Thoughts On The Infinite Dial 2018 Report - The Podcast Report

People own smartphones. It's no longer a question of will they consume on their smartphones. It's a question of how will they consume on their smartphones and what will they consume on their smartphones? Make that part of your dialogue, make that part of your conversation, because it is huge. You are listening to the podcast report with Paul Colligan. Here's Paul. Every year for the last 20 years, years, Edison research has done the infinite dial study. And the infinite dial study is basically a. Get this study based on what happens to the whole audio theme, the whole audio positioning, the whole power of audio when we move from a town with the talk station, the sports station, the rock station, to essentially, because of the Internet, the infinite dial. As many rock stations as we want, as many talk stations as we want. Obviously, as podcasters, this becomes obvious why this is important. What's neat about the infinite dial is it's not just a study of podcasting. It's a study of all Internet audio and how it all fits together. I think one of the things that helps me every year when they do the presentation is that you begin to see, okay, wait a minute. Podcasting in comparison to Internet radio, podcasting in comparison to Pandora, podcasting in comparison to satellite radio. Different things are out there. And this is part of what makes the infant dial such a powerful study. Now, there's a couple things that I really appreciate about the infinite dial that cannot be stressed enough. Number one, it's a real study. It's a real sampling. So many people in this space survey their audience and declare those results as real. They're not. They're what your audience had to say. So many people have go, well, in my experience, I find that this. And that's great, but that is your experience. You can't take your sampling from a single source. You can't take a small sampling. You can't take a feel. And they don't do that at Edison. If at the beginning of each study, you find out exactly what they did, how many they picked, how they did it, which is huge. Now, the infinite dial is all of Internet audio. They do other studies, podcasting, share of ear. They did a smart speaker study. But I actually love the infinite dial because it puts it all together. Now, this year, it was the 20th anniversary. That hurt a bit because I just have been following this for a while and it just makes me old and. Well, I'll deal with it. Thepodcastreport.com 144 I've got a link to the slides. I've got A link to the Facebook presentation. I've got a link to everything. What I want to do in today's episode is not recap the study. If you are serious about the space, you need to head out there and you need to watch it, you need to listen to it. But at the same time, what I want to do in this episode is not provide Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Director's Commentary, talk about what it is, but actually just go through the slides quickly. Think of me as your friend and I like to think of you as my friend. Think of us just kind of going through this together. Here are the slides that matter. Here are the slides that don't matter. What do we do about it? The recording isn't that long, but it is the take home, it is the big idea, it is the commentary on their take home, it is the commentary, commentary on their big ideas. And well, gosh darn it, I think you will do better as a result of combining both the infinite dial and my thoughts on it. So with that said and done, we'll do the tip of the week and then we'll get to the infinite dial. One of the number one questions that comes up in podcast consulting is what kind of schedule should I follow for my podcast? Weekly, daily, monthly, bi weekly? As inspiration hits? What should I do? Paul? What should I do? Well, one of the beautiful things about making a podcast is that you don't have the constraints of a traditional show. Not only do you not have to give it out at a certain time, but you don't have to make it a certain length. If you only have 15 minutes of information, make a 15 minute podcast. If you're going to go long, go long. Maybe let them know if you can at the beginning. But take your audience with you. And honestly, that process of taking your audience with you is the answer to the question of what is the ideal release schedule for my podcast? See, here's the thing. Ask them. Ask them what they need, ask them what they want, ask them how you can serve them. And they usually, most often will be more than willing to tell you exactly what it is that they need. And then if you listen to them, you can do. Well. Now with that said and done, people like patterns. If I get up Monday morning wondering if something's going to happen, I'm not going to go down that path because I'm wondering. But if I get up Monday morning knowing that something specific always happens, that is your podcast, I'm going to be in a much better place. If your podcast comes out once a month. I might be an A. Oh, is this the week it comes out? Can't remember. Don't worry about it. If your podcast comes out every other week, is this the week it matters? I don't remember. The podcast comes out as inspired. Same sort of thing. But if I know that your podcast comes out every Monday at 8am, I will be much more likely to go for it. So it's the careful balance between people like predictability. People like to know what's going to happen and when it's going to happen. But at the same time, and this is the power of the podcast, people like it when you serve them. Go ahead, ask your audience what serves them best. You might just be surprised with the results. If you head out to the podcastreport.com144 I have a link to the page at Edison Research that has the slides from The Infinite Dial 2018, the recording of the live Facebook broadcast in all of its tuxedo glory. I recommend heading out there, use this as a supplement. Definitely consume the whole thing. This is more just a what do we do with it now that we've consumed it? What I want to do is I want to go through the slides and I've just got the computer in front of me. I'm going to go through them. I'm going to tell you what hits me, what makes me think, what you might want to think about it, and we