Graham Brown: Welcome to the age of audio of my name's Graham Brown from the award-winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. The age of audio is a series of conversations with thought leaders and change makers in the world of audio that's podcast, radio, and social audio converging with big data to create engaging and authentic content for a new generation of listeners.
Hello? That word, that phrase, instant companionship that we can't underestimate that can sort of impact radio and audio, I suppose we're going to talk about, and you say that radio presenters were trained and you, were saying, I guess the other side of the glass as the producer, right? What did you see in what they did that we can learn from in the world of podcasts and what are they, what did they do differently that your average podcast that whether they're pro or amateur, it doesn't do?
Sophie Hind: Particularly from my experience in commercial radio, where you often have a music format with a presenter, it's not just all speech based, although it can be. What's important is that so what factor so that long rambling links don't work for the consumer in the same way that long rambling podcasts don't work. And if I start with the podcast world, I think what we've seen is it's brilliant that it's a kind of hobbyist medium anybody can produce a podcast, but what you find with people from a non radio background is the very first podcast they put out there is probably explaining what their series is going to be about. Then they put through lots of episodes. What we've learned from radio, I think, is how people can see. So,in each people might drop into episode three without having listened to episode one. So, in radio terms that, we program radio for reach and for frequency and taking into account how often somebody is going to listen and when they're going to listen. So they might not hear the beginning of the show. So you can't take for granted that they know what you're talking about. So in radio every link is crafted so that it's understandable to someone who may have just switched on at that point. See, you can't start a radiative link with, as I was talking about earlier, you have to be succinct and clear, and I think exactly the same applies to podcasting in each episode to craft it well, you need to almost have that kind of catch-up or narrative or tell a story so that episode works in isolation or automatically links back to what's come before.
Graham Brown: Can you do that if you're, let's say an insurance brand and you are thinking about, how do I use a podcast to, their first step is going to be, how do we sell insurance? Right. Which maybe that ain't gonna work directly here. We need to step back a little bit. But as a, we're not interesting as a brand, we don't do that kind of narrative stuff. Is that relevant? How do you talk to people and how do you talk to them in that kind of situation?
Sophie Hind: So with something like that, you need to take, I guess, the issue or the information and the craft is finding a way to make it relevant and personal to people. So every year we all need insurance in our lives. We all buy insurance, but there are multiple different types of insurance without pet insurance, car insurance, home insurance. So, what a good podcast is not a tell situation, it's going to leave the listener with something valuable and an information that's presented i think in a really clear, easy to understand way. So you may have an expert with a non-expert and it's about teasing out the information in a conversational way. I think that's another thing that's so key about audio is it's got to be conversational, what people love about podcasts is their authenticity.They're not preachy, they're not high brow. They're either information or educational, like listening to a couple of friends in a studio talking about something. So whatever the subject matter is, it's bringing it to life in that kind of close to me, conversational type of way.
Graham Brown: Yeah. I mean, the way you describe it, the conversational aspect, the authenticity, these are all very much the words that people talk about when they think about the format. A lot of people think about this as these sort of more vulnerable conversations as well, that we don't have necessarily on a day-to-day basis inside companies as well. So there's all sort of this discovery process going on about what podcasts could be and how they are being developed as well and we've come a long way since obviously, if we go back to how serial, put it on the map for everybody and people really start listening to podcasts and how brands are kind of learning that it's got to go beyond man steep speaks to man type podcast and those kinds of adopters, more interesting narratives.From your perspective, what's really interesting in this space at the moment, who's really pushing the boundary and inspiring you in terms of content, formats and ideas about podcasts?
