Podcasts are a source of information and entertainment, they deliver aha moments or gripping excitement. And they are one thing above all: a medium that enables everyone to find something interesting in what is now a huge range. Grit Leithäuser, Managing Director of Radiozentrale, spoke to ROLLING STONE about the current and future role of podcasts in entertainment and about the German Podcast Award. “Self-praise is always funny, but we all put together an award that the German podcast scene needs and deserves,” says the co-organizer of the event, at which this year’s podcast stars will be honored on June 23, 2022 will.
Podcasts in focus: Interview with Grit Leithäuser
ROLLING STONE: What actually makes a strong podcast?
GRIT LEIHAUSER: There are many answers to this question, but one crucial one in particular: the podcast must be relevant to the listener. And now, of course, it’s going to be diverse, because whatever you like is relevant. Podcasts are often used for training and as a source of information. It’s about specialist topics in certain professional fields, the background to social developments, etc. A good example is still the podcast on the topic of Corona by Prof. Drosten, because he provided up-to-date background information and analyzed highly complex things in a way that the listeners could understand. But it can also be an exciting report, a conversation, elaborate audio productions, emotional narratives on topics that are not otherwise discussed in society, sports or music topics, comedy and so on. In short: The range of content of podcasts is very large and ranges from niche topics to celebrity mainstream podcasts.
With the German Podcast Award, on the other hand, there are fixed criteria according to which the crowd jury evaluates the submissions. Hence the decision to identify formats as categories, such as “Best journalistic performance”, where you can apply really tangible criteria. But to say in general that “this is a recipe for success” is, in my opinion, not possible. And to be honest, that’s what makes the genre so exciting for everyone involved. If you want to say something universally valid that makes a good podcast, then it is probably the mixture of experience, craftsmanship and passion.
How can you get attention with your own podcast these days?
No question, the market is getting bigger and there are more and more productions. This is also due to the fact that podcasts can be produced without a lot of equipment and this is also getting better and better. From my point of view, podcasts are like Instagram, only with auditory content. On the one hand, it is important to clearly and concisely get to the heart of the special feature or unique selling point of the podcast. Or as the saying goes: A good idea fits on a beer coaster. To arouse curiosity and then keep this promise. On the other hand, the podcast must appear on a regular basis and the podcast must be continuously promoted. For example via social media channels, which tease each release of a new episode and pick up content. The community has to be activated and addressed again and again, and preferably an exchange with it has to be sought.
For celebrities who start a podcast, it is of course much easier because there is media interest per se and the community has already been built up in other ways and is being expanded by the podcast, so to speak.
What was the motivation to create the German Podcast Award?
As with almost all large projects and ideas, the prize was not initially born with a firm intention, but in a small circle as an idea within a small discussion group. The question was: why not give podcasts and thus the great creators the big stage they deserve? As other countries have already done with similar podcast awards. Because podcasts inspire so many people and you mostly only hear the voices. So it would be appropriate that the faces behind it should be put in the public spotlight on this day.
And of course it should also show the variety of topics and formats podcasts have to offer and give the listener a bit of orientation in this large podcast offer. In many further discussions, thirteen leading players in the audio industry were rounded up and everyone was immediately enthusiastic about the idea. Then the sleeves were rolled up and the first German Podcast Prize was set up from an idea with a lot of enthusiasm and joint forces.
What are the criteria for nominations and who decides who wins in which category?
As already mentioned, we have agreed on formats for the categories of the German Podcast Award. The reason for this is that we didn’t want to identify topics such as sport, music or science individually, because otherwise there would be an incredible number of categories and even worse: we might not have taken thematic areas into account. That’s why there are seven categories for this year’s award: “Best Script / Best Author”, “Best Interviewer”, “Best Talk Team”, “Best Production”, “Best Newcomer”, “Best Journalistic Achievement” and “Independent”. Incidentally, the latter was introduced last year in exchange with the community to give independent podcasts more presence. And then there is the audience award, where the listeners decide which podcast wins the race. In order to show more diversity here as well, this year’s audience award was divided into four sub-categories: “Knowledge”, “News & Politics”, “Comedy” or “Lifestyle”. Incidentally, every podcast submitted automatically takes part in the audience award and has the chance to convince the listeners.
Nominees and ultimately also the winners in the seven categories outside of the audience award will be determined by a crowd jury, which this year consists of around 200 experts who are closely connected to the audio industry, professionally or privately. So selected podcasters, producers, moderators, editors, specialist journalists, authors and publishers. This judging process is divided into two phases and the nominees and winners are determined by awarding points. The jury is based on a catalog of rules according to which criteria the podcasts are evaluated in the respective category. For the crowd jury, this is a real auditory challenge given the many submissions, but it gives you a good overview of the current German podcast landscape and you will certainly notice many exciting new formats for yourself.
What is the status of the award ceremony today?
Self-praise is always weird, but we all put together an award that the German podcast scene needs and deserves. This year we again have a higher number of submissions than in the two previous years, even cracked the thousand mark. This is a big indication that the award is important for the podcasters. The podcast community also reflects this to us and we often hear that the winners are quite proud to have won the award. And whoever has won often submits it again the following year, which is also an indication that the incentive to hold the trophy in your hands is very high.
That’s one side, from the podcaster’s point of view. But then there are the listeners who vote for their favorite podcast in the audience voting. This year over 600,000 took part in the voting. From my point of view, this is a real house number. All of this shows us that we are on the right path. And this year there is the icing on the cake, because for the first time we will award the prize live and duly celebrate the winners on the evening. This was not possible in the first two years due to Corona, but will be made up for this year. So we really have something planned for June 23rd in Berlin.
What are the current podcast trends and what does the future of podcasts look like?
There is a YouGov poll every year about podcasts, asking for the most popular genres etc. In the last survey, the four genres “Knowledge”, “News & Politics”, “Comedy” and “Lifestyle” were the strongest representatives. As mentioned at the beginning, podcasts are often used as further education and as a source of information and the topic of entertainment is also an important component. In terms of content, the range of topics is already very large. And that will remain so, or rather there is still a lot of potential. Because as long as there are people, there will be stories to talk about and learn from. But what also needs to be said is that podcast standards are getting higher. In terms of quality, people today have different expectations of podcasts than they did three or four years ago. You need a clear concept and good recording quality. The times when you could just sit in front of a microphone and start talking are over in my opinion.
As far as the market as a whole is concerned, the number of listeners will continue to grow, as has been the case in recent years. Today, one in three listens to a podcast and a quarter of people even listen to it weekly. There will also be a large increase here in the coming years. All in all, audio and listening are booming and podcasts are the perfect complement to daily radio. No wonder that many podcasts are also produced and offered by radio stations. Otherwise, the market is in motion as far as the question of marketing is concerned. Corporate podcasts will gain in importance and of course new sound options such as 3D audio will be tried out to make the listening experience even more exciting.
But it’s also the case that the bigger the market gets, more and more people want a piece of the pie. In other words, the market is being fiercely contested by marketers, publishers etc. and will probably also consolidate a bit. But the potential of podcasts is great. It is not for nothing that many large companies and audio providers invest a lot of money in order to position themselves. And this because the proceeds are already good, but mainly because they see the development of podcasts. And looking at the US, where the podcast market is clearly the most advanced podcast market in the world, expect to see $1 billion worth of ad revenue coming from that market. The podcast development is already well advanced and is still in its infancy when you look at the potential.
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