Unpacking Jefferson Studios, Warner Music Group's new podcast network

This piece is partially a follow-up to two articles I wrote over the past month about the intersection of music and podcasting: My piece for Hot Pod about hybrid album/podcast release strategies (which, ICYMI, also got syndicated to Vulture), and my writeup on Patreon about Sony Music’s investment in podcasts.

Now is a somewhat strange time to be writing more about music/podcast strategies, since both music and podcast listening seem to be down in the aggregate, per multiple reports. But even as listening declines in the short term, supply of both music and podcasts will likely go through the roof in the long term as innumerable creative, talented people look to keep themselves busy at home.

With this backdrop, there’s one major hybrid music/podcast initiative that I think would be good for you know about, and hasn’t been reported in other publications yet: Warner Music Group has quietly consolidated all of its past podcast operations into a new, singular network, Jefferson Studios.

A bit of history: Previously, the bulk of WMG’s podcast activity was housed under Atlantic Records, which formally launched its podcast initiative two years ago, in February 2018. The imprint’s flagship shows include What’d I Say and Inside the Album, both of which feature several WMG artists in interviews about their careers and the inspirations behind some of their most well-known albums.

All of Atlantic’s podcasts used to sit under the URL atlanticpodcasts.com. But now, that link redirects to jeffersonstudios.com. On Spotify, both What’d I Say and Inside the Album — each of which has released new episodes in recent weeks — now credit Jefferson Studios, rather than Atlantic Records, as the main show creator (see screenshot below for an example).

Based on Jefferson Studios’ Instagram page, it looks like the company officially established the separate podcast division sometime in January 2020, and WMG has proactively expanded its podcast efforts across several other internal departments ever since, instead of just focusing on Atlantic.

Some notable examples:

Warner Chappell Music is credited as the main creator behind the limited audio-doc series Final Sessions, the first season of which goes behind the scenes in the making of Warner/Chappel-signed singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson’s latest album, Losst and Founnd.

Digging Deep with Robert Plant dives into the eponymous English singer-songwriter’s back catalog; Season 2 of the show was released along with a ~$110 commemorative box set of the same name through WMG’s catalog label, Rhino Records.

The newer podcast Landed features interviews with several employees at Warner Music Group about their careers and about working with artists and music-industry professionals. To date, all the featured employees are under the Atlantic umbrella, including but not limited to Mara Frankel (senior creative director of brand partnerships at Atlantic) and Gina Tucci (VP of A&R at Atlantic and general manager at Big Beat Records).

People’s Party, a weekly hip-hop interview podcast hosted by Talib Kweli, might be the most interesting example in the whole mix, for a few reasons:

• Kweli is independent and, to my knowledge, has no current affiliation with WMG on the recording side (although he did release a few records through WMG in the 2000s).
• On Spotify, the main creator for People’s Party is credited not as Warner Music Group or Jefferson Studios, but rather as UPROXX, the online media company that WMG acquired in August 2018.
• Not coincidentally, People’s Party is also the closest to being a current-events podcast — commenting on contemporaneous issues in society, politics and culture, instead of being tied to a more evergreen piece of musical work. WMG’s historical expertise is arguably in music and catalog marketing, not in real-time news marketing, so it makes sense that the company would want to combine its podcast expansion (Jefferson Studios) with its digital-media expansion (UPROXX) more deliberately.

You can view a full list of Jefferson Studios’ shows on this page.

Comparing the podcast strategies of Warner Music vs. Sony Music

For now, WMG is taking a vastly different approach from Sony Music when it comes to podcasts.

As I argued previously, Sony Music is investing in podcasts as a direct, and in many ways competitive, response to Spotify’s similar moves. In particular, the major label has interestingly released little to no music-related podcast content to date. Instead, the focus has been mostly on topics such as daily news commentary, investigative features, comedy/satire and politics — including and not one, but two shows related to COVID-19. By diving headfirst into these verticals, Sony Music-backed podcast projects could be promoted within many more verticals on Spotify (e.g. sports or comedy, which Spotify is also investing in heavily), instead of being delegated by default to music.

In contrast, nearly all of Jefferson Studios’ podcasts so far are dedicated to promoting WMG’s own artists and catalogs. The shows are first and foremost marketing and fan-engagement vehicles to help drive consumption of other kinds of owned audio that make more revenue for WMG (for now) — instead of intending to be consumed as standalone narratives, regardless of whether the end listener is a fan of the featured WMG artist(s).

To me, this approach is not necessarily competitive with Spotify, but rather is simply taking advantage of the streaming service’s changing infrastructural priorities. WMG has also adopted this approach outside of the Jefferson Studios umbrella with some of its artists’ album campaigns. For instance, Atlantic Records artist Kranium recorded a track-by-track commentary for his recent album Midnight Sparks, which Atlantic then combined into a hybrid music/podcast playlist on Spotify. That isn’t competitive with Spotify so much as additive to the already-existing experience of fans, given what the streaming service now has to offer.

In short, the contrasting podcast strategies of Warner Music and Sony Music present two potential paths forward for podcasts in the recorded-music business: as an “artist service” and a marketing expense, or as valuable pieces of intellectual property in their own right.

Other hybrid album/podcast projects to know

1. In 2015, the production team behind the wildly popular Welcome to Night Vale launched their own podcast network, Night Vale Presents, to support a wide range of artists who have never worked in podcasting before.

One of the network’s more popular podcasts, I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats , is directly related to music. Hosted by Joseph Fink (creator of Welcome to Night Vale) and John Darnielle (primary member of the band The Mountain Goats), the show’s latest season dives into the making of the band’s album In League With Dragons. The episodes also feature covers from the Mountain Goats’ 2013 album All Hail West Texas throughout — which were themselves released separately as a double-LP on Merge Records.

2. Bhi Bhiman‘s independent album Peace of Mind was premiered in February 2019 as a podcast with the network Critical Frequency. The limited series features guests such as Dave Eggers, Glynn Washington and Dale Ho, who unpack the political, cultural and sociological themes behind the album in conversation with Bhiman himself.

One potential strategic takeaway from Peace of Mind is that if an artist releases a podcast alongside an album, they should bring other like-minded artists along for the ride on the podcast side as well and bring them on as guests on one or more epsiodes. Not only can that approach help articulate the deeper message or creative vision behind an album (if that’s what the artist is going for), but it can also help a lot with the podcast’s discoverability and buzz — it’s just another take on a feature verse, except through conversation.