I build subscription products on one discipline: whatever we count, charge for or rank, the listener should be able to see it and to name who decided it.
I am chief product officer of Lisandre Audio SA, a Lyon-based audiobook and podcast subscription company listed on Euronext Paris. We have 1.58 million paid subscriptions across France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Spain, and our revenue in 2025 was €268 million. I lead 158 people across product, design, research, recommendation science and accessibility, with a budget of €29 million, and I report to our chief executive, Solène Varadier. I decide plan structures and the listening experience; prices are proposed with our finance director and approved by the chief executive.
I came to product from radio. I spent ten years at a regional network, first as a reporter and documentary producer and then, from 2003, as the person who looked after its website and launched its first podcasts. After that I built a local-radio catch-up app, paid digital subscriptions for a regional newspaper group and the customer app of a Belgian mobile operator, and in 2021 I joined Lisandre.
The questions that occupy me are ones where a product decision is also a promise. What should a subscription count, and should the subscriber see the count? Whose interests decide what appears first on a screen, and can the listener tell? How should a service treat its oldest customers, who pay most faithfully and struggle most with each redesign? And how do you add a free tier funded by advertising without letting it quietly erode the paid one? My answers have cost subscribers, revenue and one argument about timing that I lost.
A meter the listener can read
In March 2023 we replaced a €14.99 unlimited plan with plans of fifteen and forty hours a month and an openly priced unlimited plan at €24.99. About 13,000 heavy listeners left. Gross margin rose from 31% to 38% by 2024, and monthly churn averaged 2.8% in the first half of 2026.
Every row on the home screen has an owner
Since June 2024, sponsored placements fill at most two of twelve rows and carry a label. Visibility revenue fell from €7.4 million to €5.1 million, while independent publishers' share of home impressions recovered from 8% to 16%.
A reduced mode that older listeners choose
Mode lecture, launched in November 2024, offers five controls, large type and a button that rings our support line. Within a year almost a third of subscribers over seventy used it, and monthly churn among the over-sixty-fives fell from 2.6% to 1.8%.
A free tier with rules on itself
Our advertising-funded podcast tier reached 2.3 million monthly listeners by June 2026 and brought 61,000 people to a paid plan. Advertising is contextual unless a listener consents to more, and audiobooks stay behind the subscription.
Current focus
I am working on two things for 2027. One is a family plan that shares a pool of listening hours among up to four people without turning one of them into the household's meter-keeper. The other is our Spanish service, which has 240,000 subscriptions but a catalogue still thin in recordings from smaller Spanish publishers, so recommendations there are weaker than in French.
Conversations I welcome
I am not seeking another executive role. With my chief executive's consent I would consider one non-executive seat on the board of a European company whose many older customers are moving to digital service. I also accept a few speaking and advisory conversations a year on the questions my essays address.
