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How To Fix Copyright Music Problems In Podcasts

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In our research, when we ask podcast consumers which categories they’re interested in, Music is regularly in the top 10. And yet, there are no music podcasts at the top of the podcast charts.

Why is that?

One obvious reason is that most podcasts don’t actually play any popular music for various reasons, but it likely mostly stems from a fear of getting sued.

Back in March, I met Peter Ferioli and Christian Swain, co-founders of Pantheon Media, a network that features music and sports podcasts. I’ve long been fascinated by this conundrum, and it has led to several discussions as to why this is the case, what might be done to solve the problem, and how research can play a role.

Peter, Christian, and I spoke at length on this topic for this special edition of Tuesdays With Coleman. The structure for rights fees in place for radio and streaming doesn’t apply to podcasts, and you’ll learn why as Peter and Christian lay out a vision of how a new system might work. They also explain how “fair use” works and why it allows them to feature popular music in their shows.

As a bonus, you may hear the term “Gordian Knot” referred to in a conversation for the first time in your life.

Here’s my conversation with Peter and Christian, with the full transcript below:

Jay Nachlis (00:00)

I ‘m Jay Nachlis from Coleman Insights and joining me from Pantheon Media today are Peter and Christian. ⁓ Guys, thanks so much for joining us for this discussion. It’s great to have you.

Christian Swain (00:11)

Thanks for having us, Jay.

Peter Ferioli (00:12)

Pleasure to be here, Jay.

Jay Nachlis (00:14)

So Pantheon is a network with music and sports podcasts, including the official Metallica, the Mighty Metallica is on your roster. you know, we met in March, I think, at the Podcast Movement Evolutions Conference. you know, we have this shared love of, you know, we’re all music geeks and have this shared love of music. We love music podcasts. And it’s, I guess, it’s kind of…spun into several conversations about the topic of using music in podcasts, which has always been fascinating to me. And I think it’s a topic that maybe hasn’t been talked about enough. And there’s a lot of, I mean, you think of things that have misunderstandings, misinterpretations, this has gotta be like right towards the top of the list, right?

Christian Swain (01:01)

True. Well, I think it all starts with, you know, the working with an industry where there is a bit of a Gordian knot when it comes to licensing and maybe that needs a, you know, a refresher into the 21st century on what that could mean and how the ⁓ economics work when spread.

you know, by the smaller creators that there is a lot of upside to them if they would pay attention.

Peter Ferioli (01:33)

So let me break that down into the layman’s terms those of you who don’t know what a Gordian knot is. ⁓ what I think, what Christian was putting it in the terms of some of the different types of music licenses that podcasters would actually need today to actually use a track, you would first need.

Christian Swain (01:39)

What? We gotta start with Greek history? Well, come on, everybody should know that. Classically trained.

Jay Nachlis (01:40)

What?

Christian Swain (01:54)

Yeah, yeah.

Peter Ferioli (01:59)

It’s two different sets of licensing and buckets this falls under. The first set are the master recording rights. And that’s the actual recorded version of the song that actually is usually owned by the label. Right. And then you have the composition rights, which are the like the melody, the lyrics, and those are typically owned by the publisher. Right. Right. Then, OK, so here’s where the problem becomes for podcasters. OK. And it gets really hairy, and hence the Gordian knot.

Christian Swain (02:19)

The songwriters.

Jay Nachlis (02:21)

Okay.

Peter Ferioli (02:29)

You don’t just deal with these PROs like radio or performance rights because podcasts are actually considered on demand and downloadable because of the RSS feed and the technology that podcasting originally stemmed out of that doesn’t today still define podcasting but is a major infrastructure behind how podcasts are served and delivered to you via Apple, Amazon, Spotify, etc.

Peter Ferioli (02:58)

So you have these other set of rights. You need reproduction rights to copy this music into your show, right? Then you have to have distribution rights to get it out to all the listeners from your RSS feed, wherever it’s being stored and served to everyone listening. And lastly, you have something called digital transmission rights, right? And those are for streaming purposes. So now you’re looking at six different parties to just use 30 seconds when all you want to do is try to promote and sell and push music discovery at heart in that 30 seconds of music.

Christian Swain (03:36)

Yeah, we understand why, you you can’t just make a podcast and start playing songs. That’s not the point. And that’s not what we do. You know, we are, you know, we kind of consider ourselves like the modern version of Rolling Stone magazine. You know, we’re audio and video. But the thing is, is that we need to talk about the music by showing the example. Now we try to keep the the samples short and in context.

which does fall under fair use. So we are covered, but we would love to figure out a scheme that allows licensing, full licensing to be used so that more people would engage in this activity and provide more marketing opportunities for those rights holders as an end result.

Jay Nachlis (04:23)

Yeah, so let’s talk about fair use for a second and what exactly that means based on, so it sounds like there’s a journalistic component to it, right? When you mentioned Rolling Stone as an example, so it’s like, is the difference that if I’m covering it in that way compared to, I don’t know, just playing it as part of the best of the 2000s playlist that I put together, is that the difference?

Peter Ferioli (04:47)

I’m gonna start on this one just because I would consider myself an expert in this because, you know, we’ve been doing this for 10 years and about a year ago, Warner Brothers and Universal en masse decided to flip on a switch in Spotify that basically gave us, I believe over one week we received 4,700 individual notices that basically took us through a three page multi-tier process that fair use was one of the main cruxes of it. And so I’ll tell you a little bit about that and that experience is this. Fair use is, it’s a legal doctrine that is used in defense. It’s not a right. You can’t claim it on the front of things.

And it’s defined when you use copyrighted material for things like criticism, comment, news reporting, parody, teaching, research, pastiche. There’s different, a lot of different things that it covers when you use ⁓ some of copyrighted material. But then the four factors, if it were ever to come to a court case where you did go to trial and during the trial, your lawyer claims for fair use.

Christian Swain (05:46)

Parody.

Peter Ferioli (06:07)

The judge and the juror, if there was a jury, which most likely would never be, but the judge would look at four main factors around what is considered fair use. The number one, it’s the, you know, it’s the purpose of the use, right? The nature of the works, the amount of it used and the effect on the market for the original. Did it damage it? Did it lift it up? What did it do to it? Did it take?

Money away from it. How did it impact the market when this happened, right? So if you’re using a clip like we do for review or critique or demonstration, that is covered under fair use. Should it get to that point of when we were, and we are very confident in that. But if we simply take 30 seconds of our favorite song and use it as background music, use it as entertainment purposes, just an intro on something that doesn’t apply,

Christian Swain (06:51)

If it ever got to that point.

Peter Ferioli (07:05)

That almost would never qualify.

Christian Swain (07:07)

Don’t use Kenny Rogers the Gambler for a gambling podcast.

Jay Nachlis (07:11)

Right. Right.

Peter Ferioli (07:11)

So at the end result, basically, what you’ll get from an attorney is never do it because it’s expensive to defend should it get to this point, right? Not all of them have the network, the ways and means and the experience and wisdom that we do having as many podcasts as we do and understanding the differences and what we’re doing, right? A lot of podcasts are just not worth the risk to an individual podcaster at the end of the day.

