Automated voice: On this episode of The Sonic Truth, we sit down with Colin Anderson, a seasoned pro in podcast and content production. We dive deep into the evolution of podcast networks, what it takes to scale a podcast operation from startup to sustainability, and how content curation can make or break a show's success. Colin shares insights into the ever-changing monetization landscape and what podcasters need to do to optimize revenue while staying authentic. Thank you for tuning in and welcome back to the Sonic Truth.


Female host: Welcome back to the Sonic Truth. Thank you for tuning in, today we have a very special guest on the podcast, Colin Anderson, former VP of Content and podcast at SXM. He also held roles at Earwolf, Stitcher, maximum Fun and BBC. So a long veteran of production, content, production and audio. Welcome, Colin.


Colin Anderson: Hey, thanks for having me.


Female host: Thanks so much for being here. It's a pleasure to connect. I understand that although Los Angeles is home, you are overseas today.


Colin: I'm coming to see you a live from Scotland.


Female host: Fun. I am so jealous. It must be absolutely beautiful. So thank you again, Colin, for coming on. We obviously admire and respect your incredible experience in audio and with content production and producing and all that you've done in and around the industry. So we really wanted to talk today about a couple of different things around scaling success and content and curation monetization strategies. So we just dive in here with the first question and we can just kind of take it from there. One thing we're interested in picking your brain on are what are some of the key challenges and lessons that you've learned in working with different brands and agencies to grow a podcast operation from early stage development to more of a sustainable revenue generating business.


Colin: Scaling was something that I kind of came in to do at Earwolf in 2016. Chris Bannon, who was then the Chief Content Officer, hired me, Earwolf, had been going probably six years at that point. It was a network that had grown up around [inaudible] Conan and Paul Scheer and their kind of Los Angeles improv comedy friends, and that was a really strong basis for a network because people guested on each other's shows and were supportive of each other's stuff and there was a kind of coherent aesthetic of like, if you like the comedy in this show then you'll probably enjoy Ron and Beverly or wamp it up or whatever that each show felt like a kind of an iteration of something else on the network. I think at the point that I joined there was probably 20 shows, something like that and I think that there was the risk at that point that every time there was a new show that felt coherently, like something that could come off comedy Bang Bang, it was now like competing with its own audience to be the show that you listen to on a Monday or a Tuesday or whatever.


I looked to try and diversify our demographics within that comedy world. So we brought in more queer hosted shows, more bipoc coasted shows and try to replicate Scott's originally a wolf cluster with shows that were for slightly wider audiences. That was the way of trying to make that growth more sustainable. It was also a really fortunate time in podcasting where Scott had had created this network that already had scale Omni bang bang. How does this get made were both in the kind of top plenty podcasts at any given time. So we had had a strong platform to launch new shows off. And back then, once you got Steve Wilson at Apple's email address and you had a new show coming, you'd reach out to Steve Wilson at Apple and he helped get it profiled and stuff. It felt much easier to launch shows in 2016 than it does a decade later.


Female host: That's actually a good segue into my next question. The audio space is obviously crowded and only getting increasingly. So how do you approach developing and curating engaging content that stands out among all the rest that's already there?


Colin: Standing out's just such a challenge. I guess the simplest route to it is through the kind of famous people option where you go, we know that this author or actor or whoever has a definable audience already. Like ideally has a incredible socials and an email list where if they launch something they can contact their fan base and say come and support me in this new thing that I've launched. I think you're still looking for content genres that aren't already huge in podcasting. Like who are the audience groups? The interest groups that aren't being served right now. And that was something I felt like I saw again, like a decade or so ago when my favorite murder launched, seeing their growth trajectory from like zero to a million listens in the course of a few months and it was just like, yeah. I guess up until that point, podcasts were mostly white guys maybe with some sort of tech nerd background or public radio refugees who were like here's the thing that I really want to make but public radio won't let me make. Karen and Georgia were like, well, how about if women host podcasts? And how about we do shows that are about true crime and it blew up. What are the reality TV kind of content opportunities in podcasts now? Seems like something that's huge in other media, but not yet in podcasts. I guess that might be where some of the kind of TikTok is, influencers video podcasts are going to come in where it's that kind of reality tv. His access to my personal life and the events that I'm going to content that their audiences seem to like


Female host: In terms of spreading the word about new podcasts for interest groups that aren't being served at the moment? Is it really all about leveraging TikTok and video channels and things like that for promotion? Or is there a secret sauce for how you spread the word?


