In This On Demand Age - Is Live "Worth It" - An Interview With Rob Greenlee - The Podcast Report

In this on demand age, is live worth it? It's the PODCASPT report episode 127. Show notes, links, conversation and more at the podcastreport.com 127. It's a long interview so I'm going to front load it. This episode of the Podcast report is brought to you by how to podcast training. At howtopodcasttraining.com we've launched our first batch of students thrilled with it and if you want to get on the list, visit how to Podcast Training. Today I have Rob Greenlee. I have known Rob for a long time. I've known Rob before he was in Zune. Yes, Zune, the Microsoft attempted a media player. Rob did some really interesting things there. Rob is now at Spreaker, which is a podcast company that has the interested element of having a live element to what it is that they're doing. One of the things I love about Rob is that he doesn't call it live podcasting like some to. Podcasting by its very nature is pre recorded media placed online, made available for on demand or subscription based delivery. So you really can't do a live podcast. But there is the theme of live. There is the model of live, there's the excitement of live, there is the buzz of live. I've even got my how to stream video live book. And so I brought Rob on to chat about live. Does it matter? Should we still do it now? Yes, he's at Spreaker, so yes he's going to speak to it, but he has some interesting thoughts on live and some things that I think are really worth examining. We chat a little bit about a recent cameo that Zune made. We'll chat about that and then towards the end we look at what Google's doing with podcasting and what that means and some rumors Rob has heard as well. I've got the links to everything@the podcastreport.com 127 my show over at Spreaker we've got a link to Rob, a link to Rob's email address for the pass through thing that he chatted about. So a whole bunch of links@the podcastreport.com I would love your thoughts on this episode. If you head out to the podcastreport.com 127 you can make them there or you can go to the podcastreport.com iTunes thepodcastreport.com Stitcher the podcastreport.com Google wherever it is that you want to go, you can definitely do that. If you want to make the interaction. If you want to chat thepodcastreport.com Twitter, Facebook, etc. So, with that said and done, let's get to Rob. I will end with Rob's last word. Good stuff here. Enjoy. I have Rob Greenlee on the Skype phone. Rob, how are you doing, buddy?

Doing great, Paul. It's great to be here.

You just got inducted into the Podcasting hall of Fame, or just got. Whatever the proper term is. The ceremony has not happened yet, but.

I got sucked in. I guess it was like a vortex that pulled me, pulled me in.

Rob and I have a long history, and it's funny, I thought of Rob the last couple of weeks. I want to bring him on the show to talk about this topic. Then this weekend, I was sitting in a crowded movie theater watching a movie that I knew had several cameos. Most of the cameos have been spoiled to me, but one of the cameos was not spoiled. And all of a sudden, the Microsoft Zune pops up. Yes. It was Guardians of Galaxy, Volume 2, and I just had to laugh.

Back to the future, right, Paul?

To the future. So, Rob, what was your connection with the Microsoft Zune?

Well, I spent six years working on Zune podcasting. So I was hired in there to build the podcasting side of the platform. Actually spent about six months working on the TV show side of it for a while. I got that off the ground.

I remember that.

So I was kind of in the middle of it. I was on the. Not the first group of team members on the Zoom, but I was kind of in the second wave because I came in when the second kind of upgrade happened. So it was like a year after it actually launched. But it was quite a fun journey. I spent quite a bit of time working at Microsoft, and it was kind of sad to see them kind of piece by piece dismantle that whole platform because it was an exciting platform at the time. We just had a difficult time competing with the juggernaut that would be the Apple ipod.

So, yeah, yeah, I had bet a lot on it, too. I hadn't taken a job at Microsoft, but my first gig in Internet was supporting a little product called Microsoft frontpage. And I still did well on that. I've still got one tool for Microsoft FrontPage, still running 13 years after the death of Front Page, that still pays my mortgage and my car payment. And so I had this idea. I saw Zune. I love Zune. I think Rob and I were probably two of the biggest fans of Zun, and I saw it as the next step. I love the software I love the fact that there was a guy who was identifiable who was in charge of the podcasting group. And, yeah, I was sad to see it go as well, but there we go. Rob's been a good while. Rob is now at Spreaker. For those who don't know what Spreaker is, give us 30 seconds or so.

Well, it's a podcast hosting platform that also supports live streaming, so we can combine the worlds of kind of live online radio with podcasting. So if you wanted to do a show live and then have it published as a podcast, it's easy to do. On Spreaker, we give you the free apps and the plans. It all is included in every plan that we have is the live streaming component. So it's really a powerful platform. That's why I'm working here is because it was a type of a platform that I would have built myself if I was going to build a company. So it's been exciting. I've been here for a little over two years now, and I've been really working with a lot of content creators from the full spectrum, which really encapsulates my past in this medium as well, because I spent a lot of years doing live radio and was involved in streaming for many, many years. In the early days of me doing my original show, that kind of got me started on all this. I was using Windows Media streaming servers and real streaming servers back in those days, and that's where most of my audience came from. When podcasting launched in 2004, it was a pretty simple. It wasn't a big deal for me. It was pretty simple. I just added the enclosure tag to my blog RSS feed and I was like, okay, is that it? Is that all I have to do? It was fairly straightforward. And I took my radio show and made it a podcast.

Now, I want to speak to that because sadly, in our space, there are a number of times when a company comes up with a unique angle, a unique piece of tech, a unique something, and they put someone in charge of it who appreciates it but isn't necessarily well versed in that space. I want to just emphasize what Rob said here, long history in radio, Internet radio, streaming, live, not just the tech of live, but the psychology of live and the production of live. And so they brought on Rob for his unique ability. And Rob was able to come and bring not, just, you know, tech savviness, but some. Some history and experience to this. And that's why I brought Rob on today. So the question, you know, it's funny, we were chatting before we hit the record button. Rob, you know, when we started, live was really expensive, really complicated. I mean, Windows Media Server, you said that just kind of ran shivers through my body. I mean, I used it a couple of times, but it was a lot of work. It was really expensive, really hard, got a little bit easier, but kind of stayed expensive. Now we're in the age where it's for all sakes and purposes, free. With an existing account. Spreaker does a fantastic job. The software's great. Boy, talk about juggernauts. Facebook is, of course, killing it live as well. And there are rumors of a live media option coming out of Facebook. I think the new Alexas. There she goes. Just turned on there. Going to say something in a second. But the new lady in a tube from Amazon, I think, is going to make that world interesting as well. So now that it is cheap, almost free, now that it is easy to use, the question is, is it worth it? And I don't mean is it worth it, because, yeah, everybody likes to do radio, but the fact of the matter is, you and I had all these grand ideas of let's do the live episode live, but the logistics of putting the audience together, sending out the manning, let everybody know when it's doing all these things. I just decided it wasn't worth it because the majority of people were going to consume this thing and are consuming this, and you who are listening to this right now, are consuming this. Not live, but in the downloads. So, Rob, the big question a few minutes into this is, in this on demand age, is live worth it?

Well, I think it depends on what you're trying to do and the audience that you're trying to reach and the connection that you're trying to make with that audience, I think is the question. And live is not for everyone. I think generally, if you speak to folks or podcasters that are doing live, they will tell you that it makes them a better podcaster or broadcaster or online media creator to do what they do live. There's very little possibility of being able to edit, so you really have to be prepared and focused. I. I don't have any problem doing live myself, but I do know a lot of people that will take the position that on demand is where the market is, and I can't really argue with that. I think that on demand is where the vast numbers of listeners will be even if you do a live show. That's just the reality of it. But you are also not tapping into one of the core elements that has made live radio as popular as it has for many decades is the. The ability to have a connection with your audience at a much deeper level. And I think that's the power of it. But you have to realize you're talking about 1% of your listeners or less will probably connect with you live. But I can tell you those 1% of listeners will be able to provide you with impact and contribution to your show, whether it be comments, whether it be actually, if you wanted to have them join you on your show too. So those are going to be. Your passionate fans, are the ones that are willing to take time out of their day, put it in their schedule and come in and listen to you live. And making that connection with people is really what this medium is about. But you're also going to make that connection with thousands of other people that will connect with you on demand as well. So you still need to create a show that is personable and will create fans and friends, essentially. And that's the goal that I do with podcasting, is to be really honest and to have open and frank conversations. I mean, the two shows that I do every week, that's exactly what we do. I do a show with Todd Cochran from Blueberry Raw Voice, and we don't do any show prep on that. We just turn on our webcams every morning, Saturday morning at 9am and and talk about podcasting. In the industry, there's no show prep. We just get. It's like we met at Starbucks and we're just talking. That's how I approach it. And this whole thing of being fearful of live is something that I think is real. I think it takes time to get over that fear of talking live and making sure that you're able to communicate ideas. And it does take some training of your mind to be able to multitask in this. Because oftentimes when you doing live, you're having to juggle software and you're having to monkey around with Skype and play around with settings and do sorts of things. Sometimes you'll drop connections and you have to be able to be agile and know how to handle these things. So it's not for everyone. But I think it can be for everyone if one tries it and learns.

