Podcasting is obviously a really important part of my business, and the exciting thing is that there’s a LOT of potential for growth. If you look at the numbers, there are less than a million active podcasts out there. Compare that to YouTube and blogs, those numbers are about five hundred million each. It’s why I’m so dedicated to helping you get your own podcast out there with my Amp’d Up Podcasting and Power Up Podcasting courses, and why I wanted to sit down with my friend and co-conspirator Matt Gartland, COO and CFO of Flynndustries LLC. We talk about the state of podcasting in 2019: what we’re thinking about, what tools we’re excited about, and where there’s room for innovation.

The biggest news that we talk about is Spotify’s recent acquisition of two key podcasting businesses: Gimlet Media and Anchor.fm. With Gimlet, they have a powerhouse production team that puts out great shows like Startup and Reply All. With Anchor.fm, they have a publishing platform that makes it easier for people to get from having an idea to actually publishing a podcast. For Matt, it means that they’re establishing the kind of end-to-end ownership they need to create a walled garden of content. That gives them all sorts of options for innovation with the way they do ads, pay models, and more.

From there, we talk a lot about the innovations we’re dying to see in the podcast space, like recommended content and more analytics for creators. Matt and I have actually been doing some work in this space, so if you haven’t checked out the WordPress plugin we created for podcasting, be sure to visit SmartPodcastPlayer.com. We also go through the tools we use to fill in the gaps. There’s a lot of information packed into this episode, but the bottom line is that there has never been a better time to start podcasting, so get out there!