from Hacker News

We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

by andrewacove on 2/21/19, 3:42 PM with 357 comments

• by blang on 2/21/19, 5:30 PM

  I'm actually worried that podcasts are going the way of the web. What, for a while, was a weird world of enthusiasts talking about things that interests them seems to be morphing into a world of a few big corporate entities calling the shots.

  I have two reasons for these worries.

  1) The purchase of Gimlet by Spotify mentioned in the article. 2) The purchase of Stuff Media by iHeart.

  The purchase of Gimlet is problematic for a couple of reasons, but the biggest is that a distribution channel now owns a large content company which could lead to content bubbling. I don't want to have different players for different shows, I want the shows to be available on all players. I believe this is already happening, "Crime town" season 2 is only available on Spotify.

  The iHeart purchase might be more troubling. Have you ever noticed that no mater where you are in the US, the radio stations are extremely similar? This has a few reasons, one of which is, that station is probably owned by iHeart (formerly Clear Channel), they own over 400 radio stations are are in virtually every US market [1]. I'm not saying iHeart is evil, but the chance that shows get more homogenous increase when large corporate players have to satisfy shareholders. I'm not sure I can take any more true crime shows.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radio_stations_owned_b...

• by Mister_Snuggles on 2/21/19, 4:44 PM

  Personally, I'm not a fan of podcasts at all.

  I've tried, and listened to some interesting ones, but in the end I'd much rather consume the same content by reading instead of listening. It's faster, it's easier to skim and skip around, you can have hyperlinks to other references, etc. Overall, text just works better for the kinds of content I'm interested in.

  There's a podcast related to a product I work with that I've tried a few times. The podcast is very well done, but each one is about an hour long. I'd much rather have it as a blog post where I can skim through to find the pieces that interest me. They've gotten a little better with their episode descriptions where they tell you what topics they are talking about and when they start, but it's only a minor improvement.

  Podcasts are also completely inaccessible to search engines. If I want to find the podcast where they talked about an interesting thing that I want to revisit, and it's not in the episode description, it's basically lost forever.

• by schnevets on 2/21/19, 5:06 PM

  Creators may be entering a golden age, but the delivery methods and infrastructure have been stagnant for years now. We now have ongoing shows, evergreen episodic shows, "two amateurs in a basement" niche shows, 12-episode and it's done audiobooks, and various other designations of podcasts, and yet we still serve everything like it's a blog that needs to release content weekly. I also find it frustrating that we only categorize by topic. I'll listen to something very different on a 5 hour car ride than I would on a 15 minute walk with my dog (beyond something "Comedy" instead of "News")

  Most listeners see Apple Podcasts as "good enough", but I find it confusing, and other applications follow the same approach with one or two "tweaks" that are not worth sacrificing features or adjusting to a new UI. I'm still optimistic that Spotify can get their act together (since they have the resources and incentive), but they haven't done anything dazzling since quietly adding a podcast section years ago.

  It severely limits the capabilities of the medium, and yet no one seems to think anything is wrong. I understand this structure is a result of RSS serving as the backbone of "podcatchers", but everyone would benefit from a bit of lateral thinking.

• by spuz on 2/21/19, 4:41 PM

  I am surprised that higher capacity storage on phones was not mentioned as a driver of podcast listenership. For me, when I upgraded to a phone that had 32GB of storage around 2014 I was finally able to store mp3s that would download automatically ready for me to listen to along with all the music and photos that we would otherwise fill up our phone storage with. Before this, it was actually pretty hard to be an avid listener of lots of podcasts without having to deal with the hassle of managing your data storage.

• by driverdan on 2/21/19, 6:19 PM

  While I agree there are plenty of great podcasts out there, I disagree with some of the things in the article.

  > When Netflix moved into streaming, they invested billions of dollars into original programming, helping usher in the “New Golden Age of Television”

  The current age of TV started long before Netflix moved to original content. This is not a model anyone should want to see in podcasts. Closed wall content is bad for everyone.

  > For listeners, there will be more amazing shows of all kinds. More media companies will invest in creating quality long-form audio.

  I don't think this is necessarily a good thing. I listen to and enjoy some expensive, high production corporate podcasts. But I greatly prefer independent podcasts. So many corporate ones are overproduced (eg Radio Lab) or are full of ads, begging for money, cross promotions, and other non-content (eg 99% Invisible). I'm concerned that high budget shows will push out high quality indie shows and make them harder to find.

  > Spotify will create more exclusive content to aggregate and retain listeners.

  This is terrible for everyone except Spotify. Closed wall content is bad for everyone. Despite being a paid Spotify user I will not listen to any Spotify exclusives. If you become a Spotify exclusive you're dead to me.

