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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +layout: post |
| 3 | +title: "The podcast bubble" |
| 4 | +date: 2022-05-15 17:24:20 +0200 |
| 5 | +categories: phylosophy |
| 6 | +--- |
| 7 | + |
| 8 | +Podcasts and podcasting are not a new thing but since pandemic situation it has been rise as a new way of entertainment. |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +I have been a podcast consumer for more than 15 years, of course not all the time same podcasts and not with the same consuming time. First podcasts I started to |
| 11 | +listen where recorded radio programs that I was not able to listen them in live and I use different software to synchronize it and organized in different ways. At that time |
| 12 | +I though it was a good idea because I could listen whatever program I like at any moment of the day without taking care when the program has been happened; after several years |
| 13 | +I have same feeling in general but with some points that I have started to consider before listen anything new. |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +## Rediscovering podcasts with pandemic |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | +Several months after first lockdown with pandemic I have decided to start walking to refresh my mind and doing some exercise. It is a cheap activity (actually is free), it is |
| 18 | +[healthy](https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/5-surprising-benefits-of-walking) and it can be done at any age and mostly at any time of the day. When I was doing my conmute |
| 19 | +I tried to do as much as possible for walking such as not using escalators or elevators, triend to save couple of underground stations if they are close and time spent is near the same than |
| 20 | +using it, etc. |
| 21 | +But I have to admit that being a remote worker and without anything to do for going out and without being a particular lover of doing exercise I had lost most of the physical activity |
| 22 | +I need just to be a bit healthy person. Pandemic with lockdown contribute it to put the things worse but at least I realized it about that. For doing exercise there are two ways: going to the gym/home |
| 23 | +and do outside stuff. I was not clear that going to the gym was safer -at the beginning of the pandemic- and in case of doing it, not very confortable to do all the activity |
| 24 | +with the mask. So I have decided to go for a walk, between 1-2 hours and depending of the path, between 6-10km. My target was clear, so next thing I need is something to listen meanwhile |
| 25 | +I am walking. |
| 26 | + |
| 27 | +### Podcast as a business |
| 28 | + |
| 29 | +I take my headphones, my phone and I opened the podcast application. I had hundreds of options to choose, between most listened episodes of the week, most listened programs and if not I can |
| 30 | +navigate through categories and then select programs and episodes. So I spend some time to subscribe podcast I consider interesting, with a variety of topics and each time I was going out I just |
| 31 | +play it and listen. But then I quickly realized that this feeling of spending time choosing what to listen is same that happens with [Netflix](https://medium.com/8px-magazine/netflix-and-the-constant-struggle-of-making-choices-dfbd6f240d64) and any streaming on-demand platform. This is the main advantage of classical radio/TV: content is fixed and if you do not like it |
| 32 | +you can change to another channel; probably you are going to end watching a show you do not like at 100% but at least it will be something. |
| 33 | + |
| 34 | +Maybe related to pandemic situation but I see a lot of differences -probably due my bias on content I consumed- between podcasting ten years ago and today, specially remarkable during and after the pandemic. |
| 35 | +We can say that before most of the podcasts were like *professional* ones; good content and good production; note most of them come from a recording of a live radio program or TV shows. There were other ones that we could say with more domestic production but with an excellent content as well. Of course this is not new, it is a trend and it was [raised](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/12/20/the-podcasting-revolution/) as a new business category; take a look how a music streaming platform like Spotify has been quickly moved to offer podcasts as Apple is doing: podcasts can be offered with a subscription per program, so we can say that is a *new* potential billion business with content according to the numbers of streaming platforms. |
| 36 | + |
| 37 | +### Choosing a category |
| 38 | + |
| 39 | +But after struggling with choosing podcasts and start to discard episodes or entire programs I classify them by following categories: |
| 40 | +- Based on radio shows: just the recording of the entire program. But I also realized that there are some programs which split the audio in several episodes, which is |
| 41 | +hard to follow. One thing that I did not mention before, most radio shows are also offered as a video streaming content, which it is interesting -content which is designed |
| 42 | +for being listened in live now is offered in all formats: live/recorded video; live/recorded audio |
| 43 | +- Based on TV shows: same as radio, but just the audio recorded. Problem of this way of listening the podcast is that probably you are going to skip some details and stuff make sense |
| 44 | +on the show with cameras but not with audio. |
| 45 | +- Single topic podcast: for example, ancient history, psychology, etc. Based on my experience this content is usually well prepared and with high quality. |
| 46 | +- Interviews: where each episode there is an interview to a person. I think conducting an interview is hard, close to an art as you have to prepare a lot to the person you want |
| 47 | +to make the questions and get interesting answers. But if the interview is not well-prepared it could be a waste of time. |
| 48 | +- Audiobook/stories: if well done it is a pleasure to hear good voice actors or actresses interpreting the book/story characters. |
| 49 | +- Soft talk show: with this category I put in the same group all podcasts where two or more people discuss a topic or between them about something like a friends bar conversation. |
| 50 | +Main problem is that probably there could be an episode which is interesting, but normally listen to people speaking and dicussing about a topic they do not know -or even worse, they |
