Coming-of-age in a coming-of-age: the collective individualism of podcasting’s intimate soundwork

Abstract

Podcasting collectives – groups of independent producer-hosts invested in shared resources and “sound-rich storytelling” – emerged between 2014 and 2018. The models of four U.S.-based collectives demonstrate an industry in transition and the evolving place of self, community, and publicity in contemporary soundwork. This article uses intimate soundwork and collective individualism as frames for understanding how some podcasters negotiate the tensions between the role of the collective and the individual in an ill-defined industry. In turn, the sonic aesthetics they create are symptomatic of the long-established intimacies of radio sound, the precarities of independent labor, and the increasing presence of a public process of self-discovery as creative material in digital media. The potential for podcasting to be a site for new voices and listening publics is often at the mercy of the entrepreneurial expectations of a coming-of-age medium.

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