Podcasting on YouTube

Could video SAVE the radio star?

Hello summer people. I hope, one way or another, you’ve found time this season to step away and appreciate things beyond this complicated industry of ours. Vacation is not only nice, it’s crucial for us to be able to rest and recharge and allow ourselves space to come up with new ideas and do our best work. One of the things I’ve done this summer is read (listen to) Adam Grant’s book Hidden Potential. He has a whole chapter on the benefits of rest: Chapter 4: Transforming the Daily Grind. 

“Breaks unlock fresh ideas. In my own research with Jihae Shin I found that taking breaks boosts creativity, when you feel harmonious passion toward a task. Your interest keeps the problem active in the back of your mind and you’re more likely to incubate new ways of framing it, and unexpected ways of solving it.“

I’m always happy to see my beliefs backed up by research, so this was a particularly satisfying read. And perhaps it worked, because after a lovely couple weeks at the beach not thinking about work, I’ve finally been able to pull together this next post. It’s about something that’s been kicking around in my head for a long time, and I’m now able to articulate my thoughts in a way that feels coherent enough to share. I’m always happy to hear your feedback and ideas. Happy reading!

---

Teen human in his natural habitat, watching MrBeast

I have two teenagers, and YouTube is a regular fixture in my household. The older one primarily watches fishing videos. The younger watches a combination of gamers playing Minecraft and Fortnite, endless sports reels, and this guy who has presumably made millions documenting the process of outfitting his Florida home with myriad aquariums and other animal enclosures. Oh and cooking videos. So many cooking videos. They are both totally tapped into YouTube culture including MrBeast (we had to visit his burger joint when we found ourselves in a New Jersey mall not too long ago), these guys, and this guy.

The older teen is aware of podcasts (not just because of his mom’s line of work), but he’s most definitely one of those who will always say he “watched” a podcast, even if he was just listening. And he’s most definitely not aware of any podcast apps, especially not the one with the big purple logo that came with his hand-me-down iPhone.

Of course teenage boys are not the core audience for the kinds of podcasts I’ve been writing about, but they are most definitely representative of future podcast consumers. The older one is learning to drive and will soon have access to hours on the road where watching is not an option. He also likes stories, and is getting into history and politics and maybe even Malcolm Gladwell. The younger one is very tapped into what’s popular, and I can only imagine how his tastes will shift and expand as he gets older. Both of them are wonderful, in-house test cases for the future of media. No cap.

---

I first started thinking about podcasts on YouTube around 2016. At that time I was working for Panoply/Slate, and as part of our marketing efforts for the first season of Revisionist History, we commissioned a promotional video to run on YouTube. We saw this as necessary, but it didn’t drive listeners to our podcast feed as far as we could tell. Not long after, someone took one of our episodes, Saigon, 1965, and did a full slideshow rendition of it on YouTube. It was nicely done, and while we weren’t thrilled about someone ripping our audio, it was interesting to think about audiences receiving our content in a different way. Folks ripped other episodes as well, and they posted them on YouTube with an awful still image of Malcolm’s face. We mostly tried to shut those down, but again, it wasn’t really making a dent in our listening. Apple was our core focus, and that’s almost exclusively where our listeners found us.

Cut to 2020 when Pushkin hired Eric Sandler to work on our marketing team. He came from The Howard Stern Show where video was always a part of their offering, and Eric was bullish on YouTube. These were still early days, and while we ran a few more video experiments, YouTube’s infrastructure for audio just wasn’t there. Plus, we audio creators are in audio for a reason. We love audio. We love the challenge of telling stories without visuals. We strive to make the audio so rich and beautiful and compelling that you see the story in your mind’s eye. The now cliched “intimacy” of audio is specifically because there are no visuals. It’s a feature not a flaw. So when Cumulus Media And Signal Hill Insights put out their Spring 2024 report claiming that YouTube is the most-used listening platform in the country, I was skeptical. 

Of course it’s true that YouTube is one of the biggest content platforms out there. It has more than 2 billion monthly users; it’s the second most-visited website in the world, next to Google Search. I’ve certainly gone down my share of YouTube rabbit holes, but I hadn’t thought of it as a listening platform… until now.

