Founder’s Note

Being a founder is a wild ride and you sometimes I wonder why people actually want to go through all the craziness while never really being sure if success is just around the corner or a million miles away. But then I remember that starting your own company gives you freedom to do your own thing, lets you explore new ideas, can give you purpose, meaning, flexibility, excitement, and tones of fun. Let me just give you a few examples.

Currently, I am redesigning my little studio in my office to be more visually appealing. I want to create an a space that sounds good, looks good and creates a cool and clean vibe to create captivating content. I just love to get into the “handy man” mode and work physically and create something.

Another exciting opportunity that is coming up next week is “Transforming Media” by Medien Netzwerk Bayern in Würzburg, Germany. I was invited to speak to SMEs and publishers about corporate podcasting. My focus will be on the potential of podcasts for niche/specialized companies to establish corporate thought leadership. It will be the first time for me talking about this topic in front of a bigger crowd.

And on Thursday this coming week, I am going to Berlin to attend the German Startup Award, not as a nominee nor as a jury member, but to make a podcast for Business Punk. The winner of the German Startup Award will record a podcast for our format How to Hack directly from the event. I just love how podcast have become such a versatile medium. Looking forward to spending some time in Berlin again.

And then there are all the conversations that you get to have when you run a corporate podcast business with experts about the industry, the latest innovations, and the different developments and trends that are currently taking place and shape. Of course, one of the big ones this week was Spotify’s announcement to display ‘Plays’ for podcasts had people run wild. Former Ogilvy Germany & Jung von Matt CEO Thomas Strerath, for example asked the question, if this new transparency will be the end of small podcasts and that brings me to this weeks big topic. Let’s jump right in…

The Big Topic

Quick thought experiment: if you handed in your resignation tomorrow to chase full‑time creator glory, where would you set up shop? TikTok? YouTube? Maybe LinkedIn if boardrooms are your natural habitat. Notice what doesn’t crack the top three: your favourite podcast app. Not because we don’t adore the intimacy of an RSS feed, but because it’s still maddeningly hard to cover the rent with one.

On YouTube, 55 % of every ad dollar slides straight into the creator’s wallet. TikTok’s Creativity Program hovers around a dollar per thousand views, and that’s before you tally the brand deals that trail every viral clip. In podcasting, even respectable mid‑tier shows are left heavily drumming up some host‑read spots, sponsorship one‑pagers, and a Patreon link stapled to the outro. Revenue share in audio is basically DIY.

Platforms often treat creator payouts like a cost centre, yet history keeps proving the opposite: it’s the yeast that makes the pie rise. Lower the friction to grow an audience, promise a clean slice of the upside, and creators double‑down. They pocket some cash, then pour the rest back into better mics, maybe an editor, bigger guests, smarter promotion. Quality rises, audiences grow, advertisers follow the attention, CPMs climb, and the platform ends up banking a fatter slice of a much larger pie. You can sketch it on a whiteboard and label it “The YouTube Flywheel,” but the mechanism is universal.

What do the video kids have to teach audio? First, discovery is the big one. YouTube’s recommendation graph and TikTok’s For You feed are rocket fuel, whereas most podcast players still offer a wall of album art and a search bar that feels like AltaVista in 1998 (and some might say you need to be tight with the people working for the platforms to get on the discovery page). Second, scalable ad inventory matters. Host‑reads are gold, but programmatic dynamic insertion - paired with automatic (and better) rev‑share - would let any podcaster, even the 600‑download niche show, see a paycheck. Third, we need engagement signals richer than raw download counts. Comments, polls, Q&As baked into the player give brands a sense of attention, not just reach.

So what could a good and fair podcast rev‑share model look like? Start with impression‑based payouts tuned for long‑form listening. Measure listen‑through rate the way YouTube measures watch time and reward depth, not just a tap on the play button. Introduce tiered RPMs that climb when eighty percent of an episode gets heard. Layer in programmatic ad insertion so spots slide naturally wherever the listener happens to be. Toss creators a bundle of in‑app promo credits - paid out of their earnings - so they can reinvest in placement the same way YouTubers pour AdSense dollars back into thumbnails and trailers.

Why now? Because U.S. podcast ad spend is projected to hit $4.7 billion by 2027, and the slice earmarked for creators will migrate to whichever platform builds the infrastructure first. If the only viable monetization path keeps nudging people toward video, then the next generation of “podcasts” will simply premiere on YouTube, get clipped for TikTok, and skip your purple‑icon app entirely. Formats outlive platforms; creators chase the money.

Which leaves one question: how much revenue are podcast platforms forfeiting each day they delay building an audio‑native flywheel? Every hour a mid‑sized podcaster can’t see a line item called “platform earnings” is an hour they spend learning to master vertical video instead. Once they do, don’t be shocked if they never return.

Now is the moment to pay the podcasters - and, in the process, pay yourself.

In The Studio

As I already mentioned, I am currently upgrading my podcast studio and one thing that has really peaked my interest and mainly for the reason that my skills are still a bit limited on this topic is lighting. It is not just extremely important in creating the perfect look for your content, but the devil is in the details. And it can really give you a headache. To save you from that, here are my favorite YouTube videos to quickly become a pro in lighting and letting your podcast studio shine:

People’s Choice

This week, YouTube also launched their podcast charts for the U.S. We have to peek at the very first batch of shows ruling YouTube’s brand-new Podcast Charts this week. And these three are just racking up crazy numbers.

1. The Joe Rogan Experience – by Joe Rogan
   Long-form, no-questions-off-limits conversations with comics, scientists, athletes, and the occasional astronaut. Love him or loathe him, Rogan’s three-hour riff-sessions still set the pace for the whole medium - so it’s no surprise he grabbed the chart’s inaugural #1 spot.

   
   🔗 Listen on YouTube

2. Kill Tony – by Tony Hinchcliffe & Brian Redban
   A chaotic live-show-meets-open-mic: aspiring comics get 60 seconds to crush (or crash) before a razor-sharp panel roasts, mentors, and occasionally transforms them into overnight meme legends. Comedy masochism at its finest - and good for the chart’s #2 slot this week. And they recently launched on Netflix.

   
   🔗 Listen on YouTube

3. Rotten Mango – by Stephanie Soo
   True-crime storytelling that feels equal parts bedtime tale and horror flick: host Stephanie Soo walks you through chilling cases with narrative flair (and plenty of gasp-worthy side facts). Viewers binge the visuals; listeners stay for the goosebumps - earning the show a debut at #3.

   
   🔗 Listen on YouTube

Mic Drop

Well, well, Tinkerbell! This week’s edition of The Mic Drop is already coming to an end. I want to say thank you for all you support. I cannot stress it enough and at the risk of repeating myself I love working in podcasting, talking about it, writing about it, and hearing about it. Therefore, I am happy to announce that starting in June, I will write a monthly editorial and host a monthly podcast about the podcast and audio industry for DMEXCO - Europe’s leading digital marketing & tech event.

And don’t forget: tell your friends and family about The Mic Drop. We are still not at 1,000 subscribers, so you still have a chance to win a fully-produced podcast season for free!

I hear you next week