with software,
0:52:43 we don’t have to have the CD stage first
0:52:45 to get to the individual song stage.
0:52:47 And I also talk to analytics people all the time
0:52:49 about how feeds limit what tools
0:52:51 outside the big platforms can do,
0:52:53 like not being able to tag podcasts by topic.
0:52:55 Because I believe we all need the ability
0:52:58 to find episodes, not entire shows.
0:52:59 I like Berks and Birdwatching.
0:53:01 I should be able to find any episodes on those topics
0:53:02 regardless of show.
0:53:05 Connie, you like real estate and crafts.
0:53:07 You should be able to fucking find those topics
0:53:09 and discover every single episode on those.
0:53:11 But see, this is where a transcription and tagging
0:53:14 and just a much smarter internet native way
0:53:19 of displaying podcasts makes all of that automatic.
0:53:21 There is no technical reason
0:53:24 why we cannot automatically transcribe all the top podcasts.
0:53:27 And again, I think subscription for an entire platform
0:53:29 doesn’t necessarily make sense for podcasts.
0:53:31 Like maybe it’s a good starting point.
0:53:31 – It makes sense.
0:53:33 – It’s a decent starting point.
0:53:35 But hey, maybe you’re a podcaster
0:53:37 and you’re only gonna create a couple episodes,
0:53:39 but it’s really, really good content.
0:53:41 Like why can’t you let people pay for that?
0:53:42 And again, I think it’s not just about
0:53:44 the money that’s getting transferred.
0:53:46 The problem right now is like,
0:53:48 there’s certain podcasts that I would happily pay for
0:53:50 and a bunch that I would not pay for.
0:53:51 – Yeah, exactly.
0:53:53 – And right now these platforms don’t give you that option
0:53:56 to say, hey, these are the ones that I ascribe more value to,
0:53:58 much less even to say I like this one or a comment
0:53:59 or anything.
0:54:01 – I mean, right, well, you’re also looting at the,
0:54:02 when you talk about the transcription of shows though,
0:54:05 is like, and this is obviously another key point of discovery
0:54:07 is it goes again parallel to the web.
0:54:08 There was a curated links phase
0:54:10 that preceded the portal phase
0:54:11 that preceded the search phase.
0:54:12 – Give it a couple of months
0:54:13 ’cause Google is working on that
0:54:16 and they are beginning to beta test all of that
0:54:17 in terms of transcriptions,
0:54:19 in terms of whether a podcast shows that
0:54:22 or audio at large shows up in the search engines.
0:54:25 – But they’re not even gonna have all the podcasts, right?
0:54:26 The exclusive podcast on Luminary,
0:54:28 Google’s not gonna have.
0:54:29 – Well, then that’s Luminary’s problem
0:54:31 at the end of the day.
0:54:34 Like, I think Google’s situation is
0:54:36 that they’re gonna pull in the RSS feeds
0:54:39 or they’re gonna pull in podcasts
0:54:42 that exist on the open sort of ecosystem
0:54:43 and they’re gonna transcribe it
0:54:45 and they’re gonna index it within the search engine.
0:54:45 – I guess what I’m saying, like,
0:54:49 rather than rely on Google as the search engine to do it,
0:54:52 at least very basic transcription and search,
0:54:55 all the platforms should be able to do it themselves.
0:54:57 And like, imagine all the other stuff
0:54:57 you’d like to talk on to it.
0:54:59 Like, hey, maybe in addition to the podcast
0:55:02 on podcast today, you have like five links
0:55:04 that the listener can go in and click on.
0:55:05 – Click while you’re playing.
0:55:08 I would love the ability to embed a link natively
0:55:10 instead of in the show notes.
0:55:12 – Or a PDF that you can then charge more money for, right?
0:55:13 Like, hey, to read more.
0:55:16 Or maybe like all the like parts that you cut out.
0:55:18 Like those special clips.
0:55:22 Maybe someone pays like a dollar to untap it, right?
0:55:25 – I agree, I would love to pay for stuff
0:55:27 that I want, but it’s a situation.
0:55:29 I mean, look, I’m just a normal person
0:55:31 that has like normal finances.
0:55:32 I don’t think I’m going to spend
0:55:35 more than X amount of money per month on entertainment goods.
0:55:37 – I agree that people aren’t going to spend
0:55:40 like tons and tons of money on podcasts.
0:55:43 But I think the better creators would get more rewarded
0:55:45 for their content, which means new creators
0:55:49 that don’t have, you know, crazy followings to begin with
0:55:50 can still get paid.
0:55:51 – No, I agree.
0:55:54 But the question is like, I’ve heard the line of argument
0:55:57 that it’s really hard to become a Patreon supporter
0:56:00 or find a way to give you money to a creator
0:56:01 that you really support.
0:56:04 And I do wonder the nature of that assumption.
0:56:06 There’s only so much frictionless,
0:56:08 so much attacking off the friction
0:56:10 that we can introduce to that layer
0:56:13 that we find what the maximum most efficient point of,
0:56:16 you know, listener supporting creators ends up becoming.
0:56:19 – Okay, but that is assuming that I want to support
0:56:21 that specific creator.
0:56:24 Maybe I only want a tip for that specific episode.
0:56:26 Maybe I don’t actually want to give the tip to Sonal,
0:56:29 but I want to give it to Connie and Nick, right?
0:56:30 – That’s fucked up, but okay.
0:56:31 – I mean, like, no, seriously,
0:56:35 like the way that we are thinking about paying,
0:56:37 it’s not necessarily the same person
0:56:40 who’s speaking even on every podcast.
0:56:44 And the fact that we aren’t able to more directly indicate
0:56:46 and tie our money to the products
0:56:48 that we truly, truly value,
0:56:50 I just think that’s really lost opportunity.
0:56:52 – Well, so let me push back on that a little bit, right?
0:56:57 So the assumption here is that the show is made up of,
0:57:00 that this show is made up of you, me,
0:57:03 and, you know, and let’s say a producer,
0:57:06 and let’s say, you know, a couple of people behind the scenes.
0:57:10 But I think the reality is that most of the production
0:57:13 structures constitutes a lot more people
0:57:15 than the listener can ordinarily see.
0:57:18 So what a listener, who a listener is moved to tip,
0:57:19 doesn’t necessarily translate
0:57:21 to who’s actually creating the content,
0:57:23 because that’s a, there’s an entire,
0:57:24 there’s an entire sort of conversation over here
0:57:27 in terms of like, how listeners value the creators,
0:57:29 how they sort of make assumptions
0:57:30 about what they want to support,
0:57:32 how they want to support, why they want to support.
0:57:34 There’s a, there’s a huge, there’s a sort of,
0:57:36 there’s a, there are a lot of gaps in information there
0:57:39 to give all that power to listeners, I think.
0:57:42 There still should be some middle point there
0:57:43 in terms of how support works.
0:57:45 – I’m not saying it can’t go to a show,
0:57:48 but a show is, even then supporting a show
0:57:50 is different than supporting a person.
0:57:51 – I’m hearing both of you guys.
0:57:53 I also hear that there is a lot more granularity you can do
0:57:55 because we have an infinite web.
0:57:57 And the fact that we define things as containers
0:58:01 of a feed or a podcast or a show or an episode,
0:58:03 these are all things we can redefine in this new era.
0:58:05 And I agree it’s very early innings.
0:58:07 I also agree so wholeheartedly
0:58:10 that a thriving content ecosystem
0:58:12 has to support its creators.
0:58:13 And I know you’re arguing for that too,
0:58:14 ’cause you’re arguing in this framework
0:58:16 that people have more comments,
0:58:18 they have more ability to interact with their top fans.
0:58:20 You’re saying the same thing from a different angle,
0:58:23 but from a pure business perspective
0:58:25 in terms of being able to run a business
0:58:26 that is based on podcasting,
0:58:28 there does need to be a middle layer
0:58:31 where creators can get the value they need.
0:58:33 And for me, the open question, quite honestly,
0:58:35 is whether the assumption or thesis
0:58:36 that happened with blogging,
0:58:39 and this is actually the initial premise of Anchor as well,
0:58:41 which Spotify also acquired,
0:58:43 is whether there will be now a new wave
0:58:47 of mobile podcast creators who don’t have tools.
