Sounds Profitable’s podcast has a free Supercast podcast feed along with narrated versions of our articles, or find it wherever you get your podcasts.
It’s been just over a year since the team at Magellan AI and I released The Podscape, our take on the professional podcast industry, highlighting every company and category between advertisers and listeners. We’ve updated it quite a bit, including coloring to identify acquisitions and adding new companies that reached out to use. With our last update this summer, we’ve got a new update coming this month with quite a few new additions, so make sure you’re signed up!
But as someone whose job it is to figure out who the companies are in this space and what they actually do, a one-sheet with hundreds of logos can only get you so far. I’d also love to tell you that the websites of every company on there clearly identify what they do and who can benefit from their services, but then I’d be lying to you.
So, in August 2021 I wrote about my goal to launch The Podscape Podcast, a resource built specifically to answer “what do you do again?” as quickly and concisely as possible. Whether you’re just starting in the podcast industry today or have been in it from the start, it’s very difficult to know what each company does, so what better way than to hear it from their lips directly? And today, that project goes live.
Sign up for The Podscape Podcast here
The Format
As a big fan of owning the relationship between content creator and listener, I’ve chosen to host this podcast completely on Supercast as a private, but free, premium feed. I want to know who is signing up for this podcast and be able to ask them the value they get out of it directly so I can continue to improve it. And now that Supercast podcasts can be added to Spotify, nobody will have to miss out on the content as it’ll be live there later this week.
The first season starts with an intro from me, laying out much of what I’ve covered in this article, and then kicks off with an episode from James Cridland of Podnews on the history of podcasting. Our goal is to add in recaps covering the year so far, to make sure that anyone new to the industry can have some help in catching up on the most active news.
After that, each top-level section in The Podscape (e.g. Media Planning & Buying or Content Creation) will be its own season, with episodes from each of the companies on The Podscape answering the following five very direct questions:
* What does your company do?
* Who does it serve?
* Why do people need what you do?
* Why do you do it?
* What makes your offering better than your competitors (without putting them down)?
The goal is for each episode to be no more than five minutes when complete, making it the perfect thing to listen to before hopping on a call with a prospective client or vendor.
Participation
At launch, we have over 15 partners that have submitted their audio, all of whom you can listen to now on The Podscape Podcast.
But for those of you who haven’t submitted yet, we’ve streamlined our process. Rumble Studio has provided us with a free account and made some feature upgrades, making submission easier than ever. You’ll be able to submit your company name, URL, logo, and audio to each answer right from the Rumble Studio link. We’ll do our best to get episodes out frequently, which is a great reason to keep following the podcast on your phone to get notifications of the latest companies added.
Submit your audio for The Podscape Podcast Here
Wrapping It Up
Ultimately, I don’t think a podcast will be the final form for this content. This really needs to be developed into a full-fledged learning platform, and I’m working on it! But in the meantime, I’m hoping that the podcast players in the industry see the value in presenting educational content in podcast form like this and start to work on the shortcomings that could easily be solved. Like RSS namespace improvements to let creators actually give seasons names and a more robust search engine that fully indexes all metadata of episodes.
But what this has reminded me of is my desire to continue to be a resource for the podcast industry in any way I can. And kicking this project off has inspired two brand new projects coming in 2022, all about free education and free professional resources, that I’m excited to talk more about very soon.
So, as 2021 winds to a close, please take a moment to check out this new resource and if you find it valuable, share it and Sounds Profitable with your colleagues and friends.
Product deepdives
Our Product Deepdive schedule got a bit out of whack as we sped towards the end of the year. I’ve spent a lot of time recently with our November deepdive partner, Frequency, and we made the decision to doubledown on 2022 based on the awesome features they’ve got incoming.
New Sponsors
Sounds Profitable exists thanks to the continued support of our amazing sponsors. Each sponsor receives one hour of consulting per month as a way to say thanks.
- ARN – Australia’s #1 Podcast Network, ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia
- Sounder enables audio publishers and platforms to drive content discovery, deepen audience engagement, and accelerate advertising revenue by leveraging data and insights at scale.
Want to learn more about sponsorship? Hit reply!
Rel’s Recs
This week, Arielle Nissenblatt of Earbuds Podcast Collective recommends An Eyesore and a Plague from Paulina Salmas and Jonathan Borducci, hosted by Buzzsprout.
An Eyesore and a Plague feels like it was made for me. It’s a podcast about the formation of the suburbs of NYC. Creators Paulina Salmas and Jon Borducci come at this show from a geography and urban development perspective, while also weaving in elements of society and history.
Market Insights – with ThoughtLeaders
Noam Yadin, Content and Social Media Manager at ThoughtLeaders joins me this week to share insight into current trends:
Over the last five days, Jews around the world have been eating their weight in Hanukkah donuts, latkes and well, some more donuts. It looks like Hanukkah was a topic of interest for podcasters in 2021 – mentions of Hanukkah almost doubled in 2021 compared to 2020 and 2019. There has also been a major increase in brands being mentioned in this content. It’s interesting to see that BetterHelp sponsored the most content relating to Hanukkah.
