The Audio Intrapreneur with Molly Barton of Realm

Molly Barton: I kind of think of the podcast as the spine with lots of different tentacles, you know, coming, coming off of it. And all of those little clips on TikTok and Instagram are just leading back to the mothership of the podcast itself.

Jeff Umbro: This is Podcast Perspectives, a show about the latest news in the podcast industry and the people behind it. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of The Podglomerate. Today on the show I'm speaking with Molly Barton, the co founder and CEO of Realm. Realm is an audio first digital media company with an award winning studio that boasts clients like Netflix, DC, and Marvel.

It is a global podcast network with more than 12 million downloads a month, and it includes the popular audio streaming service Pinna, which develops and curates podcasts exclusively for kids and families. I've known Molly since her days at Penguin Random House, where she first determined that she was going to pursue innovation in the audio and reading space.

Today, we discuss all of the things that she's working on and what she's excited about for the years to come. Let's get to the show.

Molly, how are you?

Molly Barton: I'm great.

Jeff Umbro: You and I go way back. You launched Serial Box in 2015, and we connected in like 2016 or 17.

Molly Barton: We know each other from the book world. So I come out of the book publishing world. I was global digital director at Penguin and Penguin Random House. So in that role, I was responsible for growing the audiobook business and the ebook business.

And so Serial Box was the second company that I started. I was an intrapreneur, so I got corporate backing to start a company within Penguin. And so that experience was what led me to sort of feeling ready to step outside the corporate environment and raise money for a startup. And the idea that I was so passionate about, which became Serial Box, was that audio and shorter installments just make a ton of sense with people's lives today, and I wanted to take that magic and immersion of a great book and bring it into a format that was going to reach much broader audiences because it was ad supported, because it was short, 30 minute installments, and you could layer it over your day. So that was where the idea for Serial Box came from. I was sitting inside a major publishing house and just feeling like audiobooks are only solving part of the equation in terms of people being able to fit storytelling, high quality storytelling into their lives.

You know, it's great that it's audio, but it's a secondary format. Most audiobooks, you know, there's no adaptation from the way that the book is written for the eye. So I wanted to make better quality audio and I wanted to work in short installments. So I started Serial Box in 2015. And we were, this was before Substack, before there were lots of really good ways to monetize short installments of content.

And I'd had no advertising background. So we started with a subscription, kind of like went the opposite from how a lot of people have operated in the podcast world. So we started with a subscription. And we were kind of doing the hardest thing that you could do because we were creating the content and trying to get people to pay for access.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. And you created the platform.

Molly Barton: We built the platform. We built the content. And amazingly, people were paying. People were buying like a second and third series from us. But it was, it was just really intensive to, to do all those different parts. I mean, you think about YouTube, where all they do is build the platform and set up the tools.

And. It's all user generated content. If we had gone in a model that way, maybe we would have stayed in that sort of Serial Box iteration for longer, but we decided to move into wide distribution and keep a subscription, but really deemphasize it in terms of how we operate as a business. So we also, in the Serial Box days, we had a little reading component so you could read or listen.

And we let go of that because everyone was consuming the audio, like swung really widely from 80 percent reading when we first started and 20 percent listening to the exact opposite 18 months later.

Jeff Umbro: I'm so curious because you really have had a lot of different touch points to like how people experience audio, including, as you mentioned, like one of them that you created yourself. So today Realm is producing its own original content, as well as distributing content from other folks. How do you think about these different distribution methods?

Cause I know originally at Serial Box, you had owned all of the content that you brought onto the platform. That's not the case today, is it?

Molly Barton: We continue to have O& O content, certainly, as part of what we're doing. We're building originals primarily in a horror, thriller, and kids and family base, but we really think that we have a big distribution network. We do over 12 million downloads per month in the distribution network. The podcast network is a big driver of the business.

Then we have our studio, which provides a whole bunch of different services for partner companies. And we think of distribution more broadly than just RSS feeds. Like many companies, we run a few different subscriptions. So we have the Pinna subscription, which is a kids and family audio streaming service. And then we have Realm Plus, but we also distribute into audiobook channels. So we really think about, I, I use the word podcast a lot, but I really think of it as audio, and that there are three different ways to transact to get that audio, right?

You're either a member of a service where you get a certain number of titles or hours that you get access to, so a paywall, or you're subscribing to a particular set of titles on a podcast platform. So there's like a la carte subscription and ad supported. And so that, that's really how, how we think of it.

And increasingly our production and distribution partners are coming to us because they're excited about tapping into those different channels and creative ways, depending on what their strategy is for a given show.