• by blfr on 2/21/19, 5:32 PM

  I remember listening to EconTalk back when you downloaded it to your mp3 player using a computer. And maybe I'm a hipster but the golden age seems to be over. It's all too mainstream now, too polished, too polite.

  Nowadays, I scroll through the multiple new episodes of many shows I used to enjoy to rarely find something I genuinely want to hear. Sure, you can probably dig to something like Cum Town but even then it doesn't feel fresh any more.

  It's the same with binge watching TV (mentioned in the OP). Much more fun when you pirated the show, when it wasn't intended than when you're just some engagement metric. I haven't binge watched a TV show in at least three years.

  Also, Google already had a podcasting app once (Google Listen?). I remember using it in like 2012.

• by DamnInteresting on 2/21/19, 4:39 PM

  As a long-time podcast listener, I have been steadily reducing my intake of podcasts in recent months. For me, this is largely due to a few annoying trends, such as Podcast A airing an episode of Podcast B, a new offering from the same organization. These crossovers are becoming common, and they are basically very long ads. I am seldom interested, but it's difficult to get them out of the play queue, especially while driving.

  As a long-time independent podcast creator, it feels as though the field is becoming saturated, making it nearly impossible for a podcast to stand out without the backing of a major podcast network. It is reminiscent of the tipping point of blogs, where the quirky ecosystem of offerings mostly congealed. That change was good for advertisers and a few big content companies, but detrimental to the diversity of content.

• by stupandaus on 2/21/19, 6:21 PM

  The writer made a pretty common finance misunderstanding mistake here:

  "That may change soon: Spotify bought Gimlet Media, a premium podcast studio, and Anchor, a podcast hosting platform, for $340 million earlier this month. That's a lot of money for an industry that was sized at just $314 million in 2017."

  Gimlet Media's $340M price tag reflects enterprise value which bakes in future cash flows, while the industry market size of $314M is reflective of estimated revenues in 2017. Apples and oranges.

• by jccalhoun on 2/21/19, 4:50 PM

  I hope that this leads to better podcast discovery. The categories on things like pocketcasts are way too broad. For example, go into the news & politics category and there are tons of true crime podcasts. I don't care about true crime. I just want to hear the news or political talk. In education there are tons of language learning shows and self-help garbage.

• by dontbenebby on 2/21/19, 4:21 PM

  If anything there's too many good podcasts - I usually set my device to keep the five most recent, and there are good shows I simply don't get to.

  (I never could "zone out" and program while a podcast is on like some people, I need ambient/classical/electronic music to do that)

• by socrates1998 on 2/21/19, 4:46 PM

  I love podcasts. As a self-employed person who needs some light distraction but can't walk to a water cooler and just kill some time, they are perfect.

  I tried going back to the radio yesterday for a moment and almost threw up with the quality.

  Not sure if a "Netflix for podcasts" would work. Unless ad money dries up because advertisers think people skip them too much, then I am not sure what the advantage would be.

  I do skip some of the commercials, but I feel like enough get through to make worth their while. I have legitimately bought stuff because of them.

  I saw an article about how much Joe Rogan's podcast makes and it was insane, over tens of millions of dollars per year.

  The guy does zero advertising and probably has less than 5 people working on it. Fucking ridiculous.

• by rchaud on 2/21/19, 7:16 PM

  The golden age has arrived, but for content aggregators and shovel-peddlers.

  Aggregators like Spotify will buy up popular podcasts and start setting their revenue percentages on the basis of "attention" or some other engagement metric, that will eventually lead to podcasts diluting their content to appeal to the largest possible base. It's already happened to their playlists.

  The shovel-peddlers will be the usual ebook/video course sellers pitching the 2010s version of "How to blog your way to millions", but for podcasts.

• by b3b0p on 2/21/19, 7:41 PM

  I feel, at least for me, the golden age of podcasts is over already.

  There was the early [0] Retronauts the new Patreon/Kickstarter version is only same in name.

  Then there was the [1] 1up Yours. All the hosts, co-hosts, and popular regular guests have moved on.

  Then there was the epic [2] A Life Well Wasted by Robert Ashley. This is absolutely superb.

  The only podcasts of similar I listen to now are Giant Bombcast and 8-4 Play. I miss the good old days.

  I've tried to branch out to other topics and areas, but podcasts are my way of escaping and thinking and listening to something else outside work and study.

  I have actually started to go back through these and re-listen to them. They are timeless. I have a friend who does the same.

  [0] https://archive.org/details/Retronauts1-100

  [1] https://www.resetera.com/threads/1up-podcast-preservation.90...

