Music Podcasting is Hard. Why it’s worth the effort Part 6:"What is PopCult doing about it?" (hint: a lot).
This was written before Podcast Evolutions 2023. It was great seeing and meeting so many good people.
In a previous post (Part 2) we did a back-of-the-napkin breakdown of the latent energy of music audiences, so we're not going to repeat ourselves here (well, maybe a little).
What WE ARE going to do is wave the flag a bit for what we have accomplished at PopCult so far. We have spent the past few years forming partnerships that address the fundamental questions that define a successful podcast. And then building them. We have done this by doing what we internally call "running into the building" of music podcasting. It's hard work, but the underlying principles are simple: Answer some fundamental questions, then build accordingly.
You need a great personalities and great narrative?
Go straight to the source. We are working with Iconic stars and/or the people surrounding them. We find the great story, and there is always one: a struggle, outsize characters, and the twists and turns in the path to fame and notoriety.
You need to include the actual music?
We've worked in partnership with global superstars like Metallica ; genre-dominant labels like Interscope, Disney Music Group and Universal Music Nashville; the world's largest Music Publishing company, Sony Music Publishing; and some new players you'll be hearing about soon. These players know that podcasting has value; and that the value has to go beyond licensing, which is often simply not worth their effort. They are very focused on their core revenue streams, and need a podcast "guide" to help them navigate the idiosyncrasies of podcasting. That's us. On the flipside, we are enabling our distribution and sales partners to tap into the actual music, and into music fans. Which brings us to...
You say you need a growth plan?
Every PopCult Podcast comes with a draft marketing plan. Podcast marketing is not an easy, big-budget turnkey exercise. If you build it, they won't necessarily come. Simply stated: If we don't have a firm idea of where the audience is going to come from, we don't develop the idea. We are not throwing spaghetti at a wall. We know where the fans are, and we have years of experience activating them.
At the same time as we are tapping into music fanbases, we are partnering with the best-in-class podcast marketers like Suzy Schultz and Alicia Mackey, to make sure our podcast marketing bases are covered.
Podcasts compete with Music?
Well, no. We have proven that podcasts and music can and should COMPLEMENT each other. They already live on the same platforms like Spotify and Amazon music, but most of the time they are in separate buckets. We are busting down those walls by creating short form audio that can be dropped right into playlists alongside the music. Our favorite experience of the Disney Hits Podcast we produce is on the Disney Hits Podcast Playlist on Spotify , wherein the podcast and the songs it covers exist side by side. We also did this with our own My Record Podcast. It's a seamless experience that listeners have now problem understanding, and it elevates both the podcast AND the music.
Podcasting is a challenging environment?
Let's get this straight: Podcasting is a delivery and monetization system. A box. We don't think of what we create solely in terms of how it fits into the boxes of Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast apps. We make compelling AUDIO. Our experience in digital marketing, storytelling, and yes, radio means that when we are creating audio, we are also thinking about how it will also live on YouTube, TikoTok, Instagram and yes, radio. When we created an audio series for Smart Speakers, it found its audience on YouTube! Getting out of the box means more potential audience, which means more ROI.
We are in a "Podcast Recession?"
It's true that the advertising environment is difficult right now. It's also true that starting in 2018, the "big guys" (you know who we're talking about ) flooded the market in cash as a play to grow audience at any costs. Some of these bets paid off (Smartless and Amazon) some of them had mixed results (Joe Rogan and Spotify) and most were expensive failures (I'm not here to shame anyone). On the other side of the coin, everyone with functioning vocal cords and an opinion seems to have started a podcast in recent years. While the cream rose to the top, the general effect was tens of thousands of bad podcasts with no listeners, opening the industry to public mocking.
But you know who didn't get the memo about the podcast recession? The listeners, whose numbers are still growing. Furthermore, there are legions of music fans who are always looking for more engagement with their favorite artists and music. Music built YouTube. Music built Myspace before it built Facebook before it built TikTok. There is absolutely no reason that music can't help build Podcasting.
The monetization may not come from advertising. It might come from tickets, merch, and subscriptions. and it also may come from direct sponsorship. In music industry context, Podcast sponsorships are far cheaper than, for example, tour sponsorships, and they are stickier and easier to track.
In addition to all of this, we operate efficiently. We don't need Metallica or Laya Deleon Hayes to show up every week in the studio. We didn't need K Flay to use a studio at all! We are experienced, we are scrappy, we are efficient and we PLAN.
Finally, we have lived through recessions, and we know who survives recessions:
Premium, quality brands.
Who will support premium quality content. (see above)
None of this is easy. While we don't always have the answers, we are 100% focused on providing them for our partners, who seem to be keen on "running into the building” with us.
That's what we are doing about it. If that sounds good to you, let's do it together.