Month: May 2019

Spotify Made a “Car Thing”

~ jen

Spotify created something called “Car Thing”. The purpose of Car Thing is to help Spotify learn more about people’s listening habits and preferences for the purpose of creating an unparalleled experience for Spotify users.

As you may know, Spotify acquired Gimlet Media and Anchor earlier this year. The move positioned Spotify as a premier producer of podcasts, and the leading platform for podcast creators.

Spotify points out that Americans spend 70 billion hours behind the wheel each year. That’s a lot of time spent on the road listening to podcasts and music. Car Thing is a device that Spotify will use in a test.

Here is what to know about Spotify’s test:

  • Spotify is testing how people listen in the car through a voice-controlled music and podcast device called “Car Thing”.
  • Car Thing was developed to help Spotify learn more about how people listen to music and podcasts. Spotify’s focus remains on becoming the world’s number one audio platform – not on creating hardware.
  • The test will be done in the US only, with a small group of invited Spotify Premium users.
  • Spotify might do similar voice-specific tests in the future, which could potentially involve a “Voice Thing” and a “Home Thing”.
  • Spotify does not have any current plans to make the Car Thing device available to consumers. What they learn from the test will dictate how Spotify develops experiences everywhere you listen.

Stitcher Hired New Chief Revenue Officer and Executive Producer

~ jen

Stitcher announced that they have added two industry veterans to its roster of top leaders.

Sarah van Mosel will join Stitcher as chief revenue officer, and Daisy Rosario will join the content team as executive producer. Van Mosel and Rosario will begin their roles May 20 and will be based in Stitcher’s New York City offices.

As chief revenue officer, van Mosel will lead Stitcher’s sales organization, Midroll Media, the long-time leader in podcast advertising that represents over 250 of the world’s top podcasts. She will set the company’s direction in identifying and capitalizing on new revenue growth opportunities and overseeing the partnership team.

A leading expert of digital audio sales and strategy, van Mosel was most recently chief podcast sales and strategy officer at Market Enginuity, where she oversaw all sales activity and strategic planning for the company. In this role, Van Mosel managed sales for Public Radio Exchange’s Radiotopia network podcasts including 99% Invisible, The Moth, Song Exploder, Criminal and Ear Hustle. She previously held leadership roles at Acast and New York Public Radio.

Van Mosel earned a bachelor’s degree in media studies from Goddard College and is the co-chair for the IAB Podcast Business Working Group.

In her new role as executive producer for Stitcher, Rosario will oversee some of Stitcher’s top podcasts on its Stitcher Original label including Unladylike, The Sporkful, Longest Shortest Time, By the Book, and new series Mob Queens and Science Rules! With Bill Nye.

In addition to production on current shows, Rosario will lead a team responsible for identifying and developing new podcasts, with a focus on narrative-driven podcasts and thoughtful talk shows.

Rosario earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from New York University and a master’s degree in journalism from The City University of New York.

Podfund Seeks to Invest in Creators Poised for Growth

~ jen

Podfund is a newly launched startup that is seeking podcasters. It is not a podcast network. Instead, it describes itself as “a resource for independent podcasters to help you build your business.” It can help match a podcast with podcast networks, platforms, talent agents, ad sales services, and other key parts of growing a successful podcast business.

According to Hot Pod, Podfund is headed by Jake Shapiro the CEO of RadioPublic, and the startup is positioning itself as “a strategic partner” of Shapiro’s podcast platform.

Some of the podcast creators that Podfund is supporting include:

  • Hebah Fisher – Kerning Cultures
  • Jake Brennan – Double Elvis
  • Erica Mandy – The NewsWorthy
  • Malcolm Gladwell – Pushkin Industries

As always, podcast creators should read the Terms of Service of anything that they are considering becoming a part of (or partner with). Podfund’s Terms of Service was updated on May 6, 2019.

Here are some key points to be aware of:

“Our check size ranges from $25,000 – $50,000 USD, depending on your stage, track record, evidence of traction, revenue, and intended use of the funds. In some cases, we may provide a larger initial check and/or follow-on funding.”

“We have developed creator-friendly terms on a revenue-based structure that ensure you own and control your intellectual property and your business, factor in the risk and return to Podfund, and are designed to support sustainable models for independent podcasters. You retain 100% ownership of your company and are free to distribute your content wherever you see fit.”

“We agree to provide funding and services to you in exchange for a percentage of total gross revenue (including ads/sponsorship, listener support, and ancillary revenue such as touring, merchandise, or licensing) per quarter. PodREV terms are 7-15% of revenue for 3-5 years, depending on current traction, revenue, and projected growth.”

Podfund’s Terms of Service also says:

“At any time you may also opt to pay down the revenue share obligation in full as follows:

1.5x the initial funding in year 1
2x the initial funding in year 2
3x the initial funding in year 3
4x the initial funding in year 4”

“A subset of set-up services are required as part of Podfund participation, and incur a fee ($2,500 – $5,000, which may be paid from the Podfund funding). These include company incorporation, establishing approved accounting/bookkeeping, access to metrics for reporting and data (solely for Podfund use.)”

“In the event your company is ultimately sold, Podfund receives a payment of 1% of the total purchase price. So if you eventually sell your company for $100M (congratulations!), PodFund gets $1M.”

Personally, some of what is in the Podfund Terms of Services makes me uncomfortable. It sounds to me like there is an initial fee that podcasters must pay if PodFund selects their podcast – which means the podcaster is starting out “in the red” with this situation.

The Podfund FAQ states that creators must be incorporated as a business in order to obtain support from Podfund. If you are not incorporated, Podfund can help you do that. I can understand a fee for helping a creator incorporate – but I don’t understand why they want a fee if a creator comes in with their own incorporated business.

But hey, if you happen to have a ton of disposable income, and a gigantic audience – maybe you might want to try Podfund. It sounds like they can help with bookkeeping and advertisement. Part of the criteria for being accepted by Podfund is that a creator must show they have made revenue from ad sales, crowdfunding/listener support, live events, or merchandise.

In short, PodFund wants the “big fish” and does not appear to be interested in helping smaller creators with funding for their podcasts.

There Won’t Be Another PodCon

~ jen

Hank Green announced on Medium that they will not be doing PodCon again. This news will probably disappoint people who were hoping to attend PodCon 3. According to Hank, Travis, Justin, Jeffery, Joseph and Monica, “The short version is: We couldn’t make it sustainable.”

The Medium blog post includes a list of the main reasons why they weren’t able to get PodCon “to a safe, sustainable place.” The reasons include:

We couldn’t fundamentally change PodCon to make it make more financial sense.

Large podcasts have a successful and sustainable business model in live show touring. “This can make it difficult to attract creators who can sell tickets without paying them the amount they would doing a touring show. We also wouldn’t want podcasters to negatively impact their livelihood just to help out for free.”

The “evening out” lie show system also works well for podcasts fans. “Many of their attendees said they would rather have an evening out than a two day event.”

Conventions are expensive to run and attend. “We wanted to run a show that paid staff a living wage, paid for the travel expenses and lodging of all invited guests, looked and sounded fantastic to audiences, and invited a variety of guests without thinking only about whether they could sell tickets, but also the value of the perspectives they could provide. We couldn’t do that in a sustainable way and we’re unwilling to compromise on any of that stuff.”

Sponsorships were extremely difficult to sell.

Those who want to go and get a piece of PodCon can visit their merch site and buy some leftover PodCon merchandise.

Patreon Explains their Copyright License

~ jen

If you have a Patron account for your podcast, you probably got an email from Patreon reminding you about their upcoming Creator Plans that will launch on May 7, 2019. Part of that email mentions that copyright license that creators must sign.

It is well worth taking a closer look at Patreon’s copyright license.

By posting creations on Patreon, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, reproduce, distribute, perform, publicly display or prepare derivative works of your creation. The purpose of this license is strictly limited to allow us to provide and promote memberships to your patrons. We will never try to steal your creations or use them in an exploitative way.

Patreon says that the state of copyright law requires them to receive a comprehensive license in order to host the copyrighted work of their creators. “Otherwise, our creators could sue us for copyright infringement for doing any number of normal things with their creations.”

Patreon posted details about why they require specific parts of the license:

Royalty-free: You can’t ask Patreon to pay you in the future you decide you no longer want to have your creations hosted on Patreon.

Perpetual: Once you post it on Patreon, Patreon is not legally liable if a copy of it remains in their database even after you delete it.

Irrevocable: You can’t post it, and then change your mind and ask Patreon to ‘remove it or face legal liability’.

Non-Exclusive: This is to ensure you can license it to anyone else you want to license it to.

Sublicensable: Patreon uses all kinds of third party services to host their content. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts most of Patreon’s data. Patreon needs to be able to sublicense the right host your creations so they are protected from legal liability.

Worldwide license to use: If someone in another country loads Patreon.com, Patreon is not liable for copyright infringement.

Reproduce: Patreon can make copies of this in more than one place on their database.

Distribute, Perform, Publicly Display: These just cover different forms of showing your creations to patrons and internet users alike.

Prepare derivative works of your creations: If Patreon does something as simple as resizing an image, that is creating a derivative work. When running a website, there are tons of things that they do to slightly alter creations in various ways.