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Podcasting Goes Pay-to-Play
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Feb 20, 2006 06:37 PM
from the get-fans-and-make-em-pay dept.
from the get-fans-and-make-em-pay dept.
James Draven writes "For the last year, people have been wondering - how to make money off podcasts? Some have dabbled with advertising, some with user donations, but now the most popular podcast on iTunes is moving to a subscription model. Bit-Tech is reporting that the Ricky Gervais Show will cost $7 a month starting next week."
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Well duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well duh! (Score:3, Informative)
This is one podcast I would be interested in paying for. I usually laugh out loud like an idiot during the whole show. These guys are pros, and it shows.
Sadly, the only other podcasts I have found that I like are Major Nelson and Distorted View.
I *might* pay for Major Nelson, just because I am an Xbox geek
Re:Well duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
This isn't even news, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This isn't even news, really (Score:3, Funny)
How does legal music piracy look like?
Re:This isn't even news, really (Score:3, Funny)
Like this. [allofmp3.com]
Re:Well duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
people who produce content want to be paid.
Before human culture became subsumed under the term "content," these used to just be called "people." As the existence of the Internet attests, there are plenty of people who contribute to culture and couldn't care less whether they get paid for it.
But, you might have a point. The next time I have a conversation with someone, I think I'll suggest to them that I'm "providing content" and ask for a small fee.
Parent
You do get a return... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another man plays on a street corner, an upturned hat at his feet with a few coins inside for people to get the idea. He would play no matter how many generous souls pass him by, he always did like the attention you see - but he could use some more cash and he is making a polite request that those who listen show their appreciation through payment.
Yet another man plays in a nice restaurant, lending a pleasant atmosphere for dining, and on occasion for romance. Not only does the establishment pay him, but he also receives tips from patrons that feel either obligated or grateful.
Is there not a place for all such men in the world? Is one nobler than the others? They are all performing for some reward - one for his own contentment, another for attention, and the other for money - they merely have different definitions of reward. Or should we expect all men of such talents to resign themselves to park benches and play for our delight?
Parent
Great Idea!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Great Idea!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great Idea!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
The jury is definitely still out on Satellite radio. You did read about how XM's loss widening [smartmoney.com] this week, didn't you?
I'll bet a few idiots will pay for their podcast, however, I don't think it's going to work very well. First, people are going to have to go seek out the audiobook version of their content on a weekly basis, instead of having it auto-sync'ed to their iPod. Second, this is going to greatly decrease their audience, which is never good for performers. Third, they've priced themselves out of the market, a podcast is not worth $3.50/hr when TV is going for 1.99/hr.
I could see paying a subscription of about $7/month to a podcast aggregator site to gain access to all of the content new and archived for maybe a season. Like I said, some people will buy their show but most people won't. In the process, they have alienated their audience, thus the reference to shooting oneself in the foot.
Parent
Seven dollars a month?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seven dollars a month?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Seven dollars a month?! (Score:4, Informative)
Also, it's not a recurring charge but a one-off.
Parent
Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
A podcast goes pay-to-play.
The title makes it sound like all of podcasting is suddenly going to a subscription model which is ridiculous hyperbole.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Correction (Score:3, Funny)
Why this is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
This is stupid because nobody makes money for content directly off consumer in any broadcast medium. Why does the sudden addition of the Internet change this in people's minds? I pay $0 directly to the networks for their broadcast content. I pay $0 directly to the cable companies for their cable content (though the cable provider does filter some of my money back to the stations -- it's still not me paying the station; if it was, I could order just the channels I want). The only time a content provider gets money directly from me is Pay Per View, which seems limited to good boxing matches and pr0n.
The same idiocy of assuming the Net must play by different rules goes into advertising decisions too: execs get 0 click-through from TV ads, but they freak out when they don't get X% click through from Net ads that they are paying significantly less for. Consider yourself lucky for being able to shove your brand into my face for 15 seconds and then move on, dude.
Re:Why this is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
People who do value it on the other hand, will buy it. I for example value WOXY.com, a radio-format webcaster of modern rock (and modern rock podcasts). When advertising $$s didn't come through for the new format, I was one of the first to join, because I value the service highly, and I was able to put my money where my mouth had always been.
Now I pay with a (truly minute compared to the value) amount of cash, instead of paying in terms of minutes of ads.
TANSTAAFL,
Paul
Parent
Re:Why this is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Luckily this is podcasting, not broadcasting. You can control who gets your 'signal' in a podcast, for the most part. Also, check with DirecTV and find out how many people pay for content from them. They're broadcasting across the globe.
