As part of the Audience Strategy module for the MA in podcasting, we’ve been required to engage deeply with industry thought leadership and to also look across podcast adjacent sectors. I’ve been down many an interesting rabbit hole as a result.
However, there’s a recent concept that I’ve come across that has really landed. I realised that I had been subconsciously noticing it, as it didn’t feel entirely foreign, but didn’t have the language with which to name it. That is: liquid content.
It slapped me right between the eyes; a recognition that liquid content is already happening and that now there’s a name for it. I’m not entirely sure who coined the term; I’ve seen it attributed it to Matthieu Lorrain of Google DeepMind and Steven Goldstein of Amplifi Media has heralded the “Era of Liquid Content.” Either way it’s almost certainly going to become part of the jargon since The Reuters Institute flagged it as term to watch in their Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026 report.
Alongside liquid content, another term keeps appearing: multimodality. While the two are often mentioned alongside each other, with potential for conflation, they’re getting at fundamentally different things.
So, in an attempt to separate them out (for my own sanity as much as anything), here’s how I’m currently thinking about it.
Multimodality: what’s going on inside the content
Multimodality is about how a piece of content is built.
It’s the combination of different modes, be that audio, visuals, text, music, sound design, working together to create meaning.
In podcasting terms, this could be:
- a carefully constructed soundscape
- the use of music to guide emotion or build tension
- a video podcast with captions and visual elements
- show notes that add context or depth
None of this content is “moving” anywhere in particular. It’s well made, layered, considered and deliberate. The question multimodality asks is: how is this mode doing its job?
Liquid content: what happens after you hit publish
Liquid content, on the other hand, is less about the craft of the thing itself and more about what can happen next.
It’s content that isn’t static. It moves. Or perhaps more accurately, shapeshifts: disassembling and reassembling, very likely with the assistance of AI, into different forms and meeting audiences where they are at any given moment.
One podcast episode becomes:
- a handful of short YT clips
- a series of LinkedIn posts
- a newsletter article
- a live discussion or event
Same core idea but different forms depending on when and where it lands and, crucially, tailored to different audiences and their preferred method of engagement.
The question here is: where can this content go and what can it become for different audiences?
To answer those questions, I resorted to my default (and preferred) explanatory method – a good old table. In the era of liquid content, this could very well be a short podcast episode too, if that’s what you prefer!
| Aspect | Multimodality | Liquid Content |
| Core idea | combining different modes of communication | content that flows and transforms across platforms |
| Focus | form and meaning | movement and circulation |
| Key question | how is this content constructed? | how does this content travel? |
| Where it operates | within a single piece of content | across multiple versions of content |
| Example: Podcasting | a podcast using voice, music, sound design, visuals | one podcast episode turned into clips, posts, articles, social content, events |
| Nature | layered | shapeshifting |
| Goal | enrich meaning and engagement | extend reach and lifespan |
| Relationship to platforms | may exist on one platform | designed to move across platforms |
| Audience role | experiences the content as created | content adapts to meet audiences where they are |
| Time dimension | relatively fixed once produced | ongoing, iterative, evolving |
Why I think these concepts matter for podcasting
What’s notable is that a podcast can sit in either camp or both.
You can have something beautifully produced, rich in sound and storytelling that lives and dies as a single episode. On the other hand, you can have something relatively simple in production terms that goes on to have a much longer life because it’s repurposed and reimagined.
Increasingly though, there’s an aim and expectation, particularly in branded or professional contexts, that podcasts do both.
This is where, somewhat grudgingly, I acknowledge the idea of podcasts as content engines makes sense; the episode isn’t the end point but rather the “atomic” raw material.
As someone who embarked on an MA in Podcasting motivated largely by the desire to find and tell good stories through the medium of audio, this rapidly shifting landscape is in equal parts, daunting, exciting and inevitable.
Daunting because it shifts the task from crafting something worthwhile to also thinking about how it can travel across platforms, exciting because it opens new possibilities for creativity and engagement and inevitable because in the highly competitive attention economy, content needs to be where the audience demands.
There’s a tension here. On the one hand, multimodality pushes one towards depth, skill and care in the making – indeed it can fuel content liquidity through richer original material with more to draw on as the shapeshifting occurs – but push too far, and you create something so “complete” it potentially resists being broken apart. Push too far toward liquidity and the risk is creating something designed for extraction; the content may travel and reassemble, but it won’t necessarily resonate with audiences.
The challenge I feel, as a fledgling podcast producer, is not letting one undermine the other. How do you make something that is both worth experiencing in full and capable of being broken apart and reshaped?
I suspect whoever cracks that will have the audiences, sponsors and advertisers queuing up.
Further Reading:
Liquid Content: The Broadcast Model Publishers Have Been Waiting For
WTF Is Liquid Content?
