Moving podcasting to the next level

I had meant to add on to each recent blog entry some recommendation of a podcast episode that I enjoyed. I’ve been remiss on that, but I now have one to explore more in depth.

The “StartUp” podcast, begun in 2014 and now in its third season, follows the story of a start-up business with each season. The first season, which I’m past midway through now, tells the story of the Gimlet podcasting network itself, which began with this very show.

Gimlet set out to challenge podcast networks and aggregators such as Panoply, Earwolf and Howl, and become the “HBO of podcasts,” as several stories about the company called it. At present though, only one of its current stable of six shows, “Reply All,” is showing up on the Stitcher and iTunesChart.net lists (see previous blog entry). That doesn’t mean this still can’t happen, or Gimlet won’t continue to grow, but it can’t be deemed a runaway success just yet.

At different points during the first season of “StartUp,” host and Gimlet Media co-founder Alex Blumberg speaks to investors and advisers who tell him, first, that he should consider pivoting his idea for a podcasting start-up to offer functions previously (and apparently still) unavailable, such as social media sharing of excerpts from shows, or a Netflix-like algorithm for recommending programming based on what listeners have already heard.

Instead, Blumberg went forward with what Gimlet Media is now, another programming network. This blog aims to advocate for good ideas in the industry, or better ways to evaluate podcasts, or better ways to grow the medium. It seems like the route taken by Gimlet was an end run around any of those goals, because it’s so similar to what was already there. So, what does that mean for where podcasting is now?

As interesting as “StartUp” is, it’s not an innovation for the medium, only an exceedingly “meta” endeavor – a podcast about podcasting – as Blumberg freely admits in some of the episodes. Technology venture capitalist investor Matt Mazzeo tells Blumberg in the podcast that he would be more interested in a game changing idea that can take podcasting from an audience of millions to an audience of tens of millions or more. An innovative idea for how podcasts are distributed and consumed will inevitably do more for the medium than one or two breakout hits.

Picking the 'truthiest' podcast ranking

In my previous blog entry, I dissected some obvious flaws in the new Podtrac monthly ranking of a top 10 podcasts. Since then, it’s been found that there are several respected podcast groups, including The Ringer, Earwolf and Maximum Fun in the comedy and culture genres, as well as CNN news podcasts, that are not being evaluated or considered for inclusion in the ranking. Apparently Podtrac chooses what podcasters to include in their sampling, or maybe the podcaster have to respond to their inquiries.

So, what are the alternatives? There’s the Stitcher top 100 podcast list. Although that list seems like a more relevant cross-section of podcasts that people are talking about, it does not disclose its methodology or what the rankings are based on. Stitcher does have two other top 100 lists where some indication of their methods is given – one for “top movers,” which have risen the most in Stitcher’s rankings. But you can’t see the full rankings, and many of these top movers do not appear in the overall top 100 list. Lastly, Stitcher also has a top 100 for the “most shared” podcasts, which looks more similar to the overall top 100. Overall, the assumption is that the Stitcher top 100 lists are all based on – and only based on – what is being heard through Stitcher’s app, which discounts all the other distribution methods available.

Another ranking, iTunesCharts.net, inspires more confidence. iTunesCharts.net operates by culling Apple’s published iTunes rankings of podcasts at the end of each day. Apple’s rankings are fluid and can change in real time – and Apple does not publish past ranking data, so iTunesCharts.net’s records are the only available history. The major attribute of iTunesCharts.net is that its measurement is based on a more universal means of podcast, so its rankings are likely more representative of the listener following that podcasts on its list actually have.

At this relatively early stage in the development of the podcasting industry, without a truly universally accepted standard for measuring the listenership of podcasts or ranking their popularity, the best any observer may be able to do is choose a ranking that feels like it has “truthiness” (the Stephen Colbert-coined word for something that most seems like it is true, even if might not be completely true). So, for now, iTunesCharts.net has the truthiness crown.