Exclusive Podcasts: Innovation or Industry Setback? – PCI 391

Speaker 0 00:00:00 You know, one of the discovery challenges is say you are exclusive to Spotify. Well, there's a whole audience out there that never gets on Spotify, and you're gonna be missing out on that. But of course, on Spotify, you're featured. So, you know, really, is that gonna make a big difference? I, I propose it probably does because, you know, when, when Rogan went to Spotify, I more or less quit listening to Rogan. Not because I didn't like his content, it's, I'm not a particular fan of Spotify and for various reasons,

Speaker 1 00:00:32 Whereas Mike McKenzie may have started listening. Yeah, exactly. Because mm-Hmm. , you are a fan of listen to content over there.

Speaker 2 00:00:40 You are listening to Podcast Insider, hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting. All with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.

Speaker 1 00:01:01 This is Todd Cochrane, CEO and Co-founder of Blueberry Podcasting.

Speaker 0 00:01:04 And I'm Mike Dell, the VP of Customer Relations here at Blueberry.

Speaker 2 00:01:08 And I'm Mackenzie, marketing specialist at Blueberry.

Speaker 1 00:01:12 Well, today we're gonna get into the implications of the rise of excuse exclusive. I have to get, spit that out there. Exclusive content platforms in the podcast industry.

Speaker 2 00:01:25 This has been a slow but steady move, um, in the, in recent years, but part of that is changes to what companies are doing and how, how often they're doing exclusive content. So we're gonna talk about how it's good for creators, how it's kind of changed, just kind of run the whole gamut.

Speaker 1 00:01:48 I don't necessarily know if it's good for creators, I guess if you're getting a check, maybe. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:01:52 May, maybe some creators, you know, like Rogan getting a couple hundred million when he was on exclusive.

Speaker 2 00:01:58 I think you might be underestimating what creators can do with it. .

Speaker 1 00:02:03 Well, you know, I think if you look at the strategy that was, and what has been developing recently, if you think about, uh, Spotify, Stitcher, luminary, which maybe a lot of people haven't heard about, and they stitchers outta

Speaker 0 00:02:17 Business.

Speaker 1 00:02:17 So , yeah, they, they, they really had this, um, this mantra of buying exclusive content, putting it on their contract. So you could only listen to it on Spotify, luminary, et cetera, wherever it may be. Amazon have these exclusive deals. Um, and I always said, you know, I've said for a number of years, if, you know, if they're willing to write the check and the check's big enough and you're willing to, to go with the, to go with the options, um, this probably is a pretty good deal. Now, if you, you know, like Mike said, if you look at Rogan and, and others that were in these premium deals, well now these platforms are making a little bit of reversion and making some of the content open, which, and making available via open RSS, it makes you go, Hmm, what happened or didn't happen? Did they not make their numbers? But again, I think having some sort of exclusive deal can be beneficial. Again, the distribution of the content then really comes into question is, you know, what reach are you gonna be limited by? And, and what will that partner do for you if you are have signed some sort of a deal?

Speaker 0 00:03:28 Yeah, some of the stuff that, uh, some of these, uh, some of these outfits that do exclusive content can do for you is they can help you get your content, you know, quality up, like, you know, provide you, you a studio, provide you producers and editors and, and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, that might be something that is worth looking into if you ever get offered an exclusive contract.

Speaker 2 00:03:57 Yeah, I definitely think it just ups the bar, um, for everyone the, the standard of the production value that people are getting out of it. I think when you hear a show from a large company such as this, doing a show, it kind of motivates you to up your game a little bit as well.

Speaker 1 00:04:16 And I think where things have changed was this worry about audience fragmentation. You know, Spotify originally was you are on Spotify. You're on Spotify. Yep. But now Spotify said, well, no, like Rogan now is available via RSS again. So, and I'm sure that was tied to some sort of monetization. So whereas you maybe don't have to worry as much about audience fragmentation, you do need to look at what that deal would be considered are, are you exclusive to Amazon? Are you exclusive to a specific platform? Um, where will current subscribers of the show be able to get your content and the challenges of moving, um, those should be considered. But again, if you've just signed a deal and you are working with a network or have this ability now to be, uh, with a platform, it definitely was, has a potential of increasing your monetization.

Speaker 2 00:05:13 The, the monetization will absolutely go up, but it also, you know, be wary of it, what contract you are signing, because some of these places are now taking the content. The content is theirs, it is the companies, it is all of the, all of the monetization is gone through, is going through the company, not through the creator. Um, the episodes are legally in their name and not the creator's name, not the host, anything like that. Sometimes, I'm not saying that's how it goes every time, but that is definitely deterred some people from doing a deal. Or one of the things that it will do is like, companies will reach out to creators themselves saying, we have listened to your show, we wanna make it exclusive. And so sometimes having already like been your own thing, it's easier to hold onto that yourself and make sure that in this deal that you're signing, you're not essentially giving it away to them. But it's definitely happened in the past like that to some people. And it's just so sad to hear.

