Maslow's Bundle

When Substack released its iOS Reader app, it took advantage of Substack’s support of text, video, and audio tools. You can create a podcast within Substack, or record a narrator track, and Substack provides auto-generated text-to-speech. Spotify bought Anchor, a studio for producing and distributing podcasts over RSS to various podcast players. And recently Spotify has added support for video podcasts.

Now some popular lettercasters are trying to retrofit audio into their production schedule. Casey Newton and Stratechery author Ben Thompson are cutting back on daily updates to make room for podcast production. Podcasters have found it difficult to extend RSS for monetization of so-called private podcasts. But a more formidable hurdle may be the time subscribers have to consume daily content at a rate that justifies paid subscriptions. Like streaming networks, consumer budgets are reaching a cutoff point. Netflix, HBOMax, and Disney+ are soon to release lower-cost advertising-supplemented versions of their services. And then there’s bundling.

Substack is experimenting with recommendations as a way of encouraging those who’ve already bitten to subscribe to the newsletters they in turn like. These new moves by Newton and Thompson are bundling their related podcast properties with their newsletters. Another bundling strategy is to use podcasts as a marketing tool for promoting favorite authors and casters, as Eric Newcomer has done with an entertaining conversation on his Dead Cat cast with Kara Swisher. The occasion was her last Code conference, which Swisher is replacing with her collaboration with Scott Galloway on the Pivot podcast. The two signed a video version deal with Salesforce+, the streaming network that virtualized last year’s Dreamforce conference. (Note: I work at Salesforce.) Also, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne bought Time Magazine in 2018.

Why should we care about the newsletter business, if it even is a business. I don’t need any rationale for that; it just seems interesting to me in a way reminiscent of the period in early 2000’s when XML and RSS first emerged. At the time it was conventional wisdom that social media was all up and to the right. Come to think of it, that’s still true if the CNBC wall-to-wall coverage of Twitter messages is any indicator. But it’s not the individual messages, or even the individuals behind them, that’s inspiring. It’s the ability we have to project our thoughts, intuition, and action into this realtime melting pot we call by various names. Whatever the pragmatists say, the pulse of the engaged mind is transcendent.

The underlying fascination of this is that it’s possible; we do it because we can. This is so not about brand management. It’s about jumping in the convertible and taking it for a spin. It’s not a message, or a document; it’s a blast from the past. From a time that once was, where what you now want to do was little more than a puzzle you couldn’t unravel. All of a sudden, you knew not much more, but possibilities were lurking. Not a model, not a protocol, certainly not a business, but on the other hand, why not. Reading a court-ordered text message is not normal, but what is immediately recognizable is the signature of the imperative. I think this, I think you might be interested, let me know. Rinse repeat. The dopamine analysis is true but not particularly important. The movement you need is on your shoulder? What? Oh, Beatle John said it’s the best part of the song. OK. Leave it in, for god’s sake.

Evan Shapiro calls it Maslow’s bundle. His famous hierarchy of needs, our underlying motivation for human development. In the streaming bundle, sports + shipping or Disney + more Disney or Apple TV + Friday Night baseball. The need for being captivated by possibility. Combinations that produce alignment and evolution.

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