The Death Of Podcasting Dominance, Brought To You By Amazon & Wondery

Amazon’s pending acquisition of podcasting powerhouse Wondery will change podcasting’s power dynamic. But not through domination. By eliminating the very idea of dominating the podcasting landscape.

January 4, 2021

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Wondery will soon be part of the Amazon machine. The acquisition—rumored to be worth some $300 million—garnered a lot of attention from the media, proclaiming this as Amazon’s play to become the dominant player in podcasting.

My take, surprisingly enough, looks at this deal through a different lens.

Diff'rent Strokes for Different Podcasting Folks

Large companies are buying their way into podcasting for different reasons. When Spotify started their buying spree back in 2018, they did it for two very Spotify reasons: driving subscription revenue to Spotify Premium and to reduce the share of revenue paid to music labels and rights holders.

But they didn’t stop there. As much as Spotify’s app is a listening platform for you and me, it’s also an ad platform for advertisers. The better ads perform on Spotify compared to other campaign elements, the more ad revenue Spotify will realize, offsetting their investments in the podcasting space.

I also think it’s a safe bet to assume Spotify is looking at future opportunities they might leverage by owning a lot of intellectual property—shows themselves and the organizations that know how to create shows that attract large-scale audiences.

Amazon is a wholly different company with different aspirations in the podcasting space. Look no further than Amazon Studios for clues to their primary motivation. By grabbing up Wondery’s talented machine of creating in-demand podcasting content, Amazon adds a new arm to its content distribution platform.

Today, Amazon Studio execs have to decide if a given bit of IP is best-suited for development into a feature-length movie or as a television series. But tomorrow, they’ll have a third option for show development. One that costs a fraction of the other two yet is still capable of reaching millions of people. That funnels nicely into Amazon Prime as well, so I expect to see at least some of Amazon’s future podcasting content to be exclusively available on their app.

Podcasting’s Throne Caught In The Crossfire

Lots of big powerhouses are battling it out right now. Not just Spotify and Amazon, but also Pandora, iHeart, Google Podcasts, and a host of opportunistic smaller players; each chipping away at each other and, by all accounts, vying for the throne occupied by our distracted (some might say absentee) ruler, Apple.

While I do think Apple will be unseated, I don’t think any other company will assume the throne. Because I think the throne will be destroyed in the process we’re seeing play out right now. At some point in our very near future, there will be no single dominant player In podcasting.

That’s the way it is in television and movies. Some networks and studios are larger than others, but none reign supreme. Podcasting apps will certainly jockey for position and compete for attention, but none will truly establish a dominant position where every-day podcasters can safely ignore the rest.

Surviving In A Fractured Podcasting Landscape

Podcasting consumption will continue to fracture across apps, leaving two major implications for working podcasters like us.

1. Achieving 100% distribution is 100% on you.

Without a single dominant platform, it will be more important than ever for your shows to be available everywhere podcasts exist. No longer can you rely on a single platform due to their dominance. Nor can you rely on a single platform to distribute your show to other podcast apps and directories. You do not want to be caught unawares with allegiances shift. You have to be in control and take a much more active role in making sure your distribution is complete.

2. “Podcasting’s Discovery Problem” becomes a real problem.

This fracturing of the podcast consumption landscape will cause us to rethink our approach to discovery, from how we market our shows to how we optimize our content and just about every other aspect of discovery we only thought was hard.

Tomorrow, it'll no longer be enough to make sure your show and episodes look good on the purple platform. You won’t be able to rely on optimization tricks that only work on a single directory. And efforts to game any single system will be less relevant. Hooray for that last one.

With that, the digital presence of your shows outside of the various podcasting apps and directories becomes hugely important. That means your website can’t suck anymore. How you present your episodes can’t be half-assed anymore. And no, you can no longer do the lazy thing of just sharing an Apple Podcasts link to your latest episode on your social channels and call it a day.

