Theo is co-founder of PodLife Events — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
This interview is from the Podnews Weekly Review
Theo Gadd: PodLife is an events company built exclusively for live podcasts.
We operate under two models. The first is a podcast-exclusive ticketing platform: this acts as a hub for fans to explore podcast events, whilst helping podcasters to drive sales, increase exposure and streamline the event process. If you imagine Ticketmaster, but tailored exclusively for podcasting - there’s everything you’d expect: analytics, check-in, payments, all at a much better value. And then, the benefits you get from being specifically designed for podcasting means we can provide key integrations with RSS which really just helps tie the events back to podcasters and increase their exposure that way.
And then the other package is an end-to-end events agency, so through this we have a network of partner venues, connections and other event partners, so we can handle everything: the podcaster just turns up, performs the event and gets to leave with the audio files to turn into an episode.
Sam Sethi: What’s your background?
TG: I’ll talk about how we got into the events world. At university, we started a peer-to-peer gambling startup. Imagine you and I went to play tennis, we could both put a bet on against who might win. As you can imagine, with gambling laws that got a bit much. But we saw more and more podcast events happening, and there was no real way to find the events unless you listen to the podcast. So that was the first thing we wanted to change. We started speaking to podcasters about the idea, and they all were saying a company dedicated to events would actually really help with the setup, and planning it all, and really making the most of events.
Events do help to solve a number of the key issues in the industry. Obviously, it’s so difficult to monetize. Events provide a great alternate revenue route - ticket sales, sponsors, the opportunity to sell merch and all that sort of thing at the event.
Podcasting is a one-way medium: fans take hours out of their day to listen to podcasters, but it’s a strange disconnect. Events are a great way to build community, get everyone together and overcome that. And then finally, you’ve got all the engaging content that you get from events, like the clips from the socials, the photos - it really does help grow the podcast and increase its exposure.
SS: In Podcasting 2.0, new technology had just been brought out called publisher feeds. The idea of a publisher feed is a great form of discovery, where other shows from the same publisher are there in the podcast app. When we first met, I wondered if we could get events into apps in a similar way.
TG: I think kind of embedding details of events in places where listeners live and spend their time, such as listening apps, makes a lot of sense, and really does enrich that experience where, as you’re listening, you can see there’s a new event happening and explore that.
And I think vice versa, on all of our events pages we have the podcast card, and that allows people coming across the event, who might not necessarily know the podcast already, to go and like read a bit about the podcast and find out where they can actually listen to it, their socials and all that thing. So I think that kind of cyclical discovery between us as an events platform and podcast apps is just a good thing for everyone.
SS: So, you’re working with Oh For Food, and you’re doing another big event as well, aren’t you?
TG: We’ve got a number of things in the works. I suppose the biggest thing we announced last week was Cheerful Earful, which is a comedy podcast festival. They were launched about a week ago now. They’re a comedy podcast festival, which is going into its third year this year. They’ve got a lineup of more than 30 events across various venues all over a nine-day period, involving some of the UK’s biggest names in comedy podcasting.
They really wanted to take this year’s festival to that next level. So we created an immersive branded experience across the entire user journey, so from the event pages all the way through checkout and confirmation emails, alongside a number of custom features specifically for the festival, like day passes. We’re selling their merchandise, some live stream tickets, and one exciting feature actually is the ability to manage multiple podcasts at the festival level, and allow the podcasters to get a login to view their sales. So that’s quite a nice kind of collaborative feature coming through.
SS: For anyone who wants to get involved with PodLife Events, where would they go?
TG: The best way is probably just the website. Alternatively if you’re interested in events, and just want to have a chat, myself and my co-founder, Toby, are always open to having these conversations.
SS: Theo, thank you so much.
TG: No worries at all, Sam. Thank you for having me.