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Following the success of podcasts like Serial and Freakonomics, the increasing popularity of amateur efforts begs the question: are they the new blogs? Laura Collins investigates
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f you don’t know the story of 18-year-old student Hae Min Lee – whose body was found in a Baltimore park in 1999 – and her high-school ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed (currently serving life in prison for her murder), you’re in the minority. The case was one of the most talked-about subjects of 2014 when it became the subject matter of the podcast Serial, making headlines and igniting fierce dinner table debate more than a decade after Syed was sentenced. Serial’s host and producer, journalist Sarah Koenig, spent infinite hours rifling through detectives’ notes, listening to interrogations and interviewing anyone who knew the victim, or convicted killer, during their high-school years. The controversial case continues to show up in the news as Syed’s defence lawyers attempt to secure his freedom and affirm his innocence. One thing’s undisputed, though: Serial made radio cool again. It broke podcasting records as the fastest to reach five million downloads from iTunes (it took just a month) and last year tech giant Apple told news site Mashable, “If there was a starting point, Serial is it.” Online magazine Slate launched its own podcast to dissect each episode after it aired and prolific internet forum Reddit created a thread for fans to discuss the show (almost 45,000 users are still subscribed). So when the last of the 12 episodes was broadcast, people were so addicted to the medium they kept listening. Some of the most popular podcasts include This American Life (from the same team that produce Serial), Radiolab and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History – where some individual podcasts are four hours long. When comedian Marc Maron interviewed US President Barack Obama in his garage studio, for his WTF With Marc Maron series, it immediately went down as a landmark moment in the medium’s history. While podcasts may have felt like an overnight success, they’ve been a long time coming. Back in the ’80s, they were called “audioblogs” but technology journalist Ben Hammersley coined the modern term “podcast” in 2004 – a portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcast”. Within a few months, the number of Google searches
for the word was doubling every few days (269 million results at the time of press). It’s no wonder so many people want in on the action. Podcasts drive workplace kitchen conversation as much as a new Netflix series or the latest Game Of Thrones episode. Finding out you enjoy the same podcast as a colleague feels like having your own secret office handshake. Better yet, telling a friend about a new series they have to listen to is like inviting them along to an exclusive club where you know the owner by name. (Our most star-studded suggestion: try Here’s The Thing With Alec Baldwin to hear the actor chat with the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristen Wiig and Chris Rock.)
“PODCASTS DRIVE WORKPLACE KITCHEN CONVERSATION AS MUCH AS THE LATEST GAME OF THRONES EPISODE. FINDING OUT YOU ENJOY THE SAME PODCAST AS A COLLEAGUE FEELS LIKE HAVING YOUR OWN SECRET HANDSHAKE” If you’re a fan of trailblazing fashion blogger Leandra Medine – alias Man Repeller – then you’ll want to tune in to the two podcasts she produces. The first, Oh Boy, features filmmaker Jay Buim sitting down to talk shop with inspiring ladies like editor Amy Odell, actress Mamie Gummer and Medine herself. Then there’s Monocycle, which the 27-year-old describes as “a 10-minute monologue delivered by me, which I hope makes you feel like we’re talking on the phone and you actually care about what I have to say”. Like most millennials who watched Man Repeller grow from a weird-yet-hilarious personal style blog into a legitimate fashion-based business, Medine’s interest in the podcasting game probably has you thinking it’s time to sit up and take notice. Maybe you missed the blogging boom but, in some ways, this medium feels infinitely more accessible because all you need is a microphone and a voice, right? Well, there’s a little more to it than that… The most common piece of advice in “How To Start Your Own Podcast” articles centres on the idea that choosing a subject [
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5
MILLION DOWNLOADS PER MONTH. CLAIM T0 FAME The podcast comes from the bestselling 2005 book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything.
500 – the number
of radio stations it’s aired on.
CLAIM T0 FAME Short seasons and an emphasis on experimental sound design.
that interests you, and that you know well, makes all the difference. “Starting a podcast is easy, but starting a good podcast is hard. Why try to make an amazing high-production show about science when Radiolab already exists?” says BuzzFeed’s director of audio Jenna Weiss-Berman. (BuzzFeed’s recently established network has four podcasts, including the chart-topper Women Of The Hour, hosted by Lena Dunham.) It seems a key factor in any podcast’s success is the “inch-wide, mile-deep” philosophy. Two guys from New Zealand, Guy Montgomery and Tim Batt, epitomise this logic. They started The Worst Idea Of All Time Podcast, which involved them watching and reviewing Grown Ups 2 (a widely panned comedy starring Adam Sandler) every Monday at 9am for an entire year. “I totally accept that we spend a lot of time doing the podcast and that’s a fucking stupid way to spend three hours, but it’s probably gained more notoriety than any other thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Batt told Vice magazine. Right now they’re at the tail end of their second season… watching Sex And The City 2. In an era where commercial radio is dropping younger listeners, there’s more demand than ever for entertaining and engaging content, and a big part of that comes down to the host. Not everyone is made to be a podcast presenter, and the right one certainly makes all the difference. It’s why Ira Glass, the adorably geeky 56-yearold host of This American Life, has become the unwitting pin-up of the movement. Glass has a tendency towards “vocal fry”, his voice vibrating to create a fuzzy sound, as if he’d been to a heavy metal gig the night before. It’s definitely not conventionally “radio-friendly”, but most listeners can’t get enough. And that originality? It’s a good thing, according
“IT’S AN EXCITING THING TO GET INTO THE MEDIUM WHEN IT STILL FEELS FRESH AND AUTHENTIC, WHEN THE FORMATS AREN’T HARDENED AND THE RULES HAVEN’T BEEN MADE YET”
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CLAIM T0 FAME The Huffington Post called Carlin “America’s best history teacher”.
