Getting Mighty Crowded

YouTube. Instagram. Podcasts. TikTok. Snapchat. All of them offering alternative, gatekeeper-free methods of creating and distributing content. No gatekeepers, no studio notes, no Program Directors or General Managers or General Sales Managers. Slickly produced or strictly DIY. Wide open.

Professionals -- the kind of people who make and distribute content for a career -- have always been dismissive of the podcasters and influencers and YouTube and IG "stars." That's not REAL radio or television. Nobody I know has ever heard of those "stars." Being a radio personality takes real skills and talent honed in countless small markets and developed over the course of a lifetime. There's no replacement for a pro.

Yeah, well, that ship has sailed. Newer generations are just fine with the content they get from the "amateurs." You may not have heard of their superstars, but that doesn't matter. In an increasing number of minds, what you do and what anyone else can do with a USB mic or a webcam are one and the same. And this week's news that Spotify is testing a method, powered by the Anchor app it bought a while back, that will let anyone make, in effect, a music radio show, a little patter interspersed between songs, in the right hands likely indistinguishable from what a pro would do, minus commercials and with complete, licensed songs if you hear it through the premium paid version.

Some people are correctly bucking against the shorthand that it's "podcasts with music," since you won't be able to download it and listen through other platforms, just Spotify, and you have to pay to hear it in its full glory. But there it is, radio replicated, anyone can do it, on-demand. Like podcasts, it's true that there might be a lot of these "shows," a lot -- most -- will be amateurish, most will not have too many listeners, and many will die off due to lost interest. The restriction to one platform is another issue. But if someone does something that catches the ears of enough fans, there's opportunity. And other platforms will likely follow suit with their own versions; Pandora already has its Stories, which is different but might be capable of pivoting to a user-generated model, and others with music licenses and usable technology will jump in if it looks like it's something people want.

Radio has survived the DIY challenge so far. It would take a lot for something like Spotify's pseudo-radio to take a big chunk out of radio's audience. (The whole of Spotify, and Apple Music, and other streamers, on the other hand....) It is, however, yet another little bite, a potential category for Edison's Share of Ear studies, and it does raise questions about radio's advantage over the many competitors vying for people's attention. If we've always assumed that radio has an advantage over streamers because radio has personality, what's the advantage if streamers introduce that personality in a form that's very much like a radio show? Is the advantage that radio is live? Voice tracking is an argument against that, though talk radio does have the ability to be in the moment that a pre-recorded Spotify show and a podcast can't (though social media is even more in the moment). So, what's the argument?

The argument comes down to being better. It's as simple as that. If you have always told yourself that what you do is a real profession and that not everyone can do it even if they think they can, now's the time to prove it. I'm like anyone else in the business; I have stories of people who thought they could handle a three-hour radio show and emerged with the understanding that it's a lot harder than it looks. One even walked out in the middle of an audition, never to be heard from again. (I wonder whatever happened to him. Something tells me he isn't podcasting. He may not even be speaking.) Podcasting proved that a lot of people can't do it, but a lot of people CAN do it and do it well, some better than the pros.

If you're a pro, you have to cut through the mobs of people who have joined the fun. You have to be as good as you can be. You have to be better. You have to give listeners a reason to find you and want to devote their listening time to you. And now that doesn't just apply to talk hosts who have to fill a lot of time. It applies to those of you who host morning music shows. It applies to DJs who pride themselves on adding personality to the mix. It applies to liner card readers. It applies to voice trackers. It applies to anyone who cracks a mic and talks with the intention that others will listen.

It's on you. The Spotify-Anchor thing may amount to nothing, but add it to podcasting and streaming and video and social media and it means that however much better you had to be when you were just competing with other radio shows, you have to be better than that. Everything you've been doing in your career now has even more competition. Step it up. (And if you're a talk host, why not give that DJ thing on Spotify a try? Might be fun.)

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Okay, some housekeeping. I will be off all next week. There's plenty of reasonably timeless stuff to talk about at our show prep column Talk Topics -- Click here and/or follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item -- for that, but I'm taking a break from adding anything for the next week. One-person operations need vacations, too.

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Okay, then, I'm going off the grid for a week, if "off the grid" means sleeping an hour later and not checking my phone, computer, and email every 30 seconds. It's our 30th anniversary next week; We couldn't do the traveling we had previously planned as our celebration, and I don't want to look back on the occasion and remember it as working the way I always do. So, I'm outta here for a little bit. Stay safe and we'll reconvene on the 26th.

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