Friday 13th October: How paid podcasts fit into The Economist's subscription strategy

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We’re excited to have an initial list of confirmed speakers for Mx3 AI: the event we’re collaborating with Media Makers Meet to put on. Come and hear from Bauer’s Global SEO Director, GenAI Con’s Founder, The Journalism AI Project’s Director and more on how publishers can make the most of the opportunities AI provides.

Our Esther’s written for DCN on how a considered paid podcast strategy can boost a publication’s subscription revenue. When this news broke last month I was scratching my head about the extent to which putting the vast majority of your podcasts behind a paywall would actually benefit a brand. Esther has since spoken to The Economist’s SVP, gobal head of customer, about the impetus behind that decision:

“The podcast subscription is currently the lowest cost offered by the publisher at $4.90 a month, or $49 a year. There is also currently a pre-launch half-price offer for the full year. Overstall noted that although there is every chance they may not have got everything right at launch, the pricing feels fair in comparison to the full-price subscription. ‘So far, we’re pleased with the response that we’ve seen,’ she said of their pre-launch sale.“

I’d be astonished if we didn’t see some experimentation with this strategy over the next few years. Issues relating to discovery will be exacerbated by having the lion’s share of your podcasts paywalled, for example. But it’s wonderful to see that the podcast space is still evolving and changing as tech solutions create new opportunities for experimentation.

We’re always chatting about how the BBC is a persistent outlier in the world of media. We’ve also spoken about how some local newspaper groups tacitly blame it for their inability to convince Brits to pony up for subscriptions. Well, now the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has said it has “reasonable grounds to suspect one or more breaches of competition law” from both the BBC and ITV.

Wait, but how can this be true? Elon Musk assured us that Twitter was far and away the biggest driver of traffic to publishers. Surely the man who bought a platform for $44bn and immediately turned it into an $8bn one can’t be wrong? Sarcasm aside, this is a good look at how NPR has effectively proved that Twitter was never a traffic driver. Instead its strengths lay elsewhere (past tense).

In the grand scheme of things this isn’t really of much importance. But as someone whose love for journalism was further developed by work on The Ripple at Leicester University, I can safely say that student newspapers are a vital first rung on the ladder for many people looking to get into journalism. The continued existence of student papers is a minor miracle, so it’s great to see this.

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