This is stupid because nobody makes money for content directly off consumer in any broadcast medium. Why does the sudden addition of the Internet change this in people's minds
Why this is good (Score:5, Insightful)
I do think the market will drive the price lower than $7/mo though.
Parent
Re:Why this is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he is dealing with it... By um... Not purchasing the services... And spending the money on something else of more value.
That is capitalism too ya know.
Parent
Subscription? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Subscription? (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. I'd be willing to pay a reasonable subscription for the Daily Show and the Colbert Réport. Unlike regular TV shows, they don't have as much replay value (A year from now, how many people will say, "Ooh! Let me re-watch that send up he did of Cheney shooting a 78 year old man in the face!"), but it would be nice to be able to catch episodes instead of staying up late. I can see paying $7/mo for a monthly subscription (20 epi
Re:Subscription? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the entire point of podcasts is that they're subscription-based. You subscribe to a feed (whether free or not), and new content is downloaded automatically as it becomes available, for listening/watching at your leisure. If I
Really stupid idea (Score:3, Interesting)
7/month (Score:3, Informative)
How? (Score:3, Interesting)
So how is this done?
Cheers,
Ian
Re:How? (Score:4, Interesting)
I was very surprised to find out, but iTunes actually lets you access a podcast protected through the regular HTTP basic or digest authentication.
When you subscribe to such a feed iTunes will ask you for a username and a password.
Try subscribing to this feed in iTunes, for example: private feed [potionfactory.com]
So if your server lets you setup your own HTTP protection through .htaccess or what not, you can password protect your podcast. If you combine this with SSL, you have a pretty solid protection mechanism, but for just family stuff I would think that the digest authentication is good enough. Just don't use basic authentication because that will send the password over in cleartext.
More on this topic in my blog [potionfactory.com]
(Disclaimer, I write podcasting software for the mac os x)Parent
NPR on Audible (Score:4, Informative)
More Expensive Than T.V. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet this, $7, is almost 4 times the cost of a television show. I could buy two hours of Galactica (or something more popular.
They need to offer a lot more for this to be successful.
99 cents a show is simple enough. That, I'd try out.
This is an unproven medium. A good entry point is required. Individual tracks sold like songs would work well. What they're trying to do will put many people off. Then again, maybe enough people really really like Ricky Gervais. But probably not.
* (iTunes + audible, whatever -- everyone will focus on the Apple end of things; they're more newsworthy, whether or not you agree with it.)
Re:More Expensive Than T.V. (Score:3, Interesting)
In England, audio comedies regularly outsell all but the biggest music hits. It's a cultural thing. Check this Guardian article. [guardian.co.uk] It talks about a British company that gave free iPods + comedy audiobooks to all its employees.
However, in other news: The Ricky Gerva
Re:More Expensive Than T.V. (Score:3, Interesting)
$7 == one month of gervais podcast == 4 shows. That's $1.75 per half-hour show. That is in-line with what apple is charging for TV shows.
But, but, but this is audio only. Whatever the market will bear...
Re:More Expensive Than T.V. (Score:3, Interesting)
Recalls discussion of online radio (Score:4, Informative)
All of the podcasts of live acts playing in their lounge and also the podcasts of the unsigned band show will be available for download for subscribers, much like the example this article provides.
It looks like the reality has finally hit that nothing is free. At least though, WOXY.com is a good deal. You get the podcasts, and real DJs streaming quality music live over broadband quality streams.
I personally wish everyone the best in their efforts to make entertainment sustainable, independent, and listener supported, both with regard to the new effort via iTunes, and independent groups like WOXY.com who have seen the future of quality entertainment.
Best,
Paul Henrich
It is commercial from day one (Score:4, Insightful)
Expensive (Score:3, Informative)
Um, no... (Score:5, Informative)
The only "news" here is that a single, previously free podcast is now going to sell itself on Audible.com and remove itself from the iTunes Music Store. There is no new functionality being added to iTunes (such as a way for individual podcsters to sell their own content).
Nothing to see here. Please move along.
Jonathan
Re:Um, no... (Score:3, Informative)
Throwaway stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Second point is that this is a small subscription - but for a half hour show. If all the shows I listened to also decided to charge a small amount then this would very quickly turn into a lot of money. Maybe it would make more sense to charge for a pick and mix channel of shows?
Free Podcasts -- the low-tech way (Score:3, Informative)
$ cat ~/bin/ra2pcm.sh
#!/bin/bash
mplayer -nocache -really-quiet -vo null -af resample=44100:0:1 -ao pcm -aofile $HOME/mp3/RADIO/`date +%y-%h-%d-%R`.wav $1
then I got lazy with iTunes & my iPod... If I have to go back to that, fine. It's not the end of the world.
