The Ghost of Podcast Present (2024 Edition)
Look. To say AI has been a big focus of podcasting again this year is an understatement.
We have an AI that generates podcast episodes that I’d describe very loosely as “passable.”
And while I spent the entirety of the “Present” article last year talking about AI, I prefer not to do that again. Instead, we’ll look at the impact of current trends on podcasting — we want a fuller picture of how things are, so we can transform ourselves into the best podcasters we can be.
But first, I want to address some predictions I made.
Assessing Last Year’s Predictions
Last year for the Ghost of Podcast Future, I made some predictions, and I wish to assess them quickly:
Downloads will matter less. I think this is true. Many professionals across the industry talk about other metrics, such as engagement and completion time, as better measures of your podcast’s health.
Podcast ads (as we know them) will take a hit. I don’t think this came true. In-fact, they may have gotten worse. Some iHeart podcasts I listen to have 3-4 minutes of dynamically inserted preroll ads. It’s bad.
We’ll see some podcast listening app consolidation. This is definitely true. We said goodbye to several podcast listening apps, including Google Podcasts and Samsung Podcasts. Spotify and YouTube are becoming even more prominent.
Podcasters will have to get more creative with content. OK, OK. This is basically always true.
So what does all of this mean for Podcast’s Present? I picked these predictions because I felt by now they would be the present. And I think I was pretty close.
Let’s take downloads for example — or, really, podcast analytics at large.
What’s Going on With Podcast Analytics
I was going to dedicate an entire article to this for a reason I absolutely didn’t see coming: both Voxalyze and Chartable shut down this year.
It’s clear that 3rd party podcast analytics is a tough industry — in part because downloads are the only sure thing you can get from a 3rd party.
I should note here that I’m not an expert in this space. I’m sure there are services that have lots of other tracking to gather more info, but the point is counting a ping to the prefix is the only thing a 3rd party would know for sure.
And with Spotify and YouTube in the mix, the analytics experience is even more fractured. If you want to get a full picture of your podcast, you need to check 4 places:
Your podcast host (RSS.com, Transistor, Captivate, etc.)
Apple Podcasts
Spotify for Creators
YouTube (if your show is there)
Your podcast host can give you a lot of great information. RSS.com, which has the best analytics of any podcast host I’ve personally used*, has heat maps, granular location data, and great comparisons.
But if you want demographics, completion rates, or other platform-specific data, you need to go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify for Creators, and YouTube.
In fact, you have to go to YouTube for any analytics from them. Views on YouTube don’t show up in your podcast host’s analytics.
The same thing goes for Spotify if you upload a video for your show there.
It’s Really Confusion
I was talking to a friend who launched her podcast recently, and I was giving her the whole run down. She was asking me about the “release window” she was seeing in her analytics dashboard. I informed her that Transistor.fm is the only one I’m aware of that does that specific window, which is basically the first 2 calendar days the episode is out.
That means if you release episodes at different times, the “release window” measurement is different.
It’s probably not going to get any easier, either. YouTube and Spotify continue to innovate in this space. Apple, in my humble opinion, does not.
And while there are certifications podcast hosts can get, not everyone gets them, so it’s far from standard. They also change frequently. Plus, I’m convinced they are there to serve Dynamic Ad Insertion more than anything.
But analytics isn’t the only aspect of Podcast Present that’s contributing to some confusion (or maybe debate) in the space.
How Do We Discover Podcasts?
Over the summer, I sat in one of the few talks I actually attended at Podcast Movement. It was Tom Webster, and he was giving a talk about The Podcast Landscape. There were two datapoints I found interesting:
Personal recommendations remain the most common way people discover podcasts.
Outside of that, respondents indicated YouTube was their primary method of discovery…by a lot.
My personal experience with Gen-Z from two years ago indicated that Spotify was their preferred app of choice, though that may not be the case anymore.
In any case, the landscape is changing. YouTube is growing in the podcast space, and even if its popularity is currently exaggerated, it’s not to be ignored.
Spotify appears to be suggesting podcasts that upload video more than just audio, too.
This is concerning to long-time podcasters because, as I covered yesterday in The Ghost of Podcast Past, RSS is crucial to the survival of podcasting.
But, as Tom Webster said in a recent blog post, we as podcasters need to be where the people are, and that’s Spotify and YouTube along with via RSS.
He does have something to say to podcast app developers:
This is where I come back to Dave Winer’s comment above and what could easily be overlooked: the part where he calls upon the developers of podcast clients to innovate more. He’s 1000% right! If we want open RSS to survive in some iteration, there have to be more compelling audience-based reasons to use RSS-driven podcast clients.
I believe my podcast app of choice, Overcast, is falling behind in this regard. The developer, Marco Arment, has reportedly said he’s not adding Podcasting 2.0 features because people aren’t asking for them (though I haven’t found anything he’s written on it).
It’s true that the app doesn’t support even some of the most basic features, like displaying custom episode artwork in your feed, or transcripts.
And yes — most listeners wouldn’t say, “I want Podcasting 2.0 features.” But they can tell the difference between a feature-rich app and a lacking one.
As Webster said, if we want RSS to win the lion’s share of podcast listeners, the experience has to be good.
But even more challenging are the podcasters who firmly believe, “If it’s not RSS, it’s not a podcast.”
While I understand the sentiment, this perspective risks overlooking how podcasting has evolved. This mindset can unintentionally limit a podcast’s potential growth and accessibility.
Spotify and YouTube have done a lot to bring podcasts to more people. And much like Bob Cratchit toasts Scrooge as, “the founder of the feast,” we should be happy, while also being vigilant, about that.
Instead of focusing on rigid definitions, we should tell people, especially those new to podcasting, why RSS is so great — how it protects us by keeping our medium open for everyone, not subject to a single tech company.
Disclosure: I am the RSS.com Evangelist, but I stand by my assessment of their analytics.