No, the podcast ‘gold rush’ isn’t over. Podcasting’s golden age is just beginning

It’s a well-trodden hype cycle in the media industry. Some new technology comes along and starts to take off, publishers rush to invest, it falls dramatically short of expectations, and we all back off with renewed scepticism and a bruised bank balance.

Some have been saying for a while that podcasting is heading down this track. The concern is justified; after all, the fallout of the ‘pivot to video’ in 2018 could be seen coming a mile off.

The latest naysayer is Digiday’s Max Willens, who published a piece on ‘Why the podcast gold rush is slowing down for some publishers’. It was shared widely, and with many saying that this is the inevitable crash from an overhyped format.

“Now more than ever, success in podcasting requires sustained editorial, marketing and promotion support, all for an increasingly uncertain payoff,” Willens wrote.

But the picture Willens paints of podcasting is not an entirely fair one.

I will admit I’m biased on the subject. I co-host Media Voices, a weekly podcast on the media and publishing industry, and with that, we’ve also set up the first ever Publisher Podcast Awards, celebrating the work publishing and media companies are doing in this space.