Tech Won't Save Us - How Spotify Tried to Take Over Podcasting w/ Eric Silver

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Paris Marx is joined by Eric Silver to discuss Spotify’s big plan to dominate podcasting, why it’s now pulling back from those efforts, and the difference between highly produced and more independent podcasts.Eric Silver is a podcast producer and head of development at Multitude.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:Paris will be in Christchurch on February 4 (details here) and Wellington on February 8 (details here). He’s hoping to get an Auckland date organized and is open to going to Australia.Spotify pulled back on its podcasting ambitions last year, canceling big shows and laying off staff.After buying Gimlet and Parcast, it merged them into Spotify Originals last year.Ashley Carman posted a slide from a Spotify presentation presenting the RSS feed as “outdated tech” because it’s harder for them to harvest data from.Support the show

There's a creator in one bubble and the fan in another bubble. And there's one arrow going from the creator to the fan that says podcasting. And then there's one below. It's the same thing, the creator and fan bubbles. But there's an arrow going both ways. And it says every other medium on the internet. They're so mad that the RSS feed doesn't harvest data. They hate it.

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks. And before we hop into this week's episode, I wanted to let you know that I have some events coming up in New Zealand. I'll be speaking in Christchurch on February 4th and in Wellington on February 8th. I don't know if all the details will be out by the time this episode airs. If they are, you know, you'll find the links in the show notes. If not, you can certainly visit my website, parismarks.com, where, you know, the information will be there once it's all finalized. I'm also working on setting up an event in Auckland. So hopefully I'll have some details on that for you next week. And I would also just say, I don't have current plans to go to Australia. It's not in my

itinerary at the moment, but if there are any groups or anyone in Australia who would be interested in having me come speak across the ditch, get in touch, and maybe we can set something up. I have an interesting episode for you today. Last year, we spoke to Emily Hund about the influencer economy and how that kind of all developed. And I was surprised by the interest in that topic. People seem to really like it. And so I figured in this episode, we dive into that a bit more, but with a specific focus on the podcast industry. You obviously listen to podcasts because you listen to the show. So I thought that you might be interested in learning a bit more about what has been going on in that arena, especially as major tech

companies and Spotify in particular, have been making a big move in recent years to kind of capture the podcasting space, and that not really working out so well. So this week, my guest is Eric Silver. Eric is head of development at Multitude, which is a podcast studio. And he's also a producer in his own right, who has worked on a bunch of different shows over the years and is actually going on tour soon with a show he does about Dungeons and Dragons. Eric and I have been talking about doing an episode on this topic for quite a while now. And, you know, I just had a bunch of other things that I wanted to do episodes on. But in recent months, it really has seemed like Spotify's strategy for taking over the podcast industry has been unraveling.

There have been a lot of layoffs, a lot of changes to its internal workings and how everything is put together. And there really does seem to have been a pullback on the strategy that was once very aggressive in trying to make podcasts exclusive in making acquisitions in the podcasting space. And that has really changed as the interest rates have risen. But also there's an expectation now that Spotify actually make some proper money for investors. And so that means that trying to take over podcasting becomes a secondary goal. So you might have seen a lot of headlines in recent months about, you know, difficulties in the podcast industry about a bunch of podcasts being shut down. And sure, that is on one side of the podcast industry. But that doesn't mean that it necessarily applies to

every podcast going right now. And so that's an important distinction that we try to draw in this conversation between this industry that has a lot of money flowing into it, that is kind of the part of the podcast industry that Spotify is interested in, and then kind of the more independent side of things that is very different from that. So I think this is a pretty fascinating conversation, actually, and especially maybe helps you try to understand what is happening in the podcast industry and the types of things that I consider when I think about strategies for the podcast and the ways that we're going to try to reach more people this year and the ways to just kind of make the podcast more sustainable given the landscape that exists.

We've already taken a move this year to partner with the nation in order to try to reach more people. And we have other ideas that we're working on in order to do that. And also, you know, to make Tech Won't Save Us more sustainable as well, so that we can keep doing this for a long time to come. And so yeah, just hopefully you find this episode informative. If you do make sure to leave a five star review on Apple podcast or Spotify. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And of course, if you do want to support the work that goes into making the show, so you know, we can keep having these critical conversations about the tech industry and what it's doing

to every part of our life, you can join supporters like Richard from York in the UK, Bender in Philly, Pennsylvania, Andrea C from Vancouver, and Henry in Manchester in the UK by going to patreon.com slash techwon'tsaveus, where you can become a supporter as well. And if you do that, I'll send you some stickers in the mail, and you'll also get access to some premium episodes that we have been putting up on the Patreon feed that give you a fuller insight into Elon Musk and his impact on the world after our Elon Musk Unmasked series that we did last year.

So thanks so much, and enjoy this week's conversation. Eric, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Paris, I'm so happy to be here. This is so exciting. I could talk about the podcast industry forever. Thank you so much for having me on, on one of the shows that I listen to all the time. Awesome. I feel like the audience here is too much.

I love the show. I listen to the show, but this is it, right? The people who I talk to tend to be also the people who would be interested in this kind of stuff. So that's great. Paris, you deserve people saying nice things to you. Like there's no comment box. All you get are emails and tweets saying you mispronounced something. You're allowed to have people say nice things to you to your this. I was surprised last year when we did some episodes on like the creator economy and the influencer economy that people were really interested in these sorts of topics. So I figured since they're listening to a podcast, they would

probably be interested in knowing a bit more about how everything works around this as well. Not just about Tech Won't Save Us, but like this kind of broader industry and the influences on it and how tech has been moving in. So just to start to kind of start to get an overview, you know, how did you get into podcasting? And how would you describe the industry that exists around it? Oh, that's such a good question. I kind of got lucky, because I feel like my journey, how I started in podcasting reflects how all the different ways that people got into podcasting, but how I was on the outside of where it originally started. So I was a high school English teacher back in 2013, and I was listening to a lot of WNYC in my car. I live in New York, and I had a car because I hate myself. So I was driving to listen to WNYC. And then this new show called Startup came along in 2014, where this guy, Alex Bloomberg,

