What About Podcasting Never Changes
In what feels like a constant tsunami of change…it’s important to remain focused on what never changes.
Welcome to Dispatch #81 of The Audio Insurgent. I was recently in Madrid, Spain speaking at Podcasting Days 2025 and today’s dispatch is largely a text version of my talk there.
After I gave my talk, a journalist from El Mundo interviewed me about podcasting today and asked me a question I’ve never been asked before.
“When did you know that podcasting would grow to become what it is today?”
The answer came to me immediately.
“The first time I ever listened to a podcast over twenty years ago, I knew we’d be in the place we are today,” I said. The journalist seemed kinda shocked, like he was expecting me to say it was just a few years ago, if at all. “It was clear to me from the very first time I listened. I knew this would be massively popular with listeners and I knew that it would be disruptive to the audio industry in the best possible way.”
“That’s also the reason I remain very optimistic today,” I continued. “Because that original vision for where I knew this would go still isn’t fully realized yet.”
I’d never thought of it that way, but it’s true. I not only knew that when I heard my first podcast, but I’ve seen that same mix of wonder and eureka on so many faces when they first discovered podcasting.
When Podcast Days asked what I wanted to talk about, I said that when people get up on a stage at a podcast conference, all they want to talk about is what is new and changing. I’d like to do the opposite–I’d like to talk about what isn’t—and probably never will—change.
So, as I was saying…
[WHAT IN PODCASTING NEVER CHANGES] I speak with people who make podcasts across the industry almost every day–along with those who sell them, build an audience for them, and try to make businesses around them.
And this year, in particular, I’ve heard a lot of angst and anxiety over the state and direction of podcasting. Almost all of them comment on how much podcasting is changing. More than one of them has wondered aloud if podcasting can even be called “podcasting” anymore or if we need to come up with a new term for it–or protect the term from interlopers making videos or restricting their shows to specific apps or platforms.
What are some of these changes that have everyone so concerned?
YouTube and the rise of video podcasts.
The decline of narrative podcasting.
The dominance of celebrity.
Decreasing ad revenue.
A lack of investment money.
I might reluctantly add “AI” to this list. Reluctantly because AI will have a seismic effect on…well, everything…except no one seems to have any clear, solid idea exactly how AI will actually disrupt podcasting content (I could write an entire newsletter just on this). But the list above are (kinda) real changes, true. But are they existential-level changes?
Actually, no. Not at all.
During the 2009 financial crisis, Warren Buffett was on a car ride with one of his staffers, who was lamenting how much the world seemed to be upside down. Thanks to the economic turmoil, everything seemed to have changed. The staffer worried aloud if the world would ever recover.
Buffett asked his staffer, “What was the most popular candy bar in 1962?”
The staffer didn’t know.
“Snickers,” Buffett answered.
“What is the best-selling candy bar today?” Buffett asked.
The staffer again couldn’t answer.
“Snickers,” Buffett said again.
End of conversation.
Buffett’s candy-bar story reminds me of another business parable I often turn to and share—one that’s still told at Amazon today. During the Q and A session, a man asked Jeff Bezos what he thought was going to change in the next ten years. Bezos replied, “I almost never get asked the question, ‘What’s NOT going to change in the next ten years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.”
He then went on to talk about that, at Amazon, there were three things that never change: great selection, great price, and great customer service. Whenever the shiny new thing arrives that gets everyone excited, worried, or upset–simply ask “Does this impact our ability to offer great selection, great price, and great service?” If it does, embrace it. If it doesn’t, don’t allow it to become a distraction.
This story gets quoted a lot when new disruptive technologies come into play–and it is often used as a divining rod to help decide if an idea or project is worth pursuing. When you focus on these three, seemingly odd ideas like buying a fleet of trucks or piloting drone deliveries don’t seem so odd anymore.
So let’s swing back to podcasting.
Are there things that never change about podcasting? When podcasting was invented in 2000 and took root in 2004, when it exploded following Serial in 2014, went stratospheric in 2020, or when it reset in 2023–are there constants throughout all that?
Yes.
I believe there are four things that have never changed in podcasting, and likely never will.
First thing that will never change: Listeners want a good story
I often say that even though there are millions of podcasts in the world, there are only two kinds of podcasts in the world: podcasts that tell stories and podcasts where people have conversations. And actually, the best conversations are people telling stories…so maybe there is only one type of podcast.
This is the glue that keeps listeners listening…and coming back.
