Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder

“I struggle to find a single example of a podcast company that’s been acquired in the past few years that has thrived under its new ownership.”

March 11, 2020: The staff at our podcast company, Magnificent Noise, had lunch together. Sitting around the table, I said, “Perhaps this is the last day we should be coming into the office.” And it was. Outside of a trip to water plants and pick up mail every two or three weeks, I’ve pretty much been the only person who has gone back at all.

That isn’t unique to us, and it isn’t unique to podcasting. But podcasting had a wild ride in 2020, much different than other media and industries. The beginnings of lockdown were accompanied by a jaw-dropping decline in downloads and listening. Advertising buys were canceled at a dizzying rate. It looked bad. Really, really bad.

A few reporters asked me for my thoughts on the download decline, and I said it’ll bounce back. In radio, we’ve seen disruption like this on a smaller scale before — after 9/11 or a natural disaster, during the holidays, during the outbreak of military action — and things come back pretty quickly. One writer responded: “You can’t be serious.” I told him I was. He didn’t publish my response. (Nor did anyone else who asked.)

I don’t share that to show that I was right, but to note that — despite some incredible dire circumstances and predictions — podcasting had a pretty great year. That seems weird to say in 2020, with so much economic, health, and political turmoil, but it really did. Some impressive acquisitions happened. Revenue increased. Listening has not only bounced back but grown, and more people continue to discover podcasting.

Podcasters might be ready to wipe their brow and exclaim: Whew, we sure dodged that bullet. But that would be premature. There are many reasons to believe that 2021 will bring some significant bumps — ones that won’t upend podcasting but will dull the shine on the industry’s outsized buzz.

Three things lead me to say this.

The tide of the news cycle — and consumer interest in newsy content — will pull against us.

Nearly every organization that employs a reporter has spun up a daily or weekly news podcast, figuring that if The Daily can swing 4 million downloads a day, there has to be something at that table for them. But if you look at the long-term history of news media consumption, it looks like a staircase: quickly rising in the year or two leading up to an election cycle, then flattening for a year or two afterwards. In a post-Trump, post-pandemic, post-election world, even The Daily will have to work harder to maintain its audience (if that’s even possible). So will everyone else.

Acquisitions will taper off for a while.

If Wondery is acquired in the coming months, then pretty much every major buyable company in podcasting will have changed hands recently. For the industry, that’s healthy and normal. It clears the deck for a new tier of upstarts to grow in prominence and profile — a new generation of leading podcast companies which will eventually become large enough to attract those same M&A dollars.

That isn’t the problem. The problem is the buyers. I struggle to find a single example of a podcast company that’s been acquired in the past few years that has thrived under its new ownership. That lack of a clear post-acquisition success story — along with the comparatively low acquisition prices of podcast companies — will dull a lot of the enthusiasm for acquiring that next tier of companies. (I know it seems crazy, but to industry outsiders, a major podcast company selling for $300 to $400 million is not an impressive price.)

Let’s be honest: Our industry’s risk tolerance took a beating in 2020.

While the business of podcasting fared pretty well in 2020, its content ambitions took a major hit. The conservative trends we’ve seen emerging in the past several years accelerated during the pandemic. Nothing drives that home like this Podtrac chart of the most popular new podcasts of 2020. Notice any trends here? Rather than demonstrate an industry focused on adventurous and innovative content, this list looks like an industry focused on monetization and sameness.

When I consult with clients, I tell them the best choice for long-term prosperity is to focus on the listener’s short-term happiness. Give them great stuff and they’ll stick with you. And when they stick with you, the money follows. The answer to most questions is: Take the path that builds audience. But the core question is: What makes them happy?

There’s an old adage that if restaurants just focused their menus on what everybody loved, they’d eventually serve only mashed potatoes and peas. (If you know the origins of that saying, please let me know.) I’m sure many of the executives who greenlight some of the industry’s more formulaic and redundant content would say they’re just giving listeners what they want — and that’s fair. But look at what happened to pretty much any media sector (network TV, movie, books) when they’ve overindulged on repeating the content forms that consumers seemed to prefer. It becomes a high that never quite matches the way it first felt. Media has a long track record of forgetting the difference between what’s popular and easy to sell now with the novelty consumers will crave tomorrow.