Jeff Umbro: I know that every client of yours is probably different, but like when somebody comes to you with a podcast property that has an audience, Are you traditionally like working with them to figure out like how they can tap into all three of those different revenue streams, or is it usually one or the other?

Molly Barton: It has been really focused on ad sales over the last couple of years, but it's really starting to expand. So I was just talking to one of our partners yesterday at Adweek who was saying like, let's talk about audiobooks. I wanna, I wanna tap into that and think about how we package up seasons of our show and move them into distribution there.

Jeff Umbro: Is that different from like what Pushkin is doing, or are you thinking about it in kind of a similar way where like some properties are ripe for like the audiobook, like, you know, selling units of this thing on an audio distribution platform versus like publishing it as a podcast, whether it's ad supported or otherwise, is there one that's better, a better fit for the audiobook side?

Molly Barton: Definitely. I mean, there's certain podcasts that just don't make sense as audiobooks because they're extremely calendar based or they're, you know, they're tied to what's happening in a given moment in the world. And so they don't feel evergreen in the way that a good audiobook feels like it's going to be relevant years from now.

Jeff Umbro: When you guys shifted from Serial Box to Realm, part of that is that you wanted wider distribution. Do you truly think of that as an avenue just for wider distribution through RSS and like podcasting? Are you in the business of putting out audio or are you in the podcast business?

Molly Barton: Putting out audio, but also video, which is why I end up coming back to just saying we are a podcast-first digital media company.

Jeff Umbro: And how are you thinking about like video? And I know that there's the idea of adapting your IP for like, television and film and stuff, but like separate from that, how are you thinking about video?

Molly Barton: 20 to 30 percent of what we're producing is video. I've sort of been in and around video production for a long time.

My husband and my brother are in the film and TV world. So that has been like a relatively seamless transition for us just based on the networks that we're able to bring to bear in terms of producing talent. So Business Dad with Alexis Ohanian that we produce is a video podcast. We just delivered this summer for Peacock a video podcast called Rise or Die, which was a companion podcast to their July release, Those About to Die, the gladiator show set in ancient Rome.

That was really fun to sort of see how incredibly polished a video podcast you can put together In short order, as long as you've got the right talent involved. If you're working on a video podcast it's much easier to seamlessly create kits of cutdowns for many different social and video platforms, so that I kind of think of the podcast as like the spine with lots of different tentacles, you know, coming, coming off of it.

And all of those like little clips on Tik Tok and Instagram are just leading back to the mothership of the podcast itself.

Jeff Umbro: When you're thinking about making a video podcast, are you traditionally publishing the audio from that video on the RSS? Or are you thinking about these as kind of like two different experiences for the listener?

Are you adapting what gets published as audio only?

Molly Barton: For the most part, they're the same. And the video is just an additional offering if you happen to be watching. But it feels to me like having the video is good for the algorithm and good for, you know, sort of legit entry into YouTube and other platforms where people are consuming, but they may not actually be watching.

Jeff Umbro: I've spoken to a lot of people recently where the idea is that the video property doesn't necessarily need to be like an exact duplicate of the audio property and vice versa. Obviously there's a lot more that goes into like producing something like that because you're kind of building two different properties and ultimately it comes down to like just the goal of the show.

How do you think about the video side of this when it comes to monetization? Is it just like, More reach means more money, or is there something else that goes into that, that thinking?

Molly Barton: I think adding the visual component means that the podcast has more utility. You think about podcasting, social media, and YouTube and those three strategies, and maybe newsletter also.

Those strategies need to be cohesive, coherent, because you can really be efficient with your content production budget if you can join those at the hip so that, you know, the podcast can be the organizing principle of like, this is our long form, but off of it comes the newsletter, off of it comes the social clips, off of it comes the YouTube content.

If you're really focused on monetization, not just reach, like you want to lead people back to, to the podcast, since it's going to monetize, you know, more effectively than the video. Part of what I love about the work that we're doing right now is, you know, I was in a large company when I was at Penguin Random House in Penguin, which was owned by Pearson at the time.

You know, I, I understand the pain points of large organizations where it's like, Oh, but I don't control that budget or like, Oh, that's not my area. And so one of the most fun things is trying to help companies like get more flex in how they're approaching this stuff. And really, I keep comparing this era to, well, I keep joking, like we're in the third decade of podcasts, right?

First decade was creator driven. Second decade was platform driven and third decade is the "get real" decade. Like, we actually are building a business now. And part of building a real business is educating other industries about how to use the format. And so it's almost like this period of time that we're in now reminds me of like the late aughts or maybe early, what do you say, early 2010s when large companies were first really starting to understand how much opportunity there was in social media.

Jeff Umbro: It's really just about teaching people how they can be more efficient. And you guys are pros at that, which is very cool to see.

Can you talk to us a little bit about the breakdown of Realm's business today when it comes to your, you know, white label production work versus your ad revenue versus your subscription revenue versus anything else that I may have missed?

Molly Barton: Ad sales from distribution of our O& O content and third party content is one of our two biggest drivers. The other is the services for other companies. And then we have licensing of our O& O and subscription. Those two are sort of similar in scale. I actually refer to them as like the lungs and then the heart is the original content.

That has been really exciting to watch those business areas grow. And every time, you know, I think one of the things that's unique about what we're doing is that we do have this significant distribution network right alongside the production. And so we're able, there's so much, you know, to use a silly cross pollination between the studio and the network because so often when somebody will come in and be like, can we like arrange some swaps with you guys? And then it turns out, like, they actually need our help making something else, or somebody comes in to talk to us about making something or a strategy, engagement, and then it turns out they have content ready to distribute.

So, and I think because we know the math of, like, this is what a show of this scale is going to make in terms of ad supported distribution, we can really help right size production and help, you know, ensure success more rapidly.

Jeff Umbro: Can you give some like concrete examples of, of how these things can cross pollinate with each other?

Molly Barton: What's one example? Oh, we just were approached recently by a company in the video gaming space where they were like, we're, we're making a podcast, you know, based on a really beloved character and we'd love for you guys to distribute it.

So we wade into that conversation, they're like, Well, actually, we'd love for you to do post production. Because we realized like, you're going to do better job. And then they're like, Well, maybe you guys should actually help me handle the recording. So it just like incrementally grew as they became more.

comfortable and realize, as I say, like, because we know the math of how the show is probably going to do when we move it out into distribution, we could really help them upstream, like right size their investment and, and level set, you know, internal expectations about time to return.

Jeff Umbro: And it's a big deal.

You know, this is a completely made up example, but like, I think we've all seen a million situations where somebody will come in and spend a lot more money than they should to produce something only to see on the other side that they don't get the like audience that they thought they would, nor the revenue that they thought they would.

And like, everybody ends up unhappy.

Molly Barton: Right. And they can, you know, if you're spending that out of marketing and social budget, and it really is about establishing a big footprint and reach, it could be totally a worthwhile endeavor.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. It very well could be. And that's the thing. It's like, it's step one is just determining like, what are you hoping to achieve? And then talking to very smart people like yourself to try and figure out how they can do it properly.

So what makes a show a good fit for Realm, if somebody is like thinking about looking for a distribution partner or, you know, hire you for services or something?

Molly Barton: There are three main parts of the Realm catalog.

There's a really big society and culture catalog, which includes comedy, history, wellness. We've got some women's sports in there as well. Then we've got a sort of storytelling and entertainment part of the catalog, which includes video game related, film and TV related, comic book adjacent. Our fiction podcasts are in that part of the catalog.

And then we have our family network that includes all the Pinna originals, but also has Story Pirates and Rebel Girls.

Jeff Umbro: Working within these verticals allows you to really operationalize what you're doing because you have the same partners for ad sales or cross promos or growth opportunities and that kind of thing.

And within these different verticals, like you've established some pretty impressive relationships. Can you talk through like some of your partners and how you work with them?

Molly Barton: Sure. Yeah, we are producing for Warner Brothers, Paramount, Netflix, Blumhouse, iHeart, Spotify.

Jeff Umbro: Just those guys.

Molly Barton: A few others. We've been really fortunate to be entrusted with really beloved characters and worlds.

And I think one of the things that, you know, we talk a lot about fandom and serving fans authentically because the team are all fans. So a lot of the way that, you know, we, we've sort of won the project is because we truly love these properties and are able to quickly identify hosts and writers who are super fans as well.

And so we can kind of really pass the sniff test with, with fans, but also we understand sort of what a lot of these media companies are trying to do with their audio initiatives and, and can help them build the, the business cases around it.

Jeff Umbro: You guys have literal years of experience prior to launching your podcast arm, where you are assembling teams of writers in order to create worlds within these different communities and ecosystems.

And I want to underline like just how impressive like these properties are that you're working on and like, you know, you have DC, Marvel, HBO properties, Netflix, etc. And it's funny just to think about because like, you know, DC and Marvel, you don't always hear those in the same sentence. How do you translate that universe into audio?

