At Discover Pods, we’ve always been trying to point our readers in the direction of smaller, indie podcasters. We like the underdog. After all, the owners are Padre fans, and until very recently, that meant a lifetime of rooting for the underdog.

But how much do we really know about each podcaster and what they need? We’ve spoken before about how easy it is to start a podcast. A setup can cost less than $100. Beyond that, do we know enough about what it takes to keep a show going?

We know the major players in the game. We know the dominant publishers as companies, but we don’t know all that much about the creators themselves and what they require.

What do indie podcasters really need?

Well, we just don’t have the data. One site, The Podcast Host, is looking to do the first in-depth look at just what our smaller, solo podcasters and indie podcasters need.

Discover Pods has decided to support that effort because, hey, we love our indie podcasters, and ensuring they succeed in the future is of great importance.

Long story short, the podcast industry as a whole is exploding. It’s expected to be a $4 billion dollar industry by 2024. The number of Americans alone who are familiar with podcasts has risen to 72% and by 2024 fully a third of the country is expected to be listening to podcasts regularly.

This is why it is so vitally important to Discover Pods, as a supporter of indie podcasters to help ensure they get their piece of this massively growing pie.

The survey can be found here and takes less than 10 minutes to fill out. If you consider yourself a solo podcaster or indie podcaster, take a few minutes and help fill the knowledge gap.

You can access the full press release from The Podcast Host here. Entries close December 7, 2023, so take 10 minutes to fill it out.

The post Are Indie Podcasters Actually The Future Of The Industry? appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

From its inception, Dead Eyes has felt a bit different from the typical “inconsequential quest” podcast–think Missing Richard Simmons or Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald’s?–in no small part due to the access to Hollywood power host Connor Ratliff wields to solve his mystery. Ratliff is no A-lister, to be clear, but his early interviews with guests like John Hamm, D’arcy Carden, and Seth Rogen seemingly suggested a pot of gold at the end of a podcast rainbow: would listeners finally get an inconsequential quest that . . . actually finds answers and closure?

According to the episode’s press release, yes:

The upcoming milestone episode features a full-length interview with Hanks that discusses the details and play-by-play of “the incident,” in which the famously kind star apparently proclaimed that Ratliff had “dead eyes” and replaced him with another actor at the last minute. 

But this special episode of Dead Eyes isn’t just about “the incident,” the harrowing and baffling day that ultimately led Ratliff to create the podcast. It will also include Hanks’s discussions of being part of the A-list that Ratliff is not, including speaking out loud the “unspoken rules of working on a set.”

The question that remains, of course, is: where does the podcast go from here?

The episode’s press release hints at a future for Dead Eyes:

Although this episode ultimately solves the mystery of what happened on the Band of Brothers set that day, Ratliff has always produced his show with broader themes in mind: why doing something you love can sometimes suck, how to avoid turning the professional into the personal, and how to make peace with the powerful, yet comically random gears and levers that make some actors successful, and others, not. And Ratliff is an expert guide for the listener, offering emotionally-engaging, accessibly-profound insights that lead to unexpected “lightbulb” moments applicable to the everyday ups and downs of life – even if you’ve never been fired by your personal hero.

It seems fans will have more to dig into even after this quest reaches its “having changed” stage in its story circle. We may get closure on why Ratliff was fired and what the hell even really happened that day, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to the podcast riding off into the sunset. What the future for the podcast looks like remains to be seen with our dead eyes, but it’s a relief to hear we’ll have more of Ratliff’s musings to look forward to.

Read more: The 10 Funniest Comedy Podcasts (You Might Not Be Listening To Yet)

If you’re familiar with my writing, there’s a good chance you’re surprised I’m a fan of Dead Eyes. I have been critical of celebrity culture and unchecked parasocial relationships, both of which Dead Eyes dances around–but on a stage built from those concepts in the first place. If you’re familiar with me as a person, there’s an even better chance you’re surprised. In maybe my hottest media take, I’ve just never really liked Tom Hanks’s work outside of the unhinged Joe Versus the Volcano. Just one of those faces. Whatever the opposite of dead eyes are. Too alive eyes.

Dead Eyes has consistently been captivating, funny, and heartwarming enough for me to enjoy it regardless. Much of the joy of the podcast comes not from the quest itself, but from Ratcliff’s earnest and vulnerable conversations both scripted and in interviews with his guests. The podcast focuses on a specific, small story to speak on larger topics most spurned creators can sympathize with. It’s one of the most personal, funny, and lovely explorations of failure since The Worst Sitcom Ever Made.

But as much as I’ve recommended this podcast, I frequently get responses worried that this will be yet another story with no end. It seems those worries can subside when the episode drops on March 10th–so now seems like a great time to get caught up on the story you’ve been missing.

The post Dead Eyes Podcast Looks Right at Tom Hanks appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

As reported on by Ashley Carman of The Verge, Facebook has launched podcast support to compete with Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Like most other podcatchers–including Facebook’s biggest competitors, Apple Podcasts and Spotify–Facebook will provide access via the podcast’s host. Similar to the popular Headliner app, Facebook will also allow short clips to be pulled from episodes for easy shares on the platform.

With its release now underway, we spoke with our Discover Pods team via email and Slack to get their thoughts on Facebook joining the podcast space.

Our general consensus? Facebook bad.

Wil Williams: So, my first thought is: absolutely not, I hate it. I watched the digital media space suffer the cold, awful death of “pivot to video,” largely because of Facebook. I watched Zuck lie to literal Government officials in a trial. And I watched people tweet about how Facebook’s terms of service allow the company to make derivative works of your podcast. Summarily: Taako’s good out here.

Tal Minear: My main thought is that I want Facebook to have less of my data, not more. In my opinion, they don’t seem to be doing anything new or exciting that warrants having them more involved in my life. And yeah, I don’t want them making derivative works of my shows either. (Does that part remind anyone of the Anchor controversy?)

Wil Williams: Yes! The Anchor controversy! This is that times ten. At least Anchor didn’t say, “Oh and also we can write fanfic about your podcast and use it to market ourselves.”

(Editor’s note: The tweets that sparked this Anchor controversy have since been deleted.)

Gavin Gaddis: Speaking of Anchor: I’m extremely wary about this, if only because the big content farms on Facebook likely will make RSS feeds just to steal content from podcasts now.

Read more: The 10 Best Podcast Hosting Services (for new & experienced podcasters)

Cole Burkhardt: Yeah, honestly, I quit Facebook months ago, and this certainly isn’t enough to draw me back in.

Eddie Feeley: I agree with Tal, Facebook getting its fingers into more stuff sucks. That being said, a thing that jumped out to me was them including the abilities for users to bookmark, favorite, share and comment on podcasts through the app. It sucks that this will all be through Facebook, but giving users different ways to interact with the podcast through the app they are listening to the podcast through could help with discoverability (or just completely bury indie shows that don’t have Facebook’s love). It’s not so much a compliment to Facebook as it is a testament to how weird the current in-app discoverable for shows is across all platforms, or how much it kind of stinks that shows currently rely on Apple reviews and ratings.

James J. Griffin: This is a Clubhouse clone from Facebook for the purposes of data harvesting so they can “sell ads senator.” Clubhouse is a big whiff in its own right and why anyone wants it clamped onto the Facebook ecosystem is beyond me. Facebook is fairly explicit about their business model, and, this furthers it. They need to know everything about their user base to target ads. This helps that goal. They have no other goal beyond that and it shows in just how derivative this clone is. Fine. But for anyone serious, hard pass. There will be all sorts of collateral damage beyond good Facebook’s ecosystem for indie producers and the like. But the more you can get your audience, no matter the audience, away from their advertising first monolithic ecosystem, the better.

Caroline Mincks: I’m mostly just weary of Clubhouse and anything like Clubhouse tbh.

Gavin Gaddis: Clubhouse set back the concept of chill voice chat rooms outside of Discord by years.

Wil Williams: How do you mean?

Gavin Gaddis: The Startup-ness of it all. As we’ve seen, they basically fell off a cliff in popularity once the sheen of having Zuckerberg drop in occasionally faded. On other services it’s a cool feature, but it feels like a feature that’ll be quietly discontinued because they don’t know what to do with it.

Elena Fernández Collins: I have nothing else pertinent to say that others haven’t already. I trust Facebook about as far as I can throw a piano, which means that podcasters and podcast audiences should approach this with extreme wariness.

I’d also like to remind everyone that if you are able to divest from Facebook, you should, but that everyone should remember that it is also just not possible to do so for many. FB’s ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp means that it’s one of the only ways that long-distance families can stay in touch easily. So I don’t want to see anyone asking why they haven’t deleted Facebook yet!

Gavin Gaddis: It’s impossible to discuss Facebook as a podcatcher, in my mind, without acknowledging the fact Facebook is also the company that lied about its video metrics to a monstrous degree. There are people who used to have gainful employment in media that’re out begging for freelance scraps due to the infamous “pivot to video” inspired by, you guessed it, Facebook’s inflated viewcounts. Why in the ever-loving hell should I, or anyone else, trust Facebook?

I’m curious to see if the widely-shared belief that Facebook podcasts magically unlocks the niche of people whose only internet access is Facebook comes true. They’re used to a glut of content freebooted from the rest of the internet, podcasts are going to have an upward hill to climb if they don’t have a Rogan-esque cult of personality driving new people to try.

I do like the ability to clip audio and share it easily (which is likely using Instagram tech). It’s an idea that makes perfect sense on paper but it’ll only work in the real world if it’s implemented on a big enough app that tons of people can actually use it. I know of two podcatchers with the ability and both require the person receiving the clip to download said app. The people who own Instagram have the tech to generate easily-sharable audiograms. The future of sharing podcasts is in easily-digestible video content that’s as easy to share as TikToks, and Facebook might’ve threaded that needle. That’s the one positive thing I have for them.

As far as the industry at large is concerned this feels like a net neutral. Podcasts are likely getting freebooted on Facebook so at least this means people can have their shows on the platform that’s stealing them regularly as-is. On the flip side: now content farms can pull an Anchor and just make spoof RSS feeds and yoink content. It’s not like Facebook has a history of being aggressively hands-off with content moderation or anything.

That’s the point where I would put an upside-down emoji to communicate frustration with how cartoonishly bad Facebook is if it were journalistically-acceptable to use emoji in a post like this.

Wil Williams: I wonder if they’re going to keep acting like the Limetown show they made never happened while also promoting podcasts like Limetown or likely inspired by Limetown lol

Eddie Feeley: can’t wait for the fruit-town audio universe

Wil Williams: luckily I think we can bet on Pineapple Street Media to sit this one out

Gavin Gaddis: Well Shipworm proudly calls Limetown a Peacock show. It’d be hilarious to see Facebook plant their flag in being proud of that one. “We brought back French Stewart, dang it!”

The post Facebook Podcasts: The Discover Pods Writers Weigh In appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

Buzzsprout, a leading podcast host, aggregates their podcast base to get a representative sample size to provide the data. So while this data is a sampling of the overall podcast streaming, it’s compiled of millions of streams and there’s no reason to believe the data would benefit Spotify more than any other player. Slowly creeping up, Buzzsprout’s data shows Spotify commanded 29.4% of downloads compared to 29.3% from Apple. 

Starting to measure in October 2020, Apple maintained a 47% market share versus Spotify’s 24.4%. Though nearly double, Buzzsprout’s CTO, Tom Rossi, tells me it’s likely due to an attribution error other podcasts hosts likely see as well. Two months later the two competitors were closer: Apple 30.3%, Spotify 26.4%.

Rossi says, “Whenever somebody downloads an episode from Buzzsprout, we have to determine which podcast app is making the download, where the listener is located in the world, and what type of device they are using.

There are a large group of downloads that were using something called Apple Core Media on iPhones. Until October 2020, we included these plays as being Apple Podcasts, but after digging into the data, we determined it was actually various apps that were using an Apple API and not properly identifying themselves. When we updated our data, this caused a significant drop in the number of plays we attributed to Apple Podcasts.”

Head of Marketing at Buzzsprout, Alban Brooke tells us, “in the past four years, Spotify has grown from not having podcasts on their platform to be neck and neck with Apple Podcasts as an industry leader. Instead of just pulling listeners from other podcast apps, they’ve primarily grown by introducing millions of new listeners to podcasts.”

It’s impossible to overstate how much of an advantage Apple started with. Apple was the first major audio player to support podcast RSS feeds, the Apple Podcast app comes native on every iPhone, they’re called “podcasts” because of the iPod. However, it seems the podcast market was never large enough (and still might not be) to merit significant resources to continue innovating and growing that side of the business. The app has been slow to adopt more advanced features found in other players, they’ve been hesitant to develop original content or sign exclusive partnerships, and have overall taken a complacent role in the industry. 

While some will argue this hands-off approach has allowed podcasts to remain free and open — as opposed to Spotify’s largely closed garden strategy — the inaction has allowed competing apps to continue innovating and gain significant market share. 

Not everyone has taken advantage of the opportunity. Google’s podcasting strategy hasn’t quite bore fruit. Instead of a dedicated app, they initially made podcasts available to stream within a mobile browser before creating a dedicated experience. This model, along with lacking substantial playing features, hasn’t enticed users. According to the same Buzzsprout data, they only have 2.8% of the market despite Android phones eclipsing their iOS competitors. 

Further exemplifying this listener behavior change is a drill down on the device level. Despite Spotify overtaking Apple Podcasts as the preferred player, Apple devices still overwhelmingly dominate where users are listening from. 62.6% of streams come from the iPhone, 2.4% from an Apple Computer, 1.5% from an iPad, and still 0.1% from iPods. Android phones make up 24.1% of the streams.  

According to Buzzsprout, Spotify may have a significant advantage in Spanish-speaking countries when it comes to podcasts. Brooke continues, “for a lot of our Spanish-speaking podcasts, Spotify is already their top podcast app. We think this is because Spotify initially was focused on introducing podcasts to new listeners rather than moving listeners from other listening apps.”

The post Spotify overtakes Apple in podcast downloads appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

As podcast creators we tend to give a lot of time and attention to our show content and the gear we use to record it. And rightly so.

The listener experience is paramount to your show’s growth and ultimate success. Any part of the process that impacts that listener experience needs pouring over with a fine tooth comb.

Most listeners consume their podcasts by way of RSS feed. Their podcatcher of choice picks up that feed. Where you choose to host your podcast finds its way down the list of priorities as a result.

As long as it’s technically working, why rock the boat? That mentality finds a lot of podcasts still using SoundCloud. Even when that may no longer be the best fit for their show.

I’d encourage all creators to do a hosting audit and see if there’s a better choice. We should do this far more often. The market has grown up and there are SoundCloud alternatives worth a look.

Steve Wilson, formerly head of marketing at Apple Podcasts, pleaded for podcasters to stay away from using SoundCloud as their podcast host. Why? It’s just not designed for it.

Why Podcasters use SoundCloud as a Podcast Host?

SoundCloud, as a podcast host does have a lot going for it on the surface. There are reasons it was as big as it was at its peak and why SiriusXM was so interested in dropping that much coin on their transaction.

Related reading: 12 of the best podcast hosting services

Social networking to promote your pod

This comes from their musician roots. Swapping “tapes” and getting new music out into the scene is a big deal. SoundCloud has always had that just under the surface of their offering.

Dedicated apps

It’s “iTunes like” in that it has dedicated apps and a dedicated ecosystem. From the perspective of attracting a new audience, you can capture “SoundCloud” only listeners who may not be using another podcatcher. If you came to SoundCloud for the face melting underground dark metal band, you might stay for an obscure indie music podcast. That might not happen if you’re using another podcatcher.

It’s free.

That’s a big one. You can graduate to a paid service with more bells and whistles later. But when you’re launching a new pod idea, why pay when you don’t have to, right? Again, born of it’s garage band roots, free distribution is a big deal when you look at the world of record contract advances. Podcasting doesn’t have those same financial foundations, but new podcasters benefited alongside their musician cousins.

Analytics

They make an honest effort at metrics and analytics.

SoundCloud Alternatives for Podcast Hosting

As the podcast market matured, so did the podcast hosting providers. The demand created by an explosion in new podcasts attracted new players to the pitch.

What might we be looking to build and improve on if we are willing to jump ship?

SoundCloud isn’t a dedicated podcast host.

SoundCloud was built around music and music distribution. For independent musicians, they are a de facto better financial choice than big record labels. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to podcasters. Something to think about and consider.

SoundCloud’s uploads are based on time, not size.

Spoken word podcasts don’t require the fidelity that music does, which means you should have the option to cap your sound quality to get more length for the same size file. SoundCloud doesn’t allow this.

SoundCloud has had some issues with their business model.

They’ve had a recent influx of money and interest from outside parties like the aforementioned SiriusXM, but you have to ask yourself if you want to ride that roller coaster. A business that’s in trouble has to make changes that can have a significant impact on your show.

Compare SoundCloud Alternatives for Podcast Hosting Features

The Best Free SoundCloud Alternatives for Podcasts

The best things in life are free right? I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere. But really, as someone who has bootstrapped several businesses, taking action with a free service trumps a fancy paid service. At least when you’re first starting out.

Related reading: best free podcast hosting services

With how far free hosting has come, it doesn’t make financial sense to spend money before you’ve tested your podcast in the market and built an audience that you can monetize.

SoundCloud is a good free hosting provider, but can we do better in 2021 and beyond? Let’s look at some of the best free SoundCloud alternatives for podcast hosting.

Spreaker

Founded in 2010 as an all-in-one podcast solution, Spreaker has been well-received as one of the most well rounded solutions in the market. And they do it on the cheap. Spreaker is a great spot to host your podcast, sure, but it’s the included ancillary services that make it stand apart.

Spreaker features an onboard recording and editing suite that has no rival at this price point. Meaning you can produce your podcast from soup to nuts, or idea to distribution, all within Spreaker itself. No need for additional digital audio workstation (DAW) software.

The free plan offers basic analytics, 15 minutes of live broadcasting, and full RSS distribution. Spreaker knows who their audience is and actively fosters creators towards a show that would make more sense on their paid platforms. 

Starting Price: Free

Pros and Cons:

• Included recording and editing suite.
• Unlimited bandwidth, even at the free pricing tier.
• 15 minutes of live broadcasting.
• Full RSS distribution.
• 5 hours of audio storage.
• Analytics could be more robust at free and basic pricing.

Useful Links:

Enjoy your first month free with code “discoverpod.”

Podbean

Podbean was founded in 2006, just two years after the term “podcast” was coined, making it one of the oldest providers on this list. Simplicity is the name of the game with Podbean, and it is designed for podcast creators with very limited technical knowledge. 

This can be a double-edged sword. Viewed in a positive light, it liberates creators to focus on their content and worry less about getting caught in the gear trap.

