“I compare podcasts to community radio,” says podmatcher.com co-founder

Jarrod Pickford was 19 years old when he first landed a gig at DMG Radio Australia’s Albury hub in the early 2000s.

Soon after he found himself producing for Hughesy and Kate in Melbourne at Nova 100, followed by 6 years of freelancing at commercial radio stations. This led to his interest into the increasingly popular world of podcasting.

Jarrod is the co-founder of podmatcher.com, a marketplace for podcasters to offer services – like editing, voiceovers, graphic design, producing, writing, and so on – in one place.

“I compare podcasts to community radio almost. I like the rawness of people chatting, not having time restraints, no advertisers and no music coming up.”

Perhaps cynical of his time in the cut-throat world of commercial radio and its overproduction to grab and keep an audience’s attention, he says, “People don’t mind hearing advertisements when it’s just given to them and not screamed at them through a voiceover and sound production and sound effects.

Jarrod says a massive difference exists between radio and podcasts: “When you look at radio… it’s almost overproduced.” Podcasts, he adds, are all about the content. “You don’t use sound effects, you don’t need amazing interviews.”

Moreover, he adds: “You can really target a demographic with a certain podcast.”

Recently, Jarrod recently was a judge of Australia’s first-ever podcasting awards, The Castaway Awards – a sign of a maturing industry.

But, in terms of industry revenue, podcasting has a long way to go. Podcasting in the United States, for example, is expected to generate only $200 million in 2017.

“In comparison,” Jarrod says, “if you look at say TV or radio, they’re spending billions on advertising. So, there’s a long way to go. And I’m really hopeful that advertisers really respect the industry. Because from my experience working in radio, we did work for the advertisers, we didn’t work for the listeners, we didn’t work for the announcers, it was the advertisers.”

Jarrod Pickford’s interview is from Episode 5 of the new and highly regarded podcast series on Australia’s podcasting industry, BE Podcasting – Engage Your Audience. Also on Episode 5 is Matthew Gain, head of Audible Australia & NZ on the growing interest in audiobooks.