The Podcast Scene in Argentina
Niche podcasting has a significant history in Argentina. What will it take for the medium to become mainstream?
It is difficult to trace the first Argentine podcasts, but a good place to start is with the work done by Argentina Podcastera, a group of young podcast fans and producers of the movie podcast Demasiado Cine who saw the need to bring together the national movement of producers into a single platform. In 2014, they launched their mythical podcast about podcasts, which ran for 30 episodes. Their podcast directory includes shows from throughout Latin America and the US. They also organized the Podfest meeting and coordinated a Facebook group to exchange information and advice among producers.
As Argentine media critic Francisco Godinez Galay wrote in a 2015 article in Questión magazine, the Argentine podcast movement began with dozens of podcasts made by superfans of topics that often relate to pop culture, such as TV series, movies, or comic book sagas. The same type of producers that generated fanzines in the 90s and had blogs in the 2000s, and participated in forums and chat rooms, ended up in some cases creating podcasts on their favorite themes: the Star Trek saga or the classic Star Wars movies (and the awful new ones), videogames, TV series, technology, LGBT, sports, comics, music, UFOs, etc.
According to Godinez Galay, this “proliferates, as in the fanzine, an uncompromised, amateur, homemade, and artisanal aesthetic.”
But over the last ten years, podcasts have developed ever faster in Argentina, and in the last two years, the boom took hold. After a very strong start by fan-made-podcasts, groups like Argentina Podcastera began to professionalize the scene, some brands began looking to expand the Argentine podcasts into another dimension, and big media began to look kindly on the phenomenon. Podcasts are still niche, but the podcast scene in Argentina is facing a key moment, which may be the precursor to an unprecedented jump in the market, in the digital world, and in the Argentine media.
According to the poll EncuestaPod2017, a collaboration of more than 100 podcasters from Latin America, the United States, and Spain, the Argentine podcast audience is: highly educated, young or middle-aged, new to the podcast world, very loyal, and — unlike the trend in the top countries of podcasting development, like the US — mainly Android users. Apple does not sell directly in the country — only via import — which makes it difficult to access its products. Combine this with the high price of Apple products, and the iPhone becomes a product for the upper class that some young middle-class people buy as a status symbol.
In a recent talk, Mariano Pagella, creator of Argentina Podcastera and the production company Lunfa, said: “The listener from Argentina is very used to listening the FM magazine-style radio show, lasting 4 hours, with interviews, columnists and music. For many people the word ‘radio’ is that. And if we make them listen to a storytelling podcast they tell us that ‘it is not a radio’, they do not understand what they hear, they tell us that ‘it is too short’ (because it lasts 20 minutes) or ‘you can not listen in the background, because I miss 1 minute and I do not understand the story’. Today this changed a bit and the podcast has more options to grow.”
Podcasts hit many niches, so they can reach a large audience. If a jump in Argentine podcasting happens, in the short or long term, the conditions are very favorable and there is a lot of room to grow in Argentine podcasting. This is particularly true of people under 25, who currently make up 18% of the Argentine podcast audience, and women, who make up 23%.
After several years of what we could call “the first stage of Argentine podcasting”, in which fan podcasts dominated, the Argentine podcasting scene adapted to the times. Today, the same young people who made fanzines, then blogs, and then fan podcasts are producing serial podcasts, following the Netflix style that grew in Argentina between 2015 and 2017. These shows have hipster topics, like the HBO series Westworld and tech, the pre-Hollywood life of Arnold Schwarzenegger; the meat culture in Argentina, and the year 1982.
The podcast networks are also entering a grown-up stage. All Argentine podcast networks today have websites with remarkable graphic interfaces, similar to what we find when scrolling through Spotify or Netflix. Episodes are shorter — 30 minutes instead of two hours — and they are more smartphone-friendly, making them easy to listen to while commuting. You can now listen to a complete episode on the bus to work, and you listen the next episode when getting back home. A perfect circle!
To quote media critic Agustín Espada’s 2017 article in Fibra magazine, these networks have “an artistic criteria and a diverse thematic agenda. All seek content that is specific and in depth, to expand the radio agenda on all sides. That is to say, topics that are often part of columns or comments within the radio shows, such as film, literature, environment, technology, tourism, sexuality, and many more.”
The different networks that exist in Argentina now have different defining characteristics:
Parque is related to the Luz y Fuerza Union Radio from the Province of Córdoba. Its content is free to download and disseminate (according to its website). These podcasts are also broadcast on a special show aired on that radio station. The show is specifically designed for putting podcast episodes on radio.
Posta arises from some FM Radio Metro hosts who decided to explore the world of podcasting. Their website has a rich offering of relevant figures in the social media world, including mainstream radio columnists, which drive the podcasts to a high-profile position that seems to generate revenue. Posta is a podcast production brand that has sponsored content and a group of salaried employees — something rare in the Argentine podcasting world.
Lunfa was created by the founders of Argentina Podcastera and aims to develop serial and narrative podcasts, with a style that mixes traditional fan-podcasting methods with rarely-found tools in the local environment: the development of scripts, great sound production, and risky storytelling style.
WeToker, with the help of a private producer, is more targeted to the world of marketing and is, perhaps of all the networks mentioned, the one that has the least development of the radio language. Its shows explore the worlds of business, finance, marketing, and advertising, pointing to a very particular niche that doesn’t always overlap with other podcast audiences.
Monetization is a challenge for these groups, in part because there is a historical perception in the country that the internet is free, and, so far, there have not been many successful examples of groups that monetize digital media. Some work with sponsored podcasts (Posta), or have tried live events (such as Posta and Lunfa), or crowdfunding (Parque crowdfunded to raise money for its launch). Some have subscription services where listeners can support the show directly (Lunfa uses Patreon). But there will have to be a shift in Argentina for audiences to start paying for a web-based service. Only a few big media companies, such as the national newspapers Clarín and La Nación, have successfully introduced membership models.
The digital media market in Argentina is mainly dominated by traditional media, such as radio, TV, and newspapers that have, with a few exceptions, maintained their dominance on web platforms. The big advertisers have not yet turned to invest decisively in advertising in non-traditional media, such as websites. Consequently, most companies support their digital platforms through the income they generate on traditional media. However, in the last two years, things began to change (for more on that change, read “Medios informativos digitales: nuevas prácticas y ofertas” by Santiago Marino and Agustín Espada, Letra P magazine, February 2018).
Some mainstream media outlets have made notable digital innovations in recent years: The former newspaper Infobae became exclusively a digital news platform; the outlet La Nación made a series of advances in the digital area that surpass the rest (with a TV channel, among other developments). CienRadios of Grupo Clarín, the most visited radio platform in the country, is perhaps the only strong innovation in the radio market, after some failed projects in previous years (most notably Vorterix Radio).
The appearance of RadioCut is also remarkable. Radio Cut is a web platform that aggregates radio stations. Users can listen on demand to programs from many AM and FM radio stations (more about analog and digital radio in Argentina in “La radio agregada”, Agustín Espada, Fibra magazine, April 2017).
But none of the major commercial media outlets has seriously forayed into podcasting. The state news agency Télam and the national radio station Radio Nacional have developed some of their programming into podcasts, but this is not podcast-first content. It may be downloadable audio, but it was not produced with the podcast format in mind. Even so, Radio Nacional has been advancing in this direction and is the mainstream radio station that has dabbled in podcasting the most. It has generated an unexplored path for the big commercial radio stations that some of them will likely take advantage of. The most outstanding example from Radio Nacional is Nos, a new documentary series about the recent migrants’ arrival in the country.
Some foreign groups have also begun entering the scene. Podium Podcast, a huge podcast producer from Spain and a member of Grupo Prisa, a media group with radio stations in México, Colombia, and Argentina, among other countries, launched its first Argentine podcast series in May. The series, Policiales Argentinos, is about notorious crime stories in the country, and — after listening the first complete series — it’s really a disappointing experience. I hope it gets better in next episodes, using all the narrative tools, and magic, from its Spaniard predecessors.
The Argentine podcast scene continues to grow, and new ways of thinking about and creating podcasting are emerging. The medium has even made it to the university. In a recent talk at the University of Salvador, members of Posta and Lunfa and specialists in the field (Francisco Godinez and Agustín Espada) met to discuss podcasting in general, and Argentine podcasting in particular (the talk is available on YouTube). Their reflections and debates have enriched the world of Argentine podcasting.
So where do we go from here? It is true that from infinite niches, today’s internet, our cultural practices, Netflix labels, and Spotify playlists are made. But, at the same time, it is possible that podcasts will not become widespread in Argentina until the major media puts energy, money, and production — and the advertising and distribution that comes with it — into original podcast content. When the major outlets and advertisers do join podcasting, they will have very fertile ground to explore and can take advantage of the vast experience of podcast producers who have been developing the format in the country for almost a decade.
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