Abstract
This chapter investigates the much overlooked aspect of podcast networks in contemporary US podcast production culture. Emerging networks bring together individual podcasts and their producers under one organisation and make possible several inter-podcast practices. Based on interviews with executives of three newly formed podcast networks (The Heard, Radiotopia and Relay FM), their production cultures are reviewed in light of commodification models for cultural products. The chapter shows how, within the cultures of the podcast networks, the formation of these conglomerations is predominantly motivated by the advantages provided in terms of overcoming gatekeeping mechanisms, exploiting niche and longtail audiences, the exchange of social capital, and discoverability. As such, these motivations highlight a tension between podcasting’s promise of disruption and the mainstream/ commercial logic that reigns over podcasting production culture.
The author would like to thank Sarah Arnold, Linda Duits, Amanda Lotz and William Uricchio for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
Since 2014, an increase in attention paid to podcasting has brought in new listeners and, promptly following, advertisers and venture capital. Nieman Lab has been providing consistent in-depth coverage on developments within the podcasting industry. See for instance Nicholas Quah’s Hot Pod newsletter (Doctor 2016a; Quah 2017).
- 2.
Earlier US podcast networks are Rooster Teeth (founded in 2003) and This Week in Tech (founded in 2005). These networks, however, take the form of a multi-media production platform rather than focusing solely on audio productions. An example of a non-US network is The Podcast Network in Australia. For an overview of podcast production and distribution companies and their alliances see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_podcasting_companies. Accessed 27 March 2017.
- 3.
To be clear: when talking about ‘radio’, I am talking about the institutionalized form of broadcast radio which usually uses freely accessible media to disseminate audio content in a one-to-many system (see Hilmes 2007; Peters 1999), whether this be online or via the airwaves. This excludes other forms of radio, such as police or traffic radio, and even new iterations such as RFID chips. The phenomenon of streaming ‘internet radio’, I would argue, should also be set apart from the technology of podcasting, predominantly because of delivery over RSS .
- 4.
This lack of attention has been explicitly articulated in the Journal of Radio & Audio Media (2015, second issue), The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media (2016) and by Michele Hilmes (2013).
- 5.
- 6.
In each model, the financial transaction is arranged differently: publishers create material goods that carry cultural productions (such as books, albums, DVDs) which are sold directly to consumers. Flow logic is determined by the ability of an audio-visual product to create an audience that can be sold to advertisers. Finally, the logic of the written press combines the previous elements, for it creates an audience that should repeatedly buy a material product, such as a newspaper (Miège 1989: 12). Though related, the ‘flow model’ should not be confused with Raymond Williams’s more textual approach to the construction of flow in broadcast media (Williams 1990 [1975]; also Uricchio 2004).
- 7.
I say ‘current’ because approaches with portals for (non-musical) audio content are being developed, see Doctor (2016b).
- 8.
Despite the arrival of competitors, iTunes still accounts for 60 per cent of the total amount of podcasts downloaded (Doctor 2016a). Stitcher does offer a paid subscription service that offers premiums such as early listening , which only makes it a partial portal because parts of its content can be accessed freely but with advertisements.
- 9.
A notable exception to this is Spotify, which since 2016 has been adding curated podcasts to their library based on these qualifications: ‘That appeal to millennials. That it’s evergreen content. That it’s tech oriented. That it’s storytelling’ (Lybsin 2016). Note that Spotify, like Stitcher , is a partial portal as its content can be accessed for free, but with advertisements.
- 10.
Through this last ‘snowball’ type of connection The Heard was found via the Radiotopia respondent, for example.
- 11.
Since The Heard did not have these numbers readily available, each individual producer was approached to share their overall download numbers in order to estimate network-wide reach. However, the producers were not able to provide the numbers either due to issues of confidentiality or the lack of technical expertise required to measure their reach. Reliable tracking of podcast audience numbers can be seen as an industry-wide problem, which was addressed by NPR directly in 2016 (NPR 2016).
- 12.
Prior to the campaign for Radiotopia, Mars had successfully funded a couple of campaigns with the support of the 99% Invisible audience . Funding productions through listener support is neither a new nor an uncommon practice in the history of American public radio (see Loviglio 2013). In relation to Miège’s commodification models, the practice of financing through audiences falls within the publishing model and the written press model, since material products such as branded t-shirts are often obtained as reward for providing financial support. For more on the cultural practices surrounding fan-based support, see D’Amato (2014).
- 13.
Of the three networks discussed in this chapter, Radiotopia is the most explicitly active on the popular audio publishing website Soundcloud. Besides publishing network -related audio stories exclusively, every individual podcast publishes their episodes on Soundcloud, which get promoted by Radiotopia’s account. See <https://soundcloud.com/radiotopia/tracks> accessed 14 February 2017.
- 14.
Relay FM could not share reach or listener numbers for confidentiality reasons. In 2015 the network delivered about 1.5 million downloads per month (Dillet 2015).
- 15.
Of course, there are more historical factors that produced the current form of broadcast radio, such as social and governmental factors. For an extensive overview, see Hilmes (2007).
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Heeremans, L. (2018). Podcast Networks: Syndicating Production Culture. In: Llinares, D., Fox, N., Berry, R. (eds) Podcasting. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90056-8_4
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