2025-04-18

This morning I am musing on a business model for audio fiction...

People expect things to be free, which is a real problem for the people who make the things. And it's a problem for the consumers because, more often than not, when we are getting something for free it's because we are the real commodity; our attention, our data - sold to advertisers and sponsors, or else leveraged for increased market value.

I've been on Reddit a bit recently, trying to drum up some support for the Crowley Kickstarter, and those guys generally seem to hate the idea of a walled garden in audio, especially audio fiction.

But let's look at some back-of-a-fag-packet maths. The first simple assumption to make is that we would rather not be the commodity, and we would rather not have our shows interrupted by advertising. OK then, so who is investing in making those shows when there is no money to be made out of them? (Even with advertising and sponsorship, most audio shows struggle).

A subscription model priced at £5 per month doesn't seem unreasonable. With 1000 subscribers, that grosses £60,000 per year. Someone could probably make some low-budget audio fiction shows for that, but not enough of them to make the subscription worthwhile.

With 10,000 subscribers per month, you get to £600,000 per year. You could scrape ten seasons of audio fiction out of that, with everyone being paid and proper high-quality audio (it's a little less than the Lovecraft Investigations costs, but economies of scale would be on your side if you organised it right).

20,000 subscribers gets you to £1.2m per year, and now you can pay people to administer your platform, you can have your own app, you can make series and singles and do all kinds of things. At 20,000 people, with the right amount of taste and expertise, you're suddenly the HBO of audio fiction. And each subscriber is still only paying £5 per month for as much great new audio as they can consume.

But a lot of people don't like subscription models. And a lot of people can't or won't spend £5 per month for access to a lot of stuff that might not interest them. OK... Then let's look at the model that Qobuz, the French music-streaming service, uses, which is a mix of subs and direct payment. How does that translate?

Say we've just released a brand new season of the Lovecraft Investigations. If you're a £5 subscriber, you have access to the stream and you can listen to it at pretty high quality (better than a podcast app, because they compress the hell out of everything, but not as good as a download because streaming just isn't). But you don't want to subscribe. Fine, so we'll sell you a REALLY high-quality download of the series that is yours to own forever for, say, £20. BUT, if you're a subscriber and you also want to own the HQ download of a particular season, you get that discounted to, say, £10. (These are Trump-numbers, as opposed to figures that have been worked out and costed, and I'm using £ because who knows what a $ is worth any more).

On this model, everyone has access to everything at some level, and it's up to the individual to decide what combination of subscription/direct purchases makes economic sense for them, depending on how many shows on the platform actually appeal.

20,000+ subscribers gets a really viable business employing creators and technicians (and artists, and admin people etc), putting out a variety of high-quality audio fiction shows every single month. There will always be something new to listen to. This is how a hobby/cottage industry starts to become a business.

Does 20,000 subscribers sound like a lot? There are 280,000 people subscribed to the r/audiodrama subreddit. I think the numbers can work.

But what if someone wants to listen to a show for free? What of the people who object to walled gardens on some kind of principle? Well, there are lots of things I would like not to pay for, but I don't have the option. During the years when I was unemployed, I would go into bookshops and record shops and gaze longingly at things I couldn't afford. That's how life works.

The only real way to make free work at scale is to join the gang of people who are harvesting attention and data to line their own pockets. Not interested in that model. Just as my mailing list is not for sale, so I don't think my work should be used as a tool to exploit people. The best way to ensure that doesn't happen is to charge a fair price for a product.

But maybe there IS a model that might work here, and it's the one Sam Harris uses for his podcast and app subscriptions. I like it because it's kind of bold and trusting; if you email Sam and tell him you can't afford a subscription, he'll comp you, no questions asked. I think this is smart because Sam seems to understand that some people genuinely can't afford to pay and he doesn't want to cut them off. But he knows that only the most serious grifter will bother to email and PRETEND they can't pay. Because it feels kind of low and cheap. So, by offering free subscriptions, he has found that more people cough up.

And to the walled garden argument... I don't think it holds water. Sure, it's nice to have everything in one podcast app, but it's not how most of our lives work; we have a Netflix app, a Disney app, an Apple app, an Amazon app. If there was an audio fiction app sitting alongside Podcasts or Overcast on your phone, and it enabled you to stream everything you subscribed to and held all the stuff you had downloaded fro the service, I think people would get used to that pretty fast.

Anyway, I'm just musing. Feel free to point out the flaws in this argument, I'm sure there must be some.

Happy Chocolate Weekend to those who celebrate.