Spotify To Buy Gimlet Media - The Podcast Report InbetweenISode

So it is all the buzz in podcasting land that Spotify is in advanced talks to acquire Gimlet. Today I want to chat about the what, the so what, and the now what in terms of what this means to us in the podcasting space. This is what I am affectionately calling right now a podcast report in between a sode. This is not one of our official episodes, but this is an attempt to try out the whole Beast mode model that we chatted about at the beginning of this season and to find out the difference between going live and recording more professionally, that type of thing. It's been a fascinating test. We have some results for you and if all goes well, the majority of you who heard this actually heard the first attempt at a pre roll for the podcast report as well. But let's chat about the what, the so what, and the now what of this big deal inside of the podcasting community. The what? Spotify. The music behemoth, the podcasting player, the media darling, the thing for the cool kids. As a matter of fact, many of you have expressed that you really like the episode I did about podcast and Spotify. What's funny, not only does that come from comments and texts and men from different friends and different of you out there, but it's also the most downloaded episode of the season. It's also the longest throughput and in the Apple analytics everything. Spotify is a hot topic for podcasters. And what has happened is Spotify has announced or advanced or leaked or whatever you want to say, this idea that they are in advanced talks to acquire Gimlet. So the first thing we have to do is we have to understand what Gimlet is. Some of you know what Gimlet is, some of you don't. We're going to start there and of course why they matter. Gimlet is a podcast production company that has from day one desired and stated to be that they were going to be the HBO of podcasts. They were going to produce the absolute best of the best. They had a great start. The first show was a show called Startup and what they did was they decided to go really meta and they decided to chronicle the entire process of starting up Gimlet. They actually didn't even know the name of the company when they started recording. They actually went through the process of categorizing or cataloging, recording all the elements of the startup of this podcast company and they made it their first show Startup. It was riveting. It was absolutely fascinating and as a matter of fact, it did so well that it did a couple of things that are interesting in our world. Number one, it was the inspiration for Mike Stelzner from Social Media Examiner. It was the inspiration for his video project the Journey. I don't know if you've been watching that. It's a great show. It's fascinating. It's behind the scenes. Very, very met now. Whereas the Journey was an audio journey. I'm sorry? Whereas Startup was an audio journey. The Journey is a video show that Mike has put on YouTube and there's been a lot of stuff that's been happening there, but it was the inspiration for Mike. I think it's been the inspiration for a number of people. But what's fascinating is it was also the inspiration for that hideous sitcom on abc. I think it was abc, I don't even remember, called Alex, Inc. It was actually named after Alex Bloomberg, the guy who started Gimlet and started Zach Braff, the independent filmmaker and funny guy from Scrubs. Neither independent nor filmmaker. It was a pretty bad show, but it did launch this major show that a lot of money was spent on. I think it was funny when there was actually an episode of the feed where Rob Walsh from Libsyn said, or actually, that was a different show about podcast. I forget that. But the fact of the matter was this show launched a lot of imitators. This show got a lot of fans. This show gave them their momentum. Momentum. And I've been a fan of what they're doing ever since the second show of note. They've actually got a bunch of shows and they're pretty fantastic. They've done a really good job. But another one that's gotten a lot of tension is the show Homecoming. Now, many of you hip to the. What the kids are into these days knows Homecoming women. No, That's a show on Amazon with Julia Roberts. And as a matter of fact, it is a show on Amazon with Julia Roberts. It's a fantastic show on Amazon with Julia Roberts. And I don't want to tell you what it's about because the less, you know going into it, the better it actually is. Payoff is worth it. The time spent is there. It's 10 episodes, about 30 minutes each. Again, that's all I want to say. But that show came from Homecoming, the podcast by the guys at Gimlet. Now, they have a bunch of other shows and there's been all sorts of things, and they've got great talent. And honestly, I'm too busy producing podcasts, you know, for the existing clients to track them all, but they have Been impressive, but