Radio’s Back, But What About Podcasts?
Heading into 2013, traditional radio wasn’t in the best shape, plagued by poor performance in revenue and listener loss, yet, ironically the must have feature for any app entering the market: radio. So, while terrestrial radio is hurting, the radio format never died, it was only transitioning to a digital, app based, form. The appeal of minimal work, flipping the dial and listening to a station provide its never ending supply of content will likely keep radio around forever. People just don’t want to flip the dial anymore, they want to open an app.
The market is saturated, but one of the apps looking to reinvent radio is Songza. The music app aims big, trying to play the right music based on mood rather than just off a similar artist you have to know prior. Another app is 8Tracks which features all user built playlists and gives everyone the opportunity to play DJ, growing a following based on the quality of mixes. On the flipside, the new Swell app is gunning for the still massive talk radio crowd with machine curated programing. Unlike the current big players (iHeartRadio and Stitcher) that simply offer availability to a lot of programs, Swell is interested in streamlining the process and giving listeners chunks of the best suited programs (podcasts or otherwise), played one after another.
A lot of these next generation radio apps, like Swell, recognize the existence of podcasts, but don’t fully understand what to do with the stagnating market. Podcasts have leveled off with consumer adoption in the last three years –still under 50% of people that have even heard of podcasts. The future of podcasting as it relates to eclipsing traditional radio, is uncertain, though CEO of Swell, Ram Ramkumar, thinks “Podcasts will continue to inform and entertain listeners, but the format of their delivery will evolve.”
Tech companies, not music ones, appear ready to adopt the radio format as complementary to business initiatives, pushing it forward to meet their needs. Apps with interactive user engagement are far better suited to monetize music than traditional broadcasters ever were. According to Hypebot’s founder Bruce Houghton, “The future of radio is in expert curation and content localization.” Something many apps are already honing in on.
Big picture, the most likely scenario is that podcasting itself sinks lower to become an even more niche product, while radio, which itself has shown to be more resilient than many thought it could be, will continue to grow, becoming primarily internet powered and accessible through the most creative apps.