Why podcasts are the future for radio station content

Podcasts aren’t new — we know that. They’ve been around since the 1980s but until recently they haven’t been that sexy. Instead they’ve suffered the reputation of being produced by geeks pretending to be radio presenters in their bedroom; of being too lo-fi; of being too niche. Too weird.

But that was then, and this is now … and now podcasts are suddenly the hip new tool in the marketing mix. The obvious game-changer was Serial, an investigative documentary that turned reportage into entertainment and provided cliffhangers to encourage downloads of the next episodes. Serial not only changed how audio was listened to, but it popularised it too — it quickly became the fastest podcast to reach 5m downloads in iTunes’ history. The radio industry, disheartened by digital and looking to find a way to increase revenue and audience share, took notice. How could they get a piece of the action?

I know the answer to that question. And here’s a disclaimer — I know the answer because I’ve been a part of it. I oversee all marketing for audioBoom, and for our Q1 campaign we decided to innovate (we may be listed on the Stock Exchange, but we’re a start-up at heart). You see, we could have gone down the more conventional route — targeting commuters with our new, free apps — but instead we decided we wanted to do something different to everyone else. At the Adobe Summit earlier this month, 61% of Millennials said they liked marketing delivered as entertainment, and when I heard that stat I was more than happy. Why? Because we’d already decided we wanted to package entertainment as a marketing campaign: we’d decided to produce an exclusive podcast.

You’ve probably heard of Russell Brand. If you’re in America you’ll mainly know him as Katy Perry’s ex-husband. But if you’re in the UK, you’ll know he’s a livewire — he was sacked from MTV, given his walking papers from XFM, and fired from BBC Radio 2. He’s controversial; he likes to stir things up. But despite his firebrand reputation, Brand is an excellent broadcaster. His fans adore him.

Russell Brand and Matt Morgan now have a twice-weekly podcast on audioBoom — it’s had 1.4m listens in the month it’s been running, and this is still only the start. If you’ve not heard the show yet you should; it’s Russell and Matt back to their radio glory days. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, topical, sharp, to the point. It’s an excellent show. But more than it just being a podcast, it’s been the starting point for revolutionising audio consumption — it’s editorial content acting as a marketing package for audioBoom … and it’s also turning global radio consumption on it’s head. I’ll explain why.

Before we launched Russell and Matt’s show a month ago, audioBoom was known as the ‘YouTube of audio’: a platform for people and broadcasters alike to host their audio content (from five second clips to longer listens). But with the launch of the audioBoom-produced Russell Brand Podcast, we’ve moved towards the Netflix model; not only do we partner with the world’s best radio producers, we now produce our own exclusive content, much like Netflix Originals.

But the marketing doesn’t stop there. Not content with being the exclusive platform to host The Russell Brand Podcast (and having a sample of it at the top of the iTunes Podcast chart), we decided to syndicate the show. The content was good enough, and Russell Brand — already produced, already edited — is perfect for radio. Editorially, the show is fantastic (my colleagues have done an amazing job). So as well as having Russell himself tweeting out each episode, why not find other more traditional radio stations who wanted to share (some of) the love?

We were over-the-moon to partner with XFM in the UK (it’s one of my favourite stations ever, and I think their Managing Editor is terrific). Russell Brand Powered By audioBoom goes out every Sunday night at 9pm, edited with music and audioBoom stings. It sounds just like a standalone XFM radio show, but it’s made clear that there’s a full podcast available on the audioBoom platform. The partnership with XFM brings what appears to be a traditionally-produced show to a mass radio audience — the fact it’s been repurposed from a podcast isn’t a negative, but a positive. The tail is now wagging the dog.

With this move, radio networks are now realising that podcasts shouldn’t necessarily be a secondary marketing activity — that popular podcasts can now form the basis of pre-recorded programmes, just as Russell Brand Powered by audioBoom does for XFM.

audioBoom does so much more than produce shows that get syndicated by huge radio networks (remember, this is just our consumer marketing campaign to raise awareness of our platform — we work with 2400 content partners, not just Russell Brand!). But for an industry apprehensive about listen-again platforms and how to incorporate digital into their business models, this is a good starting point to show that digital, on-demand, or embedded content aren’t the enemy.

Podcasts — and shorter, more viral pieces of audio — are here to stay. It’s time the radio industry got reinvented.

It just so happens that audioBoom are the ones who are doing it.