Podcasting in 2025: What actually mattered (and what matters next year)

Voice Over: 00:00:00

Got dreams of being a professional podcaster, but have no idea what you're doing. This is impossible. That's about to change. A new kind of school. Welcome to the PodSchool Podcast.

Rachel Corbett: 00:00:10

Hello there. We're coming to the end of the year.

Woo, woo, woo. Anybody else really excited about it? It's felt like a big one, isn't it, for everybody all round? So I hope you're doing okay.

Hope you're hanging in there. I did say at work the other day that somebody made the grave error of asking me how I was and I answered truthfully and honestly.

About 10 seconds in, she was like, yikes. Sorry I asked. But yes, we are almost at the finish line in this episode.

back at some of the trends of: 2025

I think one of the undeniable things that has been spoken about in podcasting and obsessed about in podcasting, and nobody's really shut up about it in podcasting this year, is video. I was doing a interview with Rode a little while ago with some other creators, Mif Warhurst, Mitch Churi, talking about video in podcasting.

And one of the questions I was asked was around when this obsession began. And the reality is that it really did begin when YouTube focused on podcasting and decided that that was going to be their platform of choice.

They did have Google Podcasts. Obviously YouTube is owned by Google, so they were doing Google podcasts before and it never really captured much market share.

You also can't make money out of a podcast app, so you can make money on YouTube from people's videos. And they were seeing consumption on the platform. They were seeing people engage with podcasts on that platform.

There was obviously a lot of increase terms of people listening on their connected TVs and a lot of consumption behavior that was saying to YouTube, this is kind of where it's at. The problem is, however, that YouTube is built for video, it's not built for audio.

And so they have tried to make it a podcasting platform, but audio only content never works as good as the video content. So people are uploading their RSS feeds and the audio's coming in, it's not really doing much.

So of course then everybody's like, well, you've got to do video. So everybody starts shifting to video.

But the problem is that video is completely out of reach for a lot of people, at least full length episodes in a studio.

The stuff looks great, don't get me wrong, but it costs A lot to hire a studio or to set up a space in your house that is dedicated for video if you want it to look like a lot of the boucle chair fern in the background videos that are going around the Internet at the moment. So I think there's been a lot of hype. I've talked about it a lot.

There's been an obsession with video that has made people feel, I cannot be a podcaster, I cannot be a successful podcaster unless I'm doing full length video episodes. And that is just not the truth.

And for most people who have leaned into video in a significant way, I've spoken to a lot of them that have not seen the return on investment that they would have liked. And yes, you get additional audience for sure. There is different audience on a platform like YouTube than there is in the podcast apps.

So there is never going to be a bad thing about having your content available to more people. However, most people's shows are going to be getting incremental reach on those platforms.

So you might be getting a hundred views, you might only be getting 50 views.

You know, you might be getting a number of views on that platform that's still actually really good, like 50 or 100 more people seeing you content, fantastic. But when you're seeing all of these Stephen Bartlett style stats and thinking, well, is my show a failure? No, it's not.

But the question is, can the investment that it takes in you getting that video episode up and done justify only getting 100 views or 20 views or 4 views?

And I think that's the conversation a lot of podcasters are having this year that have leaned heavily into this is like, oh my gosh, it isn't the silver bullet that it was promised. Just like everything else. Nothing is a silver bullet.

So they're sort of thinking, okay, maybe I can't invest all of the time and money into doing this as a full length episode. Maybe I just focus on promotion or those kind of things.

I think unless you have a full team, a workflow where you're well resourced, it can sometimes be too much additional time, money, effort to be doing full video episodes. And you really need to work out how can you bring video into your workflow in a smart way that works for you and your show?

I've talked about it before that promotional snippets are brilliant for this.

You know, it's really so much more compelling for an audience to see you talking about what you're talking on the podcast than it is just to have an audiogram or a static image.

However, most of the people that I have spoken to experience consumption of that video content in the social media platforms and a very small portion of people come through to the episode. Does that mean pointless? Absolutely not.

But video is often more of a brand building exercise and we're building that promotional content for platforms that are algorithm based so that they can shoot our content out wide. But it honestly might take somebody 50 videos watching your content before they go. I'm going to check that out as a podcast.

Or they might never come across to your podcast. And for a lot of creators there is this feeling of like, oh, well, what am I doing this for?

And the truth is that you're doing it to get your show out there and to get your brand seen. But the problem is that we tend to obsess over the downloads.

And ultimately, even if you're doing video on social platforms, like your stuff is being viewed and it is being consumed on other platforms, it just might not be leading people back to the audio.

So video is a, it's, it's a real pickle because I do actually think it's, it's so important to think about, it's so important to factor in, but it is also so much additional work. And I think one of the things that you need to remember is that the audio version of your show is where the relationship is built.

