Tag Archives: Spotify

YouTube Music and Spotify on the Podcast Branding Carousel

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.

YouTube has 2.5 billion active users globally. 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.

Four Questions to Answer in Audio Brand Perceptual Research

Tuesdays With Coleman, our blog that offers tips and insights on branding, content, and research strategy, is now four years old. Over the next four weeks, we’ll reprint four blogs (one per year) that made the most impact through industry engagement.

This week, we’ll start our celebration of the number four by presenting four of the most important questions that can be answered in perceptual research–a type of study we conduct often at Coleman Insights.

ARE CONSUMERS THINKING ABOUT MY BRAND?

Whether it’s a radio station program director poring over ratings, a podcaster dissecting downloads, or a streaming service examining the subscribers of one of its channels, there is a big question that these numbers don’t answer. When consumers choose an audio brand to listen to, is yours one of the ones they think of?

The measurement we use to obtain this information is called Unaided Awareness, and there’s a reason it is one of the first questions we ask in perceptual research. The goal is to learn the first brands that come to mind in your listening universe. For a radio station conducting a perceptual study, for example, we may ask respondents to name as many radio stations in their area as they can remember, regardless of whether they listen to them.

When it’s time to pick an audio brand to listen to, your target consumer is only thinking of three or four at any given time. How can you generate significant listening numbers if your brand isn’t one of those top-of-mind few? It’s no different from the exercise your brain goes through when you pick a restaurant to take a friend to lunch. If the restaurant isn’t top-of-mind, you’re probably not eating there. Radio is at a further disadvantage here, because while a consumer may use a tool like Yelp or Google to discover a restaurant or Apple or Spotify to discover a podcast, radio discovery tends to be more organic or reliant on paid marketing.

WHAT IS MY BRAND KNOWN FOR?   

In August, Sam Milkman’s Tuesdays With Coleman blog “I Can Tell You How Healthy Your Brand Is With One Question” took a deeper dive into the “first thing that comes to mind” philosophy. Not only should your brand be top of mind, but your listeners should also be able to explain what your brand represents in a few words. “That station plays hit music.” “That station plays New Country.” “That station plays Hip Hop.” “That podcast is about serial killers.”

It seems simple, but you may be surprised how often listeners are either not able to answer the question at all or think of your brand for other things first. For example, listeners may think of your station for playing the most commercials or having too many contests before they think of it for its music or talk position. It’s a challenging but correctable problem, but research can pinpoint where the issue is.

AM I PLAYING THE RIGHT MUSIC?

For music radio stations, there is often no more important question than this but there are many ways to approach it. 1) Are you playing the most popular music? Not just with your current listeners; are you playing music that’s popular enough to attract new listening or have you maxed out available audience with the styles you currently play? 2) Are you getting credit for the right music? Are listeners thinking of your station for the music you play or is another station getting credit? Are they thinking of you for styles you don’t want to be associated with? 3) Do the music styles I’m playing work together? The reason why Pandora picks the next song for you and Spotify curates personalized daily mixes are not by chance. They are highly data-driven algorithms based on your music preferences. Radio stations can have a similar advantage by using Compatibility data to learn which styles are more likely to create tune-ins and tune-outs when played together.

HOW POPULAR ARE MY PERSONALITIES?

Just as it is important to have a baseline of Unaided Awareness to learn how many consumers are thinking about your brand, it is also helpful to know how familiar your key personalities are in the market. In a Coleman Insights Plan Developer study, respondents only evaluate a personality if they have heard of them. Thus, you can see which personalities may not be very well-known but show a great deal of upside with a positive evaluation. Or vice versa, a personality that may have challenging evaluations that need to be addressed and coached.

While every perceptual study is customized based on the issues and challenges germane to each specific brand, these four important questions are the backbone of a great many of them and provide the stepping stones to actionable strategic plans.

From all of us at Coleman Insights, have a very Happy Thanksgiving. Next week we’ll begin sharing the most impactful blogs from the past four years – starting with 2018.

How Platform Choice Impacts Contemporary Music Tastes

Tuesdays With ColemanOver the last couple of weeks, we’ve learned quite a bit about the current state of contemporary music. Among many other findings, this year’s study of the current tastes of 1,000 12- to 54-year-olds across the United States and Canada has indicated a rise in the appeal of Country, a slightly older lean to the best-testing titles and a downtrend for Pop, Hip Hop/R&B and Dance/Electronic. This week, we’ll focus on how the genres of the best-testing songs vary based upon consumers’ choice of platform. For example, the best testing genres among radio users look different than those of streaming users. Pandora fans look different than those consumers who prefer Spotify. Why do we find these differences so interesting? Because programmers are barraged with data from different sources every day. A song’s amazing number of streams on Spotify, for instance, might be used as an argument why it belongs on your radio station. Or the fact that “everyone” on Pandora is flocking to a particular style suggests that you should move your programming in that direction.

But is it really that simple?

The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights”, which has strong radio airplay, is #1 on the Spotify Top 200 Chart. “D4L” by Future, Drake & Young Thug debuts at #1 on Pandora’s Top Spins chart. “The Scotts” by The Scotts (Travis Scott and Kid Cudi) which debuted during a live virtual Fortnite event that attracted over 27 million unique participants, bowed at #1 on the Billboard streaming chart last week.  Does that mean these are the most popular songs in North America—or that they are popular among people who listen to your format? Not necessarily, particularly if the people who are using radio or streaming on a daily basis have different music tastes.

That’s why understanding the different profiles of consumers of these various platforms should matter to you. It should help you appreciate what all those stats being thrown at you really mean.

For starters, the best testing songs of people who use radio every day look a lot different than those of daily streamers. What’s the big difference? The Top 100 among daily radio listeners contains a large percentage of Pop and Country, and a smaller amount of Hip Hop/R&B. About a third (32%) of the Top 100 of Daily Radio Listeners is Pop and 29% Country, but only 19% Hip Hop/R&B. Daily Streaming Listeners, on the other hand, have much more Hip Hop/R&B (29%) and far less Country (only 15%).

Does that mean Daily Radio Listeners don’t like contemporary Hip Hop? No. It means when we look at Daily Radio Listeners as a group overall, they gravitate toward Pop and Country among contemporary genres. You are more likely to find interest in Pop or Country when you take a broad look at regular radio users.

We see other notable differences when we compare the Top 100 of Pandora, Spotify and YouTube fans. Consumers who prefer Pandora over other streaming services have a tremendous amount of Country in their Top 100—39%. They also have 26% Pop but significantly less Hip Hop/R&B at only 17%. Those who prefer Spotify go in the opposite direction. They have a very large percentage of Pop (39%) and a good amount of Hip Hop/R&B (26%)—but very little Country, only 9%. YouTube fans look very similar to Spotify fans.

The point is that people who prefer Pandora have much more Country in the songs they rate best; those who prefer Spotify and YouTube have more Pop and Hip Hop/R&B in their Top 100 songs. We sometimes tend to think of streaming users as homogeneous, but they are not. The profile of consumers who prefer different streaming services are distinct—and it is important to keep this in mind when we look at data coming from various sources. And that’s true of almost every different platform we analyzed.

Next week, we’ll dive into the political fray–to discover the respective taste differences between supporters of President Trump and Joe Biden. In an environment in which common ground and bipartisanship can be hard to find, can these two polarized groups find musical consensus?

Don’t miss next week’s Tuesdays With Coleman to find out.