I sometimes listen to podcasts, close to none of them were discovered inside a podcast app, and the one that were, it was because an author of a podcast I was already listening started a separate one. I used to think that podcast had a discoveribility issue, but I'm honestly not that sure anymore. I don't usually get new books/ebooks suggested by my phone either, and after all, a podcast and an ebook have more things in common than different from each other. I trust word of mouth over algorithm to give me good reading suggestion, and off course I do the same with ebook (in the more sporadic occasion when I want to use ears rather than eyes), maybe it's just unreasonable to expect podcast to act differently.
> You'll find thousands of shows with perfect audio quality and professional-grade cover art that contain absolutely zero intellectual nutritional value
This is why I switched to audio books. Many podcasts with real guests contained too much salad and not enough meat (e.g. a machine learning podcast but they talked about going to conferences).
Contrary to what many think, I believe AI generated content can increase the nutritional value. I've done experiments with turning technical PDFs into podcasts, e.g. summarizing machine learning papers (similar to NotebookLM).
I searched for good programming or more broad IT-related podcasts but unfortunately haven't found ones that aren't either straight up ad or thinly veiled ad. I understand that invited guests or podcast producers want to have compensation but end result is of putting and not attractive to me. I'll place software engineering radio as an example - I listened to some episodes but it gave me impression of slop even before word slop was established.
On the other hand I know excellent quality podcasts founded by voluntary Patreon members so I hope issue is I simply haven't found IT ones from that spectrum yet.
The whole scene is rapidly being pushed to walled gardens too not published to an RSS feed for the client of your choice. I assume because most Podcasts are now a video affair.
It seems just about every celebrity has started producing one based on the new golden globe award the other day.
The only podcasts I still listen to are the ones I've been listening too since the 0's when I had to download .mp3 files and put them on my USB key MP3 player
100% amateur stuff, no ad, nothing to sell, just humans having fun in front of a mic
----
The recent reboot of the medium is more akin to the talk shows from TV, but instead of trying to reach a wide range of audience, podcasts are targeting niches.
Which allow more podcasts to exist... but make it harder to be sustainable since their goal is mostly to make money
I subscribe to exactly zero podcasts. It's not a position or a statement; I just don't find them interesting enough to win out over audiobooks or music.
Thanks to the Libby app, I have "read" several thousand books over the past 7-8 years. An excellent pair of earbuds is mandatory to allow a 2x listening speed, which you can work up to in about a week.
Everyone tells me that they "don't have time" to listen to 2-3 books a week. I listen when I'm doing my morning routine, when I'm cooking, when I'm cleaning, when I'm cycling, when I'm shopping, when I'm clearing snow.
Listening to influencers and celebrities hang out, pretend to be friends and try to be funny just doesn't do it for me.
Would you say that you really digest the books you listen to like that? It seems difficult to fathom to me. I generally try to use tedious downtime to think through things and solve problems in my head rather than listening to anything, but I've found that I can't even really keep my thoughts straight while walking outside due to watching where I'm going and the large variety of distracting external stimulus. I feel like I would get absolutely nothing out of listening to an audiobook at 2x speed while cycling.
Would it be like returning to that time when all of the podcast people were trying to tell me about the same quirky thing and I had to decide between letting them down or pretending I hadn't already heard it from the other podcast people?
Maybe the content was better in those days, but as an outsider I'm not too keen on going back. I prefer my friends as separate people.
Podcasting started mostly due to curiosity. People used to discuss topics that were interesting enough to warrant investment into the needed hardware and labouring the entire setup and production. If the topics weren't as interesting, the people were. That is how Joe Rogan begun and built his brand, after all. There was quite a lot of "whoah" factor back in the early days.
I do not think this has gone away. Yes, market saturation waters everything down to the common denominator. Podcasting is no different than any other commercial or public market. But there will be always outliers. The only difference is that back in the old days(early 2000s and 2010s), your choices were limited, which made it easier to pick. Today, you have to invest time and effort and hunt down those good podcasts that match your interests by sifting through a ton of the noise(badam, tssss).
I was big into podcasts, even started my own. Until I realised that without interesting guests to bring in week after week, there is no point in it.
