Spotify and Apple are soon to announce podcast subscription products for creators, goes the rumor.
Often, creators started creating a podcast with the same reason YouTubers, Twitch streamers, or top athlethes started: They simply fell in love with the topic and the practice.
Some athletes, YouTubers and streamers make a lot of money, most make almost no money and the middle man (promoters, tech giants) always wins. It’s that way.
With podcasting it’s different. The podcast is this ‘innocent kid’ in it’s teenage years, and everyone likes the kid. There’s no barrier to try, it’s free. Most podcasters are sponsored, run (often native) ads or have their own business they promote (or have another cause).
Now some tech giants (Apple, Spotify) decided, just as Google did with YouTube, that the podcast-creators business model is going to change: they’re going to add subscriptions to their functionalities and podcasters will be able to easily sell subs.
And that’s a trap.
Why would creators start selling tickets to their consumers, if they had a different model first, that worked? Now that the technology changes, creators might start seeing their creations more as a ‘business’ and inevitibly the industry will change. The market will mature, but it will also become susceptible for click bait – just as évery digital medium became up until now.
Click bait is a hustle. And no one wants to be hustled. And the wonderful kid that’s podcast will suffer a loss of interest.
Podcast used to be this medium with long, high quality niche content to listen on the go, in commute, during laundry, cooking, …. Now that it’s starting to become more commercial, this will definitely change. I don’t know how, but I’m really unsure if this was (or will ever be) the right move for this medium by the tech giants.