Before I began this blog I use to host and produce a weekly podcast. I first started out with a health & fitness show back in 2005 then I did a songwriting show with contents similar to what’s found in this blog. Recently I’ve had a few songwriters ask me if I thought that starting a podcast would be a good idea in order for them to promote their music. They also wanted to know if they could make some money off podcasting while at the same time getting their music out in front of a larger audience. My answer to them is, “not really”.
You see podcasting is very similar to radio, in the sense that if you’re not producing interesting content with each episode, your listeners may stop subscribing or downloading your show. Now I’ve seen Artists out there that have made both video and audio podcast and have been very successful, but these generally have been established Artists that have a big following. Quincy Jones, and Mark Hoppus from Blink 182 are two good examples. An even those guys don’t really put out a weekly show all the time. Quincy Jones started his podcast in the Fall of 2007, and so far only has 8 episodes, and neither one of these guys are currently monetizing their podcast.
For up and coming Artists and songwriters that want to start a podcast I think it’s a good idea to do it as you would a blog on your website. You could put out an episode whenever the muse decides to visit you, and not have to worry too much about getting out a show every week. This however may not attract many advertisers, meaning your ability to monetize the podcast this way is limited.
The biggest problem I see with Artists that start a podcast is that they run out of interesting contents for their show. And I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to subscribe to a music show which only plays one Artist’s music. When I began my music podcast, I kept a lot of my own music out of the show. I played music from a host of other Artists, and talked about different things that I thought would be interesting and educational for songwriters and music lovers. I don’t think my show would have been as successful if I had treated it more like my personal website, where I’m basically promoting myself. You can however use your podcast as a way to discreetly talk about your music or website. But again you don’t want this to be the main point of your podcast.
On my first podcast I had about 5000 subscribers each month, yet I made very little money from my podcasts because at the time there weren’t too many health & fitness companies rushing to advertise their products this new media. With my music podcast I knew it would be very difficult to get sponsorship because there are hundreds of other music podcasts already out there. That market is over-saturated and only the top 4 or 5 shows are attracting serious sponsorship.
There are several other ways to make money from your podcast other than sponsorship and advertising (ex: donations, paid content, etc), and although there are folks out there making a living out of it, they are few and very far between. So don’t think that starting a podcast that’s primarily about your songwriting and music is going to allow you to quit your daytime job.
If you decide to start a podcast, keep your audience in mind always. If you don’t have anything interesting to talk about for 3 or 4 weeks, don’t put out a show just to fill in the calendar and bore them with b.s. If you don’t feel that you can deliver at least 1 interesting show per month, reconsider doing something different like a blog or newsletter which doesn’t constrain you to any schedule. I cancelled my first podcast the moment I felt that I was simply re-hashing old stories, because there was nothing new to say. Remember; when it comes to podcasting, “content is king”.
Also on a side note; don’t buy into the hype that’s been floating around by some podcast networks which say you can give up your daytime job if you join them. In almost 3 years that I’ve been podcasting I have only seen a very small handful of folks that have been able to do that. The fact is that just as there are hundreds of thousands of Artists around the world and only 1% succeeds in making it to the big leagues, the same can be said about podcasting. At last count from Podcast Alley, there were almost 40,000 registered podcast. iTunes directory is even bigger. So you can see that the competition for listeners is immense, yet the number of podcast producers making a living out of it is very small.
But don’t get too gloomed and doomed by all these statistics. Remember that as an Artist or songwriter, what comes first is the fulfillment you get from creating your craft. The same approach should be considered if you decide to start a podcast. Do it first because you enjoy it.