I heard about Spreaker before you came on board. I played with it. And, you know, I always get nervous in the industry when a piece of technology pops up. I always wonder, you know, are they gonna make it? Like, because everyone wants to be free, you know, and then get bought by somebody and so Spreaker popped up. And the thing I loved about Spreaker, and to this day, they're still doing it. So I like that. And it wasn't just the hiring of you, Rob. There was something else. The idea with Spreaker was that the two are one and the same. See, for a while in podcasting, there was this battle about, why are you podcasting when so many more people are listening to Internet radio? And, yes, those numbers were true, but Internet radio included streaming, Pandora and music and that kind of thing. There was this idea that, are you doing live or are you doing podcast? And then what was beautiful was there were some rogues like you, who would do live, take the recording, make it a podcast. And it's not just you, you know, little unknowns like Dave Ramsey and those guys were following that model as well. But what Spreaker did that was interesting was Spreaker just said, hey, you got to produce it at some point. Might as well produce it live. And then let's use the tech to just go from live to instantly on demand. Which is funny because, you know, that's. That's basically what's happening now with all the TV online. I'm a big fan of the show the Americans, you know, and I never catch the show Tuesday night when it airs because way after my bedtime, but then the next morning, it's available immediately. This is a model that people like, and the Americans now knows that show, knows that the amount of people watch it live is really insignificant, but you have to broadcast it at some point. And I think one of the things that's interesting in podcasting, Rob, you deal with a lot of veteran podcasters, guys like Todd in it forever, who could pick this up. But here's the thing. I deal with a lot of clients who just get petrified and terrified with that first episode. When you have the nicety of the recording studio and then you have the editor, anywhere from the fiverr.com editor to the kid newly released from the Institute of Podcast Learning, whatever, who wants to charge $100,000 to edit. They have this idea that I can now produce this, like I do a Beatles album, you know, and not one of the live ones. And so what Spreaker did was Spreaker said, hey, do it live for the people who want it live, and then make it a podcast immediately afterwards. Kind of what you and Todd do with the new media show. Except, of course, that's video, so that's not quite there, but that's broadcast live and made available as the Podcast afterwards.

Yeah, it's both audio and video podcast. Yeah.

It's funny because back before Spreaker, possibly even before you were at Zune, although it's right about that time I came up with this idea of the new media content creation model. And if anybody wants to go to YouTube, there's old videos out there in four, three even of me explaining the new media content creation model. And that was simply that you got to record at some point. I mean, that's just space, time continuum. And if you record live, you don't get the niceties of editing, which means maybe you're going to have a second cup of coffee, maybe you're going to think things through, maybe you'll outline a little bit better if you need it, or maybe just the adrenaline will kick in. You got to record at some point. So why don't you record in front of an audience? Because there is an audience who wants you live. There is an audience who doesn't want to hear the replay. They want to hear it the second it happens. Now, at the time when I suggested the new media content creation model, I had suggested a telephone bridge line was the model. And it's funny because the telephone bridge line I suggested in that video, although at the time was screaming cheap, is still many, many, many more times the cost of a Spreaker account right now. And I suggest you got to create at some point, create it live and then produce it as a podcast. So that's fine and dandy. This path. Now, if you go to the average social media event, they will tell you that Facebook loves Live and the world loves live and you want to get people's attention, go live. And there are books out there about live. I've got my how to stream book is out there and all these people are pushing live as an entity in and of itself. You know, is that an entity in and of itself anymore? You know, or these people just try to sell books. Would you ever do a show only live and never archive it?

No, I think that's, that that's a mistake. I mean, but that's just me. I mean, I, I, I can tell you that there's thousands of show creators that are creating live shows on Spreaker that don't have an RSS feed on iTunes. So, you know, who am I to say that that's, that's wrong? I just, that's just not what I would do.

Is that a tech decision? Is that a, what kind of decision is that, Dino?

I think it's a decision that content creator wants to create an online radio show, I think is what they're thinking. They think terrestrial broadcast radio. I'm going to do it over the Internet because I can't necessarily get on a radio station, but I can do it just like radio is doing, but I'll just do it on the Internet. And I think that's been a model that's been gone for many years. I mean, if I go back to the very early days of when I was involved in this medium, because there are shows out there that are getting huge audience connections. I mean, I've had shows on Spreaker that were getting six to ten thousand comments flowing through in a two and a half hour live program. People are highly engaged in those shows and sometimes those shows don't feel the necessity to put it out as a download. So I advise them to do that and their numbers get higher. But some shows, some hosts just like to do it live. That's it.