who used to work at This American Life, started a podcast company. And he was going to record it and put it out and share with people what it was like. And I'm like, this is so interesting. I can't believe this is something I could do. And when I stopped being a high school English teacher, because there was a grades fixing scandal at my high school. So I got kind of disillusioned with public education kind of quickly. I'm like, I could do this. This makes sense to me. I love how you can tell a story with audio, both in this formal way that they do with this American life, this kind of long form audio

journalism, but also just like listening to people talk about stuff. I love sports. So listening to sports talk radio and having conversations like that. I'm like, I my phone is plugged in, I can just listen and I can queue it up whenever I'm driving or doing whatever. So it took a while for me to kind of drive my way there. Because it turns out, the only way to get educated on how to make a podcast was if you were an intern at these public radio stations. Paris, imagine if the CBC was not a full thing for the country, but just distributed a little bit to little public radio stations in various cities, and they kind of did their own drives, and they're related to NPR, but not really. It's very confusing. But the point is, they've been doing these types of

things for a very long time, but you needed to be an intern there, which means you were in college and also it was unpaid. So you needed to do that. Or you could be a volunteer where you basically like worked there for free for only like a $30 a day stipend. And I couldn't get any jobs because I didn't have enough experience to work at these new private companies like Gimlet. And no one would teach me how to make a podcast. And there was one summer camp in New Hampshire for adults that would teach you how to make podcasts, and I couldn't do it. So slowly, I got these jobs that were podcast adjacent. And my friend Brandon, who I worked at SiriusXM with, taught me how to record and edit. And finally, years later,

in 2016, a bunch of podcasts got together and we started Multitude the Collective. And we created a business based off of that making shows for other people and helping other people and selling ads. And we were able to do it ourselves because there was such a large gap because no one would teach us. So we learned it ourselves. And then we realized there was a lot of space to do a good job. I say this all the time, especially in a post Spotify owning everything world. I'm so glad so many people are bad at the podcasting industry, probably the same way that bloggers feel. They don't understand how to monetize and make this life sustainable. They're like,

we can exist and we can thrive. So podcasting isn't dead. I think that the people who invested so much time into it and coalesced around it and conglomerized, they failed spectacularly by giving a ton of money to Prince Harry and Meghan and giving all the money to Joe Rogan instead of cultivating the actual business of making podcasts, creating a community and then selling ads and, and, and getting people to pay for it. It's so fascinating to hear you say that because I feel like it kind of picks up on something that we were just talking about before we started recording, right? Because, you know, you're talking about listening to the Gimlet podcast and kind of learning that model and being interested in kind of getting in through that kind of more, I don't know, official professional route that I guess was

very common in the podcast industry. And that was an element of this that was completely out of my understanding or was not something I had any association with when I thought about podcasting for all those years that you're talking about. it was really something I would say I learned more about as Spotify started to kind of take things over. And I started to learn about this broader ecosystem. Because for me, when I thought about podcasting, it was like, independent interview shows and like, chat shows like Trash Future or something like that, that predated Tech Won't Save Us. And these were the types of things that I was listening to. And so when I approached, you know, starting my own podcast in 2020, it was kind of like, of course, I was going to look at these models for how to set this thing up. Of course,

I couldn't start one of these long form kind of very expensive podcasts to put together anyway. But like that kind of way of approaching it just seemed completely divorced from my understanding of how this all worked. And so I think it's fascinating now to kind of explore what this broader industry looks like and how it works. Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense, because when you look at an independent podcast, the making of money, the business side is almost the same as making the show. Okay, what are we going to talk about this week? Who's going to edit it? When is it going to come out? And also, are we going to have ads? Are we going to have a Patreon? How are we going to make this thing worthwhile to us, the people making it? And then as soon as the big forces come then and try to blow it up, then it becomes an industry. What an incredible episode, by the way, with Emily Hunt. I love this

episode. But as we've seen there, people were so surprised in the post-financial crisis that someone wanted to give them money for the little blog they had. And I'm I give you some money to run an ad? And they're like, oh my God, yes, thank you. I love that. Because this was happening in the 2010s, I think that although we still, the independent podcaster was like, oh my God, what money? This is my stupid little podcast I have. They were aware from the jump that there is money to be made in digital media creation. I think that this is very interesting how the podcast and the influencer are in kind of conversation with each other, that we're all part of the creator economy in that the influencer is exactly on these social media platforms that have an algorithm and they follow the algorithm. While the podcast is relatively very slow media, it uses the RSS feed,

this ancient piece of technology. There is no comment box. You just kind of put it out in the world and then people come back in their own way back to us. And yet the way that you make ads on podcasts are very similar to the way that influencers are. They look at your reach and how popular you are and they're like, hey, I made up some math and here's the amount of money I think you are. And they're like, hey, I made up a math. And here's the amount of money I think you deserve. But podcasts keep that download secret. That's not a public number, while the influencer is very public. So it's kind of funny how these two things are in conversation with each other. And yet the podcast is like, I always say it's the speed run of how all the other media

industries are dealing with like everything that happened in in blogging and YouTube in the 2000s and then into the 2010s, like is happening super fast in the podcasting world. So when you're looking at that independent creator who's like, oh yeah, of course they're off of Patreon. Of course, they'll try to sell ads, dynamic ads. I don't know. They kind of are annoying, but should I do them? Is it a passive way to make money? I don't know. Or should I give this up to a network who will then decide whatever they want to? Or should I just do whatever Spotify is telling me to do? They're just getting barraged by so much stuff because so many people were ready to disrupt the podcasting industry, the tech industry, Hollywood, and media people are all trying to disrupt it all at the same time. It's a little bit of tech, a little bit of blogging, a little