But I think that the main issue is, and has been for a very ling time, that there is really not a single good user interface for consuming podcasts, especially offline, managing podcasts or discovering new ones, keeping tabs on what is going on with individual shows or even getting recommendations on and being able to purchase your own podcasting kit, so that you don't have to research and learn about audio, video and other related things that might detract someone from thinking about starting their own podcast. And also all of this in packaging suitable for different consumption situations - walking, driving a car, riding a bus, being at work or at home. Yes, there were many various apps and websites, but they all suck and lack in any useful feature. They essentially just aggregate podcasts and offer RSS feeds. That's kindergarten bs.
I run a small podcast startup. I've been doing it ten years.
Podcasting is drying up because the money left. Everyone went all in on podcasts on 2020. Spotify bet the farm on podcasts. Money poured in. Marketing bros realized there's only so many mattresses and underwear you can sell through the format and left.
You really can't serve personalized ads through podcasts. The relevance of what you advertise can be about the topic of the show (that is, marketing to the type of people who would listen) or the location of the listener. Pretty much every other signal gives you nothing interesting you'd be about to decide "yeah they're a potential good customer". Spray and pray.
The money left. People realized they couldn't justify the time and money they pour into podcasting. It turns out, even if you weren't expecting to make money, you really hoped people would listen. Not enough, because podcasts faded and people discovered TikTok. No more waiting for your favorite show to drop: everything is your favorite show. If you get bored just scroll up.
Lots of folks are still making it work. But a lot more people are going into podcasting with a more deliberate approach. People are doing it because they think it's important, not because they think people will listen or because they want to get rich. I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
I remember looking into podcast advertising for my previous company back in ~2018. I listen to a podcast that I believe claimed ~50k regular listeners at the time, and a 2 minute sponsor read (1 of 3 per show) was priced at something like $4000.
I never understood how that sort of pricing would work. The unit economics were never even close for us. I can see how they might be closer for SaaS businesses like Squarespace, but for retailers? Feels very unlikely. I'm not surprised the money dried up, or rather, figured out that funnelling VC cash into podcast ads doesn't turn into profitable growth.
Interestingly, now in 2026 that same podcast (which according to the hosts hasn't grown), no longer lists their pricing for ad reads, and frequently only has 2 filled spots, and has had periods of only 1 or even no ad reads per show over the last few years as times have been tough. They've now diversified into overpriced memberships.
Ironically I get ads in my (English language) podcasts in Dutch because I'm downloading them in the Netherlands. But ads for helping me learn Dutch might be a better choice.
Some podcasts use listener donations but even reasonably popular ones can struggle this way - https://www.europeanspodcast.com/ comes to mind.
I'm pretty sure I'm getting personalized ads when I listen to podcasts through the iOS podcast app. Well, maybe they're only localized - I get ads in German when I listen to u.s.-based podcasts.
A lot of podcasts server ads via their provider (e.g. megaphone). They do tracking and analytics.
Funny thing is that lots of the provider are now owned by Spotify. So right now you basically have the choice: a) listen to it on Spotify with good embedded ads b) listen to it on your podcast feed with bad embedded ads.
I would love to see some deep economic analysis of what the fuck is going on with Bombas. Why is everyone on the internet trying to sell a helix mattress? How does a marketing department even negotiate that many different contracts with that many small scale influencers?
> I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
Is there a good discovery mechanism for people looking to go past the first 3 episodes? Is there anyone trying to do curation of any sort? I wonder if AI that knows you super well could be used to find the right podcast for you.
I'd love to explore more political, science and other types of podcasts but it is too easy to set one up nowadays which results in so much garbage and I have wasted enough time with Rogan, Friedman and their ilk to realize that I'm forced to do curation. For one bit of gold there is so much trash and time is the most valuable thing you have.
I'd guess there's still a bit of money left. On one of the few podcasts I listen to (made by two professional podcasters since 2008), the ads (long and annoying - but luckily easily skippable) are entirely for other podcasts.
We should reset the podcasting world because the top podcast lists are full of topical stuff someone doesn't care about? A top podcast list full of fluff means that we've run out of things to say, seriously?
