Stop Making Podcasts

I make podcasts. I do it for living and I do it for a hobby. I behave like an addict, unable to stop myself from from taking on new podcasts, some of which serve to held me pay my bills, some of which serve that undefinable, flighty master, happiness.

I have been pumping podcasts into the ecosystem for years now, many of which have served their purpose, lived their lives and now exist only as static artefacts in the dead seas of the internet. Others are still swimming along, being updated on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. They are all part of the nearly 1 million podcasts that exist, and have provided our ears with over 30 million episodes, enough content for a hundred, for a thousand lifetimes.

Stop making podcasts.

Almost every problem that continues to beset the podcast industry could be addressed (if not solved) if we just stopped making podcasts. The question of discoverability would be profoundly assisted if the marketplace were to desist in its exponential growth. The question of audience sizes would be aided by the lessening of the ever increasing plurality on offer. The question of monetisation would be better answered if advertisers and sponsors didn’t always have dozens of podcasters offering their souls for a crisp dollar bill. In short, we would all be better served if the podcast market stopped growing or, better still, started to shrink.