iTunes for Podcasts

The audio space has had a lopsided development. Certain aspects have grown considerably. Others remain unchanged. Audio is still mainly comprises of music and podcasts. While distribution has evolved for music artists, the business models are still not optimal. But, music, as an industry, has evolved much more and at a faster rate than the podcast industry.

Hunter Walk’s piece on this topic got me thinking. I agree with him that we tend to associate podcasts with something that’s easily available, substitutable and free. The mindset around podcasts has crippled its business growth to a certain extent. That being said, I do not think changing the category’s name from “podcasts” to something else would be a good first step toward a viable solution. I think we need an iTunes’s equivalent for podcasts.

I think we need a new distribution platform to get used to the concept of buying podcast episodes in piece meal so that we could gradually move on to Spotifys, Apple Musics and Pandoras of the podcast world with subscription revenue models.

Such transition has been a proven model. And, I do not see why the this model cannot be deployed with minor tweaks in the podcast world. Yes, the streaming royalties will be meager for podcast episodes since most people are unlikely to listen to the same episode more than once. We will need to figure that out for sure.

It’s a shame how podcasts haven’t progressed much even in 2016 while music and video industries are light years ahead.