Jay Nachlis (07:38)

Okay, now I’m curious about how hosting platforms play a role in this and to, I guess to explain to everyone what that is. If I’m an independent podcaster and I want to get my podcast out to the world.

onto all the different platforms, Apple and Spotify, et cetera. ⁓ Like you mentioned before, there’s an RSS feed. And that’s when you go to a podcast hosting platform, some examples are like Buzzsprout and Libsyn and Blubrry They will take that and they will put your show notes in there, right? You upload your episode and it goes out to the world. So do they have any sort of role in this or no?

Christian Swain (08:08)

distributed out.

Peter Ferioli (08:19)

I’ll take a first shot then I’ll let Christian talk. this one’s interesting because right now, yeah, well, and right now, you know, none of these hosting platforms. So what you’re talking about, Jay, is where when I make a podcast, I make an audio file, I have to put it up somewhere so that it can be distributed and heard everywhere. Now, originally, none of those places in the podcasting industry for the first 15 years were also places that…

Christian Swain (08:20)

Yeah, go ahead.

They know about it, yeah.

Peter Ferioli (08:46)

Also had blanket music licenses. So we have a world now where that you have some of these hosting services That you know do have a comprehensive blanket license for their platform So like a spotify for podcasters or an anchor or literally amazon music, right? So when they make their originals, they don’t have to negotiate in the same way that the independent podcaster does but these host services at the end of their day are just, you know, what we would say are CYA, which is cover your ass. And it’s about liability, right? So if you have one second of any copyrighted music on a show on one of your hosts, like a Libsyn or a Blubrry or anywhere else, and they are contacted by the rights holder to ask that it gets taken down, they are liable. So ultimately your host is who is responsible for the distribution of copyrighted material. And none of them want to take on the liability on behalf of thousands of individual creators who don’t know their intentions.

Jay Nachlis (09:53)

Right, yeah, that makes sense.

Christian Swain (09:55)

So none of those companies are willing to, you know, be the the the law enforcement of ⁓ of usage out there. We’ve presented some concepts that we might be willing to, ⁓ you know, take that role on or basically somebody would have to take that role on if, you know, it was strictly a downstream, you know, Hoover up. the nickels, make sure that they’re using it properly and provide reporting and monthly checks to the rights holders.

Peter Ferioli (10:32)

And what Christian’s talking about was deployed in the best way, the best example we have of what Christian is talking about is content ID on YouTube. And so when we talk about the world’s top premier kind of copyright material filtering platform right now that notifies rights holders in near real time about their usage of via a creator or influencer. And nowadays, especially, we’re in this weird world where videos are podcasting, live streamers are podcasters, Spotify’s got video for podcasters. And the more that they are using music and being flagged, but they are given the opportunity because of the ubiquitous nature of where all video is being kind of served through.

Christian Swain (11:09)

Yeah.

just on YouTube, right?

Peter Ferioli (11:25)

You know, just do YouTube. you know, obviously every different, we talk about the hosting platforms and 60, 70 from places your podcast can be found as an audio format. Well, there’s only one or two right now that you’re going to find them in video and they really can, can, can control that. And they have a great system there. So they do, they do allow the usage of copyrighted works on YouTube. You can either share in the data.

You can share in the monies, you can be blocked in certain countries, or you can go through a multi-page process of claiming fair use by which many of the large folks who have the five, eight, 10 million listeners on YouTube that are doing music reviews and critiques, Rick Beato, ⁓ a couple other ones that we know, are dealing with this issue right now where they’re getting copyright strikes where they used to just be able to claim fair use.

Christian Swain (12:17)

It seems like YouTube has gotten a little more militant on the usage, ⁓ certainly with certain artists. But at the same time, you’ve seen just like ⁓ when ⁓ digital music began ⁓ with Napster, there was this Heisman of, ⁓ no, we’re not gonna do this. And eventually everybody went along with the program.

Christian Swain (12:44)

And so it’s just a question of how long do you have to put up with that before everybody sees the long-term benefits? And this has happened in the recording industry time and time again. They always fear the technology. And when they finally employ that technology, they end up making more money than they ever did before.

Jay Nachlis (13:05)

Right. So when you think about the way that labels look at this, it, ⁓ is a lot of it from being antiquated, like an antiquated view of it?

Christian Swain (13:17)

I did use the term Gordian Knot.

Jay Nachlis (13:20)

Yes, you did. Yes.

Peter Ferioli (13:20)

Yeah, the labels, listen, at the end of the day, there’s only one thing the labels care about, which is money. Okay, so if you go back to it, what is their answer is this, is if there was a there there, they would have a system in place. And what do we mean by that? If you look at the company pex.com, which became rights.com and some of the data indexing they did in their studies of kind of analyzing all… Yeah, they analyzed all… They analyzed a massive amount of YouTube. They indexed actually every podcast out of 200.5 million of them. They ran through a filter and they identified music usage in both YouTube and in audio podcasting. What they found was in YouTube, you had about 83 % of videos were using music of some form or another copyrighted license, etc.

Christian Swain (13:49)

trying to copy YouTube’s content ID. using music.

Peter Ferioli (14:15)

And then in audio podcasts, and they found that only 17 % were using music. And this was probably about five years ago. That’s probably adjusted a few points upward. But at the end of the day, there’s an opportunity there to use more music and grow. But conversely, if we look at the top 200 podcasts that are…taking all the dollars and ad dollars and taking all the listeners, right? How many of them are using music or went out and paid sync rights to use a track or use it? None of them are. So you have the music labels going, look at all the top podcasts. None of them are music. None of them are using music. There’s no money in us licensing any of these top people because so that’s where we came in years ago with an idea that we called AMP, which was the Alliance of Music Podcasters in our early days where one of the solutions we thought and we still believe was

Christian Swain (14:42)

are not exactly music podcasts, right?

Peter Ferioli (15:08)

If we could aggregate our entire vertical of not just Pantheon and our hundred plus music podcast, but then some of the other music podcasters and networks out there that we could create a set of data and create a blanket license that we could then go to the labels and get. But the issue still becomes at the host level and the data and tracking and getting the hosts, these hosts companies to have some skin in the game at some why financially should they get in the business of tracking this these data and stats on their end for these labels? Right? Spotify did it because they went negotiated and got sound exchange and they could come all the force to bear with their subscription product. But what is in Libsyn and Blubrry and Art 19, What is in their interest for the labels to go, hey, every month, here’s all the data and all the music usage that was happened on on the platforms, right?

And so that’s where we’re at. know, there’s got to be money there for somebody and the labels don’t think there’s money there. It being a lot of money right now.

Jay Nachlis (16:12)

That’s really interesting. It’s interesting what you say about the top podcasts and them not using music and that argument, right? Because a lot of it comes from, like when we do research, we did the state of video podcasting study back in March that we presented at that conference we were talking about. And it’s very typical when you do these types of industry studies and you’re just researching the podcast consumer and you’re asking them about category fandom, not actual usage, but you ask them what categories are the most into. Music is always high.

And the last one that we did, was number seven overall. That’s really, really big. And so there is a gap between people’s perception of, hey, I love this, I want this type of podcast and their actual consumption. But it comes from what you’re talking about. It’s because there’s not enough popular music. I was recently reading about Song Exploder, which is a really big podcast, right? Where artists come on and they dissect a song and how was it made? They get in the weeds, it’s great.

