For What It’s Worth

The news this week of the launch of yet another self-proclaimed attempt by a startup to become "the Netflix of podcasts" drew the same response from practically every pundit that I had: Is there really a market for subscription podcasting? I'll leave the specifics and the head-scratching over Luminary's plans to Nick Quah, who makes all the important points about the company's plans, but the episode has, I think, wider implications for content producers and the people who are looking to make money from content of any kind.

The threshold question for anyone looking to charge any fee at all for any content should be whether there's a market for what you're selling. That's open for debate in most cases; I'm sure Luminary's principals think that what they're offering is attractive enough to get people to pay eight bucks a month, and I'm sure there are others who disagree. I'm of the opinion that getting people to pay for podcasts will require more than just celebrity names or getting episodes before the general public gets them for free, but I don't think there's any conclusory evidence yet. But there are other questions that I don't see being asked or answered quite as much. They're questions you've probably asked yourself.

How much are you willing to pay for your content? How many subscriptions are you willing to have? And when you answer those questions, it's not a matter of thinking about podcast subscriptions, or audio. It's everything: Internet fees, TV packages, music, newspapers, everything. They add up fast. Some are more essential than others. And you, the content producer, need to consider where you are on the spectrum of essential-to-optional.

Needless to say, you'd better be as close to essential as possible. Unfortunately, that end got crowded as soon as on-demand video streaming became a thing. Remember when people were demanding a la carte TV programming and thought it would be a big money saver ("I'm tired of paying for channels I don't watch!")? Let's see... Netflix is thirteen bucks a month, HBO Now is fifteen, you can get Hulu for six, Amazon Prime is $119 a year, and while some people (not me, unfortunately) can get the broadcast networks over the air for free, if you want any cable channels at all, it'll cost you twenty or thirty bucks a month. Sports? The individual league streaming packages, and maybe ESPN Plus. So that's TV. Music? Unless you're listening to Spotify on your computer and that's it, you're paying them, or Apple Music, or Amazon or Tidal or Deezer or someone. Maybe you have SiriusXM in your car, too, and if you're a serious news or sports consumer, you probably pay for the New York Times or Washington Post or your local paper or The Athletic.

Radio and podcasts? Is there any room?

It's not out of the realm of possibility that someone will devise a podcasting or streaming radio offering that people will pay to hear. It's just as likely, or more likely, that the podcasts and streaming will be part of something larger. That's Spotify's game -- to keep you inside its walled garden for all your audio desires. That's probably how Pandora and SiriusXM will ultimately morph together into an online subscription option. But in a universe of a wide range of free audio options, podcasting and streaming alike, it's going to be hard for someone to make money with a subscription model if people will think, hey, I get stuff just as good for free already. And that means looking for another way to monetize, and THAT means dealing with a changing advertising market which is getting more programmatic by the hour.

Did I say this was going to be easy? Did I say I had the answers? No and no. But when you're looking at startup upon startup proclaiming that they have the answer to how to make money with audio moving forward, you're looking at people charging headfirst into a market that's pretty crowded and uncertain as it stands now.

Oh, and you're not the "Netflix of" anything if you're not Netflix. Try to be the first You of whatever you're doing. The next wave of profitable, successful content providers will get there by offering something unique and worth the subscription/ad rates/merchandising money. The "Netflix of" bravado may work on the investment class, but consumers just want something good to watch, hear, play with, or read.

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Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
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