Sounder Turns One: What We Learned About Podcasting in 2020

Scaling a tech startup isn’t easy and doing so during a pandemic is even trickier. In this article, our team at Sounder highlights what we learned about the audio industry, how we added value, and where we’ll continue to innovate.

Podcasts have long been part of our lives. Whether it be Armchair Expert, The Daily, Dueling Decades, The Ron Burgundy Podcast, or The Twenty Minute VC, there’s always another podcast queued up to listen to. As fans of the audio industry, we couldn’t help but notice how difficult it was to dig through the growing number of podcasts to find new audio content. Digging deeper, we found it’s just as frustrating for creators to get discovered by new listeners.

When we started Sounder, our goal was to build amazing tools to add real value to the evolving podcasting ecosystem. A year later, Sounder is doing exactly that! We’ve built a technology platform focused on building growth and monetization solutions for the audio and podcasting space. Like all startups, we saw a problem that needed to be solved, or, better put, two communities that needed to be better connected: creators and listeners.

In hindsight, we may not have picked this past year to launch a new company. We can all agree that 2020 has been like no other: a devastating pandemic, the prominence of important social justice movements, unsettling political events, and an ongoing self-inflicted threat of climate change. Despite the macro challenges, starting Sounder this year has been a blessing. We amplified voices from around the world (in 50 languages no less) with something to say about these important issues — podcasts like Read the Room and Surge: An ICU Nurse on the Frontlines of COVID-19.

While scaling Sounder from 0 to 1, we’ve learned so much about how to best serve audio creators. In this article, we’re sharing our wins and learnings with you. We hope it helps you go from 0 to 1, too.

Highlights

Overall, it’s very apparent that the audio/podcasting industry is still in its early days. Creators need solutions to help them manage their content, grow their audience, track their success, and make money doing what they love. To that end, we’re proud of the progress Sounder has made in pushing the industry forward.

We found a dream team: It takes a team effort to solve the problems we’re tackling at Sounder. We’re proud to have grown our team of three to 25+ and worked with leaders across the broader audio ecosystem. We’ve built a solid foundation by hiring a talented, fully distributed team from around the globe. With Sounders in Amsterdam, Novi Sad (Serbia), New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and San Francisco, our culture is rich, our internal conversations are well-rounded, and our team meetings are tricky to schedule.

We moved out of beta: At the end of June 2020, we launched our reimagined, feature-rich platform focused on discovery tools for creators. We built a next-level audio player, a top-tier analytics dashboard, and podcast web pages that make our creators look like website designers. But it’s not so much the launch itself that we’re proud of — it’s the collaboration we had with our creator community. We built tools with and for them. Everyone from our designers to our engineers spoke to our podcasters to learn about the tools they need to be successful. We’re committed to continuing operating in a creator-first manner.

We signed up more than 20k creators: We are amplifiers. Anyone with a message or story can sign up to Sounder for free. Out of tens of thousands of episodes on Sounder, you can find just about any topic from Pokémon to healthy dating. And we love that.

We partnered with major publishers: Yes, we’ll keep seeing big-name podcasters sign exclusive deals with networks and that’s great! But we’re committed to facilitating the open ecosystem podcasting was built on. That’s why we focused on building enterprise-level APIs for large-scale publishers and audio platforms — so they can continue growing and offering new and exciting experiences to their listeners.

We built a community: This year, we’re proud to have helped build and participate in growing the community of podcasters. We shined the #Podlight (social media features) on 34 incredible Sounder-hosted podcasts and released our #SoundHER and Sounder Coaching series. We even added our first ever Podcast Coach! Diversity, belonging, and inclusion are at the root of everything we do here at Sounder — our branding, product design, communication, and team are anchored in these beliefs. We hear from creators that they love working with us because our team and brand are fresh and friendly.

Key Learnings

Our mission is to make audio more discoverable and better for everyone while supporting a thriving and innovative ecosystem. Over the last year, we’ve learned a lot about where to focus to live up to our lofty goals. We’re thankful for all of the conversations we’ve had with our creators, customers, partners, investors, and advisors. Each discussion helps us refine our strategy. Here are some key areas where we will continue to innovate.

There isn’t a silver bullet solution to discovery. It’s a combination of art and science, dedication and perseverance. It requires a concerted effort to leverage all available tools to find and grow an audience. The lack of discovery is a real challenge for creators of all sizes. New and seasoned podcasters alike lack the tools to grow and develop audiences.

Connections: While the major distribution platforms provide creators with the opportunity to find new listeners, creators are still walking into a crowded marketplace. There are 1.6m podcasts out there and building relationships with listeners is tough work. However, when creators can build these direct relationships, it leads to greater understanding about what they care about, what content matters and how to best engage them to become long-term listeners.

Customization: Publishers and platforms are looking for innovative and customizable solutions tailored to their needs. Larger content creators, platforms, and networks all have unique use-cases that require tools and technology that are flexible and easy to integrate into their existing experiences. What may work for one publisher may not be the same for everyone else. Customization is key.

Discovery: This year, we internally coined the term Audio SEO when it became apparent that audio content discovery and engagement is dictated by more than the audio itself. With the proliferation of smart speakers and search engines like Google making audio a priority within their index, it’s more important than ever for creators to optimize their show notes, transcripts, and other text-based assets to rank and be discovered by new listeners.

Advertising: Audio advertising needs a revolution rather than an evolution. Current advertising models don’t support every creator and advertiser. There is a massive gap. While there are opportunities for the largest podcasts to monetize their content, we are proud to offer a way for creators of all sizes to generate meaningful revenue from their podcast. For the open audio ecosystem to be successful, every content owner needs to have the opportunity to make money doing what they love.

Analytics: Data points are not actionable insights. We learned a lot about how outdated podcast metrics are. Creators need more meaningful insights and smarter systems that help them (1) understand their audience; (2) create more valuable content; and (3) optimize their growth and monetization opportunities. Our analytics dashboard empowers our creators to get better each episode, tapping into critical metrics that help inform content and marketing strategy.

The Year Ahead

Despite the year we’re having as a global community, the audio industry has reached an inflection point. According to Listen Notes, there are currently 1.6 million podcasts and over 82 million podcast episodes. The number of new podcasts being started increased nearly 600% in 2020 compared to 2017. Powerful and diverse networks, like Dear Media, Latina Podcasters, and ABF are adding much-needed content to the space. We’ll keep seeing popular shows sign exclusive deals, but we’ll also keep seeing brand-name shows choose to stay in the open ecosystem and offer their content for free.

When it comes to audience growth, it was touch-and-go as we all settled into what life looks like during a pandemic, but podcast listening has found it’s foothold in our new work-from-home lives. Plus, listeners are increasingly open to hearing ads in their shows, which is great for creators looking to monetize.

Going forward, our goal is to continue making discovery easy and accessible. To us, it’s about helping creators grow through understanding and interacting with their communities in new ways. We plan to do this by investing in and developing new technologies, such as audio search and interactive discovery experiences, that advance audio discovery and monetization at scale.

We aim to democratize audio advertising for creators and brands of all sizes. Through monetization automation to advanced ad products, we look to empower all podcasters to make money from their craft. We’re on the verge of a new era for audio where content alone won’t win. Audio interactivity will be the next mountain to climb, and we’re excited to continue this journey alongside all of our podcasters.

We’d love for you to join us too,

Kal Amin, Dan Daugherty, Goran Krgović