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Jan. 21, 2025
The Future of Podcast Monetization: Courtney Carthy on How Lenny.fm Helps Podcasters Get Paid
Have you ever wanted to earn money from your podcast without dealing with tons of payment methods or piling on more work? This episode has got you covered!
In today's episode of Podcasting Tech, Mathew Passy chats with Courtney Carthy, a podcast creator and producer from Melbourne, Australia. Courtney is one of the creators of Lenny.fm, an innovative platform for podcast creators and listeners that seamlessly helps podcasters get paid for their creations.
Having started as a producer at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, working on various radio shows and digital channels, Courtney is passionate about creators being paid for their work. After almost 10 years he left to create one of Australia's first independent podcast networks - Nearly Media.
In 2014, he transitioned from broadcasting to working with digital content creators, producing 15 original shows and 20 branded podcasts that attract millions of downloads annually. Today, he shares his journey and explains how Lenny.fm is revolutionizing podcast monetization.
Courtney's dedication to simplifying monetization without altering the listening experience showcases the potential for podcasts to flourish economically.
IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER:
- Courtney’s journey: From student radio to Nearly Media. His shift from radio to podcasting and launching a podcast production company. (00:01:01)
- The birth of Lenny.fm: Courtney explains how Lenny.fm functions as a payment platform without hosting content, enabling listeners to support their favorite shows directly. (00:05:06)
- Incentives for using Lenny.fm: Discuss why listeners should subscribe and support through Lenny, and the benefits for podcasters. (00:08:26)
- Tracking and supporting through Lenny.fm: How the system tracks podcast publications and ensures fair distribution of funds to active shows. (00:14:00)
- The ecosystem of support: How support from one podcast can benefit others within the Lenny.fm ecosystem. (00:16:14)
Links and resources mentioned in this episode:
- Lenny.fm platform - https://creators.lenny.fm/about/
- Creator's Portal for Lenny.fm -
- https://creators.lenny.fm/
- Nearly Media - https://www.nearly.com.au/about-nearly-media/
- Follow Courtney Carthy on social media:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneycarthy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lennyinc
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lennyinc_/
- Recommended equipment: Yellowtec microphones
- Software recommendation: Opus clips
- Editing software: Reaper
This episode is a treasure trove for podcasters eager to improve their monetization strategies without compromising their creative integrity. You will also learn about the importance of keeping podcasting simple for creators, the concept of supporting shows without extra content creation, and the ultimate goal of making money flow seamlessly to podcast creators.
Join Courtney Carthy and Mathew Passy as they decode the future of podcast monetization with Lenny.fm.
**As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases of podcasting gear from Amazon.com. We also participate in affiliate programs with many of the software services mentioned on our website. If you purchase something through the links we provide, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The team at Podcasting Tech only recommends products and services that we would use ourselves and that we believe will provide value to our viewers and readers.**
For additional resources and insights visit podcastingtech.com or follow us on social media:
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PODCASTING TECH IS POWERED BY:
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EQUIPMENT IN USE:
- Rodecaster Pro 1st Gen (No longer available). Consider the Rodecaster Duo or Rodecaster Pro II
- EV RE20 with 309a Shockmount
- Rode PSA1+
- iPhone continuity camera but previously the Logitech Brio 4k
- DCMEKA In-Ear Monitors
- BusyBox Smart Sign
Transcript
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This might be the furthest we have traveled for the show. In fact, this might
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be the furthest I've traveled to talk to anybody on a podcast. We are chatting
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with Courtney Carty. He is a creator and producer
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at nearly media and Lenny dot FM And
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Lenny dot f m is a platform that's gonna help creators get paid.
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We love that idea. So excited to talk about that. Courtney, thank you for joining
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us here today. Hello from Melbourne, Australia. You
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might be able to hear the magpies in the background. Is that what
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I heard? I thought that was made up on Bluey.
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No. We get Kookaburra's too. Oh, wow. Alright.