| 51 | +started learning about it just the day before- is usually not a good idea for the listener. Think about it with the same but going into a pub. |
| 52 | +- Company podcast: mostly in tech sector -not sure if same happen in others- but is like *soft talk show* but entirerly dedicated about how cool is a company and how cool they do the things. Just a polite tip: if you need to repeat you are cool, probably you have a *small* disonance with actual world. |
| 53 | + |
| 54 | +So it seems that individuals/groups/companies have a podcast series with several episodes. Podcast platforms are scalable and the fact that everyone has a smartphone or a computer that can |
| 55 | +use means that podcasts can be consumed. You can choose between Audible, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Podcast, Ivoox, Amazon and more platforms that offers podcasts; and of course as a business |
| 56 | +they play with [exclusivities](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-05-12/spotify-has-exclusive-deal-with-armchair-expert-podcast) to move customers from one platform to another. Better to wait to the future to determine if the quantities payed for those exclusivites and efforts are supported by financial statements of the companies, because at the moment it seems that numbers are not as good they expect. |
| 57 | + |
| 58 | +But after that it seems that we do not realize we have a *pretty limitation*: **we still have 24 hours per day** and for example, [Youtube]https://earthweb.com/how-many-videos-are-uploaded-to-youtube-a-day/#:~:text=YouTubers%20upload%20about%20720%2C000%20hours,form%20of%20content%20online%20today) is uploading 720.000 hours per day; if that data is true it means that each day 82 years of video content is uploaded. So there are two questions raised here: |
| 59 | +- are we able to listen ALL new published content? |
| 60 | +- how can determine if a content is worth to listen to? Remember your time is limited. |
| 61 | + |
| 62 | +## Are we in ~~trouble~~ a bubble (again)? |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +If each radio program is published to podcast, most of TV program is podcasted, most interviews are podcasted, most books are podcasted (because we do not have time to read the book and |
| 65 | +we need the audiobook for *getting it faster*) and each friend pub conversation is published as a podcast, can we considered it as a bubble? As I said our day still have 24 hours and probably |
| 66 | +we need to use between 6-8 hours to sleep. Still have between 18-16 hours per day, which we need to work and doing stuff. I do not think that normally we can have enough focus while |
| 67 | +working and listening a podcast; normally focus is gone on work and other thing is a distraction. Distraction for working related with mental activities are destructive and has a strong |
| 68 | +impact; for non-mental work can be interesting always you have an environment where you can listen the content without problems. In an optimistic case, after working still there are 10-8 hours available at day that you use in your own stuff. Now think how many podcasts are you subscribed, how many episodes you have pending to listen and how much attention you pay when listeing them. |
| 69 | + |
| 70 | +That brings the situation of choosing what to listen and when, as everyday there are more and more new episodes to listen. |
| 71 | + |
| 72 | +I do think that at someway there is a bubble podcast: so much content with still time is limited about how much can be consumed. Also there is a concept here: quantity or quality? My bet |
| 73 | +is always to priorize quality over quantity. For example, if you listen an interview and after finished it you are still thinking about that conversation is a good one; however if you are listen |
| 74 | +to something and forget about it -just to have some noise in the background meanwhile you are doing other stuff- probably not the best one and it could be discarded. |
| 75 | + |
| 76 | +There is another thing to consider but it is more on the side of the *makers* instead of the *consumers*. You have an idea, a content and decide to write something. There is a format that |
| 77 | +needs to be choosen: can be a video, a podcast or event a blogpost. Normally reading is faster and more accurate than listening things; normally face expressions have sense in a video than |
| 78 | +in an audio, normally an interview where you want to get interesting things could be more natural with video/audio that then putting the transcription into a post, etc. |
| 79 | + |
| 80 | +My point and from a quality-focus perspective I would consider following points: |
| 81 | +- is the content interested to be shared? and why? |
| 82 | +- is podcast the right format for the content? |
| 83 | + - is more effective to write the content instead of publishing into a post? |
| 84 | + |
| 85 | +If content is not interesting, not the right format or it can be converted into a blogpost probably quality is not the metric you want to use. |
| 86 | +Note one thing in communication theory here: the message is the important thing, not who speaks. |
| 87 | + |
| 88 | +## Some personal tips |
| 89 | + |
| 90 | +After that, my personal tips for choosing podcasts: |
| 91 | +- There are podcast which production is not as professional as you want but content it is. Focus on content more in how it is done. |
| 92 | +- For some podcasts, be careful with biases. |
| 93 | +- Avoid companies/*soft talk shows* as much as possible, unless you find an episode or set of episodes with content you are interested on. |
| 94 | +- Whenever possible, listen to people who has a *skin in the game* as normally are best ones you can learn from. |
| 95 | +- For a better subscription handling: |
| 96 | + - Before suscribing, check several episodes to ensure you want to listen more. |
| 97 | + - Once subscribed, if you are not listening them for some reason just unsuscribe -do not keep something you are not going to use |
| 98 | + - And once subscribed again, if there episodes that you do not like of you do not want to listen, just unsuscribe. |
| 99 | +- As my previous post, configure podcast application notification. Note that in theory they are going to be consumed when you are intestered on and you want; do not be pressed to |
| 100 | +receive the notification of a new one or the notification of having N pending podcast to listen to. |
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