1. Where Are We Now?: The Podcast Celebrity Moment
Podcasts are currently having a celebrity moment. The hype and frenzy was brought on by the viral true crime podcast, Serial. Everyone was talking about the podcast, actively engaging with the content on forums, and eagerly waiting for every episode to come out. Usually podcast celebrities, much like radio celebrities, are rarely important enough to be on television, but Sarah Koenig, host of Serial, created enough hype with the general public to be brought on to The Colbert Report. Other celebrities are also podcasting, including Alec Baldwin, with his celebrity interview show Here’s The Thing, John Oliver with The Last Week Tonight and The Bugle, Ricky Gervais with The Ricky Gervais Show, and Cheryl Strayed with Dear Sugar Radio.
2. Growth of Podcasts
Podcasts, only recently prominent in pop culture, have been around for a while. While New York Magazine declared there was a “great Podcast Renaissance” in October 2014, the truth is, podcasts have been steadily growing every year. It’s true podcasts weren’t being talked about much from 2008–2013, but according to Jordan Harbinger, host of the popular podcast The Art of Charm since 2007, it’s because, “it wasn’t new anymore, so nobody was talking about it. But if you look at the statistics…podcasting has been growing steadily, in great numbers.” Indeed, Rob Walch of the podcast hosting service Libsyn agrees, noting that “smartphones, and specifically the iPhone, have really been the driver of growth the last few years” because they make podcast downloading and consumption easier.
3. The Final Frontier: Podcasts in your Car
According to a report by GSMA, by 2015, 50 percent of new cars worldwide will come equipped with internet connection. By 2025, it’ll be a 100 percent. “When that happens and there are podcasts in everybody’s car, it’s not podcasts anymore,” says Harbinger, “it’s just the radio.” This is bound to grow the podcast industry dramatically, as people without smartphones or who don’t really know how to access podcasts through an app on their phone will have easier and direct access.
4. Everyone will Podcast
Podcasts are about to become hugely popular to listen to and to make. With podcasts in cars and easily accessible to everyone, competition is only going to go up. Podcasts is becoming a viable medium, and corporations are going to get in and produce great shows to sell their brand and content. Therefore, this is the time to get in, and create a following for your podcast.
5. Monetization beyond Ads
Podcasts currently make their money through ads, and this is a good revenue system. However, in the future, the ubiquitous nature of podcasts will allow people to make brands and sell their services beyond just their podcast. For example, Jordan Harbinger from The Art of Charm piloted a self-help program at $50/hour. They’ve now expanded their services: “We started to hire consultants and therapists so we could get our curriculum to be really good, and we started to monetize and now have workshops.”
6. Podcasting is like Blogging
According to a Neiman report, podcasting is following much of the trends of blogging back in 2004. As the article states, “The question now is whether podcasting’s future will play out as the last decade of blogging has.” That is, outlets like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post thrived, unlike more independent smaller bloggers. Traditional media like print (and in the case of podcast, radio) suffered. However, this also ensured improvement in the quality of content. As the Neiman report states, “Podcasting will endure a similar evolution, with so much adaption that “podcasting” will erode as a term while the form becomes ubiquitous.”
7. An On-Demand Talk Radio
As we’ve seen with Netflix and iTunes, consumer behavior has changed suggesting that consumers want to consume content unbundled and at their own pace. Just as catering to this behavior changed the television, movie, and music experience, this is poised to change the radio industry and bring a rise in the use of podcasts. Terrestrial and satellite radio currently occupies 74 percent of all audio consumption, while podcasts only cater to 2 percent of the audience. However, with better quality, better technology, better content, and better revenue, podcasts are poised to take over traditional talk radio.
8. The Rise of the Networks
When YouTube first started, a small number of independent YouTube-ers would put up videos, but in 2009, big networks like MakersStudio and FullScreen started producing and releasing videos in high quality. This is already starting to happen with Podcasts. PodcastOne aggregates all the best podcasts, 5by5 is a podcast space for all things “geeky”, and EarWolf produces comedy podcasts.
9. A New Creative Space
Serial, Welcome to Night Vale, and This American Life have shown us that podcasts can be a really creative space if utilized intelligently. While the majority of the podcasts follow a talk radio type of model, the last few years have shown that stories, both real and fictional, can be told through a podcast. Therefore, in the future, more experimentation with the trend, and with more creative content is predicted.
10. Rise in Smart Podcasting
Jeremy Finch in his article, The Future of Podcasts asks really interesting questions about the technology that comes with the medium of podcasts: “Can podcasts be richer and more multidimensional than they are today? Could we redesign tomorrow’s podcasts so they adapt to where we’re listening and what we’re doing at that moment? Can we transform a historically static listening experience into a more responsive and dynamic one? If podcasting is the natural evolution of terrestrial radio, what will be the future of podcasts?”
Groupon founder, Andrew Mason, is attempting once such technological advancement, Detour, which uses phone GPS to geo-tag audio files to actual places. Therefore, the museum audio guide listening experience can be brought to actual neighborhoods you’re currently in. As Finch says in his article, “Imagine, for example, walking through Fisherman’s Wharf as you listen to interviews with actual fisherman from the docks, or wandering around Walden Pond as you listen to transcendentalist poems and stories about Thoreau.” This blending of digital and physical experiences is called integral reality. Many such advancements can be predicted for the future of podcasts.