Graham Brown: Welcome to The Age Of Audio my name is 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.
All right, Olli, let's talk about podcasts and maybe we can start with journalism itself. Your background, you are a trained journalist, as I understand, like for many years of being a reporter. What do you see as the sync between podcast and journalism? Is it a natural fit? What are you seeing people doing with podcasts in that space now? What's interesting?
Olli Sulopuisto: Well, I think that, first of all, podcasting is a direct descendant of blogging and that sort of whole ethos of doing it yourself, which always was a problem for journalists. Like they didn't know what to do with blogging. At first, it was like, blogging is something that amateurs do. It's not something that professionals trained journalists do. And it took a good long while for blogging to be integrated into traditional journalism in a way. But it got there and I think that podcasting is like the same thing. At first, it seems like an off-start thing that the other side is doing. Like they aren't following our norms and our professional ethos and ways of doing things. And that's why there was a bit of a mismatch at first for many organizations. But once you get the hang of it, once you see the strengths and you start to understand, for example, what are the differences between doing FM radio? Narrated, non edited radio journalism, which is much of what happens in Finland and also what's the relationship between the written word and spoken word oral traditions are different, oral storytelling is different than I think that journalists. And I do think that it's mostly just singular people more than organizations, at least more than legacy organizations that realize that creating a podcast and finding an audience and keeping an audience is a really powerful way. I mean, that's something that is really hard to do in any other medium, because the audience relationship is so different and the way you relate to those people is so different. So that's where the journalists or the journalism that I think of as being the most interesting thing in podcasting is instead of looking.
Graham Brown: How has that translated? Well, so have you seen successful journalists translate well into successful podcasts?
Olli Sulopuisto: If I look at it from just, strictly a finished point of view and this year in 2021, I don't think there are that many strong contenders there. There are a few, and interestingly enough, I think the Finnish examples are mostly radio journalists. So that also tells you something about how they have the organizational cloud to do something in traditional broadcasting, but still they find the need and they find some success in creating a podcast. Specifically like something that is distributed on demand digitally that is not constrained by whatever traditional constraints on form or shape or something else you have in there.
So there are a few of those again. If I look at it from a very finished perspective, many of the most interesting podcasters are still coming from outside the traditional circles, Also that is something that the finished journalistic organizations, the bigger and the smaller ones are struggling with. I mean, partly because of money, partly, maybe because of skills, but yeah, I don't see any super strong successes here in that direction. Yes. I'm hopeful Obviously.
Graham Brown: Well, I imagine you absorb a lot from outside, right? I mean, the level of English in Finland is pretty high and it's a market that always has traditionally been outwardly focused. Hasn't it? So the kind of stuff that's popular in Finland at the moment. What was the sort of balance between local and foreign content?
Olli Sulopuisto: There are no hot numbers, obviously because we don't have a national level tracker, but I'd say that interest in Finnish language content is growing constantly. And I mean, that's natural, if you think about it, that at first you hear the big American shows, maybe some of the UK shows, but like you have basically English language content, but it's not in our native finish. And when you get the first finished upstarts, they get a lot of interest. And by now we're at that point where if you look at the Spotify top charts or the apple podcast charts, you'll see a bunch of lifestyle content in there, you'll see a bunch of true crime content in there, all finished shows. And it's not like they're select of those shows in English. So I suppose that many of the previously popular genre shows that were in English are now replaced by those Finnish ones, for example, in those genres. So I guess that the total pie of listening, if you were to look at it, it must be mostly Finnish cause if you even though yeah people do speak English, but there's always been a clamor for finished stories and just stories that are in finish, even if they maybe they're slightly clumsier or the production values, aren't so high, but still there is something that connects really strongly, if you use your mother tongue, your native tongue. So, It must be over 50-50 for finnish content off the top of my head. Don't hold me to this. It's not a real number, but I might guess that we're at something like 80-20, or even 90-10, finished slash other languages.
