I have been listening to a number of podcasts for a long time and recently a number have introduced extensive advertising and are additionally asking me to join Patreon and give them the cost of a cup of coffee each month. Some of the USA based ones are asking for $5 a month.
I subscribe to about 60 podcasts, some are good and I would listen to every episode, some less so and I can start listening but delete after a minute or so.
I may be wrong but I thought Podcasting was a hobby and I have been asking my Son about starting one myself (he has some GCSE’s in media) but it would seem that some are now looking for it to be an income stream. Some have recently started putting the second half of the podcast behind a paywall.
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed this. I’m happy to pay for 3 or 4 of the good ones but some of them can churn out poor quality podcasts on occasion. One of my real favourites has just put out two consecutive casts that fall below their usual quality which makes me reticent to give them a monthly fee.
Am I being unreasonable?
Coming from the other side of the fence, you might be surprised at how expensive podcasting can be especially if you start getting some big download numbers. As well as being a podcaster myself, I also do editing for others and one of my clients is paying around £700 a month in hosting alone.
Even for the smaller hobbyists you have web hosting, podcast/data hosting, equipment and software and that's before you take into account research materials and other incidental costs. Before I was made redundant, we were spending around £20-30 a month on research materials, £50+ a month in travel to visit locations and often paying more than that for entrance fees as well as well as a number of other costs that add up quickly. Then you have all the time involved in researching, writing, recording, mixing etc. It probably takes us around 20 hours to put a show together from scratch.
When I was earning a decent wage we bascially swallowed these costs like many podcasts do but I don't see any reason why podcasters shouldn't have a patreon accout for those that wish to support them. In our case it is the only way we can afford to keep producing it! We don't have ads on our show so it is pretty much the only way we get any return on our costs and whilst we would love to be able to have enough coming in to allow us to do the show full time, I don't expect that will happen any time soon. We do keep all our shows free but patrons get some bonus material and physical rewards depending on their pledge level. I'm actually just sending out Christmas postcards to our patrons now.
I was really surprised that we have so many patrons paying $5 a month and above. I was expecting that the majority would do $1 or $2 a month but the majority do $5 a month or more. It was actually quite humbling that there were so many people wanting to help support the show. I would still hope though that most podcast creators would take the view, as we do, that the support is really helpful but we will still produce the show for free for everyone to enjoy.