What Does The Stitcher Acquisition Mean To Podcasters? The Podcast Report Episode #20

All right, I'll bite. What does the Stitcher acquisition mean to podcasters? Show notes, links and conversation@the podcastreport.com 20 show hotline is 503-897-1290.

Hi, it's Chuck Brown from Hide youe Word, a daily Bible reading podcast for folks on the go. I first discovered Paul Colligan several years ago when he was co host of one of the very first podcasts I ever subscribed to called Internet Marketing. This week I was very pleasantly surprised to stumble across him again recently on the Podcast Report and have really appreciated his fresh, savvy take on the whole genre. So settle in for another episode of the Podcast Report with your host, Paul Colligan.

Long and short of it is this Deezer buying Stitcher is the best news for podcasters since Apple put podcasts into itunes. That's right, it's that good. If this resonates, I'd love you to tweet this out. If you head out to the podcastreport.com20 there's a link that lets you do that. Of course, you can hit Twitter yourself. What is this show and when are we going to get to the content? My name is Paul Colligan. I am the six time best selling author of the Business Podcasting Bible, the number one top selling podcast strategies. Been in podcasting since day one. Love the industry, the people and the news. And that's what this show is about. Two audiences for this show, the podcaster, those guys who want to make and those gals who want to make their podcast better and those thinking about getting into podcasts. You want to think about it the right way. The Podcast report's not a massive play, but it's a deep one and we're building a little community here. So let's chat about the topic. What does the Stitcher acquisition mean to podcasters? Why the topic? Well, number one, it's in the news. It's pretty exciting. This European concern, Deezer bought Stitcher. Now it's exciting. The podcasters are talking about a bunch of you have posted things and said things. Here's my take on it. But I'll tell you this, my take right now is this acquisition is extremely understood, misunderstood. There are some bigger issues at play here. We're going to see more and more of this and there's a need to be ready. For any of us who are podcasters, I. E. Content producers, this is the kind of stuff we need to be thinking about here and talking about here. This is the kind of stuff that the podcast report is built for. And gosh darn it, some podcasters think too small. So that's why we're going to chat about it now. What do we focus on? What are the important elements of the acquisition? Well, number one, there is infrastructure. There is value in the infrastructure of the distribution of your content. Apple has made a great deal of money selling iPhones and ad pads that distribute your content. Stitcher just got acquired for a good chunk of change to distribute your content. There is money to be made here. People are going to do it, and they're going to do it with someone else's content. It would be a really good idea if that someone else was you. So focus on that. Number two, International is coming fast. Deezer is popular. The connected cars. If you know anything about Europe, what's amazing is Europe basically in many ways bypassed the infrastructure of copper wire and went much to wireless. Quicker, faster data. It's a whole different paradigm over there. It's hard to explain, but they're embracing it and they're loving it. And now with the Deezer acquisition, well, it's coming faster now. Stitcher remains. Stitcher's not going anywhere. Don't worry about the work you've done with Stitcher. Just realize that Deezer is going to get access to the database, which means more listeners, which means more customers, which means a bigger list, which means more than we could possibly be hoping for here. Maybe that's a bit hyperbole, but, you know, hence the recording of this stuff live. Anyway, Stitcher right Now is in 50 models of cars, okay? A Stitch directly, that's Ford, that's GM, that's BMW. 50 different models right now running stitcher. That doesn't include CarPlay on the Apple side of things, it doesn't include Android Audio on the Android side of things, and sure as heck doesn't include people like me who just have, you know, their iPhone connected via Bluetooth to their car stereo when they're driving around. Stitcher is in a lot of cars. And I'll tell you this, the promise of Stitcher, the content you love when and where you are, is really, for a lot of people, more exciting than the term podcasting. Podcasting makes some people nervous. I joke all the time about how my mom still doesn't think she can consume because she doesn't have an ipod. Stitcher and that concept and Internet radio in the car. Content stream to the car. The Pandora of content is bigger than podcasting. Guys, we need to think about that. We need to react to that. Another thing to focus on simply is Windows. You know, I had always assumed that Stitcher would be on Windows Phones. I just never assumed Windows Phones would be in that bad of a place where