Speaker 1 00:06:19 I would think if someone came to me today and said, Todd, I wanna take your personal show and, and bring it into, let's just say a network. And again, uh, the network thing is, is more popular now than maybe these exclusive deals with the, with the big companies. But I think if, if it was a big company, let's say it wasn't Amazon or someone like that, I would have to probably be say, okay, I'm gonna retain ownership, I'm gonna retain rights to the content, I am going to retain rights to my feed. Um, I be able to revert if I need to, uh, you when this relationship is over. Um, really protecting myself and, and the brand would be really, really important to me personally. But again, I think what it really can do is that it, these, these platforms can really help you rise your audience. Because if they've paid AKA wrote the check for you to be part of their platform, I think that, uh, even if it's not exclusive, then maybe you just, you know, you're, you are a show of X, Y, Z, um,

Speaker 0 00:07:27 Featured, you know, featured show of say Spotify or

Speaker 1 00:07:30 Right, right now you're gonna have all this new exposure just from having that marquee, uh, banner head on those particular, uh, on those particular platforms.

Speaker 0 00:07:42 You know, one of the discovery challenges is say you are exclusive to Spotify. Well, there's a whole audience out there that never gets on Spotify and you're gonna be missing out on that. But of course on Spotify you're featured. So, you know, really is that gonna make a big difference? Uh, I propose it probably does because, you know, when Rogan went to Spotify, I more or less quit listening to Rogan, not because I didn't like his content, it's, I'm not a particular fan of Spotify and for various reasons,

Speaker 1 00:08:15 Whereas Mike McKenzie may have started listening. Yeah, exactly. Because mm-Hmm, , you are a fan of listening to content over there. So yeah,

Speaker 2 00:08:23 I mean, it, it reminds me of streaming services in general, like specifically just, um, movies and tv. Like you're paying for whatever you can afford or whoever's password you can obtain for however long. And, you know, it's, I don't think there's as much a overreach or like crossing in podcast apps like this. Um, people tend to just try to listen to all of the shows in one app. So when there's a show you like in Spotify and then there's another show available on like a specific Apple subscription or something else, um, that I think does really focus on that limiting audience of only the people that are in this specific app are really gonna find this. I don't think we've ever really heard of a big, big jump on any of these platforms saying we got this amount of influx of users based on this show being here. The only one that I would really expect that from is maybe Spotify for Rogan,

Speaker 1 00:09:32 You know, and again, um, it's been interesting to watch the full development of this, you know, platforms that were really exclusive are now again, becoming open and some are still staying exclusive. So it is kind of a weird mix right now. And, um, and I don't think, I think they figured out this is what I think they've done. I think they figured out that they can, they can more, they can monetize with, uh, all these additional, um, exposure points. In other words, you're still an Apple podcast, you're still on all these different platforms. Well,

Speaker 0 00:10:08 You know, just look at the potential, you know, we, we keep talking about Joe Rogan, but uh, you know, a big show like that, if it's exclusive to Spotify, it's limited to Spotify users and you widen that out, it can only grow. 'cause you got Apple and you got all, all the little independent apps, you know, all and some of the other big companies and, and you know, that exposure, you know, if you're selling CPM campaigns, of course it's gonna go up. Uh, so that you, it's one of those things that, uh, that, you know, you could charge maybe more on an exclusive platform ad or whatever, but not necessarily,

Speaker 1 00:10:51 You know, as of this recording, and we're recording this in early 2024, the economy is kinda driving some of these factors too. And we're not seeing absolutely, we're not seeing as many of these exclusive deals. So, you know, these are adapting scenarios right now. So what's, what we're saying today could change tomorrow, but, um, I think that, um, we will see, we'll see if it goes towards more about exclusivity or if it becomes more about being open, um, I'm hoping it goes more towards the open and still having the ability to have a deal and, you know, and be able to, you know, cash that big check. But again, as a, as a indie, as an indie independent content creator, um, you know, there's other ways that we can think about monetizing the content through premium and, uh, not giving up so much of a, you know, a percentage to third parties if you do it through directly, like on platforms like Blueberry. So there is models out there. Yeah. Um, and I think we're gonna see what happens, but, you know, localization, you know, this, this might be the time that localization starts to grow. So if you've got a show that's a local, it could have as much value as a show that's really global. So it's, it's really, there's two sides to the fence on this.

Speaker 2 00:12:11 I'd say we probably will see a bigger influx of smaller indie platforms figuring this out themselves, whether that is going the route that's been very popular for a long time of join our Patreon, and you'll get other exclusive content going directly through the app like you can with Apple and doing premium episodes there, or doing the premium that we now offer with blueberry. You know, that's one of the reasons that we started offering it is because we wanna give the smaller creators a better chance of being able to monetize in all of these creative ways that, you know, isn't just ad deals or demographic information or something like that, where it's like, no, we're actually providing something for pe for people that they're happy to pay for. Well, there's, you know, there's that subscription fatigue, but there's, there's like fatigue of, I'm helping this one person that I really like in their like, creative show, and I don't wanna give Amazon like, more money. Yeah,

Speaker 0 00:13:17 Well, it's kind of the value for value thing, but there, there is kind of a hybrid model where you have free and open content and then you have some exclusives that people pay for. And of course our premium product does just that, just like Apple, uh, subscriptions does.

