Navigating the Future of Podcasting: AI, YouTube & Cutting Through the Noise

Hey, it's Paul and it is the podcast report. Yeah, we're bringing this bad boy back. I am inside of Facebook right now. I'm also recording a video version of this that we'll be using for other things. This is a quick test and podcast report will go a little bit deeper in the future here. But why I'm doing this is because testing has always been part of the podcast report. I use the show to figure out how podcasting works and then share the results with you. So setup. What I'm doing today is I'm recording this to Facebook Live. I'm using ECAMM Live and if you listen to the audio version of this, it's my smiling face. I won't be showing any charts or graphs or anything. And obviously if you're listening or watching the video version of this, maybe on YouTube or something like that, which we'll chat about in a second, you've got that option as well. But testing's always been part of this. It's kind of fun. We're live and I see that one person has popped in. Go ahead, leave a comment or whatnot. Maybe we will interact with this. But anyway, today's episode is all about testing. Now, there are going to be three themes that we're going to be looking at in the near to immediate future here. Theme number one, AI. AI is obviously everywhere. Everybody's talking about it and AI is going to be key to podcasting, but it's not going to necessarily be key to podcasting. With some of the videos and things that you've seen about ChatGPT, writing our podcast and that kind of thing, that's not it. AI is going to do a couple of things. Number one, it's going to do some really interesting things with our cameras. I'm going to show you something here in the video that I think will be really, really interesting. If you're watching the audio version of this, you're not going to be able to get much. But look at this. This camera looks pret pretty happy with this camera. But look at this. If I turn off portrait, that blurry background kind of goes away. That's not that exciting. And then of course, also in this, I can turn off studio light. And now the lighting's terrible. This is a terrible looking video. But when I turn on studio light and I turn on portrait, now this is a decent video. This is the kind of thing that you want to do with video. This is an iPhone 12, the 14's out, the 15 is going to come out. This Fall. This is an iPhone 12 mini. The lights on this are minimal at best. AI is going to help us clean up our cameras. AI is going to help us clean up our sound. When you listen to the recorded version of this on the podcast or YouTube, wherever it goes, you're going to hear a cleaned up sound by AI and then the rest of AI in podcasting, it's going to be very interesting is we are going to have. Well, internally at the podcast partnership, we are looking at AI as a copilot situation. AI isn't going to write anything, AI isn't going to perform anything. AI is going to copilot. Humans are going to land the plane, but AI is going to copilot. What does that mean? Well, there are things that it's just easier for AI to do. When you look at show notes, part of the whole show notes process is you take a long episode and this episode is going to be maybe 10 minutes or something. So not that big of a deal. But the show notes person has to go through and listen to everything and figure out where the chunks of that are and where the different parts of the podcast are. That takes time. This is the type of thing an AI can do really well, can clean up really well. Some of the tools I've seen, some of the products I've seen in this space are really interesting. AI can give us some interesting titles. AI can give us some interesting first drafts of the shownotes. Again, copilot. Humans are going to land the plane, at least for some time. But AI is going to be a big theme, so watch out for it. The second big theme is going to be YouTube. I am, and I'll speak a little bit about this later. Heading to podcast movement this August and I'm going to be presenting on YouTube and podcasting. We're doing some really interesting things with our clients, you know, in podcasting, YouTube. But fact of the matter is this. YouTube has turned on podcasting. Go to YouTube.com podcast they are there. There are the gurus will tell you. Well, they're not really podcasts because they're not RSS feeds and this kind of thing. I really don't care. YouTube is calling it a podcast. A lot of the public thinks in the podcast. Worldwide podcast consumption. Apple's number one. Worldwide podcast consumption. YouTube is number two. Not even Spotify. Spotify is number two in the US at least those are the last numbers I looked at. And then number three for YouTube. But it's a big player, it's an important player and people know YouTube as opposed to Netflix or people know YouTube like they know Netflix as opposed to some of the other standards and whatnot that are out there. I've got a client who, honestly, I