Even at the free pricing level Podbean offers full RSS distribution, 5 hours of storage, and a dedicated Podbean app for iOS and Android. They do offer paid plans as well if your podcast’s trajectory is ascendant and you don’t feel like making a move.

Starting Price: Free

Pros and Cons:

• Blog style point and click interface.
• Dedicated iOS and Android app ecosystem to encourage podcast discovery.
• One of the oldest and largest podcast hosts in the market.
• Full RSS distribution including iTunes.

• 100 gb bandwidth cap.
• Lackluster analytics.

Useful Links:

Podbean Link

Buzzsprout

After a decade in business Buzzsprout’s free plan still has a lot to like if you aren’t publishing a daily or weekly episode. The free plan does have some limitations that seem designed to steer you toward one of their paid options where you’ll find a plethora of extras.

That said, the free plan does hosting well. It distributes widely to all the major podcast directories and supports plenty of bandwidth. Even for shows with a higher file quality. If you sincerely think your podcast will be monetizing quickly, a layover at Buzzsprout’s free plan might be the right move for you.

Read our full Buzzsprout review.

Starting Price: Free

Pros and Cons:

• Better analytics at the free tier than competitors.
• 250gb monthly bandwidth.
• Supports higher frequency and bit rate audio files.
• Easy to import your show from other hosts.

• Limited to 2 hours of storage a month.
• Shows are hosted for 90 days only. This can be an issue for your archive.

Useful Links:

$20 Amazon gift card when you sign up

Anchor

If you’ve been podcasting a while, you’ve come across Anchor. It’s the Soundcloud alternatives for podcast hosting that is popular with hobbyist creators. And for good reason, they’re owned by Spotify and the corresponding deep pockets. 

Anchor is free and has unlimited hosting. That alone would be enough to attract attention, but Anchor takes budding podcasters a step further.

Unlike some other hosts, Anchor doesn’t restrict your bit rate at all. If you have a music heavy show you want to broadcast at 256k, go for it. Married to the high quality audio capability are some next level analytics for a free host that are very useful when building an audience.

The free tier also includes some structured monetization that isn’t always found in the gratis offerings.

Starting Price: Free

Pros and Cons:

• Superior free analytics.
• Full RSS podcast distribution.
• Unrestricted audio quality.
• Novel mobile recording suite on both Android and iOS for location flexibility.

• Anchor isn’t shy about placing your show under the Anchor umbrella. This can cause branding confusion with new listeners.
• Monetization offerings, while there, require a large number of downloads.
• Online editor is rudimentary. Clips need to be pre-edited before being built on Anchor.

Red Circle

Red Circle is free. Their business model is unlike any other on this list. Red Circle doesn’t make money unless you make money. They work on a commission or arbitrage model and thus their financial incentives are more in line with the creator’s. 

This works great for shows that are new and starting out. The last thing they need is new overhead when they’re focused on creating new content.

Commissions at Red Circle range from 4.5% on direct donations (a feature SoundCloud also launched last spring) to 50% on “programmatic” ads. The latter being basically commercials the podcast host themselves has nothing to do with.

Price: Free

Pros and Cons:

• Monetization focused. Red Circle needs you to make money. They’re going to help you in any way they can.
• Small, dedicated team that runs Red Circle. They are more responsive. You might even find a founder or two on your Reddit thread.
• Ticks all the requisite podcast start up boxes.
• Promotion and financial alignment with creators.

• Relatively new company without a long track record (yet).
• Lacks some of the bells and whistles of more established hosting providers.

The Best Paid SoundCloud Alternatives for Podcast Hosting

When you’ve been at it a while and you’re starting to build a significant audience, your podcast hosting review will likely suggest a paid option. After all, you get what you pay for, right?

While free options are a solid baseline, paid options offer refined features like granular analytics, more monetization opportunities, and advanced marketing.

Several of the free options I covered above have paid tiers, but if you’re ready to make a paid move, look to these hosts. These SoundCloud alternatives for podcast hosting are dedicated to a paying audience. You may not need a stopover at one of the providers splitting their attention between free and paid.

Transistor

What jumps out at you about Transistor.fm is that they want to be the podcast host for those with a lot of ideas. One of the first calls to action on the site is that you can host as many different podcast streams under one account as you’d like. Instead of trying to cram everything into a single show, break that audience up and get paid.

Their HTML5 based web player integrates well with most content management systems (CMS) meaning it’s easy to share across the web. You’ll want to be embedding all of your shows on all of your platforms. 

The only thing holding you back with Transistor.FM is that you have a download cap. 15,000 downloads per month on their introductory plan. Caps are a bummer, but that’s kind of a first world problem isn’t it?

Starting Price: $19 / month

Pros and Cons:

• Can have multiple streams under one account.
• All major aggregator distribution. iTunes, Google, Spotify, Pocketcasts, Overcast, etc.
• Intuitive drag and drop workflow to publish.
• Well built HTML5 player that is easy to share.
• Excellent show analytics included.
• Download cap across all pricing platforms.

Blubrry

If you’re looking for professional options that won’t bankrupt the show and grow with you over time, Blubrry might be the host for you. The lower echelon of their pricing scale forces podcasters to cut back on some niceties, sure. The 100mb upload per month limit is going to force you to scale back the audio quality for example.

Burbrry’s “long tail” podcasting gives podcasters an opportunity to squeeze every drop of value from their archive. You can cut in evergreen audio segments globally into the archive. Without impacting your bandwidth quotas or ranking.

That means newer, more relevant ads, higher paying archive ads, and other updates that translate to more revenue.

The platform is literally stuffed with little addons like that. We did a much deeper dive on Blubrry before, and the platform just keeps getting better in the low end paid space. It won’t be for every show, but it requires a look.

Starting Price: $12 / month

Pros and Cons:

• Longtail archive focus.
• Free migration from another host.
• Professional show analytics.
• Utilizes CDN service to serve content faster.
• Excellent WordPress integration with PowerPress plugin.
• Unlimited bandwidth.
• Limited storage space.

Useful Links:

First month free

Captivate

As a relative newcomer to the podcast host game, Captivate was born out of one podcaster’s desire for simplicity and like minded goals. Frustration with the competition can be a powerful motivator.

Captivate’s pricing model is based on downloads per month. Their $19 per month plan will serve you up to 12,000 downloads. Plenty to monetize your show with a basic advertising model. So, it’s not like it breaks the bank.