will go from there. First of all, I love the methodology and I love where they're going and I love that they take science seriously and all these things because, boy, not everybody does. But the fact of the matter is 233 million people, 83% of America owns a smartphone. People own smartphones. It's no longer a question of will they consume on their smartphones, it's a question of how will they consume on their smartphones and what will they consume on their smartphones. Make that part of your dialogue. Make that part of your conversation, because it is huge. Tablets going down I wouldn't decry the end of tablets at this point. I would certainly consider what other places your audience is looking to things. The fact of the matter is because of their devices. Amazon's lady in a tube. If I say her name, she'll start talking. The Google home, the Microsoft Cortana. There are other ways to get content. Tablet is not just one of them. It represents a different space than the phone does. And the fact of the matter is it's still 50%. It's still half of the country. Smart speaker Awareness continuing to go up, that's obvious. That's only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. What's interesting is last year at Podcast Movement, I did my smart speaker presentation, got a huge response to it. And the fact of the matter is it has more than doubled since then. It keeps getting bigger and bigger. Going to the smart speakers makes a heck of a lot of sense how the smart speakers break up. Fact of the matter is, yes, Amazon is doing better right now. They won't necessarily always win everything. And it's not a question of what is your Alexa strategy or what is your Google home strategy. It's a question of what is your smart speaker strategy. Now, if we take something like the number of radios owned in the home and that information is interesting, but the fact of the matter is people are going to devices now hooked up to the Internet to get their content. This is not a podcast strategy. This is not a smart speaker strategy. This is not an Internet radio strategy. This is a I better put my content on the Internet strategy. It's one of the reasons why I love the Infinite Dial so much, is it brings it all together. The social media numbers starting about slide 15, it was interesting. Facebook down a little bit. I would still not decry the impact of Facebook. I would not drop your Facebook strategies. The numbers there are still pretty significant. You don't want to decry anything that is more than three quarters of this country. And Facebook is interesting there. So going through those slides don't kill anything yet. But do definitely, again, realize that it's not an issue of the strategy of what you do about Facebook or what you do about Twitter or what you do about Smart Brand X, Smart Speaker X or Smart Speaker Y. It's a question of how do you make sure your content gets everywhere. We've chatted about this on the show. I really like the distribution strategy that Libsyn has. I would continue to recommend that you think about it. So when it comes to the online audio section, the fact that online audio listing has gone up again, estimated 180 million. Is this. What is this? Yeah, 180 million is pretty fantastic. The average time spent weekly went down a little bit. I wouldn't worry about that. Car goes up, everything goes up. You are at a situation where more and more people are getting their content this way. What is your plan? What is your strategy now? Audio brand awareness. Pandora's position. This is massive. Slide 29 might be the biggest opportunity for you to take advantage of what's coming. Pandora announced and I will link to it in the show notes the podcastreport.com 144 Pandora announced recently that they are coming up with a podcast strategy. So if the number one audio brand in the country is coming up with a podcast strategy, you want to be part of it, you want to monitor it, you want to follow it. Pandora, if you are listening to this, please call me, because I think it's going to be pretty fantastic what you guys do. And not only are they most recognized, but they're used. Everything you look at, Pandora just shows a tremendous position, a tremendous place. And remember, the fact of the matter is, every time Pandora streams Britney Spears or Megadeth or James Taylor, I'm trying to get all the different genres there. Every time they do that, they have to pay. These people, they don't have to pay when you stream our shows. And so it's a better financial sense for them to offer this in the mix because, gosh darn it, they don't have to charge as much. They've realized the power of it. They've realized the impact of it. They probably paid a lot of money to get that whole NPR serial season two thing. It's time for phase two. Can't wait to see what they do with it. If we jump over to weekly YouTube usage, this is tremendous. 46% estimated 129 million. YouTube usage continues to grow. YouTube usage will continue to grow because it's safe, because it's easy, because it's a product that we know what to do with. The YouTube Red product interfaced with the Google home product lets us, well, gosh darn, it lets us stream audio even though it's video, to our desktop or to our smart speakers. And I'll tell you, I'm seeing consumption across the board of podcasts at YouTube, even without the video. Consider that it's great distribution. The in car media slides, the fact that AM FM radio is still such a big part of it, it doesn't show the decline of anything. I do think what's interesting is the podcasting is bigger than satellite radio. I think that's really important. There are huge industries and a lot of money in satellite radio. Podcasting is bigger than that. I think that's tremendously huge. If you go through these slides, it's interesting. The numbers are going up in all the right directions. That's interesting. I do think that 15% of America looking at an in dash information entertainment system is interesting. That's a new audience, that's a new place to look at audiobooks. The whole bit on audiobooks to me, is just a model of consumption that you really want to think about. People like this thought, people like Pandora, people like Internet audio, people like Internet radio, people like audiobooks. Don't find