Is there. So a good chunk of my client base are marketers and people who leverage their show not to sell ads for Blue Apron or Audible or any of the classics, but to actually use the show to leverage and market their own products, tools, services. One of the problems with podcasting since day one, one of the dirty little secrets that us podcasters don't like to talk about is the simple fact that because a podcast is available anytime, any place, anywhere, there's no urgency associated with it. I always know, you know, I mean, I love your and Todd's show. It's fun to hear what you guys say, you know, and part of the fun is not always agreeing, you know, but. And I'm not gonna be there Saturday morning. That's just not my style. But I know that because that show is archived, I know I can listen to it anytime, any place, anywhere. And as a result I don't. Because the tyranny of the urgent. Is there a marketing play realistically anymore for, you know, if you don't listen Wednesday between 8 and 9, you don't get the show. Anybody doing that?

Yeah, I think that these shows that I was just talking about, I think are doing that, though I have to say that most of those shows are still archived on Spreaker. It isn't like they don't make them available. They can be streamed off of our website. So I think that there is a place for that in the market.

So they're doing the show. Basically they're using Spreaker for its Internet radio capabilities and its Internet radio archiving capabilities, but not its podcasting. Abilities.

Correct. They're just not putting an RSS feed into iTunes is really what it comes down to. They're making their show available off their website through our web embeddable player or people are coming to just the Spreaker website to listen to it. Spreaker has about 6 to 7 million people that are listening to programs just on the Spreaker platform. So it's a pretty good sized group of people that are on there consuming content Though you can easily say that those folks could build a much larger audience if they made their show available on a lot of other listening platforms. But you know it's, that's a little bit of a different model too. And some of these shows will actually do some post production work on their live shows and then re upload them to Spreaker so they can go in and make some edits. The platform does allow you to do it live, have it go live and then you can do some post production on it and republish it to update that file to clean it up a little bit. So I think that there's many shows that are doing that as well.

I understand politically you can't speak to the, oh, what's the word I'm going to look for here? I'll be trying to be political as well. The value of said strategy. And I'm not going to ask you to, to, to do that. But, but, but I do want to comment on the unique number power force represented by Apple. You know let's, let's speak to what we saw, you know, with, with our, with our zun years. You know, we've been, I have one client who killing it, doing great right now and the first post publish promotion that we do for the show on Facebook is a direct link to the iTunes URL. And we do that because that's 85% of the audience. And it's funny, there are several itunes scrapers, I'm sorry, several podcast clients that scrape from itunes. So it's not just itunes that itunes represents, but there's several other platforms as well. Well, won't call them out here, but you and I know what I'm speaking to here. We publish it to itunes because they're just the 800 pound gorilla. I was at an event once, we were launching someone's podcast. She makes it to number one. Somebody comes to the back of the tech, comes to the back of the room with an Android phone in one hand and her iPad in the other hand and she says I can't subscribe to this show on My phone, I go, well, but you can subscribe on the iPad. Oh, that's right. She subscribes and walks away. So even in that case, the Android user. Anyway, we published this week, we published an episode. We did the same promotion we've done for the last dozens and dozens of episodes where we promoted the itunes link and the person made some sort of snarky comment along the lines of, don't you realize that iPhones is a small percentage of the world's phones? Yes, very much realize that. I am a numbers guy. You are a numbers guy. One of our favorite numbers guys in the world, Tom Webster, makes us aware of the numbers, but the numbers are simply this. This huge chunk is going to come because of Apple and you have to.

Identify it's like 60 plus percent of all listening to a podcast happen.

Yeah. Depending on, again, how it's promoted and how it's marketed. The podcast report, actually, this show actually is very low on itunes. I think we're at about like 58 or something. Last time I looked because I got so many podcasters on so many platforms listing in so many different ways. But then I got other shows that are, you know, in, in the high 90s, and part of that's where it's promoted and, and who the audience is and whatnot. But tech for tech's sake is fun for the enthusiast, but tech for tech's sake is never a good business decision. Any thoughts there?

Yeah, I think where you're going with that is that sometimes tech can get in the way for new users or new people that aren't as savvy or aren't as familiar. And I think that's a key question is what's the pathway to new listeners to podcasts to find something that they would have an interest in. And I think many in the industry have been voicing this concern that there's a discovery problem for podcast. While I don't necessarily agree with that premise, I can see their point. I mean, trying to get new people, and there are plenty of new people out there that podcasting hasn't reached yet. But what we see in the numbers and the research is that once somebody gets hooked on it, they tend to go all in. They tend to get sucked into it. It's kind of like starting to drink coffee. You get addicted to it. That's the model that, that we see. And that's really, if you look at, if you deep dive into the numbers that the Edison research folks, Tom, like you refer to, if you pull that share of ear out and really, look at it. AM FM radio starts to look under threat. Every podcast consumer that gets involved in this medium listening to podcasts winds up listening to more podcasts than they listen to radio. Those that do not listen to podcasts tend to listen to more radio. So that is the pattern that we've been seeing, and that appears to be what the future looks like. It's a generational shift that's happening right now, and on demand is where this medium is going, and radio is definitely a little under threat right now.