Sophie Hind: Very interested in what Spotify are doing at the moment. So love the fact that as a business, they've recognized, they've got this huge engaged audience that they've built up through audio listening, but music listening but i have realized that from a commercial perspective, podcasting is going to be more valuable to them as a media commodity than just music advertising in music and I'm really interested in some of the ideas and the series that they're commissioning and they're building on what some of the other publishers are doing with the kind of daily drive short form audio. And we've seen a massive trend towards short-form audio, which for me as an individual suits me perfectly. I struggle to listen to an hour or two hour podcast, but I love 5 ,10, 15, 20 minute podcasts. So I like the sort of moves to shorter episodes I find quite inspiring. I also think it's really interesting what FIFA has done recently. We do a lot of work in sports, so the whole FIFA sounds thing for me is really interesting to see a big fairly kind of corporate rights holder realizing they need to do something image marketing wise. So trying to present themselves more as more than just the football brands and it's they've seen that crossover between art, music, football and zoning in on the personality aspects. So, bringing a musical person and a sports person together to discuss issues is quite interesting and it's a similar thing. If you think about premier league football clubs, we've now seen that most football clubs have one or two big stars whose personal brand is probably bigger than the club itself in terms of their social following or anything else. It's a similar thing. So I think,I'm excited about personalities using audio in new ways and crossover between different areas and to see a bigger organization like FIFA moving into that space in a less obvious way is quite exciting.
Graham Brown: And why do you think they're doing it? What's driving them? Is it that they spot new licensing opportunities or is it something beyond that?
Sophie Hind: I think it's a few things. It's part of their brand definition. So I think there, this is my personal view, but I think their reputation is quite steroidal and gray and so they want us to extend that brand outside of just sport. Probably the gaming brand has already got some links in life with music. So it plays in perfectly to that so they're exploiting. I suppose some current trends to just help extend that brand values and movement to other areas. So there is a big commercial element too, as well with FIFA, for sure.
Graham Brown: Absolutely. Yeah I mean, obviously it's a brand that's really, hasn't had a great PR run for the last few years. Has it? I mean it's always kind of I mean, what the situation is, we don't have to go into, on tape so yeah, I'm okay. The Spotify part is fascinating, isn't it? Obviously this kind of brings us around a little bit to the search and the AI part, as well as the, I see effectively Spotify have realized where the commercial sense lies. Obviously, a business built around record labels is never going to be a great business because they're taking a small cut of every dollar effectively. The rest has been paid to performance rice, the mechanical rights societies and so on. They're only getting a little bit and they have very little control over the pricing and now here along comes podcasts. And even that, that Joe Rogan deal, if you think, oh, a hundred billion, that was too much money, but their share price increased 10% the same day, that was like $2.7 billion in value on their market cap. So, was it a good investment? It paid off like day one for them. If you look at it from the CEO's perspective, but I'm really interested in, the kind of noises they're making, the things they're trying, like you've mentioned the short form staff they're doing like that kind of daily drive mix now aren't they, which they've been trialing, which is really interesting. It's like radio automation, which is like really, I think they, they tap it into something. They're testing it now. If you look at what they're doing on the research side, there's a lot going into such as well. And, indexing all of the audio. What do you see that is really interesting in that space at the moment, that excites you?
Sophie Hind: I was thinking about this, about the way they surface content compared to apple. If you listen on apple, if you listen on Spotify, And neither of them, or publishing, or see what they're doing in the background with the SEO and the algorithms but there's definitely some interesting thinking about how Spotify are going to start using their data to suggest content for you. I don't have all the answers to it, but I think that it was with podcast SEO at the moment. If we move into that area for a second it's still the most prominent way you're going to find a podcast is probably apple, Spotify and as a podcast you still, everybody needs to use all the basic tricks and there's a whole list of things you can do so every way, you'll hear the listen for a review, which I'm sure you use. But you know, it's really important that you use all the tricks that you use in traditional SEO in pompous SEO so, everything from the title of your podcast and your show, show description, there's some really interesting tricks in terms of phrases, you've got to use that kind of explicit description. Having a web page helps promote social health, but there is no silver bullet. I don't think of a name for that.
Graham Brown: Yeah. I was speaking to Todd, the founder of blueberry podcasting. They were like the OGs of podcasting. He said that thing up in 2005, not right and it's amazing how out of the game there were so, and he was saying that the biggest, [inaudible] from their data so it may be skewed. The biggest discovery tool for podcasts is Google, meaning we can’t overlook at it. It's like people go to Google and search it and that's where they find most podcasts and then they'll go and they'll follow that to the apple or Spotify, right?
Sophie Hind: Yeah.
