Category: Podcaster Tips

By Rob Greenlee

Many have said, over the past 10 years that podcasts were just too difficult to find and know how to listen to them.  I would agree that was the past and that past perceptions like this create a delay in the realization that something new is about to be born that will revolutionize the podcasting or on-demand spoken-word audio market we know today.

“I believe that 2015 and 2016, will bring the most profound improvements to on-demand spoken-word podcast market since iTunes added a podcasts area.”

This next year or so will show us a synergy of some very important areas that in combination will be explosive to the podcasts market.

The opportunity areas are smartphone personal agent technology that we have been seeing slowly develop like Siri, Cortana and Google’s agent technology this is currently nameless.  The other areas of important improvement are around in-car dash listening and most importantly the focus on content and the businesses that support at a very high level.

This smart agent technology is deriving out of what is called “machine learning” and is a growing focus in the tech sector that is driving the convergence of inputs from mobile device sensors, location beacons, artificial intelligence and big database stores of personal data. These technology evolutions are driving a more contextualized experience on all of our mobile devices.

You are asking at this point, “What is contextualized mobile experiences and how is this going to impact my podcast listening?” 

The answer is fairly simple and when you hear it, that light bulb in your brain will go on and you will say that makes sense.

The answer is that our mobile devices will become more and more aware of what you are doing, where you are and what you like to do and when you like to do it.  Then based on all the sensor and personal data these smart agents have access to about you, then they will start to predict and suggest what, when and how we will live our daily lives.

In many ways we are already living this contextual world, but the difference is the predictive nature of the next generation of 8 processor cores and then 12 and 16 core mobile devices that are coming in the next few years.  I believe that we will see cloud connected devices with huge processor power that are connected to huge server farms being built by Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.  These server farms and future devices will know you like you have never known yourself.

To give a little perspective and real world example of this trend, the recent Apple purchase of mobile app podcast playback platform called Swell had as much to do with machine learning and context as podcasting.  Swell was laser focused on obtaining data signals from app usage, social media and device location to help personalize the audio playback experience.

This contextual future in combination with the growing embrace of the broadcast radio side and the increasing quality and variety of content is setting the stage for a huge growth pattern for podcasting and on-demand audio.  We have the pending battle between generations of spoken-word audio listeners who mostly span local and national content. We are seeing a significant trend around in-car streaming audio versus broadcast radio listening.

“I believe that car in-dash streaming audio playback is going to be a major inflection point for podcasts with the coming deployment of Apple’s “CarPlay” with 3G and 4G internet connected app experience that will be driven by mobile device and direct to the car wireless data plans.”

Young people today don’t listen to much radio and mostly digital music platforms, but older people tend to listen to more spoken-word radio and on-demand podcasts. The good thing about the younger generation is that they become older and that will help drive the future in-car streaming audio platforms that will increasingly be connected with our devices smart contextual driven user agents like Siri and Cortana.

This means that your mobile device, car, home and office will be places that your device knows the spoken-word podcast content you like and delivers content listening and advertising suggestions that are relevant to your calendar, location, activity and most of all interests that have all been obtained though the world around you and the personal data you have put into your cloud enabled devices. This may or may not be a good development, but it will make listening to spoken-word podcast content much easier then today.

Originally distributed in Podertainment Magazine.

By Rob Greenlee

Content and distribution have had a long-running relationship with each other over many decades, going back to the earliest days of print, TV and radio. Yet, this relationship has been growing more and more unstable since the beginning of the digital age. Think Napster, as the internet has taken over more and more of the distribution of content that can go directly from the creator to its audience.

The growth of the internet has meant that in general traditional aggregator distribution middlemen are, more and more, getting cut out of making shares of revenue from content that can cover costs associated with creating and maintaining distributing pathways for getting content to audiences. This audience pathway has often been expensive to create and operate. Think newspapers, radio, and television in an analog content delivery world.

Fast forward to 2004, the iPod was dominating portable audio and thus sparked the birth of a little on-demand radio medium called Podcasting that we thought of as the utopia of unbridled and open content creation and distribution. We all thought that this symbiotic relationship between podcasting content and distribution at places like iTunes would continue forever. Well, folks, those days may be coming to an end in the new age of podcast content monetization we are seeing develop today.

I believe that we are seeing the beginnings of a battle starting to happen between creators of high quality podcast content and on-demand audio distribution platforms.

This is happening now because the content in this relatively new medium is finally able to be monetized effectively.

Yes, it is a new day for podcasting and it only took 10 years of struggle for the medium to be taken seriously by the radio and advertising buying markets to get here. The old saying comes to mind: be careful what you wish for as many in the podcasting industry have wanted effective monetization of the medium for a long time now. The battle between content and distribution has arrived and so have a few other things that we all should have known were coming.

It is well known that many more podcasts these days are making serious money.

With that come new people and platforms that want to jump in on the opportunity. The other trend that is happening is increased attention and larger audiences are coming to the podcast medium. It has long been the dream of many early entrepreneurs to seek angel and venture capital to build on-demand radio / podcasting platforms on the promise of obtaining large user bases that would potentially lead to revenue in the future.

The brewing battle is centered on who has the contractual rights to sell advertising in the podcasting content and who has the rights to distribute the said podcast content.

The dirty little secret in the podcasting space is that some of the newer open aggregator distribution platforms are running advertising in front of podcasting content without always sharing revenue and or giving play count credit to the true owners of the podcast content.

The fallout from this battle is going to shape the future of on-demand audio and podcasting. The key issue is that podcast aggregator platforms that do not own or represent the advertising sales and license podcast content will have a difficult time surviving in this new on-demand radio/audio market. It is hard to see how these open content aggregator distribution platforms will make enough revenue to justify the continued investment in software infrastructure, let alone bring a strong return to investors.

These platforms will struggle to support operations without some source of revenue besides venture capital and ad revenue coming from running ads against content that they have not paid for rights or share advertising revenue. They will face legal challenges from the true rights holders that will put them in legal and financial troubles. We will see new aggregator app platforms struggle to find a foothold as the best content will not be available on those platforms.

I believe that serious content creators and content distribution platforms need to operate in ways that are more cooperative with each other.

The only alternative is that content owners will take more control and own the distribution and audience relationships.

It is very possible that open aggregator platforms may be in the process of fading from the on-demand and podcasting market.

Podcast content networks will create distribution platforms for reaching directly to audiences. In the future, larger content networks will be the ones to do the needed content distribution rights and revenue sharing deals.

Originally distributed in Podertainment Magazine and watch videos about the eMagazine here.