This Week:
· What does it mean that the number of new podcasts has dropped?
· BetterHelp is the top spending podcast sponsor
· Layoffs at Spotify and their shifting business model
· This weeks Technical Tuesday will be about Compression.
What does it mean that the number of new podcasts has dropped?
From Podnews
Have the number of new podcasts really “plummeted”? (podnews.net)
I spoke last week about recent reports that new podcast launches have plummeted which some commentators are seeing as a bad sign for the industry.
I’m was pretty positive last week because I see it as a normalisation to healthy growth levels outside of the spike caused by creative people being stuck at home for a year.
Over at Podnews their interpretation is in line with mine, but further than that there are changes to how Anchor treats its podcasts.
Anchor shows used to be automatically submitted to Apple and automatically approved. This is no longer the case. Which means many of the junk shows cluttering up their servers weren’t submitted to Apple Podcasts, so weren’t counted in the Listen Notes study.
BetterHelp is the top spending podcast sponsor
From Podcast Business Journal
BetterHelp, Amazon Top Ad Buyers in December – Podcast Business Journal
I don’t talk about podcast sponsorship often as I believe there are better ways for podcasters to use their shows to generate business for themselves, but I think this may be of interest.
Online therapy service BetterHelp is the biggest spender in the space per Magellan AI, with an ad spend of just over 9 million dollars. They are well ahead of 2nd place Amazon.
There has been some controversy over BetterHelp in the last few years as the service apparently struggles to pair users and therapists. And it’s interesting to see how much they spend.
Disclaimer. I do have an affiliate account with BetterHelp, but I stopped promoting them ages ago.
Layoffs at Spotify and their shifting business model
From Hot Pods at The Verge Ariel Shapiro
How the Spotify layoffs impact its podcasting business – The Verge
Spotify is in the news again as they are doing another round of layoffs, and former podcast content honcho Dawn Ostroff gets the boot.
Ostroff was instrumental in getting many of the podcasting big names to go exclusive. Exclusivity hasn’t generated much in the way of money for Spotify so they are probably going to be pivoting away from that.
No podcasts are being cancelled, the latest layoffs are primarily from the advertising and business teams, including teams from Podsights and Chartable.
Ariel has an excellent analysis that you should read. But in short, Spotify is consolidating and going leaner going forward.
Compression for Podcasting
Compression is critical for audio work.
It evens out audio to make it better to listen to, to help you meet loudness specification, and can also be a creative tool. Giving that ‘warm’ friendly sound we all associate with good radio.
Compression evens out your audio, making high volume sections quieter and decreasing the dynamic range. The difference between the luid parts and the quiet parts. And weirdly this helps make the audio louder. I’ll go into more details in this week’s ‘Technical Tuesday’ post.
Dave Couto
Bright Vox Audio