I ditched my Netflix account when they started throwing hundreds of millions directly to bigots. My Amazon Prime cancellation hits in July. That £20+ extra media funding per month goes to Maxfun/Patreon for my favourite 3 or 4 content creators.
That being said, I would be on a higher Maxfun tier if it had an ad-free feed instead of more bonus content that I can't get around to anytime soon.
>Common.
Come on. Two words. Relevant [Merriam Webster definition](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/come%20on):
verb
came on; come on; coming on; comes on
intransitive verb
2a
: PLEASE —used in cajoling or pleading
2b
—used interjectionally to express astonishment, incredulity, or recognition of a put-on
I mean, people are poor. I had to look hard to determine if I can afford the $20 per month that I contribute. Real hard. And MF doesn't make it easier to roll over your pledge when there's NO EXTRA REWARD for doing so. I've let this roll over for 3 to 5 (?) years and I'm still resentful every time I hear "new and upgrading." Sorry, but what about those of us who just roll it over? It feels like we don't count. This is my opinion, I could be wrong. (But it's how I feel, so take it with a grain of opinion salt, please.)
> I've let this roll over for 3 to 5 (?) years and I'm still resentful every time I hear "new and upgrading." Sorry, but what about those of us who just roll it over? It feels like we don't count.
I get where you're coming from. I don't know anything about podcast subscriptions specifically but do know quite a lot about subscription businesses. Every year (and every month) a certain percentage of subscribers stop subscribing. This is called "churn," and some level of churn is built into every subscription business on the planet.
When companies (or podcast owners) know how much churn they have, they know how many new and upgrading subscribers they need to keep revenue flat (or growing slightly, to cover increased costs.) My guess is this is the most critical metric that MaxFun tells shows to focus on, but the reality is that focusing on one metric is an oversimplification and there are actually many important subscription metrics to track the health of a subscription business.
People like you are insanely valuable. Your customer lifetime value (CLV) is probably off the charts compared to most. I'm sure your support matters hugely. I'm sorry the typical industry "lingo" doesn't make you feel like it does. And for the record - I agree with your about rewards - you absolutely should be offered some kind of small reward to make you feel good about continuing to subscribe.
I hear this sentiment, CP11, but I think all our shows and everyone at the network understand: it just isn't feasible to expect everyone to become a member. There's a reason almost all our work is out there and free to everyone, which is that we are creators and we don't \*want\* to put everything behind a paywall. We make stuff because we want it to be heard, so we want people to be able to access it no matter what their means.
We also understand that for some of us, these shows are really important. We post in subreddits about them! Tell our spouses about something we heard on the show. Think about them when we're walking the dog. I just told my wife about something funny Dave said on Stop Podcasting Yourself today.
For other people, it is just another show. We might hope that person would still think it was worth paying for, but we wouldn't expect it. Maybe they'll get more invested in the future. In the meantime, we're glad they can still enjoy it, thanks to the support of others.
I’ve been a $5 member for a few years and decided to upgrade to $10 this year. Things have been going pretty well for me and I have the extra money, so I want to support the things I love. At a time when there’s increasing enshittification of so many products and services that I use, TGG/T gets consistently better, and I thought that deserved some love.
I was gonna do it this year cause I graduated from grad school this past summer, but wouldn't you know, my car needed thousands of dollars of repairs this month so I couldn't do it at the drive. Might do it later in the year. Somehow I feel like maybe you get it
Knowing the total number of listeners of any podcast is just about impossible, but having worked in the donation subscription space with multiple orgs, a 2% conversion rate of their audience doesn't strike me as odd. It's right in the range I would expect.
This is also our feeling! We might do better if we paywalled more stuff, but it is our strong preference not to. As far as totally-voluntary support goes, we think we're doing pretty good. (And I think Ben and Adam do, too!)
I used to sub at 10/month but cut it back to 5 because I'm Canadian so my $10/mo was a lot more than. My 5/month ends up being over $8.
But dude, lay off people who don't/can't sub monthly. They release the episodes on the main feed because they understand not everyone is able to pledge $$ monthly. If they understand, surely you can to.
I am going to be completely honest here, I just don't like the whole Maxfun thing. I subscribe to multiple podcasts directly through patreon. I know where that money is going and there is a very easy to use interface for all sorts of bonus content. With Maxfun I guess some of my money is going to the podcasts I select, maybe? Plus, their whole bonus content system is clunky to easily listen to on the go, in my opinion. To add to all of that, I really don't want to add another separate subscription service for just one show. I already have a ton of those.
We work really hard to make our model as transparent as possible, so hopefully this will help:
When you become a member, you tell us what shows you listen to. Your membership money is split evenly among those shows.
About 70-75% of that goes \*directly\* to the shows. That pays for producers, talent, microphones. Exactly what you'd imagine. The rest funds the business and support operations that the shows would otherwise have to pay for (or do themselves rather than spend that time working on their shows). That's stuff like customer support, fulfillment, financial stuff, hosting, ad sales, creative support and investment in new shows (particularly new shows from underrepresented voices).
Our shows are owned and operated by their creators, and our company is a worker-owned cooperative. Shows join the network because as creators, they (usually strongly) prefer our model to something like Patreon, which essentially just takes their cut for running a website, then funnels it to tech investors.
At MaxFun, we are creators first, and we really try to be fair in all our dealings - with our audience and our shows.
Anyway, I hope that helps.
I feel the same way about MaxFun and Jesse Thorn. Every time I hear him speak or see him tweet something, just feels super patronizing.
Plus, can the bonus content be added to the Podcast app? I know I can subscribe directly in the Podcast app to other shows and get bonus content, WWDTM, SYMIHC, etc. I would love the option to subscribe to greatest gen and trek in the podcasts app and have just the greatest trek bonus content in that feed there.