Graham Brown: But increasingly I think, Spotify and apple have to change their game because let you go on apple, you go on Spotify that's experience that you have is going to determine which one you're going to go back to because you've already now started saying that you prefer Spotify in certain instances, right? In terms of experience, certain instances are better and that's going to bring more people across. Right? So I'm really curious about how that's going to play out now. Really, I wonder what you think about this, that Spotify recently did a deal with Facebook and that was to bring the Spotify player to Facebook and the one point X billion Facebook users. Now the interesting angle on that is that in 2001, 20 years ago, Google did a deal with Yahoo and Yahoo used to be powered by the search engine Inktomi and they dropped Inktomi and all Yahoo search got powered by Google in 2001. And all that time, Google was collecting data. They were getting to Yahoo's customers.They were learning about them. Learning about their journeys and stuff. And then in 2004, Yahoo realized, hang on a second, what's going on here? And then they realized that was a really bad deal and they dumped Google and took everything back in-house again and then I saw, Spotify did this deal with Facebook looking at that looks really familiar to me. I'm wondering what you think about all of these kinds of tie-ups in the audio space at the moment and what you can read into that cause I guess your content publishers must be wondering, do we get on Facebook? Do we get on Twitter spaces? Do we get on clubhouse? What are you telling them at the moment?
Sophie Hind: Yeah, it's fascinating. Isn't it? And I think first of all, what's exciting is that all the social media platforms are either developed audio products or experiments in audio number one. So isn't it incredible that it just reinforces the fact that people want audio. People want to communicate through voice, which is a whole other side of our business because it's quicker and easier. So yeah, Twitter, Facebook. So with our clients, it's about being where your customers are so when we produce audio or podcasts for our clients, we will always produce audio cuts or audio grams as we call them to go on all their social channels, whether that be Facebook, Twitter etc. Things like Twitch and clubhouse are really important, particularly in the sports world at the moment. So it's about having a presence on those channels as well. But I think it's fascinating, you know what you've just said about that Facebook type and I'm excited to see more really, I think that certainly in terms of how we get stuff promoted to us. And, with Facebook, it's quite a [inaudible] isn't it? We all know we've all seen the documentary because of what they surface. But I think Spotify certainly seems to promote more through listener tastes, not just topics or styles. So if you've listened to a particular type of podcast, They seem to recommend more on style or via a guest that may have been on a podcast that you listened to. So if you then allow her on what Facebook can do in terms of pushing content and tying in likes and referrals and stuff. Yeah, I think it's phenomenal. It will, undoubtedly, they've all recognized all the social media platforms recognize the missing, tripped with audio and they need to be in the game and they're clearly all doing types in the background. So I think we're about to see something quite exciting over the next couple of years. I can't quite predict how it's going to go. I don't know if you can. It's mind boggling when you think about it.
Graham Brown: Does it fix that problem that a lot of podcasters are having now, which is audience growth, say problem, I mean, challenge that they're finding a lot harder there's more of an incline now in growing audiences. It's not, if you went five years ago and you launched a podcast, you had an audience, right? That was it. Wow. You had a podcast. I'll subscribe, but now it's a lot harder as any media industry consolidates. Right? So do you think these are the answers like, Facebook and clubhouse, or are there sort of things that people need to be doing or things you're seeing about growing audiences and community? Because I imagine sports, they've been doing this for a long time. They know how to grow communities and they're what's happening there and in terms of what that can teach us about audience growth?
Sophie Hind: Yeah, I think there's a lot of issues, probably one is quality over quantity. So, you said in a podcast that has been around for 15, 20 years, there's a lot of content out there of varying quality going back to the radio conversation we were having. Having the experience of creating content for the ear and not the eye is a massively different skill. So, anybody that's coming at this with a radio production background will be thinking about how do I keep it engaging using those tricks to lock the listener and keep them coming back from war. Whereas, other people just approach it straight as open the mic off. I go talk and they will come. So there is going to be something around quality and potentially filtering I think in the future that doesn't exist in terms of surfacing your content and discoverability. It is a big challenge and as I say, SEO, some of the stuff we were just talking about is really important. I think we'll see more specialist hubs. So we've launched a sports podcast network in the UK for exactly that reason because, and blue wire has done the same thing in America. It's really hard to discover great sports content if you just go on to Apple because you tend to get just the same big podcasts over and over again. So having a destination, whatever the vertical that specializes in entertainment or student radio or sport, I think is going to make it easier for people to start to filter what they really want because at the moment the search engines on the podcast platforms don't really do it for you. So, with our sport platform, we were on a mission to help those podcasters grow their audience and grow revenue and make it easier for people to discover sport. If you like sport, you may want to listen to something that's about golf or sneaker alternatives. You don't just want to listen to the biggest football podcasts in the world, which is what you probably normally get served every time you go on to apple and the other tricks that we're employing is getting the podcasts to cross promote each other in their shades because a non conflicting, and I don't think enough of that goes on on the big networks either. It's more advertising focused than promotional.
