Podcasting is Media's Slow Food Movement

(cross posted from my contribution to NiemanLab's Predictions for Journalism 2019)

As both legacy and digital publishers wean their business models from reliance on advertising, social platforms, and costly video, the new turn is towards seeking direct revenue from audiences via subscriptions, paywalls, crowdfunding, memberships, and blockchain experiments.

It’s notable that some of the Internet's oldest protocols are part of the answer, with email newsletters and podcasting standing tall after a decade of adtech-driven disintermediation on the web (see Lumascape).

Against a backdrop of media malaise, podcasting offers hope for a healthy ecosystem that treats listeners with respect, gives publishers a direct relationship with audiences, and gives voice to new talent and communities long missing from the airwaves. Podcasting is the slow food movement of the media world. 

Podcasting’s “bugs” - that episodes are difficult to scan, share, and comment - are actually its features. With Facebook and YouTube in a sickly cycle of algorithmic derangement, publishers are very much in need of podcasting’s antiviral cure. 

In 2019 podcasting will enter year five of its renaissance, still expanding from the big bang of 2014 -- the launch year for Serial, Gimlet, Radiotopia, Panoply, and Apple’s first standalone podcast app. The stakes have gotten higher and the big players have taken notice. The influx of creators of all shapes and sizes will put pressure on a podcast economy that still lags in terms of monetization and marketing muscle. 

In 2019 we’ll see bolder attempts to carve up the expanding podcast pie into more profitable premium paywalls. But I predict unsatisfying results until Apple decides to offer its own. The fact is that most people still don't understand how to listen to a podcast, never mind pay for it.

However, a pivot to podcasting does give publishers something powerful: a channel they own and control, literally giving voice to their brands, stories, and the journalists behind the bylines. Podcasting may not yet be a moneymaker for many, but it’s a meaning-maker for most. In an overabundant media world, that kind of trust is the scarce resource. The challenge for podcasting is to unlock the immense value of listener loyalty that goes deeper than any ad impression can capture.

For publishers’ whose strategy calls for forging audience relationships that are not easily swiped away, podcasting is a sound investment in 2019.