3. Andrew Menczel, Founder of Piccolo Podcasts | The Age of Audio

Andrew Menczel, Founder of Piccolo Podcasts joins Graham Brown in this episode of The Age of Audio. The Age of Audio is a series of conversations with thought leaders and changemakers in the world of audio. Podcasts, Radio, Social Audio, and Data are converging to create engaging and authentic content for a new generation of listeners. To get access to all the audio conversations and book content for Age of Audio, go to theageofaudio.com.
Andrew Menczel, Founder of Piccolo Podcasts joins Graham Brown in this episode of The Age of Audio. The Age of Audio is a series of conversations with thought leaders and changemakers in the world of audio. Podcasts, Radio, Social Audio, and Data are converging to create engaging and authentic content for a new generation of listeners. To get access to all the audio conversations and book content for Age of Audio, go to theageofaudio.com.

Show Highlights:
  • I came up from a fan's perspective as well so that sort of brought that side to it where I wasn't trying to be a journalist as much as a fan.       
  • So I just thought, well, if you're an Australian cricket fan and especially if you were traveling or overseas and you wanted to keep in touch with the cricket action from back home, there's nothing better than a podcast for that.                                                                                          
  • I don't like that notion of a podcast where people can just get on and chat about their week and people are gonna listen to that. So I always wanted to get straight into the news and make it worth someone's time.                                                                                                                  
  •  Because I feel that with podcasts, audiences want that a little bit, they would want to get behind and understand a bit more about the man behind the mask, if you like.                                                                                                                                                                                            
  • But when you get them in a podcast, it's just you and them. Hopefully, if you're lucky and you're speaking to them for longer, it's actually harder for someone to keep up their guard for that sort of length of time. So if you spend a bit of time and slowly sort of try and unpack stuff and lead them to a place, you can get some pretty great stuff.                                                                                                                          
  • In Podcasting, one of the real strengths is this idea of narrowcasting as opposed to broadcasting, in which you can target a specific group of people and not dilute the message down for a wider reach because its small, but the concentrated fan base is a lot more powerful than a very broad and thin fan base as you would in traditional broadcast media.                                                                                                               
  • I've had a, I guess a classical kind of podcast journey where you start as an amateur in your living room and I've progressed to a more professional environment.                                                                                                                                                                                               
  • Data has become so easy for anybody to step up to the mic. Has meant this sort of flood of podcasts, which is great. The flip side of that is it's easier to produce, but harder to promote.                                                                                                                                                               
  • Now, everyone gets good people on their podcast. And if they're not getting them on their podcasts, those people are doing podcasts themselves.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
  • And I wonder as well, moving forward, the challenge that what's going to happen in the stores is that over time you're going to see this polarization just as you see in any media landscape.                                                                                                                                                   
  • It's still one of those industries where there are no rules and you should just have a fucking crack.