Are paid podcasts now a billion dollar market?

PLUS: The rise of digital-only startups that are finding sustainable models for local news.

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.

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Let’s jump into it…

Quick hits

MrBeast went on several podcasts recently to brag that his upcoming Amazon show will be the biggest in gameshow history. But now that he's firmly in the mainstream, his fast-and-loose approach to making videos is likely to face increased scrutiny. [NYT]

Crooked Media has 20,000 paid subscribers ... so a minimum of about $2.4 million is generated from them, depending on which subscription tier they choose. [Bloomberg]

The current WashPo publisher founded a company that focused entirely on distributing its content through social media sites like Instagram and TikTok. As it turns out, it's difficult to build a sustainable business model when you rely on platforms that are extremely bad about sharing revenue with creators. [NYT] Of course, this is basically the same playbook that BuzzFeed adopted over a decade ago. I remember Jonah Peretti bragging that he didn’t care if BuzzFeed content was consumed on BuzzFeed’s website or on its social media channels. It was only a few years later that he changed his tune and started arguing that the tech platforms should pay more to BuzzFeed for the value it created.

I'm not sure I'd put much stock into this study showing social media engagement for Canadian news orgs went down after Facebook banned links from those orgs. Of course it went down. The question is if their overall audience went down as well, and to what extent? Did Canadians find other ways to access news? [ChrisD]

"Patreon announced that podcasters collectively earned $350 million on the membership platform last year. The company also said more than 40,000 podcasters earn money from fans on Patreon." [The Information] And Patreon only represents a small part of the market — both Apple and Spotify have their own podcast subscription products, as do Substack and a number of other platforms. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if paid podcasts now represent a $1 billion market. And given that the US podcast market is only generating about $2 billion a year right now, then that means that paid subscriptions make up a sizable portion of the industry’s revenue.

It's great that sports media has had a lifeline in forming all these lucrative gambling partnerships, but they're now devoting significant reach and brand trust into converting a portion of their audiences into gambling addicts. Can't help but wonder if 10 years from now we'll look back and cringe at how willing they all were to embrace that business model. [Business Insider]

How the Wonder Tools newsletter grew to 39,000 subscribers

There’s this saying that “those who can’t do, teach,” but Jeremy Caplan actually practices what he preaches. By day, he instructs on entrepreneurial journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and on his nights and weekends he writes Wonder Tools, a newsletter about the internet’s most useful websites and apps.

Jeremy launched Wonder Tools in 2020 and has since grown it to 39,000 subscribers, which is pretty remarkable considering he’s still running it as just a side hustle.

In a recent interview, he walked through all the strategies he uses to grow his audience, including how he partnered with Poynter to grow his initial subscriber base, how he collaborates and swaps recommendations with other newsletter writers, how he buys ads on other newsletters, and how speaking gigs at online and in-person events drive signups:

I will share to LinkedIn some of the posts where I feel like there's a group of people on there who might benefit or might be interested. And I will basically just describe one of the key points from the piece: What am I writing about? Why is it useful? Why should people care? It’ll be really brief, followed by a link to the post

And I will post to Substack Notes because within Substack, there's a community of people who are reading each other. And for them, it's a natural place to be exposed to new posts and things they may not have known were being written about.

And beyond that, I will still post to Twitter a little bit. I don't find that particularly useful at this point. I think Twitter has devolved to the point where it's not a primary source of traffic for a lot of newsletters or podcasts in my sphere at least. And so I find that to be less useful and less relevant at this point. I've experimented a little bit with Threads and I may do a little bit more with that because I think that's a growing community and could be interesting going forward. But in general, social media is not a primary driver for me, I would say.

More quick hits

"At the moment, adapting homegrown IP to gaming is a particular focus for Netflix. There are over 80 games in development based on Netflix programming including 'Emily in Paris' and 'Selling Sunset,' according to a company representative." [Digiday]

The NBA's $76 billion deal isn't just a great payday for the league, it represent Hollywood's complete surrender to the reality that live sports are more valuable than every other form of TV programming. [Hollywood Reporter]

You might not have thought much about the rapper 50 Cent for the past 20 years, but he's quietly become a media mogul, serving as the executive producer for a range of shows and film projects. [THR]

Pop culture social media accounts that are likely seen by millions of people who typically avoid political news are posting lots of pro-Kamala content. Some Democratic operatives are hopeful that this will move independent voters. [Vanity Fair]

Lots of attention is paid to the decline of legacy local newspapers, but not enough to the rising number of digital-only startups that are finding sustainable models for local news. [The Guardian] I’m hoping to have Joshi Herrmann, the media entrepreneur profiled in that Guardian piece, on my podcast sometime soon, so you can look forward to that.

By enrolling every single one of its Prime subscribers into its advertising tier, Amazon flooded the market with inventory and sent TV ad rates plummeting across pretty much every other video platform, including YouTube. [FT]

Don’t take my newsletter and podcast for granted

I know that when a creator sticks their hand out and asks for financial support, the natural inclination is to roll your eyes and assume that someone else will subsidize the free content you’re consuming.

Well, I’m here to tell you that those other people aren’t lining up to pay. Currently, my newsletter and podcast aren’t sustainable. So far, I’ve been able to say no to all the recruiters who have approached me about full-time roles, but there may come a day when I can’t justify turning them away. When that happens, I may have to shut my newsletter and podcast down, or at least significantly dial back their publication schedule.

There’s only one way to prevent this: become a paid subscriber. Seriously, it’s only $100 for a full year, and if you’re using insights from my content to improve your own business, then that $100 pays for itself. And if you use the link below, you get 20% off for the first year: