Audible isn’t the future of podcasts
Last week’s Hot Pod, the single best source of podcast news on the internet, was abuzz over Audible. The audiobook company owned by Amazon has hired impressive public radio talent, most notably Eric Nuzum, NPR’s former VP of Programming. We also learned that Audible is launching Channels, a major update to their mobile app which will add curated podcasts alongside audiobooks. Many folks in the podcast world wondered if Audible was creating original content, and while that may come later, Eric set the record straight in his Q&A with Hot Pod creator Nick Quah.
“I’m not at Audible to build podcasts. I’m at Audible to start a revolution. In the way audio is produced, and in the way audio is distributed.” — Eric Nuzum
I have no insight into production, but Audible isn’t the future of podcast distribution or discovery, and frankly none of the apps that exist today are either. Apple isn’t. SoundCloud isn’t. Spotify isn’t. Stitcher isn’t. TuneIn isn’t. Overcast isn’t. Google Play Music won’t be. Pandora won’t be. NPR One won’t be. And so on.
Don’t get me wrong, these are all great companies with impressive people working on them, but there are structural constraints that prevent these plays from becoming the dominant podcast app of the future (short of herculean pivots).
That’s because the podcast app that actually starts a revolution, defined by mass adoption and delivering a user experience orders of magnitude better than what any podcast app offers today, will adhere to the following 4 constraints:
1. Free(mium)
Podcasts are the digital evolution of radio, and there’s a very specific expectation any listener who is going to seek out this content will have: that it’s free. 91% of Americans listen to terrestrial radio while only 13% listen to podcasts every week. As those live on-air listeners convert to digital on-demand listeners, the popularity of podcasts is positioned to experience massive growth, but apps that erect paywalls will limit their user base to an affluent fraction of the total opportunity. Other monetization methods can be added on later (donations, merch, recurring fee to skip ads between shows, etc.), but the core service must always have a base, free level of access to be competitive (free alternatives will always exist).
2. Access to All Podcasts In One Place
Because TV shows are tightly protected through licensing, the way we access them via apps is totally broken. You have to juggle HBO GO , Hulu, Showtime, Netflix, etc. if you want full access to all of the best TV content. These problems even surface somewhat in music, with The Beatles only recently adding their catalog to Spotify and certain artists like Taylor Swift still holding out. But the good news for podcasts is that 99% of them are accessible without contracts, negotiations, and fees — which is a huge boon to us, the listeners.
Some podcast shows and even podcast networks have their own mobile apps (Radiolab, This American Life, Howl, etc.), which makes sense for now because they catch hundreds of thousands of listeners who aren’t familiar enough with podcasts to know where else to go. But when software eats radio and people continue to become digital, on-demand listeners, they will also mature in their listening habits. As they fall in love with a variety of shows, they will abandon apps that limit their choice with incomplete catalogs.
3. A Podcast-Only App
Podcasts aren’t music. Podcasts aren’t TV shows. Podcasts aren’t movies. And podcasts aren’t audiobooks. Accordingly, podcasts belong in their own, standalone app.
Making mobile apps is really hard, in part because you have to find a way to make some new, often complicated experience appear streamlined and simple. Limiting feature creep and addressing the specific core purpose of the app are tenets for making great apps. And along those lines, the podcast app of the future will be exclusively focused on podcasts. There’s a common trend at the moment for music apps to add podcasts to their audio experience, and while that may seem like a logical enough move on the surface, it actually only serves to clutter and obfuscate the app’s user experience.
Music and podcast content are not categorized in the same ways. They have wildly different durations and represent active vs passive listening. You don’t have to think about music, you can just listen and enjoy. But by-and-large when you listen to a podcast, you’re paying attention: laughing, learning, or engrossed in some human interest story. While audiobooks are more similar to podcasts than music tracks, cramming paid and free content into one app that is completely different in terms of distribution, duration, publication frequency, etc. will still prove problematic. Being specific here pays off. If users want podcasts, they will open their podcast app of choice. Same for music. This is the unbundled digital evolution of terrestrial radio on our smartphones.
4. Meaningful Discovery and Sharing
This is far and away the most important thing missing from podcast apps right now, and the hardest problem to solve effectively and with mass appeal. It will be interesting to see what Audible’s curated Channels offers. Otto Radio is also interesting with their algorithmically generated stories for your commute. And the work NPR One is doing, mixing manual and algorithmic curation is promising. And Overcast’s baby steps towards hitting the Twitter API and taking recommendations from listeners is also interesting. Apple’s charts are always useful and we’ve long benefited from Steve Wilson’s editorial curation. And tung.fm looks promising as well. But as it currently stands, the podcast app experience is still broken, and given how tech startups work, when a great app finally comes along, it will probably be a small, scrappy startup from outside the established podcast industry.
It’s my opinion that the first app to finally create meaningful discovery and sharing stands to pick up a huge user base and catalyze the revolution Eric was talking about: to finally make podcasts accessible and easy to interact with. And this is because the rate of conversion from live radio listeners to digital listeners to date has been artificially slow because there is no optimal destination for digital listeners: where is the Instagram of Audio that streamlines the experience? The podcast app that makes our lives easier and that everyone loves to use?
What seems obvious to me, and several others (but is by no means profound), is taking the best strategy for content discovery that already exists and applying it to podcasts: social graphs. That means creating a social platform for podcasts where you discover new episodes as the people you respect or know favorite and share episodes. Put another way, imagine a Facebook where instead of posts, each item in your feed is a podcast episode. Or a Twitter where instead of tweets, each item in your feed is a podcast episode. And people favorite, share, and talk about each one. An app you open in anticipation of your commute, learn about many different compelling episodes, and pick one to listen to. An app where you inform your friends about what you think is worth listening to in a half second in the form of a simple like or favorite. The key here is having discovery and sharing begin to happen inside the same app where you listen to podcasts, not just on Facebook or Twitter, where you aren’t going to stop tweeting, reading, or looking at cat GIFs to listen to a 20 minute episode.
Many folks who I respect in the podcast community, including Eric, have said they don’t think there’s enough worthwhile content across the universe of shows, and that this more than anything is what’s holding podcasts back from mainstream appeal. I disagree. I think there is just enough content, but it’s impossible for any one person to find it on their own. In running podcasts at Product Hunt for 6 months, a community model where users post new episodes every day, I was inundated with new content and mostly just from the tech startup corner of the podcast universe. I was often surprised by how much I enjoyed certain episodes from shows I had never heard of and would have never found or listened to on my own. And I would never have been able to replicate the discovery fueled by our community on my own. And this is just a taste of what’s possible; a tip of the iceberg. Rather than pooling our interests, knowledge, and insights we are all brute forcing our way through the podcast universe isolated in our podcatcher of choice.
Whether you agree that a social platform is what’s needed or not, hopefully we can all agree that it’s too damn hard to find and share great episodes. In my next medium post, I will dive into some specifics on what I hope the Instagram for Audio may one day look like.
Alex co-founded Knomad, a social platform for discovering and sharing podcasts on the iPhone. He also launched Podcasts for Product Hunt. Talk to him about podcasts on Twitter: @AlexCartaz.
If you like what you’ve read, be sure to hit recommend below, to pass this story along to your followers! As always, consider following Panel & Frame for more emerging voices in Comics, Literature, Art, and Film!