yourself in the position where podcasting versus audiobooks. It's the combination of podcasting and audiobooks and audio at YouTube, stream to the smart speaker and audio at Pandora whatever way they want to take it. That's the strategy. That's what you want to do. So the podcasting slides. Let's enter slide number 48. Estimated 180 million numbers continue to go up. 2018, 64% of the country. Nice. We knew that was coming. We know it's going to continue to grow. And to be honest, there will be a point where it starts to minimize because we've just reached max. If you look at the other points, all the stuff that Tom and team went over, great stuff. Monthly podcast listening. One more. More than one out of every four. The numbers are great on the age demographics. That makes sense. On 51. Nothing that I would necessarily find surprising. Weekly podcast listings 17%. One out of every five ish. Maybe one out of every six ish. Americans listen to podcasts every week. That's tremendous. The number of podcasts listened to in the last week goes up. Fantastic. The device most used. Notice the computer's going down. Notice the smartphone, tablet, portable device is going up. And I predict in future years we'll probably see a new color represented by the smart speaker. But again, podcasts going nowhere. They're just being consumed at different places, which are some of the things that you want to think about. Location most listened to. We speak to a lot about the car. Less than 25%. We speak a lot about working out and on the plane. And the others less than 24. You know, a tiny amount at home. Still huge. Half of the Americans who listen to podcasts listen at home. You know they have smartphones, you know they have smart speakers, you know that they're getting rid of their radios. Make the type of podcast that someone would want to listen to at home. We're almost at the end of this, guys. Slide number 57. Let's see here. Most listened to car or truck. 22% more than one out of every five. Interesting podcast listening. Most of the podcast. We knew that. We're seeing that from the Apple stats. Nothing necessarily to do there. Increase podcast playback speed. I've always thought it was a goofy thing. It's very nerd. This is slide 59. There are some who want to listen at multiple speed. And yes, I love it when podcasters brag about how fast they listen to podcasts. But it's only a small percentage that is going to go down, I predict over time as we see more people doing this smart speaker adoption faster than smartphones. Yep, smart speaker is a huge passion of mine. That was the big presentation, last year's podcast movement. We'll see what happens at this year's podcast movement. But yeah, smart speakers faster than anything else. You gotta have a plan, you gotta have a strategy. Am, fm, it's still the dominant media in the car. I think that's gonna change. I wouldn't worry too much about that. The percentage of Americans who use social media has tapered off. Yeah, but it was too much. It's still a predominant, very, very important player. Don't plan a strategy of a social media, free world and streaming audio. The fact of the matter that Pandora remains stable is so huge. The growth in Spotify we chatted about a couple of episodes ago. Apple Music not doing that well. Amazon Music interesting with of course the Alexa. But Pandora is going to be the next play. Pandora's going to be the next interesting spot. If we go to 64. Podcasting continues its steady growth. Realize that it will taper at some point. Not in the next couple of years, I think, but it will taper at some point. But as your content is more and more smart speakers, as your content is being watched, listened to, consumed with YouTube read in the background, be careful in thinking that that tapering means that your audience has gone down a bit. Slide number 65 is just the deal on their future events. Great content. Again, I tried to do this in such a way that I wanted you to watch the video. At the very least, look at the slides. Consume these for yourself. Tom and team, thank you. Fantastic job as always. My job as a podcast consultant is certainly secure for the next several years. We will chat next week. Bye. Thank you, Tom and the team at Edison Research. I realize it's not just Tom. Tom's just the one I know and have known for way too long. We need these numbers. We are better as a result of these numbers. The industry can do better things as a result of these numbers. It is sad that I had to do all that chat at the beginning of this about how you get numbers and how some of the things that others are doing out there just isn't right, real. But it's important to know that this industry is getting better. This industry is doing better. This industry has some fantastic chances and it's been proven by people who are good at proving these things. I would love it if you could give a shout out to Edison Research in any form of social media thanking them for this. This is collected at great expense. Don't you forget that. And then maybe let's chat about this. Let's chat about what the infinite dial means to you. You can edit it to podcastreport.com 1. You can follow me on all the social platforms. You can respond to me on all the social platforms. Don't even necessarily have to follow me. Let's have a conversation about this that goes further. Thanks again to Edison. Thanks for listening. We'll chat with you next week. Bye. We love the social interaction here at The Podcast Report ThePodcastReport.com Facebook ThePodcastReport.com Twitter ThePodcastReport.com InsertSocialPlatform of your choice. We'd love to hear from you. Love to give you the chance to interact with other listeners of the show. Another thing we'd love to have you do is simply subscribe to the show, if you know what that means. Great. Head out to the podcatcher of your choice and subscribe to the show if you don't know what that means. Basically, all the big programs, itunes, Google, stitcher, all of these platforms give you the ability to subscribe to the show like you'd subscribe to a magazine or a newspaper. And then the minute a new episode comes out, it comes to you automatically. It comes to you without worries about spam or that type of thing. 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