Further, Captivate’s philosophy centers around building a podcaster community. They regularly push shows to be featured on their platform and do put some marketing umph behind their client’s work. 

When you’re ready to look at paid hosting, this may feel like a homey place to land.

Starting Price: $19 / month

Pros and Cons:

• Professional level data and IAB certified analytics.
• Phenomenal WordPress integration for additional marketing avenues.
• Community focused with an eye towards creator show growth.
• Responsive, always on, live customer service.
• Automated donation, opt-in, subscriber, and calls to action.
• Unadulterated audio quality. Can upload lossless if desired.
• Episode download caps at every pricing level.

Libsyn

Lybsyn is one of the oldest podcast hosts in the space, having been around since 2004. It’s a company that gives off a vibe that they somehow invented the space. Other companies feel hip, experimental, and collaborative. Libsyn feels established and competent. 

More than 75,000 podcasts are using Libsyn and those numbers convey a well deserved heft. 

The old guard company delivers unlimited listens, a robust app ecosystem, and wide distribution. At their lower pricing tiers, they offer a steeper learning curve, and cost plus basic analytics. 

Libsyn is a professional’s podcast host, so if you can get in at their higher pricing tiers, you’ll feel better about it. There are better free options available if you’re looking at their $5 per month tier.

Starting Price: $5 / month

Pros and Cons:

• Polished mobile apps in the mid range and high price tiers.
• Unlimited listens and downloads.
• Visually appealing mini-site if you don’t have your own standalone site.
• Famous podcasters on this host. Can handle the traffic.

• Even basic analytics cost $2 / month more.
• A custom URL using your own domain name is an additional $2 per month.
• Not as intuitive as some other SoundCloud alternatives for podcast hosting.

Conclusion

SoundCloud is a familiar proving ground for many a podcast when they’re just starting out. As a free hosting solution it offers enough to serve as a proof of concept.

There are enough questions about the future of the SoundCloud business model that should give creators pause.  It makes sense for podcast creators to take a proactive look at these SoundCloud alternatives for podcast hosting.

If for no other reason than to have your bases covered.

As the podcast industry has grown up, more mature, dedicated, hosting options have emerged. Both in the free and paid arenas. 

SoundCloud was a giant, and maybe it will be again. But their trajectory is a reminder that, as creatives, we ought not leave all of our eggs in a single basket.

The post 5 SoundCloud Alternatives for Podcast Hosting appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

“Public radio has grappled with its diversity problem for decades, and yet it remains a largely white, largely male industry,” notes Celeste Headlee, the letter creation team’s lead and former public media host with NPR, PBS, and PRI. “When we began this work, we were all reeling from George Floyd’s death (and Brianna and Ahmaud, among too many others) and from the exposure of long-standing discrimination and harassment at several public radio stations. We were angry and upset and ready to fight to force our leaders to implement anti-racist policies.”

The letter comes during a long and arduous fight for anti-racist workplaces and reporting across public media that has been pushed into the light, in part thanks to the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Diversity reports from NPR have long shown that Black voices are rarely reporting on Black stories and that upper management is overwhelmingly white and male. Even though audiences and employees have been pushing for more diversity, and even though this diversity rhetoric has been at the forefront in public spheres for years, white employees make up almost 71% of NPR’s staff. Between 2015 and 2019, NPR’s staff showed a 3.5% increase in Latinx employees, a 0.8% increase in Black employees, and much less than even that for every other person of color.

“A Vision for an Anti-Racist Future” also arrives while several public radio stations and public media organizations are grappling publicly with the effects of their ongoing racist reporting policies.

Last month, The New York Times was forced to retract the bulk of reporting for Caliphate, a podcast about ISIS based heavily on the stories told by Shehroze Chaudhry, a 26-year-old arrested by Canadian police in September 2020 on a terrorism hoax charge. Just this weekend, Michael Barbaro delivered his apology on Twitter, a day after New York Times’ The Daily was pulled from four major radio stations; it was, unsurprisingly, not well-received.

Also in September, Martin Di Caro was finally dismissed from WAMU for a long history of sexual harassment at the station, after a flurry of departures by employees of color, specifically women of color. These events are only some of the more recent turmoils that public media has faced in terms of their lack of adept handling of racism and sexism in the workplace.

“A Vision for an Anti-Racist Future” addresses these hiring practices and payment structures, demanding that every station have a proportionally representative demographic of the community it serves. It also envisions a full pay transparency policy and standardized chart in order to address the wealth gap between people of color and white people, especially Black women who are undervalued and face extreme bias when negotiating for their salaries.

The third section details equity and accountability in training and professional development, with a vision of competent and accountable leadership when it comes to commitments of justice and equity. As noted here, “public media leadership is dominated by whites” at 87 percent, a managerial system that is failing both its responsibility towards Black journalists and its need to attract the next generation of journalists.

In covering this letter, Discover Pods reached out to a few signers to talk about the letter’s intent and why they had signed it. Keisha Dutes, co-executive producer over at Spoke Media, described her experience with job-hunting in 2020 as a Black woman.

“When the uprisings were happening in the summer of 2020, I had just gotten laid off, and you know how the industry is, people know that.” This is how digital media industries work, especially ones that run heavily on hiring contractors and freelancers: when people get laid off, everyone knows it thanks to the grapevine and social media boosting their request for work. “It was such a weird thing to be laid off in the middle of an uprising [. . .] and then being solicited for jobs and going into interviews at this time, when you’re the most mentally exhausted.”

This phenomenon last year could be seen all over several industries: opportunities for Black people to have manuscripts checked and pitches accepted, to come in for interviews or apply for grants. The lack of concern for people who most likely do not have the mental and emotional resources to fill out forms, complete an interview, or polish off a manuscript was transparent in these moments.

Read more: How to make your podcast more accessible using transcripts

Dutes explains, “When you’re an interviewee, you don’t have any power. But as the interviewer, if you zoom out and the conversation is about how to best support Black people and workers, it was very weird that in their fervor to hire ‘good’ Black workers, interviewers would often overstep and not realize that they’re asking for a lot of attention in a time that is very terrible. Coronovarius, uprisings, people getting killed, the cops rolling up on Black Lives Matter, all this replaying over and over on the news.

“And then they’re talking about oh well, if you’re stressed then take a break.” Dutes laughs. “I can’t take a break if people more powerful than me are asking for my time. I think folks are so into getting into this diversity shit and inclusion shit, and they aren’t even realizing that the people they’re targeting are people.”

