This is an automatically generated transcript of the PodPod episode ‘Martin Spinelli: The ABCs of Podcasting’. We apologise for any errors in spelling and grammar.
Rhianna Dhillon
Hello and welcome to PodPod. My name is Rhianna Dhillon and this is a podcast all about that wonderful world of podcasting. We always have special guests and in depth conversations. And today we are joined by Martin Spinelli, who teaches podcasting. So you can imagine the kind of questions we're gonna ask him. Joining me on the podcast today we have Reem Makari, journalist and PodPod researcher, and Adam Shepherd editor of PodPod. Hello to you both.
Reem Makari
Hi. Hi. Hello.
Rhianna
Hi. How's it going? Good weeks everyone?
Adam Shepherd
Fantastic week.
Reem
Really good. Really busy everyone who ever decided to create a podcast has decided to send in a podcast launch this week. So very, very busy.
Adam
It's been ridiculous.
Rhianna
Is it all up there on podpod.com?
Adam
It is indeed it's been all hands to the pumps this week.
Rhianna
Jon Snow, I see, has just launched a new podcast. Obviously, we had Dan Snow on last week, who is Jon Snow's nephew. So what's Jon Snow's about?
Adam
Would you believe another interview podcast? That and Louis Theroux has also announced a Spotify based interview podcast, so interview podcasts coming out of the ears and into the ears.
Rhianna
Oh God, this counts as an interview podcast as well, doesn't it?
Adam
Yeah, absolutely.
Rhianna
Oh, my goodness. I mean, who's ever heard of Louis Theroux though? And also another example of a broadcaster being tempted away to podcasting with Jon Snow. So that's quite interesting. As I said, we've got Martin Spinelli on. And it's a really interesting week to be speaking to him because I am guest lecturing at City University of London in film journalism at the moment. So we've just done our second week. And next week, I am going to be teaching them all about film podcasting. So this just feels perfect. Because how do you teach podcasting? It feels like something that is, you know, more innate, but that's because there's haven't really been many courses that you can go on to teach you about podcasting.
Adam
Well, up until now.
Rhianna
Up until now, so City University of London are about to launch an MA in podcasting. Reem, you went and saw the podcasting suites.
Reem
Yes, I went yesterday to do an interview with Brett and Sandy who run the course. And I got to see the new podcasts studio. So they built them specifically for the new courses launching, but also to be used by other journalism students that are also doing broadcast. And learning podcasting. It's very interesting, because apparently, there's a very high demand from students to learn more about podcasting. And they also got insight from industry professionals into curating the course. And even from the perspective of the industry professionals, they were even saying that, that there is a need for, for more students to kind of get get that background in audio before working in the industry. So there's things like tech skills, how to market your podcasts, how to monetise, all of these things are going to be taught in this new course, which is really, really interesting and kind of wish I could go back and do my Masters.
Rhianna
I know, you do feel really envious now, and also talking about film journalism, you know, I didn't have anyone to teach me about film journalism specifically didn't even know that was a thing you could do. And I really love that there are people hungry enough out there to want to learn about these things that they've created courses for them as sort of supply and demand. Adam, did you think this means then that pretty much every university in a few years gonna have their own podcasting MA? Or do you think it's still just going to be a quite a specialist subject?
Adam
I think it's going to be relatively specialist, but I think any school that has a strong media or journalism department is absolutely going to look at branching out into podcasting. Because it is, you know, a huge and growing industry, it's one that a lot of students want to engage with. And it's something that there is a need for, as you mentioned, there hasn't been really a dedicated podcasting course up until, you know, the last sort of year or so. And it's, it's something that does require a slightly different skill set even to something like radio. Yeah, you know, podcasting is much more of a DIY kind of platform, you do have to have a little bit more kind of all round knowledge. I feel like then you do being a radio broadcaster, I mean, you'll know this yourself Rhianna. What is the difference like going from radio to podcasting? Do you need to cover more of the bases yourself as a podcaster?
Rhianna
Yeah, I think you are allowed a bit more freedom and flexibility of course, because you're not constrained by you know, the news having to come on at six and it's kind of rare that you have your own show. So you know, film or other bits normally come in like a magazine-y kind of show. Whereas when you're kind of doing your own podcast, you do have to know pretty much everything unless you're interviewing someone about that specialism. I love podcasting so much. But I also really do love radio. I think because of the discipline of that, yes, I think it's better to go from radio to podcasting, almost, because you've learned the rules of audio a bit more. And then you can break them all in podcasting, which is great, I suppose. But if you've only ever done podcasts, and then you've got a radio, I imagine that's a really difficult jump doing it that way around, but I don't know, I might be wrong. So if you're listening, and you have done it that way around, get in touch.
