Defining a podcast
Avengers Assemble! To me my X-Men!
A task force … a secret task force has been created to future-proof podcasting.
Now listen, if that doesn’t sound like a little bit of dystopian bullshit I don’t know what does.
I first heard about this on the Oxford Road podcast. It’s called The Media Roundtable. I actually didn’t listen to the entire episode because it bored me.
I’m not really the target market for that show. I listen to it because I acknowledge that advertising is shaping the future of creator stuff. But me tuning out is not actually a commentary on the quality of the show. It’s a good show and Oxford is a big name in advertising.
Here’s the thing. I’ve been saying for years that the way advertising is being sold on podcasts is stupid. They sell it like radio or print advertising but it doesn’t work because on-demand isn’t broadcast or old-school print. I have speculated for a long time that most ads on podcasts are probably pretty much worthless. They just never get heard and they probably don’t convert. Brand deals with hosts are a whole other thing. Those work. I don’t need to tell you that because you already know. If you see or listen to a host talking about the software they use or the shirt they are wearing or the bubbly energy drink they love … that’s a powerful recommendation. Because of the parasocial relationship with the host sure but also equally it’s a product demonstration. The 20 second Betterhelp ad in pre-roll, it’s noise we skip or just ignore.
I’m participating in a podcast challenge led by industry insider Arielle Nissenblatt. And she posted the definition of a podcast by this task force. They call themselves AMP Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting. They have released a document that they call the Accords.
Is it just me or do you feel like you’ve walked into a fever dream where these folks see themselves as part of a DC or Marvel hero - villain script? An alliance…really? An Accord…are you for real with this? Please look at this ink blot and tell me what you see.
Justice League, Assemble!
Anyway…
This is how this very modest team of folks have defined a podcast:
PODCAST
A podcast is an on-demand show rooted in the spoken word and fully
intelligible as audio. Typically episodic and conversational, podcasts cover
wide-ranging themes and formats. They are accessed as audio or video via
open RSS feeds and other distribution methods.
You can find the accords and the definition for yourself here:
Wonder Twin powers, activate!
My response to this definition is an eye-roll, a yawn and mild annoyance.
First of all, podcasts are words. They aren’t rooted in words and definitely not spoken word which is a form of performance art. My understanding is that podcasts came from the world of academia and journalism not open mic poetry night at the local wine bar. They have completely ignored huge groups of podcast formats that include educational content, narrative fiction and honestly also investigations and documentaries.
I envision a room full of black turtleneck wearing wanna be beatnik poets writing this in a dark smokey room (but modernized so each person is alone in their own room connected to the others by zoom and the haze is either from wildfires or fruity-smelling vape smoke). but it was probably more like a room full of corporate mid-level executives using Claude to create this nonsense drivel word salad.
It’s not a bad question. On my own non-secret and not superhero inspired panel for creators this was the second question I asked: what even is a podcast in 2026. We did not wear turtlenecks for our conversation.
I spent 5 minutes to look up who this Alliance was. There are 12 voting members from the following companies: Betterhelp, Draftkings, Libsyn, FlightStory, Oxford, Podscribe, SiriusXM, UTA Creators and Shopify.
Shopify feels like an outlier. Although maybe they are a big ad client and I just haven’t noticed. Betterhelp and DraftKings are super big ad clients with podcasts and also brand deals with influencers (which means that if you’re a Betterhelp client … you are paying for that ad spend but that’s a whole other topic).
Listen, this project was designed and conceived for advertisers, agents and companies trying to figure out a problem in the ad world. It’s a real problem. That’s fine. I’m a tiny creator who is nowhere near big enough for Betterhelp to want to advertise on anything I make. And the list of people who care about my opinion on this definition begins and ends with me. I know it. But we live in the age of open distribution for media and so I get to write this and put it out in the world anyway.
Did Picasso need a definition of what a painting was in order to be a painter? I actually don’t know. He did go to art school so maybe he did. The argument of what is art and what isn’t has been around forever. I have no reason to think that will change anytime soon.
As a person who is doing the work of making audio recordings, articles, newsletters and video streams…I don’t feel like I need a definition to do what I’m doing. I will also say that I don’t feel like my shows fit easily into the categories currently created by podcast publishers.
This is always the case, a definition is not necessarily needed by the artists or the talent it’s often needed to organize from the industry side. To organize and categorize so that it can be more effectively monetized and controlled. Like music and scripts, movies, and published books and magazines. These organizations historically don’t always turn out to be good for the talent…that feels like it deserves a mention.
Look closely at the definition and you see that they are clarifying that podcasts are not music and not books and I would guess that’s because those industries already have rules and regulations about how content can be sold and distributed. My speculation continues that this is not because the people who wrote this are benevolent forces in support of creators and artists.
I remember a random tidbit from school about the difference between a book and a magazine. It had to be defined so that the post office had a way to charge for mailing them.
And that’s pretty much all I have to say about that.
Will this definition be adopted more broadly? Maybe. But the Alliance is not really representative of the industry overall. Notably some big industry forces are kind of missing. Like I dunno …literally any news organization at all.
But I actually suspect that we’re in the middle of a bigger shift in media and entertainment and we don’t know what’s coming next that will probably take everything into a new direction. That’s just a guess.