Podcasts and podcasting are not a new thing but since pandemic situation it has been rise as a new way of entertainment.

I have been a podcast consumer for more than 15 years, of course not all the time same podcasts and not with the same consuming time. First podcasts I started to listen where recorded radio programs that I was not able to listen to them in live and I use different software to synchronize it and organized in different ways. At that time I thought it was a good idea because I could listen whatever program I like at any moment of the day without taking care when the program has been happened, after several years I have the same feeling in general but with some points that I have started to consider before listen anything new.

Rediscovering podcasts with pandemic

Several months after first lockdown with pandemic I have decided to start walking to refresh my mind and doing some exercise. It is a cheap activity (is free), it is healthy and it can be done at any age and mostly at any time of the day. When I was doing my commute I tried to do as much as possible for walking such as not using escalators or elevators, trying to save couple of underground stations if they are close which time spent is near the same than using it, etc. But I must admit that being a remote worker and without anything to do for going out and without being a particular lover of doing exercise I had lost most of the physical activity I just need to be a healthier person. Pandemic with lockdown contribute it to put the things worse but at least I realized it. For doing exercise there are two ways: going to the gym/home and do outdoors stuff. I was not clear that going to the gym was safer -at the beginning of the pandemic- and in case of doing it, not very comfortable to do all the activity with the mask. So, I have decided to go for a walk, between 1-2 hours and depending on the path, between 6-10km. My target was clear, so next thing I need is something to listen meanwhile I am walking.

Podcast as a business

I take my headphones, my phone and I opened the podcast application. I had hundreds of options to choose between most listened episodes of the week, most listened programs and if not, I can navigate through categories and then select programs and episodes. So, I spend some time to subscribe podcast I consider interesting, with a variety of topics and each time I was going out I just play it and listen. But then I quickly realized that this feeling of spending time choosing what to listen is same that happens with Netflix and any streaming on-demand platform. This is the main advantage of classical radio/TV: content is fixed and if you do not like it you can change to another channel; probably you are going to end watching a show you do not like at 100% but at least it will be something.

Maybe related to pandemic situation but I see a lot of differences -probably due my bias on content I consumed- between podcasting ten years ago and today, especially remarkable during and after the pandemic. We can say that before most of the podcasts were like professional ones; good content and good production; note most of them come from a recording of a live radio program or TV shows. There were other ones that we could say with more domestic production but with an excellent content as well. Of course, this is not new, it is a trend and it was raised as a new business category; take a look how a music streaming platform like Spotify has been quickly moved to offer podcasts as Apple is doing: podcasts can be offered with a subscription per program, so we can say that is a new potential billion business with content according to the numbers of streaming platforms.

Choosing a category

But after struggling with choosing podcasts and start to discard episodes or entire programs I classify them by following categories:

  • Based on radio shows: just the recording of the entire program. But I also realized that there are some programs which split the audio in several episodes, which is hard to follow. One thing that I did not mention before, most radio shows are also offered as a video streaming content, which it is interesting -content which is designed for being listened in live now is offered in all formats: live/recorded video; live/recorded audio
  • Based on TV shows: same as radio, but just the audio recorded. Problem of this way of listening the podcast is that probably you are going to skip some details and stuff make sense on the show with cameras but not with audio.
  • Single topic podcast: for example, ancient history, psychology, etc. Based on my experience this content is usually well prepared and with high quality.
  • Interviews: where each episode there is an interview to a person. I think conducting an interview is hard, like an art as you must prepare a lot to the person you want to make the questions and get interesting answers. But if the interview is not well-prepared it could be a waste of time.
  • Audiobook/stories: if well done it is a pleasure to hear good voice actors or actresses interpreting the book/story characters.
  • Soft talk show: with this category I put in the same group all podcasts where two or more people discuss a topic or between them about something like friend’s bar conversation. Main problem is that probably there could be an episode which is interesting, but normally listen to people speaking and discussing about a topic they do not know -or even worse, they started learning about it just the day before- is usually not a good idea for the listener. Think about it with the same but going into a pub.
  • Corporate podcast: could be interesting if they speak about something they know and they have actual experience on the field; otherwise it could be just a poor sales podcast.