Adam
Speaking of film, podcasting, I would love to see Chris Hewitt and the Empire Film Podcast guys going into a radio set, and you can't really get away with a two and a half hour recording in in radio.
Reem
Two and a half hours is when they cut it.
Adam
Exactly.
Rhianna
Today, so I had a lesson just before we're recording this, and I asked my students to pretend to be on Front Row. And not only are they not really ever heard of Front Row or knew where that sat, which I know but interesting, right? We assume that knowledge but their early 20s. And not all from the UK, admittedly. So that definitely explains something.
Adam
Reem, you're about to say that you don't know Front Row either...
Reem
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Rhianna
Which is fine. Like, we assume so much knowledge if you've grown up with the BBC in this country. So my parents used to listen to The Archers, which is like the one of the longest running radio soaps on the radio, obviously.
Adam
Did we talk about The Archers last week?
Rhianna
I mean, I try and work it into every single conversation I ever had. So very possibly. Front Row is a magazine art show that comes just after The Archers on Radio 4. So I got them to kind of do a film review. And I gave them three minutes each to review a film or TV show. And they they were very good, but they are all afterwards said how much they struggled with that time limit. And I was like, welcome to my world. That's what you have to do. You have to be so concise. With radio, you can't ramble and look at me now on a podcast. I'm like what was the subject we began on? Let me bring it back to Martin Spinelli, our guest today. He's a leading professor of podcasting and Creative Media at the University of Sussex. And he's also an executive producer and host for the For Your Ears podcast, which kind of deep dives into the industry alongside author Lance Dann. And he wrote a book with Lance in 2019 titled Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution. So this is somebody who knows his stuff when it comes to podcasting, so here he is: Martin Spinelli. Welcome to Martin Spinelli, professor of podcasting.
Martin Spinelli
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Rhianna
It's an absolute pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much for coming. So to start off, when did you take podcasting seriously, when did you realise that podcasting was this phenomenon?
Martin
Well, it happened I remember it very clearly it happened in 2014. I was at an award ceremony at Reuters headquarters in London. And it was an award ceremony for young and up and coming journalists. I was there with some of my students who had been entered. And I was walking around from table to table talking to young people. And I was asking them what they were listening to. And almost every single one of them at that moment in time in autumn of 2014, said, "I'm listening to Serial, I'm listening to Serial, Sarah Koenig. I love what she does. It's amazing. I want to do that." I had not clocked Serial before that moment, and a few episodes had released. So that night, I went home and downloaded all the available episodes of Serial and binge listened. And I was absolutely and completely hooked from that moment. And I knew that this thing that was this sort of slightly geeky, slightly marginal, slightly nerdy undertaking had finally hit the mainstream or was about to hit the mainstream. And from that moment, I started really systematically listening to more podcasts with a kind of critical ear. And I got together with my research partner, Lance Dann, and we started working on the book Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, which became the first proper, serious scholarly engagement with podcasting as a new form of audio distinct and different from radio
Rhianna
It's incredible that you were sort of like the first in that field. So was it a bit of a race against time we worried that anybody else was going to jump on before you did? Was it a rush to get everything written and out there as quickly as possible?
Martin
Yeah, we didn't really dilly dally, because we knew somebody would beat us to the punch. But there were a lot of other books out there that were about podcast technology, podcast marketing, podcast monetisation, but there were no books that were really kind of looking at it for what it was as something new and different a new way of communicating a new way of relating to people. So we interviewed a bunch of top notch producers, producers from Serial, from Radio Lab, from The Heart, from Gimlet and from My Dad Wrote A Porno and a bunch of other places, the BBC. And we collected these really incredible insights into this moment in time when the medium was really emerging and really breaking on the scene. And we were kind of fueled by the excitement of getting those ideas out into the world without too much delay, because we knew things were changing. So yeah, we weren't so worried about being caught out. But we really wanted to kind of get this stuff into the world
Reem
after you started taking podcasting seriously, when did Sussex start taking podcasting seriously, what made them start to invest in podcasting as a module for students,
Martin
that's happened, as I've developed as a podcast maker and a podcast thinker. I have brought my students along that journey with me. I've had meetings with deans and heads of school, and they started investing little by little in podcasting, along with me. So as my interest grew, the support from Sussex also grew with it. So we're developing right now an MA in podcasting, which would be among the first in the country, which would be fantastic if we get it off the ground, which I hope we will do very soon.
