Bloomberg Says Podcasting Hasn’t Had A Hit In Two Years

Podcasting is generally not a medium that generates a lot of controversy. Yet last week, an article in Bloomberg by Lucas Shaw caused quite a stir and generated a lot of discussion and the podcast community.

According to the Bloomberg article, none of the 10 most popular podcasts in the U.S. last year debuted in the last couple years, according to Edison Research. They are an average of more than seven years old, and three of the top five are more than a decade old. (“The Joe Rogan Experience,” “This American Life” and “Stuff You Should Know.”)  Only a few podcasts in the top 50 (“SmartLess,” “The Michelle Obama Podcast,” “Frenemies”) are less than two years old. And none of them are in the top 25.

Shaw believes this trend concerns executives and producers across the podcasting industry, who worry they are wasting a lot of money on new shows. Spotify, Amazon, SiriusXM, iHeartMedia and outside investors have plowed billions of dollars into production companies. Spotify has spent more than anyone, paying about $500 million for three studios. Where is all this money going if these companies aren’t producing new hits?

Bloomberg does correctly diagnosis a possible reason for this phenomenon. There are more podcasts than ever before. Spotify hosts more than three million podcasts, up from a few hundred thousand just a few years ago. While the vast majority of those new shows are either defunct or have minuscule audiences, there are still way more podcasts than there were just a few years ago.

The number of new podcasts has grown more quickly than the podcast audience, and so the number of listeners per show is going down. The list of shows competing to be that program you try on your weekend walk is longer than the backlog of TV shows you want to watch.

“Discovering new shows is harder than ever as a result. We rely on recommendations, algorithms and word of mouth to guide us,” Shaw writes. “While year-end lists of the best podcasts can boost the audience for a show, podcasting platforms need to do a better job of guiding listeners. (Most companies used to rely on Apple for promotion, but that’s trickier now that Apple wants to push shows that participate in its subscription program.)”

Fragmentation is happening across media. It’s always easier to find an audience when you are early to a trend (like the internet). It was easier to build a big audience on YouTube five years ago than it is today. That’s why a lot of people flocked to TikTok. Soon enough there will be a new platform of choice.

According to Shaw, podcasts that launched 10 years ago or five years ago have a big advantage over ones that are brand new. They had years to build up an audience, gather word of mouth and appear in search results. While the audience for new shows is smaller, existing hits, like Joe Rogan and “Call Her Daddy.”

Shaw is exactly right that there are too many podcasts chasing too few listeners. In addition, large companies like Spotify have been releasing a veritable avalanche of new shows. In large part, these new shows from large podcast networks seem to be more derivative than novel. What I think Shaw is alluding to is that new podcasts need to either find a new or unique niche or a new and fresh treatment on a familiar topic.   

Unlike TV shows or movies, the barriers to beginning a podcast are relatively lower and massively less expensive. As long as some celebrity or social media influencer can start a podcast for their fans, podcasts will continue to proliferate.

Is there a solution? What do you think?

Let me know.