Navigating for pay services

The problem Sheryl and I are mulling over today is the difference between having our free podcast, be used by for pay services, vs. the already established platforms, which in essence charge too. What’s the difference between Spotify, where most of our audience resides, and a young start-up offering a curated podcast listening experience?

Sleep Tight Stories is still a simple thing, without the elaborate production values and serialized story telling of say, The Alien Adventures of Finn Caspian, but it’s taking an ever increasing amount of our time to produce. Our ongoing effort to reach out to independent authors is an effort worth doing, but many most publishers consider partial readings as theft, not a marketing opportunity, or a chance to reach a new audience. This takes time. A lot of time.

When you publish something via unprotected feed, there is little we can do stop anyone from pulling that feed into their service. In fact up until now we have been actively encouraging them to do so (being included in JioSaavn’s service required a visit to a lawyer to review contracts).

I’m inclined to think that it’s great to be included. But Sheryl’s reflex response was no. It’s her voice after all.

We have a few hours to decide before politeness requires I respond to their email.