You probably saw the announcement yesterday that AdvertiseCast had been acquired by Libsyn. This isn’t about that. It’s about a possible dystopian future when all podcast hosting companies have such an easy-to-use monetization engine that they require podcasters to use it.

I think most podcasters would switch. No money out of pocket and a steam of revenue coming in? Heck yes, most podcasters would say yes.

But such an action would have other unintended consequences, and I loves me some unintended consequences. The arms race among hosting providers would accelerate, changing how they operate. Several new business models for podcast hosting company would rise out of the rubble, leaving us with this possible (not that I’m predicting) dystopian podcasting future filled with:

• Free media hosting providers that require ads - Think YouTube, only more distributed and potentially more or less annoying.
• Cost-prohibitive luxury hosting providers catering to a select few - Think big book publishing or enterprise-class services.
• A fractured system of paywall providers - Think today’s streaming TV providers today, only more of them.
• Paywall aggregators - They works with all (or some) of the paywall providers, but take their own pound of flesh.
• Software as a service-specific media hosting bundled together - Think Adobe Cloud.
• Scrappy hangers-on who find a way to make the legacy $20 a month hosting model work in a vastly different future.

Part of my job as a digital strategist is picturing the bad along with the good. Sorry if you find this potentially frightening. Welcome to my brain.

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/will-the-race-for-podcastings-profits-drive-our-dystopia

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Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

Image credit: Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.