Things You Don’t Hear at a Podcast Conference
Produced by Lina Prestwood (UK 2024)
55 min
Is it an alternative keynote? A lament? A provocation? Or an incitement to revolt? You decide.
With more than a whiff of the corporate in an industry that appears to champion and bolster the indie spirit, some audio conferences can feel like deeply incongruent spaces. Keynotes are usually about markets, ad revenue and content buckets from men (and it is usually men) who appear to have been born in the boardroom - and the big story they tell is of the exciting growth! growth! GROWTH! of the audio space. They value our small shows and our brilliant creativity, they tell us. Bring us your best ideas, they say.
Yet, that’s often not what it feels like for many of the producers in that very audience. Right now, being an audio producer has never been harder, more volatile or more exhausting. And if your show doesn’t come with a dead body or celebrity at the centre of it, it can feel nigh-on impossible to get away.
So, with that incongruence in mind, for the inaugural XMTR audio festival, Scenery Studios asked a selection of producers and creative audio champions to share how they’re really, truly navigating being creative producers in the podcast industry in September 2024.
And that’s EXACTLY what we got - and way, way more - from:
Talia Augustidis // Jasmin Bauomy // Benbrick // Davy Gardner // Sarah Geis // Axel Kakoutié // Starlee Kine // Anna Sinfield // Julie Shapiro // Shreya Sharma // Deborah Shorindè // Ross Sutherland
Just like the live audience at the XMTR festival, follow along with this handout - it shares the questionnaire they responded to, their biogs, the two questions we asked the audience after – and the responses we gathered from a brainstorm about how we might start to better advocate for the creative health of our podcast industry.
It will live here for three weeks on the XMTR Listen Page / Player until 5th November
Transcript available here.