So what’s the net effect of these three? In practical terms, not a lot. People will still listen. Downloads might soften, but they won’t crater or decline significantly. If anything, podcasting’s outsized prominence will come back down out of the clouds. But even if that happens, in a very real pragmatic sense, podcasting will still be the future of spoken word audio for the foreseeable future. Just not quite as hyperbolically so.

I’ve done these predictions for a number of years and so far, luckily, haven’t generated a lot of cringeworthy or profoundly incorrect prognostications. But this year, I really hope I’m wrong. I’d love it if someone waves this in my face next December and tells me that I missed what ended up being a great year. If there’s one consistency in the short history of podcasting, it’s the industry’s ability to surprise and evolve in directions that are difficult to foresee. In a world stuffed full of change, let’s hope that’s one thing that continues in the new year.

Eric Nuzum is co-founder of Magnificent Noise.

March 11, 2020: The staff at our podcast company, Magnificent Noise, had lunch together. Sitting around the table, I said, “Perhaps this is the last day we should be coming into the office.” And it was. Outside of a trip to water plants and pick up mail every two or three weeks, I’ve pretty much been the only person who has gone back at all.

That isn’t unique to us, and it isn’t unique to podcasting. But podcasting had a wild ride in 2020, much different than other media and industries. The beginnings of lockdown were accompanied by a jaw-dropping decline in downloads and listening. Advertising buys were canceled at a dizzying rate. It looked bad. Really, really bad.

A few reporters asked me for my thoughts on the download decline, and I said it’ll bounce back. In radio, we’ve seen disruption like this on a smaller scale before — after 9/11 or a natural disaster, during the holidays, during the outbreak of military action — and things come back pretty quickly. One writer responded: “You can’t be serious.” I told him I was. He didn’t publish my response. (Nor did anyone else who asked.)

I don’t share that to show that I was right, but to note that — despite some incredible dire circumstances and predictions — podcasting had a pretty great year. That seems weird to say in 2020, with so much economic, health, and political turmoil, but it really did. Some impressive acquisitions happened. Revenue increased. Listening has not only bounced back but grown, and more people continue to discover podcasting.

Podcasters might be ready to wipe their brow and exclaim: Whew, we sure dodged that bullet. But that would be premature. There are many reasons to believe that 2021 will bring some significant bumps — ones that won’t upend podcasting but will dull the shine on the industry’s outsized buzz.

Three things lead me to say this.

The tide of the news cycle — and consumer interest in newsy content — will pull against us.

Nearly every organization that employs a reporter has spun up a daily or weekly news podcast, figuring that if The Daily can swing 4 million downloads a day, there has to be something at that table for them. But if you look at the long-term history of news media consumption, it looks like a staircase: quickly rising in the year or two leading up to an election cycle, then flattening for a year or two afterwards. In a post-Trump, post-pandemic, post-election world, even The Daily will have to work harder to maintain its audience (if that’s even possible). So will everyone else.

Acquisitions will taper off for a while.

If Wondery is acquired in the coming months, then pretty much every major buyable company in podcasting will have changed hands recently. For the industry, that’s healthy and normal. It clears the deck for a new tier of upstarts to grow in prominence and profile — a new generation of leading podcast companies which will eventually become large enough to attract those same M&A dollars.

That isn’t the problem. The problem is the buyers. I struggle to find a single example of a podcast company that’s been acquired in the past few years that has thrived under its new ownership. That lack of a clear post-acquisition success story — along with the comparatively low acquisition prices of podcast companies — will dull a lot of the enthusiasm for acquiring that next tier of companies. (I know it seems crazy, but to industry outsiders, a major podcast company selling for $300 to $400 million is not an impressive price.)

Let’s be honest: Our industry’s risk tolerance took a beating in 2020.

While the business of podcasting fared pretty well in 2020, its content ambitions took a major hit. The conservative trends we’ve seen emerging in the past several years accelerated during the pandemic. Nothing drives that home like this Podtrac chart of the most popular new podcasts of 2020. Notice any trends here? Rather than demonstrate an industry focused on adventurous and innovative content, this list looks like an industry focused on monetization and sameness.