  [2] http://alifewellwasted.com/

• by wenbin on 2/21/19, 6:34 PM

  If you want to explore what podcasts are out there, try Listen Notes, a podcast search engine I built https://www.listennotes.com

  You would be surprised how many unknown but interesting podcasts on the Internet :)

• by samstave on 2/21/19, 5:53 PM

  I love falling asleep to Jo Rogan Podcasts.

  Also - to his credit, what I like about Joe Rogan, is that he brings on smart people and just is inquisitive and asks questions, and never over speaks them, treats them with respect and asks questions from a point of curiosity...

• by ryanmcbride on 2/21/19, 11:03 PM

  I'm terrified that Stamps, MeUndies, and SquareSpace will go out of business and all podcasts will be left with no stream of revenue. /s

• by api on 2/21/19, 5:15 PM

  Podcasting is probably the closest thing right now to the authenticity, diversity, and creativity of the early web. There's a massive diversity of podcasts out there on every subject and even many of the purely amateur ones are of very high quality.

• by dzohrob on 2/21/19, 4:39 PM

  Cofounder of Chartable here, happy to answer any questions.

  And, if you're looking for podcast recommendations, I recently analyzed 522 recommendations from 25 different critics' best-of lists to find the best of the best podcasts of 2018, also on the blog: https://chartable.com/blog/the-best-podcasts-of-2018

• by ProAm on 2/21/19, 8:17 PM

  I disagree, I think we have reached peak Podcast and are now entering the walled garden, possibly over-sponsored/advertised age of Podcasts.

• by atoav on 2/21/19, 11:05 PM

  The golden age of podcasts is now, from here on I predict much much corparate efforts to destroy the free and decentralized thing the podcast scene is compared to other media.

  Relatively little ads, relative many people self hosting, very direct connections between producers and listeners, not limited by my Plattform or patent – from now on it is going downhill.

• by intrasight on 2/21/19, 5:29 PM

  I consume these types of media in order of consumption volume

  1. Podcasts 2. The Economist (text and audio) 3. Youtube

  Podcast listening dominates. I had started listening to podcasts when I was having trouble sleeping and wanted to stop using drugs (Trazodone) to help me sleep. I still use podcasts for that purpose, but I also now listen to them any time that I am able - like driving or doing chores or yardwork. It's just amazing to have some well-spoken, interesting person or persons in my head while I do something that doesn't require the higher cognitive centers.

  My rule for podcasts is quality over quantity - meaning quantity of channels in my app, not quantity of hours consumed. My "binge podcasts" are those by Mike Duncan - "The History of Rome" and "Revolutions". Other favorites are "In our Time". If anyone know of other podcasts of the same quality as those by Mike Duncan, please do share.

• by bane on 2/21/19, 5:13 PM

  One of the things that seems really interesting to me is how personal podcasts seem to be to listeners. People really spend time custom curating their lists. Many of the problems with podcasts pointed out below don't bother me in the least, but its because of what I tend to listen to, whereas I have entirely different problems I don't see reflected in anybody else's issues.

  I think this really speaks to how customizable people's listening habits and needs are.

  For example, I mostly listen to podcasts when doing dishes and cooking. And I focus on topics that don't really have a timeliness component, so it doesn't matter if the podcast doesn't release new episodes or I discover it years late.

• by wenbin on 2/21/19, 6:23 PM

  Podcasts are ubiquitous.

  There are high quality productions like shows from gimlet media. But most podcasts are more like twitter / Instagram accounts. Podcast becomes a channel for marketing (companies) or self expression (individuals) or exploring some kind of long tailed interests.

  There’s strong demand of accessing podcast contents from listeners, pr agencies, ads agencies, app developers, teachers & students in k12 schools.

  Ps, if you want to build a podcast app or a service that needs to access podcasts, you can try out our API: https://www.listennotes.com/api/

• by chrxr on 2/21/19, 7:05 PM

  Can anyone tell me if young people listen to podcasts? Like people under 16? I found something that suggests 7% of listeners are under 17*... I just wonder with an audience split like that, is it expected that young people will suddenly pick up podcasts when they reach a certain age? Or is it an indicator that the format doesn't appeal to the youngest generation?

  https://www.convinceandconvert.com/podcast-research/new-demo...

• by iagooar on 2/21/19, 5:00 PM

  I work for a German podcast hosting company and what's been happening in podcasting in 2018 here in Germany is pure madness. There's been an explosion of different companies and producers that have gotten into the space, bringing really high-quality content.

