A Penguin in the Orchard

Avoiding Advertising

Here’s a snippet of an announcement I made this morning on The Roadhouse:

The Beta Roadhouse Premium subscription is now available here. This version of the show is ad-free and encoded at 160 Kbps. Without the ads, there will be addtional cuts in each premium show not found in the ad-supported version. I’m also working hard to provide some additional incentives to subscribe to the premium version, including possible label discounts for music in the show. For now, the first 75 annual subscribers will receive a user@roadhousepodcast.com email address with the familiar and convenient GMail interface, provided by the GMail for Domains program. Other perks will certainly follow in the next few months.

The Roadhouse Premium is a for-pay version of the show, though it’s not intended to be a windfall profit-maker. I’ve kept the pricing very, very low in order to make it easy for you to subscribe. You have a choice of three recurring payment plans: $1.99 per month, $4.99 per quarter or $14.99 per year. For convenience and to keep costs low, we’re accepting payment only through PayPal at this time.

This is one of those times when you just feel like you’re rolling the dice, with the house on the line.

Providing a premium version of The Roadhouse seems to make sense. I’ve had more email about the advertising in the show over the past few months. Only one has been cranky, but the sentiment against it does seem to be rising with the number of advertisers in each show.

Two things, I think, distinguish this approach from most others.

The first is that there’s still a free version of The Roadhouse available for all. Virtually all the for-pay podcasts I’ve seen are for-pay only - no free versions. I’ll continue to produce and make available a free version of the show, just with advertising support. And, really, I think even the advertising has been pretty low-key and exactly in the spots listeners are interested in.

The second distinguishing factor is the pricing. I intentionally priced the show very low: $1.99 a month for four hours of quality blues delivered at a high bitrate in whatever podcatching client you’re currently using. On the average, each show contains 13 tracks. That’s 52 tracks in four shows for $1.99 or less. That’s low enough that I’d hope it’s not a financial obstacle to any listener. There may be some who argue on philosophical grounds, but the price shouldn’t be an issue.

In any event, it feels like betting the house. I’ve done that in the past. I think this time the odds are much better.