Virtual podcast events are bringing in six-figure earnings

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Salutations, team! I'm here on Tuesday. I can tell you to watch and listen to the premiere of the new song by Muna at 11:45AM. The music was somewhat upbeat, but you really never know.

Big in virtual events.

People are willing to pay for more than a pre-recorded episode of a show. Virtual versions of those shows? In this climate of fatigue? Yes, baby. They're booming.

I was told that the company has sold over one hundred thousand tickets since March of 2021. The streams have averaged six-figure payouts for creators. Monet House makes money from a 10 percent service fee on the customer, with many shows returning to the platform quarterly.

Moment House helps create a contained environment for these huge payouts from a combination of tickets, merch, and tips from the audience, as well as meet-and-greet upgrades or after parties. The platform has been a success for big names like the McElroy brothers and cult favorites like Morbid: A True Crime Podcast and Buffering The Vampire Slayer, but technically any podcaster can host on the platform.

There are moments that are livestreamed and interactive. Bart Coleman, Moment House's head of comedy, described the events to him as having "anything can happen."

Mike Muney, head of creator partnerships, tells us that moments work well for many people who want to make money off of their work and engage directly with their audiences. Moment House also hosts concerts and has done so for a long time. The audiences of the podcasts have shown they are willing to do their part by giving in to the paywalled perks. Moment House is a natural extension.

Moment House is not the only one in this space. Nick wrote about the virtual-performance endeavors of the company. There was a lot of doubt about its shelf life at the time, and if it would last once audiences were able to return to in-person events. It seems like there is more desire for location-agnostic events than we have known.

The platform for booking host was launched by Headgum.

Gumball is a host-read ad marketplace that the company says is unparalleled in being fully automated, and it was publicly launched last week.

Headgum built Gumball's tech internally and used it to book ads for its own slate of shows. CEO Marty Michael is excited for more independent shows to get in on it, since they have already seen a halo effect from the existing relationships that advertisers have with Headgum.

It was working so well that we thought it was time to talk to investors. With that money, the team is bolstering its promotional abilities, as well as Gumball's technical muscle, to keep scaling.

Athletic Greens, a company that some may recognize for its frequent podcasts ads, has been using the beta version of Gumball for almost three years.

Host-read ads are more complicated to place than other types, but Athletic Greens still prioritize them. The secret sauce of a podcasts ad is a host read, she says.

The person gets questioned about why.

The Washington Post Magazine published an op-ed by the writer, who wrote that he was facing two choices as a creator of a forthcoming show, considering that Joe Rogan had caused many creators to question whether to keep aligning with the platform.

He feels trapped because of the expectation that he, a Black man, take a particular stance against Rogan.

He said he could remove my upcoming show from the platform and trash it. The outcome would be different for the other Young on the platform.

There is a bundle from Spotify.

Soundtrap, a cloud-based audio recording platform, and a Swedish company that was acquired by Spotify in late 2017, are now available to bundle with Spotify Premium. Soundtrap is not only for music production, but a more general toolkit that distinguishes offerings for musicians and storytellers.

Big catch! If you're planning on also publishing on Apple, Stitcher or another podcasting service, there's a big downside to Soundtrap. Soundtrap won't give you an RSS feed for each episode, so you'll need to publish it outside of Spotify.

The election is being kicked off by YouTube and Trump.

Donald Trump was brought on to discuss who knows what. Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitch changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election is what he ended up talking about.

I called it, folks. It's an election year, public figures were already getting rowdy on podcasts, and Trump seemed like the exact person who would make headlines at this intersection, in an abrupt exit from an NPR interview. We go again.

It looks like the Full Send episode is still available on other platforms, so there is an interesting dynamic playing out. Traditional podcasting platforms have been slower to moderate the open environment of RSS-based shows, but YouTube has a long history of moderation. There are several examples to point to, like removing Joe Rogan content for vaccine misinformation and permanently banning Dan Bongino.

There is a deal for reVolver.

The partnership gives reVolver exclusive global ad sales rights to their extensive lineup of podcasts, which include popular Spanish-language shows. According to the press release, all shows from reVolver will be distributed and available on all.

Thank you for reading! Hello, mom!