So how many millions coming through Spreaker on a month?

Well, we have about 6 to 7 million active listeners on the platform that are listening to content on the platform through our Android and iOS apps, as well as on our website. So we have lots of custom apps out there for shows that we create for shows that host on our platform. But we also have very, very good listening apps. They're Spreaker branded listening apps that have all of the shows, the 100,000 shows that are on Spreaker, plus all of the top podcasts that are hosted outside of Spreaker as well.

Now, let's talk to that discovery issue and let's talk to that strategy issue here. That many millions, and with such an emphasis on Internet radio, there have to be people coming Through Spreaker, either spreaker.com property or your app, or through an online radio that they listen to, who maybe don't know itunes, who maybe don't even know podcasting. I joke about. My mom to this day still believes she can't subscribe to my shows because she doesn't have an apple yet. She has the iHeartRadio app on her Kindle. Fire is these entities. And that's the other really interesting discovery this season because itunes is such a juggernaut. You know, we tend to think of itunes as sort of the, you know, the king of, you know, in the. In the high castle and then, you know, outside of the motor, all these, you know, feudal landovers battling over the dozens of people who aren't losing the iPhone. But the fact of the matter is it's not dozens. It's millions with you guys and it's. It's these other places. Is there a strategy for someone to put their show on Spreaker and maybe promote inside of the Spreaker infrastructure? Let's not make this a Spreaker commercial. Let's make this a strategy play here. Are there reasons to leave the walled garden of itunes to help in your discovery?

Well, it depends on what you're talking about here, if you're just talking about making your show available on as many listening platforms as possible, then yeah, I think that it's pretty straightforward to get your show on Spreaker. There's basically two ways of doing that. There's one, just getting in, creating an account, taking your current RSS feed that you have in itunes and putting it into Spreaker into our feed importer tool that basically just scans your RSS feed, picks up the new episode and and distributes on the Spreaker platform. That would be your own hosting account that you would come in and we would redistribute your show. So that's one option and I call that secondary distribution. So you have like maybe you're primarily hosting on Libsyn or someplace like that. We can be a secondary distribution platform to reach the listeners that are using Spreaker or the other option, and this is something that we're slowly rolling out, is the ability to do what I call a pass through, which is exactly what itunes is doing, is where you would submit your feed to me, robsprreaker.com and I could add it to the Spreaker catalog. That would only be available in the Spreaker listening apps on iOS and Android. That would be kind of like what I did at Zune where podcaster would submit their show to me and I would add it to the catalog and it would pull from the original source and Spreaker would not be re hosting that file. Let's.

Let's chat with that for a second. So if you go to the podcastreport.com 127. This is episode 127. I'll have a link to Rob's email address. Although robertspreeker.com is not that hard. Although to spell Spreaker. Let's make sure everybody knows how to spell Spreaker. For those who want to go direct.

S, P R E A K E R Spreaker, it's just, it's just basically speaker but with an R. Yeah, and.

I will put a link to that. I'll put a link to Rob's email address and we're calling that the pass through. What are we calling that?

Yeah, exactly. It's just a pass through. It's the same concept that itunes does. And recently Stitcher converted over to an all pass through platform as well. And the iHeartRadio platform is solely converting over to a pass through as well. The only holdouts that exist right now in non pass through are basically Spotify and Google Play Music, which If you want to talk about Google Play, we can do that a little bit too.

Let's do that. So@the podcastreport.com 127, I'll link to Rob's email address. If you want to get your show on the list, no cost there. I will also link to. I do the thing where I have Spreaker host my show and I will link to the podcast report at Spreaker as well. So you can take a look at what that feels like. Yeah, Rob, I wasn't planning on this, but let's talk about Google. And I just purchased a Google Home I got about a week ago. And first of all, I'm very impressed with it. More so than the lady in the tube where if I say her name she'll pop up and annoy us during the podcast. I need to put turn off the lady in the tube before I hit the record button here because of course, she's just out of reach.

Call her Echo Echo.

There we go.

Yeah, because she won't respond to Ms. Echo.