Speaker 1 00:13:34 But at the same point, if uh, Amazon or a Spotify or someone like that came to me and said, Hey, we wanna do a deal, I would definitely listen to that, what that deal was gonna be. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:13:44 See, see how, how many zeroes are on the track for

Speaker 1 00:13:46 Sure. Yeah. And, you know, in what I give up or what I don't give up. And, but I think that at the same time, what we're gonna see here is the, the economy and, and where people listen is probably as important as anything else, you know? So I, I do, and I have said for many, many years, I don't care where they, where they listen as long as they listen. So for me, the widespread options of having the content everywhere is more appealing to me. And I think maybe that has kind of sunk in at some of these, at least at Spotify, it looks like they've had a, a, you know, turned the corner here and said, okay, yeah, we tried, we kept Rogan locked up for three years on our platform. Now let's, you know, let's do a run with some shows that are not only available here, but there, and then, you know, we'll make it up on the backside, but what does that mean? Are we, we subjected to 10 more ads in a show? Is it gonna sound like radio? You know, so there are these trade offs. Um, and again, I'm sure as Mackenzie as you had indicated, they were, they knew that a lot of his fans would move to their platform and pay for subscription. Something tells me based upon their change of heart here is that maybe they didn't get as many as they thought they were gonna get. So in this next round,

Speaker 2 00:15:07 Yeah, as far as I know, they've never actually, you know, made

Speaker 1 00:15:10 Profits. They never

Speaker 2 00:15:11 Said so,

Speaker 0 00:15:11 Yeah, they won't, they won't tell us

Speaker 1 00:15:13 The results. Yeah. But you, you can only, that's my hypothesis is that mm-hmm, , you know, that by them opening up, they'll say, okay, we can, we've gotten a number of people over here already, they're probably gonna continue to pay, and then now let's go ahead and, and get some extra money by being able to run advertising to the, to everyone that listens on every app. But we'll see

Speaker 2 00:15:34 It, it makes me think of, I have a feeling there were quite a few people who not only didn't move over to Spotify for Rogan, but also kind of gave them crap about it in the sense of like, come on man, don't do this type of thing. Like, you've always been this old school guy of open platform, you know, your, your rights to content, that type of stuff where he was like, oh yeah, this doesn't exactly like make me shine in the light that I would like to be in. So I think that's definitely something that people consider as well in the move to something more exclusive like this is how will our audience, like, make us feel about it, regardless of whether the people will still move over whatnot, like the people that won't. How bad will that backlash be?

Speaker 1 00:16:26 So I think here in the end, we'll, this is just gonna be an ever changing adopting story. And, um, and we'll see what, how this changes globally. Other, other platforms take advantage of exclusivity internationally or not. Time will tell, but, uh, it's definitely caused the industry to raise their eyebrows for a number of years here. And it's, it's shaping the industry. But, you know, is it, the question remains, did it drive innovation? Did it drive competition? Maybe, but it's also raising questions about accessibility, diversity, and the sustainability of various business models. Um, I, I think in the end, uh, my, my brain has always said, well, let it be open and then the chips will fall where they may great content's, great content. Um,

Speaker 0 00:17:17 You look at these, uh, you know, set top box apps or whatever you wanna call 'em, Netflix and that sort of thing. A lot of that is still exclusive content. Sure. But I think more and more the studios that are making this content are shopping it to more than one. And I think we're gonna see a consolidation in that business. And, and maybe the same thing in podcasting is happening when say somebody like Rogan goes Po you know, goes RSS. That's kind of the same thing that may happen with the, with the, uh, streamers.

Speaker 1 00:17:52 One thing that, one thing that, good point. , you know, one thing that we can also remember, well, no, what's happened within that industry, the TV industry is we see every month a certain amount of shows go on Netflix, they go on Hulu, they come off Hulu, they go on Netflix, they come off Hulu, they go to Paramount. So the, the media moves around and I, I just hope podcasting doesn't get into the model of, you know, who's rented the content for the month. Um, I think it's dynamic enough that, you know, the open model overall will win and then, you know, people can employ, uh, whatever monetization model they want. Yeah. And whatever happens inside content,

Speaker 0 00:18:30 Whatever happens, the open RSS is still gonna work.

Speaker 1 00:18:33 . Yeah. So, well that's a wrap for today's episode on exclusive content platforms and influence on the podcast in industry. We hope you gain some insights into this evolving trend or on, on-trend, whatever it may be. Yeah. , you can always reach out to us with your thoughts and questions. For more content like this, visit our website. Of course, be sure to follow us on social media. Thanks for tuning into Podcast Insider. Till next time, keep on podcast.

Speaker 2 00:18:58 Thanks for joining us. Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast insider.com for more information to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. To check out the latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease because we can't afford them.