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(By Jon Cooley) Dozens of professional podcasters, amateurs, and entrepreneurs rallied in downtown Austin this past weekend for the Outlier Podcast Festival, looking to gain some insight into the booming medium. Rob Greenlee, who recently left Spreaker to join Libsyn, was one of the keynote speakers at the event. Here’s what he had to say.
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Looking at the state of podcasting was keynote speaker and longtime podcaster Rob Greenlee. While tech giant Apple continues to hold the vast majority of downloads, others have started carving out their markets through buyouts of podcast hosting networks, Greenlee said this shows confidence in the medium. It also gives out hope that hosts and content producers could make some money through podcasting. But as Greenlee noted, “it’s also creating more competition….so all of us are going to have to up our game to be able to compete in this new world of big cash.”
By that he means investing not just more time but money and people to a podcast. Greenlee said to build a better program a podcast needs to build a small team around it, as what is needed, be it editing, writing, research or marketing, cannot be done by your lonesome anymore. You need to also up your sound quality. While subjective, Greenlee said its primarily about improving the listening experience for your audience. As the podcast medium has evolved he said you may have to start dropping some money into the AdWords as social media platforms have started limiting a creator’s ability to build listenership organically.
As for those looking for a return on investment, Greenlee said this and next year will be the time of dynamic ad insertions, this’ll give more podcasters a chance to make some revenue off their past episode as well as more recent.
Taking a look at listenership, Greenlee said people listen to at least 85% of the content but anecdotally added he and others have seen more than 100%, meaning people are relistening to the content. He credited Apple for the data. Tech is also changing the way people listen to content. While still mostly a mobile consumer, Greenlee explained that more people are starting to listen at home as more smart speakers hit the market.
We’d like to thank Jon Cooley from Emmis Radio in Austin for covering the event for Podcast Business Journal