As the global podcast market becomes a $30 billion industry, an agency is giving some shine to the hard-working professionals who support that ecosystem. Oxford Road, a company known for its audiovisual ad products and insights, is behind the upcoming Independent Podcast and Creator Awards.
The Indie PaC Awards, as the ceremony is known, will take place at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 15. Rapper Killer Mike has been tapped for the hosting gig, and Oxford Road has assembled a jury that will select winners across ten different categories. Creators must own the IP for their podcasts and have editorial control in order to be eligible for Indie PaC nominations, and Oxford Road will also leverage its ad data to find shows that are worthy of award consideration.
This is hardly the first podcast-specific award show we’ve seen. There’s the People’s Choice Podcast Awards, the Ambies, the Signal Awards, iHeartMedia’s own SXSW-set ceremony, and awards for specific groups like Black and Latin podcasters. There’s even an unrelated celebration of independent podcasters in the U.K.
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Despite all that noise, Oxford Road felt that independent podcasters deserved more shine, and the nominees in Indie PaC’s Creator of the Year category help explain why this particular field is so important. Some indie showrunners, like Theo Von, are bringing their owned-and-operated podcasts to the forefront of pop culture. Other creators who fit that description, like Diary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett, are using their podcasts as the foundation of sprawling media companies — and those businesses are getting massive investments from VC firms.
“Independent creators tore down the gates,” Oxford Road CEO Dan Granger told The Hollywood Reporter. “They proved you don’t need a network, a studio or anyone’s permission to build an audience that trusts you. The Indie PaC Awards exist to recognize the creators who took that risk, the brands brave enough to back them early, and the work that makes people hit subscribe.”
One of the Indie PaC jury members, Ashley Flowers of Crime Junkies, has turned her podcasting career into a $250 million empire. That may be the end goal for many of the Indie PaC nominees, but before they get there, they deserve to be celebrated for the work they’ve already done. On March 15, they will be.