Yes, yes. Why? I have you on a headphone so you could say the name all you want, but the Google Home. Two things that really impressed me, A, the Edison Research numbers on the connected speaker. I didn't realize how big that was in its first year. But B, the Google Home seems to be just as good as Echo in terms of that. And what's really interesting is whereas right now you got to jump through a few hoops to get your show in Amazon's infrastructure, submitting to the Google Play infrastructure puts you automatically in on the Google Home. What are your thoughts on Google? The numbers are still terrible. Anybody looks at their stats? Yeah, terrible.

It's still really early days for that platform and the same with the Echo Alexa platform. So I think it's really going to have a significant play over the next three to five years. How so? Yeah, well, because it's going to be in so many devices and so many platforms and slowly but surely we're all going to be conditioned to talk more to our computers. It's just the direction it's going to go. And I think that there's good reason for that. So I'm really, really hopeful that it really starts to take off. I think not to talk a little bit about Amazon, but their recent announcement of their kind of visual Alexa is really an interesting play and I think it's the first salvo into them creating an app experience for mobile as well. But as far as Google getting back to what Google is doing, they seem to be floundering a little bit, honestly on the podcasting side. I know that their leadership on the podcasting side is part of the Google Play Music podcast. It's very Microsoft ish, sorry, is in disarray right now. There's a lot of talk and rumor that, and this is pretty substantiated at this point that Google Play Music podcasts area is going to be shifting over to YouTube. Okay. So I'm not sure what that means. Nobody in the industry really knows what that means. I do know that for many years now YouTube has been saying that they're a great listening platform for podcasts. They are not going to support podcasts in the same way that we're all used to, but they're just going to make them available. And many podcasts have been available on YouTube. Spreaker publishes directly automatically into YouTube. It's a feature in our platform right now. It's been there since I've been there for a couple of years now. And lots of people do it and there's a, there is a significant listening opportunity for a podcaster to publish over there. So what Google does with that is your guess is as good as mine right now. But it does appear that the tie in with Google Play Music may be coming to an end soon.

So taking some notes here for the show notes, a couple things I will link for those who are interested. If you go to the podcastreport.com 127 I will link to Rob shows. Of course I'm putting that Rob shows. But I'll also link to the podcast report at Echo, Amazon's platform and I will link to it at Google as well. And so you can see how these go across everything at this point. It's all the pass through model. What I think is interesting about the YouTube thing and it's funny because this question that I asked at the beginning of the episode in this on demand age is live worth it. What's interesting is there's almost a second question in this YouTube age, is audio only worth it? Is a question a lot of people have asked you and I have been fighting, it's funny for the last 12 years or so. We probably have a list a mile long of all the technologies that were going to kill podcasting. Many of them have come and gone.

Come and gone, yeah, exactly.

But what's interesting is I started a couple dozen episodes ago about publishing my show to YouTube automatically. And what's interesting is not a big audience there by any means. But YouTube gives you, they give you reporting on how long somebody stays on your video as opposed to similar videos in your industry. So are you above average or below average? What's interesting is most of my shows, and it seems like the longer they are, just the static picture with the audio tends to get a longer consumption rate than videos do, which I think is fascinating. Which means people are going to YouTube. Not a lot, but people are going to YouTube, are consuming a good chunk of the show. For any podcaster who thinks that they're dead if every single part of the episode is not consumed, time to grow up. That's interesting. I hadn't heard that rumor, Rob. I think that makes sense. Google is obviously in disarray, the dominant position. They have just simple things they could do. Just, just take their AI to transcribe shows, put that in Google search, and then to have someone type in Rob Greenlee is live worth it. And somehow have the podcast episode show up in the Google marketplace would be fantastic. And something that they could literally spin up a few more servers, get a few of their interns, and they could write this thing in a week. And yeah, it's an interesting space. I actually signed some NDAs with Google way back in the day when we started this. The NDAs are now over, so they've been looking at this for over a decade and they still have not figured out how to implement it, which I think is absolutely fascinating. And it is definitely more than the Google home. It's definitely more, although it's very cool. I mean, I could walk downstairs and say, hey, play the latest episode of this and even skip ahead an episode, skip ahead a few minutes. All the things we still want from Amazon. So that's an interesting play. I'll tell you. Red. Do you have a YouTube Red subscription? And we'll explain what that is. But do you have one?

I don't actually know. I don't.

