Podcasting in 2024: Embracing AI, YouTube Trends, and Staying Relevant

Hey, it's Paul Colligan. It's the podcast report. It's been a long time. And traditionally hear the podcast report when it's been a long time. What I do is I just call up Dave Jackson from the school of podcast. I say, hey, Dave, let's do a show. So, Dave, let's do a show.

All right, let's do a show theme.

We're recording this in January 24th. If all this. If all goes well, we'll get this out pretty quickly. And so the theme of today is, what do podcasters need to know in 24 that they might not have even known was a thing in 2023? So let's start there. Dave, what do podcasters need to know in 24 that wasn't even a thing in 23?

I think the big one that wasn't in 2023, that's the part.

And we can fledge with that a little bit. Maybe January of 23, you know, just. I just don't want to talk about, should you podcast what's an RSS feed? You know, all the stuff that we've been doing years.

Well, I think the. That they didn't realize in 2023 or less, people are making podcasts. So the person that thinks, oh, I would start a podcast, but there's already 50 on my topic. If you go out and look and see the active number of podcasts, and even active is a show that hasn't put out an episode in 90 days, and I'm like, if you haven't put out an episode in 90 days, I count you down and out. Unless it's some sort of weird seasonal thing or something like that. So I think that would be one thing that people should know, at least. I don't know. What do you think when it comes to what they should know?

Well, that's interesting. So should know. You know, 20 plus years into this, it's still not maxed out. And we should not pretend like it's maxed out. We should not act like it's maxed out. We should not do stats and recordings and industry research or whatnot based that it's maxed out. Now, YouTube, you didn't bring up YouTube. YouTube was a big thing in 23. Talk to me about YouTube and podcasting and give it to me Dave style.

Well, Dave style is I come from the Adam Curry school, and I looked into this. If you think about it, the big advertisers were Facebook and Google, and then TikTok came in, and they're making billions in the advertising revenue. So somebody's piece of the pie was getting smaller. And I'm pointing my finger at YouTube. Who said, Guys, people aren't talking about us as much as we used to. We gotta get somebody talking about YouTube. Larry, what do you got? Larry's like, I don't know. I think podcasting's hot. Let's do podcast. Okay, Good. Everybody on YouTube. You're a podcast now. And so everybody's scrambling to be on YouTube now. And I'm like, okay, yeah, sure, why not? It's, you know, it's the number two search engine. I love the fact that nobody's blogging anymore because, you know, we do know what the number one search engine is, and we know what they want. So I am holding my breath. It is like Google's fourth or fifth attempt at podcasting, so hopefully they'll stick around longer than, you know, a year or two. And I've heard that YouTube music isn't a horrible app. I, I played a little bit with it. So I, I do not have high expectations for now that, you know, you can ingest your RSS feed into YouTube, which some companies have been doing for many, many years. So I am, I'm not overly optimistic that the YouTube podcasting thing is going to be like a big. It's not going to move the needle much. I hope I'm wrong in a way, but what say you, Paul Collier?

I agree with a lot you said, but I think there is an element of momentum and enormous nicity or whatever. Enormousness or whatever the right term is.

Wow. I like that word.

First of all, first of all, do you see YouTube results on Google?

You do?

Do you see Google results on YouTube?

I don't think so.

I could be wrong.

That would be Google, last time I checked.

Excuse me. Excuse me. Do you see YouTube results on Google?

Yes.

Do you see Google results on YouTube?

On YouTube?

Who's the number one search engine, Dave?

Well, that would be Google, so.

No, don't.

Oh, wait, it's got to be. That would be YouTube then.

Right.

Makes sense.

Interesting. The other thing is I, I totally believe. I totally believe that YouTube's like, what's hot, what's new? And, and I've spoken to a bunch of people and, and some of the predictions is that, you know, basically they, they took the whole team at YouTube and they just drew a line down the middle, Captain Adama style, and said, you know, pick the YouTube killer or pick the TikTok killer. And then everybody just kind of divided, you know, you know, they're kind of deciding what. What goes on. The thing is, is that YouTube is so freaking big.

Yeah.

That they can't help but move the needle and change some things. Let me give you a couple of examples. Number one, most of my clients and most of my client base, they tend to have a YouTube budget and a podcast budget. Now they have a content budget. I think that's good for everybody. Finding your podcast content, wherever it is that you get your content, is a win for podcasters. And a lot of people get their content at YouTube. Had a client in the CrossFit space who was doing really, really well. And what was it. And this was four or five years ago, about 20% of their downloads were coming from YouTube. Okay.

Nice.

Now, here's the interesting thing. Couple interesting things. Number one, their video was just their logo with the squiggly line thing. I think they might have even been using Libsyn for this one. Nothing attractive at all.

Okay.

Their thing was the interview show style that everybody seems to love so dearly. And. But what was amazing was, and they would go an hour plus, their consumption rate for an hour and 20 minutes of squiggly lines in the CrossFit space was doing better than the consumption rate of regular videos that were an hour and 20 minutes long in the CrossFit space.

