We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Sidhom. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.

Matt, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry

Podcasting is in an interesting spot. For awhile, you saw a lot of consolidation happening with some bigger players acquiring podcasts, most notably Spotify. But there doesn’t seem to be a plan after that whereas someone like PodcastOne has successfully acquired some podcasts and grown the network. I think you’re going to see less big acquisition moves in the space and more podcasts getting creative as to how they grow revenue to where it becomes more of a lifestyle business for a lot of players. And by lifestyle business, I mean, the owners make great money and are doing what they love so there’s just not that pull to make a big sale and make all the money at once. It will also be interesting to see how AI affects the industry and if it leads to what you see on YouTube with a lot of products being automated but still popular enough to create revenue.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Our podcast started as just an app. I used to make my wife mix CDs when we were dating with notes on each song. As streaming services grew, she was able to re-create the actual playlist, but not the personal notes. So, my co-founder, Samer Abousalbi, and I created an app that allowed you to do that and even add a voice note to make it even more personal. That app still exists but in the midst of that release, we thought the mix tape itself would be a great podcast. We started just recording a test episode and haven’t stopped since. Then we added Jenn Tully to the network and her show What Are You Listening To? And we just grew from there. We’re still not profitable to where this is a full-time job but we love it and think we’re well on our way. Our fans are so passionate, we think it’s just a matter of time before we reach a critical mass of those fans.

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

Most people just think of advertising as the only driver of revenue in podcasting but you have to have so many downloads that it’s difficult. We have the advantage of starting as an app so we had that source of revenue first and I think it just immediately re-oriented our mindset around revenue. In addition to that, we sell mixtape cards for events where you can add a QR code to a card you give to your guests and we connect that to the playlist on multiple streaming services so people can access your music wherever they listen to music and you get to give them an old school gift in a modern way. We’ve taken that same QR code approach to things like journals and even Taylor Swift stickers! By not wholly relying on ad revenue, it alleviates the pressure to just focus on downloads and gives us a stronger base to build on.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Samer and I met in business school. I was working on a different project with a different partner and we needed a coder. Samer fit the bill and we got him on board. He actually tried to quit at one point and I convinced him to stick around. In the midst of that project, I kept telling him about this mixtape product. I would remind him about it from time to time and finally during Covid, as the previous project we worked on was winding down, he called me and said we should go for it. About a year after we started the podcast, Jenn Tully was a listener who reached out to us and we decided to reply to her and that started a series of conversations where she joined us. It doesn’t hurt that her background is as a publicist. So, we had the perfect group come together, I’ve done a lot of broadcasting in college and even after, Samer was a technical guy – obviously we both have MBAs – then to have Jenn be a publicist – it’s just a great confluence of events. Reminds me of how so many bands form – hey, you play the saxophone, we need a saxophone, come on!

Contact Info:

• Website: SuperAwesomeMix.com
• Instagram: @SuperAwesomeMix
• Facebook: @SuperAwesomeMix
• Twitter: @SuperAwesomeMix