The Now & Next in Podcasting

Welcome back to Atlantia. Today we are talking to Nick Qua, none other than Nick Qua, the guy who was probably one of the first kind of signal in the noise signals for podcasting UM. And we met Nick a few years ago when we did g Podcast Theater and then when we started Atlantia, and he's just got a really clear perspective, not just on podcasting, but I also think about what's gonna happen in the future of the media space, maybe um in in light of or in addition to

audio totally. Yeah, I think the decoupling of those two things. And I know something we've talked quite a bit about is that, you know, many brands and advertisers and creators are saying you know, what's my approach to podcasting. It's not necessarily about what is your approach to podcasting, it's what's your approach to audio? Um, and how do you think about podcasting as a mechanism to deliver a narrative

within that. Earlier in the week, Nick and I got to sit on a panel with The New York Times during for Advertising Week, and we're going to talk about on the show, UM, has it hit the point of maturation? Are we in a mainstream phase of podcasting? Really interesting? What is mainstream? Right? What is mainstream? And to get next take on that? But I still think we're we're very early days and we have a lot to learn about how to leverage this channel to create conversation and

engage with consumers. So if you don't subscribe to Nick's Hot Pod newsletter, you should because I always found UM when I started researching what was happening in the audio space like three or four years ago, he was this you know, he had a community and he had he was this voice UM that kind of cut through all the um mystical ship of what was happening. So with that, Nick Kua, we'll be right back, and we're back in the studio with none other than Nick Qua, founder of

hot Pod and contributor to Vulture. Nick, welcome, so great to have you on the show. We were just reminiscing about our first time meeting you back at the Atlantia launch party UM, which is almost two years ago now, which is incredible to think about. And obviously the space has evolved tremendously since then. But hot Pod, your podcast industry must read newsletter, has just exploded. Can you tell us about the journey you've been on, and before you

get into that, really why you decided to create the newsletter. Well, I don't know if it's explode. It it's more just like grown slowly month over month, year over year, much like podcasting in general. I got into it because back in two fourteen, I was working in another news room and I had been a listener to podcasts for a long time by them, and the first season of Cyril had been sort of reaching its apex at the point

I believe it was it was November. It was somewhere like it's six or seventh episode, and a good number of mainstream outlets started writing about Cyril in the podcast industry at large. But it didn't quite map with what I understood about the community. Um and it's sort of like just drove me to build a small, sort of free side project just to like get some thoughts out

and essentially blog. But after a while more people started subscribing, and after a while after that, people from w n y C and a few other sort of like podcast companies New Synasty were stead of subscribing, and it just sort of never stopped publishing. Since what have you noticed over the time of writing about the industry people are are most curious about, I think people. So I've always thought about Hot Pot as a community paper. It breaks new sometimes, but it doesn't always like and I try

not to do it very often until it's important. But they usually sort of design it as basically a water cooler for various people from the community to sort of look at an issue and sort of understand the lay of the land. A given week, I try to sort of put in a lot of stories about how people are thinking about the space, how people operate within this space.

Of my bread and butter work has always been look at this team, this is how they're thinking about things, is what they're doing, and this is what they're worried about, but sometimes I step in to do sort of like thirty thou feet analysis into what I think is the bigger picture and trying to draw lines that readers kind otherwise drove by themselves. The world of podcasting in the

last to four years has completely changed. It's kind of mainstream now in terms of at least people listening talking about it, media companies getting into it, um, journalists getting into it, etcetera. What do you think right now are

the kind of biggest signals of where the industry is headed? Um. It's actually really interesting because I do wonder whether it has achieved a sort of sort of mainstream status, and I do wonder about that still a larger question of what it means to be mainstream and knows where the media goes. We sort of functioned to really like fragmented

media ecosystem right now because the Internet has basically flattened everything. Um. But the thing that's been super interesting to me about the past four years is I think we're going to look back at to mid is a sort of really interesting in between period and now we're only we're about to see, you know, what scale really means and what it um sort of an industry growing into something that has a bigger architecture really means that the biggest signals