0:58:48 And again, with tools like Descript,
0:58:49 which democratize editing,
0:58:52 with tools like just being able to record a podcast
0:58:54 in your phone without having to have like a fancy
0:58:56 Zoom recorder or mics.
0:58:58 Like that is an open question to me.
0:58:59 And I don’t know if people are really gonna listen to that
0:59:02 because we have this discovery problem in the ecosystem.
0:59:04 And yet there are a few centralized choke points
0:59:05 that are coming up now,
0:59:08 particularly iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, et cetera.
0:59:11 By the way, on this notion of growing the podcast ecosystem
0:59:13 and the total addressable market size,
0:59:15 what do you guys make of radio here?
0:59:17 ‘Cause that has its own set of structural and policy
0:59:19 and regulatory considerations.
0:59:21 I’m curious for your guys’ take on that aspect of it.
0:59:24 – Well, I think the market size for podcasts
0:59:27 is multiples larger than what it is today.
0:59:30 And I do think it’s tapping into radio,
0:59:32 but it’s also tapping into other things
0:59:34 that do really well in the audio format.
0:59:36 So like audio books that are self-published,
0:59:39 for example, things that are related
0:59:41 to the knowledge sharing market for adult learning,
0:59:44 I think really, really work well for audio formats.
0:59:46 There’s a lot of stuff where I don’t need to watch someone
0:59:49 talking on YouTube with like a whiteboard,
0:59:50 ’cause usually they don’t even really need
0:59:52 a whiteboard, honestly.
0:59:54 – Although there is a funny argument to be made,
0:59:56 which is that people also listen to audio on YouTube.
0:59:58 And in fact, Chris Anderson was telling me his son
1:00:01 watches entire movies on YouTube in audio mode only,
1:00:03 which I think is freaking fascinating.
1:00:06 – I also just listen to movies on YouTube all the time.
1:00:08 – I mean, yes, YouTube also works for audio.
1:00:11 But I mean, just imagine topics around business,
1:00:14 topics around finance, topics around parenting,
1:00:19 even like meditation and how to like improve your life.
1:00:21 All of that stuff works really well in the audio format
1:00:24 and doesn’t necessarily always require video.
1:00:26 So anyways, those kinds of podcasts,
1:00:28 at least today, are not the mainstream podcast, right?
1:00:31 ‘Cause today, mainstream podcasts are again around shows
1:00:33 versus individual pieces.
1:00:35 Instead of being like a TV show,
1:00:38 why can’t you be like a movie?
1:00:40 And it’s like this one-time thing that goes really deep,
1:00:42 which is really valuable content.
1:00:43 And I think if you take that kind of definition
1:00:46 for a podcast, it is so massive.
1:00:48 – So let’s begin the whole notion of treasure radio, right?
1:00:53 Like we, it is an industry completely utterly defined
1:00:55 by the nature of the distribution point.
1:00:57 It is antennas going out, it hits you in the car,
1:00:59 it hits you in the radio,
1:01:01 and it commands billions and billions of dollars.
1:01:03 My interpretation of that industry
1:01:06 and its sort of strange persistence
1:01:08 has a lot to do with advertising relationships.
1:01:13 It is still the medium that has the most easy reach
1:01:16 for, and that hits the most Americans,
1:01:19 and has the most like history behind it.
1:01:21 And so if you’re an advertiser,
1:01:23 you feel significantly more comfortable
1:01:26 because that is your default industry to fight into.
1:01:29 And I feel like that feeling of safety and confidence
1:01:31 is something that should not be understated.
1:01:34 And it’s something that all digital media sort of sectors,
1:01:36 including podcasting and beyond it,
1:01:37 should sort of be cognizant of like,
1:01:41 that’s one of the primary things driving that situation.
1:01:44 – And I think another reason why ads work so well on radio,
1:01:46 and it works well on podcasts too.
1:01:49 Sometimes it comes in the voice of the creator
1:01:51 versus the voice of the brand
1:01:53 or like some other random voice.
1:01:54 – 100%, yep.
1:01:56 The sort of buzzword that podcast industry executives
1:01:58 use all the time is intimacy, right?
1:02:02 And that’s why we sort of hear the host rat ad being
1:02:05 the pinnacle of the podcast advertising experience.