they don't have Stitcher. But they don't. And so it doesn't mean that the world is now itunes or Stitcher. You got to think about things like Tunein that has the, not only the Windows platform, but, you know, the Tesla cars as well. So we want to continue to focus on being everywhere, realizing that we want to partner with the middlemen who have developed the infrastructure to get our content to other people. So focus on those things. Now, what we don't focus on, for goodness sakes, a Weezer optimization. Okay, don't put yourself in a position where like, well, what do we have to do to be found in Weezer? Don't worry about that. Produce the type of content, do the meta tagging, do the level of excellence that you would want your audience to listen to. And the AI that is coming, the, the findability that is coming, all these things that are coming is going to help you get more listeners, more users. Let's face it, Stitcher tracks, if you have an account, you know how many downloads, how many streams, how that compares to everybody else. Stitcher knows what is good, Weezer is going to know what is good. They're going to share it. They own each other's databases because they are one company. So if you stop thinking about Weezer optimization, stop thinking about Stitcher optimization, stop thinking about podcast directories like we chatted about last week, and think about producing great content. Yeah, that's what you need to do. Another thing you don't want to focus on is you don't want to focus on picking platforms. You want to focus on being on all the platforms. It's entirely different and it's really, really important. And then finally, and not all podcasters, we're getting over this more and more every day. But there were a number of podcasters, and still are, who are greatly concerned about the ad insertion that people like Stitcher will do or people like Weezer will do now that they are Stitcher, get over the ad insertion. That is the price to play of distribution on somebody else's network. If your model for podcasting cannot survive, if somebody else puts an ad in as the process of stitching it all together or something like that, you gotta really bad model, okay? So stop worrying about Weezer optimization, the picking of platforms and ad insertion. Now let's have some fun with this. What do you Have. What can you play with? Where does this go? Number one, you have content that people want. This is really, really important. Yes, Weezer picked up Stitcher for the big names, but you come along for the party and of course I know the audience here. I know there are some big names listening to this. So Weezer bought it for you guys directly. But Weezer for the rest of us brought us inside. We have. You have content that people want. That's reality number one. Reality number two, there is money in the plumbing. There is money in bringing the content from the content creator, you to the listener. You know, France over in France, that was a really stupid statement, but you know what I'm saying? And money in the plumbing. Now, Tom Webster, one of the smartest guys I know, Edison Research, I'm going to link to him in the links for this episode. He's got a show called the Marketing Companion Podcast, which is fabulous. Tom has always said, and it's brilliant and it sums things up in a really good, non nerd way that the Internet has never been good to the middleman. If you think about that, that's really true. You know, pop stars are doing great, but you know, Warehouse Records has gone away. You know, Hollywood's doing fine, but the independent studios, you know, or the independent movie theaters, you know, a lot of people are getting DVDs now, books. Let's talk about Amazon and what's happened with Kindle and that type of thing. The people who produce the content have always done well. It's just the people in the middle. It's the plumbing of the content, it's the middleman of the content. Where the Internet really hasn't been that good to. And those have to be huge, massive plays. So here's the great thing. A huge conglomerate Deezer over in Europe bought a huge conglomerate stitcher over in America to combine the databases to get your content out to more people. The Internet's not going to be good to these guys. These guys might fail, other guys might fail. But the fact of the matter is, if you keep your content sent out everywhere, you're going to be in a good place. Now, some historical perspective here I think is really important. Number one, I remember I was at Gnome Decks and Todd Cochran handed me the first book on podcasting. I signed it. I've still got it on my shelf. Thank you, Todd. And I realized something about six months later. That book didn't mention itunes having podcasting. Why? Because when that book was published, itunes wasn't doing podcasting. Yet. If you think about the implications of that. That is incredible. That is insane. My book, the Business Podcasting Bible, doesn't mention the iPhone. Why? We didn't even know. We weren't even rumblings that the iPhone was coming when we wrote that book. See, podcasting keeps getting bigger and bigger and better and better. Your content now is going to be in more places than you thought it was going to be when you started recording that content. And that's only good if you do it right. So what should you do? Well, a kind of simple something we all should have been doing for a while to go. But I think this brings this one home. Number one, look through your show. Look at your show through the lens of someone who doesn't have English as their primary language. They might speak English. They might speak English better than you, but it's not necessarily their primary language. So colloquialisms and things that you say that might make sense to, you know, a fellow North American or a, you know, fellow Portlandian, in my case, might not play so well in Estonia. And you want to think about that through number two, if you're obsessed with the term podcast. I've said it before, I'm going to say it again. Get over it. You are bigger than a podcast. And Deezer is going to bring you content just like they are going to bring music, not songs and albums. If you call it a podcast, someone's going to listen to it. There will be people who will love your content who will not know what a podcast is, and they're going to get frustrated. I mean, what happens if someone stumbles across your show as a result of being inside? Maybe their Ds are tired of music. Maybe they hear about this content, they log on to your content, they stumble across your show. Maybe not episode one. Probably not episode one. Notice how I introduced what the show was at the beginning of this. Trying to do some best samples for you, but what happens if somebody stumbles across your show? Okay, what am I doing, number one? Well, if you've noticed, I announced at the beginning of the show and I'll do it again. I have the whole text EP20 to 503897-1290 to get the transcripts and the show notes and the mind map for this podcast. Now, the problem is that works great here in America and all of us have, you know, long distance pretty much for free on our cell phones. But now it doesn't necessarily play so well over in Europe. There's a slight expense over there. And yeah, most Europeans are pretty savvy. As to how to text America, but you know, am I ready for that? I definitely have to get my trigger texting play ready for international, something I should have done a while ago, but this is alerting me to that. Then the other thing I really have to do is I really have to focus on content, not podcasting. Because again, we're going to be appearing in places that aren't necessarily podcast. Now, for a guy who runs a show called the Podcast Report, this can get a little complicated and a little interesting. So I'm thinking about that. I'm working that through. I'd love your thoughts on that. We are@twitter odcastrpt.com podcast report wasn't available. I'd love a follow. Love any comments you got there. We are@facebook.com the podcastreport if you haven't liked that yet, go ahead and like that. And this episode with the links will be up@the podcastreport.com 20 Again if you'd like to to get the transcripts for this and the show notes and the mind map, go ahead and text EP20 to the show hotline, 503-897-1290. Feel free to leave a voicemail message if you'd like the podcastreport.com 20 links I've got the Stitcher announcement. This whole announcement from Stitcher straight for them. The Verge article. I love the way they report this stuff. An article on the French and podcasting. Boy, if there was, you know. Well, to make it long story short, the French don't like the word podcasting and some of their ministries and some of their organizations basically have banned the word. That's a great example of why, if you're obsessed in podcasting, you might want to again, get over it. So I've got an article on the French in podcasting. And then finally I've got a link to the marketing companion podcast Tom Webster, whom I referred to earlier. This is the podcast report. You can find it at thepodcastreport.com iTunes the podcastreport.com Stitcher thepodcastreport.com Pocketcasts Tunein overcast not at SoundCloud yet. Still trying to figure that out. Looking at Spreaker. Done some experiments with there. I chat a little bit about that last week. That would be great. Subscribe to this if you are listening to this on anything other than a website, the tool probably has the ability to subscribe or follow or whatever they happen to call it in your language. If you subscribe. If you Every time we come out with a new episode that comes to you automatically. That's one of the benefits of podcasting. It's very, very powerful. You want to subscribe so that you can keep up to date with what's going on. Because if you are this far into this episode, this industry is fascinating to you, and I'd like to bring you the news that matters. Next episode, we're not going to announce. That's going to be another surprise. But between now and then, if you'd like to review us over at iTunes, the podcastreport.com iTunes or the podcastreport.com iTunes Stitcher. This is Paul. This is the podcast report. I'll see you next week. Bye.