The second ScrollStack MasterClass on The Art of Podcasting was held on December 16. The host of The Filter Koffee Podcast, Karthik Nagarajan, led an hour-long session, sharing important tips on becoming a podcast host, earnings from his podcasting journey, and the different ways a podcast can be monetised.

"Podcasting is the most intimate storytelling medium that exists today,” according to Nagarajan. “There's something about the simplicity of audio." 

Here’s a brief of the MasterClass.

History of podcasting

The term “podcasting” is a combination of what happened at a device level with the iPod and what is happening with the content, which is broadcasting. 

“The name that I would prefer for this is talk radio,” Nagarajan said. 

It was in the 1980s that the digital distribution of talk radio actually happened in several places in the United States. “It’s important to know that people started sharing audio content on the internet even before music started happening,” he shared. 

The first watershed moment was in 2000 when I2Go launched episodic content on their mp3 players. “To me, the most important technology that makes podcasting the democratic thing that it is today is the attaching files in an RSS feed,” Nagarajan said. 

2005 is the most critical moment when we hit scale with iTunes starting to support the podcast, and in 2006, Steve Jobs demoed it. 

In India, the journey starts in 2006 when IndiCast, India’s first podcasting initiative, was launched. "India has always been an audio first country, and urban Indian lifestyle is conducive to multi-tasking," Nagarajan said. 

Commercially speaking, Gimlet gave podcasting the commercial stamp in 2019, that “this is an industry to reckon with,” he added. 

Is podcasting for you?

Ask yourself, Do you like depth over breadth? Do you have the discipline to create? Are you a good listener?

"You sit and create podcasts week after week, you need creativity coupled with discipline. If you are planning to host a show that is conversational, you must be a good listener," according to Nagarajan.

The business of podcasting

Largely, there are three ways by which a podcast can be monetised: programmatic, brand integrations and sponsors.

"Speak to your listeners. Take the loyal ones very seriously. Don’t worry about the numbers – it's a different journey altogether,” Nagarajan said. 

 Watch the full MasterClass here:

To learn more about our upcoming classes, reach out to creators@scrollstack.com. ScrollStack supports native audio – to start publishing your own podcast, sign up here.