Graham Brown: That's interesting. Yeah, that's a good sign. Isn't it? And if we chatted about this before, when we last spoke is if we were to go back 20 years in Finland, it's a very different world. And yet Finland was really in the ascendance with Nokia and everybody that came from Nokia had all the Nokia alumni who started content services and then Finland, later Sweden became very much at the heart of driving content in Europe and both globally as well. Some of the brands are still around. So really Finland was in the driving seat of a communications revolution. Is the aspect of that sort of repeating itself or is this different this time? Because I'm seeing, for example, in different markets, lots of young people picking up podcasts. And that's what was quite encouraging because the North European countries were always quite advanced when it came to young people in texting 20 years ago. What are you seeing in Finland that you're seeing a lot of young people like creating podcasts, you seeing anything on the business side, outside of content itself for people creating interesting apps or products around it?
Olli Sulopuisto: Well, at least if you look at the podcast listening studies from Finland, it is still heavily skewed towards young adults. So maybe they're 18 to 30, 35, like they're the consumption or, familiarity with podcasts and listening to podcasts steadily that's way over 50%, depending on the study, you look at it, it's at 60 or more. So definitely they're still there. So we don't have that nice bell curve where each segment listens to podcasts, as much as they do. So, still skewers young, and then on the sort of the production side and especially the means of production side, If you were to look at it from a market perspective, I often wonder about the reasons why Sweden seems to be just a few steps ahead of us. That's happened in many other respects. There was this thing that people said in the early audience that digital advertising Sweden is like two years ahead of us. So whatever is happening in Sweden now will be happening in Finland in a couple of years, you just, looking at the distribution of money towards internet advertising versus traditional ads. And something similar seems to happen with podcasts. Like we've had the national video on demand and audio on demand service [inaudible], like BBC iPlayer. We've had that for years. So like we've had the technology, we've had the smart phones, we've had cheap mobile data, like there basically there's nothing on the technology side that would have stopped a bunch of finnish content creators from creating their own shows and becoming huge. But for whatever reason, it seems like the Swedes were yet again a couple of steps ahead of us. And now we've I don't know if we've caught up to them, but at least we are up to speed right now. And I guess that I don't see any huge differences in trends either on the consumption side or the production side, if we're looking at Western Europe slash the Americas one big contributing factor is the fact that we do have a Public broadcasting corporation in Finland that creates some sort of shows. So the niche areas that are available are different from say, the US there may be more similar to what happens in the UK in that respect. So that's maybe why true crime and the lifestyle podcasts and that kind of things have popped up because some of the, like the, your more artsy cultural needs are maybe better filled by our national broadcasting company. But on the other hand, if I'm thinking about if there are any innovations, I mean, there was a Finnish startup that did short form audio a couple of years ago. It wasn't like Tik-Tok as now that I know. It wasn't like a clubhouse, but now that clubhouse is a thing here as well. At least it's about the founder. I know him, like he's had some interesting thoughts about whether they basically had the right idea, but their go to market timing was off or something like that. Is there still a need for that kind of thing, but maybe they were still trying to compete with the traditional podcast, audio on demand, players in the market and that's why they failed. So there've been a few tries put like that, but nothing big thus far, obviously like once we hit stop on this, there will be news of some huge funding round of our new innovative growth, finished audio.
Graham Brown: Yes, yeah okay. One of the things I'm interested in is how people use podcasts or any kind of democratised medium to tell stories. And in particular, journalism is a type of storytelling really isn't it in some form? And then when you, even if you look at history, like the printing press enabled the production of cheap publications. The first books that were published with chapbooks, which were penny books right. And that gave everybody the ability to everybody, but a lot of people, the ability to have a voice and then what changed, well, wasn't just the fact that everybody now had a voice that I should end that welcomed in democracy that welcomed in the reformation and all that sort of age of sight of enlightenment that came with it. So it wasn't just the fact that everybody had a voice. It was the fact that now everybody was exposed to new ideas and this concept that everybody has an opinion that counts. So hence democracy came later on and I'm wondering, as a journalist, how you are seeing podcasting? Do you think it has a role to play in this that it's giving a platform for ideas, both good and bad and giving people in society a voice that probably didn't have traditionally would have been a journalist right. But now everybody has a voice to express or what do you see? I mean, it's because normally I see north Europeans are quite advanced in this sort of space. They're quite liberal thinkers and progressive is there anything of interest happening in North Europe that we should pay attention to the way people are using podcasts and what you think it will develop into ?