Like how do you think about the sound of the show?

Molly Barton: With any existing story world where people are coming to it with a sort of preconceived idea of what the characters look like, whatever the setting is, it's so important to establish that connective tissue in terms of the sonic landscape and sonic identity of, of the brand.

So comics in particular are really interesting, because it's all dialogue. So adapting from comics to audio is much faster than adapting from prose to audio. So you had mentioned Marvel. When Serial Box first started, one of our first sort of gigs and projects was Marvel accepted us as a licensing partner for Black Panther, Jessica Jones, Black Widow, and Thor.

And so we created original stories with those characters at the center and went through the whole approval process. So we've done both, like we've adapted existing stories into audio and then we've taken the characters and developed new. They're both super, super fun and we work really closely with the, the, you know, franchising character teams at those places when we do those projects.

One just funny story for one of the projects that we were working on in 2019, I won't reveal like which character it was, but we had created a storyline involving, this writer's room happened in the summer of 2019. And the writing was happening that fall. And the storyline was about a pandemic that started on cruise ships.

Jeff Umbro: That's amazing.

Molly Barton: Needless to say, we had to do some last minute changes.

Jeff Umbro: Because everybody's a fan, I'm sure you have all kinds of things that you guys want to put in there. And like, sometimes you probably don't get to. I want to take one step back because you had a couple acquisitions. I think it was late last year, Lipstick & Vinyl, and Pinna.

Molly Barton: Yeah, we were growing really quickly in 2023, particularly in our ad sales vision, and we needed more inventory and we wanted to really quickly expand our society and culture catalog. So we decided to acquire Lipstick & Vinyl and with that one sort of move, we were able to bring more than 40 women's lifestyle focused shows into the network.

Jeff Umbro: Those are all licensed shows. Lipstick @ Vinyl was like an agency. Was there ever a fear that they would all just jump ship?

Molly Barton: Yeah, no, we had to make it worth their while, right? So it was really about accelerating our catalog growth and the network expansion. The second move that we made, and we did these deals at the same time for reasons.

So we acquired Pinna, the kids and family audio streaming service that had originally spun out of Panoply. I'm sure some of your listeners will know all the history. So I'm a mother of a five year old and an eight year old and audio is a really big part of our family life. And I was just looking at the data around the growth of kids and family, and it is staggering.

I, most kids in the U S are listening to podcasts every week. And so, and in an era where there's so much concern about the negative impacts of screen time, there's so much concern about the negative impacts of social media, investing in an area where, you know, kids' imagination is being sparked because, you They need to imagine, otherwise it's not happening. That's how audio works, right?

And it's, you know, great access to broader vocabularies that may be spoken in their house. Like there's just so many exciting reasons to support more kids and family audio that on a personal level, I was really motivated and then it just felt like, okay, wow, we've already got our foothold in the scripted podcast business where, you know, we can create an original fiction podcast like we've done recently for, for Blumhouse and iHeart with our show Dream Sequence, which has hit number one in 18 countries. So of course we're excited to talk about like, what else can we do with Dream Sequence now that it's, you know, done so well, what are the other categories aside from mainstream fiction podcasts where you can really build new franchises?

And so kids and family was the, the most logical category to me and mapped like most closely to the kinds of production that the team was already very good at. So the reason we did Pinna and Lipstick & Vinyl at the same time was we wanted to be able to market the Pinna shows to more young women.

And so we want to bring the listeners in from Lipstick & Vinyl at the same time that we were bringing in the, the Pinna shows.

Jeff Umbro: That's brilliant. And I, I didn't know that part of it.

My big question for you, how do you monetize a kid's show? Like kids aren't going out and like buying whatever they're listening to. So like, presumably you're marketing to the parents in that instance.

Molly Barton: We just released a survey in partnership. Realm and Story Pirates did a survey of over 700 listeners of kids and family podcasts. And one of the results of that survey that's pretty stunning is that over 80 percent of listening to these podcasts, it's co listening. So you're reaching the whole family, typically in the car.

Where do parents make their decisions about what to buy? Probably in the car or the kitchen. And it's actually a really fantastic opportunity for brands because you're reaching the parent and very clearly addressing the parent, but you're also, the kid is hearing it, so you're reaching the buyer and the nagger at the same time.

Jeff Umbro: And are you, do you have case studies that show this is effective?

Molly Barton: Yeah. I mean, I think there, there is sometimes fear on the part of brands around privacy, COPPA compliance, et cetera, but we're totally compliant in touch with COPPA all the time, you need to declare that it's an ad so that it's clear that it's not part of the show.

