This million-dollar industry called podcasts

Everyone seems to have a podcast these days; David Tennant, Dua Lipa, Paul Scheer, Lance Bass, Lavar Burton, Minnie Driver, etc.

If you know a celebrity, musician, artiste, poet, or author with a sparkling personality, either they have just created a podcast or they have been running one for years. Podcasting is a billion-dollar business.

The industry’s star started rising in the mid-2010s. And then the pandemic came and forced the world into lockdown, giving people no other choice but to devote themselves to online entertainment.

Suddenly, podcasters with years of experience in the field and barely any listeners became overnight successes, earning millions of dollars in ad revenue annually. You also saw an explosion of video podcasts on YouTube, along with pre-existing YouTube channels that introduced an audio-only podcast version of their long-form videos.

Africa is not immune to this trend. Ugandan celebrities are already toying with the idea of starting a podcast because they can see the writing on the wall. Podcasts are the future. Podcasts are kind of like radio.

You sit down and listen to them. But unlike radio, anyone can make a podcast. You don’t have to restrict yourself to a small crop of radio personalities you may not even like. Here, you have access to a variety of voices that match your distinct preferences.

Also, you know those moments where a radio conversation is finally getting good, but then they cut it short because they only have a small 15 to 20-minute gap in their schedule for your favourite topic?

That does not happen with podcasts because podcasting personalities run everything. They can keep any given episode going for as many hours as they want. This allows them to explore every subject as thoroughly as viewers would like.

The subject matter is equally diverse. You know that rolex maker (the food, not the watch) in your neighbourhood with the hilarious stories? He could start a podcast today where he amuses listeners with his chapatti adventures.

The same goes for that charming hairdresser, cobbler who knows everything about everything, that supermarket attendant who seemingly chats everyone up, the banking clerk with an observant eye: basically, if you can think of a topic, some random person has a podcast about it. I’m not talking about one or two individual episodes.

People make entire podcasts designed to dissect niche topics from every conceivable angle. If you don’t believe me, consider one podcast by Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce in which they investigate and explain every person, place, and thing mentioned in a single Billy Joel song (We Didn’t Start The Fire).

You read that right. Someone made a podcast with dozens of episodes about a single song. There’s also The Empty Bowl (dedicated to breakfast cereal), Containers (focused on shipping containers), Haptic and Hue (talking about textiles), Kurt Vonneguys (obsessing over every written Kurt Vonnegut work), Eerie Essex (studying ghost stories from Essex, England), A Way With Words (concerned with language use), and more.

Someone actually made a podcast (Emer and Esther) in which two women tour their country while trying different Sunday roasts (traditional British meal). Therein lies the primary appeal of podcasts.

The human race has created a whopping 4.4 million podcasts so far. Think about that. People blame this medium’s popularity on its convenience. You listen to podcasts. You don’t have to watch them.

This allows you to do other things while learning about your favourite subjects. However, the depth and variety at your fingertips are a much bigger draw. It does not matter what you like.

If you care about it, someone has probably made a podcast about it. And access has never been easier. A Spotify subscription will cost you Shs 10,000 a month. Don’t wait. Start browsing.

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