That is again what is coming back from the industry, from creators. The long term, I'm going to sit with you for 30 minutes relationship is happening on the podcast and audio is so important for that.

Even the people that are listening or watching your show on YouTube, the vast majority of people are listening to the audio on YouTube.

I think the stat might be 7% or something are only, are doing the video only, but most people will pop it on in the background on the telly just because they like to consume content on their telly because it's like a big radio or big speaker in their lounge room and they can potter around doing other things. So it's still important to be thinking about your audio and to understand that the people who are coming to the podcast, they are your rusted ons.

They are the ones you need to care about and they are the ones. I mean you need to care about your whole audience. But I mean you don't want to forget about them.

And I think in this video conversation we are forgetting about the people who are coming and following our show and staying with us. It is really hard to get a new listener. So you don't want to Ignore the ones that are there because you want them to stay.

If you lose those listeners, it's so much harder to get somebody new into that show again. So it's really important to, to still think about your audio.

Even if you've got a video version of your show, audio is still really important and you want to make sure that it's a great listening experience for someone and video. Then I think if you're not gonna do full episodes, think about it as a great sort of top of the funnel tool.

It's the thing that is there to build awareness for you, your show, your brand. And it's good to get out there and get better reach than a podcast can get. Cause there's no algorithm in a podcast app.

But then the bottom of your funnel is your audio feed. So don't neglect that thing because that is the thing that builds long term trust.

The other thing that's been an obsession this year is obviously AI and the opportunity of it.

One thing that AI has done, yes, it has really helped with workflows and I think there's a lot of ways you can use it in your podcast that is really beneficial, that will help you. But it has really pushed people towards authenticity and community. There is a real feeling like, okay, there's all of this stuff out here.

I cannot discern whether it's been written by a robot or not. And what I want to know is, is this the thought, feeling, opinion of a real person and can I connect with that person?

And I think there's real opportunity here for podcasters because of that relationship that podcasters have with their audience and the community that you can build around that. And I think that's how you should be thinking about things with your show. How can you have a two way conversation with your audience?

Can you get a newsletter up and happening or some kind of community situation set up?

Like, is there something that you could bring into your podcast that would help you nurture those relationships and make people feel like they have a closer relationship to you? Because I think that's becoming ever more important as time goes on and we're leaning more and more into tech.

And now robots are making stuff that is pretending to be real people. You know, all of that stuff is really making people crave that connection. And I think that's an opportunity.

I do think practically though, AI can be great to help you with your podcast, but you want to think about it as an assistant, not a replacement for you. It is about automating the admin tasks of your show. Not Automating your creativity. You cannot set and forget this stuff.

You can use it for a whole bunch of things that will help you build out content, but it can never replace your views, your lived experience, your perspective. And that is what people come for.

So make sure that you are not getting rid of that from your show, from your social content, from everything that you ship out with AI because you don't want it to be your identity. Basically you want to use it to free up your time so you can show up as more of you. So that's something really important to keep in mind.

The next thing is also kind of on the video side of things, but it's the Spotify video thing, which has become a big talking point this year. But, but I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of creators who have gone down this path.

I can really understand why a lot of people are doing this. And Spotify is really leaning into pushing promotion for people who are utilizing this feature because they want more people to use it.

So that is pretty attractive for people. Spotify says, I want to feature you, push your show.

That can get you a lot of additional views and it can make you real addicted to the Spotify promotion drug.

Because once they're pushing you, that can bring in a lot of audience, which can be really great for your show, you know, but in terms of monetization, I think if you are an independent show, you're not really monetizing, your audience is small, you want to do video based episodes, your audience will enjoy it for sure. And they can flick audio to video, so it doesn't impact the audio audience at all. And as, as long as you're not filling your video episodes with.

And now I'm looking at this thing here and forgetting that people are listening and not watching. But there can be great benefits to it creatively, I think.

But if you get to a certain point where you want to monetize your show and you've got a significant amount of audience, the revenue per thousand downloads you can get on video is much less than on audio. So if you're at the stage where you have audience that you're like, gosh, I could run ads across all this.

If you're uploading your video to Spotify, that's cutting off off all of that audio. Like you can't serve ads to that. Yes, you can bake in ads across that.

So it might work for some creators, but it's just certainly something to think about as you grow your show. And it's not black or White.

I've had quite a few conversations with creators where I've talked through some of this stuff and they've got massive, massive audiences and they've been like, oh, oh, I didn't kind of realize that that would limit this or.

So I think just make sure that these things work for you because I think sometimes we can all get a bit swept up in the promotional aspects of things. And yeah, it really will depend show to show.