Christian Swain (17:00)

Yep. Been around for a long time.

Jay Nachlis (17:08)

And the creator was talking about how, I don’t remember if it came off for a while, but the whole point was at one point he just couldn’t afford all of the fees. And I guess it became big enough that they were able to do it. that’s the quandary, right? It’s not that the popularity isn’t there. It’s not that you wouldn’t have better performing music podcasts if more were able to be used, right? So, yeah.

Christian Swain (17:35)

There should be. You know, we have been told time and time again that in the music industry, we are the marketing arm nowadays. The old ways of trying to get people to pay attention to new music was through the FM DJ, the record store clerk, and the music press. None of those exist anymore. So we are the 21st century version of all those things wrapped up into a single platform.

And we think that the music industry should lean into us and duplicate more of us ⁓ by allowing a licensing scheme that would be conducive to that sort of growth.

Jay Nachlis (18:22)

Yeah, I think the condemnation of FM radio as the lack of source of music discovery was a little too much on the one side, but your point is well taken. It’s a lot less than it was for sure. And people are going to streaming for music discovery in droves and it should be a conduit for that. That’s not happening, yes.

Christian Swain (18:29)

Yeah, you also have a much larger pool of music to choose from out there. So how do you find what is the next thing that you want to hear? We know that algorithms and playlists aren’t exactly the best way to do that. Music is a very, very personal experience. so word of mouth is actually the best way that most people have discovered new music. So, the algorithm will feed you, you know, your commonalities, as we like to say, you you know, if you’re a fan of Black Sabbath, well, geez, they think you’re going to be a fan of Ozzy Osborne. Well, yeah, no kidding. ⁓ But, you know, what, you know, that’s not how people actually consume music. They want to explore. They want to put their fingers out into other potential possibilities, whether they like it or not. ⁓ And if you had you know, a system to help recommend those sort of things, that would be better for everybody.

Jay Nachlis (19:41)

I think a couple of analogies would be thinking about ⁓ even like host read ads, for example, are always more effective than, Yeah, right. Why? Because it’s someone you trust telling you something. It’s a recommendation. much, it’s just, it’s more personal than an algorithm, right? ⁓ And I think that that, and same thing, like the way people discover new podcasts for years, in fact, up until this year, the number one was always friends and family.

Christian Swain (19:50)

Yeah, and the dynamic insertions. Yeah.

Jay Nachlis (20:12)

Now social media is number one. Friends and family is still up there, ultimately it’s work, to your point, it’s word of mouth. And so we’ve talked about when it comes to a solution and how do we convince the labels? How do we get them to a point where we can get to the system you’re talking about where every independent podcaster could have the opportunity to use popular music? How do we convince them? What’s the, you know, what do we do here?

Christian Swain (20:34)

We dangle a big dollar in front of them. That’s how we do it. That’s what they want, definitely.

Peter Ferioli (20:41)

Yeah, yeah, they have to understand that it’s definitely a marketing music discovery, you know, in the catalog, back catalog exposure is where it’s, you know, it’s really important. How do you, if you have a friend or you get a recommendation from somebody for restaurant, do you trust them if they haven’t eaten there? I mean, you let’s talk, I heard about this song on this podcast. They talked about it, but I didn’t hear it. You should go check this band out because they just talked about the song, you know, really? That’s how you’re going to recommend or refer something because

Christian Swain (20:58)

Yeah, exactly. But I can’t really talk about it.

Peter Ferioli (21:11)

a friend, you know, read the review of the restaurant, you should go there. Well, did you eat there? Like I wouldn’t trust anybody who’d recommended abandon me if they didn’t hear the band or the song.

Christian Swain (21:21)

Yeah, that makes no sense at all. you know, to talk again in context, we’re not suggesting that they just like willy-nilly let people use music to their heart’s desire. We’re suggesting to put, you know, some rules around it. And that is basically the fair use rules, you know, parody, you know, commentary, education. Those are things that I think benefit from small samples of the music to express what it is that you’re talking about so that the concepts and ideas get fully realized to the audience.

Peter Ferioli (21:58)

Now, let’s just say that we are allowed to do that though, actually. Those 4,500 notices we got, we went through the three phase step, declared fair use. When you come through Spotify, they gave you a notice. There was four things. You can say, this is not in my work. We have rights to use it from the rights holder. We’re using it under fair use or we will remove it. You have to check four actions and then they check back and then they take it down if you haven’t responded and you get like, you know, I think it’s 72 hours, three days to respond to these notices. If you don’t, they take your song, your podcast down off Spotify. So we did 4,500 and all of them, we did fair use on all of them. Every one of those episodes is still up on Spotify. So if we were to go in front of a court today or a lawyer, I’d go, I have 4,500 cases of it being accepted as fair use and being played on Spotify after we submitted. So, but that’s the problem. They would still go after and shut your account down and you kind of never get to that point. So we’re not, you know, we, you know, we advocate poking the bear a little bit if you claim fair use and no one has ever been sued in the history of the internet for using a piece of music in something in a creative social work ever.

You can never find, as a matter of fact, only one person was ever sued or attempted to be sued in the Napster years for uploading and sharing a music file at all. Because all the liability, it’s all cover your ass. It’s a whack-a-mole game, Jay. If Podbean gets a notice from Universal because somebody’s putting up their entire Beatles catalog as podcasts, right? And people can do that. Anybody can do that today. You can go make a podcast and put up your entire music catalog, right? And see what happens, okay? Right away, the… Right.

Christian Swain (23:37)

We don’t recommend that.

Christian Swain (23:43)

Definitely don’t recommend that.

Peter Ferioli (23:45)

The technology exists that it can be tracked. The rights holder can get notice in real time. You can get the data in real time if everybody’s listened to it and you can share in the monetization of it. So if YouTube can do it with Content ID, the question becomes, why can’t the rest of them do it? So, right, and they can, especially in today’s AI filtering world, they can. Do they want to? Is there money in it for them? Right, that’s now the next thing because Google has AdWords. So it’s in their best interest to make a song

Christian Swain (23:47)

Okay. Yep.

Peter Ferioli (24:15)

Like, ⁓ let’s take one for example, ⁓ the kids, the African American kids were listening to Phil Collins In the Air Tonight. So there’s a reaction video, right? Before that, you know, they let that go because that song blew up and made more copies and sold more streams and listens in the next two weeks than ever. So at least that they understood in the moment they could go from zero to a hundred million overnight of views because they let it go as the rights holders. They could have said, no.

Jay Nachlis (24:22)

Yeah, yeah.

Peter Ferioli (24:42)

And squash that in the first one minute when they got the notification, right? But because there was a system in place to let them share the data, the money and everything and Google wanted to make money on it too, right? So, and then that’s, I’ll end it with this. The dirty secret is that Spotify has, you know, millions of uses of full songs in their music category under their podcasting. And none of it is being paid back to the rights holders right now.

But Spotify is running ads on those podcasts and making money on all the ads, on all the music, on all those podcasts. Spotify is making money, right? But on the other side of the house, on the same platform, they have SoundExchange paying out for a stream from that song. So you ask yourself, they can track it and they do on their platform. Why not just track the usage on the podcast and pay the rights holder via SoundExchange?

