Everyone’s abuzz about podcasting! Well, kind of. Maybe not everyone. You’ve probably seen the 2016 stats: According to Edison, 21% of Americans ages 12 and up have listened to a podcast in the past month. That’s followed by this spin on trends: “That is up from 17% in 2015. Monthly podcast listenership has increased 75% since 2013.” Everyone deserves a high-five, right? Those numbers are huge! But wait a minute. I think folks in the audio space are missing the bigger story:

If there’s one book this year that best sums up what the radio industry has to do to compete in a world of infinite choice, it’s this one: Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment I talked with Anita to test some of my own theories about radio’s future in the presence of her research. The result is a clear strategy and plan of action. Now the rest is up to you. Click here to listen to my interview: Download Audio Or here for the sharable So

The “golden gut.” It’s what separates those who can pick a hit from the rest of us. But what does the science tell us? Its lesson is unambiguous: Hits are total flukes. Well not entirely. A number of years ago students at Columbia staged an interesting experiment, described here by Tim Sullivan at HBR: [Doctoral student] Matthew Salganik and his coauthors set up an ingenious experiment: they created a website where people could listen to songs by unknown artists, then decide

Nobody wants to fail. Yet we inherently know that without taking risks – without risking exactly the failure we fear so much – the big successes are likely to remain out of reach. Recently I was with a Broadway theater producer – someone who has produced famous shows you know quite well – and he said something that, while not surprising, was important and interesting: “The biggest hits go to those who have the biggest failures.” And he should know. This is not to suggest that