Mule Radio downsizing →
Founder Mike Monteiro:
We will remain open, but starting in July, we will only host Mule Design employee shows. Let’s Make Mistakes, David McCreath’s wonderful It Might Get Personal, Mike Essl and Ed Casey’s Issues, and Erika Hall and Gabe Levine’s Running From the Law will remain. But we will go back to doing it for fun. We will not sell sponsorships.
This comes shortly after their biggest show went independent. (Don’t worry, there’s no drama there.)
Podcast networks are a lot like blog networks. (Remember them?) When the medium is young and everything’s difficult, it helps to band together with a large entity to pool resources on tools, hosting, ad sales, and staffing.1
But as the medium and technology mature and hosting costs drop, being in a network becomes far less necessary and compelling, and it increasingly makes sense for people to go independent. The glory days of podcast networks are behind us.
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Contrary to popular belief, and much like blog networks, podcast networks don’t do much for “exposure”. Great shows usually get discovered regardless of where they are, and successful networks don’t save mediocre or limited-appeal shows. ↩︎