it's been going fast. I think one of the most telling stories is Merlin Mann. I talk about him a lot on the show. I just. I think the podcasting he does is great. I think the thought that he puts into things is fantastic. And he actually shared on his show how he really liked the TV show on Amazon prime, who doesn't like Julia Roberts. And he actually went to see if there was a podcast about it, and he found the podcast of the story by mistake, thinking it was a fan show. So the TV show actually led Merlin, a fairly decent podcaster, into the podcast. You know, lots of stuff. Lots of stuff. So they're the HBO podcasts. They want to be the HBO of podcasts, which means certain things that are really important. Number one, they spend massive amounts of money. They spend massive amounts of money. Shows are thought of in terms of teams and not just two or three people. Massive teams. They have a huge office in New York. Teams of people doing this. Weeks of productions per episode, six figures per episode. The podcast that they produce is very different than obviously Paul going live to Facebook, but it's also very different than the podcast that the independents are producing. And let's go to the what. Because this is key, because their podcast are so big. There has been some fear and there has been some. Some fear inside of the podcast community that we're gonna get squashed out and that this thing is gonna produce this media empire that is going to, you know, we're all gonna lose. Because the only thing that's gonna matter anymore is Spotify and Gimlet. Well, a couple things. The acquisition. It puts two companies that weren't getting a lot of press before up in front because it get all these spins. There's. This is podcasting finally mainstream. Podcasting has been mainstream for a while. You know, Is Spotify a viable company? Spotify has always been a viable company. You know, is. You know, are the boys up at Gimlet worth watching? The boys at Gimlet and the girls. Gimlet are very, very worth. Worth worth watching. Puts these companies up front, though, and there's a lot of buzz and there's a lot of excitement about. Brings me back. And I'm going to date myself here. But this brings me back to the. The. The craziness that happened when AOL announced that they were going to acquire Netscape back in the very early days of the web. So actually a lot of independent web makers and websites are like, oh, AOL is going to take Netscape. They're going to Ruin everything for us. It's been a fear in tech for a long time that when two big guys get together, it ruins anything. The fact of the matter is, in the Netscape AOL thing was people started getting onto the Internet faster and we all benefit from that, and podcasting actually benefits from that. And so I wouldn't necessarily worry about that, but it feels a lot like AOL and Netscape, which is interesting. Not quite as big, the numbers aren't quite as huge, but absolutely fascinating. But here's the thing. Some podcasters are worried they're going to be left in the dust. Some podcasters are worried that they're going to get squeezed out. Some podcasters worry that all the money, all the time, all the attention is going to go into the big shows like Gimlet. I'm going to go into the big networks and they're not going to be able to get, you know, even what's left. They're just going to be lost in the shuffle. Now, a couple things that are really interesting. Number one, Adam Curry. Adam Curry, thank you for creating podcasting. Been a while. He announced on his show in the midst of all of this, essentially that an offer had been made and that he couldn't say much an offer had made for his show, by the way, which is hilarious because it is the antithesis of these crazy shows produced by Gimlet. I really don't know what that's about in the slightest. I think maybe the comparison would be, I guess, Netflix, who's doing their reality programming versus these huge mega blockbuster Oscar nominee kind of things they're paying for at the same time. Maybe that's it. But the fact of the matter is he said they made an offer. I have no reason to believe they didn't. I don't know why there would be anything made up there. He said that what was interesting was he was made an offer. Couldn't say anything about it about the NDA, but he could say this is really interesting was that Spotify didn't want the show to have a feed anymore, basically making the show to where it would only come from Spotify, and that the show wouldn't go out on any of the other platforms. Now, this is interesting. This is not Monopoly or anything like that. This is just a media strategy that some have tried in podcasting that honestly simply has not done that well. But the question is, is Spotify looking to acquire Gimlets so that Spotify becomes the only place where you can consume Gimlet content? Well, in the. In the. So what category of this? If Spotify is the only place where you can consume Gimlet content, guess what, you can still consume your content there. I don't believe there is any reason, there is any business reason, there is any ethical reason, there is any strategic reason, there's any reason at all for them to drop your show to make sure that people listen to the Gimlet stuff or whoever else they acquire. By the way, Adam Curry says, he says no. And again, I have no reason not to believe him. So this idea that Spotify would sort of slowly become the default and then they'd squish people out by not letting the others work or that type of thing, I really wouldn't worry about that at all. We don't see it historically. There's no business model for it now. Have big massive companies spent a great deal of money to do really stupid things? Yes. Will big companies spend massive amounts of money to do really stupid things in the future? Yes. Is this part of the legacy of big huge companies? Yes. And this could be a really big stupid mistake. But the problem is, is this really big stupid mistake going to affect your show? Is this really big stupid mistake going to have any impact on you? Well, it's not. It's just not. If anything more people are going to, you know, at the end of a season, whatever show they're listening to on Gimlet, they're going to say themselves, what else do we have that's out there? And lo and behold, they'll find your show. If you follow the Instagram of Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl, they found that Spotify was promoting one of the other shows in their network on big ads in New York City. New York City. And didn't know it was coming. I've had clients in the past who have been promoted by Apple. Didn't know it was coming. Definitely indies. Everybody I work with is in the indie space. I'd love to take some large scale stuff, but everybody I've worked with is in the indie space. Spotify is not promoting indies. The promotion of indies going away is not something that necessarily makes sense to anyone. Spotify is a big company. Gimlet is a big company. They survive differently than small companies do. They need all this money, they need all this cash, they need all this attention to continue to grow, continue to get bigger, continue to acquire other things. That's the game. That is the publicly traded company these days. And. But you're not, you don't need a gazillion people to listen to your show, to make any money. You don't need headlines and all the major papers to make the impact that you're making. To look. And by the way, the cost of getting to all these places and the promotional and all these things to get all there. They don't get this for free just because they're good. They pay for this. They pay through the nose for this. And because it's good, people stick around and they can run ads and that kind of stuff. Now here's the thing. So is Spotify going to lock up the Gimlet shows and only put them on Spotify? Possibly. Is Spotify going to design a situation where, you know, we could put these Gimlet ads on Apple and we could now put ads on the Apple player for the Spotify app and the Spotify service? Yeah, they could release this thing to Pandora and now they could have ads on the shows to bring people over from Pandora to Spotify by having these big names associated with them. If they were to do the right ads at the right time, thinking strategically, this could get really, really interesting. I've chatted in previous episodes the whole strategy that Libsyn brought to the game of destinations and man, imagine Gimlet. Gimlet shows Apple version, Gimlet shows Google version, Gimlet shows Pandora version, Stitcher version Alexa version, that all promote and leverage people to the Spotify platform. This one's interesting, this one's exciting. But again, if your favorite podcast listener jumps from the iPhone app or Stitcher or Pandora or anything over to Spotify, they're still there. Just make sure they know that you're available everywhere and you're going to be okay. But this adds on other network thing. I think this is the opportunity. I don't know if Spotify is going to do it. As I said, big giant companies sometimes make big stupid mistakes, but this is a thing that I think is probably a more likely eventual outcome. But regardless, you're not going to get squashed out. So that was the. What that was the. So what now? Let's talk about the now what now what do we do do? Okay, what this announcement, what this story, what this trend, what this thread means in our industry of the indies is very different from what it means to them. You can ride the tail to this. Also, you know, if Spotify is in all the news right now, promote the fact that you're also available on Spotify. You know, if Gimlets, all the talk these days, you know, we can do shows about Gimlet that reference Gimlet. You know, Popular thing has been to do a show about a TV show. Fine. Do a show about a Gimlet show, personally. Sounds boring. I'd say create your own content, but that's a whole nother deal. We are lean, we are thin, we're strategic, and this doesn't get in the way of us at all. And I came up with this imagery, and I don't know if crass is the right word. It's not necessarily as clean and as succinct as maybe some of the imagery is right now. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. America now is embracing more and more cannabis shops, marijuana joints, in more ways than one. And it's legal now. And there have been people who have been decrying the problem and how it's destroying America and all these issues. But I've been fascinated in these legal weed shops, and there's some in my town now, and I'm not a big fan and whatever. But what's fascinating are these Girl Scouts who are selling their cookies across the street from the weed joints. They're killing it. You know, they realize what's happening in the industry, and they're just, instead of complaining about it, they're actually leveraging it to do something about it for themselves. And I think that is exactly what us podcasters need to do. I don't think the fight for Spotify taking over Gimlet was ever a problem that affected us, but it's here, it's coming. And by the way, you know, if this one doesn't come, others will come. It's just a matter of time. And if we stay lean and we think strategically and we deal with this on the level that the Girl Scout sells her cookies strategically, we can be at a wonderful place. So that's my thoughts. I got a couple of comments that are here on the Facebook Live part of this. If you are live, you can leave a comment or more if you want, and we'll respond to those. Obviously, if you're listening to the podcast version of this, I can't do that. But all those classic reviews and that kind of thing, all those things that the podcasters ask for are certainly nice. Yeah, make your comments, and I'm going to comment here, and we're going to go from there. Okay. David Randall says, Paul, your insights are always worth the price of admission. Well, I guess it's free, but still. Well, thanks, David. You know, now, David, you're listening to this, actually on Facebook. You're watching this on Facebook. You have to look at this mug on Facebook. Fact of the matter is, this one's going to go out for the first time with an ad. You know, dynamic insertion, which will be interesting and not everyone will hear it, but the price of admission maybe is not going away, but thank you for the kind words, David. Jonty. Jonty says a listener. Listen regardless where they hear you, you love them all. Exactly. I did an episode way back when about, you know, some podcast hotshot who is berating people who might dare to listen to him on Stitcher because of Stitcher's audio quality. And I was actually listening to that on Stitcher and that person sounded like an idiot. Yes, the audio quality isn't as good, but if that's where I'm going to consume your stuff, get over it. So, yeah, Jonty, listeners are listeners are listeners. And the great thing is, if Gimlet decides we only want listeners from here and we decide that we want listeners from everywhere, we are going to win. Good job, Monty. Jonty. Jonty Mitchell. See where I got Monty from? Jeremiah says Spotify has made a lot of perception inroads with the mainstream. Yeah, it did. And I chat about that a couple episodes. I've now had a few guesses for my show, think podcasts are only available on Spotify. I've had a few guests for my show that think podcasts are only available on Spotify. I wouldn't doubt that. That's actually fascinating. I think. I think we might see more of that in the future. But here's the deal. If they only think they're on Spotify, they can go on Spotify. Spotify does a good job. Thank you, Spotify. They're spending a lot of money right now, and if they do this Gimlet thing, they're going to spend a lot of money promoting it. So you know what? We might be in a space, Jeremiah, where Spotify does a better job of promoting podcasts and what you've got than Apple ever did. Bam. Think about that. So I've had a number of guests for my shows who think podcasts available on Spotify as imperfect measuring stick, but an interesting anecdote. Yeah, it is. And I don't believe we are going to see less of that. I believe that we are going to see more of that. All right, I'm going to do my official close up for this and we will get this thing out into the podcast feed. If you want to leave. If you were still on Facebook and you're watching us Facebook, I will jump back in and make comments and that kind of stuff, but if not, we'll do the feed and I'd love to hear what you think about the little ad insert that has coming. Who knows, maybe we'll put this at the end as well. Thank you so much everybody for listening. Love the interaction. Spotify. Don't worry about it. It's a good thing for all of us. Chat later, bye.