bit of a backdoor for pilots. And that's why we're at where we're at with podcasting and why so much has happened over the last few years. Now everyone's declaring it dead. Yeah. And, you know, let's get into that, right? Because I think your description of it is really interesting as we've seen kind of media, film and television. We've seen the growth of YouTube over two decades. We've seen, as you say, what's happened in blogging. And I think you could almost see Substack as a renewed version of kind of commercialized, more commercialized blogging where the revenue models are kind of, you know, easier to come across. So you're not kind of doing this for free. Substack or the Aftermath Defector new thing, which is happening this year,

which is very interesting. Absolutely. You know, kind of building on this development and also kind of the failure and the difficulties in traditional media, right? And so now you have this move where all of these companies are seeing that there's this, or at least there was this opportunity in podcasting, and we can talk about that, where it was using this old RSS feed, it was still relatively open, it was not as kind of commercialized and taken over as these other spaces. And so at least there was a belief by these larger companies that you could move in here and kind of do something with it. And I want to dig into all that. But I think before we do so, maybe we should talk about these narratives that people have probably been seeing over the past year, right, where I feel like on

one hand, everything is supposedly going really poorly in podcasting and a ton of shows are being canceled and it's like the end of the world. But then on the other hand, when you dig into it, you know, listener numbers are rising. Listeners are spending more time actually listening to podcasts like as individuals and ad revenue is relatively healthy and seems to be poised to grow this year. So where's the disconnect between these two narratives where on one hand, things are the end of the world. to buy every single company, Spotify, I need that return. I wrote down a list of all of the notable companies that Spotify acquired and the people that they gave exclusive money to. Can I just read this out? Absolutely.

Okay. February 2019, Spotify acquired Gimlet and Anchor. Gimlet made really high quality, high touch podcasts and Anchor, you just let you kind of make whatever you wanted as fast as possible, right? Spotify then in March 2019 acquired Parcast, which basically was like a true crime podcast factory. They then got the exclusive rights to last podcast on the left in November 2019, which is a kind of like a spooky, true crimey podcast. May 2020, Spotify announced the exclusive rights to Joe Rogan for $100 million at the time.

At least. At least. At least. It's more now and they got to renew him soon, which is going to be even more money if they end up doing it. November 2020, Spotify acquired Megaphone, which was hosting and also Dynamic Ads, which kind of inserts ads whenever you're listening to a podcast. They then acquired this company called Pods, which was a podcast discovery app. Recommending podcast is still the white whale of technology, but I still think that the best way to do it is hearing it from a friend.

They're still trying to disrupt that. December 2021, Spotify acquired Wooshka, a company only existing to get acquired, a podcast tech company that developed specialized technology that allowed radio broadcasters to easily turn their existing audio content into on-demand podcasts. Okay, we're still buying. Spotify bought Chartable and PodSites, two podcast data companies. And that is kind of, and there's still some small stuff in between that I glossed over. From February 2019, for three years, they were just buying everything. And then this year, they're like, hey, maybe we shouldn't have given so much money to Harry and Meghan to not make any shows. Maybe we shouldn't have given money to Obama and Springsteen to make six episodes of a

podcast, and then no one remembers it anymore. Yeah, you can't blame Obama and Harry and Meghan. They made off pretty well with Spotify money there. That's what I mean. When you give a celebrity some money, they're going to do, like everybody, they're going to do the bare minimum unless you tell them to do something. And if you're so dazzled by their celebrity, they're going to play on that. I don't want to leave all of this at Spotify's feet.

It's notable to say that Stitcher, that SiriusXM acquired Stitcher in 2020 and then promptly shut down the podcast app a few years later. They bought Stitcher for $325 million from EW Scripts, but EW Scripts bought it from Midroll Media for $4.5 million four years earlier, which is kind of wild how that number just ballooned. And it's also notable that Entercom, which is now known as Odyssey, bought Pineapple Street Media, which is a prestigious podcasting studio, and Cadence 13, which was an ad distribution platform and production company, for a combined $70 million. And now Odyssey has just filed for bankruptcy. That seems to be kind of the story with so many things over the past year where we had these significant acquisitions. And now so many of these really kind of experimental plays, whether in podcasting or elsewhere, you know, have resulted in bankruptcies or, you know, kind of getting rid of these companies that

these larger ones bought, assuming that it was going to be this kind of, you know, extension of what they were doing. But maybe it's worth talking about why Spotify was moving into this space, right? Because I know that, you know, one of the general narratives that we have is that there was this podcasting explosion kind of during the pandemic, and we can get into that. But you talked about how, you know, the acquisition of Gimlet was February 2019, which was about a year before everything really took off with COVID. So what was leading Spotify in this direction to see podcasts as this thing that it really wanted to take over and move into? I think it became the new thing that like, you know, at a company, they kind of look

around for the youngest person in the room and says, hey, make us a Twitter or make us a YouTube channel or make us a Twitch stream. Podcasting became that. But I think that there were a lot of very popular things that breached the zeitgeist. I mean, startup was a little bit more niche, but serial was huge. And everyone was like, oh, that's the podcast. And I think that for so many, it still is the podcast. It's also worthwhile to note that Serial was made by another former This American Life journalist, Sarah. That's what Sarah Koenig was

doing before. And it was a spinoff of This American Life. It was first premiered on this massive radio station that had a podcast RSS feed and was premiered on that. It's also worth to know after that, there was S-Town, which was another very popular true crime show, came out from them. And then the New York Times bought Serial Productions in 2020. So now it's a part of whatever the hell the New York Times is doing with their podcast division as they're pumping out the daily and making Michael Barbaro into a sex symbol? Spotify also acquired The Ringer, which was the new thing from Bill Simmons after his stint at ESPN. People started listening to podcasts a lot, and they started building these relationships with the people making them. I think it's funny how the word chat show has kind of permeated as

the thing, which is just people talking. Because I think that's the thing that actually is the backbone of the industry, the relationships that people have with the hosts. And I must say, love listening to the hosts bounce off of each other. But like, when you say chat show, it feels really derogatory in the way that it's just like, oh, it's like a talk show. Then that's what my mom watches in the middle of the day. It's kind of like, oh, it's so low class. It's so low culture. And yet when we look at Joe Rogan,

