Matthew Revell

There’s been a bit of talk, recently, about “monetising” podcasts. Y’know, what we’d call “making money” out of podcasts. It was inevitable and is far from a bad thing.

Sure, there’ll be attempts by a few of those really odd looking blokes who run the so-called marketing websites - the ones with five or six screens of ridiculous, hyperactive copy that try to sell you their latest book o’bullshit. But every now and then, there’ll be someone who has a good idea, which they implement well, and manage to make a little cash from, without appearing to completely sell out.

Podshows has been set up by a couple of DJs, who recently ended their stints with national radio stations, and apparently were behind turning the crazy frog ringtone into a “song”. The idea seems to be this: gather together a few DJs who used to have a national radio show, let them continue to record something very similar, then charge people to listen to it streamed on the internet.

The Podshows website gives a rather bold, and frankly inaccurate, introduction to their concept:

Let’s face it who wants radio anymore? The reason you bought an MP3 player is because you want to hear what you want, when you want. That’s where podshows.com comes in - it’s the world’s first website to give you unique downloadable radio shows.

I can think of at least one other site that offers “unique downloadable radio shows”, but let’s put that aside for now. In their FAQs section, you’ll learn that not all the shows are downloadable: you have to pay your 99p first, though, to find out which ones are only available as a stream. They blame it on licensing, adding vaguely that they’ll have it all sorted in a few weeks.

You may be able to tell that I’m not really sold on Podshows. I think it’s great that someone’s trying to make money from internet broadcasting, again, but these guys need to do a bit more thinking, if they’re going to succeed. For a start, there’s a touch of, “it’s okay, podcasting is proper now that we radio DJs are here”, to the whole thing. Secondly, they seem to believe that their content is sufficiently compelling that people will want to pay to hear it. Lastly, I feel their segmentation is a bit confused: i.e. they’re hoping to appeal to too many different people.

Of the shows currently on their site, two are essentially continuations of what the founders did on their Radio 1 and Virgin Radio shows: Wes Butters does a Top 40 run down and Darryl Denham plays music, with his “hilarious” comedy interludes. Also available are both Paul Gambaccini’s Jazz and Classical Top 40 run downs and an ancient Kenny Everett pilot show. There’s more, but these particular shows illustrate what I believe to be a rather scattergun approach to finding their audience.

If anything, it’s the Jazz Top 40 that will find them an audience. Guardian Media Group’s Jazz FM will soon become the insipid-sounding Smooth FM, ditching Gambaccini’s show in the process. Jazz is under-represented on UK radio, with just a couple of shows on Radios 2 and 3 to keep fans happy. So, Gambaccini’s show does fill a gap and has an established audience, even if it’s not large enough for the Grauniad. There’s also a promising-sounding monthly show about the British comedy scene. I imagine there could even be one or two dedicated Kenny Everett fans who are desperate to hear that pilot.

But do we really need yet another Top 40 chart show, when Radio 1 and at least two syndicated commercial shows, already do that? Is there an audience of Wes Butters fans willing to pay 99p to hear him do what every other chart music station already offers for free? And I don’t understand what most of the shows will offer that I can’t already get from my local Emap or Capital/GWR station. In fact, if I’m going to have to stream most of it anyway, Shoutcast links to hundreds of free streams and there are countless commercial stations offering streams covering just about everything that Podshows does.

If they get the licensing sorted, enabling them offer downloadable MP3s, then the 99p may be justified. They’ll also have to offer more original ideas, perhaps targeting niche audiences: generic 90s, 80s and 70s themed shows just aren’t different enough.

I know it doesn’t sound like it but I do hope Podshows succeeds. If they do, they’ll show commercial radio that its reign won’t remain unchallenged.