Here, the studio and the Majelan podcast platform, now offered free or at a preferential rate to Bouygues Telecom customers. There, the paid podcast and audio story platform Sybel, made available to drivers of new Renault models. While, except for exclusivity, the vast majority of podcasts appear in the offers of platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcasts, etc., further increasing the points of contact between the public and the programs is not an option for the actors. of the sector.

“Today, 50% of our subscribers come from our partnerships with SFR, Free, SNCF… and now Renault”, recognize Virginie Maire and Matthieu Viala, the founders of Sybel. Offered at a preferential rate to customers of the operator of the Altice group for two years, the platform prides itself on being today at the head of “more than 50,000 subscribers”. While Majelan is aiming for 150,000 subscribers to its paid offer, “being offered for two years to Bouygues Telecom’s 20 million customers means additional turnover, less marketing expenditure and more subscriptions”, believes Mathieu Gallet, co-founder with Arthur Perticoz of the platform, who recognizes: “Getting known is the big subject. »

According to the former president of Radio France, “nobody has cracked the problem of the discoverability of podcasts”. In other words, everyone manages as best they can to win over those who seek to put something new between their ears: visual staging on the apps, the most precise description possible of the programs, choice of words favored by search engines, selection of related references, etc.

” Word of mouth “

“Our role is to inform the podcast well, so as not to fall into Internet limbo”, confirms Gautier Derocles, marketing director of the Louie Media studio. Better to tune the algorithm behind the suggested recommendations at the end of a session (“those who listened to this program also listened…”) with the precision of a watchmaker: “Since we changed it, six to seven months ago, recognizes Matthieu Viala, the listening time spent by users on our service almost doubled. »

“The first lever of notoriety is word of mouth,” explains Charlotte Pudlowski, co-founder with Mélissa Bounoua of the Louie Media studio. After having supplanted reading advice, recommendations for series and podcasts are indeed irrigating conversations between friends. But by closing places of sociability, confinement “robbed them of part of the natural increase in listening, recognizes Joël Ronez, founder of Binge Audio and president of the Syndicate of Independent Audio Producers. Less word-of-mouth means less discoverability. »

Telecommuting, by eliminating the commute between home and work conducive to listening, would also have reduced the consumption of podcasts by 20%. But “the dynamic, which for a year and a half has not been good, resumes with the return to normal life”, assures Joël Ronez. To accompany it, the studio, notably at the origin of the phenomenal “Les Couilles sur la table”, is preparing to revamp its offer and increase the attachment of its audience (2,000 subscriptions targeted to start) by offering it a sitcom daily (paid), “The Soapcast”.

Number on the rise

“The paid audio market can expect to have between 1.5 million and 2 million subscribers by 2025,” say Matthieu Viala and Virginie Maire, whose job it is to help creators succeed (and monetize ) their content according to the audiences sought.

The number of productions available to listen to is enough to make you dizzy, as evidenced by the measurement of the podcast audience carried out each month by the Alliance for press and media figures. At the last measurement, in April, it had 295; the first, the famous “Transfert” (Slate Audio), accounted for 813,979 downloads in France, when the last 49 ranked (programs from Radio Vinci Autoroute, L’Equipe, L’Indépendant, Le Point, etc.) had been downloaded less than a hundred times.

Added to this are all those who listen to replays of radio broadcasts: in December 2021, Médiamétrie (which does not measure independent podcasts) counted 139.5 million plays or downloads. A constantly rising figure, even if the same program can be taken into account several times (you can listen to it in full or by chronicle, which increases the figures). According to a study by the CSA institute covering 2021, a third of French people have become accustomed to listening to native podcasts.