The Current State of Podcasting

This is something I wanted to talk about because I’m seeing some interesting currents in the conversations around podcasting.

If I remember my history correctly podcasts were invented in the early 2000’s?  I started in 2008.  I know this because I have a t-shirt from the Vermont 50 Ultra from 2008.  And I remember I made my first recording after running the Mount Washington road race that year, (and then running back down for good measure.)

That Mount Washington entry I earned by running the New England Mountain series the previous year, 2007.  I think I got a shirt for that too, but it was a lousy shirt and I threw it away.

Why did I decide to start a running podcast?

Well, I was a fan.  I got that first iPod, which came out in 2001.  The original version of iTunes came out at the same time.

First, I ripped all my old CD’s into digital and listened to my music.  But then got bored.  I looked around and found the first few podcasts.

I listened to of these.   Not running podcasts.  I didn’t know running podcasts existed.  I was listening to marketing and sales podcasts mostly.  Internet 2.0 stuff.

But it was cool.  Here were some run-of-the-mill tech guys chatting about all the tech stuff going on.

I decided to figure out the technology and start a running podcast.  I figured it all out and DIY’ed it all for myself.

I started the RunRunLive podcast then, because I thought I had learned everything there was to learn about amateur endurance sports, and I thought I had a unique perspective as a midpack runner.

I also wanted to practice my writing and performance skills.  Writing was always an itch for me that in my rat-race career I really didn’t get to scratch.

No one knew what a podcast was back then.  You would have to tell them that it was like a radio show, but on the internet.

It wasn’t easy.  The technology was immature.  That was part of the attraction.  You had to learn the technology and then build the show.

Those were simpler times.  No one expected to make any money.  There was really no way to make money.  Advertisers weren’t interested in podcasts.  The people making money were the Internet Marketing gurus who sold courses and how to sessions.  The techies who were making podcasts did it to be heard.

Facebook existed, barely, and Twitter was a nice place to talk with your friends in 144-character chunks.

So I planted my flag in the ground and started putting out a show every week.

I honestly didn’t pay attention to the number of downloads that I accumulated.  There was no easy way to track it and the technology kept changing.  You had to host the files yourself on a server so you could grab the raw interactions at the source.

At its peak I was maybe getting 2,000 downloads a month.

Over the course of the show, I probably accumulated a couple million downloads.  But, downloads don’t equal listens.

I do know I wrote a couple million words!

At the time we were all just amazed that there was anyone out there listening.  We were like “Wow! 40 people downloaded my show!”

If you had the tech skills, you could install Google analytics on the hosting site and you could kinda look at the server traffic and see that there were two people downloading your show in some odd place like Jamaica, and you wonder, ‘who is that guy in Jamaica listening to me talk about running in the woods with my dog?’

It was, frankly,  mind blowing.

So how did we make money.  The simple answer is that we didn’t.  We took donations or subscriptions to keep the lights on, but only those few who could use their show as part of their business, like coaches and consultants, to drive demand for their other products and services got anything out of it.

I never had ads in the show.  Not because I don’t like money, but because it just didn’t seem right to charge people for what we were doing.  And at the time advertisers didn’t know what podcasts were.

The only people giving us anything were the running shoe companies who were trying to figure out how they could access these ‘Bloggers’.  I did get a bunch of swag and a bunch of free race entries.

The pinnacle of that was when ASICS flew me to New York City for the marathon as a celebrity blogger.  I mean, who saw that coming? I had my picture on the front of the Wall Street Journal!

That was my 15 minutes in 2010.

But the big benefit.  The number one thing we got out of it was connection.  We got to meet people who had the same passion as we did.  People who loved to run and loved a good story.

I always liked the audio podcast format because you could really make a connection with people.  Once I found my voice in my writing I was able to talk to whoever was listening.  Not talk at them, but talk to them.

It was, and still is, very powerful.

