Podcast unbundling: How Amazon Music’s Topics may accelerate the trend

Every podcast platform has a search function. Type “conspiracy” into most and you will probably see a list of podcast titles with the word conspiracy in it, but there may be hundreds of episodes related to the word “conspiracy” that fail to surface. 

Most podcast search engines are not sophisticated enough to scan the content of episodes themselves, but Amazon Music’s new AI-powered Topics feature aims to change that. According to Amazon’s blog, Topics will allow users to “browse podcast episodes by the topics mentioned in episodes”. On podcast episode pages, users will be able to tap on a Topics tag and see a list of episodes from other podcasts that discuss that topic. 

While in its early stages, Amazon Music’s Topics is a sign that some podcast platforms are already taking steps to address two areas of podcasting growth that MIDiA identified at the start of 2024: podcast unbundling and podcast recommendations.

Podcasts are certainly different from albums, but the personality and / or serialisation that tends to tether listeners to a particular podcast title is not that far off from the narrative arc of a good album. For many consumers in the CD era, only a few songs on any album may have been of interest, but the only way to access them was to buy the other eight songs as well. While users can and do consume podcast episodes on an individual basis, most platforms are still geared towards podcast subscriptions. 

Amazon Music’s Topics feature is not likely to upend the podcast subscription any time soon, but it is a step towards increased single-episode consumption. One could even imagine the ability for users to subscribe to “topics” instead of (or in addition to) podcast titles. Whether in the form of a playlist or a feed, topics subscriptions would be a very real step towards the unbundling of podcasts.

Related to unbundling is the issue of recommendations. As Stuff You Should Know co-host Josh Clark told The Information’s Creator Economy: “‘I don’t think anyone has figured out the algorithm that knows exactly what [podcast] to serve to who… If someone can figure that out, it would be a huge boon to the industry”.

In music, one of the follow-on effects of unbundling is the ability to serve single recommendations to listeners on a digital conveyor belt. Consumption now happens at a faster pace and in bite-sized chunks, while newness of releases has arguably become less important than the quality of the recommendations being served. 

Again, Topics will not solve the recommendation problem that Clark identifies, but it is an indication that podcast platforms are starting to think about how to create better content-audience fit. Together, unbundling and algorithmic recommendations can create that fit, just like they did in music. However, like in music, that may also mean putting more pressure on episodes to be breakout successes and placing more value on the content than the creator.