So YouTube Red is a $9. Go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. I wanted to mention one thing before we move on from the Google stuff and the Echo stuff, and that would be that a lot of the big hosting platforms for podcasts will at some point or ultimately support development of these skills apps that are required for the Amazon Echo Alexa platform and then the Google Home platform, as well as the Cortana, probably the Cortana platform, which is also creating skills too. And there's been rumors of across the board support for the same type of thing as well. So Microsoft is working on this as well. And I think what you're going to see is these hosting platforms like Spreaker, basically enabling access to these devices automatically with all accounts, I think is the direction that it appears like things are going. So this problem of getting on these devices and these platforms will be solved by the leading kind of hosting platforms, I believe, either as like a paid for app or it'll be included in your plan. So I don't know that the model has been.

The tech is being solved. You know, do not spin up a media Live media server, guys. Spreaker has that solved for you. Do not produce. I didn't want that to be the commercial it sounded like, but in a lot of cases the companies have produced the tech and either it's plug and play easy and you can do it yourself, or you can get your guy or gal who does that thing. You don't have to write anything new. In some cases you don't even have to pay a few extra bucks. But if you do pay a few extra bucks, it's a lot cheaper than somebody to write something new. So the tech is covered. It's the strategy. What's the strategy going to be, Rob, when you are not just on Spreaker and not just on itunes, but you're on the Google Home and you're on Cortana and the lady in the tube. Does podcasting change when you're everywhere?

I don't believe that the core of podcasting from the content perspective will change dramatically. Because I believe what will happen is that those skills or those apps for those platforms will get better and better over time. They'll be easier for people to verbally navigate. One of the problems that exists in those platforms right now is the navigation of individual episodes and shows and being able to search inside of a podcast or to be able to easily go to different episodes via spoken word, or be able to easily fast forward, go back. All these kind of things that we take for granted with our visual devices that we do, these are all going to have to be handled easily and through natural language. And that's kind of where those apps are right now of trying to develop those skills that have the usability, the verbal usability essentially to navigate, discover, control, subscribe and notify. Those type of things are what's important. And a lot of that is very early days. I mean, the experience of accessing a podcast is pretty straightforward, but you have limited controls on what you can do inside of those app experiences that are part of that of each of those platforms.

So let's speak to YouTube Red for a second. YouTube Red is YouTube's attempt at the premium side of Things Netflix, you can pay $10 a month for Hulu, you can pay $10 a month for Pandora, you can pay 5. Different people have different options yout YouTube Red is their platform and of course any thinking person would ask well wait a minute, YouTube's already free, so why would I pay for it? Well, YouTube Red does a couple of interesting things. Number one, it takes away the commercials and if you do any research on YouTube and boy, that Amazon, the new Echo, what do they call it? The Echo, the new visual one. In the commercial they had the example of someone sitting on the floor trying to fix something and saying hey, show me videos about so and so. So having those commercials go away, very viable. The other thing they've done is they've and I don't know if this is going to go away but currently they bundle Google Music into it, which is interesting and Google Music is very good and Google Music plays Right now I can walk downstairs and I can tell a device to play an album for me that I can't do on Apple yet. But then number three is they have some content exclusive to YouTube Red. It's basically some of their stars get a budget to do higher end stuff. I don't know how attractive that is. But taking away the commercials plus the music plus the original content plus the other thing is you can download and play offline and that type of thing begins to make sense. It's a juggernaut. YouTube's default. My mom is scared to death of podcasting but she loves really YouTube.

That's simple, right?

Yeah, it's videos of kitty cats. So that could be a place, that could be a place for Google to play and I think they just begin to emphasize the you part, not the tube part. And of course the tube part is an old term that the kids today don't even really understand or know anyway so they could have an interesting play.

So it could always call another section of it kind of upod.

Yeah, exactly. I've seen worse things come out. So Rob, it's always great to have you. I want to summarize a couple things. If I miss any links here, let me know. The question I brought Rob on for originally was in this on demand age, is live worth it? Rob said yes, just because it makes you a better broadcaster if nothing else. And for all sakes and purposes, although we're not broadcasting this live, this is not going to be edited. There's going to be an intro and some music but you know, it's definitely worth it. Rob was realistic about, you know, it's basically 1% or less. But that 1% or less is connected on a much deeper level. And the cool thing is the text here anyway, to make it easy, record live, go in something like Spreaker. You can even do the post production on a website. So it's just not as complicated, not as expensive, not as overwhelming as it, as it used to be. Then we just chatted about. Did I get that right?

Yeah, no, I think that's a good synopsis of it. Okay.