If your goal is reach and that's it, you know, video might really work for you and you can bring it into your workflow and it's not impacting and you're not necessarily that worried about the return on investment because you, you just want the content out there, then that's one thing. But if you are really thinking about revenue, then audio is probably going to be the stronger business model.

And it's a good idea to kind of, you know, monetize all of your audio and then if you want to do video, look to a platform like YouTube and monetize on that platform. The last thing I'd just say is there has been just so much. Here's the sexy thing you can do to grow your show.

Video is the only way forward and it's the path to a million downloads.

You know, all of this kind of message that completely ignores the one constant in podcasting that has been true since the start will be true no matter what trend happens next year and in the future. And that is that consistency is the most important thing in podcasting, full stop.

And so if video is helping you reach new people, but the workload means you can't keep consistent, it ain't worth it because you will not be able to build audience unless you can remain consistent.

And that consistency is about building a relationship with your audience, telling them, I will be here for you, so can you please keep being here for me? And that is what incrementally grows your show over time, which is essentially what podcast growth is all about.

Long term, consistency beats going viral in the short term every single day of the week.

And the shows that are being fought over by networks right now are ones that have been on for a long time, consistently releasing episodes, often that started during a time that if you try and do the same thing now, you can't repeat the results.

You know, if you started your show seven years ago, it's very hard to get up to some of those levels now, and you better be doing it for another seven years to try and hit that. So you need to understand that if you are Trying to hit those lofty, lofty goals. Some shows will never get to that point.

But if you want to get to that point A, you have to have a really quality, well thought out product and you have to stick at it consistently.

g about building your show in: 2026

Use video purposefully and use it in the way that works for your workload, your life, your show. Do not look at what other people are doing and say that is the only way to do things. You often cannot replicate what they are doing.

You do not have any of the backstory or the context or the behind the scenes of their team, what they're working with, all of those kind of things, which can mean you will set yourself up for significant disappointment because you can't actually do what they've done. And so you really need to think about what is possible for your life, your show, and focus on that.

Use AI intelligently, you know, think about how it can help you reduce the time on certain tasks that do not need your brain so that you can use your brain for the tasks that do. Try as hard as you can not to chase shiny new things. I know it's hard. I know it's hard.

I would say that the thing that I suck most at is like marketing and pushing and things. And when you see what good marketing can do and how it can make people obsessed with things and generate fomo, you're like, oh, wow.

When you get this right, it really is pretty impressive. But again, you just want to always be thinking about what's actually right for your show. Focus on community connection.

If you have a show already and it has a small audience there, think about those people and how can you connect with them more deeply? How can you serve them better? How can you stick around for them and make sure that you're building something that gives them a reason to stay?

Because it's always going to be harder to find somebody new to take their place than it is to really nurture them if they're already there. And then focus on the long game. Don't think about spikes, because often even big spikes in audience, those people don't stick around.

I've done so many shows over the years where, you know, we've had a guest and they've. It's blown up the episode, it's gone absolutely massive. And you can see in the analytics this huge spike.

And then down it comes back to the normal spike of every single other episode. You know, those people come in for that guest or that topic, but not every single one of those people stay.

So you really want to think about just chipping away at this in the long term, being consistent, and really think about focusing. I feel like this year there's been a lot of distraction.

There's been a lot of talk here, there and everywhere about, this is a solution, this is a solution. Now it's this, now it's this. Now it's this, now it's this.

And it's interesting, as somebody who's been in podcasting for years, to see how quiet this space used to be and how few experts, honestly, there were in this space. And now it is noisy. It is hard to get your focus on what you need to laser in on.

And I think that is the only way through this noise is to just be focused on what is best for you, your show, and how to make that a success, because that's going to be fulfilling for you, and that's a really important thing. So those are some of my thoughts about what's been going on this year.

want to start your podcast in: 2026

I feel like I want to shift things a bit and I'll talk maybe a little bit about that next episode.

But if you do want some help with your podcast, make sure you head to the description of the episode where you can find the ways that you can work with me. I'm also working on developing some community offerings next year around this topic of community and connection.

You know, I want to be able to help people more closely and. And to have some regular contact with people who are like, you know what?

I want to do this right, and I want help to do it right, because that is the stuff that I love to do.

And I love to help people that are at that point, at the beginning, and they don't know the craft, they don't understand how to make a great show, but they don't want to just wing it.

They do want to make a show that is going to be well thought out, well structured, that has a really high chance of finding an audience so that they can build something that they can be really proud of. So.

So if that is you head to the description of the episode, I've got a bunch of ways that you can work with me, and I will be adding to those as well. I might also pop a link into the application form for my Mastermind, which is for people who already have a show.

I'm going to build that out next year as well. But yeah, I'd really love to help you with your podcast if that's something that you want to do in the new year. And hopefully we will work together.

I will see you next week.

Voice Over: 00:20:17

That's all for today.