The Download on Podcasts: Google steps up to podcasting, but not enough
Posted on October 28, 2015 by Brad Hill
The announcement from Google that it would add podcasts to its Play Music interactive music service shines a light into the gloomy and under-competitive realm of podcast discovery in Android devices. But it’s a relatively dim ray of light compared to the bold discovery paths that Apple provides to its audio users.
Most podcast listening is mobile. Most podcast discovery, downloading, and streaming occurs via the podcast category in iTunes, which is carved out in the Podcasts app which appears on all iOS mobile desktops. Apple’s gigantic first-mover advantage with podcasts has widened its lead in the mobile era.
This column has complained before of Android’s gaping lack in this department. Android is, by far, the global leading mobile operating system, and offers no built-in acknowledgment or discovery of podcasts. Existing third-part apps like Pocket Casts and Podcast Addict provide solutions, but users must seek them out, download and install them — in other words, they are already podcast fans with some fluency in how discovery and acquisition work.
While the podcast category has grown dramatically, with 33% of the 12+ U.S. population having listened to a podcast at least once, and 10% listening weekly, according to Edison Research, consumption is dramatically skewed to Apple products.
Back to Google’s announcement, posted by Elias Roman, who headed Songza when it was acquired by Google, and now is Product Manager of Google Play Music. Adding podcasts to Google’s music subscription product is a smart move, roughly in parallel with Deezer’s acquisition of Stitcher, Spotify’s intent to add podcasts, and Rivet Radio’s recently announced build-out of podcast shows. Elias Roman’s unique selling point is that Google Play Music will leverage (Songza’s) content discovery algorithms to recommend podcasts based on user habits.
This is all good for Google Play Music subscribers, but is not the solution that the immense population of Android users needs. The competitive thrust is aimed at other music services, not at Apple. It is the Android operating system which needs a podcast solution, not a Google app within the operating system.
So, while we’re eager to see how Google Play Music’s podcast library develops (and happily, loading in a podcast is much easier for podcast owners compared to Apple’s daunting set of requirements), we’re doubling down on our memo to Google: Make a podcast portal, and bolt it into Android. Help bring podcasts into the mainstream.]]>
Author: Media Partners Worldwide
Pandora gets exclusive streaming distribution for Serial’s 2nd season
Pandora gets exclusive streaming distribution for Serial’s second season
Posted on November 2, 2015 by Brad Hill
Pandora announced today that it will be the “exclusive streaming partner” for the second season of hit podcast Serial. In 2016 the agreement will extend to This American Life, the public radio program which distributes its shows as on-demand podcasts, and which is the creator of Serial.
This initiative is a new programming dimension for Pandora, and a potential source of new audience for Serial. “Pandora reaches millions of people who never listen to public radio or download podcasts,” said Ira Glass, host of This American Life. “This’ll get our shows to them.”
Because long-form narrative podcasting is so different from the normal song library of Pandora tracks, the service will carve each Serial episode into five-minute bites. Pandora calls this “chapterized” content, and promises it will make it easier to listen in portions, and return to a previous leave-off point. The chapters will play continuously for those who want whole episodes.
The launch date for the second season of Serial is undisclosed in this announcement. Season One will likewise be poured into Pandora on November 24, for binge listening over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Serial will still be downloadable from iTunes and other podcast aggregators, while Pandora enjoys the exclusive pure-streaming rights.
Without question, the partnership has unique value for all stakeholders. Pandora jumps on the podcast train. Serial gets exposed to an audience of 78-million monthly users, some of whom have probably heard of Serial but have never figured out how listen to a podcast. And those users get the benefit of easy discovery and playback in an environment they know and love.
Interestingly, this agreement also gives Pandora a block of interactive content that can be accessed and heard on demand, unlike its entire non-interactive music library. Users just add the “Serial” station, and can listen to as much as they want. When users create station based on a music brand, the first track is usually that artist or brand, and then the Music Genome kicks in with a playlist of which the user has limited control. Spoken-word podcasting is free of music licensing restrictions, and can be thoroughly interactive and on-demand.]]>
Pandora gets exclusive streaming distribution for Serial's 2nd season
Pandora gets exclusive streaming distribution for Serial’s second season
Posted on November 2, 2015 by Brad Hill
Pandora announced today that it will be the “exclusive streaming partner” for the second season of hit podcast Serial. In 2016 the agreement will extend to This American Life, the public radio program which distributes its shows as on-demand podcasts, and which is the creator of Serial.
This initiative is a new programming dimension for Pandora, and a potential source of new audience for Serial. “Pandora reaches millions of people who never listen to public radio or download podcasts,” said Ira Glass, host of This American Life. “This’ll get our shows to them.”
Because long-form narrative podcasting is so different from the normal song library of Pandora tracks, the service will carve each Serial episode into five-minute bites. Pandora calls this “chapterized” content, and promises it will make it easier to listen in portions, and return to a previous leave-off point. The chapters will play continuously for those who want whole episodes.