1:02:10 And it’s also its most valuable ad slot, ad type.
1:02:14 And so, that’s why like a lot of the genres
1:02:16 that you pointed out when you sought to build
1:02:18 the taxonomy of a podcast is very personality driven.
1:02:20 It’s very people driven.
1:02:22 That’s why there’s a little bit of trickiness
1:02:24 when we talk about something like fiction podcasts
1:02:26 or non-narrated podcasts and how you monetize that,
1:02:27 how you build that relationship.
1:02:29 – Yep, I agree.
1:02:31 It’s very much native to the content of the storytelling
1:02:32 and the medium in that context.
1:02:33 – Absolutely.
1:02:35 And at some point we will see innovations in business models,
1:02:37 innovation in distribution in the structure,
1:02:41 in the sort of like container of it
1:02:45 that will alter the advertising assumptions here
1:02:47 or the monetization assumptions here.
1:02:48 But I just want to go back to,
1:02:50 to tie it back to the very first thing we talked about.
1:02:52 The definition of it, what we think about it,
1:02:53 how we think about it,
1:02:55 our assumptions of it being personality driven
1:02:57 or show driven or episode driven,
1:02:59 it needs to fragment at some point.
1:03:00 It kind of needs to break up
1:03:04 because it needs to be a universe that can hold
1:03:06 a bunch of different kinds of experiences
1:03:08 in the same way that when we think about television,
1:03:10 we’re not just talking about breaking bad.
1:03:12 We’re talking about real fortune.
1:03:15 We’re talking about like so many different kinds of styles.
1:03:17 – We’re talking about like American Idol,
1:03:19 which is such an important movement around the world
1:03:21 when you think of the future of content.
1:03:24 And TikTok and challenge-based things, right?
1:03:26 But the point is that there is a whole,
1:03:28 that was a huge fun reality TV, like–
1:03:30 – Or things around holidays.
1:03:31 – Right. – Like the Super Bowl.
1:03:33 Once a year type events, right?
1:03:35 Like this is again, like we have to break away
1:03:36 from the show concept.
1:03:37 – Exactly, I agree.
1:03:39 And to your point, just on a terminology thing, Nick,
1:03:41 I would say the word fragmented,
1:03:44 we’ve used that in the context of industry fragmentation.
1:03:46 To me, it’s more how to make a homogenous term
1:03:49 more heterogeneous and have more diversity
1:03:50 embodied within it.
1:03:53 – Yeah, and so I think the question here is sort of like,
1:03:56 do we think about the spread as on the one hand,
1:03:58 you have prestige TV, and on the other hand,
1:03:59 you have reality TV?
1:04:01 Or do we think about the spread more like,
1:04:02 on the one hand, you have Netflix,
1:04:04 on the other hand, you have Twitch?
1:04:06 Like, is that the way we’re gonna think
1:04:08 about the ecosystem at large?
1:04:09 Or are we gonna be a bit more specific
1:04:11 when we use the term, when we do our coverage?
1:04:13 I think that’s also, you know,
1:04:15 what we talk about is this important
1:04:16 about how we talk about it, so.
1:04:17 – Do you wanna say one more thing?
1:04:19 – No, I wanna ask you questions,
1:04:20 ’cause there’s so many of my friends today
1:04:22 who want to create podcasts.
1:04:25 And you created the A16Z podcast from scratch
1:04:25 to what it is today.
1:04:28 – To full credit, it was actually created before I joined,
1:04:30 and I took over at three months in the production
1:04:31 and then I’m hosting it a year later.
1:04:33 – Okay, but I know like the user base massively,
1:04:36 the listenership massively grew under your care.
1:04:37 So I think you should talk about, you know,
1:04:39 what are your tips for someone
1:04:40 who just wants to get started on podcasts?
1:04:42 – Oh my God, that could be its own episode,
1:04:43 and I’d love to do that someday.
1:04:45 So I guess maybe on the spirit of creation,
1:04:46 which is a theme of this episode,
1:04:48 I’ll just say some very quick, high-level takeaways,
1:04:50 which is one, and I do this when I give a lot of talks
1:04:52 and talk to founders about how to start their own things
1:04:53 for their company.
