This might be the furthest we have traveled for the show. In fact, this might

be the furthest I've traveled to talk to anybody on a podcast. We are chatting

with Courtney Carty. He is a creator and producer

at nearly media and Lenny dot FM And

Lenny dot f m is a platform that's gonna help creators get paid.

We love that idea. So excited to talk about that. Courtney, thank you for joining

us here today. Hello from Melbourne, Australia. You

might be able to hear the magpies in the background. Is that what

I heard? I thought that was made up on Bluey.

No. We get Kookaburra's too. Oh, wow. Alright.

Well, I I should say I said today, but for you, it's tomorrow. But, thank

you for, making the time to, to jump on here and chat with me.

I really do appreciate it. So first of all, you have an interesting background as

far as, like, your your foray into

podcasting. You started out in broadcasting. How did you where did your

career start out and and what made you kind of pivot over to working with

digital content creators? So I did student

radio at uni because my housemate just dragged me

into the studio one day, and said you've gotta get work experience

if you're gonna get a job. And then I joined the ABC straight out of

uni and then spent sort of,

almost 10 years there and was always interested in the technology and

audio. So how that sort of crossed over. So set up a lot of

the early Facebook groups, Facebook pages, and other things.

And then podcasting started to come around in 2012,

2013, and then when 2014 happened and you've got, you know, Alex

moving from Planet Money and Serial and, you know, Zoe

Chase and just sort of like NPR and that style

kicking off. It was so compelling for me as someone who was starting

to make radio documentaries, early on in my career.

I was at a point where I was a bit sick of my job at

the broadcaster. There wasn't much going on around and a

friend and I had started an event called inflatable regatta

which was getting bigger, big enough that I could warrant

taking 6 months off work to put my time into and that's where we

got inflatable boats and we had

about 800 of these and people would jump in the boats and then sail down

the city's river. It was it was fun exhausting

but on the other side of that I thought if I get through this maybe

I could set up a podcast production company,

a la Gimlet because that had been going for a year or 2 at the

time. And, do branded shows

because strategy just doesn't have a big audience to to monetize with

ads and then do some, creative shows, some

original shows. And that was 2017.

Now we've sort of slimmed that back after doing a lot of branded

stuff, and a lot of original shows just to try

out. I think we've done about 15 original

shows and maybe 20 branded or, you know, paid

for podcasts. We've left with 3 shows

that do about 2 and a half 1000000 downloads a year, which is pretty

good for the Australian market. I think

maybe any market. We've got, work

with, you know, big name Australian comedians that have been established and these shows have

been running for 6 years. So we've got an audience that's, you

know, dedicated. We know how to, you know, do things for

them. Then they've got Facebook groups. And then

since 2020, or maybe even

before then, I was frustrated with how podcasting

had, you know, money flowing through it. You know, the industry was new,

and the only option it seemed was, you know, to apply a radio

model. And then Patreon came along.

That sort of was yeah. No. But it was a lot of extra

work. And I could conceptualize

the idea and after the 2020 inflatable regatta

event, I was at our office at the time which had a little studio at

the back. And I got a friend of mine who's a developer

in and said, what do you think about this? And I drew the concept on

the board with how everything sort of flows around and why it sits

outside the apps and all these other considerations, and he said,

yeah, I think we can do that. That's possible.

And so we started building and mucking around on and

off as we all, you know, started to have kids and get distracted and, you

know, the world went through a pandemic. But, yeah, this will be this

year we got our act together and and put it out there. People are using

it. People are getting paid in Singapore, California, the UK,

Australia. There are people who are podcast creators are receiving money,

and that's, that's the goal. I don't care

how the money gets to them. I mean, I do, but, you

know, I want I want it to get to them in a good way, but

the the ultimate, like, you know, are we

successful is our podcast is podcast creators getting money. And, yeah,

they're starting to. We just want them to get more. So this is the

Lenny dotfm platform, and this is the

one where you can put your show in and start to get paid for listens.

How does it work where you're able to, you know,

track the listens, attribute it to the right show, get the money to

the creators without having any additional software. Right? People can just listen via

whatever web browser they're on. Yeah. So we

don't host any content, or anything like that. It's

really just a payment platform. So,

we monitor a database externally through

an API to see that shows are publishing.

List listeners become supporters when they pay $4

US a month and then they choose the 4 shows that they wanna support. They

can choose more, so they can choose 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,

10. And then when those top 4 shows, if

any of them don't publish an episode, the preference is reorganize

so that there are always supporting 4 shows that are

publishing episodes in the last 30 days. Now then the

money is attributed to those shows if their show is

already a member with Lenny, we'll have their

payment information so that we can pay them out when they request, but

otherwise, it just accumulates. If they haven't stood with Lenny,

then we contact them and say, hey, you're accumulating

money from listeners, and then they

can choose to withdraw that, you know, whenever they want.

The thing that's, sort of unique about it

is it that Lenny doesn't try and really interact with the

listening experience at all. People just listen where they listen, you don't have

to create any extra content for it. There's a, you know, the core

product that your listeners love is your podcast that you spend all your

time thinking and making and, you know, producing and,

you know, sweating over to then go, oh, well, if you

wanna make money, you've got to do something different. That's not the podcast

like a newsletter just seemed counterintuitive to me as someone who

was making a lot of podcasts thinking like that this is the best

thing that I've making at the moment. Why isn't it why is it the last

thing I can monetize? And so, when we were setting it

up, I thought I don't want people to have to go and produce extra

content. I mean, you can if you want to and it's a good way to

reward listeners that are supporting you through Lenny. But

we didn't wanna make it extra work. So everything is

so purposefully simple, easy,

and then, you know, we're obviously contactable as well to help out with

any of that. So if you're a creator and say go to the creator portal,

which is just creators.lanny.fm and

check it out there. So right. Anybody listening,

make sure your show is on there because you could have listeners coming around and

and listening to your show without you even knowing it, and you deserve to be

compensated for what people are paying to do it. I guess the real

question that I'm sure most podcasters wanna ask is, what is the

incentive for users to use Lenny for consuming

content when they could probably get these shows in other

places without having that $4 month hit, which it's not a lot of money, but

still there's you know, it's more than what they would be paying.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the shows would still be free, you know, unless you

put a paywall up or anything. But

Lenny is just there as an option,

for you to say, hey, if you enjoy our show, if you want us to

keep making it, help us do that by becoming a supporter. You

know, one easy way is using lenny.fm. I mean,

people can send you money in plenty of different ways but this is just a

smart way that generally heavy podcast

listeners. So people that listen to more than 6 a week,

can support the shows that that they appreciate. Now, when

you have somebody supporting your show for the podcast creators,

you can request the email addresses of the people that are supporting you.

So then you can add them to your mailing list, add them to the members

area of your website. You can also add

in, sort of like a thank you. So here's

a discount code for our merch store. If you wanna, you

know, buy some merch. A way of saying thanks for being supporters.

If you go back to public radio

and particularly community radio, how we have it here in Australia,

people get such a buzz out of their name being read out on the

podcast. Like, thanks to Peter from Camberwell

for your support. We really appreciate it. Like,

often and in our research that we've done, often that's

enough for people to say, yeah, I've I've listened to hundreds of

hours of content from or thousands of hours of content from all of

these great podcast creators, I'd like to, you know,

contribute in a way that's meaningful. And, you

know, to be blunt when it comes to creating content, like,

money is meaningful. And it's not

money that's had, you know,

significant percentage chunks taken out of it by

an advertising agency, you know, you know, a

brand or anything as it sort of like find as ad money finds

its way to you. If you're running

ads or a sponsorship with someone, it doesn't take a lot of time

like it does finding sponsorships. Having been through that

before, I called up a transportation, like, a logistics

startup once when I was trying to find founding sponsors

for our, one of our podcasts that was gonna be about medical

history. And I thought it's a fascinating subject with a great host

and, the founder of this, you know, multi $1,000,000 startup

that I managed to catch, so why would I want people finding

out about our startup next to

blood and guts? And I said, alright. Fine.

Fair enough. But hung up the phone and realized, like, people pay 1,000 to

sponsor true crime podcasts, and they're absolutely

graphic. But that was a miss.

With Lenny, you get a better chance

to directly engage with your audience, and I think that's what

thinking like a radio presenter or a radio

station misses in podcasting. We recently did an

article about how, podcast should think more

like a band than a radio presenter. So I

worked in the music industry for 3 years, making podcasts

about music. And I would see band sign with our labels,

and they would immediately, you know, turn on revenue

streams like merch, touring, physical

sales, and licensing sales. And they

knew that those 4 plus more revenue streams working

together would give them an amount of money that,

you know, they could focus on making music.

Podcasts and podcast creators

tend to do and there's plenty that don't. There's

plenty that do many revenue streams, but tend to do 1

or none, and we wanted to make it really easy. So if you

were using Lanny to monetize, why not

set up a print on demand merch store as well?

If you've got ads, why not? With Nearly Media with our shows, we do

ad free episodes on Apple Podcasts for $4 a

month for 2 shows because it's easy to do and we get a couple $100

that way and people appreciate it. You know, the all

apps can't be all things to everybody because we've got such a fragmented

ecosystem, in terms of the

2 big apps, but then also all the other platforms people use

for hosting and, for hosting their audio

and websites as well. What about what is the listener

experience like? Is that is that an app? Is that mobile? Am I

downloading the episodes? Right. One thing I do enjoy about podcasts is I

download the episode, then I can get in my car and know that I'm getting

interruption free listening. Is that how Lenny works? Yeah.

Yeah. It's there's no new app at all. People listen where they

listen. It's just a way similar to, like, buy me

a coffee or PayPal or Venmo,

where you're just you've got a direct relationship with the podcast

creator through our platform. The listening experience happens on

another platform or another app. So how are you tracking the

listening and the support, or is it just I'm giving $4 and

saying these are 4 podcasters I wanna support.

Maybe I'm I didn't listen all month, but I still wanna support them.

Yeah. So what we track is whether or not the podcasts

published an episode that month, 1 or more episodes. And if they

did, then they get that the split for that

month. If they didn't, they get shuffled out, but we

can't track if you've listened to the podcast that

you're supporting. That's just too difficult at the

moment. And, also,

if you support if you've chosen to support them, you know, that's a

choice that, you know, that you've made because you're probably listening to these

shows. Yeah. That makes sense. And then

you said it's it's kinda ranked. And, you know, if we're talking about $4 a

month, is it a dollar per person, or is there, like, a little bit

more of a weighted split, for those 4 shows?

At the moment, we've kept it even. So it's

a dollar each for the top 4 minus 10%

to Lenny to, you know, keep us keep us going. And

then that just accumulates, so it's 90 US cents accumulating per

listener each month. The economics of it

work out a little better than advertising

if you have, close to 1% of

listeners supporting you on Lenny.

And then after 2%, 3%, 4% up to, you

know, maybe if you say if you had 10% of your listeners supporting you on

Lenny, you just, you know, you're doing really well in terms

of the comparison to other ways to monetize the the

economics work out really well like that. And if

the shows that your listeners also listen

to so if someone listening to podcast and tech

supports you and then supports another show that's

similar, and then that other show says, hey, if you, you

know, wanna support us do that on Lenny FM.

Those other listeners to the other show might end up supporting you. So you

might have, say,

you know, 5 active people that have come because you've promoted

Lenny, but then you might also have 5 other people that are supporting you because

another podcast has done it. So the ecosystem and the

way that it's set up, the ecosystem will sort of

become self supporting and in a in a way if that makes

sense. So the success is spread

around. It's not a $100,000,000 Sirius

XM, you know, deal with 1 podcast that's got

5 producers. It's whatever money is going through

Lenny FM has to be spread out across the

podcast ecosystem because people have to choose

one or more podcast to support. So if there was a

$100,000,000 going through Lenny, only 25,000,000

would go to one show if everybody supported that one show, and

then the other 75% gets spread out in any

funny way across the ecosystem, and

that way that's part of the thinking that we had when

we started it that we didn't want

people just to support the shows that were great at selling to

them that they should support them. We wanted people to support shows

that they listen to regularly, with an

opportunity, you know, that was built in

to the product. And going through the

economics of it, like, you know, spreadsheets and spreadsheets, it just

it performs that, but we just need to get to a bigger scale. That

said, we've got,

for the amount of people we

have subscribed to,

to Lenny either free or paid. We've got lots of

you know, we've got, about 2 and a half times the amount

of podcasts that have listened. So for

for every 100 people that subscribe to Lenny, about 250

podcasts are mentioned. We're able to go to those 250 and

say, hey. People are interested. People are really appreciating

your show. Alright. So if you're listening to this and you're a podcaster, there's no

reason not to submit your information to creators.lenny.fm

to ensure that if there's somebody out there who wants to give you money for

your show that you can and also might as well

press and let listeners know this is a place where they can listen, where they

can support their favorite content creators, you and maybe a few others.

Again, we're chatting with Courtney Carty. He is the,

basically cofounder of Lenny.fm,

and he's a producer at Nearly Media. Courtney, before we let you go, and we

thank you so much for your time, we have a couple of questions we'd like

to ask everybody. I mean, I know, obviously, supporting podcast is

probably the main spot, but is there somewhere else where you would like to see

improvement in the podcasting world, whether it's from the listening side, creation

side, distribution, anything like that? I feel like

podcasting has is sort slowly

losing its community a little bit, there used to be a lot of

interaction, previously with people sort of

trying new things, and as you know, we've all sort of

like grown up with figuring out what works. So that fringe element

of podcasting, I think, has, has gone away a

little bit, but, you know, maybe that's me just being nostalgic for, you know,

whatever reason. Discovery is always

one that I think is,

you know, could be improved. Everybody wants their podcast to be found. I wanna

discover new podcasts that are really cool, and listen to

those. There's the the

collective mindset of what a podcast is, I think should,

should be broken up. It doesn't it is so the classic one

is there are too many podcasts and then you go, well, there are too many

books, there are too many social media accounts, there are too many songs,

You know, those those sort of tied cliches about about

podcasting just need to be need to be rinsed out.

