Where we’re at in Media 2020: Audio and Otherwise
Tags: Newspapers, Podcasting, Podcast, Media Criticism

A few thoughts on some of the interlocking trends in media as 2020 draws to a close:

Spotify isn’t interested in being a podcasting company, they want to be the only radio company: it’s been confusing at times exactly what Spotify’s podcast strategy has been the last several years other than “go big.” Gimlet and the Ringer have a few big shows but not that many shows, and not that diverse an offering; Anchor had a lot of barely-listened-to podcasts and some tech of dubious usefulness; and while Joe Rogan is a big splash, he certainly comes with a range of issues. This year’s acquisition of Megaphone clarifies things [NB: I worked at Megaphone neé Panoply in 2016–17], though the recent departure of a senior executive shows there’s not total clarity as yet.

Megaphone transitioned several years back from a do-everything podcast company that included original podcasts and boutique ad sales, into a pure tech play: podcast hosting and ad sales through a marketplace. The acquisition of Megaphone will allow Spotify to do a couple of things: higher efficiency monetization of their in-house podcasts when they’re consumed via RSS (i.e., outside of the Spotify ecosystem), and a more streamlined ad buy experience for brands that are already on-board with ads within the Spotify ecosystem.

This is going to present an interesting dilemma for producers of podcasts who have been using Megaphone for hosting and/or using their marketplace for ad sales. Do they stay in that world knowing that their listening data is being viewed and used by a direct and massive competitor?

But even more so, it’s a signal of how Spotify sees the future of podcasting and audio — at least, how they see it as useful to them. Incorporating the open podcast ecosystem inside its walls has been a big win for Spotify on several tracks, not least of which is that it’s a way for them to lower costs — when users listen to a non-Spotify-produced podcast on Spotify, it’s even better than their listening to music, because Spotify doesn’t have to pay anything — and in fact, can monetize with mass-buy brand advertising.

Extending this mass ad marketplace out into the broader podcast ecosystem works for Spotify because they can operate in massive volume, which is how most brands still like to buy digital ads. It will also have the effect of driving down Spotify’s CPMs (e.g., “Reply All” among others was formerly able to charge very high rates for their host reads; the produced brand spots are almost assuredly not bringing in as much by unit), and the CPMs for the industry as a whole, but by putting it all in the same ecosystem, Spotify will be able to sell a much higher percentage of available inventory at much lower overhead — you don’t need as many ad sellers with a programmatic marketplace.

At least that’s the thinking. I’m skeptical it will work quite as well as the massive outlays suggest but then, Spotify has built a massive market cap and I’m sure they’re thinking they might as well use it to try to get a hammer lock on audio listening. The overall effect of their shift is that everything in their advertising space converges back on the form and aesthetic of radio ads: loud, disruptive, and (imo) ineffective. Taken with the decreasing effectiveness of ads on other platforms and the ongoing crisis in digital ad fraud and brand safety, my bet is that there is going to be a shift back towards trusted and premium publishers. Podcasts offer a deep engagement channel either independently or as part of a broader offering, and smart publishers and ad buyers will seek out the ones that are good and effective.

The New York Times is a platform, now: for the last two decades, the Grey Lady has held a precarious double identity in media — it’s the country’s flagship news publication, home of many of the best scoops and greatest reporting, and also a site of the transformation of modern media business models. On the former, there have been no shortage of scandals — Jayson Blair’s false reporting; Judith Miller’s credulous cheerleading for the Iraq War; the hysterical focus on Hillary Clinton’s emails in the 2016 election; James Bennet’s disastrous tenure; and of late, the retraction of the “Caliphate” podcast and related misdeeds. And on the latter, it’s easy to forget now, but the Times was in dire straits during the financial crisis in 2009, leading them to sell a chunk of the paper to Carlos Slim in exchange for a $250MM loan.

But the Times has also done vital reporting and especially in an era of absolute devastation for newspapers specifically and the media more generally, it has been important that the Times do well. Important for the industry to show that news is still a profitable and important endeavor; important for informed consumers of news as a cultural signal; important for our information ecosystem as one of the few news organizations with the scale to report big stories over months or years.

And of course, scale is the word of the day/year/decade. As Ben Smith noted in his first piece as media columnist for the Times,

The gulf between The Times and the rest of the industry is vast and keeps growing: The company now has more digital subscribers than The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the 250 local Gannett papers combined, according to the most recent data. And The Times employs 1,700 journalists — a huge number in an industry where total employment nationally has fallen to somewhere between 20,000 and 38,000.

No longer is it a feel-good story for the rest of media — instead, the Times is now an existential threat, siphoning off subscribers from across the country as local newspaper subscriptions decline and local newspapers are sucked dry by private equity.

The furious reaction to Andy Mills’ prospering in the wake of the “Caliphate” scandal, despite his long-documented history of deeply inappropriate behavior, is part of a larger shift (this is not meant to minimize the long-standing abuses and still-ongoing deflection of responsibility — I only mean to suggest this is happening in a broader context). Many who had previously held back from criticizing the paper for its harboring of a known harasser made it clear in their critiques that they’d felt threatened by the Times’ power: its centrality in the industry, and as a shining city on a hill, the ultimate gig in a business bleeding gigs. But that centrality itself is now a threat to anyone else in the news business, and that city doesn’t shine as bright.

The Times doesn’t need anyone to defend it — indeed, it could do with a lot less defensiveness. And as with the earlier furor over James Bennet’s poor judgment and the initial dismissals of internal criticism from journalists of color at the Times, it’s important that such a central journalistic institution be held to high standards if it is to demand continued admiration.

The problem with Times as platform is that it’s not replicable — the whole point of a platform economy is to tend towards monopoly or oligopoly. That’s not good for the media industry generally, and it’s certainly not good for our broader society.

There is some hope in new business models — from stalwart digital niche publications like Talking Points Memo, nonprofit media like The Markup and Futuro Media, creator-owned publications like Defector, and the vast array of independent podcast productions. The next year is an opportunity to be much clearer and more honest about where the business and practice of media are, and where it can go, and it’s my hope that new and emergent media companies can imbue themselves with a greater sense of openness to critique and flexibility in both business model and cultural standing, than some of our long-hallowed institutions.