Different Words for Different Beasts — The Taxonomy Issue in the Future of Podcasting
The scope of content that falls under the label “podcast” is borderline absurd, and I think it is the problem behind most of the major issues in the industry — including the financial ones.
We can all feel it — podcasting seems to have reached a weird plateau, despite actively growing. Nick Hilton’s article “Has Podcasting Failed” is great evidence of this. Change has to come or death will ensue.
I think evolution often begins in language. We’ve made the things, the shows, and many have outgrown their label of “podcast.” Now, we need to name them properly to decide the best thing to do with each group.
We can’t let all the animals in the zoo play in one pen. They require different foods and care. And besides, they would kill each other.
Let’s start with user issues.
The Plight of the Podcast Fan
Imagine you go to a bookstore looking for a nice novel about turtles. The bookstore sections are kind of vague. You see ‘Arts’ — well you want a novel, and that’s literature, which I guess is an art so maybe there? But I mean turtles aren’t art… so is ‘Arts’ referring to the topic of the book or the type of book?? You realize-there’s no way to sort through all of this content by format because there are no words for the formats, you can only search by an extremely broad theme. Or wait, turtles are animals so maybe “Science” because that has a subcategory of “Nature”? But you don’t want a scientific book on turtles… Finally you just ask someone. The clerk leads you to the shelves with all the writing on turtles. This section includes: poetry about turtles, investigative reports about turtles, true-crime on turtle murders, comedians blabbing about turtles, political analysts blabbing about turtles, blogs that some weird guy who calls himself “Turtle Man” wrote, pamphlets from someone trying to sell you the business of their turtle company, memoirs written by turtles, kids books about turtles … it’s all in one god-damn freaking chunk. What the hell kind of bookstore is this? Welcome to Apple Podcasts… and every other podcast app I’ve ever used. Ok now that you know I am actually talking about podcasts and trying to find a good one that you’d be interested in — time to either open a second app or a website that gives you some podcast suggestions or a better organization system. But these things aren’t going to include all the available content out there — you might miss something great! (This is even if you care about podcasts enough to have the drive to do this extra work, some may see reading podcast blogs as a time-suck and just give up.) OR you could click on a random one and risk listening to something truly awful. Good luck!
Why “Crime Podcasts” are Big
I think the reason shows like Serial have taken off has at least as much, if not more, to do with format than being about crime. We need words for formats instead of themes. People like/want/need shows that tell one continuous story in digestible chapters and characters to follow with immersive sound-design. Crime shows often give them that.The only word listeners have to describe these kinds of shows is ‘crime.’ So that is what they type in the search bar on the podcast app. If there were a word for the format of these immersive serialized stories — or a platform full of only these kinds of shows — they would eat up all of them, not just the crime ones, because it would give them the kind of storytelling their brains want. I don’t think it’s any wonder why podcast conferences have so many popular panels on immersive sound-design and story-telling. A good chunk of listeners don’t want to be talked at. They want to lose themselves in a story. People want to choose what to watch, read and listen to based on format first and topic second — look in any bookstore or TV/Movie-streaming app to prove that.
The Plight of the Audio Maker
When I say I make a podcast, ‘people’ (ya know, non-audio people) generally ask me“what do you talk about?” and then assume a few incorrect things: I discuss a niche topic… I’m trying to promote a business, I’m interviewing ‘experts,’ or maybe I’m making jokes about movies. I say, ‘well it’s more like an audio drama.’ Then I have to explain what an audio drama is.
Oh so you write fiction?
‘Well no it’s a true story.’
‘Oh so it’s like Serial?’
‘Nope no one dies, no crime here. It’s a memoir. I originally wrote it as a book for my MFA thesis.’
‘Oh so an audio book? Like on Audible?’
‘Well no, unlike audio books it’s adapted as a script in short chunks and I have music and sound effects which I create myself and heavily sound-design into my program…’
‘So it’s… a what?’
‘A podcast… I guess… sigh.’
Basically calling my thing a podcast feels incorrect. And I am not the only one who feels that way.
“Maybe we need different words for them.”
