Simon Owens's Tech and Media - Can local podcasts become profitable?
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: If you’re already signed up and want to support the work I do here, the subscription link below will give you 10% off for your first year: Let’s jump into it… Fix your CMS and make Enterprise WordPress work at scaleThe New York Times, CNN, Wired, Salesforce, Spotify, Sony: They all use WordPress to publish at scale. The key is partnering with an agency that gets digital media. For more than a decade, today’s sponsor The Code Company has worked with publishers to erase technical debt, cut down development costs, and make tech stacks lean, fast, and flexible. "From the media side of FreightWaves, one of the most valuable ROI we’ve made was the work The Code Company did. It’s almost unmeasurable the amount of potential and growth we’ve unlocked." — Nick Torres, Director of Media Technology at FreightWaves Contact The Code Company here to find out how they can help you turbocharge your tech. How a newspaper columnist made a successful jump to an independent newsletter careerLyz Lenz, a former newspaper columnist, wrote about hitting her three-year anniversary of launching a paid newsletter. It's always fun to read about traditional journalists who make successful jumps into the Creator Economy:
LinkedIn still actually wants to be in the news businessEarlier this week I noted that publishers have seen a sharp decline in referral traffic from platforms like Facebook and Twitter, mostly because those companies have made deliberate moves to siphon off that traffic. For slightly different reasons, both Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have decided they no longer want to be in the news-delivery business. You know who does still want to be in the news business? LinkedIn. At least that’s according to its editor-in-chief Daniel Roth:
I’ve certainly spoken to media operators who cited LinkedIn as their biggest source of social traffic, but I still get the sense that the vast majority of publishers — even business publishers — aren’t seeing much traction on the platform. Despite having nearly 60k followers there, for instance, I’ve never been able to drive much of an audience to my newsletter, and I’m not sure why that is. Do you live in the Washington, DC area?I like to regularly organize group dinners and other social gatherings with media operators who live in this city. Sometimes I make a reservation at a restaurant and other times I’ll have folks over to my own house for cocktails and snacks. If you’d like to be invited to future get-togethers, then shoot me an email and I’ll add you to my spreadsheet. WhatsApp isn’t just for personal messagingApparently some publishers are successfully leveraging WhatsApp to drive traffic back to their websites:
Can local podcasts become profitable?Nieman Lab reports that The Athletic has shuttered most of its local sports podcasts:
I haven't seen many local podcast success stories. They often don't have enough scale to attract national advertisers, and most local businesses aren't sophisticated enough in their ad buying to target podcast listeners. That’s not to say there aren’t any local podcasts that found sustainable business models. In 2021 I wrote about Daily Detroit’s success through a mixture of local sponsorships and memberships. I also covered an Ohio sports podcast’s success with getting its listeners to subscribe to a text messaging service. And of course City Cast has been busy experimenting with whether it could pair local newsletters with podcasts, though I have no idea if it’s reached profitability yet. Can Spotify move the needle on audiobook listening?Spotify announced this week that paying subscribers in certain countries will receive up to 15 hours of free audiobook streaming per month. Bloomberg published a good breakdown of how this differs from the traditional audiobook purchasing ecosystem:
Spotify’s initial foray into audiobooks was pretty boring, given that it only allowed you to purchase them in an ad hoc fashion and you couldn’t even pay within the app. It'll be really interesting to see whether Spotify can move the needle on audiobook listening. The question that’s still unanswered is how it pays for all of this content in the long-term; right now, it offers 15 hours of audiobook streaming to premium subscribers, but based on what I've read Spotify pays out 70 cents of every dollar it makes from subscriptions to music rights holders, and I doubt those rights holders are keen on giving up their piece of the pie. Will Spotify ultimately launch a separate subscription product for audiobooks? Will it introduce advertising in some way? These are the thorny issues it needs to figure out, but I wouldn’t underestimate its chances given how quickly it muscled its way into the podcast market. There’s lots you can accomplish when you already have hundreds of millions of monthly users. Do you sell a product targeted toward marketers, media executives, or professional creators?What a coincidence! That’s exactly who reads my newsletter. You can find out how to advertise to them over here. How Michael Lewis became a nonfiction juggernautThis is a great profile of Michael Lewis that dives deep into his reporting process and how he chooses his book subjects:
ICYMI: How Josh Spector monetizes his 25,000 newsletter subscribersHe generates revenue through a mixture of consulting, advertising, and paid subscriptions. Let’s take this relationship to the next levelI only send this newsletter out twice a week, but I curate industry news on a daily basis. Follow me on one of these social platforms if you want your daily fix: You're currently a free subscriber to Simon Owens's Media Newsletter. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
Older messages
Is a decline of social media traffic bad for publishers?
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
PLUS: The podcasting industry has entered its sink-or-swim era.
The pivot back to free content
Friday, September 29, 2023
PLUS: Did Substack bring back the blogosphere?
How Oovvuu grew its video platform to over 400 million streams per day
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Ricky Sutton co-founded the company to help publishers claw back advertising dollars from the Google/Facebook duopoly.
The New York Times finally understands the value of a personal brand
Friday, September 22, 2023
PLUS: AI-generated content is already harming publishers' Google traffic.
How a blog about the VC industry generated over $1 million from online courses
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
John Gannon built an audience with VC job postings and then monetized through a mix of online courses, productized services, and sponsorships.
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