Rhianna
I rather kind of facetiously introduced you as a professor of podcasting. Actually, you're a professor in podcasting and creative media, right? Yeah. Yeah. Are there elements where podcasting is sort of elective to students? Can they choose to kind of specialise more in podcasting?
Martin
Yes, yeah. So on our undergraduate degree in media production, students can choose to work in podcasting with me, or animation, or digital interactive, or documentary, film, or photography. And every year, I get a handful of really dedicated students, I find the ones that do podcasting really, really want to do podcasting and are really committed to it, and are are the best ones or the best students. And I'm not just bragging.
Reem
what kind of skills are those students learning that compare to the stuff that they're learning in media production, as well as our was a media studies,
Martin
we have degrees in media studies in film studies in filmmaking in journalism. The undergraduate degree that I teach on is the BA in media production, I also teach on the MAs that we have the really great MA in media for development and social change, and the MA in digital media as well. So the skills that they learn in podcasting modules are first the kind of concepts what makes a podcast a podcast, what are its unique and distinctive traits and characteristics? What can it do? And what does it do better than anything else? I teach narrative, I teach how to build a narrative, how to tell a story about how people relate to the world relate to really, really complicated things, through stories through narratives. And I teach them what's unique about podcast narrative, it is more intimate. There are moments of reflection, the host, the presenter is usually more involved and more there as a character who's on a journey with a listener, I also teach them how important it is to decide who your listener is really, really early, to have a really, really clear sense of who you want to listen to your podcast, an imagined listener. So we do exercises where we create avatars of listeners, for the podcasts that my students are producing. So they will go online, they'll go to Google Images, and they'll put in some key words that they think are connected with their imagined listener. And they'll get a picture of a person and they'll name that person. And they'll write up a paragraph or a page of a backstory of that person, who they are, what they like, what they do, where they work, what they study what kind of media they consume, and they they'll post that up in their production space, and use that as a kind of reference point to help them answer questions about decisions they have to make to help them decide on different things when they're making their podcast. And having a really clear description of the podcast that you can integrate into your social media profiles is really important knowing what you do in you know, 15 words or less what this podcast is really about integrating it into social media. So podcasting, unlike any other media was born into social media it is native to so Social media, Twitter that's been in the news recently. But many people don't know but but Twitter was originally for audio messages. It was for short audio messages. And it was born out of a podcast undertaking called audio. And it's kind of their you listen to podcasts on your phone, which is the same device that you use to engage with social media. So it's a really, really integrated media platform media undertaking. And so those are the concepts that I teach them. But then we also get really, really practical, we get our hands dirty, we make stuff all of my students start making stuff from day one. And in those practical exercises, practical workshops, that's where we put all those concepts together, where we actually bang them up against each other and try to make them work. And we produce podcasts that that are there on podcast aggregators, on podcast platforms. Next to professional podcast, one that I do every year with my MA students is a podcast called Borderscapes, which is about transitioning states crossing lines, crossing barriers, both kind of geopolitical and more metaphorical, and intrapersonal. And they all work on that whole podcast series. Some people work on the website, some people work on the trailers, some people work on distribution, some people work on sound music, some people work on the graphics, they all share in the promotion of it, and it goes out there and is going into our fourth season this year. And it's a you know, it's a really, really great thing to have this real thing out in the world. That is not an assignment that you submit for a grade in some university course. But something that is out there that real people can engage with. It's so it's so motivating for students.
Rhianna
It just sounds so incredible. I'm really sad this wasn't a thing when I was at university because it's the dream for somebody like me, just to go back to what you were saying about creating this avatar. Do you find that your students are creating work for themselves? So people like them? Or are they actually trying to go to much older audiences or audiences that they don't know a huge amount about?