But once you do that, you, you're, you have a lot of flexibility. And so I think now that brands are starting to understand that, a lot more big brands are jumping in and we, we definitely know that it works cause we hear from the brand partners. Like, Oh, we saw a direct, you know, lift and engagement following the campaign.

Jeff Umbro: So how do you gauge success across all of your departments? Like, what are the metrics that you're looking at?

Molly Barton: How much fun we're having.

Jeff Umbro: Okay.

Molly Barton: And I'm not joking. I'm not joking because if you're having fun, everything else falls into place.

Jeff Umbro: I'm going to push back a little bit because like you have, you have a board of directors.

Molly Barton: They're not, they're not, they sound fun. I mean, I'm pretty fun. They have a board meeting.

Jeff Umbro: I know that you're looking at like total revenue and dollars in the bank and like stuff, but I guess the part of the reason I'm asking this is that like, there's been such a big conversation this year around like actual listeners as opposed to downloads.

Are you guys having those conversations as well?

Molly Barton: In all seriousness, obviously we're, we're looking at, you know, progress against goals all the time, but well, not all the time. We are trying to like get as much flow and immersion in the work into every day as possible. And like, we've done things like, we have no meeting weeks and you know, we've, we've coordinated meetings across departments so that we're maximizing heads down time.

Jeff Umbro: The brain trust of like multiple people from different parts of the business.

Molly Barton: Last couple of years of our growth, we're already after the big MGs that weren't worth like, so we got to sidestep some of the things that have been really hard for other companies. And we also have grown our services business with a wide variety of partners, not like one deal that everything rode on that. And if that fell apart, we're, you know, third wave or whatever in the podcast, you know, industry. And so, so we haven't had to recover from big knocks like that. We had to kind of scratch together growth with smaller shows and figure out how to grow them. And we just, you know, didn't have the money to overpay.

So I think, and one of the things that we really try to do, like talk about industry health is when we're acquiring shows, we try to share our mouth with agents and bring them in. Like, let me just show you, you know, what, what is going to happen with this show. And we feel like that's an investment in the wellbeing of the industry.

And we're happy to pass if it doesn't look right.

Jeff Umbro: We've seen that a bunch as well. Like it is a crazy thing to say out loud, but like, there's been so much opaqueness in this industry for so long that like sometimes it is, it is as simple as just being transparent with the people that you're speaking to. And then at the very least like everybody's expectations are aligned.

Molly Barton: Right, you might not get the show but at least like, you know, you're you're sharing intelligence.

Jeff Umbro: What kind of goals are you guys looking towards for next year. In 2025, what would make you really happy to be talking about a year from now?

Molly Barton: One of the things that has shifted, you know, we talked about some of the really wonderful production partners that we have.

One of the things that shifted and, you know, In 2024 is that those partners are entrusting us not just to make the shows, but to distribute and monetize. So really excited about that to be sort of 360 for, for a partner. Like we came up with the idea, we made the thing and now we're selling amazing presenting sponsorships.

This will be vague, but I'll make it brief. We're growing kind of imprints with a couple of different partners. That word is a little bit more bookish than podcast ish, but labels, to use a more music industry phrase, I don't know if there is a podcast equivalent of a label or an imprint, but.

Jeff Umbro: A network.

Molly Barton: Yeah. So we're digging into a couple of fandom areas that we already play in, but building more structure around that and, and bigger partnerships. So excited to sort of unveil those next year and serve listeners in those categories of super fans even better.

Jeff Umbro: iHeart, for example, has like the extra sauce network or like the, the Big Money Players Network.

And so it's like, you know, a comedy network underneath the bigger umbrella that shares like operational resources. It's something we've tried to do in the past. And like, and I've seen a couple of folks be very successful at doing, but you're going to be great at it. It's your, you have the perfect recipe to make that work, so.

Molly Barton: Aw, thanks.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was a ton of fun. It was good to catch up.

Molly Barton: Really good to see you. Thank you.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Molly Barton for joining us on this episode of the show. You can find Molly on LinkedIn at Molly Barton or head to realm.fm.

For more podcast related news, info, and takes, you can follow me on Twitter @JeffUmbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate.

If you're looking for help producing, marketing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at Podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all social platforms @podglomerate or @podglomeratepods. This episode was produced by Chris Boniello, and myself, Jeff Umbro.

This episode was edited and mixed by Jose Roman. And thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Annabella Pena, and Vanessa Ullman. And a special thank you to Dan Christo and Tiffany Dean. Thank you for listening and I'll catch you all in two weeks.