  Also, Spotify grew into the second largest platform bringing in a lot of fresh air and slowly but steadily eating into and breaking up Apple's monopoly. Now we're all kind of wondering what's gonna happen next after the acquisition of Gimlet and Anchor.

  If this isn't the Golden Age of podcasts yet, we're sure pretty close.

• by subjoriented on 2/21/19, 6:23 PM

  I started listening to "Serial", "This American Life", "Hardcore History" and a large number of other programs. Podcasts are generally easier to consume, reconsume, and schedule. That said, recently (several years) I've moved off of podcasts because there was a surge of podcast content, and no good mechanism to find quality programs. That and I was never able to find consistently good podcast software.

• by meowface on 2/21/19, 5:34 PM

  For anyone who isn't aware of it, the YC podcast is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5PACZiyiDk1...

  A few episodes I liked:

  Leonard Susskind on Richard Feynman, the Holographic Principle, and Unanswered Questions in Physics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQAcLW6qdQY&list=PLQ-uHSnFig...

  Office Hours with Michael Seibel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ2BWOT4hfs&t=0s&list=PLQ-uH...

  Peter Reinhardt on Finding Product Market Fit at Segment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-vfn97QTr0&t=0s&list=PLQ-uH...

• by lbacaj on 2/21/19, 10:20 PM

  I believe behind much of this success with Podcasts is that we are actually entering a golden age for Audio content that isn’t music. So I don’t think this is limited to just podcasts but podcasts are riding this wave.

  I think the Apple AirPods, gaining extreme popularity and removing so much friction, the home speakers and the incredibly busy lives of people today all make audio easier to consume while doing other things. I think we will see more and more interesting content in this space and it’s not limited to Podcasts or Audio books. I think we may even get to a point where we see audio go viral, which has never happened to my knowledge.

  As an example of alternate sources for gaining knowledge on the go, and a little self promotion, I have built an App that uses AI/ML models to read any article to you.

  You check it out here at https://articulu.com

  Generally I’m incredibly motivated by the non music Audio space and I think there will be even more interesting things coming.

• by 40acres on 2/21/19, 10:43 PM

  HN is fully of early adopter types so I'm not surprised to see the pessimism about the future of podcasts but this industry still has a long ways to go. Podcasting will probably never be as big as video (streaming, TV, YouTube, etc.) but it's a natural 21st century transition for radio to make. Podcasts have the same advantage as Spotify and Netflix in the sense that programming is not limited to a specific radio station or a specific time. The medium is also diverse enough to support a wide array of content.

  The worst thing about podcasts is the ad reads, but with the right platform I'm sure it will get better. Another criticism is that many "professional" podcast are edited with the same cloth, they have that "NPR hipster" feel with a banjo and some strings in the background. But as more podcasts come up this too will be remedied.

• by avar on 2/21/19, 11:48 PM

  I've been a dedicated podcast listener for years, but have recently started to shift towards a larger portion of books on Audible instead where I'd previously listen only to podcasts.

  I wish I'd have done so earlier, at some point you start bottoming out on the depth podcasts on a given topic can give you.

• by protomyth on 2/21/19, 4:34 PM

  So, how is this different from the previous attempts to turn unpaid podcasts into paid podcasts? Given the amount of content in the podcast space, people seem to find other shows.

  Plus, the whole idea really suffers when you talk about people like Joe Rogan or any other big name. They can get money from advertisers themselves. We see some of this with YouTube and how "networks" are working or not working. An honest business person willing to create a low-overhead agency to hook creators up with sponsors would probably go far. This whole thing reminds me of the MC Hammer story about the economics of a record deal versus selling records out of the trunk of his car.

• by rhacker on 2/21/19, 6:09 PM

  I have a serious question:

  For those of you that like podcasts, did your usage go way down (or even stop) when you got married?

  I listened to them all the time back in the day, but mostly because they were tech oriented. For husband / wife activities only video/youtube/netflix seem to work.

  Is there any notion that Podcasts are better for people not in relationship thing? I mean you have to either play it for the house or listen on your headphones and it just doesn't make sense to try to tune out the wife for multiple hours.

  Also my favorite podcast, Java Posse is done anyway. It's weird to actually hear someone calling this the golden age when it was, for me, 10 years ago of listening to them non-stop.

• by burger_moon on 2/21/19, 4:56 PM

  I'm a huge consumer of podcasts, almost entirely comedy podcasts, which are just comedians bs'ing for a couple hours about nothing. However I watch all of them on Youtube, they all record the podcast with video and upload them. I find it to be a much better experience being able to see the person and many use the video aspect to pull up images and video. I guess it's basically just watching tv at that poi

  I've even started my own yt channel to comment on these podcasts because I enjoy it so much. Plus there's so much content being created there's always something to talk about.

