YouTube represents a huge opportunity for podcasters
It turns out that people really enjoy watching video recordings of podcast interviews.
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Pod Culture: Podcasts are video; videos are podcasts
From the article:
YouTube (and streaming more generally) understands the incredible value that can be created from to-camera personality-driven monologues or dialogues. The fact that the dialogue is often with a chatroom doesn’t matter; it’s an interactive reciprocity that most of podcasting can only dream of. The camera serves to enhance the feeling of intimacy, and in a year (shit, more than a year now) when we’ve all had to get accustomed to the sight of our ugly mugs being broadcast to friends, family and colleagues via Zoom or Teams or Skype, the demand for that enhanced human factor is increased. Not to mention the fact that the technology for doing this has gotten simpler and simpler, and eventually will be hard to disentangle from any audio capture (as the latest iteration of Zencastr is proving…).
YouTube represents such a huge untapped opportunity for podcasters. It seems so anti-intuitive that users want to simply watch two people talk, but it can actually pull in huge viewership numbers when done well.
Name a major YouTube star today, and chances are their channel has an accompanying podcast. These creators were already adept at the video production side, and so they easily erected camera setups in their podcast studios and then uploaded the video, usually to a separate channel. In some cases, they launched two separate channels: one for full episodes, and another for shorter, viral-optimized clips.
This video-audio hybrid was pioneered by YouTubers, but it’s seen slower adoption within the larger podcast community, mostly because a lot of podcasters aren’t trained videographers who had expensive cameras lying around just waiting to be used. Also, for a long time there just wasn’t good technology for recording video interviews remotely; but recently platforms like Zencastr and Squadcast have rolled out pretty good video recording technology.
All this is to say that I think any conversational podcast that isn’t at least thinking about adding a video component is making a mistake. And I know I’m kind of a hypocrite here since my own podcast doesn’t include video. So maybe I should get on that at some point.
Why a Hell’s Kitchen print magazine pivoted to newsletters
Phil O’Brien did what a lot of 21st century media entrepreneurs would never do: he launched a print magazine, one focused on the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in Manhattan. Over a period of about six years he built out a steady stream of advertisers, but the pandemic shutdown wiped out his business virtually overnight. Out of desperation, he pivoted to a daily newsletter.
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Insider: Influencers are using text messages to drive sales with a new affiliate-marketing tool
From the article:
Text2Shop was created by MagicLinks and is powered by the text-marketing startup Community. Community works with a number of influencers, like David Dobrik and Addison Rae, to send messages to fans.
Delaney Childs, an influencer with 481,000 Instagram followers, uses both Text2Shop and Community to reach her followers in a more "intimate and direct way," she said.
After joining the Text2Shop program in October, Childs drove about $12,000 in two weeks, according to MagicLinks.
I don't think I could come up for less desirable service than one that allows Instagram personalities to send spam text messages to my phone asking me to buy stuff.
Daily Beast: These Alt-Weeklies Faced ‘Total Annihilation.’ Here’s How They Survived.
This is a really good overview of how alt-weeklies have adapted during the Covid shutdowns.
Variety: Netflix App Adds ‘Fast Laughs’ Tab With Comedy Clips Streaming in a TikTok-Like Feed
From the article:
The streaming giant Wednesday launched Fast Laughs, a new feature for its mobile apps that presents a string of comedy clips from its stand-up specials, TV series and movies.
Netflix’s Fast Laughs displays full-screen vertical video in an auto-playing feed, borrowing a page from apps likes TikTok, and lets users share their favorite bits with friends and social media. The company says the section will provide up to 100 curated clips per day.
This is kind of brilliant. Netflix is essentially mining its own IP to not only serve up bite-sized content, but also expose its users to a wide array of shows and movies that they might not know about.
Creator spotlight: How Seth Williams built REtipster, his YouTube channel for real estate investors
Seth has built a large audience through his YouTube channel, podcast, and blog. He spoke here about how he gets more mileage out of his content by cross-posting it to all three channels.
Want to join my super secret Facebook group?
Ok, it’s not that secret, but I do only promote it in this newsletter, which means every single member works in the digital content business. We get up to some pretty good discussion about industry trends. Join here: [Facebook]
eMarketer: Spotify podcast listener numbers will surpass Apple’s this year
From the article:
This year, 28.2 million people will listen to podcasts on Spotify at least monthly, while 28.0 million will listen via Apple Podcasts. Spotify has experienced significant growth in recent years; the company will grow 41.3% this year.
This was always a "when, not if" scenario. Once it became apparent that Apple wasn't going to try to match Spotify's investments in podcast innovation and exclusive content, it was only a matter of time before Spotify captured a plurality of the market.
Yes, we’ve heard rumblings for over a year that Apple is soliciting original podcasts, but other than a few one-off exclusives, it’s announced very few major content deals.
It also hasn’t rolled out any functionality for helping podcasters make money, and while Spotify is still early in this process, you can tell that it wants to eventually offer the same kinds of revenue opportunities that are now standard on platforms like YouTube. Once those are rolled out, then Apple has no chance of keeping up.
NYT: Female Athletes Are Undercovered. These Olympians Want to Change That.
From the article:
[Alex] Morgan, along with Sue Bird, Simone Manuel and Chloe Kim, has teamed up to found TOGETHXR, which they describe as a media and commerce company designed to elevate women’s voices, around but not exclusively within sports. It is their entry into the fast-growing world of athlete-founded media companies, joining the likes of The Players’ Tribune (Derek Jeter), UNINTERRUPTED (LeBron James) and Thirty Five Ventures (Kevin Durant), among others.
More and more pro athletes are taking their star power and channeling it into digital media businesses. We're quickly headed toward a future where nearly every pro athlete has their own podcast, YouTube channel, or other content operation.
Medium’s content discovery is still lacking
I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Medium for a long time. I’ve always loved the idea of taking the audience scale of a social network and applying it to longform written content, but for years I’ve been frustrated with how Medium handles content discovery. In short: I think it’s bad at serving users with the content that they want and instead attempts to spoon feed users with content that they don’t want.
Why do I care? Well, as a paying subscriber, I’m constantly perplexed by the headlines and articles that are put in front of me in Medium’s daily emails and when I visit its homepage.
But as a creator who sometimes publishes content to Medium, I’m even more frustrated. Over 10,000 people have followed me on the platform, and I don’t think Medium is doing a good job of placing my content in front of the very people who are most likely to read it.
Anyway, the other day I went on a little bit of a Twitter rant where I posted some screen captured examples of Medium doing a poor job of showing me content: [Twitter]
Creator spotlight: How James Cridland built Podnews, his podcast industry newsletter
Most solo newsletter writers rely on paid subscriptions to fund their work, but James monetizes almost solely through advertising and sponsorships.
Medialyte: In retrospect, the creator economy was inevitable
This is a good exploration on the differences between influencers and creators. I disagree that there is a difference; the "creator economy" is an umbrella term, and influencers fall underneath that umbrella.
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Simon Owens is a tech and media journalist living in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Email him at simonowens@gmail.com. For a full bio, go here.