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The company itself may be only six months old, but it’s made sufficient progress to attract investment as it seeks to scale its offering of shows. Today, the company announced that it’s secured $1 million in seed funding from , a boutique technology investor and holding company which acquired and operates the podcasting app, and has backed other podcast (and podcast-adjacent) companies like SuperCast and DoubleUp. Ride Home Media is valued at $3.8 million following the transaction; McCullough told Crunchbase News that, at this time, the company’s board remains unchanged.

You too could make a decent living talking about stuff on the internet, if you do it on the daily. McCullough wrote in an email that “the economics of a daily podcast are such that one person can helm a show and earn deep into the six figures per year,” with a modestly sized audience. McCullough reckons that “an audience of maybe 30k listeners” is enough to make a decent stream of revenue for all involved: the host, the support staff, and the media venture which takes care of the heavy lifting.

Here’s the thing about making media online: it doesn’t cost much to get started, but getting noticed and accruing enough of a following to make a living at it takes an ounce of talent and a pound of persistence. Without an existing platform of their own, independent creators have to factor in a ton of luck as well.

To start a podcast, for example, requires a recording device (heck, a decent modern smartphone will do in a pinch), some audio editing software (which probably came pre-installed on your computer), an audio hosting account (probably less than $20 per month if you’re just getting started), and sufficient time and intention to produce an engaging product on a somewhat consistent basis. But unless you already have a sizable online following, it’s likely that your only listeners will be your family, close friends, and a couple of random folks that came upon it by happenstance, at least for awhile.

Working with an online media company helps to circumvent the biggest challenge creators face—getting discovered—alongside the tedium of securing sponsorships and ensuring their work is distributed far and wide.

McCullough and his co-founder are no strangers to podcasting and media production. Welsh was co-founder of U.K.-based media property and previously served as the vice president of Hearst’s digital platform efforts. McCullough, for his part, has been in the podcasting game for years. I–full disclosure–became a fan of his work in 2015, when I binged through the earliest episodes of his , and kept listening. From the start of that podcast, McCullough stated his goal was to record the raw material for a book about the history of the internet. “How The Internet Happened” was published in 2018.

Ride Home Media’s first podcast is produced in collaboration with TechMeme, the popular technology news aggregation website. The format: episodes between 20 and 30 minutes in length, published right before the evening rush hour (Eastern time), containing a survey and analysis of the biggest tech news stories of the day. sits alongside politically-focused (covering, you guessed it, the ongoing U.S. election saga) and , which the media company launched today in conjunction with its funding announcement.

McCullough is convinced the model can be replicated across a number of different verticals. “Very probably a Gamer Ride Home, Media Ride Home and Money & Markets Ride Home are next on our slate,” he wrote in an email. “But we very much will go where the talent leads us. We got pitched on a Sneaker News Ride Home, and that’s not an insane idea. Any topic niche where there’s enough news and enough of a committed audience is something we will consider.”

Ride Home Media is currently taking suggestions for new shows. “We want to get the word out to any and all writers in any and all topic spaces: pitch us show ideas! Become a trusted, daily voice in your area of expertise and make a good living doing it,” said McCullough.

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The Internet enabled a host of video entertainment options that could have supplanted our interest in audio content. After all, after the rise of television, radio never had the same preeminence again. But in the era of esports and high-def streaming video, the time when , humble audio is having a moment.

Sure, your friends listen to podcasts. But even if you don’t partake in hipster radio, recent news has underscored the scale to which the podcast genre has moved from the fringes to the mainstream.

, and the stakes are rising, financially and otherwise. So it’s a good moment to remind ourselves what has happened recently in podcasting-land.

Recent Doings

Most recently, a company called “emerged from stealth mode” over the weekend . They report Luminary has raised $100 million in capital and intends to rent access to its podcasts (helmed by big names like Hannibal Buress, Russell Brand, and others, according to its website) for $8 per month.

That’s a staggering amount of money for a company, which, , was founded in 2018.

But it’s not the first podcasting company to raise $100 million this year. Amazingly, a company called Himalaya Media raised $100 million as well. That news broke in February. Himalaya’s lead investor is , a Chinese company that as a “spoken word audio platform.”

But there aren’t only big rounds available for podcasting-focused companies. You can raise less, it turns out. (Check our mid-2018 look at the podcast industry here).

As reported (co-host of , a show that I take help out with), podcast production company called raised $4.3 million last month. The WaitWhat Series A is not the only smaller investment into podcasting-related companies. It turns out that , a tool that we use on for analytics has raised $1.2 million towards the end of 2017, for example.

And, of course, no podcast summary is complete in 2019 without reminding ourselves that Spotify spent over $300 million buying (lots of well-produced podcasts) and (online podcast distribution). Those exits tell investors that there’s M&A activity in the space, meaning that they may be able to exit podcast investments sans the need for an IPO.

I didn’t think that we’d have multiple nine-figure rounds into podcasting companies ever, let alone a few this year. And with Spotify dropping big dollars into the genre, other major music platforms could follow suit. Of course, going from renting or selling the work of others (iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify’s work with music) is different than creating your own work. But Apple is getting into original video content as we all know. And audio is cheaper to create.

At least I thought it was.

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