| First Things First. The economy is looking rough out there, and it’s all but certain to get worse. A few resources to flag if you’re a US independent or freelancer looking for some support:
(1) The Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) has set up a “Freelance Audio Fund” to provide emergency relief to folks in the audio community whose incomes have been affected by the pandemic. Applications are open until April 25, 2020. Big disclaimer, though: the fund is only meant for AIR members in good standing. More information here. (2) If you’re not an AIR member, consider turning to assistance that’s being provided through the federal stimulus package. Producers, podcasters, and other creatives operating as sole proprietorships, small business owners, independent contractors, or self-employed individuals can apply for forgivable loans to cover payroll and various expenses. The timing’s a little different depending on your designation, so pay close attention to the details. Start with this fact sheet, it’ll point you where you need to go. You should consult a lawyer if you’re having trouble grokking the options. (3) I’ve been leaning on the following resources to get a better sense of support that’s available out there:
As you can imagine, the full swathe of support options is pretty fluid, so keep in mind that there may very well be more options out there. Again, these resources are mostly for readers based in the United States (which has a complete shit safety net for utterly ridiculous historical/ideological/ I’ll probably run this in Tuesday as well. People gotta know. Okay, moving on… | |
| First Things First. The economy is looking rough out there, and it’s all but certain to get worse. A few resources to flag if you’re a US independent or freelancer looking for some support:
(1) The Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) has set up a “Freelance Audio Fund” to provide emergency relief to folks in the audio community whose incomes have been affected by the pandemic. Applications are open until April 25, 2020. Big disclaimer, though: the fund is only meant for AIR members in good standing. More information here. (2) If you’re not an AIR member, consider turning to assistance that’s being provided through the federal stimulus package. Producers, podcasters, and other creatives operating as sole proprietorships, small business owners, independent contractors, or self-employed individuals can apply for forgivable loans to cover payroll and various expenses. The timing’s a little different depending on your designation, so pay close attention to the details. Start with this fact sheet, it’ll point you where you need to go. You should consult a lawyer if you’re having trouble grokking the options. (3) I’ve been leaning on the following resources to get a better sense of support that’s available out there:
As you can imagine, the full swathe of support options is pretty fluid, so keep in mind that there may very well be more options out there. Again, these resources are mostly for readers based in the United States (which has a complete shit safety net for utterly ridiculous historical/ideological/ I’ll probably run this in Tuesday as well. People gotta know. Okay, moving on… |
Stitcher Listening Data. Earlier this week, the folks at Stitcher sent over some findings on what they’ve been seeing in the data that’s specific to their portfolio. Here are the top-lines:
Overall listening has decreased 7% on average over the last three weeks, relative to the prior baseline.
Much like everyone else, Stitcher cites the lack of morning commutes as the primary cause of decrease in overall listening. Specifically, they observed that average listening between 5 am and 10 am dropped by around 18%. Average listening during other hours is down just 4%. There has been some uptick in non-commute hours listening last week, but not enough to make up the commute listening loss.
The company also notes that they’ve observed “a little bit of recovery” in the last week, as listeners adjusted to life indoors.
Some notes of methodology: the company looked at hourly downloads during the four weeks of March, and broke the weeks up according to phases. Week 1 was thought to be “Normal Times,” as in prior to COVID-19 social distancing measures, while Week 2 (March 9-15) was understood as “Initial Measures” and Week 3 (March 16-22) was “Aggressive Measures.” Week 4 was broadly perceived as a period in which listeners were adjusting to their “New Normal.”
So, for that last top-line, Stitcher saw a -11% listening change in the aggressive Week 3 compared to Week 1, and a slightly better -9% listening change in Week 4 compared to Week 1, suggesting a return to some kind of routine listening for some. They’re continuing to monitor the situation, and I imagine they’ll be letting folks know what they find in their portfolio.
And FYI: the sample involves just podcasts represented by Midroll, the sales arm of Stitcher (which isn’t included in the Podtrac sample). All those pods are hosted on Omny.Meanwhile, elsewhere…
Chartable, a podcast analytics company, ran a study on the podcasts they measure. Their sample is apparently over 6,000 podcasts large, but the make-up isn’t super clear from the post.
