Keen On

Gutted by AI larceny and glutted by an avalanche of shows, the podcast economy is in deep crisis. So says Marshall Poe, founder of The New Books Network, a publisher of almost 30,000 independent podcasts. Things really are that bleak, Poe insists. Drawing parallels between today's AI content appropriation and Napster's music piracy in the late Nineties, he argues we've entered an era where "the theft of IP is an accepted business model." AI companies appear to scrape podcast content without permission or payment, then repackage it as their own product. Meanwhile, the market drowns in a vast ocean of shows, with AI-generated podcasts now flooding platforms at unprecedented scale—one company claims profitability with just 20 listeners per episode while producing 3,000 episodes weekly. For independent creators lacking deep pockets or legal teams, podcast economics have become impossible. "The cost of that theft has gone to zero," Poe explains, describing an environment where authentic human voices struggle to su