I'm thinking about the future of the Celtic Christmas Podcast…at least as a podcast.

I love the podcast format. I love being able to share music with people, to help them find something new and wonderful. The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast is a beacon of new music. There's nothing else like it online… at least for Celtic music.

Every year, I get into Christmas promotion mode. I always overwork myself at this time of year. Too many new ideas I want to work on. It takes time and effort to create playlists, record them, post and promote them. I have a team that helps me. It's still a lot of work. It takes me away from other things.

That's why this year I decided I would set some financial goals for the podcast. In order to release an episode, I need to reach the financial goal of $250 per episode on Patreon. I have not reached that goal. In fact, I'm kind of skeptical that I will reach it at all this year.

You see, the problem is I have a ton of things to promote. I don't have time to promote the Celtic Christmas Podcast goal. Doing so detracts from other promotional goals. Plus, people won't get revved up on Christmas until December, when regular people actually start listening to Christmas music.

I can't help but think that perhaps this is the time when I should reimagine how I create the podcast and do it in a way that will better benefit the musicians who are featured on the shows.

One of the downsides of podcasts is that I can't pay royalties for songs played in the podcast. This bothers me, especially since, thanks to Patreon, I do make money from publishing shows.

Episodes last year got 15,000 downloads. The standard royalty rate for downloads is 9.1 cents. So if I did get permission to play the music of artists royalty-free, then I'd half to pay $1365 PER SONG on the show. That's about $16,000 per episode.

Fortunately, all of the artists provide their music freely. I buy their music as a small way to support the artists. But I don't feel like that is good enough. It would serve these artists better to use the modern services that are currently available…namely streaming

I'm still working out stuff in my head. But here's what I'm thinking about how to revamp the Celtic Christmas Podcast.

1. Create playlists on Spotify and Amazon Music.
2. Use the same show naming structure that I use for the podcast now, naming the show after a song in the playlist or a possible theme name.
3. Record short intros to be released on Celtic Christmas Podcast to give the playlist an almost podcast feel.
4. Post shownotes on Celtic Christmas Podcast website.
5. Make custom graphics for each playlist
6. In order to be added to the Playlist, they would still need to submit permission to the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast. That should keep bringing in new music and qualify artists for the show.
7. Publish Hang the Holly episodes (including a song) for the public feed. This allows me to keep the podcast running, plus promote the latest episode and artists in the show in a podcast feed.

Some questions:

• Would it be possible to continue using Patreon to fund this new endeavor?
• Would people be interested enough to pay for it?
• Or should I create an exclusive podcast for patrons-only?
• What other ways can I redo the podcast in the future?
• Am I still trying to overwork myself when I told myself I wouldn't do that this year?