Martin
Great question, most of the time they're producing for people like themselves. Some of the time... I have a student who's doing a podcast this year, about Chinese folk festivals for a British audience for a UK audience. So looking at the key folk festivals throughout the calendar year in China, and they're all attached to specific locations on the map in China, and talking about them dramatising the folktales that have given rise to these festivals to a UK audience. And that is that one is aimed at a slightly older audience. But I have a podcast that's being developed by a student who is talking about drinking imported beer and going to clubs and pubs in Brighton. That is perfectly for his 20 year old demo. And I have another podcast, which is really, really fantastic one called Who Rule the World that one of my students is producing, which is a kind of sex positive contemporary feminist podcast, about young women kind of not caught up in ideas of being victims, and being kind of powerful and progressive. And it's great. And I've, I have a bunch of other podcasts most of the time Rhianna, it's for students a student's age, but my graduate students are quite old, or they can be in their 30s as well. But But even with them the kind of it's always easier to try to identify or relate to people who are more or less in your demo, some of the time they push out of it.
Reem
Have any of them continued their podcasts after the university course.
Martin
Yes, yeah, yeah, I've had a bunch that have done really, really great work, continuing their podcast series, one of them a French student that I had three years ago, who did a podcast about dreams and the interpretation of dreams. Another one that I had, who was doing a podcast involved in a podcast platform through the course in London, about young, ethnically diverse people expressing themselves in South London. He was Nigerian. He took that model to Nigeria, and is now doing a hugely well funded podcast series about young entrepreneurs on the margins of Nigerian society called Climb and he's doing that in conjunction with the LSE in London. He's got a lot of funding and he's he's spearheading the podcast arm for Channels, which is the equivalent of ITV in Nigeria, the the largest independent media channel in Nigeria. area in Nigeria, you know big country 120 million people and he is on the forefront of introducing podcasting to more and more Nigerians. That's amazing.
Rhianna
So you were doing so much research presumably for your book. And you were also making your own podcast, For Your Ears. Were you doing in conjunction with each other or one followed the other.
Martin
So the first podcast that I produced with Lance Dann, who is my creative and research partner, he's at the University of Brighton I'm at the University of Sussex, he's right across the street, was a podcast called For Your Ears Only, which was based on the research that we did for the book Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, but we wanted to make it more accessible, more conversational, and even more fun. So we took interview excerpts from the people that we interviewed Jad Abumrad, Dana Chivas, Alex Bloomberg, all of these wonderful people. And we use them as actuality material in a larger conversation podcast, where Lance Dann and I would talk through the idea of intimacy and podcasting, the way narrative is structured in podcasting, the way audiences relate to podcasting and to each other through podcasts. The way drama has been reinvented on podcasts the way ethics are changing because of podcasts. And in each one of these episodes, we had a creative moment where we either did a little dramatisation, or some kind of montage, we had two producers, former students of mine, who were paid living wage rates to do it, working on these creative moments and putting it all together. And it's a really, really lovely podcast that's used by hundreds and hundreds of other people who are teaching podcasting around the world. That was the first one I did with Lance. Since then, we've been working on this really massive thing that we have been very, very lucky to get a lot of money to produce, called The Rez, which is a sci fi adventure drama for seven to 11 year olds baked into it, kindness, wellbeing, prosocial messages that we generated through conversations with the Psychology Department here at the University of Sussex, because they, they do a lot of research into children's media diets. And the way those diets affect their values and the way those values affect their long term well being and mental health. So they could tell based on the kind of media you're consuming, and the way you're engaging with it, whether you're more likely to end up with body image issues or OCD, when you're 19. Depending on the podcast you're listening to, or the TV you're watching or the YouTube, you're watching. When you're 11 years old. We made this fantastic thing that has cracked the top 20 in the UK cracked the top 20 in the US. And also now we because we've built PSHE lesson plans, curriculum resources for primary schools around it. So it's now being taught in over 120 schools in Britain. And it's you know, it's it's been a labour of love, hugely rewarding for me something that I involve lots of students in, but top notch professional we were nominated for a Webby. This last year shortlisted we were in the same category as Elmo and Story Pirates. That's when you know you've made it. Yeah. And Elmo and us lost to the Story Pirates. So damn those Pirates! But it was great.
Rhianna
That's incredible. I love this so much. It must have been some things that you picked up when you were doing your own podcast, you've made these two different, very different podcasts that you didn't know about when you were researching. Because obviously, there must be a very different thing between kind of reading and listening to compared to actually making so can you tell us a few insights that you might have picked up by the more kind of practical side of what you've done.
