Reggie James has an exceptionally thought-provoking note out for my fellow creative people. It's focused on podcasts and recorded conversations, but there's way larger applications to it the more I think about it.
Here’s my overall assessment: it's a great method for identifying how to build something people can find. If audience is your goal, you want to know where you show up on his graphic.
If studying podcasts is your goal (which, I am guilty of), it will especially get you thinking about the medium. And as I was reading this, I had one issue that kept nagging me.
The issue I'll raise is - because it applies to at least some of the people who are going to read this in podcast study mode - I think you lose something when audience finding is your primary goal. If you look at this image and say “I want to be here so I’ll make content like this person” I don’t think that’s enough.
Now, great artists steal is fine, and audience building is always a good goal to have. I want to be clear that I am not knocking that. But there's more to life than fame.
And, I don’t think these people did what they did with what Reggie’s calling out in mind. Not exactly at least.
When I look at the shows on his chart, I also think about the audience perspective. What - really - are they getting or feeling from it? Because that’s what’s making them press play.
They might want evergreen or topical, they might want host personality or dense information - but in all categories there’s a reason that audience is showing up.
Where Reggie blows the doors off in this note is with this term: catalogue value.
He’s right that the simplest question in podcast media that almost nobody asks when they’re starting off creating something is - what is this episode worth in three years?
Acquired, Founders, the whole “evergreen” argument builds from there. It's the book off the shelf. A stranger finds it in 2029 and works backwards through six years of archive that never stopped earning. The legacy of that IP is everything.
This is what makes the catalogue value framing so genuinely useful. But when I look at those same shows - ones I've listened to off and on for years, at various levels of engagement - my question is about the people who found it and kept hanging around.
I need a word for that.
Not just because I have ADHD and get bored of stuff. Not just because I drift in and out of almost everything. Because I can’t be the only one, so there has to be an audience perspective on the catalogue value missing here.
It's like a band you love to go see, right? Is it a phase of life or is it YOUR band since you were 17? To understand this we need another term. Since Reggie didn’t work this out yet, I’m calling it belonging value.
Catalogue value answers: what does a new listener get from finding this?
Belonging value answers: what does a long-term listener get from sticking around after they’ve found it?
Content is the entry point. Identity is the destination. How you get there is everything.
Identity is what you do, what you consume, and what those things say about you. The relationship with the content - direct or parasocial - is where belonging value lives. And what everyone is chasing is some version of that.
Identity by association. Do you think anybody has a Conversations with Tyler tattoo? I don’t know - but I do know people have Black Flag tattoos, and both of those things come in audio wrappers.
So I start playing around with this chart. I start thinking about bands and where they might fit.
Where does Fugazi go? Who rhymes with TBPN? I start to think about how the songs get you in the door. You get the ethos, the values, the thing you feel a part of, and that's what keeps you there and makes you wish you got there sooner. The catalogue calls to you.
And there’s one hit wonders. They are practically the definition of narrow catalogue value with a ton of belonging value. Not a lot of catalogue, obviously - but kinda just one thing, re: one hit - that's still something you go back to and discover or reference.
Then there’s the bands that don't have the hit but have years of fan loyalty. Fugazi bucked t-shirts, sold out shows, and people - me included - still pine over never seeing them live. So they’re not TBPN. I’m still thinking of that one. But what about the Grateful Dead? There are just so many identities that happen to come in audio wrappers with various forms of catalogue.
Reggie’s chart is great. But music figured this out decades ago. The question for recorded conversation is whether it can matter even remotely as much as music.
The rare shows have both. I’m starting to see it now.
Acquired seems to have it. Founders definitely does - the way people are excited to tell somebody about David Senra is a belonging value signal if I've ever seen one. TBPN too, in how they define their audience as limited and finite.
Minor Threat is Molly O'Shea - topical, intense, of the moment. Fugazi is David Senra - the same ethos grown into something more durable and philosophical. And Rites of Spring is All In, which is genuinely funny to me right now. Emotionally raw, extremely earnest, and deeply felt by the people who love it. Not for everybody - but what great thing is?
Reggie's rules are almost entirely about building catalogue value - and they're good rules. Preparation, cutting the pose, designing for disagreement. All of it makes the show better for the person encountering it fresh. Every audio-based medium creator should think about this.
Reggie did an amazing job mapping the territory here. That's still different from telling you how to build something people stay for.
Go the extra step.
What keeps the person who's been there for three years still showing up and still calling it their show? That's belonging value. And that's the question his framework leaves open for the rest of us to answer.
