Plug into the Podcasting Industry: Interview with Bryan Barletta from Sounds Profitable

Carel: 0:07

Well, hello to you. I'm Carel, host of AV123, an audiovisual show powered by Voice123, the largest and most trusted voice over network where you can hire any voice actor for any AV project. In this episode, we're chatting with Bryan Barletta, founder of Sounds Profitable with over 16 years experience in the advertising and technology space, a true advocate for digital audio. He shares his insights on the business of podcasting, what they do, how they do it, and why that matters.

Bryan: 0:41

Podcasting is a really killer channel. It's, uh, has fantastic audience, we continue to put research out on all of that and it pulls people in ways that audio can only pull people in and it's meeting people in a digital era.

Carel: 0:54

And there you have it. So, if podcasting is your thing, don't go anywhere. Okay! Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable, thank you so much for your time and willingness to tell us all about the business of podcasting.

Bryan: 1:10

Thanks for having me.

Carel: 1:11

So, let me get right to the chase. Sounds Profitable, as an endeavor, has set itself the primary goal of educating and empowering the podcasting industry on all levels. You are committed, you say in your website, "to setting the course for the future of the audio business." Now, that's a very bold statement. So what does it mean, and how the hell are you guys gonna do it?

Bryan: 1:33

Yeah, I'm, uh, you know, it's our goal with all of this is we believe that, um, podcasting is a really killer channel. It's, uh, has fantastic audience. We continue to put research out on all that, and it pulls people in ways that audio can only pull people in, and it's meeting people in a digital era. And so we believe that through Tom and I and through and our title at our company's partner and through the 175 and growing partner companies that we work with, that we are the right people to help highlight this industry and help grow it both through listenership and monetization. And so by being able to pull everybody together in such an early stage industry, we're 20 years into it and still can be considered early stage because of the size and the revenue from it, but we're able to get people and peers to talk together, and we're able to get the platforms to interact with us and we're able to really focus on the message of why podcasting and by doing that and listening to all these people we're able to grow it not just for us or for our partners, but for literally every single person interested in being a podcast listener to a hobbyist to getting a career in it, whether it's behind the mic or in front of the mic. And that's, that's why we believe we can do that, we can set that goal because we we're just committed to it, we love it, we're listeners and creators ourselves.

Carel: 2:53

You know, a friend of mine who's been in commercial radio for 25 years told me the other day that she thinks podcasting will eventually replace traditional radio. How much truth is there in that statement, do you think?

Bryan: 3:06

I think we're in a, we're in an interesting time where we can compare broadcast television and connected television, right? Like, um, or streaming services and on demand services, um, we're not completely away from like, uh, what is it, day and date style watching or consumption, right? There's, um, I think today, as we're recording, The Fallout, a video game TV show, uh, launches on Amazon, but it's not until tonight, right? It's not that at midnight or whatever local time that it was available on Amazon Prime, they still held it to a certain time. So if streaming TV, if connected TV, if all of these on-demand services are still held accountable to that, there's still that tune-in aspect that's really attractive. And that's still why people watch you know, broadcast television, they still tune in for certain shows and things like that.

Carel: 3:56

So, do you think the same applies to radio?

Bryan: 3:58

I think so; I mean, I think that know, I think in the U.S., we're a little bit behind on radio compared to globally; I mean, like, the digital signals and radio are really interesting and make it a little bit easier for someone to have radio on their phone and bring it with them and not be reliant on starting listening on your phone and then moving to listening in your car in a separate device basically and then having to exit back and find out where you were. So I think that there's a lot there, that I think radio still has that value on, especially with the news, especially with commute times and all of that, it still has a hold on people. And my favorite thing is that when the people are into digital audio every now and then, some of them will be like, 'Have you heard about advertising on broadcast radio?' And it's like, yeah, it's been a thing for a little bit, now, it seems to still work pretty okay, but yeah, I, it might at some point, but I still think there's a place for it.

