I was listening to my favourite podcast (Radio SubPop) today and it got me thinking… It’s a series of tracks given away by a record label. Why? Aren’t they reducing their artists’ saleability by giving away all this music? They get none of the licensing money that they would from radio either and there are no adverts to sweeten it for them. What’s in it for them?
I remember being told by one of my friends that hardly anyone makes money from an indie single (unless you are Gnarles Berkeley) - they’re tools to help promote the album. Releasing a single requires a lot of effort: design, promotion, distribution. All for 500-2000 units shifted… It must be incredibly time consuming.
Now consider a podcast. It’s almost free to run and you have a base of subscribers from your target market receiving your music regularly. That must be the most cost effective album promotion possible. Consumers get some free music, the labels get some free promotion and everyone’s happy.
There are a couple of catches though. Where do they get these subscribers from in the first place? Some promotion is therefore required. Further into the future, what happens when podcasts have become a mainstream medium? Surely it’ll become increasingly difficult to get noticed as the big labels wade in with their hefty wallets. And finally, podcasts suffer from the same problem as RSS - pull technology reduces serendipidy. Why would you subscribe to a labels’s feed if you don’t know their music already?
So podcasts have their problems but the labels to crack them will have a year or more’s head start on the rest of the game… So far I’ve bought 4 albums after hearing singles on the Radio Subpop podcast and it’s not cost them anything to get me hooked.