Colin: A secret sauce is I'd go to my marketing colleague experts and really work with them. I think some of the things that we've done in the past is find really specific comps for the shows that we want to do cross promos with and things like that and often a marketing team are kind of projecting a campaign before they've heard a pilot or like they really benefit from the production team talking through like how they imagine the show going, what shows we think are similar. And then by having the marketing team really, really well read in, I think they're able to do much more effective work either
end up with just going, well, it's like a famous person interviewing famous people. Let's just advertise on the top five famous people interview podcasts because that might not be the tone. I guess I'm dodging the question of marketing secret source in favor of really trying to inform and empower the marketing teams who are looking at these numbers every which way and can even tell you like what success needs to be for a different podcast can be different things like there's shows and networks out there that just need to hit the charts, and there's a way that you can market to just focus on chart success, maybe over download success. So working with the marketing team with your specific goals in mind is valuable. Christie Maribel is someone that was at Stitcher and SiriusXM and now has her own consultancy and she's always someone that I go to and just get advice.


Female host: That's great. And what about monetization? So obviously there's a lot of talk constantly about the best way to monetize podcasts, and I think even those channels are always evolving to some extent. In your opinion, what are some of the most effective ways to monetize revenue growth for these podcasts while also maintaining authenticity?


Colin: I'm quite commercially minded as producers, production folks go. I really want to see the talent that I'm working with get paid for the work that they're doing. I'm pretty comfortable with ad sales and ads being available at a podcast. Generally encouraging of if that's not a brand that you really dislike, thenn approve it and read the ad. In terms of like that kind of sellout mentality, I'm there. But I also loved about like Stitcher Premium and the places that have got the kind of Apple Podcast plus things. I really like the idea that you can go it's free and ad supported if you want it free and ad supported or you can pay for the Patreon or the whatever premium version that is ad free. I like to be able to give consumers that choice of like, how do you want to support the show? Do you want to support it by listening to ads or do you want to, are you in a position to pay a couple of bucks a month and fund it that way? Then which shows like work best and which like monetization models varies as well. Shows like Hollywood Handbook who were kind of long Earwolf but had. There's shows that are like, if someone could listen to one podcast a week, this would be the podcast and they'd probably listen to it several times over. Like, those ones I think do really well with Patreon because their fans' number one priority. Fans want to directly support those hosts. We saw shows like that making tens of thousand dollars a month through a Patreon where that's probably a lot more than they'd be making from ad supported.


Female host: Interesting.


Colin: I also love the maximum fun model where it's like listener supported. The challenges with anything is that kind of subscription fatigue. I think a lot of people are feeling the squeeze financially at the moment and looking at how many TV subscriptions do I have, how many Patreons, how many Substack and rationalizing. I think the best business model is to hedge your bets and have both options. And then if advertising's having a great month, then awesome and if you've got some subscribers that are there for the longer haul and you can build this like deeper relationship with and do fan meetups and bonus content and whatever else then that's great too. There's sliding balance as to what works best for your individual share.


Female host: Zooming out with a wider lens, monetization and otherwise. What trends do you see shaping the industry over the next? It's hard to even say next few years because I feel like so much can change even in the next six months. So I guess just future state and how can or should creators and the distribution platforms prepare for some of those trends.


Colin: The big trend this year that it feels like everyone, all the big networks and whatever are betting on is video. It feels worryingly like the kind of podcast bubble that we had where pre pandemic P & Ls and green lighting shows and everything just kind of assumed exponential growth just in the, well, it seems like podcasting's growing and it seems to me a little bit like videos being treated as this is going to solve all the problems of Apple iOS 17 downloads dropping and everything. Everyone's just like, get video and then video will fill the gap. But it doesn't seem like the video sales, they're not actual video sales yet. That's the promise of future video sales. It's a little bit nerve wracking as someone that's stuck with kind of podcasting as an audio medium and a lot of my hosts have been like, yes, the reason we love doing a podcast is we don't have to do hair and makeup. And so adding video adds still still adds like somewhat additional expense and extra production difficulties. Maybe it is good for marketing. The clips are good, but I don't know if people really see like clips of their podcast on TikTok go viral. I don't think that then drives people over to subscribing to the podcast. They just enjoy more viral clips on TikTok. So both the revenue value of video and the marketing value of video seem somewhat unpro out at the moment. While we're all going. I guess we need it and we should have it and let's figure it out. So it'll be interesting to see how that spins out longer term or by the end of the year.