Carel: 4:54

Well, on that note, and from your perspective, what strategies are most effective for podcasters to increase listener engagement and retention, especially in a market that's becoming increasingly saturated because everybody seems to want a piece of Mama's podcasting pie? What's it going to take for podcasters to succeed?

Bryan: 5:15

I think success is really an interesting question. I mean, like our, uh, our newsletter is about 9, 000 people that, um, that read it, uh, or that receive it every day. I'd say about 50 percent of them, that's our unique open rate. So more than half of them for six issues a week. That's what, that's what we get for readership there, but our podcast itself is only about 200 to 300 downloads per episode. So it's really creating that habit, um, the disparity between that is huge, but to me, those people letting us in their ear, like every now and then, I'm like, ah, maybe it's okay if we miss the audio for today, right? We get an email about it, someone sends me a text message like I disrupted their flow. So I think, I think understanding what success is and leaning into it and understanding that that success might not be the end solution, podcasting might not be your only channel or your strongest channel but, um, defining that is, is the first step of it. Um, retention, like you said, is, is I think even more key than growth most of the time. Because if you can grow your show, whether it's listenership or traffic, retaining them is the most important part of it, right? How do you get them in that loop? How do you create that habit for them? Whether you're releasing every summer for something for people to listen to over spring break, or you're, uh, you know, a daily show or a weekly show or a monthly show, how do you get them to make time for you? That's a big part of the retention. How do you not waste their time by, you know, over stuffing on ads or creating too long of an episode when they're used to a shorter one or when their falloff is kind of dictating, maybe they don't need as much per episode. So I think understanding those cues about what your listeners are doing today will help you grow. And then from that retention, engaging with them and understanding where they are, who they are, who you're appealing to and finding out not only where to find that group in a bigger scale, and getting in front of them, and that can be paid advertising that can be cross promos on other podcasts that can be, um, buying ads in, in newsletters or, uh, going to live events with a QR code on your t-shirt, depending on what your niche is and all this stuff. But by understanding who your audience is, you can understand not only that those people you're looking for but the people adjacent to them. Uh, my favorite is the, the stats continue to show the, the overlap is very heavy between like kids podcasts and true crime podcasts because it's a lot of co-listening on mom or dad's device. And so that means that that audience, like you wouldn't think that someone listening to a true crime podcast would want to hear a promo for a kid's podcast, but they do, right? So figuring out that audience and how to get in front of not only the ones you've secured, but the people who are close to the ones you've secured.

Carel: 7:59

Tell me something, Bryan, how would Sounds Profitable define success in podcasting?

Bryan: 8:05

Oh, that's hard, um, let's put it in two categories. Let's talk about, um, hobby and professional. Um, look, I, every now and then, I have a two-year-old and a five-year-old and we'll record audio, right? Like their voices are so cute and they're not going to be like this forever. So for me to be able to have a conversation with them or get them to say something funny and record that, um, I don't know if I've ever put it on an RSS feed, but they call it a podcast. I call it a podcast, and it's for us, right? Um, that's a hobbyist, I'm never, I'm not going to quit my job to go do that professionally. Uh, I don't know, I think I kind of do that, I guess already, but to me that, um, as long as you love it, as long as you enjoy it related to journaling, painting, creating something, um, if it makes you happy, that's success. Uh, nobody has to listen to it, but you, um, you can delete it when you're done. If it makes you happy just to have created something, um, that's success on the hobbyist side. On the professional side I think, I think it's tough, right? I think success can be identifying that podcasting can be a path for you to work professionally, whether it is in front of the mic behind the mic, whether it's getting a job at a company that does stuff in podcasting, and therefore your podcast gets to be part of what you do, right? Can you bring it along as a branded solution? Is it just a side project that gives you more credibility in that space? There's all the options there, um, but for a handful of people, it can become like it can become its own independent thing. And so I think that success is, it's so hard, that's so hard. I think that people need to define success individually for them. I think podcasting probably isn't the path it was 20 years ago, where you could just keep talking and eventually quit your job. But I think that maybe it can make you a little bit more money, or maybe it can get you talking to 100, 200 people per episode, which, when you think about it, I've spoken at conferences with 20 people in the seats in front of me to have 100 or 200 people is absolutely a home run and to have them consistently listening to you. I don't know, I mean, to me, that's success. There are two to 300 people per episode that listen to what we have to say, give us minutes of their time instead of scrolling through a newsletter. You can't, you can't replace that.

Carel: 10:19

Now, Bryan, I have to ask you this question because it cuts so close to the bone. How crucial would you say the role of voice overs is in podcasting? And what qualities, what qualities should someone look for when selecting a voice to represent their brand, their product, or tell their story?

Bryan: 10:36

Um, you know, it's, on the creative side of that, it's really interesting because there are some people who I could not, stand listening to because of their voice or their cadence or how they choose to tell a story, um, that are incredibly popular. And, so it's personal preference on a lot of that stuff. Um, you know, my partner, Tom Webster, is a phenomenal public speaker, and people like his voice. I mean, I remember when he had his newsletter before we started working together, I said to him, I listen every time you speak in public. Why are you not narrating your newsletter? Why can't I listen to a podcast version? And he did it, and it was a huge success. There are a lot of people who are really thankful for it. And I think that, I think that the voice can really matter. I mean, there's, there's a handful of podcasts I listen to where I can tell the difference between all the kid voice actors. There's a handful that, I react to them the same way I react to when my friends and I are on a phone call all together or playing a video game together. These people are in my head and I've invited them in there so much that, that like it resonates with me in the same way it captures my attention. And so I think it's critical, but I think, I think that sometimes the topic or that person might be off-putting to the general public, but it doesn't mean that they can't be successful there, but it has to be an intentional choice. I think you can't just put anybody in front of a microphone unless they have some attachment to it, even if even if what they're creating isn't appealing to everybody

Carel: 12:13

Now, in your view, what are the most promising developments in podcast monetization and how do you see these evolving over the next few years? Any key trends maybe?

Bryan: 12:24

Yeah, I think we're back into the mindset that podcasting has a strong influencer appeal to it, um, even just taking influence, right, not influencer necessarily like, the idea of like that YouTube celebrity or Twitch celebrity, all of that, but like, just think about the influence aspect. Um, and what it's really shown me is that there are people who identify as podcasters because it's a very unified and a structured way to exert influence. And, but they do more than that. There are people that have killer newsletters and YouTube, and their podcasts is 1/10th, the size of either of those, but they identify as a podcaster because it is something that you can explain easier and is more appealing to talk about. Um, that, that right there, that, that's like a really strong way for them to say like, I'm selling what I'm doing, right? They don't have to just sell podcast ads on like a cost-per-thousand basis. They don't have to sell sponsorships or complete takeovers of just their podcasts or just their video or just their social media or newsletter. They can sell the package, you're buying me. I'm interested in your brand, I'd like to be considered as a rep representative of your brand, I want to promote it to people. Here's what it costs for me on all of my channels to be about your brand. And I think that that's allowed a lot of, um, a lot of creators to explore non-standard models. Now that's incredibly hard because you have to understand the business side. You have to be, uh, uh, uh, the product has to be appealing, you have to figure out how to reach out to them, but that I think is becoming more and more attainable for those smaller creators. Because I would caution on the other side, I mean, if you just put ads in your podcast, the smaller you are, the less high dollar amount, the less likely it's going to be an announcer-read ad and a more or a host-read ad it more likely be an announcer-read ad. At the end of the day, I mean, a hundred downloads is not going to make you very much money, uh, through ads, even if you stuffed it with ads and then you risk alienating your audience. So while there is options there, that's like, one or two coffees a month money sometimes. And so that gap is in creative thinking, that gap is focusing on growth. And in the same way, if somebody told me they were going to start a business or a store, but they weren't going to invest any money in it and they were just going to like put it out there and hope for the best. Um, I kind of, I'd laugh at them at that, right? Or I don't think I'd be that mean, but I would expect them not to succeed. The same thing happens for a podcast, if you want to make money off of it, you need to grow it. And sometimes the growth has to come before the monetization options. But yeah, there's standard ads, there's the opportunity to knock on the door of any brand you can get an attention of and tell them why they should work with you as ads or something bigger. Cost per acquisition is starting to come back, more and more, which has been really attractive. The idea of that I'm going to do as many ad reads as I want because I'm passionate about it, but the sale dictates how much I earn off of it. Um, we're going to see more opportunity, but I think what's really cool is the podcasting will be the place where a lot of these influencer based opportunities become more formatted and more structured, and the podcast-based opportunities expand even further.