don't think he knows the difference between podcasting and YouTube. The general public conceives of it that way. So YouTube's there. And if you go to any podcast and, you know, we've got a podcast channel for the podcast report at YouTube. Up until this point, it has been an audiogram, even though some. An audiogram. That's the thing where you have the graphic with the squiggly line, although some have been done in video before just to do a massive produce thing. And I'll be sharing some of those numbers of podcast movement. We just. The audiogram Just did the audiogram. This video will be the first one. This episode will be the first one. That is a video inside of that. Of course, we'll pull the audio from it, we'll clean it, and we'll do all that stuff. But YouTube is going to get more and more important. I wish I grabbed a screenshot of this. I was on YouTube a couple days ago. I wasn't logged in as me, and I saw something along the lines of, you know, we pay for premiums, so I get the YouTube Premium whenever I log in as me. But I saw something along the line of YouTube. Watch, listen. YouTube's a major player. Major player. And in terms of online media, YouTube's there. We produce our content for everyone. You know, I've always said producing content, you know, for a specific location would be like making TV for only Sony television sets. It's a ridiculous thing to do. So, number one, AI is huge. And although I'm not chatting about that, a podcast movement, it's a big theme here at the podcast partnership. Number two, YouTube is a big issue, and that's become more and more prevalent. Number three, noise. This has become a really big theme, a really big, important theme. I really appreciate the guys at Pod News, James and the team, how they're kind of reporting. Yeah, we've got all these podcasts, but here's how many came out with an episode last time. Over at the Audacity podcast, they report the numbers. I can't remember the name of the website he has for that, but he's crunching those numbers to figure out what's going on. And the fact of the matter is, millions and millions of podcasts, but just not a lot of people publishing. When I was the last podcast movement, this gal seemed really excited about her Podcast and had visions for a podcast and had plans for a podcast. And I was excited. I was getting into it. And then it was funny because after all the things we spoke about, she said to me, and one day soon, we're going to launch on Apple. See, part of the noise is, if we're not on Apple and we're on YouTube, what is a podcast? Where does it come from? Does someone who goes through anchor, which is now Spotify podcasting them, producing a single episode, is that a good thing? There's a lot of noise that we're going to have to deal with, and that's going to be an important thing for our industry. So the big themes we'll be looking at this year, AI, YouTube and the noise. As I said, I'm a podcast movement. If I remember correctly, I think I'm speaking on Thursday. Should be a fun session. They're doing the thing where they're cramming a whole bunch of people in at the same time. And so it's only 30 minutes for the entire thing. And that thing will usually happen when the person who speaks before me will go late and then it'll even be shrunk. But we'll get together and we will make sure to have that conversation. And then, in addition to podcast movement, I do have a book out. I haven't done the promotion for it yet, but I've got a new book out. I did all those podcast books, and we've got a new one called Never Go Shopping when youn're Hungry. And the concept here is so many of us, you know, in podcasting or in social media or in YouTube production or in all these things, we just kind of get excited because we can. And just because we can doesn't mean we should. And then it becomes kind of crazy. And it's kind of like when we go to the grocery store and we go shopping when we're hungry. The book is kind of the process to think through that everything we're doing at the Podcast partnership to help people get through that. It is a fun little play, and I recommend you take a look at it. At some point. I'll do a big promotion for it and that kind of thing, do the number one run. But it was. It came out under some interesting circumstances. I'm sure in a future episode I will chat about that. Anyway, this is on YouTube. I'm sorry, this is streaming to Facebook, and it's fun to see three people in there. If anybody wants to make a comment, go ahead and make a comment. If not I will close this up and we're going to start putting this. This will be the first step through some of the AI tools that we're playing with and some of the AI tools that we're seeing. More content will be coming soon, but I want to put this here. I wanted to thank you for being around. I know there hasn't been an episode for quite some time, and the fact that anybody consumes this. Thank you. I appreciate it. We will chat very, very soon. Enjoy. Bye.