Second thing that will never change: Listeners crave community and a sense of belonging
Know it or not, every podcast in the world is the voice of a niche. Even huge podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience or Radiolab are the voice of a specific type of person with a particular interest or worldview. Going all the way back to podcasting’s origins, the earliest shows were chat shows for people interested in very specific tech topics. It can be as literal as a podcast focused on 17th century fabric or Dallas area real estate agents or adult adoptees–or it can be more topical, like people interested in unsolved crimes or a sports team or new movies. The podcast is the hub of the community. And as we’ve seen, this often takes on a life outside of the podcast itself. On dating apps, it’s common to list favorite podcasts–so people can find other members of this invisible community. Sometimes the community isn’t so invisible–with self-organized groups on Facebook or Reddit just for show fans.
Podcasting is a social media. This may not be front of mind for them–but listeners live it.
Third thing that will never change in podcasting: Listeners see podcasting as a solution to a problem
There can be all kinds of listener problems, such as “I’m bored,” “I want to laugh,” “I want to learn something new,” “I want to know what’s going on with something I care about,” “I’m lonely,” “I want to escape,” “I want to have my mind blown,” “I want to get angry,” or many others. Listeners turn to podcasting to solve a problem, sometimes a problem they don’t realize they have or aren’t consciously trying to solve. When the podcast solves that problem, they stay and come back again. When it doesn’t, they move on.
And the final thing that will never change in podcasting: Listeners love surprises
It could be an unexpected twist or an idea that blows their mind–but listeners come for the talent or topic or ideas they are interested in, but stay for what they didn’t expect.
Think about the last time you read something or heard something or watched something and then told someone else about it. You might have given an overview of the story–but where do you focus your praise? On the surprises.
Nothing on the planet is as soul-sucking as a predictable podcast episode. When I’m listening to a show, I often mentally pause a minute or two into the episode and map out where I think the episode is going. Too often, it follows exactly as I thought it might. That sucks so much. But when you come up with something I couldn’t see coming, 🤌.
So that’s basically the list I see of things that never change:
Listeners want a good story
Listeners crave community and a sense of belonging
Listeners see podcasting as a solution to a problem
Listeners love surprises
Beyond that, not much.
But what about video and celebrities and all the HUGE changes to podcasting?
To be honest, I see most of them as cyclical things that wax and wane. For example, to some people, it seems that YouTube and video podcasting have exploded out of nowhere. These people haven’t been doing a good job of paying attention. It’s worth noting that when podcasting first started, it was as much or more a video medium as an audio medium, as so many very early podcasts originated as streaming shows (does anyone remember RealVideo?). Audio took an early lead for two reasons. The first was practical: file size. Downloading video files took a lot of time, while audio files, often 1/10th of the size, were quicker to download. Second, a lot of audio creators were quick to recognize the opportunity and came in loaded with great material. Plus, watching videos on a portable device back in 2004 was kinda the equivalent of watching video on your watch today: possible, but not enjoyable. The audio podcasts grew so quickly that it kind of eclipsed video podcasting. The rise of YouTube seemed to be the death blow for video podcasting, but, frankly, it instead proved to be a lifeline. The recent rise of video podcasting is more of a full circle moment than something that’s disruptive. And just like 20 years ago–not everything works in video form. And that’s okay.
The death of narrative, which we’ve discussed here before, isn’t really a death, but an evolution. Every medium becomes fixated on celebrity when its networks run out of ideas. And advertising is the most cyclical of all these “existential” changes–and it isn’t even the first time podcasting has been on the advertising down cycle (this is also the reason I so often preach about the lack of wisdom in being over-dependent on ad revenue).
I also want to note that what you should take away from this is not that Eric says nothing changes in podcasting. Lots of things change. I look at Magnificent Noise, and the business we are today is very, very different than the business we launched in 2018 (maybe that’s one reason we’ve stuck around all this time) and the work we do is fundamentally different than the work we focused on seven years ago. But what I’m saying is that a lot of these changes that we see in 2025, and have seen throughout the history of podcasting, are much more confined to the surface than we realize. The fundamentals? They rarely change. If anything, they just come into clearer view.
[A CLOSING MOMENT OF ZEN: THAT’S THE POWER IN THE PLUS!] I took a lot of airline flights over the past six weeks…and watched a ton of movies. This ad ran as a pre-roll for everything I watched on every flight. And to be honest, I got a little obsessed with this ad.
Or more specifically, how little it actually says. This pair talks for 30 seconds…and it is so full of empty words that it took me about six views to actually figure out what this firm does (that is, beside dropping buzzwords).
When I worry about the future of audio–I worry that it will be run by people like these, who say all the right things–yet don’t have an actual idea between them. I’ve seen this in the audiobook industry for many years. I see it often in public media too. Radio seems to have stopped caring long ago, so no one seems to be too concerned about even saying the right things. Is podcasting getting there too? Take it as a note of caution.
It reminds me that when we forget why this medium exists—to connect, surprise, and solve—we start sounding like these two.
Okay, that’s it for today.
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Make great things. I’ll be listening.
--Eric