Martin
The practical side, actors are great; actors' agents can be a bit challenging. I'm just putting that out there. Other things that we've learned, I mean, I personally learned I had not done a podcast like The Rez, before I set off on that adventure with Lance. Planning is so incredibly important when you have a really, really complicated project. So for The Rez, there are probably 30 different people involved in different aspects of it. You need a really, really good Gantt chart, you need to have everything planned within an inch of its life. You need to be really, really prepared. The art of being a producer is the art of solving problems, right? So if you want to be a good producer, you have to be able to take stuff that comes at you randomly and deal with it well.
Reem
I just want to go back to the skills that you're teaching the students. You said that it's mostly practical work, but I'm assuming there's a bit of research as well and reading material that they're supposed to be given. And I'm a recent post grad student who did her dissertation on podcasting, and I couldn't find anything like it was a struggle trying to find good reading material on podcasting, considering it's so new. So what kind of things do you usually recommend to your students? Or do you make them listen to podcasts instead? Or from the get go just immediately get their hands dirty?
Martin
Did you find my book, Reem? Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution when you were...
Reem
I mean, probably but I've blacked out my dissertation at this point!
Martin
It's a good book, I highly recommend that one. There are other books out there now. The books since ours that have come out are much more niche. So you know their books about Serial, there are books about podcast journalism. I am the lead editor with Lance on the Bloomsbury podcast study series. So we've commissioned five titles in the series, which are going to come out starting next year over the next few years. There's a book on music and podcasting. There's a book on podcast drama, there's a book on masculinity and podcasting, there's a book on podcasting in the Latin world. So podcasting in Central and South America. There's a book on scholarly podcasting, and podcasting as a way of setting up communities of researchers, and more will come out when I'm teaching, I will have my students selfishly, perhaps read my own book, because it's the best material that I know the best. But I will point them to articles in journals and academic journals, but also I'll point them to these newer books that have come out. There are some practical books now that are quite good. They used to be slightly cheesy and written very quickly, but there's some quite good ones. Now there's one called Make Noise, which is very, very good. And one, I think, called Podcasting Made Simple, which is, is also very good. But in terms of listening, so I have them listen to a lot of podcasts that they like, and part of the learning, it's a kind of knowledge exchange, so I'm learning from them. They're introducing me to podcasts that I didn't know about. Every week, a handful students will do a very quick five minute presentation individually on podcasts that they like and that they listened to. And I discovered some really, really cool stuff from them. So I recently discovered Call Her Daaddy, do you guys know that one? Yes, yeah, it's quite a phenomenon. But in terms of listening in a more practical way, I have them listen to again, my own podcast For Your Ears Only. I have them listen to 20,000 Hertz, which is a sound design podcast, which is fantastic. Gimlet, the big podcast production house in New York, run by Alex Bloomberg, was recently acquired by Spotify recently, a few years ago, quoted by Spotify, they do a podcast called Gimlet Academy, which is also really good. And PodPod. I'm pointing them to PodPod. Up your game!
Rhianna
very well, and I love it. So you're mentioning sound design is one thing that you're obviously pushing them towards. And you were talking about social media, the importance of social media and podcasting. So do students sort of end up picking out a role that they want to do or do they trial absolutely everything do you kind of ensure that all of them get a chance on mic as well as off even if they're not necessarily keen?
Martin
I don't force anybody to be on mic who doesn't want to be on mic and plenty of them would rather work behind the glass. And that's totally fine. So in our MA module, everybody will work on promotion, because everybody has their own networks and own contacts, which can be brought into the mix of reaching out into the world and promoting a podcast. But there are teams that they will join. So there's a graphics team. There's a web team, there's a distribution team, there's a sound and music team. And they all have different jobs to do as teams and they report back to the group. So the classes the workshops are really production meetings, they are there, they resemble exactly a professional media production meeting, podcast production meeting, like I have for The Rez and other podcasts that I produce, they show what they've done, talk about what they've done, ask for input, asked for feedback, figure out what's working, figure out what's not working, get nudges from me and the other people around the table. My undergraduates are doing everything on their own, more or less. So they're building their own podcasts from the ground up and they take a longer time to do it. They do it over the course of a year rather than the course of a term. It's a slower burn. But they will often get people in to do bits and pieces that they need help with. So there are musicians in the School of Media Arts and Humanities here at Sussex. They will get musicians to write the music. They will get actors we have a drama department, they will get actors to do work in drama if they're doing drama or if they're doing a single narrator storytelling type podcast, but for the undergraduates I like for them to get their hands dirty in every aspect of the podcast making from the ideation and development through to the social media promotion.