Morgan Givens, an independent podcast producer who used to work as a producer on 1A at WAMU–and who is not signing the letter–agrees.

“If we don’t do what they want us to do, there’s a problem. Because there were things they wanted me to do, but they wanted me to do it in a way that would continue to uphold white supremacy and would have made me a token. And I’m not about being a token. I’m not anyone’s token.”

People at his station asked Givens to apply for an open host spot at Pop Culture Happy Hour, right before the news broke about Di Caro, and Givens expressed how flabbergasted he was. “Why would I want to join y’all when you can’t even recognize the issues you have within your journalistic departments, you can’t even recognize it within headquarters, you can’t recognize it within your member stations? And you think I want to join something called Pop Culture Happy Hour where I am going to have to, [in order] to do my job well, not hold back at all when it comes to talking about different systems of oppression and how they manifest themselves in art.  At NPR? No thanks!”

This letter is a vision plan, full of hope and concrete actionable steps that public radio leadership needs to take in order to improve their working conditions for their Black and brown employees. And, as mentioned earlier, it hopes to help decrease income disparity and attract more journalists. Givens elaborates on what the future will look like if something doesn’t change:

“[Public radio are] getting themselves into a situation where they don’t have a lock on our ability to reach people and they’re going to suffer what is colloquially known as browndrain. Who do they think is going to want to try to work with them?”

When asked why he isn’t signing the letter, Givens expressed both support of his friends and colleagues who have signed the letter and a deep, understandable frustration with repeating the same story over and over.

“At a certain point, if they need a letter still, I don’t know how to help them. If they still need me to sign my name to a letter that has the list of all the things they already know to do, I’m not doing that. We’ve done this before and we’ve done it before and we’ve done it before. I feel like we’re past the point where we need to be sending these people open letters. We are past that point where we ask them to meet us where we are because we have been asking them to meet us and they say, ‘We’ll get there when we get there.'”

The United States is now two weeks past the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol, and two days from Joseph Biden’s presidential inauguration. Notably, several public mainstream media outlets did not call the attack an insurrection or coup during the entire day (and some still have not). Headlee has said, “In my opinion, [what happened two weeks ago] in DC is directly related to the tolerance of bigotry and racism at all levels in our society, including our workplaces and our newsrooms. We wanted to take a stand and now, thanks to the dedicated work of hundreds of public radio employees, we can.” (Farai Chideya, host of Our Body Politic, recently updated her 2016 article “The Call-to-Whitness” to talk about how public media’s responsibility in this outcome).

Givens states plainly that “public radio is a problem: they both sides everything to death. The problem I am seeing with these institutions is that they have fallen for the lie that the truth is partisan. The truth is the truth; the partisan people will twist the truth to make it partisan.”

Read more: Podcast Spotlight: Latina to Latina

The letter ends with sections on the transformation of coverage and accountability, particularly “ending the pursuit of objectivity,” a journalistic standard that upholds white supremacist and oppressive structures in the newsroom and in the media. It is why the coverage on the insurrection at the Capitol looks so different from coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Journalistic objectivity is a standard that actively prevents people from telling the truth, as happened to Lewis Wallace with this article that led to his firing from Marketplace in 2017. As he says there, “We should own the fact that to tell the stories and promote the voices of marginalized and targeted people is not a neutral stance from the sidelines, but an important front in a lively battle against the narrow-mindedness, tyranny, and institutional oppression that puts all of our freedoms at risk.”

The pursuit of objectivity would typically consider me, a signer, ineligible from reporting on the letter, even though I signed due to my first-hand experience with the issues the letter has addressed. Why would someone lacking that experience understand the letter and its intent more than myself?

And even though Dutes signed the letter and Givens did not, their thoughts on the matter remain closely aligned for their entire interviews, to the point where they used the same phrases and referenced the same experiences — because all of this racism keeps happening, continuously, because we have not yet done the work to dismantle the structures that enable its existence.

Quoted from the letter’s introduction, “The first public report on public radio in 1978, decades ago, said that ‘public radio has been asleep at the transmitter’ on issues of race.” This is the root of Givens’ reasoning.

“I’m not going to keep letting them say oh, we’re listening, we’re working on it. No, you’re not. You’re lying to me because you said that last year. And you said that the year before. And you said that a decade ago. And you said that in the 60s, and in the 50s. You’re lying. Stop lying to me; be honest and come out and say you don’t want to do the work.”

Both Dutes and Givens, though interviewed separately, commented on being pushed into a trope by public radio: the Magical Negro. When hiring Black people, public radio still assumes their new hires will be the ones to fix the workplace, instead of fixing their own workplace to make it safe for Black people.

Dutes discussed this trope when talking about turning job opportunities down: “I realized what it means to say no and how the conversation changes when these places call you to be their Magical Negro. And how the tone changes when I say I’m not interested. It’s, ‘Wait, did she just say no? Did she just say she’d rather stay out of work?’ [. . .] I think we, as people of color and especially Black people, the mode of conversation in talking about us is as though we are all underprivileged and we need their help. So how dare you not take this thing I gave you?”

Givens cited the trope when discussing how he views public radio these days: “I question whether public radio is worth saving because it does not seem like it wants to save itself. I am not going to be out here trying to save something that has no desire to save itself, was not made for me […] Why am I trying to hold on to something that has clearly shown through the years that does not care about me and mine when I can make something new? I am sick of us being called in to fix the problems they created when this is something that no longer had to be a problem.”

“I’m not here to be their Magical Negro,” Givens stated flatly.

And Dutes is not here to fix anyone’s diversity problem because “a lot of independent houses and other audio creation places are built by people who are offshoots of public media. They bring the same attitude and structure to their new workplaces, because if that’s what you know [. . .] you should be improving, but a lot of times, people are rebuilding the same structures that they came from under the guise of new, and improved, and better. You can’t be new and improved and better if you’re just imitating your old boss.”

Dutes expressed what this letter requires from signers for it to be successful. “People have to live this letter. Are you living this letter? You can’t have this standard for your job, and not have this standard at home. If you can’t talk to your kids about racism, about sexism, about all the -isms, you’re not living it. I need you to talk to your kids, I need you to talk to your spouses, I need you to live it, and then come and tell me about how we’re going to do this shit at work.”

You can read the letter and the list of signers here.

