Crypto News: A year in audio and what's to come

Welcome to your last Soundbite of 2022. As we wrap up the year, I want to thank you all for subscribing, reading, emailing and chatting with me since we spun this newsletter up only four months ago. It's been a yo-yo year of ups and downs in the audio world, and I'm looking forward to documenting the next one. As always, reach me through email here and if you haven't yet subscribed to this newsletter, please do so here.

For my attempt at an end-of-year issue, I'm looking backward to see the future. Let's recap some of the biggest stories we covered this year to see what they might tell us about what's to come in the audio space.

Audio pivots to video

In August, YouTube officially entered podcasting with a dedicated landing page and an NPR partnership. It began courting audio companies at conferences and offered money to get them to start producing videos.

In the months since those efforts began, the company has mostly convinced networks they should record video in addition to audio. My no-duh prediction would be that podcasting's push into video continues next year, which, yes, I believe it will. But at the same time, I can imagine some networks dropping off after failed experiments. Looking at some of NPR's YouTube pages, like Fresh Air's and Planet Money's, video views often number in the low hundreds and don't crack 1,000 — yes, you read that right — a minuscule audience for a network that reaches 19 million unique people a month through its podcasts, per Podtrac. YouTube is going to have to put some promotion behind podcast pages and make it free for viewers to lock their phones and still consume shows, something mostly only available to YouTube Music subscribers. Otherwise, resource-strapped podcast networks will give up before the effort really gets going.

Podcasting enters the real world

Adnan Syed, the subject of Serial, was released from prison in September, over twenty years after being wrongfully convicted for murder and nearly a decade after the initial release of the series. This, I believe, is only the start of podcasting's real-world impact. My colleague Davey Alba and I covered research this year that documented doctors and hospitals being called and harangued over care they provided, typically to Covid patients. The impetus for those calls? Podcasts.

Next year we'll hear more about how podcasts influenced people to take action in the real world, whether it's buying a new mattress or something much darker.

The Joe Rogan scuffle ignites tension between musicians and podcasters

It's hard to believe the entire Joe Rogan vs. Neil Young debacle happened only in January and February this year, but indeed, that was 2022. As you might recall, Young pulled his music from Spotify over his discomfort with Rogan, a Spotify-exclusive podcaster, sharing alleged misinformation about Covid-19.

We could look back on this through a variety of lenses. But for me, it marked the start of tensions between the podcast and music worlds. Streaming platforms are incentivized to push listeners to talk content because they don't have to pay royalties when someone listens; and, at the same time, they can actually generate additional money from podcasts, as Spotify does with Rogan. If algorithms and human curators push people to more podcasts, they possibly take away from music time, a thing labels and musicians won't love.

This is more of a long-term prediction. But I think the dynamics at play here will continue to bubble up, and we'll see increasing conversation about how much promotion the streaming platforms provide to their talk content over music.

Podcasters are buying millions of downloads through mobile games

I reported in September that various podcast networks were buying downloads through a company called Jun Group, which places episodes into mobile games and requires players to listen. While this specific practice might continue, I see this story as a reflection of the pressures on networks to keep impressions high amid all the podcast deals they've signed. It feels like marketing practices we've come to accept from the web traffic world might increasingly make their way over to audio. I'll be keeping a close eye on the new ways audio companies try to get their episodes or songs in front of listeners.

Music marketers move on from TikTok's dance challenge craze

I published a story this week about the petering out of dance challenges on TikTok. Music marketers, who once viewed dances as a surefire way to mint a hit, tell me they've moved away from highly choreographed productions. Instead, they're focusing on lifestyle content and getting music into those videos. When a dance does pop, marketers typically find they involve simple moves, like a finger wiggle or shuffle, that they can capitalize on quickly and that can be learned in a single watch. Gone are the days of everyone watching TikTok dance tutorials. (Or was that just me?)

Justin Bieber's close to signing a $200 million catalog deal

My colleague Kamaron Leach reports that Justin Bieber is close to selling a stake in his publishing rights and recorded music catalog for around $200 million. Hipgnosis, which is backed by Blackstone, is the apparent buyer, though per the story, the deal isn't imminent.

Ticketmaster's Taylor Swift chaos rekindles antitrust concerns
Another great story from a colleague! Leah Nylen walks us through the antitrust history of Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation. As she reminds us: "Since the 1990s, Ticketmaster has been the subject of multiple federal investigations into its business practices, including one that led to $10 million in fines for illegally spying on a rival and another the appointment of an outside monitor who reports to the Justice Department on the company every few months."

That's a wrap on 2022. You can reach me through email, Twitter DM, or LinkedIn. (You can request my Signal in all those places, too.) Please do reach out if there's something I should know, and I'll see y'all on the other side.