Making Media · Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts
2023 Recap
·30 min·1 clip
Downloads are down 24% year over year, and iOS 17 changed podcast auto-downloads.
1. Making Media's 2023 recap tracks how the show and the podcast industry looked at the start of 2024.
2. The hosts are Tom, who leads the discussion, and his co-host, who grades the show and pushes the reflections.
3. The episode asks what 2023 meant for podcasting, for Making Media, and for the next year's guest strategy.
4. December data show downloads for the top 20 podcast publishers down 24% year over year.
5. The decline is linked to Apple and iOS 17 changing the auto-download function.
6. The hosts say older subscribe-and-forget behavior inflated download counts, including episodes stored on phones without being heard.
7. Advertising rates reportedly fell from $25 CPM to about $22 on a like-for-like basis.
8. New RSS feeds reached a five-year low, a little above 200,000, which the speakers describe as moving "down and to the right."
9. One response compares podcasting to interest rates and says "the era of free money is over."
10. Another response argues that these cycles can create opportunity when supply shrinks and investors focus on audience quality.
11. Spotify is used as a barometer because its podcast announcements and pruning of shows are said to mirror the wider market.
12. The speakers say the power law still dominates, with established creators holding ground while new entrants try video or other differentiated approaches.
13. Making Media is graded a four out of five for its first year, with the missing fifth point tied to scale rather than pride.
14. The show crossed 50 episodes and ran slightly ahead of a one-episode-a-week pace by its first anniversary.
15. The hosts say transparency is valuable but hard to balance because more openness can "come back to bite you."
16. Neil from No Laying Up, Morgan Housel, and Matt Levine are named as the top three most popular episodes.
17. Spike Eskin, Addie Ignatius, Hitton Samtani, and Kevin Espiritu are singled out as especially strong or underrated guests.
18. The tone mixes industry analysis with self-review, and the format moves from macro podcast metrics to personal episode rankings.
19. Listeners who follow podcast business, guest strategy, and creator economics will get the most from this.
20. Casual listeners seeking a tightly edited narrative or a single-topic deep dive may skip it.
