Month: April 2007
Podcast User Magazine Has A Competitor
The podcast magazine space has just changed with the advent of Blogger and Podcaster magazine.
The much-employed aphorism about imitation being flattery is fairly easy to employ, with much similarity to existing and well-established online podcasting publication Podcast User Magazine clearly evident – but B&P could be flattering to deceive. The first issue isn’t bad, and it can definitely improve.
This new kid on the block looks like it’s doing a few things PUM aren’t, including having a sharp eye on revenue. They seem to be well organised, spending money and selling themselves as the first professional podcast magazine. They are also offering in multiple formats, and it could be said that this throws a gauntlet down to PUM, which has remained staunchly written-not-spoken since launch.
All of which leads me to take a long hard look at this unique, podcaster-centred project. Despite a good-sized audience, a developed sense of self, and a brand both smart and obvious, PUM is still not widely recognised outside of podcasting. PUM has not been marketed aggressively since it’s birth, and this is no criticism. It can easily be argued that this relaxed, semi-commercial, blog-based, collegiate attitude is the online magazine’s charm, and the team of intelligent, enthusiastic practitioner-contributor podcaster-writers a major reason for it’s widespread appeal among podcast afficionados, producers, viewers and listeners.
More seriously, although the magazine carries regular, high quality, niche content, PUM has not been anywhere near monetized to it’s potential, and despite a lot of drumming up advertising revenue, no inroads have yet been made into lucrative pastures such as Real Life publishing syndication, which surely holds the promise of greater reward to the writers and editors for their thousands of hours of unpaid work.
Can Bloggers and Podcasters keep the content coming? If they can, then they will inevitably grow their readership. Is this likely to impact upon PUM’s ever-increasing readership? Probably, and possibly that won’t be negative. There are many more potential readers out there than are currently reached by PUM’s marketing, and some of these will be alerted by B&P’s launch.
But until the recent launch of B&P, having seen off early opposition, PUM had no serious competitors. Will another podcast magazine crowd PUM and make it difficult for them to achieve wider visibility and cross over into mainstream media? This is more threatening to the ultimate scale of the success of PUM, if not to the magazine’s continued existence. They are unlikely to lose their currently loyal readership, but as new people come into podcasting, without increasing promotion and adopting more aggressive marketing, they could lose their position as the main contender for the podcast consumer / industry crown.
PUM’s recently reorganised management will now have to look soberly and hard at this new publication as it attempts to differentiate itself and sell itself to businesses, the professional end of the scene.
PUM may be the current “market leader” but their respectable online success does not guarantee it a place in the future. There is competition, and it will be fascinating to see how this shapes the new PUM.