I heard this recently at a panel discussion at the PRX Podcast Garage. The topic of the evening was specific to science podcasts, but at some point the conversation turned to one of the old favorite topics among podcasters — we are in a new-ish industry that needs to evolve, bad. (The other favorite being — we need a better way to get money, bad). Someone said something about “talking head podcasts” and the difficulty of talking about “the kind of immersive, literary podcasts we do” in the same thought (“The Great God of Depression” was being discussed).
There was a beat of silence. I could feel everyone in the room thinking the same thing and holding their breath, and then someone finally said it.
“Maybe we need different words for them.”
The room sighed.
We need to call creatively-written, highly-produced audio-only shows something besides podcast
And then we need to give them their own platform just for beasts of their kind — literary writing, immersive sound-design, scripts written and edited specifically for audio format, one continuous story. These are not 8-hour audio books. These are not blogs read aloud. These are not essays or research papers on niche topics with some music added in. These are not people chatting and making jokes — a lot of listeners are completely opposed to all of the above kind of content. Those are podcasts — although they still need better subcategories too. But these shows, these works of art, are not podcasts. I don’t know what they are yet.
Once we properly name these — we need to stop giving them away for free and begging for money from our patrons and advertisers. It’s not public radio and it doesn’t have to act like it. And we need to stop feeling like there’s no point in even continuing a show that has less than 50,000 downloads per episode because we will never get advertisers interested. Like hey, if your show only has 10 episodes because it’s a serialized story — uhh you just don’t even have time ever get to that level of downloads, unless you are a well-known audio maker or famous some other way before the fact. All that work to try to sell socks? Well how the Hell else?
Hmmm. An idea:
A ’ Netflix’ for highly-produced audio content. And to stop calling it podcasts. And it’s not audiobooks either. Movies and books aren’t given away for free. Why is our stuff?
I think? Tell me I’m wrong go ahead. I will believe you.
Caveat:
Of course one of the wonderful things about podcasting is the low-barrier to entry. The chat-casts, and talk-shows — the audio blogs — can remain on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. We need those ideas to keep coming. There are amazing ideas there that need signal boosts. This article is not a diss to those shows. I love many of them. I am just saying they are a different animal and need a different name so we can take care of each of them in their own way.
Imagine if we only had the word “video” to describe all available visual streaming content including both a 14 year-old’s video-game-review Youtube channel and a Francis Coppola film. That’s where podcasting is at.
Those who produce audio that is equivalent to film and television need to realize what we are making are not “podcasts” — they are not blogs — and thus they should NOT be using the blog model of distribution and revenue.
Thought experiment:
Imagine this Netflix style app. You pay 6.99 a month or something. You open it and the first screen simply gives you three buttons “Non-Fiction, Fiction, Kids.” Once you get in you are greeted with more familiar terms: “Documentaries” “True-Crime Stories” “Murder Mysteries” “Memoir” “Investigative Journalism” “Horror” “Sci-fi/Fantasy.” You breathe a sigh of relief. Now that’s a lot easier than the amorphous blobs of “Arts” or “Culture &Society” right?
The people who make the content in the app would get paid an advance for their work. And then they would get paid in royalties. Just like people who make movies. Like people who write books. Because we are not making chat-casts and marketing material, we are not making podcasts, we are making art. (To make this feasible and force the market to evolve we’d have to pull our work off of iTunes and Google. I know, scary.)
And indie people could pitch their stories to the platform to get an advance to produce a good show— you wouldn’t need to already be a well-known public radio maker to get a deal because you are a story-teller and that is what matters here, not how many stations you’ve worked at. Because we are not making reportage or chat-casts and marketing material, we are not making podcasts, we are making art. (Again not using that word to elevate it above other types of shows, just to show it should have a different model of distribution and revenue. It’s not a blog.)
