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Podcast Summary:
Title: The Evolution of Podcasting: A Deep Dive with Zencastr's CEO Josh Nielsen
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Mark Evans talks with Zencastr's CEO, Josh Nielsen, about the dynamic world of podcasting.
Josh shares his journey from a software engineer with a passion for the startup ecosystem to founding Zencastr, a platform that revolutionizes podcast recording, editing, and hosting.
He discusses podcasters' challenges with traditional recording methods and how Zencastr addressed these issues by leveraging browser capabilities for high-quality audio capture.
Josh reflects on the podcast industry's evolution, highlighting the impact of major events like Serial and the COVID-19 pandemic on podcast popularity and creator growth.
He emphasizes the untapped potential in podcasting, citing the low creator-to-consumer ratio compared to other social platforms and the role of AI in reducing production barriers and enhancing content discovery.
Josh touches on Zencastr's commitment to supporting the podcast community through advanced editing tools, education, and fostering connections within the ecosystem.
From the conversation
How Josh Nielsen went from a failed music startup to Zencastr
Josh Nielsen is the cofounder and CEO of Zencastr. He began as a software engineer and moved into startups soon after university. He worked as a developer in residence at Techstars Boulder, where he helped companies get their products ready for demo day. He then started Soundkeep with a few friends, a tool for electronic musicians to collaborate online. It did not work out, but Josh learned that browsers were gaining new ways to access a microphone and to save and store audio.
While pitching Soundkeep, someone told him podcasters had trouble moving audio files around. He set the idea aside until the company folded, then came back to it. He interviewed podcasters, who were all recording on Skype at the time. Josh says those recordings were highly compressed at best, with dropouts and robotic sounds at worst. Listeners complained about it on Twitter, which is the opposite of what a podcaster wants from an episode.
Josh expected the first version to take six weeks. It took about six months. The MVP hit product market fit right away, and the first customers came from messages on Twitter telling podcasters that their audio problem was solved.
Why podcasting still has room to grow and where AI helps
Josh describes big shifts in interest over the years. When Serial and This American Life reached millions of downloads per episode, people saw that podcasts could be big and profitable. He says Zencastr did not catch that wave, the wave caught the company. COVID brought another bump that has tapered off, though Josh says the longer term growth trend is still strong.
He argues the market is far from mature. He puts the creator to consumer ratio on X and TikTok at something like 30 to 40%, compared with well under 1% for podcasting. In his view, barriers to entry and burnout explain the gap. Making a tweet is much easier than making a podcast.
Josh says AI is already lifting some of that weight. Zencastr has had a machine learning team for two or three years, mainly to transcribe content and make it searchable. A few months ago it launched an AI clipping tool that works from the transcript. A 30 to 40 minute recording should produce around 20 clips. That is enough to post every weekday for a month from four episodes a week. Josh sees finding an audience as the biggest problem in podcasting after the barriers to creation.
"Podcasting doesn't have a built-in growth algorithm like it would be if you posted a tweet or a TikTok."
What customers ask for and what Zencastr is building
Josh says the most common request is help with growth. Creators publish and get "crickets", and they want some early validation. Hosts and audiences also want to connect. Zencastr already offers a monetization suite with programmatic ads and paid guest spots. Josh notes that this only helps creators who have figured out growth, and most have not.
That is why he points to clipping, cross-promotion and networking. Zencastr is currently a siloed experience. Josh sees an opportunity to let creators search the network for possible guests, or find podcasters with similar content for guest swaps and ad swaps.
The current initiative is advanced editing. Zencastr can remove ums, ahs and long pauses. Josh wants it to handle deleting sections and adding intros and outros, so new creators do not have to download files into tools like Audacity or iMovie. AI-generated show notes and social posts are not at the top of the list. On education, Zencastr is refining onboarding and running webinars. Josh would like a platform-agnostic podcasting university, but says prioritizing it is hard. The team mostly follows what customer support hears.
How Zencastr approaches competition
Josh says Zencastr was close to the only option when it launched. Remote recording is now much easier to build, and he notes that someone can download libraries from GitHub and get something running quickly. His answer is to keep expanding. Zencastr aims to be an all-in-one, opinionated platform with editing, production, hosting, growth and monetization. Josh says only two or three other platforms cover every step, and he believes Zencastr is the best of them. For marketing, he is doing podcast tours and talking to anyone who will have him on.
He admits he panicked when the first competitor launched with editing and hosting tools. It had little effect on Zencastr. His view today is to watch competitors without fixating on them. He names Spotify, Apple and Descript as players to respect, and says his bigger worry is whether Zencastr is executing fast enough on what users ask for.
"If you're watching, if you're paying too close attention to what everyone else is doing, you're not paying attention to what you need to do next."
Lessons from raising venture capital
Zencastr raised about $4.5 million, with the round closing at the start of 2021. At that point it was still a recording platform without hosting or monetization. The money was meant to build the rest of the toolchain. Josh also saw that well-funded players could push Zencastr to the margins if it could not iterate quickly. He says COVID helped the business, which felt strange to him.
Josh says he enjoyed fundraising. He describes it as a puzzle with many more no's than yeses. He learned that a story about helping small creators did not persuade investors on its own. They needed a reason they could repeat to their limited partners.
"They may love you, but if they don't have the ammunition that they need to defend that investment to their limited partners, then it's just not gonna happen."
Where Josh expects podcasting to go next
Josh sees the lines blurring between podcasting and other media. Some people launch on YouTube and call it a podcast. He says clips are becoming the main way new and casual listeners find a show, while full episodes serve the super fans. He thinks most podcasters are really content marketers who use podcasting as one channel next to TikTok, Instagram, a blog and a newsletter. A long recording with a good guest can feed all of those.
He also expects more healthy niche communities that can support themselves. Josh says advertisers tend to work only with the biggest creators because of workflow limits and brand safety worries. He recalls telling advertisers that Zencastr users had 10 million monthly downloads and that 80% of those creators wanted to monetize. Transcripts let Zencastr check content for problems at scale. He also sees backer programs as a better fit for small and mid-sized shows, and says Patreon helps creators take money but not deliver value for it.
"And the primary piece of consumption now for podcast audiences is becoming clips rather than full episodes."