---

Earlier this year, YouTube introduced RSS integration. You can now upload your podcast, including your entire back catalog, onto the YouTube platform, for free. Of course once you're there, you still have the challenge of discovery. If you thought it was hard to get noticed with four million podcast feeds, try breaking through 800 million videos. That aside, there are some unique opportunities.

First, YouTube is, and always has been, a creator-first platform.

Since its launch nearly twenty years ago, it’s been designed for users to reach their audiences directly. There are no gatekeepers — for better or worse. You can post what you want, when you want. This recent NYT article explains how YouTube made a go of creating original content to rival Netflix and other streaming platforms, but gave it up in 2022 in favor of the user-created content that made the platform so popular in the first place. My favorite quote from the article is from this creator who says: 

“We’re not bound to a production pipeline… the culture of YouTube rewards creative risk.”

Her quote reminds me of the early days of podcasting when experimentation was encouraged and rewarded. It’s something I haven’t felt in the industry for too long.

Second, like all social media, YouTube is designed to keep you glued to its platform.

It will continuously serve you more and more content that the algorithm thinks you might like. Now, I listened to Rabbit Hole. I know how dangerous this algorithm can be. As a parent I limit my kids’ time on YouTube because it’s truly addictive and so much of what they find is brain rot. But if our goal is to build audiences for podcasts, no other existing podcast network can do this as well as YouTube. Even behemoth podcast networks like Wondery, who basically invented the concept of the feed drop to aid in show discovery, are still sharing new shows with the same pool of existing podcast listeners over and over again. The pool is growing, but it’s still many times smaller than the pool of potential future listeners on YouTube.

Third, while I still believe there’s nothing more impactful than another human voice ported directly into your brain via earbuds, YouTube offers its own kind of intimacy.

Many of the biggest YouTubers got famous by posting from their bedrooms, kitchens, and cars — giving you a peek into their private lives. You meet their families and their pets and their neighbors. You feel like you know them. Of course audio works like that, too, but there’s no denying that visual platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have gotten so huge so fast because people, especially young people, like to see their storytellers. Plus, YouTube doesn’t require the same kind of polish as Hollywood. In fact the rawness of it is part of what makes it so popular. 

So after much thought, I’ve cast aside my skepticism.

There’s now no doubt in my mind that podcasts should make their way to YouTube.

But one big question remains: Audio or Video? ¹

---

Most of the conversations I’m hearing lately center around how to add video to podcasts. That’s fine if you’re creating a show that’s primarily interview-based, and especially if you’re working in a chat-show format. If that’s the case, then by all means, keep your cameras on, record your zooms (or better yet get a high-quality video set up) and post a video version of your show. But if you intend to make a long-form narrative, adding video is prohibitively time consuming and expensive. 

But you don’t have to choose. You can have video AND / OR audio.

It’s a BOTH / AND solution. 

The YouTube RSS integration essentially makes a copy of your feed — hosting that copy on its own servers, totally independent of your original feed. Once your content is up there, you create a playlist for your show. And within that playlist you can toggle between audio and video. So if you have video available, great! Toggle the audio off and replace it with video. But if you don’t have video, you can leave it as audio only.

Now, being YouTube, all recommendations point to the benefit of at least some video to drive engagement with existing YouTube viewers / listeners. But it doesn't have to have the same polish you give your audio work. Regardless, your original RSS feed stays intact. So you can keep doing what you’re doing in your regular feed AND get the benefit of this new potential audience. Supposedly you can even leave in your host-read ads (though any third party ads have to go.)

So what could this look like for podcasters?

• You could record a short video introduction to your show and leave the rest audio only. Or perhaps you have a mid-season break in which you post another short video — then continue with the rest of the series as is. 

• You could make all your bonus content with video. Most bonus content is less-produced anyway, so you might as well use it as an opportunity to experiment with a new format. 

• You could record reaction videos announcing or responding to things that happen during the production process. Did some major news event interrupt your production flow? Did something happen that’s relevant to one of your episodes? Record a short video explaining what’s happening and why and post it to your channel. Start building a direct connection to your audience in a format that doesn’t disrupt your regular feed. 

• You could record episode follow-ups, promotions, or behind-the-scenes tours.