Jay Nachlis (25:17)

Mmm.

Peter Ferioli (25:38)

because then they’d have to start to reveal the ad dollars and what they’re really, what they’re monetizing on the podcasting side of the house to the music people. Do you think they want to do that?

Jay Nachlis (25:49)

Right, right.

you think it, I mean, it obviously comes down to money. is it gonna be, they see that allowing this in podcasts is going to result in more concert tickets sold, more streams of their artists, more merchandise sold, et cetera, I mean, is that, do you think ultimately that’s what’s gonna flip the switch for them?

Christian Swain (26:13)

I think in the end, they’re going to come to embrace just the fact that there is something out there that is ⁓ marketing their wares in a manner that they’re familiar with. So I think that will happen. we would like to just see more folks get in this game and we think that a lot of people are holding back because they’re afraid of that. I mean, for years we were always like, you guys, you can’t do that. And we were like, no, we think we can. we, look, we got some legal ⁓ advice early on that we were standing on some fair use ground. And as long as we maintained that, you know, that you know, education commentary primarily, we do some parody, but not a lot, ⁓ that, you know, we’d be in a good spot. And the evidence is beared out. We have not been shut down. We have not been sued. We haven’t ⁓ lost a single episode.

Peter Ferioli (27:19)

And, you what I would say is that research is absolutely critical and something we are trying to be more heavily invested in here with our creators, what’s the music usage in our shows. And we need data on a lot of these usage patterns, right? So how much music do these podcasters want to use, you know, for how long?

Christian Swain (27:24)

Yeah.

Peter Ferioli (27:41)

And we want to help try to build these licensing models and be transparent with the industry. So with that though, we need audience research, right? To demonstrate the value proposition to these rights holders. So we can show things like, yeah, a podcast listener that’s 40 % more likely to be a music super fan and maybe 70 % more likely to attend a concert. And then that changes what you’re saying, which is, and what we’re talking about, which is the conversation from how do we protect this content to you know, how do we reach these valuable fans with this content, right? So we can flip it on them a little bit. And then with that research, I hope we get the, you know, then some economic modeling, right? So understanding what can these podcasters afford to pay, what rights holders, you know, want and need to make this work for everyone, because we’re not radio stations. There’s a lot of individuals who want to license this right. So it’s not being licensed at one big scale. So

Christian Swain (28:33)

Well, micro radio stations, but…

Peter Ferioli (28:39)

You know, we really, believe again that it’s a problem that has an opportunity to be solved that can benefit the whole ecosystem.

Jay Nachlis (28:47)

Do you envision when this all shakes out, how do you envision this for, what’s the perfect scenario for the podcaster? is it something that, it feels like it’s hard not to be complicated, right? Because there’s so many different levels of whether or not I’ve got a big audience or a small audience, how many songs am I using, how much of the song am I using, right? So how does this look at the end to you guys?

Christian Swain (29:09)

Well, the mechanics are one thing of figuring out like 30 seconds, 10 seconds. I mean, we’ve looked at maybe microcharging of like, if you use 10 seconds, there’s X, if you use 20 seconds, it’s Y, if you use 30 seconds, it’s Z. We’ve looked at that sort of concept. And then the size of audience, I think, is critical. I mean, if you’ve got 100 people,

They can’t be charging you $10,000 for a sync license. You know, it’s like, it needs to be commensurate to the size of the audience. I think more than anything else, you know, so it’s a scale, you know, if you’ve got a hundred thousand people listening to your thing and are all getting excited, well, then you should pay more to use the license, the music, than somebody who’s got a hundred people, you know.

Peter Ferioli (29:56)

So the implementation is actually much easier than we all think. And it’s actually not as complicated, Jay, because all the hosting platforms, almost all of them, they charge a fee. You give them your credit card to upload your file, right? you pay a monthly fee. OK, so now when I go on to, let’s just use Libsyn as an example, because I love you, Libsyn. When you upload a show to Libsyn, you check out

To be a podcast, is this statement not true or is this true or false? You must be in a category to be distributed as a podcast in an RSS feed. Correct, right? So we have this qualifier that you now have to check you’re in the music category. Only the people who check. There’s only four available music categories. There’s music, music interviews, music history, music commentary. Those are the only four available that you can flag yourself as in the podcasting ecosystem. If you’re within those,

Christian Swain (30:31)

True.

Peter Ferioli (30:50)

Your RSS feed gets run through the AI music filter. And then through the AI music filter on Libsyn, I get dinged 0.0005 cents, whatever the streaming rate is for, or the play rate is for a song. If I have a hundred plays of it, if I have 10,000 plays or a million plays, my credit card on file gets billed for that. And I click, okay, I would like to opt in to…

My show being tracked in the music category and pay for the usage of music rights, right? And then that RSS feed goes back to the rights publisher owner. They can listen to the podcast just like they do on YouTube. And in real time, their army of 5,000 people in Germany working 24 seven, checking rights on YouTube to clear them all the time can do the same thing for the other platforms, right?

It’s just, it’s not that hard. It’s why would Libsyn take the time to implement this tech on their side if 10 people are going to use it they’re going to pay 20 bucks a month. You know, they, you know.

Christian Swain (31:48)

Well, there’s got to be money for them. Yeah.

Jay Nachlis (31:51)

Right, right. Well, the one fly in that ointment that I’m asking about though, because that makes total sense to me logistically, except for the fact that you’re not going to just use music and ideally a music podcast. You might have a sports podcast or a comedy podcast. Okay, right.

Peter Ferioli (32:05)

But has to start somewhere. Let’s start there. Okay, you are correct. But we have to build the use case and create some guardrails first for the rights holders to go, yes, these are people who are legitimate in the music industry to push music. They’re verified. We know they’re in that category. We can throw them out of that category. If they’re abusing our music, we can contact Apple or whatever it is. We can contact Libsyn and go, no, they’re not really in the, you know, they’re using this song for entertainment purpose, whatever it is. I was just starting at a beginning. Yes, you’re correct that scale.

Jay Nachlis (32:34)

Got it, got it.

Peter Ferioli (32:35)

Outside of the music category, but we need to start with something that is going to work.

Christian Swain (32:43)

All right, Jay. Thank you

Jay Nachlis (32:44)

All right, Thanks, guys.

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Podcast Research on YouTube: But Wait! There’s More!

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Anytime we conduct a research study, our favorite notification email is the one that reads, “The sums for your project have been delivered and can now be found in your brief.”

Like a kid opening presents on Christmas, that email is an invitation from Santa to go to a folder on our server, open a spreadsheet, and dive into mounds and mounds of data.

Research isn’t for everyone, but if that gives you a thrill, the business may be for you.

When analyzing the data for the recent research study we conducted with Amplifi Media, “The New Rules of Podcasting on YouTube,” as we do with all studies, we’re looking for a story. What does the data tell us? What does it mean? And how can we turn it into action to produce strategic results?

In this study, the big story is that the definition of “podcast” and how people consume podcasts is shifting, big time. Consumers now define podcasts as audio or video, not just audio. They like YouTube for podcasts. I mean, really like YouTube. What we learned from those who use YouTube to consume podcasts uncovered actionable findings that can help podcasters formulate their video strategies.