It had to happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said that, I do think it is inevitable that this happens. The cost to provide the podcasts, and the exhaustive work creating them, had to be reimbursed from somewhere.
Donations simply don't work - I removed all advertising from a popular site of mine for 6 weeks, and instead put a donations page. 6 weeks and 3,000,000 files served later, the donations totalled $0.
If the Red Cross, World Vision, Salvation Army etc struggle to get donations, having to resort to tv/radio campaigns begging for money, then I don't like any websites chance of succeeding.
Because the medium is an mp3, the advertising is limited to injecting ads like on a radio. The value of those ads (in my opinion) is less because someone might well be commuting or otherwise occupied when listening. It's not like 'traditional' web advertising where the ad is in front of you and can be clicked for an immediate response and/or roi.
Subscription Wars (Score:3)
Unfortunately, when everybody starts trying to charge a subscription for their "service"...and nobody seems to have many subscriptions under $5/month...they will end up feeding off each other. I only make $X/month, and before, I would save up and purchase something. But now it seems companies want me to keep paying them month after month, and my paycheck can cover only so many subscriptions. I think companies will fast realize that not all of them can charge a subscription, and in fact they might do better not to.
Strange language (Score:3, Interesting)
"Podcast" = recording.
"Subscription" = paying for new recordings.
"Podcasting goes pay-to-play" = buying newly released audio recordings with money. Haven't we been doing that in music shops for decades?
Is this news just because the word "podcast" sounds more exciting than "a recording"?
TWW
people will buy audiobooks, not podcasts (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole notion of "podcasts" has done audio content is huge disservice. Most podcasts I have heard really are not that good. They are filled with uhmms and ahhs, akward pauses, and often appear adhoc, unedited and unprofessional. We need a better name for properly researched, recorded and edited audio recordings which are not too long, and, as I have before, I suggest we call them "audicles" and move away from the "podcast" debacle.
Non-music audio content has a bright future. I believe though the growth will be in audio books. These must be professionally researched and written, and have high quality content, just like any other book on the market. For some interesting audiobook stats, take a look at http://www.simplyaudiobooks.com/processInterfaceA
For primarily text based books, it is relatively straight forward to create an audiobook from them. Just have someone, maybe or maybe not the author, read the text into a microphone and then do some editing. I listed to Bill Clinton's "My Life" on audiobook and quite enjoyed it, and also to the "War of the Worlds", which was also good. I also tried to listen to the Feynman lectures on audio (my academic background is in Engineering Physics), and this was where I felt the audio medium did not work well. For technical topics, it is very difficult to covert a lecture or a book to an audio only medium; instead, you really need to write from scratch specifically targeting the audio medium.
So, this is what we are currently working on, developing audiobooks for software developers. So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We are currently allowing people to freely download them, but eventually expect people to pay for them. Many people have said that they would gladly pay for the high quality audio books we are providing. But, saying it is one thing, the ultimate test will be when we actually make the switch from free to pay and see how many sales we have.
They should do YEARLY not MONTHLY subs (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus you get way more subscriptions this way from people who eventually drop out. Going for a low cost yearly is much smarter than a higher cost montly rate.
Re:He was great in the Office (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. It was vaguely funny, but really no funnier than listening to any other DJs frankly. It seemed too off-the-cuff for me to believe there was a lot of prep time to justify me paying for episodes.
The irony is I'm happily paying for episodes of The Office (US version, but Ricky Gervais is an executive producer there). At $2 an episode, it's a great deal. However, the show has replay value and nuance, where surprisingly, I catch other thi
Re:He was great in the Office (Score:3, Interesting)
No, he's not. If you've seen him in anything else, or just being himself in an interview, you'd know that he IS NOT David Brent, though naturally he draws on aspects of his life in playing him. And if you think how despicable Brent is in ma
Re:pod casts (Score:5, Informative)
The real advantage of Podcasts is that they can be accessed by anyone with a computer that has an RSS reader, and can be played back by any device that plays MP3. That's just about as darn near universal as I can imagine. And that IS a worthwhile contribution.
That it also lowers the barrier to entry of distribution is also valuable because podcasters HAVE to compete on quality, whether you are a megacorp with a $10Million dollar studio, or an amateur with just a mic and a dream, or anywhere in between, You compete based on quality of content.
Even better is that in terms of audio quality, studio equipment has become so inexpensive that with an investment of just one or two thousand dollars, it's possible to have quality indistinguishable from a huge studio to the average listener. It really is a means for democratization of the media.
Parent