• by king_magic on 2/21/19, 5:02 PM

  Are we? Podcasts are pretty overwhelming - there’s so many of them, it’s so hard to catch up, and I’m so tired of Blue Apron ads read by the hosts of podcasts.

  Personally, I’ve pretty much stopped listening to anything outside of NPR One, which does an okay-to-pretty-good job of simplifying the experience of listening to podcasts (at least aligned to NPR). Even then the ads are super annoying.

• by mukeshsoni on 2/22/19, 8:03 AM

  My guess is most people will end us listening to a lot of rehashed mediocre stuff. People will get addicted to listening to random conversations and won't even know what else to do. It will be like twitter but without any feedback mechanism. It will replace people's song listening time with a less melodic medium. Scary.

• by drdeadringer on 2/21/19, 7:40 PM

  Tech Dirt recently dropped a podcast episode about podcasting.

  https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190219/12502141633/techd...

• by iamwil on 2/21/19, 7:29 PM

  > But unlike text-based news and blogs, which have gone through waves of centralization and disruption thanks to Facebook and Google, the podcast industry has remained stubbornly decentralized.

  Anyone know why podcasting has remained stubbornly decentralized? What are the market forces that lead this to happen?

• by m3kw9 on 2/21/19, 10:25 PM

  I think is a bit over hyped looking at just the extra time you have and use that to listen to podcasts: driving, gym on the go. But if you have choice between that and the other medium it compete against a for you attention, it isn’t a win as they hype sugggests

• by ahje on 2/22/19, 8:13 AM

  Honest question here: How do you guys get the time/focus to listen to podcasts?

  I can't focus on people talking while doing something else so I either have to put down whatever I am doing in order to listen, or I'll miss most of what is being said.

  Maybe it's just me?

• by EamonnMR on 2/21/19, 5:51 PM

  We already entered it. Serial was the tipping point - a crime podcast with NPR quality production, got hugely popular, people who didn't even like podcasts where talking about it. Also, Gimlet media's production quality is very high.

• by zhynn on 2/21/19, 6:14 PM

  If Radiotopia sells out to a conglomerate or publisher, I will be extremely sad. And I am worried that I will eventually need N different apps to listen to the podcasts I like instead of just one. I don't like where this is headed. :(

• by djhworld on 2/21/19, 6:40 PM

  I have my regular podcasts that I listen to pretty much every week and some others that I dip in and out of.

  I just hope podcasts don't fall to the walled gardens, it's already happening with Spotify, BBC Sounds etc. They hate the idea of RSS

• by jotjotzzz on 2/21/19, 7:21 PM

  Really? It felt like the golden age of podcast was a decade ago. I haven't listened to podcasts in a while. With YouTube premium, you can just listen or watch YT videos instead, so maybe it's golden age for videocasts?

• by billpg on 2/22/19, 11:19 AM

  Time was, you had to be very careful where you hosted your RSS files because there were so many badly written players that polled the website every few seconds without any caching. Is this still the case?

• by c4dna on 2/22/19, 8:01 PM

  The number of podcast creators keeps increasing, and with that, they are getting harder and harder to find, even the ones you already know.

  The search tools and search directories need more advanced search options.

• by pmart123 on 2/21/19, 8:47 PM

  This could be a dumb question, but is there any service that lets you:

  1. Bookmark a time in a podcast 2. Highlight/tag a section or snippet 3. Contextually search for phrases or words in a podcast

  ?

• by tokyodude on 2/21/19, 6:00 PM

  There is practically no podcast market in Japan yet and with an average commute of 80 minutes it seems like it's ripe for someone to make something happen.

• by Causality1 on 2/21/19, 5:30 PM

  There's a lot more content out there now but the ratio of content to advertising has absolutely plummeted. Good for podcasters bad for listeners.

• by ceceshao1 on 2/22/19, 1:59 PM

  I'm truly grateful for podcasts as a medium where I can learn something and not have to stare at a screen anymore

• by k__ on 2/22/19, 12:25 PM

  Somehow I never found podcasts interesting.

  I was special guest in one last year and liked to talk, but I never liked listening to them.

• by blunte on 2/21/19, 9:07 PM

  There's simply no way that "23-25% of US adults listen to podcasts daily or a few times a week."

• by dweekly on 2/22/19, 12:23 AM

  Crazy idea, but what if Twitter spun off a subsidiary called Odeo to capitalize on this novel trend‽

• by godelmachine on 2/21/19, 8:06 PM

  Which podcast will help me improve my communication skills? Especially listening and speaking?