But wait, there’s more!

That spreadsheet with multiple crosstabs, or “data tables” as we refer to it, lists every question asked in the study and the corresponding answer overall. But we’re also analyzing answers by things like age, gender, ethnicity, and geography. We want to see how questions are answered by users of specific podcast platforms or fans of specific categories. How different are the answers by how often they consume podcasts? This is an example of just some of the digging we do.

If we showed every piece of data, the presentation would go on for days. And different pieces of data may be more interesting to different people.

If you work in radio, we’ve got data that shows how listeners of local radio stations feel about podcasting and the role of video. We’ve got data on users of many streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Paramount +, and Max.

If you work in marketing or advertising, you may find it interesting how podcast consumers say they’re discovering new podcasts.

We’ve got “momentum” data – which platforms are moving up and down in usage vs. last year. We know which podcasts consumers say are their favorites and can look at that data across other measures.

If you’re interested in purchasing additional data from “The New Rules of Podcasting on YouTube,” click here and fill out the form. Multiple levels of access are available at different price points, and we’d love to discuss how the data may help you.

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A Podcast is Audio or Video. The Customer Says So.

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Podcasters: Listen to your customers, even (especially?) when the customer may see things differently.

At the Podcast Movement conference in Denver last week, we may have ruffled a few feathers with the presentation of our findings from a new research study, “The New Rules of Podcasting on YouTube.”

One of the headlines from the study is “The Definition of a Podcast is Changing”, which indicates that 75% of 15- to 64-year-old podcast consumers in the United States believe a podcast should be defined as “audio or video”.

Another headline indicates that YouTube is the #1 podcasting app.

These findings are related in an important way, and there’s a clear reason why these findings caused a buzz in some podcasting circles.

Steve Goldstein from Amplifi Media, who collaborated with us on the study, talked about three eras of podcasting in the presentation and will cover this week in his blog. The “MeUndies Era”, when the medium was filled with baked-in ads, host-read endorsements, and the Apple podcast app went native on iPhones. The second era, the “Throwing Spaghetti Against The Wall Era”, was filled with expansion and experimentation. We are now entering the “What is a Podcast Era”, as we see the lines between audio and video blur and converge.

Dannie J. Gregoire is credited with coining the word “podcasting” back in 2004, and from the beginning, two factors were integral to the very existence of a podcast. First, a podcast was in an audio format. Second, and more specifically, a podcast was a piece of audio referenced by an enclosure tag in an RSS feed. RSS, or “Really Simple Syndication,” allows users to access updates to websites in a standardized format. An RSS feed is crucially important to podcasters because it allows them to upload episodes, artwork, and show notes in one place, and have them populate seamlessly onto whatever platform the consumer chooses to listen to them on, from Spotify to Apple Podcasts to Amazon Music. And that was generally how podcasting operated until a very large platform threw a monkey wrench into the medium: YouTube.

As a video-first platform, YouTube’s content includes shows that most would widely consider a podcast and others that wouldn’t necessarily “qualify” because the content on YouTube isn’t available as a podcast on other platforms. The RSS feed is a major point of contention for many podcasters because currently the platform doesn’t ingest feeds the way other platforms do. There are different analytics and different ways of monetizing, and one can understand how easily it can be seen as a headache.

How you view podcasting today is likely informed by your podcasting origin story. If you started listening to Ricky Gervais’s podcast on Apple Podcasts in 2007, it would be understandable if you define a podcast as audio-only. If you started “listening” to the very popular Smartless podcast with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett while “watching” an animated logo on the screen, you may feel quite a bit differently.

It’s also important to consider how the demographics of the podcasting audience has evolved. 39% of podcast consumers in our study have been using the medium for two years or less, a number that balloons to 58% among 15- to 24-year-olds. Quite simply, there are fewer purists that see podcasting as an audio-only medium and more that see it as comprising audio and video.

39% of podcast consumers have been using podcasts for two years or less

So, when we report that YouTube is the #1 podcasting destination, it’s not to say that the highest number of podcasts are being consumed on the platform. When 1,000 15- to 64-year-old podcast consumers were asked, “Which services, apps, or destinations do you currently use for podcasts?” 60% of them said YouTube, ahead of Spotify at 53%.

YouTube is the #1 podcasting app

You can dismiss how some consumers perceive what a podcast is, but that’s their perception.

You can dismiss YouTube as a podcasting platform because it doesn’t ingest RSS feeds, but consumers see it as a podcasting platform. That’s their perception.

You’ve almost certainly heard the term “Perception is Reality,” and this study, as many as any I’ve worked on, is truly a reflection of that.

We often talk about Outside Thinking, which is adopting the mindset of the consumer­. Inside Thinkers get caught up in the way they see things, which is often not in sync with their customers.

This research was designed for one thing in mind, and that was to show how podcast consumers view the medium, and how they view podcasting on YouTube. You may see the world differently than they do, but you can’t challenge how they feel.

As a wise therapist once told me, “Those are your feelings. And your feelings are valid.”

By understanding broad global perceptions of the medium, and not just relying on content analytics, it’s our hope that the podcasting industry will have a clearer path towards building strong brands to accompany much of the incredible content being generated.

The “New Rules of Podcasting on YouTube” webinar is coming up Thursday, September 7th at 2PM EDT/11AM PDT. Registration is open now.

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12 Hour Sound Machines: A Podcast Success Story

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A couple of weeks ago in the Tuesdays With Coleman blog “Brand Growth Inspiration from Lofi Girl,” I mentioned 12 Hour Sound Machines, a podcast created by a father who couldn’t get his son to go to sleep. The podcast, which he simply created for himself to play on the smart speaker in his son’s bedroom (“If there was a private toggle, I would have turned it on”) now gets 300,000 listens a day and is approaching 80 million total downloads.

I spoke with Brandon Reed, the creator of 12 Hour Sound Machines, who shared lessons from his launch for current and aspiring podcasters.

12 Hour Sound Machines podcast

12 Hour Sound Machines creator Brandon Reed

 

The genesis of 12 Hour Sound Machines was a need based on what was currently available. To help his crying child, he first tried an air filter. It wasn’t loud enough. He looked online and found the sounds he was seeking either weren’t long enough, were multiple tracks put together that faded in and out, or he could hear clicks when they looped.

And so, he made his own 12 hours of brown noise. No fades, no loops, no clicks.

The night he posted it online, he needed a name and was exhausted. So he came up with, as he puts it, “the most straightforward thing imaginable,” 12 Hour Sound Machines. He made a thumbnail in three minutes and turned it on.

In the beginning, Reed says people started finding it organically (about 30 downloads a day) and he wondered why people besides him were listening.

Even though he made it available on all podcast platforms, it was Spotify where the magic happened. Here’s his explanation:

“My offering is pure utility value. People don’t care that it’s a podcast. They don’t treat it like a podcast. They just need white noise to help them sleep. People were already using Spotify to get sounds and noise. So they type in “sound machine”. Because I was first in, I had an algorithm advantage. They see 12 hours in the name, and they click.”

And so, 12 Hour Sound Machines grew and grew, mostly on Spotify, almost entirely organically. It wasn’t until it crossed the 50,000 daily downloads mark that Reed started thinking about it as a business. He was a podcast consumer but didn’t know the industry side. So, he started learning and studying.