When I consult with clients, I tell them the best choice for long-term prosperity is to focus on the listener’s short-term happiness. Give them great stuff and they’ll stick with you. And when they stick with you, the money follows. The answer to most questions is: Take the path that builds audience. But the core question is: What makes them happy?

There’s an old adage that if restaurants just focused their menus on what everybody loved, they’d eventually serve only mashed potatoes and peas. (If you know the origins of that saying, please let me know.) I’m sure many of the executives who greenlight some of the industry’s more formulaic and redundant content would say they’re just giving listeners what they want — and that’s fair. But look at what happened to pretty much any media sector (network TV, movie, books) when they’ve overindulged on repeating the content forms that consumers seemed to prefer. It becomes a high that never quite matches the way it first felt. Media has a long track record of forgetting the difference between what’s popular and easy to sell now with the novelty consumers will crave tomorrow.

So what’s the net effect of these three? In practical terms, not a lot. People will still listen. Downloads might soften, but they won’t crater or decline significantly. If anything, podcasting’s outsized prominence will come back down out of the clouds. But even if that happens, in a very real pragmatic sense, podcasting will still be the future of spoken word audio for the foreseeable future. Just not quite as hyperbolically so.

I’ve done these predictions for a number of years and so far, luckily, haven’t generated a lot of cringeworthy or profoundly incorrect prognostications. But this year, I really hope I’m wrong. I’d love it if someone waves this in my face next December and tells me that I missed what ended up being a great year. If there’s one consistency in the short history of podcasting, it’s the industry’s ability to surprise and evolve in directions that are difficult to foresee. In a world stuffed full of change, let’s hope that’s one thing that continues in the new year.

Eric Nuzum is co-founder of Magnificent Noise.

Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund   The virus ups data journalism’s game

Victor Pickard   The commercial era for local journalism is over

Annie Rudd   Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”

Bill Adair   The future of fact-checking is all about structured data

J. Siguru Wahutu   Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different

Patrick Butler   Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration

David Chavern   Local video finally gets momentum

Rodney Gibbs   Zooming beyond talking heads

Ariane Bernard   Going solo is still only a path for the few

Mike Caulfield   2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)

Moreno Cruz Osório   In Brazil, a push for pluralism

John Davidow   Reflect and repent

Whitney Phillips   Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods

Basile Simon   Graphics, unite

Sue Cross   A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save

Rachel Schallom   The rise of nonprofit journalism continues

Mandy Jenkins   You build trust by helping your readers

Nonny de la Pena   News reaches the third dimension

An Xiao Mina   2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary

Chase Davis   The year we look beyond The Story

Raney Aronson-Rath   To get past information divides, we need to understand them first

Candis Callison   Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)

Kristen Muller   Engaged journalism scales

Matt DeRienzo   Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality

Julia Angwin   Show your (computational) work

Steve Henn   Has independent podcasting peaked?

Mark Stenberg   The rise of the journalist-influencer

Nicholas Jackson   Blogging is back, but better

Cherian George   Enter the lamb warriors

Edward Roussel   Tech companies get aggressive in local

Mike Ananny   Toward better tech journalism

Masuma Ahuja   We’ll remember how interconnected our world is

Celeste Headlee   The rise of radical newsroom transparency

Sarah Marshall   The year audiences need extra cheer

Kerri Hoffman   Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem

Ariel Zirulnick   Local newsrooms question their paywalls

John Ketchum   More journalists of color become newsroom founders

Benjamin Toff   Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse

Pia Frey   Building growth through tastemakers and their communities

Joni Deutsch   Local arts and music make journalism more joyous

Heidi Tworek   A year of news mocktails

Sara M. Watson   Return of the RSS reader

John Garrett   A surprisingly good year

Robert Hernandez   Data and shame

Anna Nirmala   Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots

Sumi Aggarwal   News literacy programs aren’t child’s play

Mariano Blejman   It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism

Meredith D. Clark   The year journalism starts paying reparations

Kawandeep Virdee   Goodbye, doomscroll

Parker Molloy   The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump

Anthony Nadler   Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy

Tshepo Tshabalala   Go niche

Janet Haven and Sam Hinds   Is this an AI newsroom?