I have the exact opposite problem with podcasts that the author details: I have too many that I want to listen to and not enough time. There are so many people whose opinions and perspectives I value that I will never be able to consume them all consistently. From deep dives into Roman history, miniseries on foreign policy, sports, politics, film music, there are so many people sharing their passion with the world and I want to hear it all.
But finding those people takes work. Yeah, there are a ton of losers out there with nothing to say who put out popular content, but that's not unique to podcasting. YouTube, Reddit, hell the entire internet has that problem.
Stuff like this reads to me like someone wants the internet to be happy fun time that only ever gives me an endless supply of good things to consume and filters out all the bad.
> Stuff like this reads to me like someone wants the internet to be happy fun time that only ever gives me an endless supply of good things to consume and filters out all the bad.
I think the dichotomy is more "curated commercial ecosystem of mass-appeal winners" vs "the full spectrum of human experience and perspectives that requires effort on the part of the listener to find what is worth listening to".
Personally, I prefer the latter. You get out what you put in and the best podcasts (for me) have always been passionate people trying to share things with others. There are definitely some with high production value that I would (and do) miss but they were never sustainable to begin with so nothing truly lost there.
Podcasting will always be able to endure in its most basic form: two people, a mic, and an RSS feed.
I suppose that sentence would make sense if „good“ and „bad“ were in quotes.
I would read it as <<there‘s plenty unique and interesting shows out there which might lack some polish („the bad“). I don‘t only want polished, boring, mass appeal shows from large production houses („the good“).>>
I sometimes listen to podcasts, close to none of them were discovered inside a podcast app, and the one that were, it was because an author of a podcast I was already listening started a separate one. I used to think that podcast had a discoveribility issue, but I'm honestly not that sure anymore. I don't usually get new books/ebooks suggested by my phone either, and after all, a podcast and an ebook have more things in common than different from each other. I trust word of mouth over algorithm to give me good reading suggestion, and off course I do the same with ebook (in the more sporadic occasion when I want to use ears rather than eyes), maybe it's just unreasonable to expect podcast to act differently.
> You'll find thousands of shows with perfect audio quality and professional-grade cover art that contain absolutely zero intellectual nutritional value
This is why I switched to audio books. Many podcasts with real guests contained too much salad and not enough meat (e.g. a machine learning podcast but they talked about going to conferences).
Contrary to what many think, I believe AI generated content can increase the nutritional value. I've done experiments with turning technical PDFs into podcasts, e.g. summarizing machine learning papers (similar to NotebookLM).
I searched for good programming or more broad IT-related podcasts but unfortunately haven't found ones that aren't either straight up ad or thinly veiled ad. I understand that invited guests or podcast producers want to have compensation but end result is of putting and not attractive to me. I'll place software engineering radio as an example - I listened to some episodes but it gave me impression of slop even before word slop was established. On the other hand I know excellent quality podcasts founded by voluntary Patreon members so I hope issue is I simply haven't found IT ones from that spectrum yet.
The whole scene is rapidly being pushed to walled gardens too not published to an RSS feed for the client of your choice. I assume because most Podcasts are now a video affair.
It seems just about every celebrity has started producing one based on the new golden globe award the other day.
The only podcasts I still listen to are the ones I've been listening too since the 0's when I had to download .mp3 files and put them on my USB key MP3 player
100% amateur stuff, no ad, nothing to sell, just humans having fun in front of a mic
----
The recent reboot of the medium is more akin to the talk shows from TV, but instead of trying to reach a wide range of audience, podcasts are targeting niches.
Which allow more podcasts to exist... but make it harder to be sustainable since their goal is mostly to make money
I'm curious about these long running but non commercial podcasts. Can you share a few (or all)?
Those are all French-speaking podcasts since at this time it was the only language that I knew:
https://diagonale-du-vide.lepodcast.fr/
https://wapx.lepodcast.fr/
https://podcast.radiovostok.ch/laplanetebleue/
I cannot take podcasts seriously. I tried, but for the more serious topics, I'd rather read a book, an article, or just watch a video.
So I listen to one totally unserious podcast, and ignore the rest. Makes my day.
