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Podcasting is no longer a side project—it’s a business model. As the medium continues to mature and audiences grow, creators are turning their shows into full enterprises, but the legal and operational decisions made early on can make or break long-term success.
Below, Anne Kennedy McGuire, deputy chair of the firm’s Entertainment practice and chair of the Podcast industry group, breaks down how to protect your brand, navigate distribution deals, retain ownership and position your podcast for where the industry is heading.
Tell us about your practice and the types of matters you generally handle.
My practice focuses on television, motion picture, podcasts and digital media, representing clients from development to production and through distribution, including branded entertainment. I negotiate complex talent, licensing and integration deals, and advise on advertising and marketing strategy across emerging platforms. My work spans both the creative and business sides of the industry, giving me a comprehensive view of how content and brands operate together.
What shifts in the creator economy have made podcasts such a powerful anchor for building sustainable businesses?
The biggest driver has been the move to platforms like YouTube. For a long time, podcast discovery was a real challenge because it was on listeners to actively seek out a show, which made cross-promotion clunky. Audio-only platforms made it difficult to stumble onto something new by browsing social media. Now, a viewer can finish one podcast episode and immediately be served another based on their watch history. Mechanisms like the autoplay feature and recommendation engines now do the work for creators and, in turn, help them build audiences organically in a way that wasn’t possible in pure audio environments. That discoverability is game-changing, both for audience growth and for a creator’s ability to attract brands and monetize consistently.
The shift to video has also made it significantly easier to cross-sell between creators, formats and audiences. Two podcasters can appear on each other’s shows and drive real traffic back and forth that translates visually and algorithmically. While the barriers to entry had almost dissolved for audio podcasts—since almost anyone can build a legitimate production setup for a few hundred dollars and essentially start making content the same day—with the shift to video, costs increase significantly and can cause additional barriers to entry.
There’s also the move toward conversational podcasting, where a host sits down with a guest and the content largely speaks for itself, which has lowered the production costs considerably compared to narrative-driven formats that require extensive research, writing and postproduction. Both have their place, but the accessibility of the conversational model has opened the door for a much wider net of creators.
As creators look to incorporate podcasts as full enterprises rather than side projects, what legal or operational decisions matter most in the early stages?
It’s essential for creators to know or at least have some idea of their end game before making any deal. The decisions you make on day 1 can close doors you didn’t even know existed.
Beyond brand protection, the most consequential early decisions tend to involve distribution agreements. Deals with major platforms can be attractive, especially when a show is new and looking for reach. But some of those agreements carry terms that can limit your ownership of the content itself or restrict your rights to derivative works down the line. If you ever want to turn your podcast into a television series, a documentary, a book or any other format, you need to make sure you haven’t already signed those rights away without realizing it.
When we’re working with clients in the creator economy, we urge them to think about what this podcast could become, not just what it is today. Is this a marketing vehicle for an existing business? A passion project? Or is this the foundation for a media brand that you want to grow, license and potentially sell? Each of those paths has different legal implications, and getting the structure right early (entity formation, partnership agreements, IP ownership, rights retention, etc.) creates a foundation for the business to scale and monetize.
Looking ahead, what emerging risks or opportunities should podcast-driven businesses prepare for as the industry continues to evolve?
I work across both podcasting and television production, which gives me a unique view into the space and how quickly the line between a podcast and a television show is getting harder to draw, creating both opportunity and risk. When you have high production value, a compelling host, meaningful guests and a loyal audience, the content starts to resemble a television talk show rather than a traditional podcast format. There are several celebrity-hosted podcasts that are produced with the same level of intention, cost and quality as a broadcast program. At a certain point, the only real distinction is the microphone.
That convergence is opening doors for established podcast creators to pursue distribution on major streaming platforms that are increasingly attracted to content that already has a built-in audience and proven production quality. That’s a meaningful opportunity for creators who have invested in their craft, but it also introduces a new level of scrutiny and additional cost to create a quality video production. When you move into that space, you’re expected to maintain a consistent release cadence, you’re operating under more-formal agreements and the stakes around intellectual property compliance increase significantly.
For example, an up-and-coming show might inadvertently use a piece of music or reference a brand without real consequence. A show with millions of listeners or a streaming distribution deal is a target, which comes with real legal exposure. This isn’t to say there isn’t risk at every level, but it’s really important for creators to understand that the risk profile changes when you become more sophisticated.
Looking ahead, the creators building lasting businesses in the podcast space are those who prioritize strategy and invest in business and legal teams with deep, cross-functional experience across all sides of the table: brand, production and creator.