Rhianna
And what about media law? Is that something that you teach students about on the module?
Martin
So media law in podcasting is a bit of a bit of a weird thing. Podcasting is international, there are different communication authorities in different countries, podcasting is still the wild west in a lot of ways. And that is really part of its charm. It's exciting, because there are no gatekeepers, because there are no commissioning editors, because there's no one telling you, you can't do this. You can't say those words, you could say anything as weird or as awful as it might be. The only set of laws that seems to be enforced now by the platforms are laws around copyright and music licencing. So platforms will kick your podcast off, and maybe sanction you in some other way. If you're using copyrighted music and you don't have permission to use it. So I teach them the law around Creative Commons music licencing public domain music, royalty free music licenced music, that is a bit of media law that it is important for me to imbue to them, because that is something that is going to have a consequence. But that kind of idea that there is no international podcast police is a really, really great thing, I think, at least at the moment. Another podcast that I've been doing for the past couple of years with a partner in the business school here at the University of Sussex, is called Agricultural Voices Syria, and Agricultural Voices Syria is a podcast that is designed to help farmers in the conflict zone of Syria, particularly northwest Syria, with information about irrigation, grafting, fertilising harvest times, a lot of information that the state used to provide to farmers as a part of support services. So we have agricultural experts from Syria, who are now living in Turkey across the border. And we've gotten them to produce this podcast series for the farmers in northwest Syria. And it exists above all discussions of media law, because the council's and the governments in much of the world, particularly in a conflict zone like Syria, they're not thinking about podcasting, it hasn't popped up on their radar yet. They don't know what it is, they don't know how to regulate it, it's not really something that they even register. So it's a very, very free space. And that has enabled us to get round a lot of otherwise really, really difficult hurdles that would have kept us from communicating with these farmers in really serious need in this conflict zone. So, you know, TV stations and radio stations are the first things that go they either get captured, taken over or blown up in a lot of conflict. So podcasting is a way because it is an outlaw space in a lot of ways. A free space is a way of circumventing those regulations and reaching people directly.
Reem
You mentioned podcasting being international, in your opinion, what are the biggest differences between the UK and the US markets and podcasting? And is that something that you also cover in your course?
Martin
I don't cover that too much, because I'm concerned to get students making podcasts in the world where they're at, which is in Britain at the moment. I do have international students, they do go home, they take their skills, and they go make podcasts. In North America, I've had plenty of American and Canadian students go and do that. But the kind of the main differences in the world between the US and the UK are the platformisation is further advanced in the US. So the big players, Spotify and Apple have become much more dominant much more quickly, and they are pushing out smaller players or absorbing smaller players buying them up. I mentioned Spotify buying gimlet a few years ago. There's this kind of real hunger on the part of the big players like Apple and Spotify to acquire lots and lots of content. And then they will periodically try to figure out a way to monetise it to put it behind paywalls. But so far, that has never worked. In my opinion. I've never seen a good successful example of paywall podcasting that has lasted more than a couple of years before it folded. So the kind of the commercialisation the monetisation, the platformisation of podcasting is further advanced in the US than it is in the UK. And in fact my podcast The Rez we are distributed by an American distributor Gen Z Media distributes us they're the largest producer of kids audio content in the world are now part of Wondery Kids, which is a part of Amazon, so even I, as I resist that neoliberal free market, deregulated free for all, you know, I've found myself having to play along in some way. So just as a kind of as an aside, the baddies in our series the res, their names are Jeff, Elon, and Zucks.
Rhianna
What are you trying to say, Martin?
Martin
It's for it's for 10 year olds, but their parents are also listening. So there are inside jokes for the parents. But things are further along in that. I don't want to say inevitable, but sometimes it feels like inevitable corporatisation and commercialisation. And I'm not against making a quid or a buck, we all have to kind of survive in that world, we have to figure out a way to make a living, pay the rent, pay the bills make our way and to make a profit and to bring in capital and to get people to invest in what we're doing by showing a potential for profit. All that's super important. And I do touch on that, to some extent in the modules that I teach. But that is a kind of higher level, meta level, more kind of Graduate Business School discussion that I have with most of my students.