listen, every man under 45 who's just asking questions listens to Joe Rogan. He has a massive devoted community and audience that revolves around him and all him and all of his friends do stuff and just hang out at Austin and say weird trans jokes. They're all terrible, but it's like that really is what podcasting is in the way that you've talked about on the show about how ads are sold on the internet and how influencers make their money is like people are selling ads

on podcasts because listeners trust the podcaster and the podcaster knows they have a devoted fan base. I think that I love podcast listeners. You guys are so devoted and wonderful. And I feel like we do have a strong parasocial, but if you respect it, it's a respectable relationship between creator and audience. I think it's the stickiest medium that exists out there. I feel like everyone who listens to the show is very into it as opposed to, I don't know, throwing a Twitch stream, which I do, throwing a Twitch stream up for six hours and I didn't really pay attention. I think that's where they're trying to make money. It's kind of funny

how many people, when Pineapple Street and Gimlet were being invested in, and what's happening with Pushkin and Malcolm Gladwell making his own podcasting company and these like prestigious podcasts being known as the types of podcasts. It's like, but that's very funny. You got to invest so quote-unquote prestigious version, and what podcasting is, which is relatable conversations that people love. I call them conversational podcasts because it does also take a lot of time and effort to make them sound and feel conversational. I think it's also interesting to think that tech is moving in and a lot of money is moving in. The prestige podcast route came from public radio, where you get money in a non-profit sort of way. So it's like, what is the profit center? How do you make money when you spend a bunch of work hours and money on the show that only puts out six episodes?

There is no profit center, which explains why Gimlet was trying to sell itself to Spotify the whole time. Like, how did they make money? I don't know. I don't know if they knew. And it's kind of funny, like the way that Gimlet as a tech story is no different than all the other tech stories where we're going to make something, we're going to make it tasty, and then we're going to get bought. Like, that is the step-by-step plan.

That's how it feels looking back on it in 2023. Yeah. And because we're in kind of the zero interest rate era, we can keep kind of stringing this along for a little while until we get that acquisition and then Spotify or whoever has to deal with it. Right. I want to pick back up on what you were saying about the relationships there and the different types of podcasts in just a minute. But I want to come back to Spotify because there's another angle to what you're talking about as well,

where Spotify is this audio company. It would position itself that way, but at its core, it's a music company, right? And one of the reasons for moving into podcasting was to try to diversify away from its reliance on music to also have these other kind of areas of revenue or listening or what have you that was not just about kind of giving this money back to the recording labels to then distribute to the

artists right because there's kind of a set formula there for what it has to be and so as it expands into other forms of audio you know that kind of disrupts that and creates potentially new profit centers um but as we know with know with its approach to podcasting, that is not necessarily how it played out because of what we've been seeing over the last little while. But I feel like there's something notable in the approach to podcasting that Spotify took.

And I was hoping you could talk about this a little bit more where we were saying that the podcast is kind of dependent on the RSS feed, but Spotify really wanted to enclose this, really wanted to take it over, and also wanted to ensure that the shows that were part of its ecosystem were exclusive to Spotify. You had to go to Spotify to listen to them. So can you talk to us about the approach that Spotify took and how kind of different that was from how podcasting usually works? It's kind of interesting that Spotify was trying to win the tech game against Apple,

who wasn't even really playing. Like Apple is too busy making kajillions of dollars on their hardware to kind of like they kind of dabble like in the way that Apple TV Plus, there's just these wild swings. It's like, well, they could just kind of do whatever they want. But Spotify is trying to beat them, even though they're not even participating. So they want people on their app doing everything. It's funny you brought up the music thing. And I think that that's why people saw podcasting is so tasty, because it was a new medium that was developing, but didn't have any of the red tape, like music does dealing with royalties and with the for the artists and also

for the record companies. So almost like Spotify tried to do a vertical monopoly. It reminds me of the movies in the thirties where it's like, we own the actors, we own the director, we own the script. You're going to film it on our lot. Our editor is going to be overseen by a guy in a suit standing over his shoulder. We're going to make sure he's not a communist. And then we're going to put it out in our theaters. And that feels very similar to what Spotify did. They bought Anchor so that you made the podcast inside of the Anchor Spotify app and you edit it there too. You put it out through Spotify and you can even make it Spotify exclusive or at least Spotify privileged. While the RSS feed, the whole point of the RSS feed is it goes anywhere. That's why people have podcatchers as these apps. Like, yeah, you could use Apple and

you could use Spotify, but you could use Pocket Casts or you could use Podcast Attic or you could use Overcast. It's just kind of a place that grabs the RSS feed. It's just kind of out there. My favorite image on the internet, which I sent to you a little while ago, was from Spotify's annual meeting, which they've been really blowing out recently. It's almost like when Apple does their big thing, but Spotify's is colorful. That's how they want it to stand out. This is from last year. Ashley Carmen, who is a podcast reporter at Bloomberg, saw this slide and it talks about the limitations of the RSS feed and how they call it outdated tech. So there's a creator in one bubble and the fan in another bubble. And there's one arrow going from the creator to the fan that says podcasting.

And then there's one below. It's the same thing, the creator and fan bubbles. But there's an arrow going both ways. And it says every other medium on the internet. They're so mad that the RSS feed doesn't harvest data. They hate it. And it demonstrates that Spotify wants to own it like old timey Hollywood. I think this demonstrates how much they when they acquired shows or studios like Joe Rogan or Call Her Daddy or Gimlet that they made them Spotify exclusives, which because podcast listeners don't understand it and it's not part of the medium. You don't go to Twitch. You don't go to YouTube. You go to your app, which can be anything. They're like, well, this show's gone.

So I guess I'm not going to listen to it anymore. I guess it's just not publishing anymore. So then it's gone. This was proven. This was reported a few years ago. But the Gimlet Union said that they told Spotify it would destroy their numbers. And Spotify was like, ah, shut up. And then their numbers got destroyed. They lost 75% of their downloads. So then when Spotify is like, ah,

this sucks. And now Gimlet and Parcast are now a part of Spotify. Those companies don't exist. They've been subsumed into Spotify studios. It's like, well, it's because your downloads were down. Well, how do you think that happened? It's because no one knew where to get them except for the 25% of Spotify app users. So again, it's like Spotify is doing big company conglomerate things when it doesn't necessarily make sense for this nascent medium built upon community and listening to those podcasts and then giving $5 on Patreon or something. And then, you know, the ads and the ads working and making sense. They can't see the kind of like simple solutions

in front of them because they're too busy being a big tech company. Yeah, because everything is about scale, right? And if you have some small podcasts that have a little Patreon or make a little bit of ad revenue, that's not going to, you know, keep the investors happy

or pay back the massive acquisition costs of bringing this in or achieve this kind of grand revenue dreams that you have if you're a company like Spotify and are trying to massively expand. You talked a bit about Apple, right? And I wonder how you compare that a bit with what Apple is doing

because regardless of how invested it is, it is obviously still a big player in the space simply because of the scale that it has, because so many people use its devices. And as a result, then use the Apple podcast app because it's just there on the phone and it's easy to use. You know, how do you compare Spotify's move into the podcast industry to the things that Apple has been doing?

That's interesting. I think Apple has started kind of realizing they're, they haven't realizing they are the tortoise in the tortoise and the hare race, so they really should start walking at some point. So they have kind of cleaned up some stuff. They've kind of relied on metadata. They reveal your episode. They're really into fiction. They make it really easy to make seasons and designate seasons and episodes like it was

a TV show. So they have picked it up a little bit. I think they've started their own way to pay them money instead of going through Patreon. That's like the new way to like, kind of take Patreons lunch. I still remember like all of my old terrible bosses using the phrase eat their lunch. And I feel like it's just all of these like executives trying to like beat each other, these rich guys trying to beat each other in this way. So yeah, they realized they had to do some stuff. I think back to in like 2018 and 2019, when like my biggest bugbear was like, no one knows where rated five stars on Apple podcasts came from. It was almost like a folk myth. It was like, oh, if you get 100 five star reviews, then the algorithm or the editors who would put you on the podcast of the day would put you up there and you'd get a massive boost. None of that was true.

We just hoped that like that, how else are you supposed to break through? As I said, discovery has still always been quite difficult. It takes a lot of clicks to listen to a podcast. You really need a recommendation from a friend who's like, no, no, no, the show is good. I promise. So Apple has let their largesse kind of speak for itself. And kind of the folk ideas of Apple, the company almost spoke for itself in podcasting. I think it's really fascinating when you talk about like kind of the myth that if you've got so many five star reviews, all of a sudden, like Apple would treat

you differently or whatever. But you see that in like so many different areas of like whether people are self-published authors and trying to like game the Kindle store or whatever and figure out how Amazon is going to treat them and what when they need to publish and what how many pages they need or whatever in order for Amazon to like be happy with them or like the right ways to post on Twitter so that your posts go up. It's like we're always trying to find this way to like game the algorithms or figure out how it's going to work. There's just all these black boxes because they're controlled by these corporations that like, don't really care as long as you're like making some cash for them or whatever, especially with Apple, because it is growing. It's like services business, which this would fit into, but the real

kind of money still comes from the iPhone at the end of the day. Yeah, I think that people tried to think of podcasting like the other media that existed out there. It's like, oh, well, there must be an algorithm. YouTubers are always having to pivot and always having to figure out what makes sense. So we should be doing something too. Obviously, these rankings have to have some sort of formula behind them. And it isn't just one person moving shows around. It has to be something. And like, you know, it's still Apple. Like we've applied for plenty of spotlights or these forms that you see or don't see or recommend it to you. And then like, it's very slow and maybe they see us or maybe they say no. Or all of a sudden you're on new

and noteworthy and you're like, how did this happen? I don't know. Maybe I just sent the right email to the right person. Then they had a free minute. So they moved your thing on a new and noteworthy. I think podcasting spent so much time looking at other mediums to be like, we want to be like that. It reminds me a lot of what video games are like. I don't know if you care about it or like, you know, the video game industry also is

going through a massive layoff issue like podcasting is. And the game awards, which is supposed to be this big Oscar-like awards, are still very supplicant to movies. But video games are huge. Video games make so much money, and it's how I feel about podcasting. I'm like, people wouldn't be so invested in trying to break and disrupt podcasting if we weren't important and doing something interesting. I'm not saying we're huge, because again, the digital marketing budgets that people buy ads on are still like the same digital marketing budgets

that they throw thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars at their Instagram ads. And they're like, oh yeah, let's try something in podcasting. You know, let's try it, let's try it. It still is relatively small, but we're growing and it keeps growing and people love this stuff. It's part of their daily routine and we also don't have to fight. Podcasting doesn't have to fight the eyeballs conversation.

You know, the NFL and the NBA are always like, oh, we got to make sure people are, we need our ratings and everything. You can listen to podcasts when you are driving, when you're washing dishes, when you can't watch a YouTube video. So it's almost like it's something out of time and space. And yet both the creators, because they're so self-conscious about making their stupid little podcast and the big companies that are like, look at this silly little thing. They don't see that it's something that's so unique, which is why I love it so much. I think that's actually a really interesting point, right? Because podcasting is something that we think of as an audio medium, right? You stick your headphones in, you play it on your phone or

whatever, and then you can cook, you can go for a walk, you can drive your car, you can do the dishes. Like it really doesn't matter, right? You don't need to worry about looking at a screen to know what's going on. But I feel like in the past year or so, we've been seeing a real shakeout in social media where Twitter is not what it used to be because of the Elon Musk acquisition. People have moved to these other platforms like Mastodon and Blue Sky and Threads, and there's this kind of real disruption that's happening. Meanwhile, it feels like TikTok is taking off, Instagram and YouTube shorts are trying to emulate it. Elon Musk now says Twitter is going to go video first, however that's gonna look.