Carel: 15:32

Before we continue, let me just ask all of you listening to the show. Are you an audio producer? Do you know Voice123 has an AV resource center with everything from filmmaking hacks to video game guides? No? Then visit www. voice123. com/blog or click the link in the description. Bryan, considering your expertise in ad tech, how do you believe advancements in technology will change the way podcasts are made and distributed? If, if AI plays a role, for example, what sort of role do you foresee?

Bryan: 16:08

Yeah, on the, on the tech that we've been using in the infrastructure side for podcasting, I feel like we've kind of been asleep at the wheel for a little bit. I think we had some big acquisitions or post COVID, we had some pricing and number changes and just a lot of stuff that we needed to, uh, to figure out, but we didn't have a lot of innovation, but that's all starting to change now. And it's really clear that companies that were doing stuff quietly, the longer-term projects that are now starting to talk about them. And I think they're going to pull a lot of attention and a lot of people moving over to use their products, it's got me very excited. Um, AI is something that's so funny, I, I gave the example the other day, like I was 14 years old, and I got a job at McDonald's so I could buy a Nokia phone, like one of the first ones they had out. I didn't have anybody to call, but like, technology was so, like, so, so much a part of my life that, like, I needed this device. And so when I look at AI today, to say I don't get it, like to generalize it like that, like it's, um, it makes me feel bad and I spend a lot of time trying to dig into it. But I think, I think today a lot of people are thinking about how AI can do creative things and artistic things. And that's not what I want, right? Like I want the mundane things to be able to be handled by AI so that I can go do the creative things, right? Like I don't need AI to play guitar for me, I need an AI to answer all my emails so I can go learn to play guitar. So I think what we saw first was a real big jump from, like, engineering type stuff all the way to the final output. We're seeing some synthetic voice stuff, which is interesting there, but people immediately jump into a full podcast done with that synthetic voice and done with that, and cool, that's great. If your perfect skillset is growing and marketing a podcast, but you couldn't build the content or get the right voice to save your life, maybe you just found your perfect opportunity; though I doubt it, but I think we're going to see it like, um, a return to the focus on, "How can I utilize AI to quickly sort everything into red, green, and yellow," and then be able to know I throw away red and maybe once a month or once a quarter I have, I revisit the red to make sure it didn't throw anything wrong. Yellow is the things I know will take a little bit of time, so I'll put it to the back of the stack and green are the things I can eyeball quickly and approve. And then I can move on to the next thing, right? We're seeing AI tools used in editing with things like Descript and Adobe to remove ums and ahs. And, um, that is really exciting to me, I mean, the text-based editing capabilities, I have no editing skills, but I've played around with Descript and it made me feel like I could do this. Is there a level between what I can do with that and what a professional engineer can do? Absolutely! But maybe when you're starting, you don't need to know Pro Tools. So I think I think if we think about it as creative output, that's the wrong direction. I think for some very specific use cases, it could be there, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it. Like I'm not going to be buying any AI art anytime soon. Um, but on the process side, I think it can free people up to be more critical thinkers and to do the more enjoyable stuff, right? Really just kind of clear the mundane off their plate.

