Wil Williams Writes

2024 has been filled to the brim with phenomenal new podcast releases — so why are so many people saying podcasting is dead?

For reasons that should soon be clear, I won’t be referring directly to any of these conversations or their participants. If you’re not already aware of this overarching discussion within the industry, this should be a sign that if you’re a creator, you really need to be more aware of industry news. Over at Tink Media, where I’ve been working for over a year now, we have a Podcast Newsletter database, and I highly recommend you subscribe to a handful of news-focused publications. (Note that everything I write here is my own opinion and does not reflect the views of Tink Media or my incredible colleagues at Tink Media.)

But for the sake of context, I’ll summarize the claims supporting the thesis that podcasting is dead. After years of rapid growth in podcast funding and monetization, advertisers and studios have gotten wise to the medium’s limited capability for profit. This has led to the devaluation and widespread cancellation of entire genres that have long been the cornerstone of podcasting, especially investigative limited series. It’s harder than ever to get — and keep — a full-time job in podcasting, and rates of pay get lower as competition increases. Morale in professional podcasting is extremely low, and everyone is on edge knowing that no matter how successful their podcast is, if they’re not Joe Rogan or the My Favorite Murder ladies or an actual celebrity, their job could just evaporate at a moment’s notice.

And none of that is wrong, even a little. I understand that people have been absolutely fucked by this industry. The stories I’ve heard are heinous. I’ve been laid off, I’ve been fucked over, and I’ve had breakdowns about my career — and I still have had it so much easier than most of my colleagues. Labor rights are something I care about deeply, something I’ve written on despite threats of defamation suits sent my way, and something I’m trying to organize about with the WGAE Audio Alliance.

So hopefully you understand that I am deeply sympathetic to these worries and complaints despite what I just have to say here: my god, people, this cannot be how we evaluate the health of an entire artistic medium. We need to have more perspective.

When you publicly claim that podcasting is dead because your heart, your soul, and your spirit have been killed by the horrific churn of industry, you are in turn devaluing the very people keeping it alive. I am one of the few people I talk to regularly who works in podcasting full-time, but most people I hang out with are podcasters. They just also have day jobs. And many of them are making some of the most exciting works right now.

To be clear, I don’t want people to go unpaid for any kind of labor, let alone stunning works of art. I think we should all be able to earn a living wage by creating. I think the starving artist myth is far more dangerous for the health of podcasting than the people saying it’s already dead. I do not want more people making more podcasts for no money. I don’t think podcasters who create without being paid are better podcasters, or realer podcasters, than podcasters who only create with a paycheck attached. I only make podcasts with a paycheck attached anymore.

But I also believe the opposite is true. People who make podcasts for no money are not lesser than professionals. When we equate the health of our industry with its job market, what are we saying about the people who have been making something beautiful for years and have never made a cent in profit? The people who have completely funded their shows — many of which are expensive! — from their own pockets, plus some change from Patreon, if that?

I wouldn’t call most of these creators “hobbyists” despite being unpaid. Their productions are run professionally, often with contracts, operating agreements, discussions around IP ownership, and teams of 10+, and the end results reflect all of that work.

Podcasting has always had an elitism problem. It’s a medium that started with DIY roots in 2001 after some code changes that gave RSS feeds the capability to distribute audio. The way podcasting is discussed, though, often chalks up its inception to broadcast radio: the This American Life and Radiolab years. Third Coast emerged as an exciting new event finally giving voice and praise to podcast producers — and year after year, I heard what an awful, demoralizing, experience it was for indie creators who attended and were constantly snubbed. I watched as journalists covering the space fully ignored any production that wasn’t backed by a big-name network, even going so far as to explicitly say that indie-majority forms like fiction were unilaterally bad art.

But the indies, the fictions, and the scrappy have always been where I’ve spent my time. That’s where my people have always been. That’s where I’ve met most of my friends. That’s where I’ve heard a lot of my favorite shows to date. That’s where I look when I need to be reminded of why I love this artistic medium.

When you say podcasting is dead, are you thinking of these podcasters? Are you listening to their work? And what do you think those words mean to them? What do those words mean about their art?

These creators didn’t get into podcasting because they wanted a stable job. They got into it because they love the art. And I’m guessing you did, too.

I think there’s a few reasons this brand of nihilism has been so prominent in podcasting this year, other than the reasons outlined previously:

1. It absolutely does seem like things have gotten worse in professional podcasting over the last few years.
2. “Podcasting is dead” is really easy and quick to say, conveys a point, sounds punchy, and feels cathartic. We’re pissed off by how badly we’ve been treated in the industry. We don’t have the time for nuance, the energy to provide footnotes on a thesis statement, or the emotional capacity to keep being unnecessarily polite.
3. Creators aren’t listening to other podcasts at all, let alone indie podcasts. We’ve forgotten what incredible shows sound like and how they impact us when we didn’t make them ourselves. At best, we only listen to shows by our friends or people more industry successful than us.
4. Creators aren’t thinking of podcasting as an entertainment industry, where grinding and freelancing and taking shit jobs for a decade is normal before landing the job you want; they’re thinking of podcasting as making any other kind of digital product, because that’s how their work is treated.
5. Creators are being told by their peers and higher-ups that podcasting is dead, and if you start being told something enough times, it’ll start to seem true.

Why are we talking about our art the same way as the C-Suite dumbasses who don’t actually know anything about what we do? Isn’t that part of how we got here in the first place? If you don’t want your work to be boiled down to the numbers, why are you doing that yourself?

I don’t think the complaints about the industry side of our work are wrong, though some definitely are (please subscribe to Sounds Profitable and read it regularly). I just think we have to be more cognizant of how we’re phrasing it. Right now, we’re failing to give basic respect to creators who have never had the opportunities we’ve had to make any money creating.

Every time I hear these conversations, I notice that indie productions are never mentioned, and it feels like they’re never even considered. The focus is always on the money, on the jobs. Quality of creation is only brought up to emphasize how bad the money is. As someone who mostly talks to indie artists, it just starts making me feel a little crazy, and a lot hurt on behalf of my peers.

What does it say about the work, the love, the energy, the time, and the care that goes into our art when we say our craft is dead? Is poetry dead because most poets will never be working artists — and are those poets just irrelevant? Doesn’t their work matter? Do you think they’re not impacted by what you’re saying?

I can’t imagine, as someone who does have the luxury of working full-time in podcasting, telling my peers who don’t that podcasting is dead because of layoffs and pay cuts and canceled shows. I wouldn’t act like they should expect a job or funding anytime soon, of course, but I also wouldn’t act like those are the only things that matter to my peers and friends who have always created without expecting those in the first place.

Not every feeling about podcasting is true no matter how long you’ve spent here. Not every thought has to be a Take. Not every claim needs to be a public declaration. Experience is not analysis. If what you want is to vent, to speak freely and not feel beholden to the often exhausting process of conveying nuance, please consider venting to your friend. If what you want is to identify a problem in your field, please consider taking the time to give that problem the nuance it deserves for the sake of those who have never had the opportunities you might have had.

Podcasting will be dead when nobody is making a podcast they care about anymore. Podcasting will be dead when there is no love, no art in any creation. Podcasting will be dead when everyone who’s ever loved podcasts is dead. Let us be defined by our art, not by our numbers.