Graham Brown: Yeah This cross promotion tactic has come up a few times. The people I've spoken to in terms of, this is what they've discovered in the last two years is really the 10 X in terms of, audience growth over traditional podcasts, audience strategies, right? That is one plus one equals three in that world. Isn't It? If you can find an online podcast and do a trade or even host swaps as well, it works perfectly fine.
Sophie Hind: Yeah . High Swaps and guest sharing. It's a really good tactic.
Graham Brown: Yeah. So would that then roll into podcast networks and different formats? Or do you think this will turn into something else? These sort of cross-promotions would be part of a podcast network's role?
Sophie Hind: It's certainly something that we have put in place for our support network. And we only launched in February, but early signs of really, really strong terms of the cross promotion tools we're using, but also promoting the network. In traditional media. So we've got a big radio campaign promoting the network. So using all the obvious channels is the obvious thing to do. But if you're an individual forecaster, you probably can't afford to do that, which is why I feel the specialist networks can do that and should be doing that.
Graham Brown: And does the network promote essentially off store ? Because once you're on store, I guess the only kind of promotion you can do is like in episode mid roll and stuff like that, I mean, I'm not sure how it would work with these guys. So you would like, like you say, if you're listening to a football podcast, you could drop in a bumper or stinger, listen to this right?. Got it. Okay.
Sophie Hind: Yeah.
Graham Brown: I just find that fascinating. I think that networks would almost form syndicated radio in the old days in a ways and that it's like grouping together in a way radio is discovery tool and it's like some way to discover content in the same way networks are filling that role if you like. And they just think that it's interesting how the model is almost taking bits from what worked, the difference with like traditional radio slays, open syndication isn't that anybody can submit to Spotify and apple, but now the flip side of that is cause everybody can send the cake. Like you don't have these captured audiences.Its like okay, what's relevant to my area?What's relevant to my life? , if I listen to jazz or listen to casual music or whatever. Now you've got networks filling that role because the main platforms, like you say, the search isn't up there yet. I mean apple it's just terribly as an experience for an app. It's just awful if you consider who they are. But, so I think,
Sophie Hind: As is, if you try to search in the Alexa, the Amazon Alexa skill store is a different thing, but the search functionality it's really, really, really poor. It's interesting what you say about the radio connection again, because yeah, in radio you're always trailing other shows, so the breakfast show you'll be trailing coming up later or guests on tonight. So I think the data that a business like Spotify has built up on its listeners and their likes, if you liked jazz, you might also like this and then we'll be a more sophisticated suggestion and promotion coming. And it, it feels to me that Spotify is moving faster in that area at the moment, but it will be interesting going back to something else you said about content as well. There's so much content out there. It's almost clogging. It's making it very hard for us to discover the great stuff and I hope that a lot of the big networks and broadcasters stop just taking every show that they create and chatting it out as a podcast, because it's not really a podcast, it's just a recorded show. For me, podcasts should be offering something different to what's live and it's just like recording in the old days a video of a TV show and shoving it out there for the moment.
Graham Brown: Oh, yeah. That's best. I think that's what somebody will do. Some companies I know are doing that, the [inaudible] reformatted to audio classic example, isn't it. But it sounds terrible all the conference panel sessions, reformatting the audio it's just awful. Yeah. Oh great. Sophie, this is really good conversation. Thank you for your insights today.
You've been listening to The Age Of Audio with me, Graham Brown from the award-winning podcast agency, Pikkal & Co. To get access to all the audio conversations and book content for The Age Of Audio, go to www.theageofaudio.com. One more time the age of audio.com.