Steve Ackerman has been at the centre of audio’s evolution for more than thirty years, but he is very clear about where we actually are in the podcast timeline. Now that his run as Executive Vice President and Head of Global Podcasts at Sony Music has come to an end, he is looking at the industry from a new vantage point. And his conclusion is refreshingly blunt. “Ten years ago, there wasn’t a podcast industry. I mean, there really wasn’t,” he says. “This is a baby bit of the entertainment ecosystem.”
That perspective matters because the sector has already been through the boom, the course correction and the period of consolidation. What Ackerman sees now is not maturity but an inflection point. This next phase will be defined by new revenue models, platform expansion and a more sophisticated understanding of how audio and video coexist rather than compete.
“If I was starting a show now, I’d absolutely be saying it has to have video from day one,” he says. For him, the supposed debate about audio versus video is a false distinction. Audiences do both. They move between YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts depending on where they are, what they are doing and how they prefer to engage with a specific show at a specific moment. The smart creator does not pick one lane. The smart creator builds in both from the start.
Ackerman has lived that strategic overlap. Somethin’ Else, the studio he helped build into a major production force, grew by embracing audio, social and online video long before those worlds became fashionable bedfellows. When Sony Music acquired the business, it was part of a wider move to create a global podcast division aimed at securing share of ear in a market where podcasts were directly eating into music listening.
“What podcast has done is it has eaten into share of ear against music,” he says. “Once people start listening to podcasts, they really start listening to them.” That behavioural flywheel, once set in motion, strengthens the logic for every major platform to chase podcast share, which is why Netflix launching podcasts this month comes as no surprise to him.
He is equally clear on the opportunities for traditional TV production companies that still behave as if the commissioning system will somehow reset to 2018. It will not. And in Ackerman’s eyes, trying to wait it out is a losing strategy. “If I was a TV producer now, I’d be looking at the amount of opportunity there is because of the consumption on YouTube,” he says. “Podcasting can give me a route in that does not cost very much and allows me to take a few risks.”
The shift he identifies is not about abandoning broadcast. It is about adding a parallel, entrepreneurial track that uses podcasting and social video to build IP, build community and build commercial value. “The content has to be strong in the first place and that means having an appeal to an audience and building a community,” he says. “If you can build the audience, all those other things follow.”
Those other things include the rapidly expanding subscription landscape, new ad formats from YouTube and Spotify, and the growing demand for live shows and merch around successful titles. “We really are still at a very early stage for this industry and there is a huge amount of opportunity still to go,” he says.
Ackerman’s next step is consulting across multiple companies rather than running one large organisation. “I feel like I’ve picked up a lot of knowledge with that experience in the States, obviously taking a company to exit,” he says. He wants to apply that knowledge across podcasting, digital and the wider entertainment economy. In truth, his timing could not be better. The old models are fading. The new ones are still being written. And audio, long dismissed by TV as a side channel, is now one of the most dynamic parts of the modern content economy.
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