New media celebrates podcast and their content creators. But all podcasts are not equal. This fact will eventually cause the podcast fad [and it is a fad] to fade. Yeah... Podcasts are becoming less, and less, viable. Why?
The podcast problem is "the revenue model" they use. They earn money via clicks rather than through the promotion of quality content. Click, click, click... Many podcasts today share guests [talent] and advertisers [funders]. Many rely upon the same platforms [YouTube, Rumble, etc] to deliver their content. Many podcast revenue models seem to genuinely confuse the importance of quantity with quality when it comes to recruiting new paying consumers. Finally podcasts are being drawn into the modern political web of broadcasting - this takes them away from their unique content advantage.
What will undermine podcasts is Artificial General Intelligence [AGI]. As AGI becomes the accepted "user interface" for learning, entertainment, hobbies, empowerment, and earnings it will disintermediate podcasts. AGI will become a one-to-many transformer [one is "the user" and the many is "the universe"]. This one-to-many relationship is the opposite to the many-to-one relationship created [and sustained] by any successful podcast.
I predict that the rise, and rise, of AGI applications will destroy the interest and market appetite for podcasts. Plus... The low quality content inside podcasts [that are about to prosper] will lead to the ultimate demise of this podcast fad. Or something like that.
Richard
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