Hope everybody at The Podcast Present is having fun with the convention (and ignoring their jet lag). Whereas I’m nonetheless very a lot throughout the pond (like, means throughout) in LA, this difficulty of Sizzling Pod leads with some information from BBC Radio. I’m additionally digging into children podcasts on YouTube and an attention-grabbing announcement by Invoice Simmons about Spotify’s voice cloning for advertisements.
However earlier than I begin — bear in mind Twitter Areas? Twitter’s reside audio platform will make historical past tomorrow at 6PM PT when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hops in a room to announce his bid for presidency. As The Verge reported final yr, many of the workforce behind Twitter Areas has both been fired or resigned. Hopefully there can be no technical difficulties!
https://4c7e4e91af8c6c8d57179f1b31d11955.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html
Children podcasts on YouTube can’t compete with Bluey
Well-liked audio podcasts for adults by Slate and NPR haven’t thrived on YouTube — seems that could be the case for youths podcasts as nicely. About six months in the past, children podcast writer Tinkercast began an experiment on YouTube. The writer behind common children podcast titles like Wow in The World and How one can Be An Earthling began publishing episodes on YouTube and YouTube Children, creating movies with mild animation only for the platform.
Whereas Tinkercast did attain a brand new (and extra various) viewers on YouTube, that group was far lower than its conventional podcast viewers. Tinkercast’s WowTube channel on YouTube has simply over 6,000 subscribers, and lots of episodes have nicely below 1,000 views. Among the many causes could also be that Tinkercast’s programming has to compete with an entire universe of youngsters content material on YouTube — from top quality, common youngsters’s TV exhibits from Disney and Nickelodeon to novice content material like gameplay movies that is probably not as enriching. So Tinkercast is in sort of a novel center group, the place it isn’t creating the kind of low-stakes content material that goes viral but additionally doesn’t have the sources of monumental animation studios.
“Being in that children area, there’s the added dimension of when children are logging onto YouTube, you already know, we’re competing with Roblox playback movies and unboxing movies. If we don’t get children within the first nanosecond, we’ve misplaced them,” Johanna Weber, Tinkercast’s senior director of name advertising and marketing and communications, advised Sizzling Pod.
Weber additionally mentioned there’s no correlation between podcast episodes that carry out nicely on YouTube and people who carried out nicely on audio podcast gamers. Tinkercast has discovered that search phrases on YouTube (monkey, poop, and bathroom are common) have pushed discovery of its podcast episodes.
One factor I’ll notice is that YouTube Children offers dad and mom the choice to show off the search operate. Whereas this security function could turn out to be useful in case of one other Elsagate — it does imply publishers on YouTube Children can be uncovered to fewer audiences.
I’ll embody extra from my interview with Tinkercast in Thursday’s Insider version.
BBC Radio is opening up extra podcast IP to the remainder of the world
The British are coming… to Audible and Apple and Spotify. World audiences will quickly have the ability to stream much more British radio packages on the podcast participant of their alternative. BBC Radio introduced right now that it’s shifting a few of its programming to the British broadcaster’s industrial content material arm — BBC Studios — in an effort to faucet into a world podcast viewers. The information arrived on the second day of The Podcast Present, as podcast and radio professionals from all over the world collect in London.
The transfer indicators a reasonably large strategic shift for the radio arm of the British broadcaster, which turned 100 years outdated final yr and has historically caught to public programming. BBC Radio made the choice after a Could 2022 evaluate to determine the way it may faucet into the worldwide marketplace for podcasts. Just like the tv arm of BBC, which has partnered with streamers like Disney, Netflix, and Amazon to export British content material, BBC Studios has made partnerships with the massive audio platforms like Spotify. The radio broadcaster is shifting programming from its factual, leisure, and drama divisions to BBC Studios — which means it may be supplied for international distribution.
Final yr, the UK authorities froze funding for the BBC till 2024, requiring the broadcaster to make funds cuts. The federal government has additionally determined to abolish TV licensing charges in 2027 — which accounts for nearly two-thirds of funding for all of BBC, together with its audio operations.
Because of the transfer, extra British podcast IP can be made accessible to exterior traders, and BBC Studios can discover extra collaboration and funding alternatives. “Our plan permits the BBC to learn from the fast-growing international audio market, enabling our distinctive audio content material to achieve wider audiences, open up extra artistic alternatives and produce extra funding again into the BBC. We’ve seen how world-class BBC programming that’s vastly common with our UK audiences can go on to do nice issues with BBC Studios’ backing, so I’m excited to see what will be achieved by this plan, serving to to place British podcasting on a world stage,” wrote BBC’s chief content material officer, Charlotte Moore.
Not everyone seems to be proud of BBC Radio’s transfer. The commerce physique for the UK’s audio trade mentioned that now indie podcast producers must compete with BBC Radio within the wider market.
The group is asking that impartial producers have the possibility to compete to work in BBC audio productions.
“The BBC’s resolution to maneuver some speech audio manufacturing groups into BBC Studios signify a step change in its strategy, with it shifting manufacturing capability to supply additional competitors to the impartial sector. As most impartial audio manufacturing companies specialize in leisure, factual and drama, they are going to now face extra competitors from the BBC within the wider market,” wrote Chloe Straw, managing director of AudioUK, in a press release.
Spotify is engaged on AI clones for host-read advertisements
Invoice Simmons has spilled the beans on Spotify’s AI advert experiments. On a latest episode of The Invoice Simmons Present, the founding father of The Ringer disclosed that Spotify was engaged on focused advertisements that used voice cloning.
“There may be going to be a means to make use of my voice for the advertisements. It’s important to clearly give the approval for the voice, however it opens up, from an promoting standpoint, all these totally different nice potentialities,” mentioned Simmons in a dialog with The Atlantic author Derek Thompson.
Cloning superstar voices is nothing new. A number of AI corporations already provide free text-to-speech instruments that function the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg, Joe Rogan, and different celebrities. Whereas these instruments aren’t good, many voice actors, audiobook narrators, and podcast hosts have expressed concern that AI may eradicate their professions altogether. The Display Actors Guild (which covers some audio trade professionals) included the specter of unregulated use of generative AI as one in all its major considerations to handle in upcoming contract negotiations. Final week, the guild known as for a strike authorization vote.
When Sizzling Pod reached out to Spotify, it didn’t straight touch upon the accuracy of Simmons’ remarks. “We’re at all times working to boost the Spotify expertise and take a look at new choices that profit creators, advertisers and customers. The AI panorama is evolving rapidly and Spotify, which has an extended historical past of innovation, is exploring a big selection of purposes, together with our vastly common AI DJ function,” wrote Spotify promoting head in B2B communications Erin Kinds in an electronic mail.
It isn’t an entire shocker that Spotify is exploring AI-generated voices for host-read advertisements. Final yr, the corporate acquired Sonantic, a text-to-speech platform that has created superstar voice clones for the gaming and leisure industries — together with Val Kilmer’s voice in High Gun: Maverick.