Rhianna
I like that a quid or a buck something for the UK and the US listeners right there. So thinking about, obviously, your students from what you've been saying, have got such varied tastes in what they want to make podcasts about. Have you noticed that there is a tendency to make similar mistakes within the podcasting?
Martin
Definitely. Yeah, definitely. The most common mistake is, I'm just going to wing it. I've got a big personality, and that's going to carry me through. That's the biggest mistake. And that is the thing that I have to disabuse students of from a very, very early moment, like the first day of class is that these things, if you want them to be serious, if you want them to be taken seriously, they need to be planned, they need to be thought out, research needs to be done, contacts need to be made, networks need to be activated, you know, unless you are a giant celebrity already, unless you're a Scroobius Pip, or Stephen Colbert or Trevor Noah, you can't just press record, let it roll, and then have your intern upload it the next day. That's not, that's not what we're doing here.
Rhianna
It's the dream, though. It's the dream. We talked quite a lot about and as you sort of mentioned, as well, podcasting being a bit of a wild west, and especially I guess, in terms of financing it as well, you know, that's not always the easiest thing, or the most obvious thing. And there is the generations that have come before us don't really understand freelancing necessarily or certainly I don't know, it can't just be my parents who struggled with it initially. It's a really difficult thing to get over and get used to, I think. So with your students, they're entering into this world where freelancing is more and more common. Are they still looking for kind of more salaried positions? Or are they quite up for working independently?
Martin
That's a great question. The gig economy is a real thing. And it doesn't feel like it's going away as much as you or I might like jobs to be more stable. Most of my students are prepared to work as broad media professionals with a media portfolio that they can take to a bunch of different employers. So I have a lot of students who end up doing, they will have studied podcasting with me, but they will end up working for a company be it a publisher or a media company doing a bunch of different jobs. So working on the company's social media campaign, working on their YouTube channel and producing a podcast for them. I have students who have gotten solid salaried jobs at production companies. And within the past few years, more and more at audio book companies, so publishing companies who are branching out into audiobooks. I've had three students recently who have gotten jobs with audio book publishers, which is great. I have students who will go back to their home countries and get jobs in the public broadcaster in their home country, doing specific work for them, be it project work or being more integrated into the large structure of the organisation, but most of them are quite realistic about what the future lies in the world of media production and they are preparing to do things as a freelancer. I have a really, really great student from two years ago now, who I mentioned before. He was Nigerian, he went to Nigeria, went to the biggest TV company in Nigeria, who didn't have any podcasts. This was only two years ago and said, Hey, let me be your podcast person, let me bring podcasting to you and bring your content to the rest of Nigeria through podcasting. And he made for himself a permanent job at Channels, at that company. So you really do have to take initiative, there is a tonne of entrepreneurial energy and spirit that's needed if you're a gigging producer. But also, if you want to get one of those salaried, stable jobs, then having that ability to recognise the need, and to present yourself and your idea as the resolution to that need for a company is a really important skill.
Rhianna
Absolutely is, I love that story.
Reem
Having seen this success story that you've mentioned, and I'm sure you've had so many more success stories with your students. What do you see as the next generation of podcasting looking like based on all of the students that you've had?
Martin
Wow, that's a really great question. The next generation of podcasting, I think, is podcasting that is even more integrated into social media. I think people's feeds are going to become more integrated across platforms. And those feeds are going to include podcasts and I see my students, I see the next generation of podcasters, facilitating podcasts for other people, helping other people make podcasts that they want to make. So a lot of work in equipping people to make podcasts and training people to make podcasts. So this Syrian project that I was talking about for Syrian farmers called Agricultural Voices Syria, I don't speak Arabic. My colleagues don't speak Arabic, the podcasts needed to be in Arabic. What we did was we trained these expat agricultural experts living in Turkey, how to make podcasts. And they did it and they've taken it forward, and they've carried on with it beyond us. So I think more of recognising that you don't have to have your name on a podcast to work in podcasting, I think that is definitely a thing going forward. The other future is a kind of bigger, more behemoth future, I do see more consolidation. I do see players like Apple and Spotify and Anchor, taking up more space on the spectrum. And I do see those outfits, employing lots of people, maybe not necessarily to make episodes of podcasts, but to to kind of identify good podcast, identify other talent, to tinker with the algorithms to curate playlists for people, I think, subscription services, where people are going to be hired to curate podcast playlists for other people and other companies. I think that is something that is in the future of podcasting and got something that the next generation is going to be able to do and do well.