to me are UM, you know, are hard Media acquiring stuff Media a couple of weeks ago. That's a significantly It's a once a massive radio giant acquiring a veteran very sort of hard at work, very functional, highly functioning podcast publishing company UM. And that to me is sort of a harbinger of things that come. I think we're going to see a lot of big legacy via companies by its win to the space and inject a lot

more resources into it. And the question then would be how how do you sort of grow this thing UM in a way that hasn't been just in like in a much quicker way, right like the past four years, in the past ten years before that has largely been a story of the industry or the community organ organically trying to figure things out on its own. Now we're going to sort of see UM sort of fire from a different direction. Any in your opinion that fire from

a different direction. Is it the same model that has been followed, like a more ad supported model that's been you know, the decades, you know, sixty seventy years of media or do you think that's going to change. It's one of those situations where I think advertising is not gonna go anywhere. It's it's it has been sort of the predominant business model for so many different kinds of

media formats and different kinds of industries. So what we're going to probably see on that front is, um, what we've learned from ad tech over the past ten years in earth set of technology industry being an attempt to apply it to podcasting, which is largely sort of developed the really storm of reputation and value proposition around um, you know, host red ads that are you know, intimate and baked into to the medium and baked into a

podcast episode. Um, we're going to see sort of all those two models clash and figure out what the new what the new sort of thing is? Yeah, what the what? What comes out from that? I don't know. I'm pretty sure that the value proposition will change as a result all the sort of messaging around podcastings intimacy and the effectiveness of its ad reads. It's going to be substantially challenged when you set of applied programmatic thinking to this.

But hopefully you know the numbers will lead to a better place and hopefully that we productive outcomes. But I think it's like, how do you think podcasting has changed journalism? I mean, if you look at New York Times and you look at the Daily, I think the Daily probably got a lot more audience for the New York Times, and the New York Times was getting before the Daily. I think you can cut into this question from two directions.

One UM what it offers legacy news companies and legacy journalism organizations that this opportunity to as you mentioned, reach new audiences UM and largely that comes from this dynamic in which newspaper organizations have beene for a lot of time, have often adopted like a voice of God kind of approach, and it's sort of a monolithic, faceless we are the authority on the subject style of news distribution and information dessemination. And we're in a moment in not just America but

the world where trust in institutions are are challenged. And what UM Audio broadly of sort of offers is this opportunity for UM people to connect people to connect institutions, people to connective journalists, and people to sort of really form of emotional emotional bond with this side that works really hard at producing the news but has historically been sort of embattled by a sort of people who question truth and things like that, but sort of people think

it from the other direction. It's it's sort of this in between place between old legacy news organizations and sort of the blogging, rapid fire news news organizations or sort of new media companies that sort of came to age in the mid to late two thousand's, places like Gawker, places like BuzzFeed, sort of sites that really built their identity around being one of the people being very voicey.

I feel like the Daily and Specific has been able to sort of build a space where it feels like this in between ground, that you're talking to a real person, that this person has a voice, but this person isn't particularly like isn't irreverend, And it's still sort of able to embody authority in a really interesting way. And I

think I think that's the wedge. What are your thoughts are sort of recommendations are best practices given what you've seen in this space for brands who are eager to either dip their toe or go all in, Because I think over the last two years, we've seen many different brands across many different categories go at this in different ways. Mm hmm. My recommendation would be to trust the natives

of this community. The heart of this product is an emotion, and the heart of this product is like an an intimacy of relationship, and so that is what you're either trying to develop if you were to create a branded podcast of your own, but that's also what you're trying to bite into. And as anybody in the sort of healthy nurging long term really you should can tell you

it's sort of like it's a lot about listening. It's a lot about being being attentive to how this community works and how this um, how this space does its job. And I think I would recommend this like listening to not just podcast publishers but um but too, but listen to what podcast audiences want. And that's that's kind of what you're renting into it the end of the day, what are your thoughts on what's happening in the programmatic space in audio in podcasting? Kind of as the maybe

counter to that, yeah, I don't, I don't know. So i I'm Morather the young person and the sort of the kind of person that I really tuned out commercial radio because I find radio ads this extremely assaulting and

overwhelming and just unpleasant. Um. And so that's my memory and that's sort of that's my um my relationship with the notion of programmatic, right, Like I came up of age in the Internet when sort of patter ads were like not great at its peak assault of this and so I think the question is that of can you use programmatic to scale quality and into the scene? Um?