I made a point of trying not to make it about me.  To be more of a facilitator of information, a storyteller, an avatar.  I never talked about my wife or my kids.  I didn’t share personal stuff except where I found inspiration.  Because I wanted to help people.

My avatar was that part of me, a good part of me, that ran and worked and traveled and learned.

There was very little feedback in the loop.  You might have people listening to your show for years and never reach out to say ‘hi’.  You might have total strangers come up to you at races acting like they were long lost brothers and sisters.  It was weird and cool.  Mostly it was one way.

Maybe that guy in Jamaica that I never met and didn’t know, maybe smiling and nodding their head and thinking “That’s right!”.  How weird is that?  I’d never know.

…

But it’s different now.  I have been reading some groups about podcasting and watching the industry.  It really has changed.  It is very similar to how Web 2.0 changed what we think of as a book.  Yeah, we used to debate that when the e-readers and Amazon Kindle came out – “What is a book?”

They are having the same debate about podcasts right now.  “What is a podcast?”  Is it audio?  Is it RSS?  Is it a video on YouTube?  I don’t know anymore.

Dave Winer invented the audio RSS feed in 2003 and partnered with MTV VJ Adam Curry to popularize the audio format.  The term Podcast is a portmanteau of iPod and Broadcast that was coined by Ben Hammersley in the Guardian in 2004 to describe what they were doing.

Now apparently any digital creator is a podcaster.

The media companies love this because it creates this big soup of free content for them to stick ads into.

I got an email from one of the cable channels this morning advertising ‘the Creatorverse’ – which was all a bunch of what we used to call video bloggers.  According to YouTube those folks are all podcasters.

Just like web 2.0 disintermediated the publishing industry, now the TV and video are getting flushed away in a rush of mediocre homemade content.

The advertisers are all in now.  There is somewhere around $5 billion going into podcast adverts this year.  Some where around half of the developed world population listens to podcasts.  Billions of people.  In most cases they trust the content from podcasters more than the network news.

Which is troubling, but also confirms the early vision of the internet democratizing everything.

In the next couple decades network TV and Network radio will become extinct or some other thing.

So, yeah, apparently, this thing a few of us creative techies started 20 years ago has taken over the world like some sort of reality TV Frankenstein.

It’s some sort of get rich quick scheme where people talk about driving audiences and downloads.

The big names have muscled their way in with big budgets.  The advertising spend has outstripped radio.  It’s basically the same set up as a prime time T.V. show, a team of technicians and producers and an A-list talent.  Recreating the old Geraldo or Oprah show as a digital audio offering.

The technology is much better.  All of it.  The barrier to entry is lower than ever.  You don’t need to know anything about RSS feeds and web hosting.  That’s all old news.

Today’s podcasters are more focused on studio lighting and A-list guests.  Blah, blah, blah.

Get off my lawn!

What started this rant, what fired this thought process, what tickled my ink-stained, old-man fingers to start typing this article is that I noticed an echo.  An echo from 1999.  New podcasters are asking the same thing that new authors asked back then.  Or lamented.  “Why is no one reading my book?” has become “Why is no one downloading my show?”

And my answer is that you have lost the voice.

Your show is low quality and uninteresting.  There is nothing new, nothing different.

That lame old interview-based podcast is oversaturated and overused.  We don’t need more self-styled comedians trying to compete with the real comedians who all have their own podcasts.  We don’t need more true crime podcasts.

We’ve lost our creativity.

It has become transactional.

My answer to your question of ‘how do I get more listeners?’ is start with the quality of your passion.  The quality of your voice.  The quality of that connection that you make with the listeners.

Don’t focus on who’s listening.  Don’t target an audience.  Just speak from your heart and someone will listen.  Someone will make a connection.  You can make people happy, if you can make a real connection, for a brief, shining moment.

Even if it’s only 40 of them.  Change 40 people’s lives and you’re a winner.  You’re creating ripples that will outlive you.

That’s success.