Rhianna
It's such an exciting time. You've really kind of made me infused for what's to come. Martin Spinelli, thank you so much for joining us on PodPod. It's been invaluable having you on.
Martin
Rhianna, thank you so much for having me. It's been a delight. I really enjoyed it.
Rhianna
That was professor of podcasting Martin Spinelli, who picked up on some points in kind of student podcasting, which I think are invaluable if you look at the wider world of podcasting, and I love especially how innovative his students sound. And it makes me so excited for the next generation of podcasters. And I know, new people are coming up all the time. But I do find it so brilliant, that they're engaged enough that they want to learn the craft of podcasting, and as well as just kind of sticking a microphone in front of themselves and speaking, Adam, what really stood out for you?
Adam
One of the things that really jumped out at me was that a good chunk of his students are international students and are coming here doing the course, kind of picking up the craft of podcasting and then taking it back to their home countries and kind of introducing podcasting into that media landscape. The example he mentioned around the student that he worked with, from Nigeria, I thought was particularly kind of compelling in that regard.
Reem
What's interesting about that is we were talking to someone this week, a producer, who is talking about podcasting and how right now we say that podcasting is no longer emerging. It's emerged because it's already such a big part of everyone's brand in the UK, but, when you look at other countries, it is still emerging in other countries, and it's not as advanced as it is here. And they also specifically pointed out in Africa, the market where you have a lot of influencers and you have very highly engaged audiences, podcasting is something that is building up in a very positive way. So it's just it's really interesting to see how the course in the UK can help them develop that skill sets and get the experience to create their own podcasts and then be able to take it to another place where they're just going to be able to introduce it to a whole new audience.
Rhianna
Why do you think that the UK is such a leading voice in podcasting?
Adam
Three letters: BBC.
Rhianna
So it's our kind of great history of radio broadcasting that has absolutely... and TV, I suppose. I suppose. She says, I suppose,
Adam
genuinely, though, I think radio more than anything else, because the UK has a phenomenal local radio infrastructure, which has been kind of really fueled by the BBC, particularly in regional areas, which has done a lot to distribute kind of broadcast and production skills over a wider area than TV where a lot of that is concentrated in London, and to a lesser extent, kind of more northerly hubs like Manchester and whatnot, whereas radio is a lot more distributed. And also the BBC, because of its long established heritage, is a world leader in terms of the quality of not just the production and the audio side of things, but the journalism and the programming and the scheduling, and all of the sort of peripheral infrastructure, if you like that supports it. And then you combine that with the commercial radio sector, you know, companies like Global and Bauer, that have had a sort of slightly different hand in developing that side of things. It's had a real impact. And I think, you know, going back to what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago with Ross Adams and the US market, because the US market has a phenomenally large and successful commercial radio sector that has also fueled the growth of podcasting in a, perhaps a slightly different direction in terms of the content and commercialisation. But the the impact of that strong radio sector, I think, can be seen in both cases,
Rhianna
is really, really, really strong parallel, Reem was there anything else that stood out for you from what Martin was saying about his podcasting students?
Reem
He just seemed very passionate during the interview, he just seemed to really see that there's a big future for all of his students. And it was great to hear that there was a few of them that have went on after the course and continued to develop their podcasts and actually got a lot of success from it. So I think it's a very exciting time for a new generation in podcasting where it's a lot of young people that are learning and it's and they're getting those that type of support from industry professionals. So yeah, it was just it was great to see the way he treated them.
Rhianna
Reem Makari, Adam Shepherd, thank you so much for joining me to talk all about the craft of podcasting. Thank you so much for listening. You can find out as we said so much more on podpod.com And it sounds like now is a really good time to delve in to the website because so much is happening. So many podcast launches, and you can sign up to our daily email bulletins to make sure that you never miss anything. Follow us on social at podpodofficial and if you get the chance, please subscribe to make sure that you never miss an episode of PodPod thanks again to Reem Makari and Adam Shepherd for their brilliant insights and Martin Spinelli. The podcast is produced by Emma Corsham for Haymarket Business Media, and I'm your host Rianna Dhillon. I'll see you next week. Bye.