I would one thing that's been sort of maybe it's because

I'm a little bit, underslept at the moment

with young children. One frustration for me

is where people don't bother to get decent quality

audio and I'm not talking about, you know, people just making shows for

the fun of it, I'm talking about big shows that, you

know, have serious numbers of downloads and a budget behind

them not bothering to get high quality audio

so that people at least sound good,

or excessive, introductions to

shows from news programs.

They're, you know, a a meandering, you know,

personal story from, you know, a 1 on 1 interview

comedy podcast. Great. But news

organizations that think it's, you know, really smart to not get to the

news until 3 minutes in, is something that that's really

frustrated me lately. There's and

that that sort of goes to an appreciation of the craft

And that is an absolute black hole that, you

know, you you can't make too many generalizations about

because podcasting has this sort of, like, beautiful way to

splinter, in all its sort of magnificence of audio texture and timing and audio

texture and timing and feel and, you know, it's relative to the listener

and the host at the same time. And that's

what, you know, keeps intriguing me about it, but

also what is you know, where the frustrations are born to.

Understood. And, yeah, I I always, refer to that, you know, preshow

banters, like, you know, my cat talk. Right? And and, right,

listen to a comedy podcast. Great. Talk about your cats. If you're trying to teach

me how to, you know, do better on my taxes, I I don't care. I'm

not here for that. Don't waste my time. You know? That's there's no value in

it for me to learn about your, you know, crazy cat or whatever animal

you might be talking about or whatever nonsense you are bringing up on your show.

What about tech? Is there any equipment, software, hardware, or anything like

that that is on your wish list, whether it's something that's out there that you

don't have yet or something maybe yet to be invented? Oh,

the yellow microphones. The yellow

tech? Yeah. That's good. Yeah. They are just

I've sort of put them in the unattainable basket because they seem so expensive,

but just they just work. They look

they look fantastic. I'm, yeah. Right up

for that. Another one is the

Opus clips. I tried that for the first time the other

day, and that was pretty amazing how, you know,

suddenly there was 25 clips just spat out.

I'd say those two things, probably I mean, always

want great field recording equipment. I

don't have a permanent studio these days because

our talent have packs that they get around with.

But a some sort of

video setup would be would be the next thing, I think,

that we'd go for. That said, we should be

using the studios that our,

advertising partners, you know, have let us, but

they're often the talent are often recording at home or at an old

pub in, in Fairfield, just

north of Melbourne. But I I use

reefer a lot. That's that's my a big big fan of

reefer and will argue with people on the Internet like I'm arguing about

US politics. Just just in defense

of reefer. I I've got something that I'll show

you after the call that might be useful in your situation, so stay tuned for

that. And last question, is there a podcast in your

playlist that you listen to maybe, you know, 1 or 2 that

you would dedicate your dollars to on Lenny?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So the Seneca podcast, I've been listening

to that for years. It's all about

China, society, culture, politics, history,

by the very capable Kaiser Guo. The

deposition, but I don't think it's still going. This

was a table read of, Elon Musk's

deposition that was made public, which is

hilarious and, and something that,

these sort of I think there are 4 actors play

Elon, his lawyer, the plaintiff, and another

lawyer. And it's them just just reading the transcript

of, you know, what happened. It's it's quite funny. Like, they they sort of

go until they can't contain themselves anymore.

Another one that I'm a fan of is Empire, which is,

a history podcast, that's been going on for a couple

of years now with William Delrimple and Anita Arnold.

And then lastly, I think probably something

like News Weekly, which is a Pakistani comedian in

Australia who does a news a weekly take on the

news is a, satirist and comedian.

Good list. Well, once again, we've been chatting with Courtney McCarthy

of Lenny dotfm. We'll have a link to

the the show, especially the creator's link where you can sign up, get your name

on there, and make sure anybody interested in supporting your show can do just that.

Courtney, thank you for being up super early to chat with me here today.

Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. I

really appreciate it. And, yeah, if you're ever in

Melbourne, let's say hi. Will do.