Olli Sulopuisto: Well, I think that there are at least two perspectives that you can look at it from. So one is the fact that yeah, the means of production yet again, they have become way cheaper and basically now most middle-class, even working class people do have access to them. So it becomes a question of skill, charisma and all that. So one thing that is happening there is that oral skills, oral storytelling and skills are different from written storytelling skills. So there are people who may be even if they try to express themselves in written language, they might seem or sound silly in some ways, but they might be really powerful storytellers. It doesn't really matter what they're talking about, but just like their control of the spoken word, their mastery of spoken word is so good that podcasting is a great fit for that. So that's one thing that's happening and that is definitely I mean, there's some sort of social strata happening in the background. There, maybe it's a class thing, maybe it's an educational thing, but definitely that's enabling the kinds of people who maybe didn't have a voice before to actually speak out loud. And, but then the whole are they being heard? Well, that's a different question than that blows through aggregators and discovery and all that, but that's one thing.
So it was spoken versus written word and the other thing that is interesting is that we see in Finland maybe the similar kind of thing that is happening in the U S but on a way smaller scale that traditionally underrepresented voices seem to have found a good foothold in, in podcasting. We don't have a dirtbag left of our own, but there are a few popular, like rather leftist podcasts. There are a few shows run by BiPAP people who traditionally would have been very but you've got a token role. Maybe you'll get a show on ULI or a couple of people will be on the air there, but like underrepresented people, minorities. There's something brewing there. And I don't like it. It's an interesting question of whether it's the medium that podcasts audio on demand or whether it's just a happy coincidence of the changing times and like societal pressures and acceptance and then the medium that seems to be ascended right now is audio. Cause whenever a new medium comes along or a new service that gets popular, a social media service, then that's the gold rush. Like before the most popular spots have been taken and before they, the sort of status quo has really cemented itself in it, it's possible to start from zero and to actually grow a pretty significant following. But the older, the service gets the older, the medium gets, then the harder it'll be to just break in. So that's maybe one thing why, you know, podcasts haven't been such a huge thing. So that's why new voices have been able to use that.
Graham Brown: Fascinating. Yeah, there's a window, isn't there for sure? Even on the algorithm side, there's a definite window. And then you see anything with publishing isn't that like games, a great example, electronic games lots and lots of cottage industry publishers, and then it consolidates don't know. And you get the big, because it's controlled with distribution and so on.
Olli Sulopuisto: Yeah. It's not impossible later on, but it gets harder.
Graham Brown: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. That's very interesting. Even with websites, I mean, if you had a website in the old days, you had traffic and now it's given us it's hard and what do you think for all of us in this space, then who all these sort of new voices we can learn from journalism in terms of storytelling, because I'll give you an example. I recently read a biography by Robert Fisk. He's a war journalist. Who's his life in the middle east proper, embedded, not embedded, sorry, proper, war journalist who would be there. He was there in the Iran, Iraq war. Everything, frontline just some amazing stories that he told were very human and very touching and shocking but nothing was avoided, and even if you talked about the horrors of war, that was done in Through human stories as well. What do you think journalists learn and that anybody in podcast had really think about when if you put your journalist hat on now, if you can, and then help us understand what is it that you learn at journalism school, such a thing that podcasters should know about ?,
Olli Sulopuisto: Well I mean, at least will sound elitist, but some of the things that I think that help, if you have a journalist background, even in the written word, if you're a magazine journalist or a newspaper journalist, first of all, you understand that you have to put in the work. That's one of those things like you can't really just show up on a press record and everything comes out perfectly on the first take. Like you realize that you gather material and then you work in the material and then the shaping which its published is one thing. And it's different from the material that you gathered. That's the one thing I see amateur podcasts often struggle with. And obviously, because it takes time, it's not that it takes talent. It's more that it takes time. It is boring. It's way more fun to just show up and start talking with your mates. That's because that's fun. I mean, it's fun to listen to myself here, mansplaining on various aspects. But then if you start to think about what's the effect that I want this storage you have on people. How do I tell it in the most efficient way, then you have to put in the thought work and the legwork as well. So that's one thing. Separating the end result from the material. And, another thing is also that at least the best journalists, they understand hopefully at some point gather some understanding of what the audience thinks. So the struggle between delivering exactly what the audience wants, That's basically journalists will say that we are independent and nobody else, like nobody outside the newsroom gets to decide what we talk about. So that's one thing that sort of like the editorial decision-making, but once you've designed it, that is the story I want to tell, this is the sort of the payload that I want this story to deliver, these are the people that I want to reach. Like, how do you go about doing that? Do you build? Do you build cliffhangers? Do you, what sort of things do you explain? Like where do you give, what do you give more space to the people speaking? Like how often are you a part of the story? Like you can't be, don't have to be. In podcasting, that varies a lot. Which persona do you use when you're telling it?Do you step out of the way, are you a focal point for the storytelling? But at least You are aware of those things. So I guess that's not the most important thing, but like a generalized skill that anyone who's done factual storytelling in any medium could bring to a podcasting.
Graham Brown: When you look at, for example, the vast majority of podcasts now, which are man speaks to man about man's story.
Olli Sulopuisto: Yes
Graham Brown: That's okay. It's a start, isn't it? But when you see people doing that, What do you feel that could be improved in the sense that okay, that will be, when we look back on websites that were like 1998 for the spinning gifts and stuff, that's how we started out. But then when we look back It's actually we needed to up our game because audiences have become more accustomed to high production values now and narratives and so on. When people start out doing that kind of content, what's sort of the next stage they should be reaching for they don't necessarily need to be producing Wondery style content. Do they? Because that may be a different direction. But if, for example, it's man speaking to man. How do we make that better?
Olli Sulopuisto: Oh, well, first of all, I think it's important to separate your sort of intrinsic motivation and external motivation. So there's nothing wrong with creating whatever you want to produce. So that's fine. I do a bunch of stuff that I expect nobody to listen to or read or watch. And that's fine. As long as you don't expect external gratification, like everybody knocking on your door saying that, oh yeah, that was so great and it's so wonderful that you did it. No, it should be pretty much all about yourself that you get your kicks out of doing it. So that's one thing. Just separating the creation from the reception, maybe in that way, if that's all you want, if that's all you need, then there's nothing wrong with the show you're doing and you can keep on doing it. But then, if you start to think about this sort of the evolutionary pressure that you mentioned, let's say that we take whatever the top 10 shows of whatever genre in whatever medium be it, yet again written stories or YouTubers or Tik Talkers, Instagram stars, whatever. I'm pretty sure that the top 10 people in any market in any medium, they will be like, if you want to break into that top 10, top 25, whatever tier you've got to up your game. So that's why basically, because people often say that, you see that there's this one show that sounds really scrappy and scruffy and they have a million downloads. So it doesn't really matter, but you're not that show they started earlier and also they took that niche. So it's really hard to get in there if all the other stuff is polished and well done. So that's where the pressure comes from. And so I'd say yet again, that the next step that pretty often you might want to think about is first of all, think about your audience and think about your competitive advantages. So like, how are you not like the other shows? What can you do that The other shows are basically in your same genre, same niche. What can they do as well as you like, do you know something that they don't, are you talented in some region? Can you get people on your show that the others can get whatever. How do you stand apart from the crowd? So like , when you're bored, the average listener takes out their phone and starts ideally thumbing through the directories and they see your show and some other show and some other show, like, how does your show stand apart? And it doesn't have to be that, I have to get a huge reporting team and I have to spend a bunch of time. Maybe you can spend just a little bit of more time on your show basically in pre-production and thinking about it in post production and you can really get huge, massive advantages from those. The return on investment can be big in the beginning if you're used to doing things in one way, and then you just have to tweak a few parameters and you might get a lot of benefits from that. So that's like the one thing that I would start thinking about: how can you stand apart from the crowd and what it is that you can do better than others? Because it's a relative thing. It's not that you have to be the best. Like you don't have to be the best cat expert in the world, but if you're a better cat expert than the others in your pet podcasts genre, then you can maybe start building around that strength and seek differentiating from the crowd.