At 75,000 downloads per day, he started looking into monetizing. His hosting platform at the time, Anchor, released a subscription model. He kept a free level of sounds but added 25 additional sounds for 2.99/month to see if people would pay.

They did.

Last Summer, Brandon Reed turned ads on for the first time, recognizing it had to be pre-roll (it wouldn’t be on brand to interrupt a 12-hour sound machine with a commercial). Despite some initial angry responses from a few listeners, it hasn’t stopped the growth.

He hasn’t left his day job working on apps for Disney, but he’s sure got one impressive side hustle. What he’s learned provides a valuable road map for anyone looking to create and monetize a successful podcast. Here are three takeaways:

  1. Find an unoccupied lane and fill it. Blue Ocean Strategy (finding unoccupied market space in the clear “blue ocean” rather than competing in the shark-infested “red ocean”) worked in this case, even if it was by accident. Reed identified a need and served it. Everyone needs a good night’s sleep.

 

  1. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). He says coming up with the name of the podcast quickly was the result of exhaustion, but “the most straightforward thing imaginable” is usually the right thing. Find out what consumers are searching for (i.e., sound machines) on what platforms (i.e., Spotify) and name it the way they would search for it and describe it.

 

  1. Don’t try to do it alone. Reed recognized early on that his podcast couldn’t scale and be successful without help. That meant bringing on a support team that included a website developer and audio engineer so he could focus on business development.

I’ll leave you with his perspective on a mistake he often notices people and companies make.

“What so many people do, with any idea or product they’re trying to build, they think, if I build it, they’ll come. If I just build the coolest widget, the most awesome service, the most unique and innovative product. Then they give it to the world, and it doesn’t catch on. So, they say, “nobody wants it.”

It’s not that nobody wants it. It’s that nobody knows about it, or the wrong people know about it.

What this showed me is that if product market fit is right, if you just give people what they need, then they will come. And they will buy.”

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YouTube Music and Spotify on the Podcast Branding Carousel

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As I reflect on the past week in Las Vegas at the Podcast Movement Evolutions conference, I’m thinking about two recent announcements that will have a significant impact on the podcasting industry. The first announcement, made the week prior at the Hot Pod Summit in New York, was revealed by YouTube’s head of podcasting, Kai Chuk.

YouTube will begin featuring audio and video-first podcasts on its YouTube Music platform.

The level of YouTube’s prowess for podcast consumption and discovery and this move was widely buzzed about in Vegas. For many podcasters, how to utilize YouTube effectively is a conundrum. Unlike audio-only platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts, YouTube cannot pull your show in with an RSS feed, which automatically populates artwork and show notes, and results in the user-friendly displays and players you see on audio platforms. Therefore, podcasting on YouTube can be a clunky, manual process. Discovery can be difficult and sorting chaotic. Because there’s no RSS feed, podcast analytics are a challenge, and thus monetizing becomes a pain.

Within this context, YouTube’s move makes sense. By offering podcasts on YouTube Music, it will pull in RSS feeds and should be easier for podcasters to set videos as podcasts on YouTube Studio. But YouTube’s biggest challenge has nothing to do with easing functionality for podcasters and listeners.

It faces a massive branding challenge.

According to Viralyft, YouTube has over 2.68 billion active users globally as of September 2023. YouTube Music just surpassed 80 million subscribers. YouTube is where podcast listeners are. YouTube Music is where they want them to be. In theory, it will create more paid subscribers for YouTube Music and it will offer an ad-supported version if you don’t want to pay for it.

But YouTube Music is not a podcasting platform today. It never has been. It has “music” in the name and will attempt to grow using a spoken-word medium. It will take an immense effort to educate consumers of YouTube Music’s new role as a podcasting platform, one with no guarantee of succeeding. It may be challenging to improve the podcast experience on YouTube, but that feels like the more logical branding play. YouTube Music as a podcasting platform will start as a weak brand in the podcasting space, and we won’t know the quality of the content until its planned launch.

Anchor, one of the top podcast hosting platforms, was acquired by Spotify in 2019 and it benefitted from the unique new show boom that was fueled during the pandemic while people were at home. The number of active podcasts inflated. One of the things that supercharged Anchor’s growth was the fact that it was, and remains, a free hosting service and attracted beginners. This is in contrast to the $15 or so monthly fee that most hosting platforms charge to house your podcast, distribute to multiple players like Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and provide a level of analytics.

Then, all of a sudden last Wednesday at Spotify’s Stream On event, the company announced it would change the name of Anchor to Spotify for Podcasters. If you do a Google search for Anchor podcasts, you may see Anchor in the listing but you’re redirected to podcasters.spotify.com with a long explanation of why Spotify for Podcasters will be better. Among those improvements include the ability to upload video podcasts to Spotify and more advanced analytics.

Just as time will tell if YouTube’s launching of podcasts on YouTube Music will work, we’ll have to see how Spotify’s dropping of the Anchor (sorry, too easy) plays out. The company didn’t spend time leading up to the change educating and informing consumers it was coming. Many users will be confused when greeted with the new name. Spotify is a podcasting player, not a hosting platform for podcasters. Its challenge will be to convince current users to stay, as well as educate consumers about Spotify’s new role as a hosting platform.

In time, both initiatives may succeed but each will be undeniably difficult. Changing brand perceptions to influence consumer behavior is one of the most difficult tasks a marketer will face. We look forward to watching both closely.

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The Bold Move That Made Fox a Real Network

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I’m obsessed with the Business Wars podcast by Wondery. Each week, the show tells the story of a classic business battle. “Netflix vs. Blockbuster” is phenomenal. “Boeing vs. Airbus” is superb. They’re all great. The latest series is “ESPN vs. Fox Sports,” and once again it delivers.

Business Wars podcast Wondery

The episodes document the many moments when Fox Sports invaded ESPN’s territory, including taking the World Cup rights in 2011 and poaching ESPN hosts Colin Cowherd in 2015 and “First Take” star Skip Bayless in 2016. But there is nothing more impactful than the story of how Fox grabbed NFL rights for the first time. This story isn’t about ESPN directly – Fox didn’t steal the NFL from ESPN, which started broadcasting Sunday night games in 1987. It stole them from CBS thanks to an earth-shaking move that stunned the industry.

There are two things that are important to remember if you’re old enough to recall 1993.

First, Fox was a fledging network. There was no “Fox Sports” in 1993. The Fox Broadcasting Company launched in 1986 as a fourth network to challenge ABC, CBS, and NBC. By 1993 the network had a few hits like The Simpsons, Beverly Hills 90210, and America’s Most Wanted, but it wasn’t seen as a major competitor to the Big 3. Think The CW now…that’s essentially the space Fox occupied in 1993.

Second, TV networks didn’t show the score consistently throughout while you watched a live game. Sounds like complete lunacy now, but network heads thought viewers would switch channels if the score was on the screen all the time.

Sky Sports boss David Hill (who would become president of Fox Sports) created the score box, which showed score and time remaining on the screen. He debuted it during Premier League soccer in England in 1992 and wanted to bring it to the NFL. Fox said they’d show scores, use more cameras to create more angles, and have exciting graphics. Hill told the NFL, “Sports is entertainment, not religion. We’ll make it fun.”