I subscribe to exactly zero podcasts. It's not a position or a statement; I just don't find them interesting enough to win out over audiobooks or music.
Thanks to the Libby app, I have "read" several thousand books over the past 7-8 years. An excellent pair of earbuds is mandatory to allow a 2x listening speed, which you can work up to in about a week.
Everyone tells me that they "don't have time" to listen to 2-3 books a week. I listen when I'm doing my morning routine, when I'm cooking, when I'm cleaning, when I'm cycling, when I'm shopping, when I'm clearing snow.
Listening to influencers and celebrities hang out, pretend to be friends and try to be funny just doesn't do it for me.
> Listening to influencers and celebrities hang out, pretend to be friends and try to be funny just doesn't do it for me.
So basically you don't subscribe to any podcasts out of ignorance. Influencers and celebrities hanging out isn't the only type of podcast.
Would you say that you really digest the books you listen to like that? It seems difficult to fathom to me. I generally try to use tedious downtime to think through things and solve problems in my head rather than listening to anything, but I've found that I can't even really keep my thoughts straight while walking outside due to watching where I'm going and the large variety of distracting external stimulus. I feel like I would get absolutely nothing out of listening to an audiobook at 2x speed while cycling.
Would it be like returning to that time when all of the podcast people were trying to tell me about the same quirky thing and I had to decide between letting them down or pretending I hadn't already heard it from the other podcast people?
Maybe the content was better in those days, but as an outsider I'm not too keen on going back. I prefer my friends as separate people.
Podcasting started mostly due to curiosity. People used to discuss topics that were interesting enough to warrant investment into the needed hardware and labouring the entire setup and production. If the topics weren't as interesting, the people were. That is how Joe Rogan begun and built his brand, after all. There was quite a lot of "whoah" factor back in the early days.
I do not think this has gone away. Yes, market saturation waters everything down to the common denominator. Podcasting is no different than any other commercial or public market. But there will be always outliers. The only difference is that back in the old days(early 2000s and 2010s), your choices were limited, which made it easier to pick. Today, you have to invest time and effort and hunt down those good podcasts that match your interests by sifting through a ton of the noise(badam, tssss).
I was big into podcasts, even started my own. Until I realised that without interesting guests to bring in week after week, there is no point in it.
But I think that the main issue is, and has been for a very ling time, that there is really not a single good user interface for consuming podcasts, especially offline, managing podcasts or discovering new ones, keeping tabs on what is going on with individual shows or even getting recommendations on and being able to purchase your own podcasting kit, so that you don't have to research and learn about audio, video and other related things that might detract someone from thinking about starting their own podcast. And also all of this in packaging suitable for different consumption situations - walking, driving a car, riding a bus, being at work or at home. Yes, there were many various apps and websites, but they all suck and lack in any useful feature. They essentially just aggregate podcasts and offer RSS feeds. That's kindergarten bs.
There's your $1B idea.
I run a small podcast startup. I've been doing it ten years.
Podcasting is drying up because the money left. Everyone went all in on podcasts on 2020. Spotify bet the farm on podcasts. Money poured in. Marketing bros realized there's only so many mattresses and underwear you can sell through the format and left.
You really can't serve personalized ads through podcasts. The relevance of what you advertise can be about the topic of the show (that is, marketing to the type of people who would listen) or the location of the listener. Pretty much every other signal gives you nothing interesting you'd be about to decide "yeah they're a potential good customer". Spray and pray.
The money left. People realized they couldn't justify the time and money they pour into podcasting. It turns out, even if you weren't expecting to make money, you really hoped people would listen. Not enough, because podcasts faded and people discovered TikTok. No more waiting for your favorite show to drop: everything is your favorite show. If you get bored just scroll up.
Lots of folks are still making it work. But a lot more people are going into podcasting with a more deliberate approach. People are doing it because they think it's important, not because they think people will listen or because they want to get rich. I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
I remember looking into podcast advertising for my previous company back in ~2018. I listen to a podcast that I believe claimed ~50k regular listeners at the time, and a 2 minute sponsor read (1 of 3 per show) was priced at something like $4000.