Graham Brown: Yeah, that's great advice. I feel that one of the areas, oddly that people miss out on, in differentiating themselves is building a narrative. If it seems to be that it's like driving a car, I know like people don't do that these days, but in the old days, people used to drive cars, right? Is to learn. And I think the first time you start driving a car, you're just trying to survive. It's thinking about what's on the right and the periphery is, you're just like, what does all this stuff do? And you've got the instructor, they're just like making sure you don't kill anybody. So that's like at the beginning, you're just like, oh, you're trying to take in all these things. And that to me is like, when people start podcasting, it's just okay, I need to record this thing right. And speak to this guy and record him as well. And then once you kind of like get over that, sort of survival mode. It's okay, actually, how do I drive? How do I get there? How do I actually do this? Where, go where I want to go. But it's a bit like with podcasts, isn't it? Cause people haven't thought that actually I'm not just reacting to every single episode, I need to create this narrative now and think about that and there's doing that in the episode okay, check out my last episode, where we talked about cats and cat hotels, and like next week, I'm speaking to Bob and he's going to give us his insights into cat psychology. So it's creating that okay, I'm going to go and listen to that one now not many people do that. And I wonder it's they're not aware of it, or maybe they're just not thinking about bigger narratives and the thought that may be a journalist type thing that you would think in those terms by default surely.
Olli Sulopuisto: You have to build the skills first, the base level skills. It's really hard to concentrate on higher level abstractions of what am I trying to achieve with this interview?, What I'm trying to achieve with this episode and what am I trying to do with the episodes that come out this spring? Unless you are pretty familiar and secure in your knowledge of how you go about first of all, how do you deal with all the technical stuff that aids requiring podcasting? It's not a lot, but there's some, and then if you have a chat cast, and interview based show, like you have to build your interviewing muscle. Like you can't really concentrate on the other things before you sort of automated that thing the whole, you've got to learn how to walk before you can run a thing. And then the thing with podcasts that is a serial medium, or not in the sense of being a show like serial but I sometimes say to one of my many nuggets of podcasting wisdom that I really have grown tired of myself cause I just burnt them out whenever, but I do think that in many podcasts with many shows, the most important episode is the next one. Like instead of really concentrating on this episode that we're doing right now and polishing it to death and all that stuff. There probably comes a break, even point at which you get to say that, okay, it's well enough and we'll leave that one alone and I'll direct my energies towards the next one, because I will only get so much return out of this episode anyway, in terms of like new audience and engagement and all that stuff. Like obviously you don't basically don't do put in some work, do putting some effort, a lot of it, but enough of it, and then start thinking about the next episode, because that's one of the things I suppose, that you see with shows that fade out after a couple of episodes, like people aren't thinking about how do I apply my strength and stamina in the longer run? Yeah, I got this great idea for an episode and I'll do that. And it was fun. And I'll do the next one and slightly late now,but I'll squeeze it in. And by the third episode, the intro will sound like, yeah, I know I'm a couple of weeks late, but yeah, I've got stuff in the pipeline that's coming up and it's sometimes inexperience and this obviously there's nothing wrong with that. But I do think that if you have the mindset from the beginning or at some point, if you start thinking about it, at least semi long-term or maybe even longer term than that probably leads to a better outcome for you and the show and the audience. Yeah. You start laying track for future episodes, you have a knowing call back every now and then you cultivate the audience that has been with you for a long time. You throw them some bones, you have some insider jokes and stuff like that, but you're still thinking that this episode, like whatever episode we're doing right now, this could be the first episode that a new person hears.
So like there has to be a way even for new listeners, but you're still keeping the old people there. And I think that it really helps. Do you think about podcasts in terms of seasons or series? Like it doesn't seem like a dispiriting idea that, oh, shit, I have to turn out 10 episodes. It's more okay. So what's the sustainable way for me to do 10 episodes now, 10 episodes later and 10 episodes, so on and so on. It's not like that old joke. They say about TV shows where if you went into a Hollywood studios office and you pitched a TV show and then the network executive would ask you that great so what's the story in the 100th episode, because they want it to really long running series and that could seem oh, bloody heck I gotta come up with an idea that will last forever, like a zombie idea. But I don't think that a podcast has to be that way. I don't think that you'd have to milk it dry.
I like most of the many long running series, they're still really good. They've gotten better. Maybe they adapt every now and then, but I think that'd be great if there's a problem thinking about them and that's what keeps them fresh as well.
Graham Brown: Awesome advise
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