And I don't know. I think this is unproven territory. Um. There is definitely a model into into which how programmatic could work for a technology like this, But you're not scaling quantity, your scaling quality um. And so that's that's the difficulty here, and therefore it changes I think the nature of programmatic right. So right now it's about chasing

eyeballs and volume. I think that you know, Laura and I have talked about a lot in the past that programmatic is the right idea executed in the wrong way. And that's in digital right add you know, banners and things like that, And I think it's possibly going to happen in audio unless unless there is some kind of genius around creating experience and letting that drive a targeted by I think what two things I think there are there are two things that might bring us to a

better place of programmatic right Like. I think the first thing is if we see really strong, clear leaders building out a model that that both sort of respects the meeting's intimacy and also it is able to utilize programmatic in the right way. If somebody can figure that out and be really strong and messaging that this is how it's going to work, it will lead to like the creation of norms around how you use programmatic that could

be productive. So I think I think that is something that we should be looking out for, and if we see it, we should elevate it. I think that's that's important. That to me only gives more thought around subscription models and people saying, you know, we'd rather pay than than listen to the same sort of experience Nickels alluding to

within commercial radio. So the curious to get your thoughts on the subscription approach and if you have any idea insight into those that may be um thinking about this and that you're excited for. I've seen unheard of a bunch of different plays within the space right now that's podcast specific. There as a company called Theminity that's trying to build sort of paid platform for podcasting. They literally want to be the Netflix for podcasts. UM. There are

a bunch of other companies to have similar plays. UM. Stitcher has Stitcher Premium, which essentially offers like bonuses and and interesting UM exclusive shows on that kind of recites on top or to the corner of their overarching ad driven model. I have written. I wrote a column about this a couple of months ago. I think we're looking at the wrong models. UM. I think we're looking at

the wrong metaphors. We shouldn't be drawing from things like like Netflix because they just have different histories if how they get to to where they are. We should be looking at things like head Space, which is a sort of meditation app that's able to slip into people's lives in a very specific way. UM. And it's and it sort of fits into a very specific use case for a lot of people that would drive them to say yes, I will pay five or six dollars a month for

this for this content. UM. I think that's the sort of model for where people should start before moving out market. But UM, I haven't quite seen anything as podcast specific that UM that's encouraging or that's interesting. Do you think there's a new model that needs to be built for Amazon and Google Home and those types of things in the podcasting space? You know, right now there are a lot of podcasts that are available on Amazon, for example.

I'm not sure that the same experience that we hear when we plug in our phones and listen to a podcast should be the same experience is when you're listening to it in your home. I think that's right, But

I think there are some things that do retain. UM. There are ways in which I can activate Alexa skills that overlap with the nature of being on demand, right, like one of the sort of bigger value propositions of podcasting sort of like you're able to UM, you made a choice to listen to this thing, and therefore it's something that you bought into and you have a testive relationship with to track this out, as opposed to something that's more of a linear stream that you catch onto

and you either choose to opt out or to switch around if you if you didn't like what you're listening to. UM. The way I've been trying to think about this is sort of the shift between desktop two mobile UM. The way that we had sites specifically designed for a stesktop that never really designed specifically for mobile, and as a result, there are breakdowns in that relationship when when one carries

to the other. UM. The question I think is sort of how do you either restructure shows or redesign shows that could fit in both environments or and or how do you build things specifically for alexa UM. There was a point that was raised in the at Week panel that that Laura and I did that was so super interesting, which is the coupling the idea of podcasts with the

idea of audio. I think that's definitely an inevitability. Publishers need to do that, especially not just when one smart speaker is really sort of become the touch, the first touch for most audio consumption, but also when platforms like Spotify or or pandor really really really sort of buy into a co opt um space previously occupied by podcast publishers, and you know, it's it's sort of I think it's it's it's all audio the end of the day, but it's all it all has to be sort of a

little bit more thoughtful than than what's going on right now, thinking about the use case and the utility. Well also, then I think forced brands to think about it's not just it's not good enough just to create podcast content or audio content. It's a strategy, like how are you deploying your message accordingly? So I agree, and I think, you know, Nick, this is something I'd love to get

your opinion on. We have been, for lack of a better term, in a really linear I think you actually said this earlier, like a linear media world, I personally think, and maybe it's more of a hope the audio is going to actually break that, and so we're gonna be looking at more non linear types of media, and that could look like something where you start franchising not only

a brand, but a talent or an idea. So if like I'm headed into a meeting with the CMO and I need to talk to them about something that's happening trend wise, there's no reason I couldn't have Serificial give me the top three things right as I'm walking out the door that I need to know about X, Y, and Z. All of a sudden, those voices, if you will, or that content I p becomes almost um uh just omnipresent.

What's your opinion on that, Nick, I mean, do you think that's possible and and and prompted by this kind of um potential and audio. Yeah, I think it's super interesting because I feel like we were always trending in

this direction, regardless of the specific context of the media industry. UM. Going back to what we were talking about early or sort of trust in institutions and trust and authorities have sort of been declining over time, and I think what has replaced as this notion of you know, trust, trust in individuals and you know, you know, folks kind of say like always invest in a person in kind of situation.

And I think I think what we're seeing I don't quite know how this translates to every media company or every new media context or different kinds of programming UM, but I think we're seeing sort of really interesting UM new compandia companies being built around individual voices. And one of the best examples of this is probably Actio says

and you were talking about Sara Fisher. It's not just her, but they've also built sort of um it's built architecture around Jonathan Swan who's their political correspondent, and and Mike Allen, who's the founder a co founder of acxios where UM they go into the world that you can read them in the newsletter, you can see them on TV, you

can see them on Twitter. They probably have like four or five different other touch points of how they're distributing the information that they know UM and you know, it's all sort of value being carried outwards into all these

different directions. The questions sort of how do you sort of monetize all of those and and the question for me and a brother's sense, it's also how to you adapt this model to other kinds of UM media context and programming cells and genres, because I don't think it's a model that could fit for everyone, but it is there's something intriguing about the truth that there is trust

in the individuals there. Nick. One of the things you and I were chatting about on that panel was around the idea of formats and the ability for people to get creative and not just thinking about it as talking heads or interviews or news style content, but some of the mechanisms that have been used by people like panically, where they've built been series around Empire and Blood, some of the relationships that are starting to happen with Hollywood

that we see Gimlet moving toward. What are your thoughts around sort of non news, sort of the fictional storytelling and the ways people are really getting creative with format. And so we've seen like a bunch of historically seen like a bunch of really interesting innovations over the past

couple of years, specifically of the podcasting. So in Para Blood dropped all their episodes at once, but so did as Town uh like I believe March of last year, where they dropped this entire novelistic story um down in I sell all seven chapters in one day and it ends up being this sort of really remarkable experience, which is, you know, in hindsight, what do you think about It's really hard to monetize. Also, it's hard to sort of evaluate the risk of whether you want to get an

ad buy on that um. But we've also seen, like I think even something as early as a comedy Bang Bang like that's sort of a really popular comedy podcast, your Wolf Um. They really play with how long you can go, how deep you can go a different segments and and sort of blurring the line between something that's fictionals I think it's not fictional. There are all these sort of different elements that carry different amounts of risk to the podcast on the genre to format that they're using.

