17% of Americans have listened to a podcast in the last week, according to Edison Research. That’s a relatively small rise from the 13% who did so in 2016, despite the buzz around the format in the last two years. Capturing ‘the other 83%’ was one of the themes of the recent Podcast Movement conference in Philadelphia, which CRV venture investors Justine and Olivia Moore have written an excellent summary of – with much food for thought for people in the music industry (Spotify, Pandora and Apple included) who are thinking about podcasts seriously.
Among those themes: a lack of diversity both behind the microphone and on conference stages talking about podcasting; strong demand from children for podcasts but (for now) challenges for parents to find the good, age-appropriate ones; a need for more podcasts beyond the staple topics of news shows, political analysis and high-brow topics (“Podcasts aren’t just for people who consider themselves ‘intellectuals,’ and the industry needs to promote other types of content,” suggests the piece); discovery is a major challenge, with 48% of non-listeners not even sure how to access podcasts – music to the ears of Pandora and Spotify; and that monetisation of podcasts is lagging audience growth. This latter point feels very important in the context of music-streaming services trying to enter the space: rather than just hoovering up catalogues of royalty-free spoken-word content to make available, how could the likes of Spotify and Pandora help podcasters with their business models?
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Tools :: We Are Giant
With “fan communities” being on every artist’s team’s mind, we’re fans of the fact that…