And then we just chatted about some of the other platforms. And the thing is it's not, you know, Spreaker has millions. And Spreaker is not the only non itunes entity that has millions. I would bet, you know, we went to Google. I bet you Spreakers probably doing more bandwidth than Google podcast is, which I think is absolutely fascinating. But, but just that they have royally messed that up. Rob spoke to the rumor that might become part of YouTube that that's definitely, definitely interesting. I'm going to link on the show to. I'm gonna look at the show notes, the podcastreport.com forward/1 to 7. All the different versions of this show in pass through. You'll see it at Spreaker and that actually I host there, but I will give the link to robspreaker.com if you want to get your show on there. Anytime you can get your show somewhere, that's always good. We'll link to Rob's show as well. Industry isn't done. We're 12 years old. ITunes has huge chunk of it, but we're not done. When an entity could pop up and boast millions of users a month, there's certainly play here. When someone is as monstrously huge as Google still hasn't figured out what they're going to do, there's still room to grow here. In a previous episode, I spoke to an attempted unicorn product that actually asked me and I quote, is itunes really that important? There's still a lot of lost understanding in the space. There's still a lot of opportunity to grow. I think what's fascinating is the ability for the personal brand Rob has gone through or personal brand is even the right term, the independent brand. In these last 12 years, it was Rob the radio guy and it was Rob, Rob the Zune guy and then it was Rob the Spreaker guy and it was Rob, you know, but Rob just got in and again, I can't remember what the exact term is, but Rob is podcast hall of Famer and it's not Rob Greenlee, formerly of Zun Podcast hall of Famer. It's not Rob Greenlee, currently at Spreaker Podcast hall of Famer, but it's. But it's Rob Greenlee because he was able to take his brand, if you will, across all these things, and it's going to continue to go. And this is what's key, and this is what's valuable, and this is what's valuable. In his case, Live makes sense. It's what he knows, it's what he does. It might make sense to more people who are doing it than aren't, but doesn't necessarily make sense to anybody. And even a proponent of Live, like Rob admits that. But we're still in an interesting space, and we're still in the early days. Podcasting has not yet entered high school, although it's entering very, very soon. And. Yeah. Any additional thoughts here, Rob, or should we close it up?

Yeah, I think Paul, and you've done the same thing. You've built quite a brand for yourself as a leader in this medium as well. Over the many years you've been out there speaking and helping people and being a presenter and bringing and sharing knowledge to thousands of people that have had an interest in this medium, too. So you've had a significant play in helping this medium grow and to develop. You've plowed into lots of areas like premium podcasting. For many years. You tried to play in that.

Well, you can't win them all.

No. Well, I mean, I think that there's a place for it.

I think it'll come back. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's just a matter. I mean, all these things come full circle sometimes. Maybe when these new ideas came out, they were too early and. Or they were too late. So timing is very important when it comes to this medium. We've seen things, like we said earlier on this show, we've seen a lot of things come and go. I tend to be a little bit skeptical of these things that come up that are new, but they're old, whether or not they can actually get traction this time. But I've been around too long. So if you're new to this medium, everything is new. Right. And that's one of my challenges been, is to help those new people that are new to the medium to get some perspective on where the medium is, where it's going, what the history of it is. And that's what's so great about having this conversation with you, Paul, is that that's kind of part of that.

Thank you, Rob. We'll put this in the show notes again@the podcastreport.com 127. But where's the easiest place for someone to learn more about Rob?

Probably just go to my website, robgreenly.com and that's with two E's on the end. That's the simplest way. But I do two shows a week. I do the new media show with Todd Cochran Saturday mornings at 9am Pacific, and we're going to be doing that this week, and that's@newmediashow.com and then I do a show Wednesday every week at 3pm Pacific Standard Time. Both these shows are live@spreakerliveshow.com so you can check that out. It's a podcast and a live show.

There we go. Thank you so much. Rob. You will be at podcast movement 2017. Apparently you're on every single stage simultaneously, so. But if anyone attends, they can catch up with you there. Any other big events this year that you'll be at?

I just got back from Pod Summit up in Calgary, Canada. I went to the very first podcasting conference up in Western Canada. So that was something I just came back from that was pretty exciting. And I'm going to be I'm flying back to Europe to meet with the Spreaker team. So every June we have a Spreaker retreat back in Italy. So I'm going to be going back there and meeting with the team. So I'll probably be doing some streaming from back then when I'm back there. So we'll see.

Must be tough meetings, Italy. Most people have at the ihop.

Yeah, that's right. Well, anyway, it's a fun team and we're scattered all over the world, so, I mean, now our CEO lives in New York, so he used to live in Venice, so if that tells you anything. There we go.

Hey, Rob, thank you so much for being on the show.

All right. Hey, thank you, Paul. I appreciate all the time here today. Thanks.