This one is from a week back: Megaphone claims that podcast downloads across its ~4,000 show sample are going up, though the findings go until 3/24. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Magellan, which studies podcast advertising impressions, has a blog post up on how five advertisers are switching up their messaging.
Torrential Storm. A bit of guidance on what’s happening with podcasting’s big picture narrative right now: as you might already know, the podcast ecosystem has had a long and checkered history with data, in the sense that there hasn’t historically been one end-all source of information that’s able to tell you a fully reliable, credible, trustworthy story about Podcasting as a whole. (That’s on top of conceptual questions of downloads vs. listens, by the way.)
On the one hand, this is more intellectually honest, frankly, because the reality is that no one party or platform fully controls or directly governs the entire ecosystem — thus having a monopoly on being able to tell its story — and what you actually have is a situation where we have to patch together a bunch of different limited representations in order to arrive at a possible estimate on what the actual overall story is. (Not to get super pretentious here, but the operating metaphor for me would be the three blind guys touching an elephant sort of thing.)
On the other hand, though, complex stories tend not to stick very well, and thus we often have a situation where folks are generally hungry to have simple stories and/or attribute authority to a storyteller that’s best able to provide that simple story in the moment. And so what we’re seeing right now, I think, is a situation where many different sources are fighting to be that storyteller, all of which have different relationships to that complexity.
I, of course, leaned on Podtrac to get a broad sense of podcasting’s sense to open up this week’s public newsletter. Long-time readers know I have my intense scruples with Podtrac’s credibility as a storyteller, in particular its heavily caveated rankers, given the incomplete nature of its measurement sample (which does include, for example, Stitcher, one of the biggest players in the space), the less-than-total way they have generally presented themselves in terms of what they represent, and also the fact that Podtrac’s sister company is Authentic, an ad sales operation. (It’s also been pointed out to me by a few critics of the company this week that the methodology for Podtrac’s “unique audience” measure should be questioned.)
All of which is to say: Podtrac should never be taken as a true holistic proxy for the podcast industry as a whole, even if various non-podcast-specific trade publications treat it as such. (On a related note: super interesting how everybody suddenly has an opinion/expertise about podcasting! Wow I sound super salty. What the hell, maybe I am.)
This sounds like a defense (because it is), but I’m saying that my usage of Podtrac’s data to kick off Tuesday’s newsletter wasn’t to treat it as a 1:1 representation for the industry as a whole — I lumped it a ton of the standard caveats in the opening column to that effect. Rather, my intent was to use it as a partial proxy from which we can get a rough sense of what’s happening. For me, the conceptual comparison would be, like, using a certain index fund as a single indicator of what’s happening in the broader economy. It doesn’t tell you the full story — shout-out to Kai Ryssdal’s mantra “The market is not the economy” — but it does tell you something about what’s happening. And I do feel, in this moment of pure chaos and everybody’s tumbling over themselves onto the floor, it’s important to get a handle on something, even if you need so much more to actually stand back up.
Okay, back to what my original guidance was supposed to be: beyond Podtrac, there are several different sources working to tell podcasting’s story right now— shaping it, correcting a previous version of it, providing more detail to it. (I highlighted some in the previous section.) But the main thing I’m trying to say is: consider all of them together, control for their samples and methodology, and embrace the nuance. And if you’re one of those sources, be frank and overt about the nature of your measurement samples. I believe that’s infinitely more helpful in orienting everybody to control risks more appropriately, better understand where the actual drops (and gains) are in the right way, and make better decisions at this moment in time.
None of this meant to argue against the fact that podcast listening in the aggregate has taken a hit over the past few weeks. It is, there’s no question about it. Second, the aggregate story isn’t the universal story — the specific layers of what’s happening is really, really important right now.
Wow okay I shouldn’t be writing on an empty stomach.Miscellaneous…
- Pocket Cast CEO Owen Grover has left after almost two years at the third-party podcast app, which was acquired by a consortium of public media organizations in May 2018. He will now serve as the CEO of TrueFire Studios, an online music education company. Matt Moog — a Pocket Cast board member, former CEO of PowerReviews, and angel investor — will step in as interim lead as the company searches for a new CEO.
- From NPR: “Sign Of The Times: Germany’s Top Podcast Deals With Coronavirus.”
- This seems like it has major advertising implications. From NY Times: “Start-Ups Are Pummeled in the ‘Great Unwinding.”