Female host: I feel like the data on that is interesting too. Like even when you look at the top podcasts that are doing the best that have that video element, consumers are still reporting that they're listening to them, the audio only versions, wherever they consume their podcast as well. And so it's almost like it really depends on where they're consuming and if they have the time to sit in front of a screen and watch. Like it's a nice to have and an additional experience to the actual one where they're just listening and consuming in the way that we all assume they would be. It's very interesting. I didn't know if you are next trend if you had one in mind or if it was going to go in this direction, but wanted to get your thoughts also on AI. The integration of AI in the production process and the creative process, did you have any thoughts there on that any future trends around AI?


Colin: I'm still pretty new to using and playing around with AI stuff myself. But I think there's really cool opportunities even just at bringing down the cost of like transcription and filtering through what content you have. I was thinking there's a bunch of old radio archives that I'd love to ingest into a machine and be able to transcribe and then find over 10 years of a radio show every time a particular band gets mentioned and suddenly you can have like an oral history of that band with like your favorite beloved DJ talking about them. This could be a fun way of using it options. I think there's hosts that are thrilled at the idea of generative AI being able to make their ad reads localized or take some of the workload off that or correct a flubbed from flubbed line without them having to like plug their microphone back in and come and do things.


The interesting thing I guess I've seen is that a lot of the podcasters that I've worked with are SAG and otherwise union affiliated. So while there's people that are creatively interested in what they can do with AI or that there might be money saving, time slaving things from AI. They're also don't want to be the talent that embraces AI and like steps out of line in front of the union or isn't seen as being supportive to the union. So I think in podcasting we're going to have to see that get kind of navigated before we see a ton of stuff. Then just on production again, like I said, I'm still playing around with it. But I think I still want to make my podcast organically and be able to hear each of the edits and not just have edited off script. Then hear that the breaths are all over the place or the timing or there's emotion in the delivery or whatever that is beyond just these are the words said in a podcast. I think there's still reasons to not use AI for craft purposes anyway.


Female host: Then what about discoverability? Do you see anything on the horizon there that could assist with that?


Colin: Yes.


Female host: Not necessarily related to AI, but in general.


Colin: It's so difficult to discover and like there's still so few outlets. Like the Guardian in the UK still does like podcast reviews. There's not that many places that like this is a legitimate well-recognized publication talking about podcasting and highlighting stuff that you might be excited about. There's everything to play for there. There's not a company or an institution or whatever that really defines here's where you go to discover podcasts and like we mentioned like that it kind of used to be Apple. Apple's just doing a lot of other things that aren't podcasting. So if they've put some effort into launching podcasting as a medium, but they've not seemed to want to own it going forward. So that kind of Apple front page, I think doesn't have the impact it used to in terms of being able to launch a show. And the Apple charts are bragging rights but you've also got the Spotify charts underneath them and then in all our newsletters that we get it's also like international charts and like what's happening elsewhere in the world. There's not like a single source of truth.


Female host: Well, maybe that's a good opportunity for someone listening is to really figure out I love the idea of reviews. I think it depends on who it comes from of course. But that's I think especially here in the States one thing that is really lacking that I think could be interesting.


Colin: I guess then some like Rotten Tomatoes style, like searchability.


Female host: Yes.


Colin: I always think public reviews are only useful as much as you trust the member of the public that's doing the review. I remember seeing like a TripAdvisor review for a hotel that was so glowing and they were like, can you believe it? There was a bathroom attached to my hotel room. I was like, you've just not been in hotels before?


Female host: That's it.


Colin: You don't get to write this hotel five stars.


Female host: That's it. Exactly. Sorry.


Colin: That was whether they're the networks, and saying well if it's like a comedy bang bang, it's like a Scott Erman thing, then I'm going to try it. Because I trust the flavor. I trust the curation. That seems to be the real value of networks is to elevate and to be able to leverage that kind of feed drop.
Conan will put it in his feed or office Ladies will put it in their feed or whatever. Like that's how you get an impact launch these days.


Female host: Last question I have you for you is around misconception. So what is, A or the biggest, in your opinion, common misconception about podcasting that you wish more people understood?