The launch date for the second season of Serial is undisclosed in this announcement. Season One will likewise be poured into Pandora on November 24, for binge listening over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Serial will still be downloadable from iTunes and other podcast aggregators, while Pandora enjoys the exclusive pure-streaming rights.
Without question, the partnership has unique value for all stakeholders. Pandora jumps on the podcast train. Serial gets exposed to an audience of 78-million monthly users, some of whom have probably heard of Serial but have never figured out how listen to a podcast. And those users get the benefit of easy discovery and playback in an environment they know and love.
Interestingly, this agreement also gives Pandora a block of interactive content that can be accessed and heard on demand, unlike its entire non-interactive music library. Users just add the “Serial” station, and can listen to as much as they want. When users create station based on a music brand, the first track is usually that artist or brand, and then the Music Genome kicks in with a playlist of which the user has limited control. Spoken-word podcasting is free of music licensing restrictions, and can be thoroughly interactive and on-demand.]]>
MPW Speaking at ERA D2C
David Alpern of Media Partners Worldwide will be presenting next week at the annual ERA D2C conference in Las Vegas on the topic of: Retail Synergy Between Broadcast and Digital Advertising
More info can be found here: http://site.retailing.org/d2c/sessions
Mali]]>
Infinite Dial Learnings
By David Alpern
Earlier this year we posted about the Infinite Dial study about audio consumption, with the conclusion that streaming is goi
ng wide, YouTube is mainstream, and podcasting is growing. Below is an article by Brad Hill, published earlier this year, that details the study.
The 2015 edition of The Infinite Dial was unveiled in March 2015 by survey producers Edison Research and Triton Digital. In its 23rd edition, The Infinite Dial is one of the most significant and respected research projects in the streaming audio industry.
A major headline came when John Rosso of Triton said that 53% of American adults listen to online radio at least monthly — an estimated 143-million individuals. (“One of the most significant findings of this year’s study,” said Rosso.) Holding to demographic tendencies of previous Infinite Dial editions, uptake of streaming radio is weighted to youth. The 12-24 demographic shows 77% listening to online radio each month.
Weekly online radio listening continues its upward march in the 2015 results — 44% of Americans listen at least weekly. That is an estimated 119-million people. In the 2000 survey, two percent of Americans made the same claim. (There has not been a year-over-year decrease during that span.) Weekly listening also skews young, with 69% of the 12-24 group listening weekly.
How about time spent? Edison found that the average weekly time spent listening to online radio was 12 hours and 53 minutes — a slight drop from last year (13:19). but with a large year-over-year jump in audience size (from 36% of Americans to 44%), the overall time spent with online radio is much higher.
Where does the listening happen? Mobile dominates, and is growing — 73% use smartphones, increased from 66% last year. Computers are still in frequent use, but declining from 64% in 2014 to 61% this year.
The presentation provided deep dives into several research topics:
- Brands:Pandora is the best-known brand in the Internet audio business, followed by YouTube. Pandora, iTunes Radio, and Spotify all enjoyed substantial listening growth from last year’s survey. YouTube is used for music by 63% of the total population, and 90% of the 12-24 cohort.
- Discovery:The Infinite Dial tracks music-discovery methods. The top resource in this year’s data is the Friends/Family response (70%), followed closely by AM/FM Radio (69%). YouTube is next at 61%.
- Podcasting:The podcasting segment of today’s presentation showed overall listening at 33% of the population, or approximately 89-million people. Podcast listeners are characterized by the data as voracious, listening to an average six shows per week, and 15% listening to 11 or more shows each week. Interestingly, the podcast audience skews affluent (52% of listeners are in $100k+ households), a data point that all ad-repping networks will probably include in their sales decks.
- Smartphone ownership:Jason Calacanis told last year’s RAIN Summit West audience: “Mobile is the only thing that matters.” Edison tells us that 71% of 12+ Americans own a smartphone.
- Cars listening:In the car, as other studies have shown, AM/FM is the most-used audio source (81%). CD players and MP3 players fare well in this survey, and online radio comes in at 21% — higher than the 17% listenership to satellite radio. In-car online radio listening is the fastest-growing audio source by far, leaping 50% between last year’s survey and this one (from 14% to 21%).
- Online audio is now a fully mainstream activity for people under 55.
- AM/FM Radio continues to dominate in-car, but is losing its music discovery leadership.
- Pandora remains the dominant online audio brand, though Spotify has grown, especially on the young end.
- YouTube as a music channel is as mainstream as all of online audio put together.
- Online radio in the car is growing—more than doubled in two years.
- The Smartphone continues to drive online audio, and most users don’t care about data consumption.
- Podcasting is increasingly mainstream, and carving out a segment of highly attractive advertising targets.
Cultivated Streaming vs. Radio
By David Alpern
Rick Dees, The Real Don Steele, Don Imus, Cousin Brucie, Kevin & Bean, Scott Shannon….these are all larger than life personalities that busted through the radio over the years and became huge radio sensations and thus ratings monsters. Comparing that to the non-interrupted music flow that comes from Amazon Music, Rhapsody, Spotify, Songza, and others is not truly a fair comparison. One is full of life and the other is full of efficiency. Some services like Slacker try to inject pre-recorded announcers, which is a nice effort, but does not even begin to approach the presence that a “jock” brings to a station.
That is why the re-emergence of cultivated content is a refreshing trend. As Wired Magazine reported last month in “Internet Radio Is Fixing to Make a Comeback”, several Internet streaming providers including Apple Music (with its impressive Beats1 radio station guided by Zane Lowe) and the new premium service from TuneIn are working to inject a personal touch into online music services.
“TuneIn anchors a human at the other end of the broadcast,” says CEO John Donham.
Nobody Killed the Radio Star
Despite the recent proliferation of online streaming alternatives, rumors of radio’s decline have been greatly exaggerated. Due to its cultivated and personality driven heritage, it’s managed to hold its own. The reach of radio and the number of people listening to the radio have remained mostly constant over a long period of time.
That is why stations like K-Earth 101 and KOST 103.5 tend to be heard all over town. While all those stores and food stalls and passing cars could choose to stream a personality free online alternative, the DJ driven presentation along with the program director cultivated playlist still conspire to produce a compelling listener experience and Internet Radio is certainly noticing and adjusting. South Korea . Game on!]]>
Radio Investing in Podcasting
By David Alpern
With apologies to Samsung’s tag line, it looks like the “next big thing” may be 
podcasting. This week Hubbard Radio announced that it is taking a 30% stake in a Beverly Hills based podcast network.
Legacy radio broadcasters are anxious to snap up the next evolution in audio media. Sources estimated Hubbard’s investment at $10 million. Just last month E.W. Scripps bought Hollywood podcasting network Midroll Media.
PodcastOne is an advertising network for more than 200 podcasts, which deliver 400 online casino million impressions per month. Some of its celebrity podcasts are hosted by Shaquille O’Neal, Adam Carolla and Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi as well as well-known public radio programs “Freakonomics” and “Radiolab.”
Podcast audiences at this moment remain relatively small but are registering incremental annual growth. 17% of Americans listened to podcasts in January 2015, up two points year over year according to the Share of Ear study published by Edison Research in February, and reviewed previously here on the Media Partners Worldwide blog.
Traditional radio broadcast companies are investing with the belief that the podcast industry is on the verge of explosive growth and point to the platform”s potential by citing the success of NPR’s mega-hit episodic podcast “Serial” that re-examined a young man’s murder conviction and has been downloaded over 80 million times since it debuted in 2014.]]>
Streaming Music + Personality = The New Radio
By David Alpern
The Wall Street Journal published a front page profile of the new radio service Apple is expected to announce at its developers’ conference next week: http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-to-announce-new-music-services-1433183201
The concept of DJ cultivated radio on the new Apple music service could be a real difference maker. The beauty of radio is well establi
shed with personality and localization, two tenants that have not been as possible with the jukebox oriented nature of most of the current online streaming services. With the right amount of artistic cultivation (and Apple’s decision that we referenced earlier on this blog to recruit several high profile BBC Radio 1 talent is a good source of that) Tim Cook and Apple may have a very strong radio product about to be shared with the world.
Moreover, with Spotify having demonstrated the ability to recruit a critical mass of paying subscribers (25% of its total US audience), Apple’s new radio streaming service should be able to leverage the buzz that comes with anything Apple does. That buzz may help propel the new Apple Radio into a prominent position in the online streaming marketplace, which is rapidly becoming the new radio home for a hungry music, culture, and personality craving audience.]]>
Today’s Female Consumer – Romancing The Store
Welcome to the era of the empowered shopper. Nowadays consumers have deals in the palm of their hands from Groupon to CouponSherpa. On the other hand consumers still want to be romanced. Sara from Chicago said that “shopping is electric – it just charges me up.” Sadly the increasing availability of online shopping can turn the most enjoying experience into mundane / passionless task. Women shop based on emotion; they go to the same stores because of the connection they have with the product and the great customer service. The digital world is separating that connection.
For more profile information on the smart, savvy, multi-channel female shopper visit http://waggeneredstrom.com/what-we-do/retail-report to download the study, or better yet, contact MPW to better learn how to target the empowered consumer using both digital, broadcast, and print media.
Women in the Business of Creative
Niya Doncheva, MPW Marketing Coordinator – The latest issue of Ad Week contains a great article on page 15 discussing
“minding thegender gap” in creative agencies. Mark Obrien, the North American president of DDB, declares that “we expect that if we remove the barriers, the rise will happen naturally” when asked about the gender gap in creatives. On the other hand, Tony Hess, the CCO of Wunderman, commented that “the emotional pull to have children & families really can’t be overlooked. We work in wonderful amazing business that is a lot of fun but is incredibly demanding.” This year alone, five women have been promoted to creative chief positions and award show juries have finally become equal in selecting their jurors. Debra Sercy of Grace Blue favors the changes in saying that “Women increasingly are in consideration because they’ve risen through the ranks, they have proven their ability, they’re agile, they’re fearless, they’re strategic, and they’re smart.” Read more about “Minding The gender Gap” by Andrew McMains in the April 20 issue of Ad Week (adweek.com).]]>