Where Are We Now: Podcasting

Most audio companies were not started as a result of their creators coming up with a way to successfully hack their way through Yale Law School. But in the case of Parviz Parvizi, one of the co-founders of Clammr, this is precisely what happened.While at Yale, Parvizi and his cofounder David Silverman bonded over the fact that they were “probably the slowest readers in the history of Yale Law School” which is why they turned their attention to audio. They would share audio books and other content with timestamps to indicate where something was actually useful. This sharing and annotation lead them to realize there was a need to be able to share the equivalent of a tweet of the relevant audio snippet and link back to the full audio. In short, unlike text and video, audio was not a discoverable medium.Audio is humanity’s oldest means of communication—the stories the cavemen told around the campfire were all spoken. But writing, and eventually pictures and videos, gained an advantage in its ability to store and retrieve information. Ancient poems like “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad,” spoken epics in their original form, may not have survived to modernity if they hadn’t been written down.With the dawn of podcasting, spoken stories have become easily stored, retrieved, and disseminated, but they aren’t as browse-able. There isn’t an easily consumable and discoverable element that can be shared socially. This is precisely what Clammr does. Or, as Parvizi jokes, “It’s a long path from Yale Law.” Through Clammr, podcasters can create sharable clips of their content that play natively in the social channel they’re embedded into and link back to the full episode or a location to download it.  The company was recently named to Apple’s Top 15 Best New App and flagged as part of Microsoft’s Emerging Media big trends to watch in 2016.Parvizi knows that making forecasts about the podcasting industry are somewhat foolish – had anyone five years ago said that in 2015, there would be an upfront event for podcasts, they would have been laughed at. Doubly so had they said that two of the standard bearers would be a recovering addict operating out of a garage that would serve as the location for a presidential interview and a whodunit on a murder from 1999. To Parvizi, much of this has to do with the fact that “there’s an asymmetry between our receiver and our speaker – we can’t speak 150 words per minute, but we can listen at 450 words per minute.”Because of this, he feels that audio’s presence on social platforms will increase. Right now, only 20% of Americans listen to a podcast on a monthly basis. This number will increase and “the next 80%, and their behaviors, are not going to look like the first 20%” Demographically, this audience will be different (not necessarily liberal urbanites), as will the way they consume and discover the content. They won’t necessarily be there as habitual listeners, but instead browse and consume only the content that they want.Parvizi feels that podcasts could become integrated with traditional music consumption platforms for some listeners, noting that Pandora and Spotify are already heading in this direction.And it will move faster than we think. With smartphones becoming more ubiquitous and 4G/LTE data becoming cheaper and cheaper, the ability to consume audio content on the fly will become easier. These two developments, along with more advanced entertainment systems in automobiles, will lead to an increase in on-demand podcasting in favor of traditional terrestrial radio.Ultimately, Parvizi sees a bright future for podcasting. More advertisers are starting to see it as a fruitful channel to market on and there is no shortage of willing creators. We’re also seeing that these same creators are willing not only to make great podcasts, but also experiment with things like General Electric’s “The Message,” allowing for compelling #createdwith experiences. Where Are We Now is an ongoing feature where the TVRev team interviews people who were there at the start of the space on their journey so far and where they see things moving in the next five years. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line at Alex@BRaVeVentures.com and we’ll set up some time to talk.