Farcaster, Mirror, Paragraph, or Lens are full of creators embracing sufficiently decentralized (thank you, @dwr) systems that are unowned and a little bit uncontrollable, yet most projects and companies end up doing Spaces on X or calls on Discord rather than on Aburra. And I get it; sometimes tech is too new, and accessibility is limited, but ...
Why not podcast?
What I'm puzzled about is - why almost none of these projects lean into podcasting. From a philosophical standpoint -> podcasting RSS feed is actually one of the most decentralized mediums with an effectively transferable audience. You saw it in real time - Joe Rogan became exclusively Spotify and has now switched back to being everywhere - and we all still listen to him.
Podcasting is also one of the last content-type inventions slowly going mainstream just about now. It's not a crowded area at all compared to other content types like blogs, yet everyone is blogging like crazy. And even my saying "slowly going mainstream" can be an overstatement. Can we really talk about medium being mainstream with less than five million active podcasts globally?
Enticing statistics on podcasts:
There are 4.2 million active podcasts globally, with over 70 million published episodes between them (expected in 2024).
The average listener spends a whopping 7 hours per week glued to their favorite podcast app and listens to 8 podcasts every week.
Episodes between 20-40 minutes reign supreme, catering to busy schedules and attention spans.
Scary statistics on blogging:
There are 2.5 billion blog posts published each year, and there are over 600 million blogs on the internet.
And almost nobody gets that organic traffic they hope for from Google and others.
Anyway, my point is that anyone - an individual or a business - is able to create in the podcasting medium without major investments and also without extra training. Almost all of us know how to talk in a civilized way when we focus on it. You don't need to look pretty (unless you want to do video) and you can record in your closet while hiding from your parents, if you need to.
Podcast can become anything!
You can repurpose podcasts into different mediums in number of ways - transcripts, blog posts, summaries, social media blurbs. You get totally new distribution channels which you are not able to reach otherwise and you can adapt your podcast to your target audience in - topics, lengths, style, type and even language.
I know I would love to see more web3 projects leaning into podcasting because many projects would be perfect for technically focused podcasts, some would be amazing for video podcasting. But every single team has an angle where the stories they live through are worth telling and recording.
So even if you don't want to mint your podcasting episodes on-chain, and sell them as NFTs, you should still consider podcasting as a way to embrace open format of finding your portable audiences. If you need help with starting, just reach out. I'd be happy to help.
Remember, we are here for the unowned, uncentralized, and uncontrollable, but ours!
I hope you will stick around, if you like - bring your friends - and let's support each other!
Find me as BFG (aka BrightFutureGuy)
- on X: https://twitter.com/aka_BFG
- on Farcaster: https://warpcast.com/bfg
- Web3 Magic Podcast on Substack - https://www.web3magic.xyz