The post Over 200 Audio Professionals Sign Anti-Racist Open Letter to Public Media appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

In reality, it’s a podcast about sound. The podcast invites listeners on a sonic journey from places as distant as space and asks if sound is relevant there and then to places as familiar as the movies where one scream – called the Wilhelm Scream – is still used thousands of times in movies and TV.

On Wednesday, August 5th, Twenty Thousand Hertz became part of a new family of podcasts being launched by TED. TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). Popular TED podcasts include The TED Radio Hour, Worklife With Adam Grant and TED Interview.

That same day, the series celebrated its 100th episode by dissecting the sonic brand of Netflix. It includes interviews with the company and a breakdown of a familiar audio logo to millions of Netflix subscribers. The Netflix sonic signature consists of those two bass-heavy hits you hear when you open the app or watch any of their content. 

A sonic boom

Twenty Thousand Hertz began as a podcast in 2016 with its first episode exploring the voice of Siri. The podcast related the story of voice actor Susan Bennett, who in July 2005 spent four hours a day inside a recording booth, reading pages upon pages of strange phrases for an unnamed project. This kind of script was common for GPS devices and company telephone system recordings, so she didn’t give it much thought.

The creator and host of Twenty Thousand Hertz isDallas Taylor, who is the Creative Director of Defacto Sound, where he has led thousands of high-profile projects ranging from blockbuster trailers and advertising campaigns to Sundance award-winning films and major television series.

Taylor’s mission is to elevate our cultural sonic consciousness to the same level as our other four senses. Consequently, his curiosity into all things sonic has led him to episodes that investigate everything from the origin of the Seinfeld TV theme by Jonathan Wolf to the origin of one of the most iconic drum machine ever developed – the 808.

As a host, Taylor is superb with a deep, resonant quality to his voice and a narrative style that steadily builds interest, drama and inspiration through a crescendo of sound and sentences. In episode 49, for example, Taylor takes listeners on a magic carpet ride through famous advertising jingles we collectively recall and asks what happened to the jingle in modern advertising and why has it all but disappeared.

In episode 17, Taylor helps us to understand forensic audio evidence and reviews audio from the missing Malaysian Airlines flight and actor Mel Gibson’s infamous domestic dispute.

The podcast never slips into a routine because Taylor refuses to limit his vision of the sonic journey.

For example, episode 94 exposes us to the universe of Star Wars sounds and how legendary sound designer Ben Burtt created the sounds of Star Wars essentially from a blank slate. From imperial fighters zooming past planets called gas giants, Taylor, in the very next episode, explores the human fascination with our own gas via the simple whoopee cushion, making fart noises.

Taylor even excelled guesting on other podcasts, joining the hosts of Switched on Pop, a Vox music podcast, in October 2019 to discuss the intricacies of mastering a recording. On the episode, Taylor guides listeners through the technical aspects of mastering a recording and how a master can dramatically affect the sound of a song. In the episode, Taylor interviews rapper DJ Jazzy Jeff and discusses his well-known song – He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper – and how the rapper feels the master ruined the deep, throaty sonic signature of the tune.

Building an audience

Since its inception in 2016, Twenty Thousand Hertz has organically grown its audience to hundreds of thousands of listeners per episode. Earlier this year, Esquire named Twenty Thousand Hertz one of best podcasts of 2020 and the podcast has wonback-to-back Webbys for Sound Design & Science/Education as a completely independent production.

The Guardian U.S. Edition praised the podcast by writing, Taylor’s love of everyday noises knows no bounds and every time he reveals another surprising, inspiring story about an interesting sound, whether immediately recognizable or rarely noticed, it illustrates how the things we hear are just as powerful, nuanced and attention-worthy as what we all love to see, taste, touch and smell.”

Although there are over a million podcasts, a tiny minority of podcasts actually make it to 100 episodes and it’s clear that Twenty Thousand Hertz hasreached that tipping point in artistic maturity, pop culture buzz and attracting more ears every episode. In fact, some of the podcast’s new episodes have been featured in Entertainment Weekly, Nerdist, Boing Boing, Mental Floss and more.

Part of a network

As podcasts continue to grow in popularity, industry consolidation has picked up speed with large players like Spotify, Sony, Sirius XM, adding to their networks via mergers and acquisitions. Twenty Thousand Hertz matches the TED roster of podcasts with its thoughtful and expansive exploration of our world and the TED partnership will no doubt amplify the revelatory potential of opening up our ears.

Earlier this year, Dallas Taylor delivered a TED Talk as a Mainstage Speaker at TED 2020 and contributed to conversations with publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and LA Times.

So far, podcasts that have joined larger networks have prospered, largely due to greater resources in story development, audio, marketing, advertising and episode budgets. For example, Switched on Pop, the music podcast with Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan, has blossomed under the aegis of the Vox podcast network. Likewise, Science Vs, an Australian science podcast, has grown its audience and its editorial capabilities as part of Gimlet.

In a multitude of ways, Twenty Thousand Hertz is perfectly suited to the podcast universe. It’s a podcast about sound via an exclusively audio medium. What makes the podcast so exceptional beyond its sonic subject matter is the vision of its creator, Dallas Taylor, who refuses to be silenced in his quest for sonic revelations.
 

The post Twenty Thousand Hertz Podcast to join TED Podcast Network and celebrate its 100th Episode appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

In the 2019 Podcast Trends Report, we found:

• 82.4% of people listen to podcasts for more than 7 hours each week.
• 33.2% of respondents have listened to a podcast on a smart speaker.
• 59% of respondents spend more time listening to podcasts than on social media.
• 55.6% of respondents said they purchased an item after hearing it advertised on a podcast.
• 61.3% of podcasters list marketing and building an audience among their top challenges.

The full 2019 report PDF can be found here.

While many are familiar with Edison Research’s reports, The Infinite Dial and The Podcast Consumer, The Podcast Trends Report strives to provide deeper insight into both podcast fans and podcasters alike. Edison Research’s reports are the standard benchmark for understanding podcast growth among the total population, The Podcast Trends Report instead only looks at those who actively listen to podcasts.

The post Announcing the 2020 Podcast Trends Report appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

For example, the Real College Podcast, from Radio K (KUOM) at the University of Minnesota, is a 30-ish minute podcast focusing on artistic and cultural events and trends happening in the Twin Cities and told through “first-person storytelling and reporting and delivered instantly through any internet connection anywhere.” The podcast has run for several years and captures student ears in numbers large enough to sustain the production.