UM think that for me, the prevailing question is sort of where where would the incentives for more innovations like this come from? Because there are increasing questions about UM the costs to really build a new experimental products of a high quality like this UM and for a lot of podcast publishers are not exactly rolling around in cash, so they're they're sort of a little worried about upfront advice. As a result, they're they're a little worried about where

the principal state comes from. So I think we're gonna see a bit of the push and pull here. I think a lot of the innovation is going to come from independent makers who are usually are working at a smaller scale and hopefully they get to move up market over time to experiment at grander levels. But UM, but it's it's unclear to me, like where the next thing is going to come from, because it's it's hard to sort of plot out de jectories and things like this.

Thinking about the roles that I think many of the platforms in the podcast space are starting to take on. I think in the beginning, everybody was trying to figure it out. Everybody was rushing to the market, creating content, trying to find their way. But cure is if you also feel that they're starting to become more defined swim lanes in the space. I think, you know, there are certain podcast production companies that are starting to develop a

reputation for the content they're creating. There's technology players sort of emerging and solidifying theirselves in the space, and then I think there's sort of these best in class creators um that regardless of where they ended up, you know they would have a following. So this is my litmus test.

If it's still possible that a person working or a team working with relatively few resources to develop something that can comparably compete with you know, something like this American Life or you know, anything that comes up from the Slate network, if an unknown person can stills take that attention and to pomp, then you still have a situation which the swim lanes, no matter how defined anydia are,

can always be challenged. And I think we still exist in the space where that can happen, That the next best thing class creator, that the next team of people who will build sort of the next big package company. It's still very much open and possible. There there are no sort of structural limitations that prevents that from happening. We might be c have seen the formation of different companies and an industry structure that reduces the probability of

that happening. Um, But the possibility that is still very much alive and and to me, I think that's that's still an interesting promise of the space. That's what keeps us coming back, right. So, Nick, what is the hot pod of the day? What are you loving listening to? Um?

I'm actually working on a review for Vulture right now on this new fiction podcast from the CBC the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is written directed at stars Caitlin Press who um famously produced The Heart, which was a Radiotopia show about the sort of intimacy and emotion. UM and it's a really interesting audio fiction series. Um. UM sort of fascinated think through it and write about it. And that's all I've been thinking about the name of brain. What

is the thing you want to see made yesterday. M hm, great questions. You know, part of the cop out answer here is that I'm always looking for something that I didn't think about, like something that surprises me and something that like, you know, one of the things I always fear whenever I go to the bookstore or look at that fall TV lineup is that I'm going to look at a wall of things that I've heard of before, that this thing doesn't feel particularly surprising, that that's a

copy of that or invitation of that. So Nick, we're gonna end the show with our favorite game. What would you kill? What would you buy? What would you do yourself? I would kill a video like social video. This is really stressing me out all the time every time I see it. Um, I would buy a public radio station in nowhere America because I still think those are really beautiful gems. Um, in this country, I would d I y a TV station that will be fun well, Nick,

qua hot pod read it. If people want to reach you, subscribe to the newsletter. How do they do that? Um? You can find me on hot pot news dot com or you can find me on Twitter. At end of qua Quah, Nick leave our listeners with three must listen to podcasts going into the weekend. UM, I would listen to to re Watchables if you don't already listen to that. UM, I would listen to the New Cereal season, which continues

to be super interesting. UM and I will listen to UM this really interesting episode from a podcast called Beautiful Stories from another Those People by the communing Chris get Third. UM and the most recent episode, he spoke to a person who survive the last Vegas shooting exactly a year ago. This week, UM and it's it's the Court dis Conversation, nick La. Thank you so much, Thank you, Nick, thank you so big. Thanks to Nick Kwa. Make sure you

check out the hot Pot newsletter. It's where we're getting all of our information on the podcast industry on the regular. I've been a reader of hot pod for years now and he's been kind of this voice and this perspective on the industry and as it's grown, kind of made me think about audio, not just podcasting in a different way. So thank you again, Nick Koa, all of our friends and family at Panoply, our producer Dana. We'll be back

in two weeks see Atlantia. Mm hmm. Full disclosure, our opinions are our own