PodMov Daily: Monday, November 15

Episode 539: Your Monday Mix

As Spoken Word Grows, What's Happening to Music?

Spoken word has grown 40% in the last seven years, according to the 2021 Spoken Word Audio Report from Edison Research and NPR. The flip side is that we’re listening to less music than we used to, writes Edison SVP Tom Webster. Podcasts are winning our attention, but what’s happening on the other side of audio?

Between radio’s loss of influence and tragically low(ering) streaming royalty rates, the music business is a tough place to be: “People in podcasting talk so much about the difficulties with podcast discovery — at least your share is growing! Try being a new artist right now that is not named Taylor or Ed and building a career.”

In other news, Webster is developing a special webinar for podcasters with his wife, speaker and strategist Tamsen Webster. It’ll be designed to help make sure your show can be pitched successfully. The webinar will be free, but links to register will be available only to his email subscribers. Our recommendation: Do it.

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How Clubhouse is Becoming a “Real Company”

“For every ‘Clubhouse is dying’ headline published, the app has — at least for now — stayed very much alive,” writes J. Clara Chan of The Hollywood Reporter. In mid-October, Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison admitted that the platform “grew way, way too fast.” Now, his team of nearly 90 is working backward to basics.

In the last eight months, updates have been “foundational,” including setting up a tipping feature in April, launching on Android in May, adding direct messaging and opening wide to the public in July, releasing recording and universal search in September, and rolling out support for 13 languages on Android in October.

As the app’s leadership focuses on steady, sustainable growth, celebrity appearances are still a major draw. Just last night, Hot Pod’s Ashley Carman spotted Oprah in a room set up to “obsess, discuss, and unpack” the recent interview with Adele. With celebrity status, Clubhouse hopes to reach “real company” status.

Sounder.fm: Podcast Hosting That Powers Your Growth

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Here's what else is going on:

• Fresh findings: Tomorrow at 2:00 pm ET, the first-ever Black Podcast Listener Report will be presented via webinar. Edison Research, SXM Media, and Mindshare will examine how Black Americans consume podcasts, including discovery, device usage, and reasons for listening. Free registration.

• Robot voice: AI-powered tools are popping up for every step of content creation. Lando Loic of MakeUseOf covers eight that can help save time when building a web presence for your show. Here’s to simpler writing, editing, image enhancement, font pairing, and text-to-video tasks.

• Blank slate: If your guest is a niche expert, “they will need to dilute the information, not just for you, but also for the listeners.” Emma Grazado of NPR Training suggests pretending to know “absolutely nothing” on the topic (within reason) and using analogies to check understanding.

• Writers’ room: The 2021 Shore Scripts Podcast Contest early submission deadline is tomorrow. Two winners will have their scripts produced into pilot podcast episodes on $5,000 budgets. Be sure to check the Podcasting, Seriously Awards Fund for possible application fee reimbursement.