• You could respond to listener / viewer feedback.

• You could announce special events.

• You could run uncut interviews.

• You could do a “how I built this” screen share of your entire pro-tools layup or scoring session and use it as an educational tool. 

You can give as much or as little window into your process as you like.

Let YouTube be your playground. The stakes are low. The possibilities are endless. 

---

But what about the indie co-op?

Despite my genuine enthusiasm about podcasting on YouTube, I worry that indies will still be left behind. Some of us will never be comfortable in front of the camera, and it’ll still be nearly impossible for an indie show to find an audience in the sea of content on this giant platform.

In my previous post I outline a solution to this “discovery problem” in which influencers serve as podcast DJ’s — offering recommendations based on their own tastes and listening habits. (This is the brainchild of Kristen Hayford.) I proposed a kind of “super feed” allowing multiple RSS feeds to appear in a single channel, kind of like what OPML files do². But upon reflection, YouTube is a much simpler solution.

What if, instead of yet another new feed in the echo-chamber of the podcast ecosystem, the influencer created a channel on YouTube?

The influencer would be the face of the channel — the curator and the salesperson. We viewers / listeners would get to know them through their videos; we get a peek into their lives via all the proven YouTube ways. But their main purpose is to introduce us to their favorite podcasts. These podcasts would appear in the channel as playlists — pulled from the creators’ RSS feeds — with permission, of course. And those creators would get a share of the channel’s profits.

The influencer would be the one to do the response videos and announcements. The influencer could interview the podcast creators about their process. They could do podcast listen-along videos, reacting to what they’re hearing in real time. They could add new a playlist when a new show catches their attention or when an old show feels relevant again. When one of their regular feeds goes on hiatus, they could replace it with something similar. And they can explain to the audience what’s happening every step of the way. They could even do media-related PSA’s — talking to the audience about what goes into curating fact-based and independently-reported journalism.

For their part, the podcast creators can stay in their lane, doing what they do best. And they can share in whatever revenue comes from this new audience without messing with whatever benefit they’re already getting from their existing RSS feed.

Let’s play this out even further.

In the shows my kids watch, I’ve noticed this whole ecosystem of YouTubers that all seem to know each other. They appear on each other’s channels and promote each other’s work. We can do the same. We can build a network of curated channels, each appealing to a different type of viewer / listener. As I wrote in my previous post:

The feed channel(!) is personalized, specific, and flexible. 

Maybe there’s a feed channel specifically for millennials, curated by a millennial. A feed channel specifically for a certain racial demographic, curated by someone IN that demographic. A feed channel for students or musicians or trans people or athletes. Each feed channel is curated by that demographic, for that demographic.

The influencers can take advantage of the YouTube algorithm to help them find like-minded viewer / listeners. And they can use YouTube analytics to track those viewer / listeners’ behaviors and learn more about them. The focus of discovery becomes the type of listener and all the many podcasts they might enjoy, rather than one specific type of podcast (true crime, comedy, wellness, etc). This could create a broader and more accurate portrait of the podcast market and create more value for advertisers and sponsors. Plus it ultimately creates a new stream of revenue for creators.

So let’s try it, shall we?

Over the next few weeks, Kristen and I will be launching a YouTube channel to try out some of these theories. Details to come in my next post.

Meanwhile, let’s bring back the spirit of experimentation that was such a big part of the industry in the early days. We used to have fun in this field, didn’t we?

There’s still a bit of summer left. Let’s get back in the sandbox. 

What have we got to lose?

---

Postscript

This video — a collaboration between YouTube and Ausha (a marketing platform) — is so far the best explainer I’ve seen about how podcasts actually work on YouTube. 

This Washington Post opinion piece from Erik Wemple provides a nice overview of how we got here.  

Broken Record (a show I developed back in the day) is one of the best examples of a podcast taking full advantage of all YouTube has to offer. Kudos to host / producer Justin Richmond and head of marketing Eric Sandler for being early adopters.

1. If you’re going to Podcast Movement, check out this great panel moderated by my friend and former colleague Leital Molad: Screen vs. Sound Smackdown: A Debate on the Value of Video in Podcasting

2. Thanks to James Cridland of Podnews for drawing my attention to this.