And so it feels like social media is moving in this direction where there's a big pivot to video happening. We'll see if it's going to stick, but it feels like there's a push to do that in podcasting as well. On the one hand, so you have kind of clips to share on TikTok and Instagram and all this kind of stuff

to try to reach audience. But also, you know, Google is shutting down its podcast app and moving over to YouTube music and kind of promoting having this stuff on YouTube. Like, how do you see this kind of push to go to video in podcasting as well? Because it feels like it's, you know, as a podcaster myself, it feels like there is a pressure to move in this direction. I think the clips thing, just the clips thing, it kind of makes sense. Yeah, let's make some clips and distribute them. Makes sense. I talked for an hour. You're not going to get convinced to listen to an hour of a podcast. That's why, you just told me that you eat frozen bread, you don't toast it. I'm like, I guess if that's how you we're following trends. And I guess video is the trend because everyone is aping TikTok. I kind of went into podcasting because I didn't want to be a YouTuber.

I didn't want to follow the algorithm. And I wasn't really stoked on having my face out there just yet. Because it was like how I was slowly coming to. And also, I was like a blogger and a writer. I was really excited. I like Twitter. There were a bunch of research that said that most podcast listeners used Twitter when Twitter pre Twitter pre Elon Musk. So it's like, oh, it was a link distribution thing. It's like, oh yeah, you think I'm funny when I write, you might think I'm funny when I

talk. Kind of makes sense. The pivot to video, this is the tech trend, right? We have to follow what they say because that's how we're how we got to market this hard thing to market. So we're going to do it the way that they say. At the same time, I'm not sure how TikTok helps. It's kind of funny. You saw that there was an article a few months ago, time doesn't mean anything, where they realized that TikTokers were using the podcast set as the way that they made TikToks because it made them seem more authoritative. And they had no podcast. They just had a microphone and were wearing headphones. So it's almost like it's a genre. It's like a, it's a form of TikTok, but TikTok wants you to stay on TikTok. It doesn't want you to leave and click a link and go to an

app. So it's, it's still like, I don't know if TikTok is going to give me more downloads for my podcast. And just from the way that the whole thing is set up, I believe in experimenting and it's definitely the new frontier. But is it actually helpful is always the question for being a part of such a nascent medium like we are. I'm not sure that TikTok actually helps because TikTok wants you to stay on the app. And how is that going to be a marketing tool for me? And this happens to a lot of people.

I think a lot of people are big on TikTok and then it doesn't do anything. Like, I mean, but we've seen this in the past, right? It's like, oh, I'm huge on Twitter. I have a massive, I guess Instagram, this actually works for, but it's like, I have a massive Tumblr. You got to do something else. You got to have a book deal or you got to get a job as a comedy writer. I think this is like when we learned about Drill, it's like he's just a dude. Where does the money come from unless you are literally doing influence

deals? It's like, yeah, I could be big on TikTok, but how does it actually go to my podcast where I have an economic funnel set up? The whole point of making something and not being an influencer in the way that we understand it now, not the bloggers from the beginning, from the Julie and Julia days, is like we made something so it stands in front of us. We want the work to stand and we want people to be into the work. Now, that doesn't mean that there isn't a parasociality with it and a sense of authenticity of us being what we say we make and are. And I think journalists and bloggers and video creators and video essayists and all these people and streamers all deal with this because podcasting is decentralized. It's like we kind of have to figure it out on our own because it wouldn't be better if it was centralized. If it was centralized, then Spotify would be good at their jobs,

and everyone would do the things Spotify is telling us to do. This is a really good example. A new thing is that Spotify has introduced like a comment section. It's like Q and A's for episodes. And we were kicking it around in multitude and we were like, Hey, should we start doing this? Should we invest in it? Should we do questions? And I'm like, wait a second. This is unhelpful for me, the creator. It doesn't do anything for me. It's an add-on for the Spotify app so that it's for users. It's a user feature. And now I got to spend an extra how many minutes a day, a week, a month keeping up and publishing these comments and making new Q&As. I'm not going to.

It doesn't help me. It's not for me. It's for Spotify. And I think that we get tricked as creators who make things where people try to disguise things that are good for the platform as good for us, but we're the ones with the audience. So they should be doing the thing that we, for us, instead of trying to trick us. I think it's, I think it's really interesting because I've encountered that feature as well. And I don't use it, but it automatically like added a question to my shows.

And then I get random emails saying, Hey, there's people who've responded to the Q and a, and I'm like, what Q and a, but you know, to pick up on what you were saying earlier, like I feel very similarly about video, right. And it's obviously something that I've been throwing around now that it's becoming a thing that's kind of expected and TikTok is growing and you know, whether we're going to do clips as well, I don't think we'll ever kind of record the whole episode because part of the reason I wanted to do a podcast instead of a YouTube show was because it was audio and I didn't need to be on video all the time. Right. But earlier, you know, before we went into talking about Spotify, you were talking about that kind of relationship piece, right. And how these relationships, you know, between the listeners

and the hosts are quite important. And especially in kind of a long running show, an interview show, a conversation show, as you would say, you know, this does become a really important piece of what continues to drive, you know, listenership and gets more people to discover the show over time. And that is kind of difficult to have when you just have these kind of short series and what have you. Because I feel like during the early stages of the pandemic when people were in lockdowns

and you still couldn't be around a lot of people, I feel like there was a lot of takeoff in a lot of different mediums. But I feel like podcasting, you had a lot of people starting podcasts to even just talk to people who they knew. And of course, you know, this podcast started in April of 2020. But I feel like you also had a lot of people listening to podcasts to listen to people and kind of have that relationship and hear these conversations and things like that at a time when, you know,

our kind of personal contact with people was was limited. So I guess it's a very broad question, feel free to answer it how you want. But what do you make of kind of the importance of relationships in the medium of podcasting in particular? It's so interesting. If we can get like philosophical for a second, the way that like anthropology intersects with tech, everyone felt very disenfranchised in 2020 on all parts of the political spectrum. And it's like, oh, if I just buy this microphone that has a USB wire and I plug it into my computer and I use one of the various things to throw that records my voice with my bros, then I'm just going to make the thing and it's going to go out there. And I think it was a chance for everyone to kind of say the