The Right To Choose How To Listen To Podcasts Shall Not Be Infringed

Every time a big player swoops into podcasting and starts scooping up people and IP, a lot of pundits poo-poo the news because they’re not about to switch podcast listening platforms. They’ve seen dozens of better mousetraps built over the years, yet without any big migration away from preexisting listening apps.

Nothing I mentioned above is predicate on podcasters like you and me abandoning our listening app of choice and making the jump to Amazon Music. Nor is this vision of the future reliant on current listeners to our shows making the switch. Sure, some of us will experiment and change what we use to listen. But life in a fractured landscape doesn’t require anyone to switch. Instead, it’s switch-tolerant.

Remember; two-thirds of the population still have yet to develop the podcast listening habit. As the Amazons of the world continue to expose more people to podcast content on their apps and platforms, more people will discover the wider world of podcasting. That’s what we want. And that’s what this article is about.

It’s not about getting your audience to switch to Amazon Music as their podcast listening platform. There's no need for that. Let people listen where they want to listen. Your job, my job, all of our jobs as working podcasters, is to make sure that our shows are well set up for the fractured world we live in without a dominant player.

If you found this information helpful, please consider supporting me over at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra.

But most important, and especially as we’re starting a brand new year, I need you to tell one other working podcaster about Podcast Pontifications. There’s a lot of FUD—fear, uncertainty, and doubt—in our podcasting space, and most of the other podcasts about podcasting are focused on the basics or are aimed at entry-level podcasters. Hey, we need shows like that, I get it. But we also need shows like this that focus on mid-level podcasters and above. I appreciate your efforts to help this show reach a new audience in the new year.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Transcript

Amazon's pending acquisition of podcasting powerhouse Wondery will change podcasting's power dynamic, but not through domination. By eliminating the very idea of dominating the podcasting landscape.