Colin: I think maybe as an industry we're not as confident as we should be, and we're talking about, I'm as guilty as anyone. I'll talk about like a podcast bubble bursting. But podcasting's still growing. We're still bringing new people into listening to podcasts. It's difficult because there's whatever the number is half a million podcasts publishing each week, so it is a little bit harder to cut through. But start, I always go back to, and I was kind of defensive of when we launched Office Ladies, people, there was parts of the industry that was like, well, it's a TV rewatch show. It's like it's low effort, it's low craft. It seemed like the haters came for us. But that first week of office Ladies where we got like a million downloads or whatever in a week, and 20% of those people hadn't ever listened to a podcast before. That's 200,000 people that presumably went away and maybe tried another podcast afterwards. It's like they're getting new people in. I think that's what, like I was saying before, the opportunities are providing content that's not already being provided. Maybe what we've done in podcasting is seen the successes and just try to replicate those instead of going, where are the opportunities for new stuff? What is the content that people love reading about or watching documentaries about or?


Female host: That makes sense.


Colin: I was thinking as I've come out of this kind of corporate podcasting world and looking around at options, programmatic and network ads have really scaled and evolved over the last couple of years. I think SiriusXM were a major part in that. They did a really good job of building that out and making it work. And then if you can partner that with more customized sales, like I think those are the biggest opportunities for podcasters. If you can have some automated source that's going to fill the empty ad breaks effectively, but then partner with someone who can sell your show in a deeper more customized way where maybe there's some socials involved, maybe there's some video involved, maybe there's some send the host to New Mexico to stand next to a car and make it more of like a branded deal. I think that's a way for a podcast to really do well. I think that doesn't matter so much even the size of the podcast at that point. And for the last couple of years, I feel like a lot of podcasters have been being told, your show's too small to sell or to be a priority. Certainly at the kind of Amazon serious Spotify. High level network. I think if you are like a smaller show, I guess I go back to like a Hollywood handbook I mentioned. Or if you're a smaller show that's doing like 50,000 downloads an episode which is crazy that that's a smaller show, but that's a smaller show. Now I think you can make really good money that way. If you've got a devoted seller who gets what your show is and is able to sell your value in something other than just your download numbers, then I think you have a really solid business.


Female host: That's excellent advice. And for those listening that maybe had that show, how are seeing those download numbers and have no idea how to get started, where would you direct to them in terms of being able to find that network that seller get educated on programmatic, where would they kind of [inaudible]?


Colin: There's more and more kind of independent and consultant folks. There was maybe still is, this boutique marketing and sales network called Lipstick and Vinyl that I really love the concept of because it felt like this halfway point between being in a network and partnering with someone else on sales marketing. Sales and marketing seems to be the thing that most podcasters are like, I've got the content, I can make the show. Now, how do I get people to hear it and make money from it? So kind of in independent sales and marketing I think is really valuable. The one time that I've used that was when I just joined Earwolf and wanted to bring Jonathan Van Ness show over to Earwolf, and still the downloads were too small at the time but we knew that Queer Eye was going to come out and Jonathan Van Ness was going to become well famous. So I tapped one of our sellers from our in-house sales team and said, would you mind just selling this show? They did it independently and were very motivated to do so and did it successfully. You just need to find a seller that you like and that gets your show and that has the bandwidth to take something on. I guess, which is easier if you're part of a network and have strong connections. Anyone listening to this podcast should do that.


Female host: Absolutely. I love lip sync and vinyl, everything that they were doing. I think they were actually acquired in 23 by Realm. So look them up hopefully they're around.[crosstalk]


Colin: We need another one.


Female host: No, that's great. That's great advice though. Thank you. Is there anything else that you want to, any departing thoughts or recommendations or insights that you want to leave our listeners with?


Colin: Lipstick and vinyl. It was Alison Marino, I think was a salesperson at Midroll or Earwolf for one of those iterations and then set up our own shop lipstick and vinyl doing marketing and ad sales for podcasts. And most doing marketing and sales podcasts. And they just seemed like such a great idea for a business. Track someone like Alison down.


Female host: Track her down. Maybe she can help anyway.


Colin: For sure. That's the other nice thing about podcasting that I think has stayed true over 10, 15 years is just reaching out to other people in the industry, people are generally open to have a conversation with you. It still feels like we're a community that supports each other.


Female host: True. I don't foresee that going away. I feel like there's a lot of really special talented individuals and personalities within this industry and at least my hope for the podcast industry is that that sense of community never goes away. Because I think it's really beneficial all around.


Colin: For sure.


Female host: Excellent. Well, thank you again for coming on. It's been such a pleasure and we hope to have you on again soon.


Colin: Hopefully I can meet you in real life sometime.


Female host: Absolutely.


[END]