I never understood how that sort of pricing would work. The unit economics were never even close for us. I can see how they might be closer for SaaS businesses like Squarespace, but for retailers? Feels very unlikely. I'm not surprised the money dried up, or rather, figured out that funnelling VC cash into podcast ads doesn't turn into profitable growth.
Interestingly, now in 2026 that same podcast (which according to the hosts hasn't grown), no longer lists their pricing for ad reads, and frequently only has 2 filled spots, and has had periods of only 1 or even no ad reads per show over the last few years as times have been tough. They've now diversified into overpriced memberships.
Ironically I get ads in my (English language) podcasts in Dutch because I'm downloading them in the Netherlands. But ads for helping me learn Dutch might be a better choice.
Some podcasts use listener donations but even reasonably popular ones can struggle this way - https://www.europeanspodcast.com/ comes to mind.
I'm pretty sure I'm getting personalized ads when I listen to podcasts through the iOS podcast app. Well, maybe they're only localized - I get ads in German when I listen to u.s.-based podcasts.
A lot of podcasts server ads via their provider (e.g. megaphone). They do tracking and analytics.
Funny thing is that lots of the provider are now owned by Spotify. So right now you basically have the choice: a) listen to it on Spotify with good embedded ads b) listen to it on your podcast feed with bad embedded ads.
Anyway you listen to it on Spotify (Often).
I would love to see some deep economic analysis of what the fuck is going on with Bombas. Why is everyone on the internet trying to sell a helix mattress? How does a marketing department even negotiate that many different contracts with that many small scale influencers?
Bombas documentary pls.
Square space are the real pioneers here
> I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
Is there a good discovery mechanism for people looking to go past the first 3 episodes? Is there anyone trying to do curation of any sort? I wonder if AI that knows you super well could be used to find the right podcast for you.
I'd love to explore more political, science and other types of podcasts but it is too easy to set one up nowadays which results in so much garbage and I have wasted enough time with Rogan, Friedman and their ilk to realize that I'm forced to do curation. For one bit of gold there is so much trash and time is the most valuable thing you have.
Do you mind providing a list of the best podcasts that came out in the past 2-3 years?
> Podcasting is drying up because the money left
I'd guess there's still a bit of money left. On one of the few podcasts I listen to (made by two professional podcasters since 2008), the ads (long and annoying - but luckily easily skippable) are entirely for other podcasts.
> best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years
Please share!
What is your startup?
We should reset the podcasting world because the top podcast lists are full of topical stuff someone doesn't care about? A top podcast list full of fluff means that we've run out of things to say, seriously?
I have the exact opposite problem with podcasts that the author details: I have too many that I want to listen to and not enough time. There are so many people whose opinions and perspectives I value that I will never be able to consume them all consistently. From deep dives into Roman history, miniseries on foreign policy, sports, politics, film music, there are so many people sharing their passion with the world and I want to hear it all.
But finding those people takes work. Yeah, there are a ton of losers out there with nothing to say who put out popular content, but that's not unique to podcasting. YouTube, Reddit, hell the entire internet has that problem.
Stuff like this reads to me like someone wants the internet to be happy fun time that only ever gives me an endless supply of good things to consume and filters out all the bad.
> Stuff like this reads to me like someone wants the internet to be happy fun time that only ever gives me an endless supply of good things to consume and filters out all the bad.
Would someone want the opposite of that?
I think the dichotomy is more "curated commercial ecosystem of mass-appeal winners" vs "the full spectrum of human experience and perspectives that requires effort on the part of the listener to find what is worth listening to".
Personally, I prefer the latter. You get out what you put in and the best podcasts (for me) have always been passionate people trying to share things with others. There are definitely some with high production value that I would (and do) miss but they were never sustainable to begin with so nothing truly lost there.
Podcasting will always be able to endure in its most basic form: two people, a mic, and an RSS feed.
I suppose that sentence would make sense if „good“ and „bad“ were in quotes.
I would read it as <<there‘s plenty unique and interesting shows out there which might lack some polish („the bad“). I don‘t only want polished, boring, mass appeal shows from large production houses („the good“).>>