to Weiss-Berman. “We don’t want our hosts to go through voice training – we want them to speak in their own unique voices,” she says. “How many times do you hear a podcast or radio host with a canned, performed, annoying voice? I can’t take that.” Though podcasts like The Worst Idea Of All Time would suggest otherwise, there’s an art to storytelling. So once you’ve bought the right equipment and warmed up your vocal chords, it’s a good idea to read up on production done right (especially if your podcast is a one-man job). US National Public Radio has an editorial training hub (training.npr.org) giving novices the know-how to get their voice into the game. People can practise from the comfort of their couch before they get behind the mic – no journalism degree required. The website, manned by a group of five industry experts, focuses on news broadcasting but covers everything from the basics of recording to finding sources on social media and injecting “documentary flair” into your story. In the same way fashion blogs became money-making machines, scoring their creators everything from beauty contracts to first-class flights to New York Fashion Week, there is money to be made in podcasts. But there’s more to it than a few hundred dollars in exchange for a product mention. “It’s an exciting thing to get into the medium when it still feels fresh and authentic, when the formats aren’t hardened and the rules haven’t been made yet,” says Matt Lieber, co-founder of Gimlet Media, the podcasting network behind the hugely successful StartUp series. “[But] while the barriers to entry are low, the barriers to large audience, and profitability, are high.” That sentiment is true for both podcast revenue and the medium as a whole. Tech start-ups were the first, and most loyal, sponsors. Regular listeners will have heard idiosyncratic plugs for web builder Squarespace or postage company Stamps.com on their favourite shows. Email marketing service MailChimp gained cult recognition when their introduction to Serial featured a 14-year-old girl mispronouncing the
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business “MailKimp”, sparking spoof memes and in-jokes. “I didn’t know it would become such a cultural phenomenon,” says MailChimp’s marketing director Mark DiCristina. But there’s a third piece to the podcasting puzzle. Once you’ve got your podcast up and running, and maybe a sponsor or two on-board to cover production costs, it’s time to spread the word. In the US, there’s Libsyn (or Liberated Syndication). The largest podcast hosting network in the market, Libsyn hosts more than 25,000 shows and clocks up 44 million monthly listeners. Wannabes can sign up for as little as $5 a month, with all the tools they need to bring their dream podcast to life at their fingertips. Spotify recently teamed up with LibSyn to offer podcasts through their streaming service. But if you don’t like what LibSyn has to offer, there’s SoundCloud, PodOmatic and Podbean, ready and waiting to make your podcast a hit. Locally, Shifty Jelly, a tech start-up run out of Adelaide, is paving the way for Aussie shows. They launched Pocket Casts in 2011, but the app didn’t take off until 2015, when it won the inaugural Google Material Design Award. Half a million downloads later (no small feat considering it costs $3.99 on Google Play Store and $5.99 on the App Store), they’re regularly approached by new podcasts looking to get the support of a major streaming service. “Interestingly, over the last two years we’ve observed a swing away from podcasts being primarily by and for the tech community,” says Shifty Jelly’s Monica Polewski. “Today, the most popular shows are telling compelling, real-life stories or sharing knowledge about the world around us, and are accessible to a much wider audience.” While most chart-topping podcasts come out of the US, Australia’s local
“THE MOST POPULAR SHOWS ARE TELLING COMPELLING, REAL-LIFE STORIES OR SHARING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND US... AND ARE ACCESSIBLE TO A WIDE AUDIENCE” industry is still making a mark on a global scale. “Science Vs is a great example of a small Australian show making it big. It was launched by the ABC last year, via an experimental digital-first program,” says Polewski. “We featured the podcast on day one and the show went straight to the top of the charts, where it has stayed.” Science Vs was quickly aquired by Gimlet Media. “It’s just such a great concept; a science show that pits facts against fads,” says Lieber. “And Wendy [Zuckerman] is a brilliant host who’s smart, funny and a person you want to spend time with as a listener.” Statistics suggest one in six Americans regularly listen to podcasts and that number looks set to climb in the next few years. When the first episode of the second season of Serial – exploring the story of Bowe Bergdahl, a US soldier held prisoner by the Taliban for five years – was released in December, it caused an online stampede and the website crashed almost immediately. Thanks to the social-media buzz, evolving technology and tools that provide an easy entrance point for amateurs, podcasts seem as enticing and profitable as fashion blogs did a decade ago. Lieber believes the future holds something incredible: “More great shows, new formats and genres, and much larger audiences. There are a few billion smart phones in the world, and each one implies a potential listener.” Welcome to the golden era of the podcast. q
650+ EPISODES.
CLAIM T0 FAME Launched in 2008 to cover the GFC, it’s now the go-to podcast to demystify money matters.
the podcast pack IRA GLASS
SARAH KOENIG
LEANDRA MEDINE
LENA DUNHAM
ALEC BALDWIN
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