Headphones – The podcasts and audiobooks of February 2021

Plus 1.8 million: are the Italians who, in 2020, have listened to podcasts compared to the previous year. The recent indagine Nielsen on the sector it is clear: the pandemic has favored a trend which, particularly in the United States, was already a certainty that had consolidated in recent years. The listeners are predominantly young adults and Internet users and to prevail are, at the moment, free streaming platforms (like Spotify and Spreaker). Podcasts are mostly listened to in home (numbers increasing) or in the car (here, on the other hand, the data are decreasing, also due to the lower possibility of movement during the various lockdowns), and listening begins in the late afternoon both during the week and on weekends.

Lot of new players appeared on the market: newspapers (also Vanity Fair has developed a Podcast section), manufacturing company, new dedicated platforms, independent e private companies.

Also for the audiobooks 2020 was a boom year: according to Nielsen research for Audible.it, in the last year 41% of Italians have listened to at least one audiobook. The listeners are mostly men (45% vs 36% of women) dai 25 ai 44 annie they live predominantly al Sud (52%). The three favorite literary genres for listening are i classics (31%), i thriller (27%) e i fantasy, which grew by 6 percentage points from 19 to 25%.

In addition to the reports on new releases (but also some “ripesconi”) that you will find in the gallery every month Ear phones will interview an insider. The first guest is the entrepreneur Rossana De Michele, co-founder of Free stories, the podcast platform that launched some of the most successful series, including Morgana, by Michela Murgia and Chiara Tagliaferri.

De Michele, what was your career path before arriving at Storielibere?
«I like to call myself ‘an elderly startupper’, a woman who reinvented herself at 50. I started working in 1998 as an author, producer and television director. Until 2002 I was at MTV Italia – those were the golden years – as head of productions and editorial development, then I switched to satellite and followed the launch of Nickleodeon and Paramount Comedy, before moving on to the Espresso group. There I watched their first TVs but they failed, and I ended up accepting a severance pay and taking a sabbatical. My two children were still small, and I decided to become freelance ».

A courageous choice.
«Giving up a permanent job is always a risk, especially due to the indeterminacy that involves returning to precarious adults. I was not obsessed with motherhood, but not a workaholic either: I have always considered myself a rather balanced person. But being able to afford the luxury of taking a summer month to be with them and see them grow, being able to mix work and private life in a more harmonious way, was very important. The choice to become a freelancer allowed me to harmonize private life and working life until they got older. Then I decided that, with a good idea, I could totally throw myself into the job again, which I am very happy, however, that I never gave up completely ».

How did it start again?
“With a one-year contract at RadioDue, where I was one of the two authors of a daily program hosted by Camila Raznovich. I was in Milan, while Chiara Tagliaferri was in Rome who, with Matteo B. Bianchi, would become one of the most precious elements of Storielibere. With the radio it was a disastrous experience: I found myself faced with the evidence that RadioDue had by now decided to dismantle a wonderful storytelling schedule. Just at that time, I had started listening to American podcasts, which I immediately became very passionate about, so I couldn’t understand why Rai was moving in the opposite direction from the United States, where they were starting to notice that audio storytelling had a disruptive force. Reducing everything to 4 minutes of chat and two pieces of music was not a way to develop quality content ».

What podcasts did he listen to?
“I had a favorite network, Radiotopia, and a program, 99% Invisible, which for me was a revelation: it made me understand that it was possible to spread vertically by telling minutiae or huge things with the same intensity, passion and competence. In short, it made me realize what kind of podcast I would like to do. I asked myself: why is there this junk food craze applied to the media diet here? Who said that people get tired if you offer them ten more minutes, but they are intense minutes full of emotions? ».

So she took action.
«I started talking about it with a production company where a friend worked, asking him to analyze with me the idea of ​​creating an audio podcast platform. Incredibly, they told me: “Let’s talk about it”. I had also consulted with my mentor, Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, and also according to him it was the right time. Thus, in November 2017 with Gian Andrea Cerone, the other co-founder of Storielibere, we prepared an editorial and industrial plan which, albeit with small numbers, was approved, and at the Turin Book Fair in May 2018 we finally Storielibere presented with the first 8 series already loaded on the platform. Among those there are two that, still today, are absolute bestsellers, Morgana e f***ing genius».

How did you choose these first 8 series?
“In a manner consistent with the editorial plan, which was born on two principles: giving priority to the word and choosing militant narrators, that is, who had very strong passions and were extremely competent. To be able to do oral tradition you have to be a pied piper, so the type of competence we were interested in did not have to come only from the study, but also from a real passion for life, which is the surest way to be able to access a community. We didn’t look for the famous name, the influencer on duty: we went straight to the point. And indeed the first podcast, Beginners by Matteo B. Bianchi, was born precisely because I had discovered that, twenty years earlier, Matteo had founded a magazine, ‘tina, in which many authors who later became famous had made their debut. I asked Matteo to bring that militancy in a podcast. A similar thing happened with Michela Murgia, who had just received a refusal from RadioDue for having proposed, with Tagliaferri, Morgana: do you think they had replied that it was “too intelligent”. Here, I think this sentence is something that cannot be heard. We have opened the doors to them too. And then a chain started from there: we met Massimo Temporelli, author of f***ing genius, then Vincenzo Venuto, with whom we had the idea of Gorilla has it small, and gradually the others. Our products have become immediately identifiable, even visually, thanks to the collaboration with artists such as Emiliano Ponzi and MP5, and at the show the following year there were 30 series. Now we have 45 active, which is a good record. Which means paying them, keeping a company ».

The pandemic helped the podcast spread, thankfully.
“Yes, because it made companies’ investments divert from video to audio. We were already very strong in content, a little less from an economic point of view. We ended up with dynamite in our hands. We have started working with brands and, recently, closed an agreement with Audible, which for us was a very important step because we have become not only producers but also suppliers of intellectual works ».

How do you make money with podcasts?
«Ours is a mixed model: we keep a free platform, we are suppliers of a paid one and, during the pandemic, when the branded content market started to take off, we started working with companies. The first was Unilever with which we developed two products aimed at children and teenagers. We have realized that, at this stage, working with companies is a wonderful experience because what they are looking for is a marriage based on values. Since we always have many projects in development, we can easily find, in our catalog, a product that fits with those values ​​that I want to be communicated. Another wonderful experience was that of Tits Up!, the podcast with Samanta Chiodini developed together with the Airc Foundation, in which we told stories of women struggling with breast cancer. In this case, we have also chosen to invest personally in the project, because we believe that encouraging research in such a difficult moment is fundamental ».

Since you started, how has the world of podcasts evolved, and how do you think it will evolve in the near future?
“There is a lot of crowding at the moment, which is good because the market has to mature. For advertising to substantially shift its investments to this sector, it is necessary that there are many intellectual works. One of the dangers is that, since there is now a bit of everything, the overall quality is lowered and there is a bit of confusion, but this is also there, because after all the podcast is a technology and, therefore, it can convey any type of content. I believe that the real turning point in the sector will come when we manage to organize the flow. Another important change is that, finally, the concept is starting to pass that the junk food media diet is not necessarily the right one, it doesn’t have to be the winning model. The audio gives the possibility to enjoy the contents in a more free way, and compared to the video it is rewarding with respect to the attention of the user. And we must not forget that it is also a wonderful way to pass skills, which has always been one of the functions of the oral tradition ».