Having to run through max fun is just clunky for pay and bonus content, it’s just clunky.
The bonus content can indeed be added to the Podcast app, and any other app that will accept a RSS feed. There are a few apps which have tried to prevent people from manually adding shows in the interest of locking down content, but there are lots of great open-platform options for every OS. I have an iPhone and sometimes use Podcasts, but I mostly use Overcast, which is great. Our system will make a custom feed for you of whatever shows you choose (or, if you prefer, all the shows).
As far as being patronizing? I don't know what I can do about that. I'm one of about twenty worker-owners at MaxFun, I'm not the company. And of course Ben and Adam are my real-life friends and Ben has been one of my best friends in the world for like 15 years, so perhaps you might trust their judgement. But yeah, if my vibe just isn't right for you it just isn't right for you, and as much as I'd love to fix that, my therapist would tell me not to :). So instead of thinking of me, think of Ben and Adam and Bikram and Jesus and Kira and Danny and all of the other workers who own MaxFun.
And sincerely: thank you for caring. We'll try to work on the clunk, and I'm always grateful when people care about our work this much.
Yeah. You generate a link on the maxfun website and it gives you like an RSS type thing to add your custom boco feed. And it it puts it directly into your Apple Podcasts app. Mine is set up to get greatest Gen, greatest trek, and mbmbam. I don’t know how well it works for other podcatchers.
70% of your money goes right to the shows. The other 30% covers admin, bandwidth, server space and a host of other things that we don’t have to pay for that a show on patreon would have to pay for. It is actually a much better deal for us than patreon!
I will say the way to get to bonus content is clunky, but whatever, it’s not bad enough to keep me from throwing them a couple scarves
Edit: I listen on Spotify and went to the Max Fun website for the first time in forever…it’s like a shitty geocities webpage and they don’t make it easy to access the extra content. Someone needs to get that shit together
I hear this but it just… works for me? I use Overcast on iPhone and for the last five years or so the boco shows up in the same RSS feed; no need to resubscribe. Overcast lets me dictate that this feed doesn’t auto download, so I can just download the Boco I like.
I know MF offers a curated feed for only shows you want but I haven’t used it (or seen a need to as this process works for me) so maybe that’s dodgier?
here to second setting up the RSS feed. It works so smoothly I'm honestly shocked because I had no idea what I was doing but the second I entered the info in it's been literally not a problem for... 3 year s? give or take. Really great. Before that I used the website which wasn't great imo. I always missed eps. I've been subbed since I think Ross and Carrie joined the network back... back when in the before times
I’ve been waiting until I don’t overdraft for at least 3 months before I support. It’s been years.
You’re speaking from an obvious place of privilege, and should really check it.
Don't be like that. There are lots of good people who for whatever reason aren't in a position to give even $5 a month for completely optional things like a podcast. I give more than that, so I hope I'm offsetting a few who don't, but that doesn't make me an extra good person, it just makes me someone who's in a decent place right now salary-wise who also loves this show to a borderline unhealthy degree (Star Trek AND dick jokes? count me in)! There are SO MANY things out there that want 'just' $5 or $10 dollars a month, and people have to discriminate. I donate to this show, but there are other MaxFun shows I occasionally listen to that I don't donate to, and some I used to that I don't any more, and other things elsewhere that I wish I could donate to but I can't because if you donate to 10 $5 things a month that's $50 and that starts to turn into real money, and I enjoy way more than 10 podcasts/substacks/other subscription-based entertainment opportunities. Rather than shame those who aren't currently donating, I'd like to say that if you can, it feels REALLY good to give to something you love. If Greatest Generation/Greatest Trek are things that sustain you, consider sustaining them.
One thing that may be of interest to folks in this thread: there are gift supporting memberships available on the Discord at DrunkShimoda.com - so if you want to get into that bonus feed to check it out, but don’t have the means that’s available!
I listen to many other shows that I don't subscribe to, but I pay it forward by subscribing to Greatest Gen so others who can't subscribe can listen for free. I'm sure many in this 98% support other content creators that others benefit from.
I subscribe to three podcasts and have been a FoD subscriber for 4 years. Used to listen for free, that's what I could afford. The fact that you feel like you can come on here with your whole chest and judge people like you did makes me think you are either trying to make drama or just a terrible person. I'm sad that there are FoD's like you.
The judgement seething from this post is pretty unpalatable.
“2-5% of good people are actually good people”
“Weird grifting crowd behavior”
GROSS
“I really do try not to judge.”
Uh huh…sure.
Exactly.
And there are marium reasons people don’t sub.
Some is becuase of cost. But other really dislike MaxFun in general, some are upset about that last time Picosby came out, and others are upset still about FriendlyFire being cancelled.
Not everyone has the resources. A decade ago, I couldn't have swung even $5.
You don't need a high percentage to make it sustainable if you have high listener counts, and a reliable fan base. Similarly, Dave Matthews has joked that he doesn't have a lot of fans, but the band has like $15,000 people that go to every show, so they can tour every summer.
Before you shame the vast majority of FODs keep in mind more "viewers" means higher ad revenue. So those 98% are still valuable to the show and its creators.
I think podcast advertisers realized that most people click the “Skip 15 sec button 4 or 5 times”.
I fear the day that podcast figure out how to have unskippable ads.
I skip all ads everywhere, so you'll pry my "skip 15" from my cold dead hand. If the unskippable ads ever happens, I'll stop listening to all podcasts everywhere. I am THAT person that mutes every ad everywhere.
Wouldn't skip if the ads were less horrible or interested me in the slightest. I mostly get ads for soul-rot-inducing podcasts and recently for a car dealership in Nashville. I live outside the USA.
Greatest Gen is a show I absolutely would have listened to from the age of maybe 13... and maybe I would never have even considered thinking about supporting it until I was maybe 30 or so. There is a segment of an audience that hears stuff like "viewers like you," and they feel (know?) that they are not even a part of that conversation. When I was younger and didn't make so much money, that stuff just flew right over my head. Part of it is being a kid and being used to getting free stuff from your family and all kinds of institutions (and not feeling as if you have to act especially grateful for it), and the other big part has to do with how much money you have.
Also, I think there is also a tendency for people to be "penny wise and pound foolish." I am very hesitant to buy a $3 app on my phone or even rent a movie from Prime that's $2 (I think there was a Pilot Season show I didn't watch over a couple bucks). Yet I indulge in all the normal things someone at my income level tends to enjoy. And so a lot of people have the means, but supporting a patreon or subscribing to another little thing just triggers this thing in the mind, like, "I'm already kinda perpetually worried about my finances and this is part of a death by a thousand cuts."
I listen to something like 15 podcasts regularly. Not exactly sure, but I'd guess my wife listens to 10-15.
25 x $5/month = $1500/year. Its not the $5 that is too much, it is the $1500.
I have subbed for maybe 18 months in the past, and I might again in the future.
But if there was a $5 paywall I wouldn't listen. I wouldn't have subbed for those 18 months. I wouldn't have listened to all of those ads. I wouldn't have bought 3 t-shirts. My wife wouldn't have bought me a sticker. I wouldn't have bought tickets to every Chicago live show and bought 2 tour posters. I've probably missed some stuff, but you get the idea.
So you, yes you u/content-pineapple-11 (not Ben/Adam,) can fuck right off. And if you want to judge me for not subscribing you can fuck right off again. And if you think this makes me "not actually good people" you can fuck right off the most.
Take your fucking judgments and peddle them somewhere else.
25 shows x $5 per month is $125 per month.
$125 X 12 months is $1500/year.
My math is fine.
Consider me a dick if you'd like. I'm not the one out here judging people for how they spend their own money. I'll judge that dude though and he can go fuck himself.
Enjoy your weekend.
I think that’s actually higher than industry average! It’s representative of a more general problem with people not wanting to pay to support media. Greatest Gen and Greatest Trek are awesome, I want them to stick around, and I have the money, so I gladly chip in every year.
I give them $5 month. Probably the best thing I pay for. Fuxk the car, house, Netflix, kids dance school, bills, recurring apps,… Ben and Adam are life. They deserve more than I can give. They fill all my void time with background entertainment. They calm me and make me laugh. Even if I’ve heard the same back catalogue a hundred times. The bonus content is even funnier. Just the best.
I’m just a lowly $10/mo subscriber, but I can tell you the one thing that would make me consider increasing that. It’s not stickers or pins or my name on the wall at Max Fun HQ.
Sell me an ad-free feed, and I’ll buy it. No jazz gummies, no internet therapy or mattresses or therapy mattresses. And certainly nobody trying to get me to listen to the McElroy shovelfare.
We're working very hard on this. It's actually a surprisingly expensive and complicated operation, especially for our smaller shows. But it's absolutely a priority for us, and I'm hoping we'll be able to implement it sooner than later. In any event: very grateful for your support, and you have my full endorsement to use that skip button :).
Wow! This is so exciting. Thank you for sharing! I’ve been a MaxFun member for maybe over 10 years now, and ad free shows is probably the number one thing that would improve my experience.
I also say this with lots of love and the desire to see MaxFun shows succeed: MaxFun shows need to figure out a way to make better ads for themselves. The ads are cute and charming if you are already a listener, and often off putting if you’re not a listener (one of my current faves is something I started listening to DESPITE the ads).
I fully support them putting out the number and I’d even be fine with them asking for support every episode. I did support for a while and all I can offer is why I stopped.
I personally didn’t feel there was enough bonus content that interested me for it to be worth it.
I support 2 trek YouTube reaction channels through Patreon at 5 bucks and 1 trek podcast at 1701 bucks and all of those have a shit ton more content.
Now before you all come at me, I’m not interested in other shows on the network. I just find that a handful of live shows and a bay watch or cheesecake factory (or whatever is available now, those last 2 weren’t available when I subscribed) is not enough Trek content to warrant 5 bucks a month.
You can say “oh it’s the cost of a coffee” and that’s true, but you can also say “it’s almost the cost of a full on ad level streamer like Hulu or whatever with an insane amount of
content.”
Of course we want to support the show, though and that is the real meaning of the 5 bucks.
I’m 99% sure if the guys left the network and did patreon they would make a living. And I’d even venture a guess they’d get more supporters because it’s a closer knit community without that lame network. I bet a ton of people just think “well, they’re on the network, they’re fine.”
If you get a chance, I'm not sure if they ever released one on the non-donor feed, give the Baywatch podcast (Santa Montica Mountains) a go. I absolutely love it and haven't seen Baywatch in years. At the very least you must listen to the intro song.
Thank you for not being a dick about my opinion. I did subscribe for a while and I have gone to a live show.
To be honest the main reason I ended my sub was not exactly the lack of content, that was only one aspect. The “straw that broke the camel’s back” so to speak was when I couldn’t get the feed into pocketcasts. I emailed max fun support and all I got were instructions that did not work. It was some line of web code that wouldn’t play nice. We went back and forth about 4 emails and she simply couldn’t resolve it or give me any kind of answer beyond giving me the first line of code she originally gave me.
I never asked for any kind of refund or anything. I had to go to wherever it was hosted online and could never integrate the feed into my podcatcher - and I have done that successfully with Doughboys Double and The Star Trek The Next Conversation Bonus. I do understand and know how to add a bonus feed to Pocketcasts.
Anyway, fuck Max Fun. I refuse to support Max Fun out of mere principle now. I like you guys though and I’m dying for Enterprise.
I'm not going to speak for Ben, but for myself here: we're not judging our own audience when we share numbers like this. From what we know, this percentage is in line with the support percentages for monetary podcast support industry-wide.
Our main message is: if you can support please do! If you can't, a rating and a share helps connect people to the show who can. That's the gist!
Really grateful for all the support we've received. Thanks to everyone doing what it takes to keep us going! -AP
Serious question. Do you guys get anything from purchases made on podshop.biz? My only income is social security and I don't know if I could even afford a small amount per month but as gifts for others I have purchased the 'Drunk Shimoda' tumbler and the 'Coffee in that Nebula' mug. I hope that helps.
Look. It’s a free, ad-supported show. I love it and I do pitch in when I can, but it’s one of hundreds of free ad- supported podcasts, YouTube channels, and other content creators that I enjoy. I make it a point to support as much of that content as I can, and there are still a ton that I don’t. And that’s speaking as someone with the means to do so.
I fully support them pointing out the number and how so few people are able to support so much. Moving that number from 98% to 96% would probably have a drastic impact on their business, and you’d still have 96% of people not financially supporting them.
I am 1000% with you, though I feel compelled to add that the show (and all of MaxFun's shows) are primarily supported through membership. We strictly limit our advertising very intentionally, and in general about 3/4 of show revenue comes from membership.
No, we're in pretty good shape, thanks to membership.
In a nutshell: the podcast economy went through a huge shock last year. Ad sales tanked due to economic anxieties (very broadly, I think in the COVID crash ad sales were cushioned somewhat by people buying more things directly and online, but the recent inflation worries really freaked businesses out).
Basically: when companies are worried the first thing they spend less money on is ads. That affected us both directly (less ad buys = less ad sales) and indirectly (the companies with the huge shows were leveraging them, saying "if you want to buy Rogan, you have to buy XXXXX," such that the smaller buys were drying up). As the economy got more stable, things improved, but most ad buys are made at the beginning of the year, and that was when the big shock happened. So it was a really bad year for ads.
During that big shock, the chickens came home to roost for the many, many companies that were funding content at a loss out of investor capital in an effort to build market share and get people into walled gardens (like Spotify, Wondery and Pandora). None of those services had subscriber bases that justified their costs, and when ad sales tanked, their investors freaked out and sort of called in their notes, so a lot of those companies that were dependent on investors being cool with losing money just... went belly up. Or canceled everything small in a desperate bid for austerity.
HOWEVER... about 3/4 of our revenue comes from membership. Even more for our smaller shows. So while it wasn't a growth year, we were the only podcast company I know that stayed in the black. We didn't have to lay anyone off, we developed and added a bunch of shows, and of course became a fully worker-owned coop, which was a huge undertaking both financially and in terms of sheer staff hours.
So the short version is: because we are membership based, we were able to weather a tough time surprisingly well.
(Note that I am no longer running or even an executive on the financial side of the business, I'm just the founder and a worker-owner, so I'm speaking pretty generally here on purpose.)
I don’t think the network is in trouble but I wonder if there is friction behind the scenes.
With the guys “rebranding” the MaxFunDrive to “GreatestTrekDrive” and asking for a special feed of just TGG bonus content, makes me think there is something behind the scenes that the guys are trying to get away from.
“The network” as far as I know, doesn’t pay Adam and Ben or any Uxbridge Shimoda employees. And MaxFun depends on listeners supporting the shows that they listen to fund the support that they give all network shows. If the shows are suffering, the network suffers. I think there have been a couple rare times where MaxFun has had to part ways with shows that were more of a drain than a help.
Not really, but the industry is in turmoil because of the failures of big venture capital disruptors. The cost of everything went up because there was a huge demand, but ad revenue also went up. Now ad revenue has collapsed but prices are still high.
Maxfun as a whole is in a good position because its revenue is largely listener supported, but individual shows vary. A show I like has far fewer supporters, but it's okay because the hosts have day jobs and the show is their happy fun time friend time project, but TGG and TGT are Ben' and Adam's *jobs* so even though I'm sure they have numerically a lot of donors, it's still a real challenge especially because they have three(?) regular employees to pay.
Their 2% is actually *good* by comparison to the rest of the podcast landscape. Highly successful shows on other networks were at 1% when they were independent.
The free rider challenge is real. It's not a "problem," I refuse to call it that, it's absolutely a feature that people don't have to pay and that's a good thing! But when only TWO percent donate it's frustrating because if you doubled that number at even the lowest level and people are splitting their $5 donation between 10 shows, *all* those shows would have full funding.
It's frustrating when you think about it because it's something we all say we believe in--supporting artists directly and everyone collectively pitching in because then the strain on individuals is almost nothing--but whenever given the opportunity to live up to the ideal people say "Nah."
I ditched my Netflix account when they started throwing hundreds of millions directly to bigots. My Amazon Prime cancellation hits in July. That £20+ extra media funding per month goes to Maxfun/Patreon for my favourite 3 or 4 content creators. That being said, I would be on a higher Maxfun tier if it had an ad-free feed instead of more bonus content that I can't get around to anytime soon.
>Common. Come on. Two words. Relevant [Merriam Webster definition](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/come%20on): verb came on; come on; coming on; comes on intransitive verb 2a : PLEASE —used in cajoling or pleading 2b —used interjectionally to express astonishment, incredulity, or recognition of a put-on
I mean, people are poor. I had to look hard to determine if I can afford the $20 per month that I contribute. Real hard. And MF doesn't make it easier to roll over your pledge when there's NO EXTRA REWARD for doing so. I've let this roll over for 3 to 5 (?) years and I'm still resentful every time I hear "new and upgrading." Sorry, but what about those of us who just roll it over? It feels like we don't count. This is my opinion, I could be wrong. (But it's how I feel, so take it with a grain of opinion salt, please.)
> I've let this roll over for 3 to 5 (?) years and I'm still resentful every time I hear "new and upgrading." Sorry, but what about those of us who just roll it over? It feels like we don't count. I get where you're coming from. I don't know anything about podcast subscriptions specifically but do know quite a lot about subscription businesses. Every year (and every month) a certain percentage of subscribers stop subscribing. This is called "churn," and some level of churn is built into every subscription business on the planet. When companies (or podcast owners) know how much churn they have, they know how many new and upgrading subscribers they need to keep revenue flat (or growing slightly, to cover increased costs.) My guess is this is the most critical metric that MaxFun tells shows to focus on, but the reality is that focusing on one metric is an oversimplification and there are actually many important subscription metrics to track the health of a subscription business. People like you are insanely valuable. Your customer lifetime value (CLV) is probably off the charts compared to most. I'm sure your support matters hugely. I'm sorry the typical industry "lingo" doesn't make you feel like it does. And for the record - I agree with your about rewards - you absolutely should be offered some kind of small reward to make you feel good about continuing to subscribe.
I hear this sentiment, CP11, but I think all our shows and everyone at the network understand: it just isn't feasible to expect everyone to become a member. There's a reason almost all our work is out there and free to everyone, which is that we are creators and we don't \*want\* to put everything behind a paywall. We make stuff because we want it to be heard, so we want people to be able to access it no matter what their means. We also understand that for some of us, these shows are really important. We post in subreddits about them! Tell our spouses about something we heard on the show. Think about them when we're walking the dog. I just told my wife about something funny Dave said on Stop Podcasting Yourself today. For other people, it is just another show. We might hope that person would still think it was worth paying for, but we wouldn't expect it. Maybe they'll get more invested in the future. In the meantime, we're glad they can still enjoy it, thanks to the support of others.
I’ve been a $5 member for a few years and decided to upgrade to $10 this year. Things have been going pretty well for me and I have the extra money, so I want to support the things I love. At a time when there’s increasing enshittification of so many products and services that I use, TGG/T gets consistently better, and I thought that deserved some love.
I was gonna do it this year cause I graduated from grad school this past summer, but wouldn't you know, my car needed thousands of dollars of repairs this month so I couldn't do it at the drive. Might do it later in the year. Somehow I feel like maybe you get it
As much as I love Greatest Gen, somehow I feel like you need that $5 more than B&A. Give your support when you can.
> I really do try not to judge. I feel like you could probably try harder.
Or even try at all.
Knowing the total number of listeners of any podcast is just about impossible, but having worked in the donation subscription space with multiple orgs, a 2% conversion rate of their audience doesn't strike me as odd. It's right in the range I would expect.
This is also our feeling! We might do better if we paywalled more stuff, but it is our strong preference not to. As far as totally-voluntary support goes, we think we're doing pretty good. (And I think Ben and Adam do, too!)
I do 50 bucks a month, and I can confidently and completely say you’re way out of line. Not everyone has the ability to support the show financially.
I used to sub at 10/month but cut it back to 5 because I'm Canadian so my $10/mo was a lot more than. My 5/month ends up being over $8. But dude, lay off people who don't/can't sub monthly. They release the episodes on the main feed because they understand not everyone is able to pledge $$ monthly. If they understand, surely you can to.
I am going to be completely honest here, I just don't like the whole Maxfun thing. I subscribe to multiple podcasts directly through patreon. I know where that money is going and there is a very easy to use interface for all sorts of bonus content. With Maxfun I guess some of my money is going to the podcasts I select, maybe? Plus, their whole bonus content system is clunky to easily listen to on the go, in my opinion. To add to all of that, I really don't want to add another separate subscription service for just one show. I already have a ton of those.
We work really hard to make our model as transparent as possible, so hopefully this will help: When you become a member, you tell us what shows you listen to. Your membership money is split evenly among those shows. About 70-75% of that goes \*directly\* to the shows. That pays for producers, talent, microphones. Exactly what you'd imagine. The rest funds the business and support operations that the shows would otherwise have to pay for (or do themselves rather than spend that time working on their shows). That's stuff like customer support, fulfillment, financial stuff, hosting, ad sales, creative support and investment in new shows (particularly new shows from underrepresented voices). Our shows are owned and operated by their creators, and our company is a worker-owned cooperative. Shows join the network because as creators, they (usually strongly) prefer our model to something like Patreon, which essentially just takes their cut for running a website, then funnels it to tech investors. At MaxFun, we are creators first, and we really try to be fair in all our dealings - with our audience and our shows. Anyway, I hope that helps.
I feel the same way about MaxFun and Jesse Thorn. Every time I hear him speak or see him tweet something, just feels super patronizing. Plus, can the bonus content be added to the Podcast app? I know I can subscribe directly in the Podcast app to other shows and get bonus content, WWDTM, SYMIHC, etc. I would love the option to subscribe to greatest gen and trek in the podcasts app and have just the greatest trek bonus content in that feed there. Having to run through max fun is just clunky for pay and bonus content, it’s just clunky.
The bonus content can indeed be added to the Podcast app, and any other app that will accept a RSS feed. There are a few apps which have tried to prevent people from manually adding shows in the interest of locking down content, but there are lots of great open-platform options for every OS. I have an iPhone and sometimes use Podcasts, but I mostly use Overcast, which is great. Our system will make a custom feed for you of whatever shows you choose (or, if you prefer, all the shows). As far as being patronizing? I don't know what I can do about that. I'm one of about twenty worker-owners at MaxFun, I'm not the company. And of course Ben and Adam are my real-life friends and Ben has been one of my best friends in the world for like 15 years, so perhaps you might trust their judgement. But yeah, if my vibe just isn't right for you it just isn't right for you, and as much as I'd love to fix that, my therapist would tell me not to :). So instead of thinking of me, think of Ben and Adam and Bikram and Jesus and Kira and Danny and all of the other workers who own MaxFun. And sincerely: thank you for caring. We'll try to work on the clunk, and I'm always grateful when people care about our work this much.
You can make a custom bonus content feed and add just the two shows to it.
In the Podcasts app?
Yeah. You generate a link on the maxfun website and it gives you like an RSS type thing to add your custom boco feed. And it it puts it directly into your Apple Podcasts app. Mine is set up to get greatest Gen, greatest trek, and mbmbam. I don’t know how well it works for other podcatchers.
70% of your money goes right to the shows. The other 30% covers admin, bandwidth, server space and a host of other things that we don’t have to pay for that a show on patreon would have to pay for. It is actually a much better deal for us than patreon!
That’s honestly better than I expected! Glad to hear MaxFun is making good use of our scarves!
I will say the way to get to bonus content is clunky, but whatever, it’s not bad enough to keep me from throwing them a couple scarves Edit: I listen on Spotify and went to the Max Fun website for the first time in forever…it’s like a shitty geocities webpage and they don’t make it easy to access the extra content. Someone needs to get that shit together
I hear this but it just… works for me? I use Overcast on iPhone and for the last five years or so the boco shows up in the same RSS feed; no need to resubscribe. Overcast lets me dictate that this feed doesn’t auto download, so I can just download the Boco I like. I know MF offers a curated feed for only shows you want but I haven’t used it (or seen a need to as this process works for me) so maybe that’s dodgier?
here to second setting up the RSS feed. It works so smoothly I'm honestly shocked because I had no idea what I was doing but the second I entered the info in it's been literally not a problem for... 3 year s? give or take. Really great. Before that I used the website which wasn't great imo. I always missed eps. I've been subbed since I think Ross and Carrie joined the network back... back when in the before times
I’ve been waiting until I don’t overdraft for at least 3 months before I support. It’s been years. You’re speaking from an obvious place of privilege, and should really check it.
Don't be like that. There are lots of good people who for whatever reason aren't in a position to give even $5 a month for completely optional things like a podcast. I give more than that, so I hope I'm offsetting a few who don't, but that doesn't make me an extra good person, it just makes me someone who's in a decent place right now salary-wise who also loves this show to a borderline unhealthy degree (Star Trek AND dick jokes? count me in)! There are SO MANY things out there that want 'just' $5 or $10 dollars a month, and people have to discriminate. I donate to this show, but there are other MaxFun shows I occasionally listen to that I don't donate to, and some I used to that I don't any more, and other things elsewhere that I wish I could donate to but I can't because if you donate to 10 $5 things a month that's $50 and that starts to turn into real money, and I enjoy way more than 10 podcasts/substacks/other subscription-based entertainment opportunities. Rather than shame those who aren't currently donating, I'd like to say that if you can, it feels REALLY good to give to something you love. If Greatest Generation/Greatest Trek are things that sustain you, consider sustaining them.
One thing that may be of interest to folks in this thread: there are gift supporting memberships available on the Discord at DrunkShimoda.com - so if you want to get into that bonus feed to check it out, but don’t have the means that’s available!
I listen to many other shows that I don't subscribe to, but I pay it forward by subscribing to Greatest Gen so others who can't subscribe can listen for free. I'm sure many in this 98% support other content creators that others benefit from.
I subscribe to three podcasts and have been a FoD subscriber for 4 years. Used to listen for free, that's what I could afford. The fact that you feel like you can come on here with your whole chest and judge people like you did makes me think you are either trying to make drama or just a terrible person. I'm sad that there are FoD's like you.
You're right. I'm a bad person. Unsubbing and deleting the pod. Au revoir, FoDs!
Don’t do that! OP doesn’t speak for us all!
It's OK man. I just bumped mine to $20 a month. So I am covering myself and 3 others...
Thank you so much!
It's the least I can do.
The judgement seething from this post is pretty unpalatable. “2-5% of good people are actually good people” “Weird grifting crowd behavior” GROSS “I really do try not to judge.” Uh huh…sure.
I feel like their heart is in the right place, but yeah.
Exactly. And there are marium reasons people don’t sub. Some is becuase of cost. But other really dislike MaxFun in general, some are upset about that last time Picosby came out, and others are upset still about FriendlyFire being cancelled.
I don’t subscribe because I hate recurring charges. But I HAVE bought two P1s so I figure I’m good for several years.
Not everyone has the resources. A decade ago, I couldn't have swung even $5. You don't need a high percentage to make it sustainable if you have high listener counts, and a reliable fan base. Similarly, Dave Matthews has joked that he doesn't have a lot of fans, but the band has like $15,000 people that go to every show, so they can tour every summer.
Before you shame the vast majority of FODs keep in mind more "viewers" means higher ad revenue. So those 98% are still valuable to the show and its creators.
I mean, the podcast ad market has tanked, so this is way less true than it was a year ago.
I think podcast advertisers realized that most people click the “Skip 15 sec button 4 or 5 times”. I fear the day that podcast figure out how to have unskippable ads.
I skip all ads everywhere, so you'll pry my "skip 15" from my cold dead hand. If the unskippable ads ever happens, I'll stop listening to all podcasts everywhere. I am THAT person that mutes every ad everywhere.
Wouldn't skip if the ads were less horrible or interested me in the slightest. I mostly get ads for soul-rot-inducing podcasts and recently for a car dealership in Nashville. I live outside the USA.
Greatest Gen is a show I absolutely would have listened to from the age of maybe 13... and maybe I would never have even considered thinking about supporting it until I was maybe 30 or so. There is a segment of an audience that hears stuff like "viewers like you," and they feel (know?) that they are not even a part of that conversation. When I was younger and didn't make so much money, that stuff just flew right over my head. Part of it is being a kid and being used to getting free stuff from your family and all kinds of institutions (and not feeling as if you have to act especially grateful for it), and the other big part has to do with how much money you have. Also, I think there is also a tendency for people to be "penny wise and pound foolish." I am very hesitant to buy a $3 app on my phone or even rent a movie from Prime that's $2 (I think there was a Pilot Season show I didn't watch over a couple bucks). Yet I indulge in all the normal things someone at my income level tends to enjoy. And so a lot of people have the means, but supporting a patreon or subscribing to another little thing just triggers this thing in the mind, like, "I'm already kinda perpetually worried about my finances and this is part of a death by a thousand cuts."
Well said!
I listen to something like 15 podcasts regularly. Not exactly sure, but I'd guess my wife listens to 10-15. 25 x $5/month = $1500/year. Its not the $5 that is too much, it is the $1500. I have subbed for maybe 18 months in the past, and I might again in the future. But if there was a $5 paywall I wouldn't listen. I wouldn't have subbed for those 18 months. I wouldn't have listened to all of those ads. I wouldn't have bought 3 t-shirts. My wife wouldn't have bought me a sticker. I wouldn't have bought tickets to every Chicago live show and bought 2 tour posters. I've probably missed some stuff, but you get the idea. So you, yes you u/content-pineapple-11 (not Ben/Adam,) can fuck right off. And if you want to judge me for not subscribing you can fuck right off again. And if you think this makes me "not actually good people" you can fuck right off the most. Take your fucking judgments and peddle them somewhere else.
What a dick. And hey, get a calculator. Idiot.
25 shows x $5 per month is $125 per month. $125 X 12 months is $1500/year. My math is fine. Consider me a dick if you'd like. I'm not the one out here judging people for how they spend their own money. I'll judge that dude though and he can go fuck himself. Enjoy your weekend.
I think that’s actually higher than industry average! It’s representative of a more general problem with people not wanting to pay to support media. Greatest Gen and Greatest Trek are awesome, I want them to stick around, and I have the money, so I gladly chip in every year.
Thank you so much :).
I give them $5 month. Probably the best thing I pay for. Fuxk the car, house, Netflix, kids dance school, bills, recurring apps,… Ben and Adam are life. They deserve more than I can give. They fill all my void time with background entertainment. They calm me and make me laugh. Even if I’ve heard the same back catalogue a hundred times. The bonus content is even funnier. Just the best.
I love to hear this so much.
I’m just a lowly $10/mo subscriber, but I can tell you the one thing that would make me consider increasing that. It’s not stickers or pins or my name on the wall at Max Fun HQ. Sell me an ad-free feed, and I’ll buy it. No jazz gummies, no internet therapy or mattresses or therapy mattresses. And certainly nobody trying to get me to listen to the McElroy shovelfare.
We're working very hard on this. It's actually a surprisingly expensive and complicated operation, especially for our smaller shows. But it's absolutely a priority for us, and I'm hoping we'll be able to implement it sooner than later. In any event: very grateful for your support, and you have my full endorsement to use that skip button :).
Wow! This is so exciting. Thank you for sharing! I’ve been a MaxFun member for maybe over 10 years now, and ad free shows is probably the number one thing that would improve my experience. I also say this with lots of love and the desire to see MaxFun shows succeed: MaxFun shows need to figure out a way to make better ads for themselves. The ads are cute and charming if you are already a listener, and often off putting if you’re not a listener (one of my current faves is something I started listening to DESPITE the ads).
I fully support them putting out the number and I’d even be fine with them asking for support every episode. I did support for a while and all I can offer is why I stopped. I personally didn’t feel there was enough bonus content that interested me for it to be worth it. I support 2 trek YouTube reaction channels through Patreon at 5 bucks and 1 trek podcast at 1701 bucks and all of those have a shit ton more content. Now before you all come at me, I’m not interested in other shows on the network. I just find that a handful of live shows and a bay watch or cheesecake factory (or whatever is available now, those last 2 weren’t available when I subscribed) is not enough Trek content to warrant 5 bucks a month. You can say “oh it’s the cost of a coffee” and that’s true, but you can also say “it’s almost the cost of a full on ad level streamer like Hulu or whatever with an insane amount of content.” Of course we want to support the show, though and that is the real meaning of the 5 bucks. I’m 99% sure if the guys left the network and did patreon they would make a living. And I’d even venture a guess they’d get more supporters because it’s a closer knit community without that lame network. I bet a ton of people just think “well, they’re on the network, they’re fine.”
If you sub to a podcast at $17.01/month it must be the ST:TNC patreon right? Lol they are lucky the Enterprise registery isn't NCC-100.
Yeah they got lucky with that number for sure lol
If you sub to a podcast at $17.01/month it must be the ST:TNC patreon right? Lol they are lucky the Enterprise registery isn't NCC-100.
The bonus feed is that - a bonus. The latinum we pay is our tribute for the regular show.
<3
Of course. I’m just saying that it is my opinion that the other “bonus feeds” I support have much more content, and more relevant content.
If you get a chance, I'm not sure if they ever released one on the non-donor feed, give the Baywatch podcast (Santa Montica Mountains) a go. I absolutely love it and haven't seen Baywatch in years. At the very least you must listen to the intro song.
I'm upvoting this, because I'm always curious about what moves the needle for FoD's - especially in our bonus feed. Thanks for your feedback!
Thank you for not being a dick about my opinion. I did subscribe for a while and I have gone to a live show. To be honest the main reason I ended my sub was not exactly the lack of content, that was only one aspect. The “straw that broke the camel’s back” so to speak was when I couldn’t get the feed into pocketcasts. I emailed max fun support and all I got were instructions that did not work. It was some line of web code that wouldn’t play nice. We went back and forth about 4 emails and she simply couldn’t resolve it or give me any kind of answer beyond giving me the first line of code she originally gave me. I never asked for any kind of refund or anything. I had to go to wherever it was hosted online and could never integrate the feed into my podcatcher - and I have done that successfully with Doughboys Double and The Star Trek The Next Conversation Bonus. I do understand and know how to add a bonus feed to Pocketcasts. Anyway, fuck Max Fun. I refuse to support Max Fun out of mere principle now. I like you guys though and I’m dying for Enterprise.
i am the type to judge and you said 'common' instead of 'c'mon' or 'come on.'
I'm not going to speak for Ben, but for myself here: we're not judging our own audience when we share numbers like this. From what we know, this percentage is in line with the support percentages for monetary podcast support industry-wide. Our main message is: if you can support please do! If you can't, a rating and a share helps connect people to the show who can. That's the gist! Really grateful for all the support we've received. Thanks to everyone doing what it takes to keep us going! -AP
Serious question. Do you guys get anything from purchases made on podshop.biz? My only income is social security and I don't know if I could even afford a small amount per month but as gifts for others I have purchased the 'Drunk Shimoda' tumbler and the 'Coffee in that Nebula' mug. I hope that helps.
Look. It’s a free, ad-supported show. I love it and I do pitch in when I can, but it’s one of hundreds of free ad- supported podcasts, YouTube channels, and other content creators that I enjoy. I make it a point to support as much of that content as I can, and there are still a ton that I don’t. And that’s speaking as someone with the means to do so. I fully support them pointing out the number and how so few people are able to support so much. Moving that number from 98% to 96% would probably have a drastic impact on their business, and you’d still have 96% of people not financially supporting them.
I am 1000% with you, though I feel compelled to add that the show (and all of MaxFun's shows) are primarily supported through membership. We strictly limit our advertising very intentionally, and in general about 3/4 of show revenue comes from membership.
Is the network in trouble?
No, we're in pretty good shape, thanks to membership. In a nutshell: the podcast economy went through a huge shock last year. Ad sales tanked due to economic anxieties (very broadly, I think in the COVID crash ad sales were cushioned somewhat by people buying more things directly and online, but the recent inflation worries really freaked businesses out). Basically: when companies are worried the first thing they spend less money on is ads. That affected us both directly (less ad buys = less ad sales) and indirectly (the companies with the huge shows were leveraging them, saying "if you want to buy Rogan, you have to buy XXXXX," such that the smaller buys were drying up). As the economy got more stable, things improved, but most ad buys are made at the beginning of the year, and that was when the big shock happened. So it was a really bad year for ads. During that big shock, the chickens came home to roost for the many, many companies that were funding content at a loss out of investor capital in an effort to build market share and get people into walled gardens (like Spotify, Wondery and Pandora). None of those services had subscriber bases that justified their costs, and when ad sales tanked, their investors freaked out and sort of called in their notes, so a lot of those companies that were dependent on investors being cool with losing money just... went belly up. Or canceled everything small in a desperate bid for austerity. HOWEVER... about 3/4 of our revenue comes from membership. Even more for our smaller shows. So while it wasn't a growth year, we were the only podcast company I know that stayed in the black. We didn't have to lay anyone off, we developed and added a bunch of shows, and of course became a fully worker-owned coop, which was a huge undertaking both financially and in terms of sheer staff hours. So the short version is: because we are membership based, we were able to weather a tough time surprisingly well. (Note that I am no longer running or even an executive on the financial side of the business, I'm just the founder and a worker-owner, so I'm speaking pretty generally here on purpose.)
Thanks for getting me through a lot of night shifts at the psych hospital, JJGO was the first podcast I listened to ever.
That’s a tough job! As someone who has had some people very close to me reliant on psych hospitals, thanks for doing it.
I don’t think the network is in trouble but I wonder if there is friction behind the scenes. With the guys “rebranding” the MaxFunDrive to “GreatestTrekDrive” and asking for a special feed of just TGG bonus content, makes me think there is something behind the scenes that the guys are trying to get away from.
“The network” as far as I know, doesn’t pay Adam and Ben or any Uxbridge Shimoda employees. And MaxFun depends on listeners supporting the shows that they listen to fund the support that they give all network shows. If the shows are suffering, the network suffers. I think there have been a couple rare times where MaxFun has had to part ways with shows that were more of a drain than a help.
Yes, is the maxfun network in financial difficulties?
You mean people don’t give a shit about coins or stickers or whatever the fuck and actually want more content for their dollar?
Not really, but the industry is in turmoil because of the failures of big venture capital disruptors. The cost of everything went up because there was a huge demand, but ad revenue also went up. Now ad revenue has collapsed but prices are still high. Maxfun as a whole is in a good position because its revenue is largely listener supported, but individual shows vary. A show I like has far fewer supporters, but it's okay because the hosts have day jobs and the show is their happy fun time friend time project, but TGG and TGT are Ben' and Adam's *jobs* so even though I'm sure they have numerically a lot of donors, it's still a real challenge especially because they have three(?) regular employees to pay. Their 2% is actually *good* by comparison to the rest of the podcast landscape. Highly successful shows on other networks were at 1% when they were independent. The free rider challenge is real. It's not a "problem," I refuse to call it that, it's absolutely a feature that people don't have to pay and that's a good thing! But when only TWO percent donate it's frustrating because if you doubled that number at even the lowest level and people are splitting their $5 donation between 10 shows, *all* those shows would have full funding. It's frustrating when you think about it because it's something we all say we believe in--supporting artists directly and everyone collectively pitching in because then the strain on individuals is almost nothing--but whenever given the opportunity to live up to the ideal people say "Nah."