1:04:54 – Yes.
1:04:55 – I think the fundamental thing people need to ask
1:04:58 is where they are in the taxonomy of shows that I outlined,
1:04:59 because that is sort of a flow chart
1:05:00 for what your next step is,
1:05:01 for either how to hire, build,
1:05:03 or just what tools to use.
1:05:05 If you’re a cult of personality show,
1:05:07 the things you can do are very different
1:05:08 than if you’re doing a brand show,
1:05:10 than if you’re doing a serialized narrative show.
1:05:11 So the first thing I always ask people is,
1:05:13 what is your goal and what kind of show you want?
1:05:14 ‘Cause it’s a very crowded environment.
1:05:17 So then the next thing is, attention is scarce.
1:05:18 With podcasting, maybe less so
1:05:19 because you have a bit of a captive audience
1:05:23 in a phone or commute or workout or a, you know,
1:05:26 a situation where they are on a hike or a walk
1:05:27 where they’re only gonna listen,
1:05:29 but even then you are competing with other shows.
1:05:31 So the number one thing is how you differentiate your show.
1:05:34 And one of the number one ways to get a lot of listeners
1:05:37 is to have a lot of episodes, a variety of episodes.
1:05:39 And so the other way to do it then is to enforce seasonality
1:05:40 where you drop a season of episodes
1:05:42 and then just like drop them in like, you know,
1:05:43 record 10 and drop them.
1:05:43 – So basically if you wanna do it,
1:05:45 it’s like a long-term commitment?
1:05:47 – I don’t think it has to be
1:05:48 because as you’ve also talked about,
1:05:53 there’s a lot more tools emerging and startups emerging
1:05:55 that will allow like experimentation and sharing.
1:05:57 – But for now, it has to be a long-term commitment.
1:05:59 – I think Ben Thompson said this.
1:06:00 Headcount is the biggest predictor
1:06:01 of how much people invest in something.
1:06:05 And I think if a company has people dedicated to podcasting,
1:06:06 then you know they’re serious about podcasting,
1:06:07 I would say it’s as simple as that.
1:06:09 So you do have to invest in it to make it happen.
1:06:10 – Yeah, but on the simple mechanics,
1:06:11 one of the most beautiful things is the thing
1:06:12 that I complained about,
1:06:14 which is the very thing that also is the best thing
1:06:16 about podcasting is the feed ecosystem
1:06:20 makes it so easy to simply record an episode,
1:06:21 distribute wherever you want.
1:06:23 And then it’s about using the feed ecosystem
1:06:25 to then freely put your feed out all into the world
1:06:26 because it’s as simple.
1:06:28 All iTunes is doing is taking a bunch of feeds.
1:06:30 All we had to do when we got on Spotify
1:06:31 was like feed them our feet.
1:06:34 And people can self-select the feeds into different apps.
1:06:35 So you can use that to your advantage.
1:06:37 And there’s a ton more about the content side,
1:06:39 but the one thing I do wanna say is that
1:06:42 the editing process is now becoming democratized
1:06:43 because there’s a huge gap.
1:06:45 I would often put it as the analogy
1:06:46 between design and manufacturing
1:06:48 where there is a design phase and a manufacturing phase
1:06:50 and you need to close and tighten that feedback loop
1:06:52 to get the best content out.
1:06:54 And what’s happening with tools like Descript,
1:06:55 you tighten this feedback loop
1:06:56 between design and manufacturing
1:06:59 where you no longer have to separate creators and writers
1:07:02 from the technical skills of actually editing a podcast.
1:07:03 So that’s really important
1:07:05 because there’s a whole bunch of tools now
1:07:07 that are on the analytic side that will,
1:07:08 and there are a new bunch of distribution tools
1:07:10 that are now connecting all these pieces
1:07:11 and supporting creators.
1:07:12 So it’s a very quick answer.
1:07:14 There’s so much more you could say on this.
1:07:15 – I think we need to do another podcast
1:07:17 on how to create podcasts.
1:07:18 – Well, that would be fun.
1:07:20 Thank you for joining the ASICS NC Podcast.
1:07:21 – Thank you so much for having me.
1:07:22 I really enjoyed this talk.
1:07:23 – Thank you.