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Hey Reader! - Over 400 people are now receiving this newsletter, which is madness to me. So thank you for being here and for reading. Truly. Anyway, I have boiled over with a rant in today's post, so without further ado, check out today's news below and read on.

Please Don’t Solve the Podcast Discovery Problem

This is to anyone currently working to solve the “podcast discovery problem”.

Please stop.

One of the greatest things about podcasting is that people aren’t chasing arbitrary rules to get discovered. Instead, they focus on making a great show and connecting with their audience. That’s how it should be and how it should stay.

My problem with their being a podcast discovery problem is that I think it will ruin podcasting. Here’s why:

(For those who don’t know, the podcast discovery problem is that there is no reliable way to get your podcast discovered by your listeners.)

Discovery Is Done With Algorithms

People have been making things online for a while now. Whether it was writing a blog or making videos, solving a discovery problem involves an algorithm.

Google did this with their search results. They created a fancy algorithm that decides what content should be shown when you search.

10 years ago, this meant you came across all sorts of interesting writing that people have done on the internet.

Blogs like Mr Money Mustache or The Marginalian would pop up in your search and you could fall down a rabbit hole of their articles.

But today, people are learning how to beat the algorithm, and so when you search for anything, you get 10 near identical results from large media companies.

The algorithm has taken all the personality out of the equation. Because to rank for a phrase, you have to use the right words, the right headers, and the right word count.

Can you imagine that for podcasting? A reduction of individuality until everything sounds the same.

YouTube Is Already Ruining the Fun

If you are a large podcast with a team behind you, your aim is to make money. Look at Steven Bartlett of the Diary of a CEO podcast. He says he wants to make his podcast bigger and better for you… But that’s not true, is it? He wants to make more money for himself and the companies that sponsor his show.

And so he can do that by trying to get as many views as possible. And he and podcasts like his do it on YouTube with this equation:

Inflammatory guest + controversial topic + tight edit to increase view time + Mr Beast style thumbnail = views.

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And what happens from here? Well, one podcast interviews a guest with some controversial views, and then all the other podcasts jump on the bandwagon to fill in the formula and try to get the most outrageous sound bite they can turn into a YouTube Short.

That then propagates through the podcasts until everyone is interviewing the same guests and asking the same questions. Boring.

The Person Who Solves It Steers the Ship

I like to look at blogging since it’s been around slightly longer than podcasting. Medium.com is doing a great job of highlighting writers and longer-form written content. I write there myself and rather enjoy it.

They have come the closest to fixing a discovery problem without the whole system descending into clickbait. But there’s still a problem. The person steering the ship decides what’s “good.”

It can’t be helped. No matter what Medium does to try and remove itself from its algorithm to show its readers stories they like, it still has an influence. They create the culture of what’s popular and what’s not. What’s acceptable and what isn’t. You have to follow their style guide, and if you want to get more views, write about the topics their audience is interested in.

Which is fine to a point. I like Medium. They’re doing good work for writers. But I hope that an equivalent doesn’t come about for podcasting because…

Podcasting is About You

One of my absolute favorite things about indie podcasters is they are out-creating work they are proud of in an honest way and for their audience. To grow a successful podcast, you still have to market yourself and do the hard work of getting in front of your audience. But it means you can create content just for your audience without following other people’s rules. That’s wonderful.

It’s okay to want your podcast discovered by the people you make it for. But relying on an outside platform and someone like Mark Zuckerburg to do it for you is not the way to do it.

Focus on creating a great show and serving your audience. Do those for five years, and it will be hard to fail.

So, to anyone out there working on the podcast discovery problem, leave it well enough alone. We have a great thing here. Don’t ruin it.

All the best from Scotland,

Kieran

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How I Can Help You

1) ​​How to get your first 100,000 downloads ebook – Learn what it takes to grow a podcast and make sense of podcast marketing.

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4) ​Recommended Tools​​ – These are the tools I use to grow my podcast. I focus on tools that improve quality and save time.

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