Mark S. Luckie   Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy

Jennifer Brandel   A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation

Astead W. Herndon   The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again

Andrew Ramsammy   Stop being polite and start getting real

Jonas Kaiser   Toward a wehrhafte journalism

Hadjar Benmiloud   Get representative, or die trying

Ryan Kellett   The bundle gets bundled

Catalina Albeanu   Publish less, listen more

Rachel Glickhouse   Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves

Nikki Usher   Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media

Jesse Holcomb   Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism

Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman   Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation

Hossein Derakhshan   Mass personalization of truth

Megan McCarthy   Readers embrace a low-information diet

Eric Nuzum   Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder

Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui   Millennials are ready to run things

Gabe Schneider   Another year of empty promises on diversity

Logan Jaffe   History as a reporting tool

José Zamora   Walking the talk on diversity

Ben Werdmuller   The web blooms again

Sarah Stonbely   Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity

María Sánchez Díez   Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok

Andrew Donohue   The rise of the democracy beat

Ashton Lattimore   Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry

Aaron Foley   Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news

Tamar Charney   Public radio has a midlife crisis

Don Day   Business first, journalism second

Danielle C. Belton   A decimated media rededicates itself to truth

Burt Herman   Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities

Rick Berke   Virtual events are here to stay

Jody Brannon   People won’t renew

Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli   Defund the crime beat

Chicas Poderosas   More voices mean better information

Ben Collins   We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists

A.J. Bauer   The year of MAGAcal thinking

Sonali Prasad   Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise

Marcus Mabry   News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)

Natalie Meade   Journalism enters rehab

Gonzalo del Peon   Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side

Jacqué Palmer   The rise of the plain-text email newsletter

Cory Haik   Be essential

Jessica Clark   News becomes plural

Richard Tofel   Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)

Amara Aguilar   Journalism schools emphasize listening

Nisha Chittal   The year we stop pivoting

Imaeyen Ibanga   Journalism gets unmasked

Ray Soto   The news gets spatial

Marie Shanahan   Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo

Doris Truong   Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage

Tanya Cordrey   Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values

Tim Carmody   Spotify will make big waves in video

Francesca Tripodi   Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes

Zizi Papacharissi   The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth

Joshua P. Darr   Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis

Nabiha Syed   Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships

Beena Raghavendran   Journalism gets fused with art

Garance Franke-Ruta   Rebundling content, rebuilding connections

Charo Henríquez   A new path to leadership

Bo Hee Kim   Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture

Brian Moritz   The year sports journalism changes for good

M. Scott Havens   Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption

Brandy Zadrozny   Misinformation fatigue sets in

Jeremy Gilbert   Human-centered journalism

Talmon Joseph Smith   The media rejects deficit hawkery

Tonya Mosley   True equity means ownership

Francesco Zaffarano   The year we ask the audience what it needs

Matt Skibinski   Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it

Rishad Patel   From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers

Colleen Shalby   The definition of good journalism shifts

Jim Friedlich   A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   Stop pretending publishers are a united front

John Saroff   Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites

Alyssa Zeisler   Holistic medicine for journalism

Zainab Khan   From understanding to feeling

Sam Ford   We’ll find better ways to archive our work

Michael W. Wagner   Fractured democracy, fractured journalism

Errin Haines   Let’s normalize women’s leadership

Ernie Smith   Entrepreneurship on rails

Laura E. Davis   The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change

Pablo Boczkowski   Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?

Christoph Mergerson   Black Americans will demand more from journalism

Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin   Media reparations now

Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes   A shift from conversation to action

Loretta Chao   Open up the profession

Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula   Expect to see more translations and non-English content

Renée Kaplan   Falling in love with your subscription

Kate Myers   My son will join every Zoom call in our industry

Delia Cai   Subscriptions start working for the middle

Joanne McNeil   Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism

Linda Solomon Wood   Canada steps up for journalism

Ståle Grut   Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox

Jer Thorp   Fewer pixels, more cardboard

C.W. Anderson   Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?

Jennifer Choi   What have we done for you lately?

Marissa Evans   Putting community trauma into context

Samantha Ragland   The year of journalists taking initiative

Kevin D. Grant   Parachute journalism goes away for good

Taylor Lorenz   Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy

David Skok   A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation

Gordon Crovitz   Common law will finally apply to the Internet

Juleyka Lantigua   The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned

Cory Bergman   The year after a thousand earthquakes

Nico Gendron   Ask your readers to help build your products

Cindy Royal   J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability