SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz joined Ashley Flowers, CEO of audiochuck and host of the "Crime Junkie" podcast, for the C Space keynote at CES 2025 to discuss the evolution of technology and creativity in the audio medium. Witz, who has been with SiriusXM for nearly two decades, has seen significant transformation in how we listen. However, what has not changed over the years is why we listen.
Whether it is your favorite podcast or a vinyl on your record player, “we are moved and enlightened by audio,” Witz said. “It keeps us connected—it brings people together and changes hearts and minds.”
Both Witz and Flowers have always gravitated toward the power of audio. Audio, said Witz, is incredibly impactful and powerful. The intimacy of audio can go where so many other mediums can’t, and it creates a connection that you can’t get with video or other media. “The car is pretty much the perfect venue for audio to create that companionship,” Witz said.
Flowers, the top female podcaster in the nation and a New York Times bestseller, is the host of her true crime podcast—a genre that has seen quite the boom over the past few years. But Flowers was among the first and admitted that maintaining her uniqueness is one of the challenges she faces as a podcaster.
The other is discoverability. How does a new content creator get discovered in a sea of audio options? Algorithms help, but there are experts at SiriusXM that love what they do as well as the genres and categories on which they work, which helps build connections with the hosts. “It’s a big part of what we are at SiruiusXM,” Witz said. “That it’s humans creating all this.”
Flowers said the biggest change is not so much the tech side, but the business side—the ability to dissect download data and listenership and how to deliver ads that don’t turn off listeners. Podcasting is still a relatively new space that is still evolving, and more accuracy is better for creators and audiences alike.
That pace of innovation has been so rapid in two primary areas: how we listen and how people create audio. The evolution of technology is easy to see. We’ve gone from vinyl to cassettes to CDs to streaming—and we have all the audio we need in our pockets or our cars. For creators, it has become much easier to create, market, and distribute, and that opens opportunities.
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“I don’t want to be an influencer,” Flowers said. “I want to have influence.”
And she does. Podcast hosts become friends; their audiences watch them grow as a host and a person. “I think it is one of the first two-way mediums,” said Flowers. “We aren’t just broadcasting this out but getting feedback from those listeners that know us.”
As with every emerging trend, AI is playing a role in the future of how we listen. Flowers values the human experience and does not use AI in the creative process. However, she does use AI to aggregate comments, DMs, and emails from fans, which enables her and her staff to reply more efficiently to her listening community, as well as learn more about her fanbase's interests and listening habits. In other words, she isn’t using AI to influence—she uses AI to help the audience influence her. Both Witz and Flowers agreed that AI should enhance the experience, not create it.
SiriusXM is doubling down on human creation because its vital to connection. “It’s really inspiring to see the technology supporting all these creators,” Witz said. “We are letting them find new audiences and really pursue their dreams, which wasn’t possible before the advent of streaming.”