Fox knew it had to bid more than CBS to get the NFL, but Fox chief Rupert Murdoch felt the bid had to be high enough to force the NFL to say yes. One of Murdoch’s analysts told him how much money the network would lose over the four years of the deal. Murdoch explained that he was looking at it all wrong. “I’m not buying NFL rights, I’m buying a network. Buying NFL rights is cheaper than buying ABC, NBC, or CBS.” Only the NFL can make Fox a real network.”

Of course, Murdoch was right. Dozens of CBS affiliates switched to Fox. Prime announcing talent jumped ship from CBS to Fox, including the legendary John Madden. Viewers and advertisers followed, and CBS stock nosedived.

But more than anything, that bold move made Fox a real network.

Coleman Insights founder Jon Coleman credits Sonoma Media Group President Michael O’Shea with the story he shares about the number to the left and right of the decimal point in the ratings share of every radio station. In short, the number to the right of the decimal point (as in the 3 in a 4.3 share) represents the majority of things radio stations spend the vast majority of their time on. This can be tweaking the music, moving talk breaks around, or giving away concert tickets. As Jon explained in the Tuesdays With Coleman blog “How to Move the Ratings Needle,” these are the tactical strategies that may take a station from a 4.3 to a 4.5 or maybe a 4.7. But what moves the number to the left of the decimal point are big time moves. This can include a format change, attracting a hugely impactful air talent, or a major memorable marketing campaign.

Big “left number” moves don’t always require the deep pockets of Rupert Murdoch. But they do require big strategic goals, strategic thinking, a competitive streak, and a whole lot of guts.

The potential reward is usually far more exciting than the number to the right.

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Interview With Brent Axe: Coronavirus and the POKE Scale

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Tuesdays With ColemanWhat a difference a few weeks, days and hours makes.

Before the travel bans, before sports and concerts cancelled and before schools closed, I paid a visit to Syracuse University for my college radio station’s 35th annual reunion. I returned from that trip just nine days ago.

The keynote of the WJPZ Alumni Banquet featured three SU grads: Jeff Kurkjian, host of Jeff and Aimee in the Morning on 102.7 The Coyote, a Las Vegas Country station; Pete Gianesini, Senior Director of Digital Audio Programming for ESPN and Brent Axe, host of the “On The Block” afternoon show on ESPN Radio/Syracuse and a reporter for Syracuse.com.

Syracuse Sports Journalist Brent Axe

During the session, Brent brought up a principle that guides his show planning, called the POKE scale. As with many others in the industry, his brand stretches across platforms including hosting his own podcast. I wanted to know how Brent is using POKE to build his brand, develop compelling and engaging content and demonstrate differentiation as a reason for listening.

Just last Wednesday, we spent some time on the phone discussing it. Syracuse was set to play the University of North Carolina in the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament later that night. While we knew sports would soon be played without fans in the venues, the thought of cancelling them altogether hadn’t yet crossed our minds.

That was six days ago.

Brent and I discussed how POKE plays a role in his daily planning, including the way he covered Coronavirus on his sports talk show up to that point.

Perhaps there’s value now, more than ever, in applying the POKE scale to show prep–certainly in a format (Sports) built around something that currently, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist. In addition, as Brent explains, it is equally important to recognize when to make adjustments.

Read an edited transcript or listen to the entire interview below.

JAY:

When I saw you in Syracuse, you mentioned the POKE scale. Talk about the acronym and what each letter means.

BRENT:

Passion, Opinion, Knowledge and Entertainment. I write my show notes on a legal pad. Every day on the top of the legal pad I write the date of the show and POKE. If you’re accomplishing those four things, particularly in the type of show I do, you’re checking the box.

Let’s start with Passion. The number one thing my listeners say to me is they appreciate my passion. They might not agree with what I’m saying, but they enjoy the manner in which I’m delivering it.

Opinion. Listeners are looking for you to have a defined, clear take. As we speak, Syracuse is getting ready to play in the ACC Tournament. They have to win to go to the NCAA Tournament. The discussion on the show is, “If they don’t win, is it a failed season?” If I don’t think it’s a failed season, I have to explain why.

Knowledge is prepping. And when you work in this industry, you’re constantly prepping. When you’re watching sports, you’re debating with yourself. First it’s, “Am I going to talk about this?” If the answer is yes, then it’s “How?” And how do I keep it entertaining for those that aren’t hard core sports fans?

JAY:   

Are you putting each topic through the POKE filter to determine how each break works within that structure?

BRENT:  

I try to. The other day I talked about Coronavirus and I broke the Opinion rule. I said, it’s my job to have an opinion here, but this is a case where we don’t know enough to have a firm opinion. You can have an opinion, but you have to clarify it sometimes when it’s beyond the scale. This is real life interfering with sports, so I’ll be honest with my listeners. When I came on, I said, I’m not an expert, I know what I know, here’s the information we have, and let’s go from there. That’s where putting it through the filter doesn’t always work. I heard a call from Bob Costas who was talking about sports talk radio and the “First Take” shows of the world and podcasts, and Bob said you can’t possibly be that opinionated about something for three hours a day, five days a week. And he’s right. When I look at the four things in the POKE scale, (I might say) I can’t entertain you today. Coronavirus is a serious discussion. You’ve got to know when to break the rules and let people know that today’s a little different.

JAY:  

So many shows right now are trying to figure out how to handle approaching the Coronavirus. If you had handled it with updates like a hard news station, it would be out of left field and not consistent with your brand.

BRENT:

And that’s where Knowledge comes into play and applies to guests. If I don’t know, get somebody on that does. It’s growing so many different layers. Schools cancelling classes. Events that are being cancelled. What do I do as a fan? Do I go to games? This is not going anywhere anytime soon, so knowledge becomes important. Trusting sources, getting people on the air with you that can explain it. If you’re not knowledgeable about it – in this case it’s Coronavirus but it could be a 2-3 zone defense – get somebody on who is knowledgeable.

JAY: 

Do you think authenticity goes part and parcel with Passion?

BRENT:  

Yes. You can’t control authenticity. Your audience is making that judgement. You’ve got to be authentic and people will appreciate that more.

JAY: 

Many hosts are afraid to give their opinion, whether it be because they fear it will be controversial or taken the wrong way. Do you always say what you believe or do you sometimes take an opinion you feel will be good for the show?

BRENT: 

It’s important to me that my opinion–going back to that word we used a minute ago–is authentic. The opinion I give someone in public better be the same as it is on the radio.

JAY:  

On the topic of brand development, listeners will see through it if it doesn’t match the brand perception of who you are.

BRENT:   

I’ve been doing radio in Syracuse since 1996. My listeners know certain things about me. I’ve had an opinion for years that Pete Rose should not be in the Hall of Fame and nothing has come along to change my opinion. So every time Hall of Fame voting comes around, I hear from people. “You still feel this way?” It can help build a brand and build awareness when people know what your opinion is.

JAY:  

Does the POKE scale work outside of Sports? Like for a morning show on a CHR or Hot AC station, for example?

BRENT:  

Yes. For example, you need to be passionate about the market you work in. That’s essential. Having an opinion and gathering other opinions is important. Knowledge speaks for itself and we’re all entertainers! That’s what I love about the POKE scale. It does apply to just about everything you can do in this business.

