I’m sure that many of you who subscribe to this newsletter are aware that I write long pieces about podcasting on Medium. Well, six months or so ago, I wrote a piece called ‘The $0.00 Podcast’, which prodded a very specific hornet’s nest. It asked the questions: how much does it cost to make a podcast? And, can you really make a podcast for nothing?
The answer to the latter question, as anyone reading this will know, is, of course, no. But the answer to the former question is more complex, and has been under the spotlight in the past couple of weeks. By total coincidence (I think) some dude named Adam this week posted a public response to my old blog, which I reproduce (not quite in its entirety) below:
“I call BS on this article. While a podcast certainly can cost you something, be it time and effort - there’s nothing wrong with using free platforms and your smartphone if that’s all you have available. Saving up for a fancy mic and intro music is not going to make a difference if your story is weak or doesn’t resonate with an audience… Good luck on your podcasting ventures, but please be a little more considerate of the have nots in this world that still can do with little ingenuity and effort.”
It’s always very tempting, as a writer, to assume that anyone who disagrees with you hasn’t bothered to actually read your work. But I feel that particularly strongly with Adam. I won’t reproduce the entire thesis of the article here, but I do outline exactly how you can make a podcast for nothing (basically the same process he describes) before outlining why you shouldn’t. And my reasoning for why you shouldn’t is simple: you’re going to waste your time and your money and emotional energy making a product that cannot reasonably compete in the marketplace.
But whatever, that’s my little internet tiff with Adam. The real meat of the reason why this subject has been on the agenda has been this article in the New York Times. The paragraph that pissed people off (or got them talking, depending on your stance) was:
“For the fifth season of “Fiasco,” one option for [Leon] Neyfakh was to seek a similar deal to the one he’d had with Luminary. In exchange for a fee that would help to pay salaries and cover the show’s production costs, which several producers said range from $250,000 to $500,000 for a narrative documentary series, a distributor would make the show exclusive to its users. Neyfakh had received just such an offer from Audible, the Amazon-owned subscription audiobooks company that now makes dozens of original podcasts.”
First things first, I’m an admirer of Leon Neyfakh’s work – his season of Fiasco looking at Bush v Gore was a genuine highlight of my 2020 podcast consumption. And I think, for someone working at the top end of podcast and radio production, he’s atypically candid and transparent about these issues. In a 2020 interview with the Financial Times about ‘The Battle for Boston’ series of Fiasco, he said that “including infrastructural costs like having an office space and a studio, plus equipment, we spend about $350,000 per season”. I often hold that, very short, paragraph up as an extremely rare example of someone talking directly about the costs incurred in the process of making their podcast.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Future Proof to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.