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.