Our biggest takeaways from Hot Pod Summit 2022

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Hot Pod Summit was held last week to discuss the future of the industry. It was a day of laughs, gasps, and jabs at our favorite audio giants.

At the end of the day, she publicly shared that she was beginning a new adventure, and that she helmed nearly all the panels. She spent a lot of time in charge of Hot Pod before she officially started, but now she is leaving. We're going to take things a little slower to get all our ducks in a row because Hot Pod will be getting someone new soon. Allow our ducks to sleep. I'm one of those ducks.

Jake will be with you in the meantime, as I will be off until next week's Insider issues.

I wanted to say thank you for being so kind to me this weekend. I am pretty sure I told everyone how much I was sweating, but now I am. I am grateful to the staff, volunteers, attendees, and speakers for giving me a sweet environment in which to feel all the things I felt.

The Summit is here! I want to run through some of the insights from the summit for people who weren't there. The things our panelists talked about were representative of the walk they walk every day, running their own companies and building out fan perks to monetize their creations. Ask them questions and check them out. They are doing a lot and are not letting up.

Existing video platforms increase the footprint.

He said that it was a game of skill and that it was a platform that podcasters could use to reach a new audience. Is it true that the suggestions on YouTube work for discoverability at all? It leads him to believe that a similar setup should be found on the podcasts platforms. Even though it's not officially affiliated with him, fellow panelist Marques Brownlee said that there is a fan-made TikTok account for his show.

It's not a shortcoming that important steps are often inefficient.

Oxford Road CEO and founder Dan Granger said that live reads hit different than third-party spots because they are personal and authentic. Responding to an audience suggestion that shows do pre-recorded host-read ads, with the goal of making it easier to swap ads in and out but not compromise their candid quality, Granger called them fake. They never reach the amount of seamless magic, according to his experience in the ad world.

Content moderation might not be the right thing to ask for.

During the Q&A portion of our panel on content moderation, producer Keisha TK Dutes spoke about the experience of Black and BiPOC voices being stifled under the guise of content moderation. She asked if any changes would come out of the recent backlash against discrimination and harmful speech, considering many relevant figures have historically kept their platforms. The CEO of TrueFire Studios conceded that the outlook isn't bright, saying that advertisers have been able to find sponsors for dangerous content and that money has maintained the status quo. The elephant in the room is the fact that the biggest story of the moment requires something deeper than moderation. It isn't happenstance, an uncomfortable accident, that Rogan and his words ended up on the platform, and now he has to be dealt with. He was paid by the company to be there.

There are a few other notes.

• On a panel about running audio companies alongside Big Tech competitors, Juleyka Lantigua, CEO and founder of the production company LWC, drove home a point about professional development: it’s a personal commitment from an employee and requires the support of an employer to evolve in the industry. And, sometimes, growth might be best accessed in a new role at a new company. That’s not a bad thing for the industry, even though it can feel like a large (and sometimes personal) loss for a small team.
• Don Albright, co-founder of Tenderfoot TV, explained that it takes time — and chance — for the ownership of IP to yield a payout for creators: “You’ve gotta have 10 things out there working,” he said, both to help the odds work in your favor and to benefit financially on the off chance that something does get picked up. “Banking on funding payroll” with things like licensing fees? Dream on.
• And at the open-ended town hall, which rounded out the day, one question carried the whole dang session: are we really at a loss for podcast hits, with the days of culture-defining audio sensations behind us? TL;DR: nope. There are many ways to define the success of a show, and folks had many ways to express that — too many to name here. But hey, even if we do rely on old metrics, another Serial-style hit could still be right around the corner.

I'm spent. Take good care of yourself, babes.

Our editor is going to run you through some news this morning, as well as for the next few to follow.

On Tuesday, you will receive analysis, insights, and commentary on the audio industry.

Hello all, Jake. I'm usually behind the scenes, but today I have you covered.

What if a news show could be updated throughout the day?

A new company is helping to launch a new show. There are a lot of interesting things to cover.

• Spooler is a new podcast tech company led by some major names in the audio space. That includes James O. Boggs, former head of Apple Podcasts; Andy Bowers, co-founder of Slate Audio and Megaphone; Dan Benjamin, founder of Fireside.fm; and Kerry Donahue, former executive producer at WNYC. Also, Henry Blodget is involved somehow?
• The company’s tech allows podcasters to continually update a show. A news show could publish in the morning and then, throughout the day, add new segments, update earlier clips, or swap around the order of the broadcast.
• Each update will rebuild the podcast and replace the prior entry on RSS, Bowers told me via a spokesperson. So if you listen in the morning, you could download the show again and skip ahead to hear what happened later in the day.
• Listeners will get a better experience through a custom player that lets listeners browse segment by segment. Right now, this only exists on the web.
• Insider is the first to use the tech, launching a news show called The Refresh (get it?). The show will publish weekdays with live updates between 7AM and 1PM ET.

This is a clever idea and opens up a lot of new possibilities. This seems to be a lot of work for both people. Producers need to be present to record and build out the episodes. Listeners need to be aware of when they last tune in to make sure they don't miss anything.

With the caliber of names involved, I'm paying attention.

There are 3s on SoundCloud.

The new station will focus on music from a young, diverse, internet-inspired generation.

It's the latest sign of deeper ties between SiriusXM and SoundCloud, which the company invested $75 million into in 2020. The Lookout by SoundCloud was launched last year and is based on the hip-hop show that airs on SiriusXM. The companies are going to work together more.

You can talk back to hosts on iHeart.

A new feature in the iHeartRadio app lets people record and send 30-second voice memos to other people who can use them on air. This sounds fun and chaotic, but how many people are using it?

White guys should listen to all the podcasts.

If you were wondering how mainstream the issue of white guys saying dumb stuff on podcasts has become, look no further than this John Mulaney sketch from this weekend's SNL.

It's all for now, catch you Insiders on Thursday.