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Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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Wondery will soon be part of the Amazon machine. The deal was rumored at - what like $300 million? And that got the attention of a lot of the media who proclaimed this is Amazon making a play to be the dominant player in podcasting. Ehhh, maybe.
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We've seen that a while. We've heard that for quite some time now with Spotify making their big moves and other big acquisitions. But there's a lot of talk about this, but I want to think about it, I want to help you think about it in a slightly different way. Because I think every big entity that comes in swinging around their huge bags of cash in the podcasting space, which I wonder how many more we can do, but regardless of that, I think they all do it for different reasons.
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Now when Spotify started doing it back in 2018 - acquisition of Gimlet and a whole bunch of other properties that they went through - they did it for one reason, well, one primary reason. Spotify wants subscription revenue. They make money when you and I give them the $7, $11 or whatever it costs for a Spotify premium membership.
It attracts more people to their platform, but also it reduces the amount of payments Spotify has to give to music labels, the rights holders of the music that's played. Cause that's how they're paid. They don't pay us, podcasters. They, Spotify, don't pay us podcasters anything for that.
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Of course, Spotify also wants to make some ad revenue. The more you use that app, the more attractive it is to people who want to advertise to people who are using that app. That's a big deal.
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Then, of course, Spotify has an on eye on what they could do with the future of all this content that they now own. And this app that they own and this entire world that they've gotten themselves into.
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Amazon's doing it for slightly different reasons. Amazon is first and foremost, looking at this, I think, as a content pipeline for Amazon Studios. That's the arm they have that makes television and movies and all that. Well, now when they get something sent to them, when their editors, when their producers are looking through the slush pile, they can say, is this thing ready for TV?
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Because we can make TV, we're Amazon. Is it ready for a movie? Because we can make movies, we're Amazon. Or is this more appropriate for a podcast? Because now we're in the podcasting space and we just bought a podcast creation team who can create that content for us. So they've got a production arm, a studio, Amazon Studios that now has a third arm to it, if you will.
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And of course they want us to sign up for Amazon Prime to get some exclusivity stuff. They're not really set up for ad revenue, even though Amazon made like 20 million extra dollars they didn't think they were going to from sponsored listings on Amazon.com. But that's a totally different thing. I don't want to go down that road.
But I don't think that's what makes this so cool, what makes this Amazon buying Wondery that big of a deal for us, no.
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I think the real big deal here is that with Amazon's entry and buying Wondery, and with what Spotify is already doing in this space and with what iHeart is doing and what Pandora is doing, I think it means starting now, very soon, there will be no single podcast platform form that has dominance.
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Now, right now we kind of have one in Apple, our absentee ruler, if you will, sitting on the throne, that's been slowly being chipped away, and chipped away, and chipped away, and they don't really seem to be doing anything about it.
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And I think this furthers that to the point to where sometime in the near future, there will be no dominant player in podcasting, which is kind of the way it is in television. I mean, which TV network dominates? There isn't one.
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Which movie studio dominates? There really isn't one. So it's the same thing. Media is just moving to where it's now totally fractured.
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Now I think that has two major implications for us as podcasters.
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Number one, because there will be no single dominant platform it is more important than ever for your shows to be everywhere. You can't rely on one single platform anymore, even if that single platform today is handling and perhaps, especially if that single platform today, is handling your distribution for you, you think it is, you can't do it that way anymore.
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You're going to have to take control. No more just list it in one place and assume it'll get picked up in other places. No, you're going to have to take a much more active role in making sure your distribution is complete.
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And number two, perhaps the bigger challenge here, is I think this will rewrite the entire discovery, marketing, optimization, whatever we're doing, all of those challenges we face today. We have even bigger challenges with them in the future because it's no longer about how does my show look on that purple platform?
It's how does my show and how do my episodes look everywhere? What can I do not just to drive ratings and reviews at this one purple platform, but what can I do to optimize my placement across all of these different places people might be discovering content with different algorithms, different ways of looking at things?
There's also going to be as a part of that, a huge emphasis on the digital presence of your shows. Not just how they live on individual platforms, but off of the platforms, because discovery is already - always been - off platforms.
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Now, even more so with this new fractured non-dominant player position. That means your website. And that means how you list your show on your website and how you share your content on social media.
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Look, you just, you can't do the lazy thing of just sharing an Apple podcast link anymore, people. That's going away.
So lots of big changes coming, but the dominance is the fact that there is no more dominant player.
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That's the world we're going to live in, which makes it fun and interesting. And a bit of a challenge as we continue to roll forward as Amazon makes this big play and starts bringing more people into the space.
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One little thing to end with here, look, whatever platform you're using today and whatever platform I'm using today to listen, whatever apps that we, you, and I are listening, they're probably not going to change.
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I mean, they might. But we don't have to change. All of these changes I'm talking about, this lack of dominance, it was for the new batch of people coming into podcasting. Because you have to remember two thirds of the population still don't have the podcasting habit.
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So as these big moves continue, and they, the Amazons of the world, continue to push more people towards the podcasting space more people are in, using that platform as their choice and learning the fact they can be everywhere.
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So look, you and I don't have to change our platforms. I'm not suggesting we do that, nor am I suggesting you should try and get your audience to switch to any particular platform, any particular listening app. Don't. There's no need. Let people listen to what they want to listen to.
Your job, my job, all of our jobs as podcasters is to make sure that our shows are well set up for that fractured reality we live in without a dominant player.
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Now, if you like the things I had to say to you, for you today, please consider going to buymeacoffee.com/evoterra and toss a couple of bucks my way. That would be nice and helpful, but most importantly, and especially for this new year, I need you to please tell one other working podcast you know about Podcast Pontifications.
There's a lot of F.U.D. - that's fear, uncertainty, and doubt - out there in the podcasting space with a lot of people just talking about the basic stuff. I want to help clear up some of that uncertainty, that fear, that doubt with this show and you telling other podcasters about the show really helps me do that.
So thank you very much for that.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers.

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