In Brunswick, Maine, The Commons is an independent podcast written, edited and produced by students at Bowdoin College, a liberal arts school. The podcast, which has also been produced for several years, is a platform for students to tell stories about themselves or others at Bowdoin and in society.

At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) students and faculty have taken the college podcast concept to a new level of theatrical drama, creating a witches’ brew of ever-shifting realities, art converging with illusion and sonic wizardry.

UNLV is located on a 332-acre campus about 1.6 miles east of the Las Vegas Strip. It offers more than 300 degree programs. The university has dabbled in podcasting before with a 2016 student-run podcast called UNLV: Different, Daring, and Diverse, which was a new student-run podcast. University Communications created the podcast and partnered with a journalism class helmed by Greenspun College of Urban Affairs professor Frank Mueller as well as Las Vegas-based podcast producers Swell Story Media. 

UNLV has been in the forefront of offering degree courses on audio and podcasting and in attracting experienced people like Adam Paul to teach at the university.

Drinking from the “wells”

The UNLV podcast is called POD 115: Kessel Run. Its tagline is “Where science fiction meets real science.”

The podcast is written by Rae Binstock — a playwright and television writer based in New York City – and UNLV Adjunct Professor Adam Paul with a story co-authored by Rae and Adam.

Adam Paul is an actor, writer and director best known for playing Mitch, ‘The Naked Man’ on the CBS hit “How I Met Your Mother.” He is also the creator and star of the Starz original series “Hollywood Residential,” and appears in the films “The Informant,” “One for the Money” and “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.”

“The aim of the podcast has been to create a series that turned the traditional podcast on its head,” Adam Paul explains. “As a lifelong fan of Orson Wells’s 1938 Mercury Radio Theater of the Air broadcast of  War of the Worlds,I wanted to update that real-time science fiction audio story for a contemporary podcasting audience. We also clearly reference The Blair Witch Project.“

The War of the Worlds is a 1938 episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells‘s novel The War of the Worlds. It was performed and broadcast live as a Halloween episode at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 30, 1938, over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast has become famous for supposedly tricking some of its listeners into believing that a Martian invasion was taking place due to the “breaking news” style of storytelling employed in the first half of the show. The illusion of realism was intensified because the Mercury Theatre on the Air didn’t have its first break in the program until almost 30 minutes into the show.

According to Professor Paul, the podcast cast is made up of UNLV undergrad acting students who are in a podcasting class taught by Paul.

“In the class, the students create their podcast ideas and pitches,” Paul says.

This project – POD 115 – Kessel Run — was always intended to be a public-facing presentation, according to Paul.

Professor Paul explains the podcast concept this way: “POD115 – Kessel Run is what we internally call the ‘Shell Podcast,’ with the actual story being the students’ investigation into the very bizarre occurrences that seem to be infiltrating the uploads of each episode and eventually their lives.”

The technical issues that weren’t

“Our technical issues in the early episodes were deliberate. Some recorded ‘dirty,’ some engineered,” Paul explains. “Verisimilitude was important to our team, as we found many fictional podcasts to be a little too ‘clean’  or over-produced in their execution. Perhaps, at times, our efforts were too good?”

The podcast created fictional characters as “podcast co-hosts and producer and the sponsor touted on podcast feeds like Podbean – Tonopah International — is a total fabrication of the podcast team. Tonopah is even the podcast’s Instagram name.

The podcast episodes were released in late April with the nine episodes all released by early June. As the podcast was released to a wide general audience, the UNLV marketing team and the cast used social media and online life to run simultaneously with the episodes, with a hashtag of #pod115.

So far, listener numbers have grown steadily as audiences experience the illusion of digital life as real life – or is it?

According to Professor Paul, their target audience are the fandom community, UFO enthusiasts, conspiracy buffs, sci-fi fans, and of course, college students.

“We’ll be producing a second season in the fall, with a new cast,” Paul proudly announces.

Head of the class

Clearly, POD 115-Kessel Run by a podcasting class at UNLV in Nevada isn’t just another college podcast about life on campus. This college podcast has already scored several notable achievements, including high-quality production values, innovative storytelling that blurs the line between the podcast reality and the reality inside the podcast. Moreover the podcast has attracted a well-known New York-based television writer and a professor who has been successful in front of and behind the camera.

If you’re searching for a podcast where nothing is as it seems and you constantly question your perceptions, try POD 115: Kessel Run.

In this post-fact world, the podcast could be classified as science, science fiction, fantasy or even a magic show with all kinds of misdirection and brilliant illusions.

Here’s a link to a video trailer for the podcast. Check it out.

The post Podcasting for College Students: How UNLV Students turned Science into Science Fiction appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.

The Joe Rogan Experience has a reported 190 million monthly downloads to go along with 8.4 million YouTube subscribers. Previously not even available on Spotify, JRE will be added on September 1st and become exclusive shortly after that. According to the release, Rogan will retain full creative control which will be something Spotify will need to reckon with.

According to The Verge, the YouTube channel will remain active but will no longer contain full episodes.

The parallels to SiriusXM and Howard Stern should be relatively straightforward. In an effort to gain a large and loyal audience, SiriusXM signed Stern to an exclusive deal in 2006 for five years. Valued at a reported $500 million, the deal created shockwaves in the media landscape.

I couldn’t venture to guess what the financials are behind the Joe Rogan and Spotify deal, however, I’d imagine they’re in the same range as the Stern contract (update: per WSJ, the deal is worth more than $100 million; another reporter claims it’s worth $200 million). Spotify last reported 286 million monthly active users. Rogan said on a podcast his show regularly earns 190 million downloads each month.

The repercussions from this move are likely twofold:

• Rogan will decrease his overall audience and anger many touting him an advocate for the “intellectual dark web”
• Spotify’s listener base will drastically increase as Rogan arguably has the largest and most loyal fanbase

Spotify has been active in the podcast acquisition market. In February 2019, they acquired Gimlet, and podcast host Anchor. In March 2019, they acquired true crime podcast network Parcast. In February 2020, Spotify acquired The Ringer. Though this Rogan news isn’t an acquisition, it serves as the latest big swing Spotify takes in the podcast wars.

Other Spotify licensing deals include The Joe Budden Podcast and The Last Podcast on the Left.

Related reading: best Joe Rogan podcast episodes

Updating….

image credit: joerogan.com

The post Joe Rogan joins Spotify as exclusive podcast appeared first on Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods.