Kattie Laur: What's Holding Back Canadian Podcasting?

Tara Sands  0:02  
The sound of podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
There are questions that get asked about Canadian podcasting. Is it in trouble? Are the chips stacked against Canadian podcasts. But the question I like is, what is actually holding back Canadian podcasting? My guest today is Katie lore, producer, audience growth specialist and creator of the pod the North newsletter. She is one of the sharpest voices when we think about how audio really works in Canada. This is one of those conversations where ideas and solutions are tabled. They are thrown into the pot of sphere in hopes that podcast money will sprout from coniferous trees across the country. Hang in there. Katie and I are going to solve every Canadian podcasting problem at once, and now Katie lore joins me from Toronto. Katie, what is holding back Canadian podcasting?

Kattie Laur  1:03  
Okay, well, I think the answer to that is always money. There are a variety of ways that that's the case, but Canada is severely lacking when it comes to grant funding, and it is severely lacking when it comes to just a culture around supporting podcasts from a sponsorship lens, there's not very many Canadian brands who know enough about podcasts and are willing to just sort of take a jump and a leap of faith into supporting those shows.

Matt Cundill  1:35  
So I was on the show pod biz, with Norma Jean belenky, and one of the things I said as a solution was that if you're a Canadian podcaster, you have to be able to get money from every which way possible, many different angles. And you've mentioned money as being the problem right off the top. So let's start with funding. Is funding a reasonable solution? Who should get funding and how much do we need?

Kattie Laur  2:00  
Oh, man, such a big, broad question. And it's so tricky now too, because video has now entered the picture. So what a budget for a podcast looked like a couple years ago is completely different. Now, if you want to play on the same in the same game as the big American ones that have like, three point lighting, studio productions, but I would say, I think a podcast, we should be able to support at least 10 podcasts a year with a 10 episode series with video production. Give a podcast $100,000 and let them do something amazing, so that we look really good on the global stage of podcasts. I was thinking 50 might cover it. I think, like, this is the thing, because I think $50,000 is a solid amount to produce a show, but then there's money that needs to go into the marketing side of things, and this is where my expertise in the podcasting space has been really interesting, because I have both experience as a producer and as an audience growth specialist in doing that work, and I have just seen how much putting money behind Strategic Growth tactics has, like, really, really impacted shows in terms of, like, explosive growth, because there is just so much impact that can happen by buying a host read ad on a really aligned show. You know. So giving somebody the option to have a big host read something about their show is, like, massive so you need a lot of money to do that.

Matt Cundill  3:39  
So in radio, there was a shortage of Canadian artists to play on the radio. And the solution to that became, you know, things like factor where radio stations would donate into, you know, a pile of money, and then it would be doled out accordingly, and we wouldn't have this great Canadian content that could be played. Can I kind of argue right now that we already have that in the form of the CBC they're taking pitches, and so should maybe they be the ones to be the official people to dole this out?

Kattie Laur  4:07  
I think absolutely they have a responsibility there, for sure. It's interesting looking at what the CBC is doing, because it's clear that they've found a niche of making really high quality content in the narrative audio space. And anytime I've talked to them recently, they've said they're not interested in incorporating video just yet, and so they also find themselves in sort of a sticky position when it comes to growing outside of like the big American ones. But I actually submitted a pitch to their recent open call for pitches, and they were very specific about what they were looking for, which I think is important, because I think it helps to be very focused on what it is. But that didn't stop me from pitching something completely unhinged. I pitched a sex and relationships and disability podcast to them for their personally feed called hoist me daddy, and it is a dating. In reviews, like stories, podcast hosted by this wonderful guy, Andrew gurza, who's a sex and disability advocate and like that is something that I think should be made. There's nothing else out there in the world like it. It was a hilarious piece of content to produce some pilot work around. And I think they could land a decent mainstream audience and like CBC could do something really cool like that. They've put out very interesting video content on CBC gem and other types of productions like that. So I think there's definitely room and demand for doing that type of work. But I totally see like there is some risk averseness to like doing more casual chat style shows.

Matt Cundill  5:41  
I was on that CBC pitch call, and I think what they were really looking for was your idea to sort of fall within one of four podcasts that they are already producing. And could they produce a series within within those four so you have to build it within, inside of their ecosystem. But it was a good exercise to sit through the pitch call.

Kattie Laur  6:00  
Absolutely. Yeah. And from my understanding, like the CBC podcast team is still quite small, and it seems like the funding that they get is quite limited. That's why they end up doing a lot of distribution work and partnering with other companies that are already making these podcasts. So it's really interesting that I don't know if the funding is really there at the CBC for them to also be producing and, kind of managing a fund of creating podcasts, you know,

Matt Cundill  6:28  
yeah, there's a lot of, you know, yelling and screaming that goes on about, you know, defund the CBC from, you know, from the wacky crowd. I could

Kattie Laur  6:35  
never be that person.

Matt Cundill  6:37  
Well, you know, you know what I mean. I love that defund the CBC stuff, because it's just so off base and wacky that it's like, Oh, you want to take away my hockey game on Saturday night, because that's the channel I'm watching. Oh, you want to take away my favorite podcasts that I listen to. And CBC has a lot of the top podcasts in the country. So when people say stuff like that, it doesn't land. It actually makes you sound like a like an idiot. So yeah, if we want to, like, redo the budget for the CBC, I am all for that, because I again, these are great ideas that we have. We should be allocating money for Canadian podcasts in this way. Another great idea for the CBC is they should probably be the center of all music metadata in the country, and be counting the can con. What qualifies as can con? There are so many things that break radio stations don't have time to count all this stuff up and fill out all the forms. You could actually have a central hub for this stuff. And you know, maybe even the CBC could host the podcast as well. We can get into the technical side of it all. So that's my defund the CBC ran for today.

Kattie Laur  7:39  
Well, I think you're onto something too, right? Because there is credibility behind the CBC name. And when CBC launches a new podcast, you know it's going to be good. We already know, like numerous CBC podcasts are Peabody Award winners at this point, or nominees like they are winning awards. They make really good content. They have a very talented team. And so the more that CBC can put their brand behind Canadian podcasts that are good, then I think that will help those indie podcasts to grow and just have that stamp of credibility right off the bat. So there is, I think, a good argument to have CBC be funding more podcasts and, like, allocating more money into the podcasting ecosystem.

Matt Cundill  8:20  
Yeah, my original idea was, you know, the radio stations with the pot of money that radio stations give into to create music, I don't know what Canadian podcasters are going to be able to pony up any money to go into a pot to help other podcasters?

Kattie Laur  8:32  
Right? No, absolutely not. None of us have money.

Matt Cundill  8:37  
So talking about corporate sponsorship, and, you know, we sort of earmarked anywhere between 50 and 100,000 between 50 and $100,000 to get behind a really serious podcast over the course of a year. If I'm a corporate company and I wanted to bankroll or fund or sponsor a particular podcast with a story, I just get to a point in my head where it's like, we can just take this money and do a podcast about ourselves, and we can call Pacific content, or anybody out there to make us a branded podcast edit. Now I realized that I said Pacific content once a Canadian company in the darling of branded podcasts, bought by Rogers, mothballed by Rogers, and then sold to lower Street in the UK. I probably should have mentioned some of the other Canadian companies that make excellent branded podcasts today. Jar podcast solutions out of Vancouver, pod starter out of Halifax, the sound off media company, I hear that's pretty good. Do we get tripped up in the money here? You know, when it comes to the corporate money?

Kattie Laur  9:37  
I think absolutely, I was just thinking about this last night because I'm planning a workshop at the end of the month about branded podcasting, and brands getting into the podcasting space, because there is this idea that, like most CEOs, want to start a podcast, and they think it's going to be amazing. And this is the thing like Pacific content, I mean, rip, but now you can go to all the other teams out there that are making branded content. Intent, like sequel, for example, is making incredible shows with their especially with their show choice, ology. But it's one thing to let a really talented team do the thing right, and most brands don't want to do that. There is a lot of, again, risk averseness, where they're like, You know what? The more this sounds, more creative and a little bit like trying something new, and it's not putting our brand out there outright, the less I want to get involved, because I don't know if we want to put all this money into it, and a lot of brands forget about who they're making the podcast for. And so I think there's like, a shift that needs to happen now where brands need to be okay with the fact that, like, they are either making a podcast to promote themselves in some capacity or and if they're not prepared to do something for their audience, then they might as well just buy ads on other podcasts where they know their audience is so like, for example, there was a show that I worked on that was a branded podcast that the ROI, which I hate using in the podcasting landscape, ended up being really high for them, because the guests that they were coming on ended up becoming clients or partners. So it didn't really matter of who was listening anymore. All that mattered was that they made that CEO happy by having them a guest on the show and then using that as sort of a doorway to connect with that CEO and eventually work with them. So I think brands can think that way, and they have to get out of this mindset of making something for the general public and just be okay with the fact that their podcast is a little bit of just like an audience of one. All it is is really to make them look credible in some form or fashion and open the door to make connections and have conversations that they want to have. Otherwise, I think a good branded podcast moving forward has to be transparent about their company, and that means they should incorporate people from the company who are enthusiastic and charismatic to be the host, not their CEO, who has zero time in the world for this, or just market on podcast. Just sponsor a podcast instead, it's way less work. You're going to have a higher turnover of actual potential customers, and you can be really targeted with who you're trying to market to. So that's just where my head is at. That's my big spiel.

Matt Cundill  12:21  
So if I have a podcast, and let's say it's government funded, would you agree that the downloads be made public, or at least the stats and the data be made public?

Kattie Laur  12:31  
I don't see why not. I think for sure, you and I have talked about this too. When it came to there was a municipal podcast that came out of Winnipeg, and you and I were talking about this a little bit, and I think you made that argument that argument that was like, if this is municipally funded, then we should definitely see the downloads and see how successful this show is doing. But it like, it's so interesting, because I see the value in a government funded podcast, or even a municipal podcast. It's nice to have sort of like a talking, a little community hub of talking about what's going on in your town. But if that show is not marketed well and nobody knows about it, then the downloads are going to be not great. And so if those downloads are public, then it opens up a whole weird conversation that you need to have around like, Well, why the hell are we spending all this money on this podcast that has no downloads, but the budget for the podcast didn't include the marketing. And there is, like a trajectory, a timeline that these teams that make municipal or government podcasts need to understand before they just go and publish something, because they do have to kind of hold themselves accountable to their constituents, and that means there has to be a marketing budget in there for the podcast to be successful.

Matt Cundill  13:45  
Well, you already unveiled the formula earlier in the show by saying that, you know, for every dollar you spend to make the podcast, you should have $1 to market the podcast as well,

Kattie Laur  13:54  
exactly, exactly. So that's something that I think a lot of a lot of the brands that I work with don't often think about and they just want to make the show for as cheap as possible. And then wonder why there's nobody listening.

Matt Cundill  14:06  
By the way, op three, dot Dev, is a great place to make your downloads public. This podcast does it if anybody wants to go see help yourself. The other side of the coin to that, though, is, you know, those defund the Canada type, vocal people will say, why are we funding a podcast with 900 downloads? You know, because then it's public, right? And that brings me back to ROI. So how do we measure the ROI of a podcast that's funded, you know, whether by a brand or by government? How are we going to determine to say, Yeah, we want a second season of that. What are the right benchmarks we should look at to say, Yeah, give me Season Two.

Kattie Laur  14:44  
Such a tough question to answer, because I always lean on like, when you want to measure the success of your podcast, you should definitely look, be looking at the consumption rate of your episodes. Now that can get tricky, because, like, let's say you lost. Launched a marketing campaign, and all these people started listening to this one episode, and more people were sampling it, then your consumption rate is going to go down because you had a sudden influx of people sampling this episode. But for the most part, I think the consumption rate is a pretty trustworthy measure of understanding like, how long people are listening to your episode for. And if a municipal podcast, for example, like the City of Winnipeg puts out at their show, and you notice people are only sticking around for five minutes out of your 30 minute episode, then I think you've definitely got something to be worried about, because that means people are not enjoying the listen. It means you're not keeping people around, and your podcast is essentially useless. And so there is definitely something to look at there around consumption rates. And then the download number is messy, though, right? Because it's not an actual measurement of the number of people that are listening. And so your tax dollars are funding a podcast where you think you're like, this is only getting 900 downloads. Might actually only be reaching like 30 people, and that's the worst reality. And so the download metrics is is messy, but at the end of the day, somehow you have to argue and make an argument for the power of niche podcasting, right? And you can't expect millions of people to listen to a podcast about Winnipeg like about what's going on locally and when to start your flowers and stuff like nobody cares. So you have to have a reasonable expectation and then figure out the language of how to articulate that this is actually quite successful, because we are reaching our community. So I don't

Matt Cundill  16:41  
mind disclosing that I do a podcast for the tourism industry association of Ontario, and we've been doing it now for I think we finished one year, and just now I'm beginning to see the numbers go like this. Show is beginning to take off now and make a connection. But if we had just signed up for one year and looked at the year one downloads, you know, people can say, Oh, that's not enough. We're gonna quit. I'm like, Well, don't quit. There's still room to grow. It takes a long time, like three years, to build an audience. And that's that's in radio, that's for podcasting. It does take three years to get people, you know, into the groove and to really, you know, own the media. I was actually

Kattie Laur  17:21  
just listening to a podcast where they had a compilation of people saying how long it takes to build an audience to the level that you're happy with. And it was over and over again, three and a half years, three and a half years, three and a half years. And it's funny, because I have an argument for relationships. That's the exact same thing at the three and a half year mark of you being with somebody, you either decide you're going to be with them forever, or you're going to break up. And most couples, you see, they break up around three and a half years, or they're together forever. This is my just anecdotal things that I've noticed in my life, and I just feel like it's the same for building an audience. I was working with a client recently who she launched her podcast in May of 2025, and she brought me on to help her with some audience growth over a couple of months. And it was really slow audience growth, and it was tricky. And she was like, what? At what point should I just give up entirely? And I was like, you still have another two years to go. Like you need to, you need to keep working on this for at least another two years before you decide this isn't worth your time anymore. I constantly say podcasting is a long game,

Matt Cundill  18:31  
so it's all the ad agency's fault for not properly selling podcasts to their clients.

Kattie Laur  18:36  
Yes, totally. This is the big issue that we're in in Canada right now where, like, no Canadian brands are are even advertising on Canadian podcasts, other than like Douglas the mattress company, they're the only Canadian brand that I can think of. I think there's a an internet company too, that I've only heard these on the Canada podcast. But otherwise, it's really hard to come by a Canadian brand that is advertising on the Canadian show, and somebody out there, I would like to be doing that work, but it's even hard to get in contact with these people, to teach them about podcasts and just like go into it full hog and try sponsoring a podcast for at least

Matt Cundill  19:15  
a year. Can I blame the Canadian podcast industry for not educating the ad agencies?

Kattie Laur  19:20  
Absolutely. Now, who is part of that Canadian podcast industry? Who are those people? Is it us? Well, it's you, it's me, Canada land. This is the problem, Matt. It's like, who wants to pay us to do that? Because it takes work, and if no one's paying me to do that education and I can't put food on the table, and so I need to figure out this is the work I would love to be doing, is figuring out how to balance my work as an advocate and educator in the Canadian podcasting space and also as a producer, because that's where, that's how I feed myself, that's how I pay my mortgage and Canadian. Games aren't getting paid enough either. So there's also that whole mess of things.

Matt Cundill  20:05  
I started my company 11 years ago, and when I got into the podcasting 10 years ago, I thought, Oh, I'm going to build podcasts, and they're going to go from me and they're going to graduate into bigger ecosystems, like curious cast, like Rogers and frequency, yep, like the podcast division that doesn't exist at Bell.

Kattie Laur  20:26  
No, those teams, like, when you talk about frequency and curious cast, those teams are a handful of people.

Matt Cundill  20:33  
Yeah, four, fours and fives.

Kattie Laur  20:35  
Yeah, there's, as far as I know, there's three women running frequency network

Matt Cundill  20:40  
at this point. Yeah. So my company's the same size as theirs when it

Kattie Laur  20:45  
comes to podcasting, exactly. That's Rogers. Rogers has so much money and they don't want to put it into podcasts. I mean, they're putting it into sports podcasts, for sure, on the sportsman side, but yeah, they could be funding Canadian shows, yeah.

Matt Cundill  20:59  
So I had a little laugh, by the way, when you were making your pitch to the people at the social and you were like, hire me as the podcast recommendation person for your show. And I was watching this, and I was like, that is never going to happen, because this company doesn't like podcasts. They don't believe in it. They have no podcasting ecosystem. They have no podcast in which to promote.

Kattie Laur  21:22  
Why didn't you comment that on the video?

Matt Cundill  21:25  
I probably should have, because it's cynical, and I'm cynical enough as it is set the

Kattie Laur  21:30  
stakes for the Met. I'm still working on that pitch now I'm less inclined to only be pitching it to the social. Now, did I send the social an email this morning, absolutely, I did, but I sent that same email to a few other networks, and now I've built a really great relationship, actually, with Ch. Ch, which is just a channel based out of Hamilton, which is just 20 minutes from me, and so they have been interested in what I have to say about Canadian podcasts. So hoping there's some good stuff there, and that will maybe start a trajectory of good things. But we do need somebody that is like a trusted resource for Canadian podcasts here, because the algorithms are not doing a good enough job in serving and pumping out Canadian shows to Canadian listeners. And so we need like somebody telling people what's out there. And, I mean, I'll do it.

Matt Cundill  22:24  
Yeah, I nominate you.

Kattie Laur  22:26  
Thanks, Matt. I appreciate it.

Matt Cundill  22:29  
I give Bella hard time about this, but it's, I mean, this is the biggest media company in Canada, and you're not touching podcasting, which is basically saying the exact same thing we set off the top of the show, which is, there's no money edit. Okay, I'm being a tad harsh. Bell doesn't completely hate podcasting. For example, friend of the show, Christy Lee, who does the Canadian True Crime podcast, appeared on the social I've got a link for you to see that appearance in the show notes. Now, where were we? Well, it's just expensive to make

Kattie Laur  23:01  
good audio. It's expensive, but you can do it well. And I think we're in a really tricky spot now too, in 2026 because it almost feels like just as there was momentum maybe coming up where it seemed like these big broadcasters were flushing out the things they didn't understand and maybe trying to start fresh a little bit and going into audio, and then all of a sudden, video becomes like a thing, thing. And now nobody knows what the definition of a podcast is. And these broadcasters are trying to figure out, what are we making exactly, and what is the ROI on this? And now we have to start from scratch, all over again and teach people what a podcast is when it's hard to even figure that out yourself at this point,

Matt Cundill  23:47  
is the social a podcast,

Kattie Laur  23:49  
I think the social doesn't publish on an RSS feed, and so that's part of my checklist criteria, personally, but that might change for other people,

Matt Cundill  23:59  
yeah, because the social is For people talking, and that's what a lot of podcasts are, and that's why Netflix is picking up podcasting, because it's people talking, and it's cheap, easy programming to put on a streaming app

Kattie Laur  24:11  
totally and it's harder and harder to figure out, like, the difference between a YouTube essay and a podcast too, because if you want to think about putting narrative shows on YouTube, then you could do the same thing that a lot of video essays do, where they just have sort of static images rotating back and forth and B roll and stuff like that, while they're making an argument. That's totally what narrative podcasts could do in video. But then are they suddenly a documentary? Like, what is this anymore? Nobody knows.

Matt Cundill  24:41  
Yeah, I'm torn on video, like everybody is, and it's oppressive. It's especially oppressive to women and YouTube with the comments, because there's a lot of rude comments that are on there. Women have to spend more time to make themselves up to be presentable. I, on the other hand, can show up with my shirt inside out that happened to me last. We hear Laugh, laugh. Gafaga fall, you know, funny white guy.

Kattie Laur  25:05  
I've been making this exact same point. Matt, too. There's a few things that stand out to me with video becoming more normalized in the podcasting space, and one of them definitely is the impact on women, because women, especially women of color, like there's just so much that they face as soon as they go on camera. They're just open to a crazy amount of harassment, as if our voices aren't already getting critiqued, just on audio only. But there's just, like a lot of work. Even just as a curly haired person, it does take work to make sure that my hair at least looks half decent when I show up on video. And so that is like something to consider, and I think it'll deter a lot of women from actually getting into podcasting, if they think that this is the only way to start doing that. But then also, if you think about all of the podcasts out there that are reliant on guests showing up for them, and there's like, a lot of podcasts hosted by men in particular, who will not give you a heads up that this is going to be video. And so a lot of women will show up to a podcast thinking that it's just going to be an audio only chat, only to discover that suddenly there's a clip of them out a few days later that they weren't prepared for. And I've even put out videos there was for my show, canardian, I put out clips of my show, just video ones, and it ended up getting co opted by a Facebook page one of my clips, they like, downloaded it and republished it, and I just suddenly stumbled upon it when I was, for some reason, scrolling through Facebook videos and saw that it was inundated with an a crazy amount of comments calling me and my guest stupid, that we didn't know what we were talking about. And then my guest, She scratches her nose, just very briefly, and there's all these comments being like, stop picking your nose on camera. That's disgusting. Maybe next time you shouldn't be so disgusting. The Internet is a cruel, cruel place. So it's just crazy. And then I think also we can already see, I was looking at Apple podcasts today just to see, because they've been sort of the final puzzle piece right of normalizing video in the podcasting space. So I was very curious to see how video shows up on their Browse page on their main Browse page, and it looks like, right now, their main carousel sort of has a pattern between Audio Video, Audio video, so it seems like they're trying to do a nice split between audio and video shows. But I think a lot of the video shows that are going to be featured are the ones that have really high quality video production. So like, like, I mentioned three camera, three point lighting, all of that stuff. And Canadians do not have the resources. We do not have money to do that kind of video setup. And so how are we going to compete against that? Like, how do we possibly compete against something that is so high quality and getting featured when the best we can do is a zoom call, you know, or squad cast.

Matt Cundill  28:03  
So you are not wrong, because when Apple made the announcement, I was like, Oh, this is going to be so cool. It's going to be a game changer. And I'm like, yes, it's going to eliminate a bunch of people from the game, yes.

Kattie Laur  28:16  
And also, the other thing that I anticipate, too is for the people that do start publishing video episodes instead of audio? I imagine their listen time is going to go down, because this is what we typically see with video. And when I was working in podcast audience growth, this was a trend across the board, which was that Apple podcasts typically had the highest consumption rate on episodes. Then it was Spotify, and then it was YouTube by, like, very, very small measure, like, typically, a high consumption rate on YouTube was like 15 to 30% and apple on average was around 80 right. So that's like a massive difference. And I think as soon as you give somebody the option to keep looking at their phone, then that gives them more options to scroll away and check out something else and look at the notifications that are coming in and all of that. And I do imagine that anyone who's going to go video forward is probably going to see their consumption rates go down.

Matt Cundill  29:13  
Yeah. So I'm hoping that this particular show, the sound off podcast, does get a shot at being in, you know, the Apple video ecosystem, just for learning purposes. You know, whether it's this one or it's my other Podcast, the podcast Super Friends, which is a video. I mean, it's live, it's a live show, and there's a video that goes with it. I don't think that with the sound op podcast, I'm ever going to stop making an audio product, because it started as an audio product. I like to narrate parts of the show. It's highly edited. It's edited way different than the video. So I'm never going to get away from that. I'm probably going to keep an audio show and a video show, if allowed, and I can do it, but you're exactly right. We're going to see a drop in listening on Apple, and just for example, my company, last year, we lost 15% Percent of Spotify consumption. Spotify went down 15% and that's because they inserted video, and a few podcasts decided to do video, and that audio listening is now gone absolutely.

Kattie Laur  30:11  
And I have contacts at Spotify that I've reached out to on their editorial team to let them know about shows that I'm working on and have them feature it somewhere on their platform where they get featured. Who knows? That's a big mystery. Spotify is a big mystery, but they've outright said to me at this point, like, don't send us any pitches that are not video podcasts, because we are only promoting video stuff right now. So there you go. It's been really tricky, really, really tricky, and Spotify has all these deals too, right with big production houses, so they're absolutely going to be the ones that are promoting the high quality video productions, rather than sort of the virtual DIY side of things.

Tara Sands  30:52  
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Matt Cundill  31:26  
Okay, so you lead me now into the discoverability issue when it comes to Canadian podcasts. So the Canadian podcast listener, we love Matt. Heard, we say hi to Matt. Heard, we also say hi to Jeff Vidler at Signal Hill insights, regular listeners of

Kattie Laur  31:39  
the show, love Matt. Heard Yep, love Jeff,

Matt Cundill  31:43  
but they come back with numbers saying that podcast listening, of Canadian podcasts, is strong. So do we have a problem?

Kattie Laur  31:49  
This is the thing. It's a really interesting thing to unpack, because how the heck are people finding Canadian podcasts? Because when you go on to any podcast listening platform, there is no way to filter by geography. So nothing. It's not going to make it easy for you to find Canadian shows. And so when you are looking at something like Apple podcasts, you are getting served something that's geographically relevant to you. So we see the Canadian side of Canadian Apple podcasts. And so the ones that are doing really well are constantly in the top categories are often podcasts from CBC and some of the major news shows and big hockey shows. So those are coming out of Canada's major broadcasters. So I can't help but feel that audience growth is doing really, really well when it comes to the shows that are from major broadcasters, but for indie shows, it's really hard for us to compete, so it's sort of the same old people getting audience growth, and we're not really seeing that a lot. For the majority of Canadian podcasts, I believe that if you ask most Canadians if they're listening to a Canadian show, they'd say yes and say CBC podcast of some kind.

Matt Cundill  33:03  
Yeah, I found over the last 10 years, since I started this, if you create something in a particular space, so let's say a show that is geared towards Albertans, that listenership will just show up. They will find it. And, you know, if marketed properly, they will discover it, especially local. But I think, because we saw it in I think it was an Edison study, or no, is Canadian podcast listener study one of the two. And in 2018 once we started to make Canadian podcasts, Canadian listening grew. I think Canadians like and know the feel of a good local podcast. You know, you go with what you know, absolutely.

Kattie Laur  33:42  
I think there's demand for Canadian podcasts at this point, especially just given the state of the world, I think Canadians are still very much looking for something that's a Canadian version, basically, like they don't even necessarily want us to be talking about Canadian specific things. They just want a Canadian perspective on something, and this was something I was sort of playing around with with my show Canadian because it's very much just a Canadian show. It's a podcast where we gossip about Canadian hometowns. This is something that literally any Canadian could listen to, even like new immigrants who are adapting to figure out this new town that they live in, and wondering what the heck the culture is like there. So I was playing around with like, what is like a mainstream show that I could make that introduces people to Canadian podcasters, just by way of them being all of my guests. But it was interesting, because the first year that I launched it, in 2024 it did pretty well, and I think people were excited for some sort of just like entertainment show based out of Canada, because it's really just a show meant to entertain you. And then in 2025 when the elbows up movement happened, I saw the audience growth spike a lot, like it almost tripled. And so that told me that Canadians were definitely. Looking for Canadian content. And even we're feeling some sort of nationalism, pride in some capacity, that is like a careful line you need to tread. But they are definitely looking to feel seen in some capacity. And I think that's still sticking around for a little while.

Matt Cundill  35:16  
Yeah, you mentioned Spotify, and that it's a little bit of a mystery on how podcasts become front and center. It's not a mystery on Apple, and I think you have experience in this area, having to work with the Apple team when you launched a podcast and you had great success with it.

Kattie Laur  35:33  
Yes, I pitched the podcast to be featured on their main carousel, on their Browse page for season one and season two, and landed the feature both years, which was really exciting, because the first year, I think it was because it was a new show, an entertaining show, something that was meant for mainstream public consumption kind of thing. I think Apple liked that. And then the second year, I think they're like, We liked that show. And also we need to really lean into this elbows up movement. And also, I think the artwork was better season two. So I think also just landed better with people when they first saw the show. So Apple podcast, I think, is looking to feature more Canadian content, but I think it's going to be hard for the niche podcast, to really land those features, it really has to be something that's meant for almost the general public, which is really hard to make, because you say, like, you know, a podcast for everyone is a podcast for no one. So that's a very hard line to figure out.

Matt Cundill  36:35  
You said a lot of great stuff here, but it's a lot of small things that make a great show. And I'm really, really, super tired of podcasting has a discoverability problem. And it takes everything in my body to restrain myself from saying, No, Your show just has a discoverability problem. And then you want to unpack what the problem is. And the problem could be shitty sound. It could be no focus on a video strategy. You already mentioned the artwork. It is super, super important to have great artwork. There's, did you reach out to Amazon? They've got a promo program you can get involved in. Did you, you know, reach out to Apple to, you know, yes, you have to fill out the paperwork and you have to say what you're going to do to promote the show. But, you know, there's a lot of people who don't do anything.

Kattie Laur  37:23  
It's really interesting, yeah, because I think going back to our good pal Matt, heard he in the Canadian podcast listener report their stats around podcast discovery were really interesting over the last year, because it said the number one place that people are discovering podcasts is online, which is a very general, broad term, and it referred to either the apps or social media and all of that stuff. And then I think the second one underneath that was word of mouth. And so online is a really interesting space, because people could discover your show because also we're talking about discovery, we're not necessarily talking about loyalty, either. So people could discover your show on Instagram, for example, and they might consume it in the form of binging 12 reels in a row, and then they just won't subscribe. But they've consumed your podcast, and they've discovered your podcast there, and then they just don't convert. That's me too. I there's so many podcasts that I only consume on social media. But then there's the app side of things. That's where I've been coaching a lot of people, and, like, getting back to the basics, because so many people started podcasts in 2020 and so it's been six years at this point. And so it's time to, like, sort of Spring Clean your podcast at this point. So I think if you're your your podcast packaging, so your series, title, artwork, description, all of that has to be really, really tight now in order for anyone to even click play, because there's two things that we want people to do right? We want them to click play, and then we want them to stick around when they do. And if that podcast packaging isn't enticing anybody to click play, it doesn't look cool, it doesn't immediately show the vibe and the topic of your show, then nobody's gonna click it, like no one's gonna click it. So you really have to go and lean into making sure that your description is really well done and tells people exactly what they're gonna get from the show, that your title is really obvious about what your show is about. That's something canardian needs to work on. But it's too late. I'm never changing the name, and the artwork definitely tells people, like, what the vibe is going to be like, just in terms of the colors and the type of artwork it is. And then is there imagery that, if somebody were to, like, delete the words all together from your artwork, can they tell what the show is about? And there's a lot of work that I think needs to be done, and people going back to the basics and figuring out if their packaging works well for them, because then the algorithms and the podcast apps that you use will make it easier for people to discover your shows there. So that's where I'm at right now these days, is evaluating everybody's podcast packaging.

Matt Cundill  39:58  
Yeah, and I'm glad you do that. Too, there are companies I know, like Coleman insights has pod predictor, which is very effective if you're about to launch a podcast. We use that for the declutter queen, which we recently launched. Also a trailer like, you need to have a good, solid trailer for your show.

Kattie Laur  40:14  
And you know what else I notice a lot of the people that I've been working with, a lot of people start podcasts because they've already built a brand, or they're an entrepreneur of some kind, and they've built an email list, and it never occurs to them to include their podcast in their newsletter, like just have a little podcast section and or post about it with a really because I think there's work to be done in the discovery of your podcast, converting the people that already love you into listeners and people that already value your insights into listeners. So instead of trying to find all these new people, the first step is to already try and convert the people that already love you and you've already built a community around and people often miss that step. They think they just need to go and find brand new people first, because they're almost too embarrassed to market their podcast to the people that already follow them.

Matt Cundill  41:01  
Another life hack. By the way, when it comes to newsletters, you're gonna have a better open rate and success rate than you are posting on Facebook, which is gonna go to 3% of your followers. You've got an entire newsletter. You've got an ecosystem of people who are already being asked to be marketed to. So market to them.

Kattie Laur  41:18  
Yes, the email list. Is everything, everything?

Matt Cundill  41:24  
Are there any Canadian podcasts? And by Canadian, I mean, with a solid 90% Canadian listener base that can just make money on ads, I

Kattie Laur  41:36  
think for sure, I think, like the ones that can definitely make money off ads in a space where the Canadian advertisers want to do that is probably definitely the podcasts that are marketed to a general Canadian public, one that people can listen to with their kids, I think, as well, so they can drive in the car and have their kids in there. So I think family listening is probably a big one too. So I would say, like, one of the big ones I can imagine is a curious cast podcast that I was talking about today. But keep Canada weird is a super fun one where people from all over the country are sending in voicemails about paranormal things that they've encountered across Canada. And it's really funny and really wholesome and just a all around good vibe. And I think if there's any Canadian brands not advertising on that podcast because also the hosts there are beloved, then they're making a huge mistake, and they should absolutely be marketing on that show. And I think all the ones about sort of Canadian lore and what it means to be Canadian, there's so many out there. Big in Canada is another good one about the songs that were popular in Canada and Canada only. That's a huge one, that there's so many like long and McQuaid. Why is long and McQuaid not advertising on this music podcast, this Canadian Music podcast, there's so many Canadian brands that could be tapping into that ecosystem, and these are things that could have 1000s and 1000s of followers and listeners because they're just broadly accepted by the Canadian public. What was the name of that podcast? Big in Canada?

Unknown Speaker  43:15  
Okay? You see, there's word of mouth right there.

Kattie Laur  43:18  
There you go. Yeah. It's a really great show, and it's hosted by two people who are, like, definitely. They both are music writers. If they're not writing currently for magazines, they have been in the past. It's a great show. They've talked about before four Fifi Dobson, the big, shiny tune, CDs, all of that stuff. That's great. There's a whole bunch of like, Canadian Music podcasts that are out there that I think totally people can take advantage of. And then anything in the Canadiana brand, where people are trying to figure out what it means to be Canadian, I think you can absolutely be marketing your stuff on for sure.

Matt Cundill  43:56  
I'm about to hit follow on that right now, so there. Well, now I have to say records and rock stars with Jeff woods,

Kattie Laur  44:03  
there you go. I mean, I'm pretty enthusiastic about my own show Canadian. I think there's definitely room for Canadian brands to be advertising. I always joke that, like, the dream advertiser on that show is a and w because, like, this is the thing we need. Funny niche Canadian things starting to build their personalities in the land of podcasting. That's what I think needs to happen, almost, sort of like the Wendy's of Twitter needs to happen in the Canadian podcasting landscape.

Matt Cundill  44:34  
Yeah, and I asked that question about making money in the ad market, because I see it with my company. Look at me just divulging all the data here about my company. My company, my company, my company. Sound off media company. We get 80% of our downloads from Canada. 20% are in the States, but 80% of the money is coming from that. 20% of the downloads.

Kattie Laur  44:54  
Yeah, this is the other thing. When you asked about, what are the stats that we look at to know if something is successful? And definitely we can look at our geographic audience base for Canadian. I think the audience base is like 90% Canadian. So I mean, I could definitely be having Canadian brands. And also, I think about all the American brands that I hear advertised on podcasts that I can never buy because I'm Canadian. So I think Canadians shouldn't be afraid of marketing to Americans.

Matt Cundill  45:25  
Oh, I thought we solved that problem with dynamic audio insertion,

Kattie Laur  45:28  
not with the baked in stuff. Though, a lot of people are baking stuff in because their downloads aren't big enough to have the option to do dynamically inserted ads.

Matt Cundill  45:38  
Canada's got another problem, and it's not really one solvable and that's we're very, very large. And another curious cast podcast, Canadian history acts. Craig was on this show a while ago, but one of the things he mentioned is that we're all taught different histories about the country. We also don't have a star system. And so if you're Toronto famous, you're going to be Toronto famous. Alberta is Alberta famous. We see it with rock bands. You know, some bands out east just don't translate out west and vice versa. Quebec is a different story. They've got their own star system top to bottom. It's pretty simple, but in Canada, it's there's very few people who are known coast to coast,

Kattie Laur  46:19  
I know, and they're not mainstream known, but they're known in their industries. And then you get people who are burnt out, and this is pretty frequently happening with indigenous podcasters. In particular. I talked to Phelan Johnson about this, and she was telling me about how, like, she had just been, like, stretched thin, because she was sort of the go to indigenous podcaster. And she was like, you know, there's lots of other people out there, right, who have other perspectives. I don't want to be the person who's just representing indigenous Canada. Like, what the heck? And this is something I think is happening with a lot of women of color in particular too, is you just get stretched thin and you end up burnt out, and then you can't put out quality content anymore. You just don't want to do this anymore. And there's got to be some sort of star system that uplifts creators and personalities who are sort of up and coming. We don't have anything like that, really. And I've been thinking about that more and more about like, who are the up and coming Canadian podcasting personalities that we should look out for. And I definitely think there are a whole bunch of them, but I think they will not be regarded as up and coming stars or stars at all, unless we give them that credibility, and who's giving them that credibility like

Matt Cundill  47:34  
no one really. Yeah, some more bad news. By the way, I'm just full of bad news, and that's, you know, the cost of podcasting keeps going up, and I can see it now. You know, with tech, so we love how things like descript and stream yard and companies like that have made it easy for us to with communication and creating video. But these companies are raising prices like never before. Oh, yeah, and this is a huge it's becoming podcasting when it first, when I first got into it and actually got back into it in 2009 cost me nothing to make it because it was a repurposed radio show. But people were talking about the barrier to entry in 2016 I said it's 300 bucks. You know, I'll give you 300 bucks. Pay me back when you get your first sponsorship. But now with video, this is really becoming unreachable for many people.

Kattie Laur  48:25  
It's really interesting because that's absolutely happening. And at the same time, a lot of these tools are trying to be the everything. Tool, like Riverside, for example, and even descript for example, like they want to be the place where you record your podcast, you edit your podcast, and you publish your podcast, and just in my personal experience as a producer, the more you try to be an everything app, the more that experience sucks and it's not fun, and things start working wrong. But also I think there's going to be I hate saying this, because I love how accessible podcasts are, but the everything apps and the ability to say, for example, use AI to take out the ums and ahs and do, like noise leveling and all of that stuff. It's done in like, a mediocre fashion. It's not great to listen to. And I've heard a lot of podcasts out there where it's great that, like, people have access to put their voices out there. I want that for them, but then the production quality is not great, and it's hard to really grow an audience around a podcast that doesn't sound good. And so we're gonna definitely be inundated with, like, a lot of podcasts that are just sort of mediocre produced but nobody has the money to pay for a producer. And then on the producer side, I'm looking at the tools that I want to use to make a really high quality production and dabble in more video production on my end, and I use Adobe Audition for editing, and then I. I'm like, Okay, I think I need to dabble in some Adobe Premiere now to do video editing. And I need both of these things. And I think both those together per month is around like $80 per month for a subscription to both. And I was like, I can't justify that, because I also need my Riverside subscription to produce virtual recordings for people. There's a whole bunch of I need my domain for my website. I need my own a cast feed that I'm paying for, and it gets really expensive, even as a producer. And so to ask people to pay you enough money to justify producing their show, it can be really difficult.

