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When you started podcasting, things were different.
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Maybe a little.
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Maybe a lot.
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At some point, those differences will start adding up, and you won't
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podcast the same way again ever.
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And that's okay.
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Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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Change comes for all of us at some point.
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Podcasters like you and me are not immune.
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Those that are providing services to podcasters like you and me are not immune.
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And those providing services to podcast listeners aren't immune, which
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means that if you think about it, not even podcasting is immune to change.
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These changes I speak of don't have to be predicated by massive
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upheavals in the podcasting landscape.
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Yes, huge inflection points have caused unpredictable ripples, which
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tend to throw a lot of plans, either business plans or otherwise, in peril.
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They have, and they will, but it doesn't take a single, massive event
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to disrupt your own stable podcasting world because that stable podcasting
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world you're thinking of is an illusion.
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At best, stability is a temporary condition and one you may not notice
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has actually expired, which means you're working with a set of assumptions
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that are no longer perfectly tailored to the reality of podcasting today.
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Now, let me assuage your fears.
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Podcast Pontifications is not in jeopardy.
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I have several more months of content before season four comes to a close.
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Yeah, next season will have something different about it.
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Have you not been listening for the last four seasons?
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I change something of time I do this.
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So you should be used to that by now, but change is inevitable and it seems
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to be coming at us a whole lot faster.
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I point to a couple different indicators when I say that the rate of change in
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podcasting seems to be accelerating.
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One of those is the large number of podcasts that haven't released a new
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episode in the last 90 days or longer.
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I haven't done a detailed analysis, but chatter amongst the people who care
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about that statistic, I, by the way, do not count myself among their ranks.
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I don't care about that statistic.
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They say that inactive shows as they call them, are on the rise.
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Now, I think there are a lot of whys wrapped up in the decision
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for a podcaster to stop podcasting, but I'm not going to unpack those,
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not on today's show at least.
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For now, I just see that simply as an indication that many creators
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had something in their lives change from when they started podcasting
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to when they stopped podcasting.
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That time period could be a matter of days or months or years.
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But that doesn't matter.
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Something changed, causing them no longer to wish to podcast.
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Another indicator is the shuttering of podcast listener focused services.
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I'm thinking specifically of Bello Collective, which made an announcement,
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not long ago, specifically calling out the changes in podcasting
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that led their decision to stop, at least pause, their operations.
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And the changes that they speak of happened over a relatively short
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time span from 2016 when they started until, well, the end of
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2021, maybe the beginning of 2022.
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Podcast listening hasn't stopped, obviously, but it has changed.
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And the way we listen, the way people listen, perhaps why
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people listen, is changing.
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Well then, anyone who speaks to those listeners has to change as well.
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Just make sense.
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Finally - because I'm trying to keep this short, there are lots of others I could
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get into - there's the consolidation of podcaster focused services.
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Not just the big mega-mergers that are minting millionaires to people
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who did a great job with their product or service and probably deserve
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to be rewarded for their efforts.
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No, no, not just them.
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But also the lower-level players who had an interesting idea for a product
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or a service, ran it as a company for a while, maybe on the side, and then for
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a multitude of reasons wound up either selling that product or service, or
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just rolling that product or service into another product or service so the
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original creator of that could move on to do other things without causing
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their users too much frustration.
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Now, if there's a takeaway from all of this, it's simply a reminder
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that change comes for us all in podcasting, in life, in business.
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For those of us who've wrapped all three of those things together, it
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sure is making for an interesting ride.
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With that, I shall be back on Monday with yet another Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!
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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra.
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He's on a mission to make podcasting better.
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Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes
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section of your podcast listening app.
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A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at
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podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected
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transcript, both created by Allie Press.
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Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.