Carel: 19:19

Now, Bryan, data privacy is becoming a thing and with growing concerns and regulations around it, how do you see the landscape of podcast advertising changing and what steps can creators take to navigate these, these challenges?

Bryan: 19:34

I think creators are in the hardest point possible, right? Because every app I install on my phone or my iPhone will ask me, like, it'll give me the button to say, like, like approve or ask app not to track. But Spotify, I guess Spotify does it, but like Apple podcast doesn't do it, right? Like, and so when I play a podcast, the assumption for most listeners is going to be that like nothing personal is being sent. Now, my personal belief is that the IP address that you're connecting for and to get super nerdy, like IPV4, the specific subset that is mostly being received by podcasting is really general. I mean, you can tell my house, that this is the object that is my house can't always get to my postal address for it, but you could get the general area of it, but you know, the things that are connecting through that household there that has been deemed as personal information. And that's sent in the request to get the download, right, to get the episode. We're navigating a lot of this because I believe that Spotify and Apple should be like, sending the flag, we do have the approval, for you to use the IP or we don't there. The hosting platform should be ingesting that and you know, storing it appropriately, on that end. They should be making calls to all the tracking solutions and the advertising augments with that knowledge in mind. Can I augment this specifically or just generally? Um, and then moving into the data retention policy. I think that those are all things that podcasting, um, it's not perfect on and it's things that we're going to start to focus on more and more as privacy becomes front and center. But what I'll say is that like a website has more holes than that, right? A mobile app and other, there are other areas that have more holes. And since podcast advertising in 2022 failed to hit $2 billion, I don't think we've, we've finished the, um, the 2023 numbers are not out yet. Those will be out very shortly, I think next month we'll start to see them. YouTube is like 16 times the size of us advertising on its own, maybe some of these things need to be figured out by better, better, bigger industries at this point, uh, and then we can inherit there, or maybe we can continue to be the underdog that makes the hard decision earlier, so that we can get ahead of things. But what I'll say is the IP address is really the only thing that's exposed. Um, it's exposed in every single thing you do. And in podcasting, we can't even tell that you listened to an episode. We can tell that you downloaded it. We can't tell that you got an ad impression. We can tell that the portion of the episode with an ad in it was downloaded. So I think privacy is honestly in a really good spot there, but that doesn't mean that all of the privacy regulation out there uh, it doesn't mean the podcasting is in line with where it's all going yet.

Carel: 22:14

Now, in your view, as someone deeply embedded in the podcasting industry, what are your predictions for the evolution of podcast content in the coming years? And what niches or formats are going to grow in popularity, do you think?

Bryan: 22:29

That's a tough one. Um, my tastes are terrible, I don't know who's popular or cool anymore. I'm starting to realize that as my kids get older and I get older, um, I, part of me wonders if podcasting is going to make it easier to fragment that, right? Like, um, I listened to some podcasts that I'm never going to be able to convince other people to listen to, right? They're, they appeal to me for a very specific reason. Um, and they're just not, they're never going to be a chart-topper. For me, like there's, um, there's a few video game podcasts that I really like and I just like how the hosts interact or board game podcasts or things like that. And I, I'm looking for those times when I got to spend more time with my friends and hear these people interact makes me feel that way. And sometimes I'll do Patreon for them and, and all that, but they're never going to be a top 100, anything, right? Like I don't care what category you put them in. So I think that there's always going to be those core podcasts, I think more and more you're going to see them being like weekly or always on, which is wild the idea that every like all these podcasts that have like an entertainment focus have to follow a nightly news cycle or a weekly news cycle. That's that's a lot, 52 episodes 48 episodes, whatever it is. That's a lot of content to put out, um, I think there's always going to be those core podcasts that rise to the top uh, but I think that as we continue to see the ability and the ease for people to create interesting content, you're going to see as you get past three, four, five, six, the top podcasts per individual, you're going to start seeing some obscure stuff. You're going to see some stuff that means something to them. And those ones I think are the more interesting ones to me, how we figure out how those people survive and thrive. Is it a exclusive membership community or, uh, live events again, a hundred to 200, 300 people listening to your podcast. If they're all relatively in the same area, or it's, if you're able to do a live recording at an event that they were all going to gravitate towards anyways, because of the bigger area that your podcast is within. You can sell out a, uh, like a theater, pretty easily. So I, that interests me way more than who's the next Joe Rogan, Call Her Daddy or anything like that. Do I miss when everybody would walk in the in the morning and be like, did you listen to Cereal? Yeah, but I, I wonder if we've moved away from that. In every bit of content, I wonder if if the we're going to have less and less as individuals to talk about because our tastes immediately split off in different directions because of how many options we have.