Matt Cundill  50:38  
Yeah, the AI thing is largely a flop when it comes to producing audio and video. I mean, it produces some pretty choppy stuff. We do all of our editing by hand. I don't know that there's any other way to do it. You have to edit something by ear, because that's what people at the other end

Kattie Laur  50:54  
are doing. Yeah. I mean, people hire me to do the editing for them because they know they'll get something good and something with an editorial brain that is looking at it and editing from a listener first perspective. But then also, you've got people who have full time jobs who want to put, like, an important message out there, who don't have the money to hire an editor, and so it's like, can you really tell them, like, don't put it out there, because it's going to be bad and nobody listens to it. It's hard to say. I think your voice is important, but nobody's listening to it because it doesn't sound great. So hard.

Matt Cundill  51:32  
Should we be talking to anybody in government about funding podcasts? Is there somebody we should be reaching out to heritage ministry, something like that.

Kattie Laur  51:41  
I think heritage ministry for sure. I think Reese waters at pod starter has been talking to heritage already. I've been talking to some folks at the Canada Media Fund, for sure, but they're a video first funding body, so the podcasts that they're now funding have to be video podcasts. Canada Arts Council is like nearly impossible to get a hold of. And those are the people that I'm trying to figure out how I can get into their ears about podcasts. And I've been sending them emails and submitting questions for their online forums and stuff, and they've gone unheard. I don't know what they did with those questions and stuff. They've just gone completely unacknowledged. And then otherwise, like, this is the work I'm trying to do more in my own advocacy work around this ecosystem is figuring out who are the people in government to talk to. And I've been chatting with somebody who's been really helpful in helping me figure that out, who's a consultant around activism. So my like, inner Libra anarchist is like, rah, rah. We must be activism mode now. Instead of producing podcasts, I need to be like out in the world and bugging politicians. But I don't know who those politicians are yet.

Matt Cundill  52:49  
Unfortunately, I'm so suspicious and leery about politicians and reaching out to them, because if you present them the problem, they're going to give you a bad solution. And I can see a bad solution being, oh well, we're going to regulate Spotify and Amazon to put the Canadian podcast, you know, first, or front load them, or something, something, something, and then the even worse. That's not a bad idea, by the way, but to try to make them do anything is is hard, especially when you we're going to make them pay, and they're going to pay into a fund, and then we're going to be able to fund creators. And I had to explain that that is a terrible idea, because what is going to happen is Spotify is going to take my 5050 deal, and they're going to turn it 6040 in their favor, and then now I am paying for the funding. So I know they have their heart in the right place, but they don't always think to the end, which is, by the way, why you can't post a news link on Facebook anymore.

Kattie Laur  53:46  
Yeah, I've heard some rumblings too about heritage, talking about basically making like a new Canadian podcasting distribution platform, which just opens up a whole new thing too, because it's like, how many people are going to adopt this new app. Is the app going to be good? Like, I don't know how good it's going to be. Who's going to download this? Like, we just, I think the simplest solution for Canadian shows, and literally shows around the whole world, is, why can't we just have a geographic filter on our RSS feeds? Why can't we just type in where it's located from, and then have Apple podcasts be like, sort by country, and then, boom,

Matt Cundill  54:28  
yeah, so that's, that's a location tag,

Kattie Laur  54:30  
yeah, we don't have that. That seems like the simplest solution. And I think we can do activism around that easy solution, and getting any of the apps to build this out. There are all sorts of contacts out there that you can talk to who build things out because people have complained enough. And I think that's the next step on my activism list as I prepare my dossier around this, which is like, do we just need a petition in some capacity?

Matt Cundill  54:59  
Yeah. So a. Location tag is a great idea. It's getting apple and Spotify and other apps to support that idea and put it in from that we can probably build a Canadian podcast index. And we had Tony doe on the show a few weeks ago, and he's already built a Nigerian podcast index. And he doesn't have the luxury of the location tag. He actually, he built it through, I think, just scanning through descriptions and feeds to see how Nigerian it was.

Kattie Laur  55:27  
Literally, I've done basically the same thing. I have my own Canadian podcasting index, which is a Google Sheet, and it is a whole list of, like, maybe 300 or more Canadian shows that I've discovered, either who've reached out to me, who I found on variety of apps just by looking up keywords, or there are people who've emailed me through my newsletter, and that's how I discover them. So it's people telling me about their shows, but I've also been really surprised at the amount of Canadian shows that I've come across, just because my algorithm, through my pod, the North Instagram account, is starting to serve me Canadian shows, which is so interesting, nice. We're going to game the algorithm. Yeah, the more you look at this stuff, apparently they want to keep serving it to you like I was freaking out the other day about the end of the world and how prepared I need to be, and then now, all of a sudden, my Instagram is just flooded with prepper stuff. So look, okay, is the world actually ending, or am I just being convinced it's ending?

Matt Cundill  56:33  
Did we solve every problem in podcasting in Canada on this show?

Kattie Laur  56:37  
I think we pretty much did. There was something else that came to my mind that I can't remember what it was, but I think we nearly solved, yeah, we did solve it all. I think good for us, Matt, this is what we came here to do,

Tara Sands  56:54  
another sound off media company podcast.