thing they wanted to say. Now, some of that was like anti-vax garbage. But at the same time, a lot of that stuff was, for me, from my own leftist perspective, I think listening to that stuff and people wrestling with where the world was and how our institutions failed us, especially surrounding the galvanization around the George Floyd demonstrations and how so many people saw that like centrists, the Democrats weren't being helpful at all and were sending out those cops to go get everybody. And also reckoning with like how our institutions failed us just about the pandemic at large, like lots of people wanted to talk to each other, and then publish that and put it out there. That makes a ton of sense to me. I think at the same time, when we're talking about the ad market, all the ads disappeared

in 2020. Everyone was like, oh, we don't know what's going to happen with the economy. Our marketing budgets are gone. Everyone gets furloughed. There are no podcast ads for months. Now, that is, I'll say this anecdotally, but I think a lot of people would say the same thing. Our Patreons grew significantly during that time. I think it was like the small business idea started to latch

in people's minds of like, oh, we need to support small businesses or then they will disappear. When everyone's like, I got to buy restaurant merch, I got to buy plants, and I got to buy pillows and support my vintage stores. I mean that with no sense of glibness in my voice. I truly, and I think that the independent media creators also got into that bucket that everyone started supporting Patreons at higher and higher levels. And podcasts use Patreon quite a lot and have that deep relationship. So there's something about hearing people in your brain. Think about it, especially for AirPods, which I use all the time. You stick them into your ear holes, and then you hear people talking and laughing

and debating and fighting and making jokes with each other and making inside jokes with each other for that matter, inside of your brain. There's of course that very popular image of the young woman next to the people who are eating ice cream, the ad of eating ice cream. It's like, this is how I feel when I'm listening to my podcasts. And it's just like, oh, we're all friends, right? Of course they know me. There's almost like, you're listening into the conversation, but because it's so close to you as a human, you almost feel like your brain is tricked to be in the same room. In the same way that our brains can't fathom being in an airplane, because it's so crazy that we're in a tube flying through the air, and that's why we cry so much on airplanes. I think it's very similar. It's just the way that society

has kind of developed. I mean, I think it's important. Again, I love podcast listeners and I also love there's no comment box, but people do reach and go out of their ways both to email us and tweet at us and also see us at live shows and say like, this show got me through a really hard time and I appreciate you for making it. And I think that so many creators are embarrassed by it. The other thing about 2020, which is the beginning of everyone and their mom has a podcast, is we started being embarrassed by having a podcast. And I just don't really understand it because it's so good and important and can be the backbone of so many people's working lives. And I think that's where the chat show thing comes through.

It's like, unless I worked with the New York Times or I worked with Ira Glass and I spent $500,000 on this and I spent three years and it was about like a heart-wrenching subject, it's not a true podcast. That haughtiness is definitely there, but those are all of the people who got laid off And it was about like a heart-wrenching subject. It's not a true podcast. That haughtiness is definitely there. But those are all the people who got laid off because those media companies didn't want to fund these shows that took a lot of time and money and didn't make a return because they put out six episodes and then they didn't build anything. Again, it takes a long time for people to find a show and fall in love with it.

So that's why I think so many people got laid off. And that's when everyone said the podcasting was dead. They meant these big bets on it, these big media bets on it. And instead it's like, oh, well, you stupid chat shows, you just record by yourself and you don't, it doesn't take any time. It's like, well, no, it takes a lot of time and we're out here surviving. We're out here thriving. I have a company that is out here doing it. I just feel like I've spent a lot of time in 2023 being like, no, we're good. We're hiring. We had more shows.

We're putting out 52 episodes a year. And that shouldn't be something to be looked down on because I think that's kind of the basis of the American dream of being a digital media creator. Yeah. And I think you see even like these large companies that got into this podcasting space, you know, doing these expensive kind of limited series and stuff are increasingly shifting to, you know, what they would consider kind of lower costs, you know, conversational content and stuff like that. Right. And, and I will just say kind of anecdotally, like on a personal level, you know, we did this Elon Musk series back in October and, you know, it was nowhere near like the standards or the quality of what, you know, one of these media organizations or something. I disagree. It was really good and really well made. I come on. I disagree. But I know, there, there wasn't nearly as much resources to put into it and we couldn't make like custom music or anything like that. But the amount of work that went into

like just putting that together, like it almost crushed me and Eric because like that whole month of October was just like a write-off because it was just all the Elon series. Can I drill down on that for just a moment? Is like, what is the thing that took the most amount of time? The research and the scripting largely, I would say. Yeah. And I think that the research totally makes sense, but it's like scripting is just a type of podcasting. It's just a form, one popularized by very intelligent, but also sometimes can be kind of pretentious and stuffy and a very specific format. But that doesn't mean it's better. It just means that it's the type of thing you want to do to communicate this almost like this essay,

this report. And like scripting something is not inherently a better form than the interview form or the talk about whatever with my friends form. If it's structured, if it makes sense, if it provides value and it's unique and does the thing that the show is supposed to do. Like a podcast, I think the best podcast does something that no other podcast, but maybe not even no other piece of media can do. You really got to find your uniqueness because you're trying to stand out from the crowd, especially post 2020, whenever one of their mom has a podcast. So you spend a lot of time trying to make it as high quality as possible. But I don't think the form of scripting this type of audio

journalist long form thing is not better. It's just different. And I think that a lot of people fooled themselves in thinking it was better and then got stuck only knowing how to make that thing. And then they got laid off. Because also when you start working for someone else, kind of the fundamentals of this whole podcast, right, is like when you are just a creative person and you take that job, they will never, ever, ever, ever show you the numbers because they want to do it over in their little office. And they get to tell you that you're like a silly little artist and pat you on the head

that you don't know what you're talking about. And then they're going to make whatever slashes or whatever and try to 10 exit. And then when they, when the money becomes regular price again, they're going to ask for returns and cut all of your jobs. So I think that people are getting really stuck in, in that thing. If we go all the way back to Gimlet, to This American Life and public radio, it was a non-profit opportunity that is funded by the fact that in a very PBS or an NPR sort of style, this should exist. It's very beautiful, funded because it's important to art.

