The future of the podcast business isn’t advertising or subscriptions. It’s both.

Subscriptions or advertising. The pivot to paid is overall a healthy trend for many publishers, but subscriptions aren’t a savior. Ads still have a role, sometimes as the main plank of media business models. The success of Axios, Morning Brew and Dotdash prove that. And ads can work with subscriptions -- look at the success Bloomberg is having in t... See more

The first wave of media was fueled by cheap audience acquisition from social media companies like Facebook which created BuzzFeed and UpWorth. The second wave is the subscription wave. Consumers want curation, contextualization, and recommendations