Insights From My Podcast Music Experience

Early in the year, I noticed that a significant number of people were searching for and buying music for their podcasts on Pond5, which is the marketplace where I do most of my business. I concluded that there was an under-served market there, and went in heavily on developing intros and loops for podcasters. A little over three months and almost 100 tracks later, I took a few minutes to look at what was selling from the podcast music collection I had created on Pond5, and promoted pretty heavily on Twitter and Google+. Here's what (I think) I've learned.

First, the podcast music is already accounting for a significant portion of my stock music sales. Since I created my collection and began to market it heavily at beginning of February, about a third of all my item sales at Pond5 have come from the collection. Since the beginning of April, it's over 40 percent.

Second, there's a definite trend in what buyers are looking for. The keywords that seem to be coming up most (besides "podcast intro" or "podcast music") are: "corporate," "orchestral" and "urban." This leads me to believe that a lot of people licensing my work are looking to make a professional, polished presentation of their podcast with a business audience in mind. Meanwhile, others perhaps want to impart a more edgy feel. What's not selling, at least not yet, are the more "oddball" styles, like light classical, baroque, and surf rock (it was a moment of weakness when I came up with that, I guess). There's certainly a lot of interest: one of the "corporate" podcast intro tracks has broken into my all-time top five in item views. (For context, I have over 400 items on Pond5, developed over a 4+ year period.)

Also, the length of the music matters. Of the items I've sold out of the podcast music collection, more than a third are in the :08 length range. Half are :10 or shorter. There's still interest in longer intros in the :25 to :30 range, but the radio formula of doing multipled of fifteen seconds (:60, :30, :15) apparently does NOT apply with podcast music. I've also sold a few loops, but not nearly as many as I'd expected. My conclusion is that the majority of my buyers want to get straight to the point, or maybe are looking for alternate audio to bracket their segments in addition to their existing music.

Based on this, to the extent I add to the collection, I'll probably focus on the styles I've mentioned. I also plan to dispense with anything in the :15 range, as there's very little demand for it. I'll still do "full" versions in the :25 to :30 range, but concentrate more effort on creating memorable, logo-type themes in :07 to :10 durations. I'll do some loops, but won't make them as much of a priority as in the past.

Are you a podcaster? Do you agree that I'm on the right track here? I welcome your comments. Also, if you haven't done so before I hope you'll check out my complete podcast music collection at Pond5.

If you're interested in exclusive custom music just for your podcast, I can do that as well. Please fill in the contact form below and I'll get back to you.