Spotify Versus Pandora And Our Podcasting Audiences - The Podcast Report Episode #164

It's Pandora versus Spotify in the big podcasting landscape. It's the podcast report episode 164. Show notes, links, conversation and more at the podcastreport.com 164 still digesting the Infinite Dial 2019 report. But I'm doing it in a way not that when someone listens to this a couple of years later, they think this is irrelevant, but what are the take homes? What are the big things that we want to take a look at? And I have been fascinated by all of the places that podcasting is going that isn't what we're traditionally thinking about. And there were three big themes in the report, and these are three themes that are going to follow us throughout the next several years of podcasting. Theme number one are the big music delivery services, Pandora, Spotify. These guys, they're coming into the game. The other theme is the smart speaker. I want to hit the Pandora Spotify issue on this one. We'll probably hit the smart speaker issue on the next one. A young Spotify listener is more likely to be listening to a podcast than not. At the same time, a American is more likely to be listening to Pandora than Spotify. We've got these numbers, we've got these contrasts, we've got these things that we're dealing with in the podcasting space. And what's interesting is whereby we might want to go, well, then, am I going all out Spotify? Am I going all out Pandora? Am I going to stick with the winners at Apple? We don't have to be that way. What's interesting is, as an independent podcaster, is most of the podcasts, basically anyone who's not contractually obligated to one platform. What's fun, what's powerful is that we can have a Pandora strategy, we can have a Spotify strategy, we can have an Apple podcast strategy, we can have a Google Podcast strategy, we can have all these. And I think this is key now. I think the one thing we can do is realize that this content is going to be delivered to different audiences. So we might want to consider how do we wrap the content for these different audiences? What do we say about these content for the different audiences? Not necessarily change the content, but change the wrapper that the content comes in. We have the ability to send different feeds to these different platforms. My artwork for Pandora can be different than my artwork for Spotify, can be different than my artwork for itunes and Google. That's interesting. Would it be viable to take the artwork and take the description and speak to the demographics of these different platforms in such a way that they walk away feeling more like the show is for me now, Paul, is that weird? It's. It's not weird. That's being done right now on one of the biggest media success stories of this decade, Netflix. Have you logged into Netflix recently and realized that the artwork they're picking for the different shows wasn't what it was yesterday? And I'll guarantee you it's not going to be what it is tomorrow. They're testing, they're running. What kinds of pictures get you more likely to click, what kind of pictures get you more likely in the right mood to consume. They are doing this on a regular basis because they know that although it's one library, it's a lot of different listeners, it's a lot of different users, and podcasting's no different strategically. What does this mean? Would it be viable to take a show, chop it up and do a different introduction for Pandora, Spotify, Apple, Google? I don't think so. I'm not doing different, actually. We tried a couple of episodes. I tried to do the shortened version of the episode on Everywhere, but Pandora then sent everybody to Pandora and it got all confusing and it got all a mess and anybody was part of that. Welcome to the podcast report. That's what we do. We test things here. I don't think the content should be different for each of these platforms, but rapper and description gets really, really interesting. It's something that I'm going to play with a little bit here. It's something that I would love to hear your thoughts on. You can reach out to me in all the social elements. Those of you who know me on social, great. Those of you who don't, thepodcastreport.com Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Be a great place to reach out. I wonder if just slightly different artwork, slightly different descriptions, slightly different this and that could help me feed to a better place and also help me in consideration of programming and wrapping and marketing and those types of things. But one other thing that I think is really key and this is going to be the longest episode. But I got one more thing about this that I want to chat about. Can I create content thinking about the young demographic? Can I My demos older. My audience is more likely to have gray hair than colored hair. My audience is more likely to go in the more traditional places to get this content than necessarily. But. But got young listeners. I've got a young audience and I've got a message here at the podcast report. At least that is viable for all of us. And what's interesting here is whereas some design for a specific demographic, some don't have to and some have to decide whether or not they're going to the podcast report has always been about making the most amount of podcasting. I gotta believe there are 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds, 50 year olds, 60 year olds who are who are trying to do that. So I'm going to try harder to speak to all of them. Not necessarily think about a specific demographic but go to larger specificity in topic but not specificity in demographic. I don't know if that makes sense. We'll see how it goes. I don't know how far this will be, but it's an interesting idea. It definitely lets me get the best of Spotify with the best of Pandora and the best of everybody else. Just a simple thought for a simple weekend. Want to hear what you think so much. Thank you so much for listening. Chat soon. Bye.