Carel: 25:03

Because you're on the bleeding edge of podcasting, Brian, what innovative tools or platforms have you come across that'll improve listener engagement or even audio quality?

Bryan: 25:14

For listener engagement You know, I think it's easy to hate on Spotify. I think that a lot of people default to that. I think, you know, you can look at how much money they spent on shows you might not like, or how they've changed how each of their products work, or the people they've laid off. And I think that that's easy to think like that, and miss out on all the neat things there. But if you buy in, if you sign up for their newsletter, if you host with them or you even list your podcast on them, today you have the ability to do polls, to your listeners. You have the ability to, um, to companion banners and ads and, uh, buy, um, ads for your podcast on other podcasts at a reduced rate in that format is something they launched there. So I really think that some of the more innovative tools for independent creators are coming out of the hosting or not the hosting the public, uh, the, the apps, which means that we need to see a little bit more out of Amazon, and Apple, but we should expect similar things for YouTube, especially with how they're focusing on podcasting and making more room for it. I think on the, uh, and that's for like growing an audience and, and the tools there, um, on the improving audio quality. Honestly, I think that there's a lot of tried and true solutions. I think to me, some of the best is buy an hour of time from an audio engineer or whoever mixed the podcast that you really liked, um, and have them walk you through some of those things. Uh, there's some always neat plugins everybody wants to talk about their plugins, which specific ones they use for which specific thing uh, and I've always been amazed with that. But there are going to be more and more tools, I mean, Wondercraft is an AI tool that I found very interesting that like can help you build a script for an overall podcast from different articles. It can help you write ad copy and and things like that. And so the areas where you're second guessing yourself it's got a voice in a mindset for podcasting you can add your own spin to it but even if it just helps you skip a few steps, um, for audio quality. AI is really, there's a lot of people really focusing on it. I think my understanding is that there's some Dolby-related products, uh, Dolby like, and because they're doing their, um, what is it, their spatial audio and all those things, and Google has their own open spatial audio format. We're going to see a lot of innovation around that tools that make that pretty easy. Um, heck, a physical product, which is amazing to talk about an indie physical product in this day, but we work with a company called Nomono, which is a, like, a four-person Bluetooth lav microphone with like a central hub to it that has eight microphones on it that on its own could be used to collect spatial audio. But also if we were talking in person and there was a waterfall next to us, that eight-person thing, uh, or that eight-microphone thing collects the background noise and helps them remove it from each of our individual microphones so that it can be more clear right so that your quality is better. So, um, I think I think we're seeing consumerized versions of technology that used to be professional only and you see this ensures product line and and elsewhere there too. So yeah, it's a great time, um, to be buying and exploring tech and products, uh, on the creator side, because I think that people are starting to dig in more and realize how technology can really improve that process and audio quality.

Carel: 28:40

Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable, thank you so much for being on the show and all of you out there; if you ever need a vocal maestro to bring your AV projects to life, remember that it's as easy as Voice123. So click the link in the description to sign up for free and hire voice actors that can bring any AV project to life. Or, if you want to add a couple of hours to your day, make use of our A to Z project management service. You'll be so glad you did! We'll be back with another AV exploration soon, so don't forget to subscribe, comment, or let us know if you'd like to be featured in an episode of AV123. So, until next time.