It seems that individuals/groups/companies have a podcast series with several episodes. Podcast platforms are scalable and the fact that everyone has a smartphone or a computer that can use means that they can be consumed. You can choose between Audible, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Podcast, Ivoox, Amazon and more platforms that offers podcasts; and of course as a business they play with exclusivities to move customers from one platform to another. Better to wait to the future to determine if the quantities paid for those exclusivities and efforts are supported by financial statements of the companies, because at the moment it seems that numbers are not as good they expect.

But after that it seems that we do not realize we have a pretty limitation: we still have 24 hours per day and for example, [Youtube]https://earthweb.com/how-many-videos-are-uploaded-to-youtube-a-day/#:~:text=YouTubers%20upload%20about%20720%2C000%20hours,form%20of%20content%20online%20today) is uploading 720.000 hours per day; if that data is right it means that each day 82 years of video content is uploaded. So, there are two questions raised here:

  • are we able to listen ALL new published content?
  • how can determine if a content is worth to listen to? Remember your time is limited.

Are we in trouble a bubble (again)?

If each radio program is published to podcast, most of TV program is podcasted, most interviews are podcasted, most books are podcasted (because we do not have time to read the book and we need the audiobook for getting it faster) and each friend pub conversation is published as a podcast, can we consider it as a bubble? As I said our day still have 24 hours and probably we need to use between 6-8 hours to sleep. Still have between 18-16 hours per day, which we need to work and doing stuff. I do not think that normally we can have enough focus while working and listening a podcast; normally focus is gone on work and other thing is a distraction. Distraction for working related with mental activities are destructive and has a strong impact: for non-mental work can be interesting always you have an environment where you can listen the content without problems. In an optimistic case, after working still there are 10-8 hours available at day that you use in your own stuff. Now think how many podcasts you are subscribed, how many episodes you have pending to listen and how much attention you pay when listening them.

That brings the situation of choosing what to listen and when, as everyday there are more and more new episodes to listen.

I do think that at some way there is a bubble podcast: so much content with still time is limited about how much can be consumed. Also, there is a concept here: quantity or quality? My bet is always to prioritize quality over quantity. For example, if you listen an interview and after finished it you are still thinking about that conversation is a good one; however, if you listen to something and forget about it -just to have some noise in the background meanwhile you are doing other stuff- probably not the best one and it could be discarded.

There is another thing to consider but it is more on the side of the makers instead of the consumers. You have an idea and decide to write something. There is a format that needs to be chosen: can be a video, a podcast or even a blogpost. Normally reading is faster and more accurate than listening things; face expressions have sense in a video than in an audio; an interview where you want to get interesting things could be more natural with video/audio that then putting the transcription into a post, etc.

My point and from a quality-focus perspective I would consider following questions before listening to something:

  • is the content interested to be shared? and why?
  • is podcast the right format for the content?
    • is more effective to write the content instead of publishing into a post? why? Just as an example: if you listen a 2h podcast episode which can be summarized into a ~5 minutes text reading I would say someone owes you 115 minutes of your time.

If content is not interesting, not the right format or it can be converted into a blogpost probably quality is not the metric you want to use. Note one thing in communication theory here: the message is the important thing, not who speaks.

Some personal tips

After that, my personal tips for choosing podcasts:

  • There are podcasts which production is not as professional as you want but content it is. Focus on content more in how it is done.
  • For some podcasts, be careful with biases. Based on my experience, the most smart they think they are, the more biased.
  • Avoid soft talk shows as much as possible, unless you find an episode or set of episodes with content you are interested on.
  • Whenever possible, listen to people who has a skin in the game as normally are best ones you can learn from.
  • For a better subscription handling:
    • Before subscribing, check several episodes to ensure you want to listen more.
    • Once subscribed, if you are not listening to them for some reason just unsubscribe -do not keep something you are not going to use
    • And once subscribed again, if their episodes that you do not like of you do not want to listen, just unsubscribe.
  • As my previous post, configure podcast application notification. Note that in theory they are going to be consumed when you have interest on and you want; do not be pressed to receive the notification of a new one or the notification of having N pending podcast to listen to.