 

We send our thanks to Brent for taking the time to share the principles of the POKE scale, and applaud every radio personality going above and beyond to serve their listeners in important, crucial and memorable ways.

Press Releases

Coleman Insights Finds TED Talks Daily Leads Awareness Among Top Podtrac Ranked Shows

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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC, August 12, 2019 – New research from Coleman Insights reveals that TED Talks Daily has the highest Aided Awareness of the 20 most-listened-to podcasts as ranked by Podtrac in March 2019. Despite being the most recognized, only 43% of monthly podcast listeners are familiar with the TED Talks Daily podcast.

The study of 1,000 18 to- 64-year-old monthly podcast listeners conducted in May 2019 asked respondents to review a list of the March ranking of the Podtrac Top 20 Podcasts and indicate their familiarity with each. The TED brand occupied two of the top three spots, with The Daily coming in second at 35% and the TED Radio Hour at 32%. There is a significant gap between the most and least familiar of the top 20 Podtrac-ranked shows, as Invisibilia is familiar to only 8% of monthly podcast listeners.

According to Coleman Insights President Warren Kurtzman, “Our findings reaffirm the idea that despite podcasting’s growth, the medium still has a long way to go with brand development. Even with the most-listened-to shows, most active podcast users aren’t familiar with them. The ones they are familiar with are big, cross-platform brands with strong marketing behind them.”

Listeners between the ages and 25 and 44 are more likely to be familiar with the Top 20 shows than are 18- to 24-year-olds or 45- to 64-year-olds. Furthermore, Coleman Insights finds that male podcast listeners are more likely than females to be familiar with the Top 20 Podtrac shows.

These findings are different from those released by Coleman Insights last week, which focused on Unaided Awareness of podcast brands. The top-ranked show in Unaided Awareness, The Joe Rogan Experience, does not participate in the Podtrac rankings and was therefore not included in the Aided Awareness measurement.

Coleman Insights will discuss the implications of its podcast research findings in a presentation at Podcast Movement, to be held at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando. The session, “Outside Thinking for Podcasts”, is set for Wednesday August 14th at 9:00 AM as part of the conference’s Industry Track.

Press Releases

Coleman Insights to Present Webinar on Podcast Listening Behavior

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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC, August 28, 2018 – Coleman Insights will offer a webinar for the broadcast and podcast industry detailing the results of an actual mediaEKG® Deep Dive study on two popular iHeartRadio podcasts. The insights will cover “The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast,” featuring former stars of ABC’s “The Bachelor” franchise, and “Business Unusual with Barbara Corcoran,” hosted by the real estate mogul, bestselling author and “Shark Tank” star.

By the end of the session, attendees will grasp the “Three Ts of Content Execution” and how each can play a role in content development. You’ll gain an understanding of how audiences feel about the content and why they feel that way. This session is designed to help podcasters and broadcasters create better, more focused content that produces more engagement and increases listening.

Coleman Insights Executive Vice President John Boyne says, “We’re thrilled to offer this presentation to those who didn’t get the chance to see it at Podcast Movement. Podcasters and broadcasters should find the insights useful for understanding in-the-moment podcast listener behavior for two shows with very different content.”

iHeartRadio SVP/Podcasting Chris Peterson said of the original presentation, “Let’s learn what listeners really think rather than a download, which tells you nothing.”

Boyne and fellow Executive Vice President Sam Milkman will present “The Three Ts of Content Execution: A Second-By-Second Look at Podcast Listening Behavior” Wednesday, September 5 from 2p-2:45 PM EDT via webinar.

Registration is now open for the webinar here.

 

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The Three Ts of Content Execution

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Tuesdays With Coleman

It doesn’t take too much exposure to Coleman Insights to recognize that we talk a lot about the twin goals of building strong brands and developing great content. My colleague Warren Kurtzman revisited these fundamentals last week when he wrote about what it will take for podcasting to pass the tipping point.

This week, I’d like to focus on the content development side of the equation. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or even a media researcher!) to tell you that better content comes from doing more of what the audience likes and less of what they don’t. The challenge comes in figuring out what exactly are those positive and negative drivers.

To help demonstrate to the podcasting industry what is doable on this front, on July 25th, iHeartRadio SVP/Podcasting Chris Peterson joined my colleague Sam Milkman and me onstage at Podcast Movement in Philadelphia to share content research we had done for two of their original podcasts. Chris introduced the session by stating, “Let’s learn what listeners really think rather than a download, which tells you nothing.”

Podcast Movement Session

(L-R) John Boyne, Sam Milkman and iHeartMedia SVP/Podcasting Chris Peterson

The Podcast Content Deep Dive: A Second-By-Second Look At Listening Behavior was the culmination of two separate mediaEKG Deep Dive® studies that analyzed a pair of iHeartRadio Original podcasts. One is The Ben & Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast, featuring former cast members of ABC-TV’s The Bachelor; while the other is Business Unusual with Barbara Corcoran, hosted by the real estate mogul and Shark Tank celebrity. For each, we recruited a sample of their target audience to listen to the podcast. Then, using the mediaEKG meter, we were able to collect granular in-the-moment feedback on what they were hearing. What caught their attention? What grew their interest? What lost them? We then followed up with qualitative questions to help us understand why they rated content the way they did.

While the details of the research are fascinating, let’s be honest: What works for a podcast specializing in The Bachelor universe may not work for everyone.

But, stepping back, there are broader lessons of the research that are applicable to many and that are evident in much of the content research we do. We refer to these as “The Three Ts” – Topic, Treatment and Tone.

  1. Choosing the right topic means choosing something to talk about that your audience wants to hear about and—importantly—wants to hear you talk about. In the case of Ben and Ashley I, their topic selections have a very clear impact on the second-by-second performance of the show. When talking about the current season of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, their odds of success are high. But, the further they get from that bullseye topic lane, the better their execution needs to be in order to cut through. In our presentation, there are some fun examples of this, as well as a creative example of how the show cleverly extends its topic lane.
  2. For Barbara Corcoran’s podcast, the lessons of the research primarily relate to her treatment of various topics. There are certain ways that Barbara can espouse business advice that really work well for her. For example, Business Unusual’s target audience reacts really well to Barbara’s highly structured, step-by-step treatment of how to do things like ask for a raise or speak well in public.
  3. Finally, it is important to understand the optimal tone for a segment. Different tones for the same topic can have wildly different outcomes. For example, think about how differently one could cover the latest news out of the White House. Stephen Colbert may take a humorous tone, while Fareed Zakaria may take a more serious, professorial tone. Meanwhile, someone else may take an almost unhinged, ranting tone. Same topic + different tone = totally different outcome.

Want to learn more? On Wednesday, September 5th at 2pm EDT, Sam and I will deliver The Podcast Content Deep Dive: A Second-By-Second Look At Listening Behavior via webinar. We’ll dig into the specifics of how listeners react to these two podcasts, and you’ll learn more about how topic, treatment and tone play out in each. Our goal is to help podcasters and broadcasters think more and learn more about how The Three Ts can help them develop great content.

Click here to register for the webinar, and we’ll talk with you then!