Why Now Is Actually the Best Time to Start a Podcast
Everyone’s been saying podcasting is dead for about five years. Too much content, too little attention, Spotify pivoting away, ad revenues contracting. The doom narrative writes itself.
They’re wrong.
What’s dying is the easy podcast — the two-mates-on-a-sofa-talking-bollocks format that exploded in 2019 and flooded every feed by 2021. That era is over and good riddance. What’s replacing it is something more interesting: audio that actually has a point of view, that’s culturally relevant.
When a shift occurs it creates the space for new creators.
Why podcasting still has massive growth potential
We need to view it differently. The podcast industry isn’t dying, it’s just evolving. Audiences are becoming more selective which is no bad thing because it means that niche podcasts are performing better, when they’re well-produced that is.
Voices started as a podcast. Before the radio station, before Coal Drops Yard, before any of it — we were recording conversations during lockdown because we had things to say and nowhere to say them. Panels on social issues, interviews with people doing things that mattered, music culture explored properly rather than reduced to a playlist description. That was the foundation. The radio grew out of it.
We’re back in that moment now, except with better tools, bigger audiences, and a culture that’s finally figured out what good audio actually sounds like.
Music Podcasts are still undeserved and underrated
The mainstream podcast world is obsessed with true crime, business advice, and comedians interviewing each other. Meanwhile the music underground — the DJ culture, the jazz revival, the diaspora sounds reshaping UK club music — barely registers. The people doing it well you can count on one hand. And the ones that do exist are pulling serious numbers, because there’s genuine hunger for this content and almost nobody feeding it properly.
So what makes a great music podcast?
Think about what a great music podcast actually does. It doesn’t just play tracks. It provides context — where a sound came from, who made it, what was happening in the world when it landed. It’s the difference between hearing something and understanding it. That’s education dressed up as entertainment, and it’s the most powerful format going.
The studio matters more than most people think.
Why Podcast Audio Quality Matters
One of the biggest barriers to a good podcast is the sound. You can have the sharpest take, the best guest, the clearest idea — and if it sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom, nobody’s listening past the first 30 seconds.
Audio quality is credibility. It signals that you give a shit.
Our studio at Mare Street Market exists because we believe in that. Proper acoustics, proper equipment, an engineer who knows what they’re doing. Whether you’re starting from scratch or you’ve been making audio for years and want to take it to the next level, the environment you record in shapes the final product more than almost anything else.
The question isn’t whether to podcast. It’s what you have to say.
The market isn’t oversaturated. The market is oversaturated with bad podcasts. Specific, well-made, culturally grounded audio about things that actually matter to people — that’s still rare. And the audience for it is enormous and growing.
If you’re sitting on an idea — a community you want to represent, a conversation that’s not happening anywhere, a corner of music culture that deserves more than a tweet — now is the time. The infrastructure exists. The appetite exists.
Come and make something.
Hourly hire, engineer support, and monthly residency packages available
