News podcasting goes paid

Editor’s note: we are republishing a note that previously appeared in The Fix Media’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe to get everything you need to know about the European media market every Monday.

The podcasting industry has been a distinct phenomenon. While most leading news companies have moved written journalism under online paywalls, their audio products have mostly been free and ad-supported. To take the most obvious example, The New York Times is a paywalled publication, but its flagship podcast “The Daily” – perhaps the most popular news podcast out there, including in Europe – is free to listen.

This is partly because the podcasting ecosystem has historically lacked easy-to-use effective technology to support paid podcasts. As David Tvrdon recounted for The Fix, paying for access to a podcast has traditionally been “a multi-step process with several technologies included”. In recent years big tech companies like Spotify and Apple have made it easier, but news industry leaders like NYT have been wary of relying on external ecosystems that don’t give them full control over their audience.

Today, news publishers are looking to have more control over the distribution of their podcasts – and explore ways to charge listeners for audio journalism. The New York Times launched its audio app earlier this year, which includes exclusives for paid subscribers. (Its biggest podcasts are still free to listen). Vox Media’s robust podcasting operation, though primarily ad-supported, still includes “tens of thousands of active paying podcast subscribers”, leveraging both Apple Podcasts subscriptions and the company’s native app.

Last week we saw the latest addition to this list. The Economist announced that its podcasts would become paid, available either to the publisher’s existing subscribers or via an audio-only subscription at €4.90 monthly. The move is much more radical than NYT’s endeavours; almost all of The Economist’s existing and new podcasts would move behind the paywall except for weekday editions of the flagship news show “The Intelligence”.

The Economist’s chief editor Zanny Minton Beddoes said while announcing the news to listeners that the change is a logical continuation of the newspaper relying on paid subscriptions to charge its journalism since the 19th century and that she hopes more publishers would follow suit. Indeed, while there will still be ways to fund high-quality audio journalism available for free, expect to see more leading news outlets yanking away their free podcasts and creating new subscriber-only ones.

Source of the cover photo: https://unsplash.com

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