Alex Bloomberg, the senior producer, was like, hey, what if we made a private company of this? And that's where Gimlet began. It's interesting to know that his co-founder and the CFO was this guy named Matt Lieber, who was a radio producer, but also was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, like a really, really big, dangerous consulting group, right? And then they got tons and tons and tons of startup capital through their initial raise

in their Series A. Their Series A, they did in December 2015. They raised $6 million on a $30 million valuation. Again, like after one year of being in business and only making a few shows. So I want to know, was there ever a plan to make money on their big spreadsheet? Because it seems like they couldn't figure it out. They're like, oh, we're going to make shows. We're going to make stuff for other companies. We're going to make shows for other companies and we're going to sell ads, but we're not that good at it and it's not bringing in enough money. And then they got even more money from their series B and then they got bought by Spotify. So was there ever a profit center in these very big, very expensive types of podcasts? It seems like the answer is no. Now, is that a good reason

to make art? No, you don't have to have a profit center. But like, if we're talking about a nascent media industry, yeah, but you kind of have to be able to answer that question. But I guess the tech people kind of like, nah, we'll worry about it later when someone buys us. The bill was then passed on to Spotify that kept racking up more and more bills. Yeah, I think that's really interesting, right? Because it suggests the industry side of podcasting was really kind of built on a false foundation that was supported by the zero interest rates of, you know, the past 15 years and kind of built on that. And the tech industry, of course, absorbed it. And, you know, they also didn't see the need to make a lot of money initially as they sought

to capture this space, you know, ensure that people weren't just getting podcasts through their RSS feeds and their feed apps and all this kind of stuff, but had to go to Spotify or had to go to Apple or had to go to YouTube in order to listen to them. And we see that they have largely failed in doing that. And I think for the better, because I don't think that that would ultimately be a good thing. And I think that we're also seeing a refocusing from that kind of version of the podcast to something that is much more familiar to what I do and the people who I know do where, you know, we interview people, we have our conversations, we have some fun. Hopefully, some of us can make

enough money to like do it as a job, but not everyone can. And I think that also explains some of the shakeout too, right? Is you had a lot of people start podcasts in 2020. Sure, you have like on the upper industry side of things, the money equation is not working out. But also people who just started podcasts for fun in like early 2020, because they were all in lockdown and, you know and now have gone back to regular jobs or doing other things and just don't have the time for it anymore. And it never really became a

job for them. There really was a speculation boom in 2019 when Gimlet got bought. Multitude was making a show for Sony Music. And it was the only show that Sony Music ever did outside of its internal because then they ended up just buying studios to be their internal Sony Music podcast. But they contracted the show with us. And we made this budget in late 2018. And we're like, oh, I think this makes sense about what we're doing. And then when Gimlet got bought, we're like, dang, our budget is like a third of what everyone else is now charging because the companies are now going to spend a lot of money on this thing. So there really was a jump post-2019, and now the large corporate bill

is coming due in 2023, which has absolutely nothing to do with all of these people thriving, having incredible communities, listening to podcasts, and making a living based on the ad revenue and the Patreon stuff and touring and live shows now that there is a life to be made. It's a great life. It's a good life to be a digital media creator. Then you don't have to follow the algorithm. You got to do the thing that's best for your audience and keep trying to grow, which is kind of everything.

There's nothing wrong with that. Totally. And so I guess, you know, to close off our conversation, we've talked about how there has been this real shakeout. We've talked about how Spotify's big plan has not worked. It's retrenched. It's merged some of these companies, got rid of others, laid a lot of people off because, you know, its whole strategy that it put all these hundreds of millions of dollars into wasn't working. Where do you see this all going in 2024? What does 2024 mean for podcasting?

I think that people are still trying to figure out what to do right now. People are still running around like chickens with their head cut off being like, what do we do? What do we do? Everything's crumbling around us. And I think that eventually people are going to realize the thing that everyone is figuring out in blogging and in media, like reporters over the last few years, is like, we're going to start our own thing. And we're going to start a Patreon and hopefully a

competitor to Patreon shows up so we don't have to all just use Patreon. Or we're going to start our own website, like Aftermath and What Defector Has Done. And what is the podcast equivalent of that? I think people are going to start figuring that thing out and realizing they can't just rely on institutions. And also, this does intersect with public art grants, which is something I don't really understand. But a lot of people get grants to make their long-form reporting thing, and we can't just rely on that. Unfortunately, for the people who are making capital A art that are supported by others, they got to figure out how to support their own money. But then what does that look like? I think we're going to all start turning our eyes towards the things that make sense. And then we're just going to make a new form.

What I hope is that we're not going to look down on the conversational podcast anymore and realize how much value is in there. Or we're all going to kind of go back to this, like maybe there's going to be like an indie filmmaking boom. How it's like, how can we do the most interesting thing with the least amount of budget? And I think it's just going to be different rules. I'm not just going to get this six figure salary from a media company, and I'm going to like, spend 60 hours making one episode, I got to do something else. I'm telling you, it's working. I have a job. We have a company. It's all happening and it's great. So I think when people start listening to the ruffians that they did,

they kind of didn't want to listen to before. Everyone's going to be a lot happier and we can really cut out these massive institutions. Yeah. And just to build on what you're saying, like on my end of things, you know, not associated with this more industry side of things, I guess, you know, sometimes it's incredible to me to see how much money it costs to make one of these podcasts. And I'm like, we make this show with so much less than that. And I think have, you know, quite a respectable impact for what it is. And it's still incredible to me that after almost four years of doing this, so many people listen to the show, so many people like it, so many people support the work that goes into making it. Yeah, it's,

I don't know, just fantastic that it worked out. But Eric, it's been great to speak to you about the podcast industry to learn more about how all this works. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show. So happy to be here. I could literally talk about this for another 10 hours. So let's stop so that editor Eric has some time to work on it. Good plan. But thanks again. Absolutely. Thank you.