The radio station making money from podcasts

06/23/19 • 2 min

Radio TOK FM is one of the most listened-to radio stations in Warsaw, Poland, owned by Agora Radio Group. A news and talk station with over 40 journalists, the station is doing something unusual: charging for podcasts.

Jarosław Śliżewski, the company’s Chief Digital Officer, says that six years ago, a decision was made to focus on on-demand content. Now, listeners pay a monthly fee to gain access to over 65,000 pieces of on-demand audio from the station, including catch-up shows and exclusive digital-only content.

Pricing is set at US$3.90 a month for access via the web, though over half of their subscribers pay US$5.20 which gives access on mobile apps, too. (That’s the same as Spotify charges in Poland, incidentally).

The company already has more than 17,000 paying subscribers - a figure that has grown 60% year-on-year.

“Every day, we produce about nineteen hours of new content for radio broadcast,” Jarosław tells me. “Additionally, about two hours a day is produced exclusively for online use, like bespoke podcasts or extended versions of live programmes”. Some of the original podcasts are broadcast on the radio, too.

They work hard on the service’s metadata, with all content described and tagged, and about 40% of the content is automatically transcribed (thanks to a Google DNI grant). The app contains personalisation, as well as playlists; you can “follow” specific topics, presenters and programmes.

While the station is present on Apple Podcasts and other similar platforms, they use these as marketing material, containing clips of the full content that is only available through the paid-for service.

Podcasting, and on-demand content, is clearly growing; and the growth in Radio TOK FM’s paying users since 2013 has been steady. “Digital income is becoming a more significant component of TOK FM’s profits,” Jarosław adds.

Radio’s future certainly looks like a mix of live and on-demand content; and perhaps Radio TOK FM is leading the way.

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The company already has more than 17,000 paying subscribers - a figure that has grown 60% year-on-year.

Radio’s future certainly looks like a mix of live and on-demand content; and perhaps Radio TOK FM is leading the way.

Support the show.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Previous Episode

Three podcasts we can learn from

At the recent Podcast Day in London, I was asked to share three of my favourite podcasts, and as always I decided to slightly subvert the brief to really be three podcasts that we can learn from.

Reasons to Be Cheerful, with Geoff Lloyd and Ed Miliband, (produced by Emma Corsham) was my first choice. Ed Miliband used to be the leader of the Labour party in the UK, and he came across as a deeply awkward, barely human and really quite unlikeable person. But the intimate nature of podcasting has changed all that to me - he's good fun, nerdy, self-aware, and endlessly inquisitive, and the podcast itself is a great listen.

Perhaps that's why most of the US presidential candidates are doing lots of podcast appearances at the moment: it’s easy to overlook what podcasting has to offer to help really get to know someone. They’ve just launched a spin-off, Cheerful Book Club, where Ed interviews non-fiction book authors: that’s worth a listen, too.

Podcast number 2 - is, well, mine: the Podnews podcast. I know, shameless. Now I don't actually want you to get it - the newsletter is better - but I'm mentioning it for two reasons: first, great advice for any podcaster is to keep things simple. There's no interviews, no features, just a quick rundown of the news every day: it works well and is very scalable - you can even record it on a phone. So, resist the temptation to chuck everything in.

Second, it highlights the power of news briefings. This podcast gets at least half of its total downloads from Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa's news briefings services. They are a massive and relatively untapped market for podcasters and broadcasters alike. You should look into them.

And the third podcast? Death in Ice Valley - it's a true crime podcast - is awesome. It was a podcast I was genuinely excited for every single episode release. I didn't even want to read the episode titles in case they had a spoiler in them. Wonderful thing.

There are maybe three things we can learn from this - first... the space it gives its subject. It's gloriously unhurried, in a way that radio typically isn't.

Second... they COULD have recorded all ten episodes at the same time: but they didn't. They spent time and energy on a community on Facebook, and built in feedback from the audience in every episode. It made a real difference to the series, and it's something I'd highly recommend.

And third - for those of you working in public radio, this just goes to show that a collaboration like this, between two big public service broadcasters, can actually work. The ABC in Australia and the CBC in Canada are also working together on cross-promoting their podcasts. There's plenty we can do if we work together. If you're a fan of this, podcast, they’ve just taped a new, live, show, which is released on June 24th.

There’s plenty we can learn from podcasting. I’d love to hear more that are worth learning from.

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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Next Episode

Hearing the voice of your listener

Johannesburg, South Africa, is a place like no other to hold a radio conference, and I was privileged to be at Radio Days Africa recently on their tenth anniversary.

Radio is an important part of life in Africa generally. Radio reaches people who cannot read or write; and plays the part of an educator in many parts of the continent.

Here’s the excellent Steve Martin from the BBC talking about radio in Africa from 2013. It’s a good overview in how progessive African radio stations are, as well as how they think about radio in a different way to many of us.

But radio in Africa is also, partially, stations like 94.7 in Johannesburg (tagline: “You love Johannesburg - we love you”), who sound as polished as the big top 40 stations you’d hear elsewhere.

However, it was Bérard Duprès from the Seychelles Broadcasting Company that got me thinking a little. He began by explaining where the Seychelles were - they’re here in case you didn’t know - and spoke about the stations that the SBC run.

One of the things Bérard showed was the radio station’s app. Obviously you can listen to the radio station on it, but you can also send a voice message to the station in high quality audio. The station uses a product called Fabrik, made in South Africa, which acts as a kind of private WhatsApp for the station, who are then able to edit and broadcast the messages. It’s a simple and straightforward way to get more voices on the air.

They’re not alone. Radio X in the UK is using a rather less private WhatsApp - well, they’re using WhatApp itself - to get messages into the studio for Chris Moyles. And they seem to be having great fun with it, even if most of the callers want just to say the word willy and bum.

For radio stations everywhere, though, services like this makes it really easy to remain real and relevant to your audience. For SBC, who run radio stations that broadcast to over a hundred different islands off the coast of East Africa, it’s a great way to hear directly from your audience. For Radio X, it’s a very good way to hear them swear at you.

Getting proper, decent audience audio on the air has never been easier. If you don’t have this function in your radio app - what’s stopping you?

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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy