#90 The Podcast Show 2024 Recap!

Happy Sunday! This week was a significant week in the (short) history of the podcast movement, as we attended The Podcast Show 2024 and SMASHED 🥳 our weekly subscribers record!

Recap: The Podcast Show Recap

The Podcast Show 2024 is a global annual gathering of the podcasting world featuring creators, technologists, start ups, publishers, audio platforms and much more! This was the first event that I attended and it exceeded all my expectations making me incredibly optimistic too about the future of the industry. I’ll share a few highlights below:

10 Trends in Podcasting (Will Pearson, iHeartPodcasts): in comparison to last year, the US apparently had a much larger presence (signalling the UK’s importance in the industry). Will kicked off the show with a keynote on trends in Podcasting and what stood out to me was: Time spent listening to podcasts in the last year has DOUBLED, with more listeners across EVERY age group, and most surprisingly podcast listening WINS on time spent (even more than TikTok).

In Conversation: James Corden and Scott Greenstein (CCO, SiriusXM): one of the most popular sessions of the show (ofcourse), and my main takeaway from what Scott said was, TALENT is always at the core and to succeed you need a unique voice with a position and a passion.

Powerhouse Women in Podcasting: an excellent panel, though unfortunately too short, featuring Vogue Williams (My Therapist Ghosted Me), Grace Beverley (TALA & Shreddy), Tolani Shoneye (The Reciepts) and Audrey Indome (The Receipts). Outside of specific dates such as International Womens Day and Black History Month, we must become better at promoting Women’s podcasts and viewing their target audience as not just Women (for example: Diary of a CEO is for all? but Word Hard, Hardly Working is just for Women?!). They also touched on Advertising in podcasting (is it better or worse vs. other forms), in my opinion, better as podcasts are longer format (than say TikTok), and often creator-led.

Podcasts: The Next Stage of Investigative Journalism In A Big Year For Politics: what a brilliant way to end the day. Hosted by James O’Brien interviewing Lewis Goodall, it came at a time when DURING THE SESSION Rishi Sunak announced the July election date. Both shared fascinating insights into the world of politics and the place of reporting within it.

Podcast recommendations will be back next week. For now, enjoy the weekend and thanks for reading!