To rejoice this new partnership, we threw a launch occasion at our London workplace the place attendees found extra in regards to the model alternatives throughout the Immediate Media Portfolio. They additionally had the possibility to fulfill HistoryExtra hosts Ellie Cawthorne and Dr. David Musgrove.
For the Record had the possibility to take a seat down with Ben Youatt, Immediate Media’s Head of Podcasts, and Dr. David Musgrove, who, along with being a bunch for HistoryExtra, additionally serves as a Content Director at Immediate Media, to be taught extra about how podcasting is evolving and what makes this partnership so thrilling.
Immediate Media has been in publishing within the U.Ok. for fairly a while. How has podcasting modified the sport for media manufacturers?
Ben: Podcasting has allowed publishers to create a wholly new technique of constructing relationships with their customers and listeners as a result of podcasting is constructed round intimacy. The nature of spending 40 minutes of your private time listening to hosts and visitors you have an interest in has allowed publishers to garnish an extremely loyal and closely engaged viewers in a means that’s distinctive to the format.
Podcasts have additionally allowed publishers to make extra environment friendly use of their content material. At Immediate Media we make use of well-organized modes of manufacturing and 360-degree content material methods to make sure one piece of content material not sits in a single location. A podcast can simply generate video, social, and written content material, serving to our prospects get essentially the most out of their passions, whatever the platform they use.
Tell us extra in regards to the partnership between Immediate Media and Spotify.
Ben: Our manufacturers already shine within the podcast area and attain a world viewers, so a renewed give attention to scaling our viewers growth throughout the podcast portfolio is vital to our income progress. Not solely by the continued success of our flagship HistoryExtra podcast, but additionally by the methods we have now in place for the total portfolio of manufacturers we characterize. We are excited to develop our relationship with Spotify and Megaphone to guarantee that our household-name manufacturers attain new audiences.
In addition to reaching a powerful 200 million downloads, HistoryExtra just lately celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. What are a few of the key elements behind the present’s success?
David: We’ve targeted on high quality conversations from the beginning, with world-leading visitors and consultants on the present. We’ve additionally introduced essentially the most thrilling and cutting-edge historians to the ears of our listeners. And crucially, we’ve dedicated to releasing episodes at a daily cadence—and rising that cadence to swimsuit listener demand—which implies that our listeners can belief that they’re going to get a top quality product frequently. That issues while you’re selecting which podcast to subscribe to.
But we’ve additionally invited the listeners to be a part of our group. We’ve given them alternatives to submit their inquiries to our consultants in our very fashionable “Everything You Want To Know” episodes, and delivered our HistoryExtra podcast e-newsletter to allow them to discover out what’s developing on the present and get entry to additional content material on-line.
How does Immediate Media’s coming to Spotify assist the present proceed to develop and thrive?
David: I’m hoping it’s going to give us a possibility to achieve out to much more listeners and serve our high quality, trusted content material to an excellent wider viewers. From a business perspective we’re equally enthusiastic about utilizing information and shared learnings to discover how we enhance model rely to work with companions throughout all classes, from finance to meals, motoring to journey, fast-moving shopper items to leisure.
The profit of getting such a big, extremely engaged viewers is that we’re related to so many advertisers. And so with Spotify’s huge audio gross sales operation and impressive plans, it makes for a really thrilling journey forward.
What are you most enthusiastic about for this subsequent chapter of the HistoryExtra podcast?
David: We’ll be carrying on with the favored strands that we already do and ensuring that we e book the perfect historians and canopy essentially the most thrilling analysis tasks within the months forward.
We even have some nice multipart investigative sequence on the best way that discover well timed matters just like the American civil rights motion, the beginning of the First World War, and the story of the First Crusade. And we’ll introduce a brand new interview format referred to as “Contested Reputations” the place we’ll ask historians to contemplate how the legacies of key historic figures have modified over time.
Anything you possibly can share about what’s coming from Immediate Media in 2023?
Ben: We have a lot of thrilling new codecs and reveals that we’ll be releasing in 2023. And we have now an thrilling growth alternative coming for HistoryExtra, to develop and develop new audiences with a give attention to focusing on particular matters that we all know our listeners are keen about.
We even have an enormous array of movie star expertise coming to our portfolio. The Radio Times Podcast has already hosted visitors akin to Will Ferrell and Daniel Radcliffe, and with our new Top Gear sequence, we’ll be specializing in celebrities from the world of motorsport akin to Jenson Button. We don’t wish to give an excessive amount of away simply but, however I believe it will likely be an thrilling 12 months for our manufacturers within the audio area.
Want to find extra from Immediate Media? Stream the HistoryExtra podcast beneath.