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Well, I I should say I said today, but for you, it's tomorrow. But, thank
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you for, making the time to, to jump on here and chat with me.
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I really do appreciate it. So first of all, you have an interesting background as
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far as, like, your your foray into
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podcasting. You started out in broadcasting. How did you where did your
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career start out and and what made you kind of pivot over to working with
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digital content creators? So I did student
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radio at uni because my housemate just dragged me
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into the studio one day, and said you've gotta get work experience
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if you're gonna get a job. And then I joined the ABC straight out of
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uni and then spent sort of,
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almost 10 years there and was always interested in the technology and
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audio. So how that sort of crossed over. So set up a lot of
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the early Facebook groups, Facebook pages, and other things.
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And then podcasting started to come around in 2012,
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2013, and then when 2014 happened and you've got, you know, Alex
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moving from Planet Money and Serial and, you know, Zoe
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Chase and just sort of like NPR and that style
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kicking off. It was so compelling for me as someone who was starting
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to make radio documentaries, early on in my career.
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I was at a point where I was a bit sick of my job at
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the broadcaster. There wasn't much going on around and a
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friend and I had started an event called inflatable regatta
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which was getting bigger, big enough that I could warrant
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taking 6 months off work to put my time into and that's where we
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got inflatable boats and we had
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about 800 of these and people would jump in the boats and then sail down
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the city's river. It was it was fun exhausting
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but on the other side of that I thought if I get through this maybe
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I could set up a podcast production company,
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a la Gimlet because that had been going for a year or 2 at the
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time. And, do branded shows
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because strategy just doesn't have a big audience to to monetize with
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ads and then do some, creative shows, some
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original shows. And that was 2017.
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Now we've sort of slimmed that back after doing a lot of branded
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stuff, and a lot of original shows just to try
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out. I think we've done about 15 original
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shows and maybe 20 branded or, you know, paid
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for podcasts. We've left with 3 shows
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that do about 2 and a half 1000000 downloads a year, which is pretty
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good for the Australian market. I think
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maybe any market. We've got, work
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with, you know, big name Australian comedians that have been established and these shows have
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been running for 6 years. So we've got an audience that's, you
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know, dedicated. We know how to, you know, do things for
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them. Then they've got Facebook groups. And then
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since 2020, or maybe even
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before then, I was frustrated with how podcasting
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had, you know, money flowing through it. You know, the industry was new,
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and the only option it seemed was, you know, to apply a radio
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model. And then Patreon came along.
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That sort of was yeah. No. But it was a lot of extra
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work. And I could conceptualize
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the idea and after the 2020 inflatable regatta
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event, I was at our office at the time which had a little studio at
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the back. And I got a friend of mine who's a developer
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in and said, what do you think about this? And I drew the concept on
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the board with how everything sort of flows around and why it sits
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outside the apps and all these other considerations, and he said,
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yeah, I think we can do that. That's possible.
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And so we started building and mucking around on and
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off as we all, you know, started to have kids and get distracted and, you
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know, the world went through a pandemic. But, yeah, this will be this
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year we got our act together and and put it out there. People are using
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it. People are getting paid in Singapore, California, the UK,
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Australia. There are people who are podcast creators are receiving money,
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and that's, that's the goal. I don't care
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how the money gets to them. I mean, I do, but, you
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know, I want I want it to get to them in a good way, but
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the the ultimate, like, you know, are we
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successful is our podcast is podcast creators getting money. And, yeah,
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they're starting to. We just want them to get more. So this is the
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Lenny dotfm platform, and this is the
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one where you can put your show in and start to get paid for listens.
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How does it work where you're able to, you know,
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track the listens, attribute it to the right show, get the money to
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the creators without having any additional software. Right? People can just listen via
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whatever web browser they're on. Yeah. So we
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don't host any content, or anything like that. It's
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really just a payment platform. So,
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we monitor a database externally through
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an API to see that shows are publishing.
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List listeners become supporters when they pay $4
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US a month and then they choose the 4 shows that they wanna support. They
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can choose more, so they can choose 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
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10. And then when those top 4 shows, if
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any of them don't publish an episode, the preference is reorganize
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so that there are always supporting 4 shows that are
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publishing episodes in the last 30 days. Now then the
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money is attributed to those shows if their show is
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already a member with Lenny, we'll have their
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payment information so that we can pay them out when they request, but
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otherwise, it just accumulates. If they haven't stood with Lenny,
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then we contact them and say, hey, you're accumulating
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money from listeners, and then they
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can choose to withdraw that, you know, whenever they want.
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The thing that's, sort of unique about it
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is it that Lenny doesn't try and really interact with the
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listening experience at all. People just listen where they listen, you don't have
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to create any extra content for it. There's a, you know, the core
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product that your listeners love is your podcast that you spend all your
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time thinking and making and, you know, producing and,
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you know, sweating over to then go, oh, well, if you
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wanna make money, you've got to do something different. That's not the podcast
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like a newsletter just seemed counterintuitive to me as someone who
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was making a lot of podcasts thinking like that this is the best
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thing that I've making at the moment. Why isn't it why is it the last
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thing I can monetize? And so, when we were setting it
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up, I thought I don't want people to have to go and produce extra
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content. I mean, you can if you want to and it's a good way to
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reward listeners that are supporting you through Lenny. But
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we didn't wanna make it extra work. So everything is
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so purposefully simple, easy,
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and then, you know, we're obviously contactable as well to help out with
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any of that. So if you're a creator and say go to the creator portal,
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which is just creators.lanny.fm and
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check it out there. So right. Anybody listening,
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make sure your show is on there because you could have listeners coming around and
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and listening to your show without you even knowing it, and you deserve to be
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compensated for what people are paying to do it. I guess the real
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question that I'm sure most podcasters wanna ask is, what is the
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incentive for users to use Lenny for consuming
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content when they could probably get these shows in other
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places without having that $4 month hit, which it's not a lot of money, but
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still there's you know, it's more than what they would be paying.
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Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the shows would still be free, you know, unless you
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put a paywall up or anything. But
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Lenny is just there as an option,
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for you to say, hey, if you enjoy our show, if you want us to
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keep making it, help us do that by becoming a supporter. You
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know, one easy way is using lenny.fm. I mean,
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people can send you money in plenty of different ways but this is just a
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smart way that generally heavy podcast
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listeners. So people that listen to more than 6 a week,
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can support the shows that that they appreciate. Now, when
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you have somebody supporting your show for the podcast creators,
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you can request the email addresses of the people that are supporting you.
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So then you can add them to your mailing list, add them to the members
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area of your website. You can also add
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in, sort of like a thank you. So here's
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a discount code for our merch store. If you wanna, you
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know, buy some merch. A way of saying thanks for being supporters.
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If you go back to public radio
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and particularly community radio, how we have it here in Australia,
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people get such a buzz out of their name being read out on the
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podcast. Like, thanks to Peter from Camberwell
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for your support. We really appreciate it. Like,
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often and in our research that we've done, often that's
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enough for people to say, yeah, I've I've listened to hundreds of
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hours of content from or thousands of hours of content from all of
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these great podcast creators, I'd like to, you know,
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contribute in a way that's meaningful. And, you
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know, to be blunt when it comes to creating content, like,
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money is meaningful. And it's not
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money that's had, you know,
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significant percentage chunks taken out of it by
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an advertising agency, you know, you know, a
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brand or anything as it sort of like find as ad money finds
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its way to you. If you're running
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ads or a sponsorship with someone, it doesn't take a lot of time
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like it does finding sponsorships. Having been through that
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before, I called up a transportation, like, a logistics
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startup once when I was trying to find founding sponsors
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for our, one of our podcasts that was gonna be about medical
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history. And I thought it's a fascinating subject with a great host
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and, the founder of this, you know, multi $1,000,000 startup
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that I managed to catch, so why would I want people finding
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out about our startup next to
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blood and guts? And I said, alright. Fine.
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Fair enough. But hung up the phone and realized, like, people pay 1,000 to
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sponsor true crime podcasts, and they're absolutely
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graphic. But that was a miss.
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With Lenny, you get a better chance
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to directly engage with your audience, and I think that's what
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thinking like a radio presenter or a radio
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station misses in podcasting. We recently did an
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article about how, podcast should think more
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like a band than a radio presenter. So I
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worked in the music industry for 3 years, making podcasts
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about music. And I would see band sign with our labels,
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and they would immediately, you know, turn on revenue
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streams like merch, touring, physical
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sales, and licensing sales. And they
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knew that those 4 plus more revenue streams working
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together would give them an amount of money that,
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you know, they could focus on making music.
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Podcasts and podcast creators
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tend to do and there's plenty that don't. There's
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plenty that do many revenue streams, but tend to do 1
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or none, and we wanted to make it really easy. So if you
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were using Lanny to monetize, why not
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set up a print on demand merch store as well?
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If you've got ads, why not? With Nearly Media with our shows, we do
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ad free episodes on Apple Podcasts for $4 a
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month for 2 shows because it's easy to do and we get a couple $100
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that way and people appreciate it. You know, the all
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apps can't be all things to everybody because we've got such a fragmented
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ecosystem, in terms of the
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2 big apps, but then also all the other platforms people use
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for hosting and, for hosting their audio
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and websites as well. What about what is the listener
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experience like? Is that is that an app? Is that mobile? Am I
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downloading the episodes? Right. One thing I do enjoy about podcasts is I
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download the episode, then I can get in my car and know that I'm getting
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interruption free listening. Is that how Lenny works? Yeah.
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Yeah. It's there's no new app at all. People listen where they
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listen. It's just a way similar to, like, buy me
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a coffee or PayPal or Venmo,
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where you're just you've got a direct relationship with the podcast
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creator through our platform. The listening experience happens on
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another platform or another app. So how are you tracking the
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listening and the support, or is it just I'm giving $4 and
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saying these are 4 podcasters I wanna support.
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Maybe I'm I didn't listen all month, but I still wanna support them.
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Yeah. So what we track is whether or not the podcasts
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published an episode that month, 1 or more episodes. And if they
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did, then they get that the split for that
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month. If they didn't, they get shuffled out, but we
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can't track if you've listened to the podcast that
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you're supporting. That's just too difficult at the
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moment. And, also,
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if you support if you've chosen to support them, you know, that's a
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choice that, you know, that you've made because you're probably listening to these
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shows. Yeah. That makes sense. And then
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you said it's it's kinda ranked. And, you know, if we're talking about $4 a
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month, is it a dollar per person, or is there, like, a little bit
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more of a weighted split, for those 4 shows?
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At the moment, we've kept it even. So it's
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a dollar each for the top 4 minus 10%
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to Lenny to, you know, keep us keep us going. And
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then that just accumulates, so it's 90 US cents accumulating per
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listener each month. The economics of it
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work out a little better than advertising
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if you have, close to 1% of
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listeners supporting you on Lenny.
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And then after 2%, 3%, 4% up to, you
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know, maybe if you say if you had 10% of your listeners supporting you on
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Lenny, you just, you know, you're doing really well in terms
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of the comparison to other ways to monetize the the
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economics work out really well like that. And if
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the shows that your listeners also listen
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to so if someone listening to podcast and tech
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supports you and then supports another show that's
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similar, and then that other show says, hey, if you, you
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know, wanna support us do that on Lenny FM.
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Those other listeners to the other show might end up supporting you. So you
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might have, say,
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you know, 5 active people that have come because you've promoted
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Lenny, but then you might also have 5 other people that are supporting you because
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another podcast has done it. So the ecosystem and the
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way that it's set up, the ecosystem will sort of
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become self supporting and in a in a way if that makes
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sense. So the success is spread
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around. It's not a $100,000,000 Sirius
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XM, you know, deal with 1 podcast that's got
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5 producers. It's whatever money is going through
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Lenny FM has to be spread out across the
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podcast ecosystem because people have to choose
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one or more podcast to support. So if there was a
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$100,000,000 going through Lenny, only 25,000,000
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would go to one show if everybody supported that one show, and
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then the other 75% gets spread out in any
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funny way across the ecosystem, and
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that way that's part of the thinking that we had when
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we started it that we didn't want
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people just to support the shows that were great at selling to
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them that they should support them. We wanted people to support shows
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that they listen to regularly, with an
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opportunity, you know, that was built in
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to the product. And going through the
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economics of it, like, you know, spreadsheets and spreadsheets, it just
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it performs that, but we just need to get to a bigger scale. That
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said, we've got,
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for the amount of people we
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have subscribed to,
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to Lenny either free or paid. We've got lots of
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you know, we've got, about 2 and a half times the amount
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of podcasts that have listened. So for
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for every 100 people that subscribe to Lenny, about 250
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podcasts are mentioned. We're able to go to those 250 and
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say, hey. People are interested. People are really appreciating
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your show. Alright. So if you're listening to this and you're a podcaster, there's no
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reason not to submit your information to creators.lenny.fm
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to ensure that if there's somebody out there who wants to give you money for
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your show that you can and also might as well
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press and let listeners know this is a place where they can listen, where they
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can support their favorite content creators, you and maybe a few others.
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Again, we're chatting with Courtney Carty. He is the,
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basically cofounder of Lenny.fm,
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and he's a producer at Nearly Media. Courtney, before we let you go, and we
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thank you so much for your time, we have a couple of questions we'd like
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to ask everybody. I mean, I know, obviously, supporting podcast is
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probably the main spot, but is there somewhere else where you would like to see
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improvement in the podcasting world, whether it's from the listening side, creation
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side, distribution, anything like that? I feel like
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podcasting has is sort slowly
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losing its community a little bit, there used to be a lot of
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interaction, previously with people sort of
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trying new things, and as you know, we've all sort of
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like grown up with figuring out what works. So that fringe element
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of podcasting, I think, has, has gone away a
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little bit, but, you know, maybe that's me just being nostalgic for, you know,
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whatever reason. Discovery is always
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one that I think is,
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you know, could be improved. Everybody wants their podcast to be found. I wanna
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discover new podcasts that are really cool, and listen to
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those. There's the the
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collective mindset of what a podcast is, I think should,
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should be broken up. It doesn't it is so the classic one
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is there are too many podcasts and then you go, well, there are too many
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books, there are too many social media accounts, there are too many songs,
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You know, those those sort of tied cliches about about
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podcasting just need to be need to be rinsed out.
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I would one thing that's been sort of maybe it's because
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I'm a little bit, underslept at the moment
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with young children. One frustration for me
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is where people don't bother to get decent quality
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audio and I'm not talking about, you know, people just making shows for
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the fun of it, I'm talking about big shows that, you
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know, have serious numbers of downloads and a budget behind
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them not bothering to get high quality audio
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so that people at least sound good,
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or excessive, introductions to
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shows from news programs.
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They're, you know, a a meandering, you know,
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personal story from, you know, a 1 on 1 interview
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comedy podcast. Great. But news
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organizations that think it's, you know, really smart to not get to the
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news until 3 minutes in, is something that that's really
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frustrated me lately. There's and
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that that sort of goes to an appreciation of the craft
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And that is an absolute black hole that, you
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know, you you can't make too many generalizations about
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because podcasting has this sort of, like, beautiful way to
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splinter, in all its sort of magnificence of audio texture and timing and audio
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texture and timing and feel and, you know, it's relative to the listener
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and the host at the same time. And that's
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what, you know, keeps intriguing me about it, but
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also what is you know, where the frustrations are born to.
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Understood. And, yeah, I I always, refer to that, you know, preshow
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banters, like, you know, my cat talk. Right? And and, right,
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listen to a comedy podcast. Great. Talk about your cats. If you're trying to teach
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me how to, you know, do better on my taxes, I I don't care. I'm
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not here for that. Don't waste my time. You know? That's there's no value in
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it for me to learn about your, you know, crazy cat or whatever animal
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you might be talking about or whatever nonsense you are bringing up on your show.
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What about tech? Is there any equipment, software, hardware, or anything like
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that that is on your wish list, whether it's something that's out there that you
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don't have yet or something maybe yet to be invented? Oh,
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the yellow microphones. The yellow
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tech? Yeah. That's good. Yeah. They are just
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I've sort of put them in the unattainable basket because they seem so expensive,
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but just they just work. They look
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they look fantastic. I'm, yeah. Right up
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for that. Another one is the
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Opus clips. I tried that for the first time the other
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day, and that was pretty amazing how, you know,
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suddenly there was 25 clips just spat out.
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I'd say those two things, probably I mean, always
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want great field recording equipment. I
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don't have a permanent studio these days because
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our talent have packs that they get around with.
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But a some sort of
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video setup would be would be the next thing, I think,
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that we'd go for. That said, we should be
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using the studios that our,
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advertising partners, you know, have let us, but
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they're often the talent are often recording at home or at an old
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pub in, in Fairfield, just
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north of Melbourne. But I I use
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reefer a lot. That's that's my a big big fan of
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reefer and will argue with people on the Internet like I'm arguing about
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US politics. Just just in defense
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of reefer. I I've got something that I'll show
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you after the call that might be useful in your situation, so stay tuned for
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that. And last question, is there a podcast in your
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playlist that you listen to maybe, you know, 1 or 2 that
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you would dedicate your dollars to on Lenny?
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Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So the Seneca podcast, I've been listening
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to that for years. It's all about
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China, society, culture, politics, history,
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by the very capable Kaiser Guo. The
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deposition, but I don't think it's still going. This
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was a table read of, Elon Musk's
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deposition that was made public, which is
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hilarious and, and something that,
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these sort of I think there are 4 actors play
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Elon, his lawyer, the plaintiff, and another
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lawyer. And it's them just just reading the transcript
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of, you know, what happened. It's it's quite funny. Like, they they sort of
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go until they can't contain themselves anymore.
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Another one that I'm a fan of is Empire, which is,
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a history podcast, that's been going on for a couple
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of years now with William Delrimple and Anita Arnold.
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And then lastly, I think probably something
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like News Weekly, which is a Pakistani comedian in
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Australia who does a news a weekly take on the
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news is a, satirist and comedian.
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Good list. Well, once again, we've been chatting with Courtney McCarthy
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of Lenny dotfm. We'll have a link to
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the the show, especially the creator's link where you can sign up, get your name
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on there, and make sure anybody interested in supporting your show can do just that.
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Courtney, thank you for being up super early to chat with me here today.
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Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. I
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really appreciate it. And, yeah, if you're ever in
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Melbourne, let's say hi. Will do.
Courtney Carthy
Creator/Producer
Courtney Carthy, based in Melbourne, Australia, is a trailblazing creator and producer at Nearly Media and the visionary behind Lenny.fm, a pioneering platform helping content creators monetize their podcasts. With a background in broadcasting, Courtney's career began at ABC after his stint in student radio, where his passion for audio and technology flourished. In 2014, Courtney left the broadcaster to launch Inflatable Regatta, a popular event drawing hundreds to sail down Melbourne's river in inflatable boats.
In 2017, Courtney translated his radio experience into the podcasting realm by founding Nearly Media, producing an impressive array of both branded and original podcasts, some garnering millions of downloads yearly. Notably, he collaborates with top Australian comedians, creating long-running, well-loved shows. Discontent with traditional monetization models, Courtney conceptualized Lenny.fm, a seamless payment platform allowing listeners to support their favorite podcasts without disrupting their listening experience. Today, Lenny.fm supports podcasters globally, ensuring creators are compensated sustainably.