A study by market research firm Cumulus published in May found YouTube is already the most popular platform for podcasts. It won the market without really trying; now, it’s getting serious. The company has launched a dedicated beta podcast landing page, hired a podcast executive to lead its efforts in the medium and offered popular podcasters and podcast networks grants of up to $300,000 to create video versions of their shows, according to Bloomberg.
It’s a sign of growing competition in the space that’s bad news for Spotify, which has invested about $1bn in podcasting in recent years. Even Gen Z’s beloved short-form video platform TikTok is thinking about launching a music service that would cover podcasts.
Much like the tendency of distantly related crustaceans to keep evolving into crabs, sooner or later platforms have a tendency to start cannibalising each other’s core features. This time, a medium is caught in the crossfire – raising the question of what differentiates a video podcast from the vlogs that YouTube first popularised.
Laurie Clarke
A common issue with platforms adding additional features is that after a point it starts having diminishing returns in terms of user experience. In the specific case of video podcasts I would even argue that a video component can actively diminish the experience of listening to a podcast. I listen to podcasts mostly in the background, while I’m doing chores around the house or while roaming around the city; in other words, when my ears are free to follow the discussion, while my eyes are paying attention to other things. Having to follow a visual story along with the audio track would be highly distracting to downright impossible – for example when crossing the street – so I would rather stop listening to podcasts than switch to video. I’m sure this applies to many other people and situations as well – you probably don’t want to stare at a screen while driving, but you might easily listen to a podcast, just as you would an audiobook or music.
Video can naturally supplement information with charts and images, but then it becomes an entirely different use case, one where you choose to pay active attention to the presentation instead of multitasking and passively absorbing the spoken information.
There have been numerous ‘pivots to video’ over the years, most of them initiated by Facebook constant changes to their algorithms, and most have failed because the medium and the message were not aligned. I can understand content creators seeking to attract more attention from the audience, in order to better monetize their work, but you have to keep in mind that the audience has limited time and interest for a fairly niche activity competing with their job, social life, and many other sources of entertainment and distraction.
Among industry players, the Spotify v YouTube rivalry is hailed as another sign that podcasting is the hottest thing in media. But some worry that a pivot to video might mean sacrificing the soul of the industry. Warren stresses that
audio is a special and distinct medium in its own right, while videography is an entirely different craft.I hope we don’t forget the power of audio, just to try to game an algorithm.
Another failed attempt to reinvent podcasting was Clubhouse. Here, the app removed another crucial component of the podcasting experience, its asynchrony: podcast authors can record and edit it at a point in time, and then people can consume it later, whenever they have time or feel like it. Clubhouse on the other hand compelled people to be present as the authors recorded their conversation, which drastically reduced its reach and growth potential.
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