I lazily day-dreamed about pursuing seed-funding to start this app. I don’t know any developers, I’ve never started a company and don’t know anyone who has. I just know we, people who make stuff that’s filed under podcast but is more like art, we need something like this. Our listeners want this whether they know it or not. And they probably do know it. They want to open an app, be able to easily find content arranged in the same system books and movies are and might even like knowing that the people who made the shows are getting paid without having to do any extra effort of going on Patreon or Indiegogo or buy another pair of MeUndies. How can they keep up doing that for each and every show they like even if they want to? We’re asking a lot of them. Why not just pay 6.99 a month?
I know this idea is something we all want. Makers and listeners. Recently, after having this idea I listened to a super popular episode of Anxious Machine. My jaw dropped in the shower. Rob had had the same exact idea. He wasn’t able to get to the point of starting an app platform to host the content. But, when people who’ve never talked have the same idea, that means it exists in the collective conscious. It’s trying to be born.
People with kids will eat this up I can tell you right goddamned now
I worked for a children’s podcast until very recently. Parents and teachers alike go nuts for screen-free story time for their kids. I read dozens of emails from parents telling me how their kids who normally scream and hit each other the entire way to school sit there in the back of the car transfixed listening to the podcast — no brain-melting iPad games and heinous music required. It made me fondly remember putting on story-time cassettes in my little primary colored tape deck as a toddler. Those story-tellers voices stuck with me. They were my friends. Oh, and my mom and dad PAID for those cassettes! They didn’t download them for free! I honestly think well-produced kids audio content would pay for this app itself many times over. AND it would fix the one thing parents complained about the show — NO AD’S. Screen-free, ad-free content that engages your little one’s brains and keeps them peaceful? UH, GOLDMINE.
Yes it would be a complicated undertaking — content will need to be produced before it’s launched while the thing is getting developed. Getting amazing producers to make stuff for an app that doesn’t exist yet is tricky. And I am no one so I would not be able to convince them. I’d need some famous people on my side. And if they come from public radio they might think this idea isn’t meritocratic enough. Well, look, movies aren’t given away for free. YouTube videos are. Some stuff deserves not to have ads.
It’s ok if this app never happens. My real goal with the article is to push the language. At the very least, let’s stop calling the audio equivalents of The View and The Godfather under the same umbrella of “podcast.” We need some new words. I think that’s step one.
And please for the love of God make it so that one word does not put the audio I spend dozens of hours a week producing and creating music for and spent a whole damn master’s thesis on writing in the same box as the spam-cast of some biz-dev marketing bro trying to get help you get rich quick and increase your testosterone. AHHHHH!!!
Closing thoughts for the future (Tl;dr):
Once we start calling these different audio beasts by different names instead of referring to all of them as podcast, we will be better able to set up specific financial models for their specific kinds of audience and programming. And apps for audiences to easily find the kind of content they want by format — instead of having to take a crapshoot looking through a mess of shows in broad nearly-useless categories. The blogger/hobbyist-expert podcaster type, who probably should still be called podcaster, can continue to use Patreon or once their specific needs are targeted, a new app or system can be created just for them.
The “actual” expert (someone teaching, currently doing research out of a university etc.) should definitely be funded by their institution since it’s in their best interest. Maybe a platform for all the podcasts coming out of an institution should be created too so students and other interested researchers can find these shows.
Heavily produced cinematic style shows with a limited run of episodes or chapters should be paid for up-front in order to guarantee production value, with the opportunity to earn royalties just like books, movies, and albums. And a platform just for that should be established — the Netflix of Podcasts — except we’re going to get a more specific word than podcasts. People with kids will pay millions of dollars for this ad-free screen-free content I am telling you.
Things produced by public media are their own beasts and they think about fundraising non-stop and have their own challenges of taking the ancient pledge-drive model into the 21st century, so I’ll leave those thoughts to the people in those places. Most stations who produce a decent number of podcasts have their own individual apps already anyway.
I have more to say on how this taxonomic roadblock is hurting us content makers, especially little beginners but I’ll put that in the next one.
Feel free to listen to my show and tell me what it should be called — besides podcast — or non-fiction audio-drama: Dear Young Rocker
Thoughts? Million dollars of seed funding for the netflix of podcasts app? Let me know on twitter @Rockerdear