Wow.

Now, on your face. For those who listen to the audio version, this. Dave is, like, surprised. We were too. And again, it's still hard to find science on this. But what we did that was interesting was we released a video only to the YouTube channel, and we said, hey, YouTube folk, let us know what's going on. We're just trying to make sense of this. So this wasn't scientific, but it was circumstantial. And what happened was, was, you know what CrossFit people do? They spend a lot of time the gym, Dave. Yeah, A lot of time the gym with earphones in their ears. And they like to download stuff. It was right when YouTube Red had got announced, which is now YouTube Premium. They were downloading things off of YouTube and listening to them as they were shaking the ropes and that kind of thing. So what it was was people were going to YouTube for CrossFit information. They found this show. They didn't care. There was a podcast. They didn't care that the video for it was terrible because they just wanted to listen to interviews with inspiring CrossFit people as they were shaking the ropes. So I think that's interesting. I have a client who joined us before all the podcasting YouTube announces he believes. I'm always fascinated with. I call it the truth serum rule. Like, how would somebody answer if they were full of truth serum? Like, like. Not how do they answer politically? Not, not how do they want to be answered? But how would they answer if they were telling the truth? And if you ask him where. What's your favorite podcast platform? A client who had spent a considerable chunk of change on doing podcastings. Doing podcastings. Listen to me, are you a potter? He believes that YouTube is, is a platform. So YouTube's spending a lot of money. Content is going on YouTube, whether we like it or not. A lot of people consider YouTube as a platform and the interface is there. So even though it's. It's terrible implementation. Now, I'm lucky enough, I don't know if I told you this, Dave, but one of my clients is actually big enough on YouTube. He was one of the first YouTubers that they ingested his podcast in. He was during the. The beta period.

Nice.

And I'll tell you offline and I'll show you the numbers offline. The worst implementation I've ever seen of this in the history of mankind, I mean, is like, like you would expect, you know, 13 year olds, you know, with a box of donuts to do a better job. I was just terrible. And this is YouTube with all their money. When I went to the last podcast movement, went to YouTube to or went to the session by YouTube to hear about what they were doing. And the guy from YouTube and he was like, I think a VP level. He's like, you know, analytics, analytics, analytics. I'm like, yes, analytics. I love analytics. That's one of my big things. So I go to him afterwards with my iPad, with my Internet connection. I go, where can I see my analytics? And he goes, no, just go to analytics. It's right there. No, it's not, you know, and it's not for this podcast. It's not for this podcast. It's not for this podcast. Well, it should be there, you know, and I agree and get back to me pretty quickly, you know, a couple days later. And we found out where the analytics were and they were just in a really silly place, you know. But again, like the party line at YouTube isn't even necessarily matched by the knowledge at YouTube isn't necessarily matched by a lot of things. So the limitations. Poor. The thing that I think is interesting, and you and I have been around this long enough, the history. And you said Google's fourth or fifth. It feels to me like their seventh or eighth iteration of Podcasting it.

It might be because I forgot about Goog. Google Play Music.

Exactly. And you know, for a while they were doing that thing where it was the Google Play Store plus the Google podcast app. It was both. And he had that mess. The latest I've heard. And we're recording this on January 18, 2024, and it might change tomorrow. They're sunsetting the Google Podcast app.

Right.

For the YouTube Music app, which again, for the YouTube Podcast app, all eight of its users. But it's interesting. So they're. They're going in the direction. So is. Is. Is it implemented poorly? Yes.

Are.

Are. Is the best minds on it? No. Could it die at any point? Google style? Absolutely. But YouTube's not going anywhere.

Yeah, that's true.

Google's not. YouTube's not going anywhere. And what they play, if we look at it right, can. Can make us all better. So there it is. There it is. Yeah. AI, big story of 24, 23, you know, 22nd November was when we caught chat GPT. AI is a big topic. I'll be honest, everybody. The first version of this YouTube video and the first version of this podcast, everything will be written by AI. I reserve the right to go in and edit it and see what's going on there. But be interested to see what happens there. What is some AI, Dave, that excites you for podcasters? And what is some AI that scares you? And not from the dysfunctional. You know, I, for one, welcome our robot overlord. Kind of AI scaring. But what are some things that AI is doing that you think is just going to cause a mess? So what do you like and what scares you?

Well, some of the things I like is I use Hindenburg for my audio and. And I'll put in chapters, and then I can export my chapters, and I can go in, upload my, you know, my transcript, my file to get transcribed. I'll throw that into. Insert your favorite, you know, AI tool. I think this was cast magic at the time. And I said, using these subheadings, write an article. And so it went to my transcript, looked at the subheadings, and that was the first time I've seen something that was like 98% done. Like, I had to do very little editing to that. And so that was something very little.

Five minutes, ten minutes, an hour?

Yeah, five minutes. I mean, I read it changed like four words and was like, yeah, that's doable. So that's the one thing I liked. I also did one where I had my audience explain what their favorite podcast and why. And then I took all of those answers, had them transcribed into one document and said, count the number of adjectives and give me a list with the most used adjective at the top. So it kind of gave me a list of, like, what people like. And it was, he was funny, entertaining, et cetera, et cetera. So it gave me an idea of like, okay, what are people. Why are people tuning in? That was kind of neat. I still have yet to. And I'm close on this one because I do a live show, so I kind of don't know what we're going to talk about. And through the span of 60 to 90 minutes, we'll mention a gazillion different websites. And so I've tried, I haven't got it quite right yet to say, pull all the URLs out of this transcript. That would be handy because that's one of those things I always say if you mention something that's clickable in your show, it should be in your show notes. And I'm trying to find a. Yeah, so that's the part that I like. There's a lot of it that my problem is I know how to type. And creating ideas and talking, not really a problem for me. So there are times when, you know, I could type up something and be really not that much slower than ChatGPT. And then by the time I fix it, depending on what I'm using, I'm like, I could have just typed this myself. So that's the part that I'm like, I'm not. I'm not anti AI. I just kind of. I always go at it. It's. It's Assisted intelligence, right? It's. It's your unpaid intern. It's not something that's just going to come up with everything and spit it out. And as for the things that scare me, I just saw it this week, and that is AI Avatar Video. And I can't remember the name of the company exactly, but I just know that you. You sign up for a free thing and, you know, you see the CEO's picture there and then you see a video of him. And it doesn't look like Max Headroom. It doesn't look like a really good Madden Game. It looks like a video. And then the guy explains that what you're watching is an AI avatar. And I was like, whoa. So. And I noticed that in the demo video, they explained how you have to really kind of say it's okay because you realize once you put this out there, some, I'm not Sure. Who or why or what. But there was a lot of, like, legal stuff that's like, you have to say, yes, it's okay to make a fake version of me. And I was like, I'm not sure if I'm ready to jump into that pool. So it made me a little nervous. I'm sure, give me another month and a half and I'll see somebody else jump in the pool, and I'll be like, okay, well, if they did it, I'm going to do it. But that was the one that I was like. But on the other hand, if you. If you think about it, and that's what he was talking about, as long as you didn't talk with your hands up by your chest, it basically, you upload a video and it. It kind of captures your essence, and then the next time you want to do a YouTube video, you just, here's the. Here's the audio. And then it just figures it out. And, you know, or actually, you don't even throw up the audio. You throw up the text, because of course AI is going to do your voice. And now the video. And I was like, that's interesting. It's kind of, you know, the tech part of me goes, that's really cool. And then there's the part of me that goes, especially being in November when I have this thing called an election. I was like, ooh, that could get really interesting as people start to clone other people, maybe with or without their permission. So that's the one that I was like, oh, that could get ugly quick.

Do you think there will be abuse of this technology on a large scale where it just becomes annoying? Like, my God, I just want to listen to a podcast done by a human, you know? Or do you think there will be abuse of this technology that is such a smaller percentage point that we don't necessarily know that it's all fake and go from there. Where do you think we're going to go?

I think probably what's going to happen is some, you know, GBT or other tool is going to go out and pull somebody else's material over, and eventually somebody. They're not going to kind of anonymize it as much, and somebody's going to sue because you took my content. But I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. But I could see that happening sometime because all the writers are going to get mad or something.

I don't know.

But it's just one of those things. I'm like, okay, because it's Already kind of a gray area of like, where are we getting this information from? And things of that nature. So that's something I'll be interested to see legally if it ever crosses the line. And it's already gone too far. I recently bought an elliptical machine. And so I went to, you know, the number one search engine, YouTube, typed in the model number and typed in reviews. And I was looking for somebody standing next to the piece of equipment saying, here it is. Let me show you the buttons and stuff. And it was all of these slowly panning photographs and a really nice AI voice, but it was hard to get. And I'm like, no, I need somebody to give me an opinion. And it was. A lot of times you could hear the, the I, the really nice AI voice reading, like, right off the brochure, and I was like, I need a human. It's. I felt like I was, you know, back in the days of voicemail, where you're like, okay, zero, give me an operator, would you? And I was just like, can anybody give me a human on this thing? So I think that's something that will probably get worse.

My most recent book that I won't even necessarily attempt to plug here, what's interesting is my collaborator on the book stamped on the back of the book, the no AI involved in the production of this book stamp, which was true to where it is right now. There will be some updates and some upgrades to the book, and we'll see what happens. Internally, the podcast partnership, we have a tool called the Team Clarity Matrix that, if you're ready for this, helps you get clarity, the team that you need to put together your podcast. And it's the six people that are involved in a podcast. And what's interesting is upgraded it this year to the seventh person involved in the podcast, and the seventh person is the AI co pilot. That's the way we're working things. The AI co pilot, it can help, but it never lands the plane.

Ah, nice.

You know, and I, I, I think this is a good analogy and a good way to, to, to look at things. Does it bother you? Do you think about it much? Or is the school podcasting and all your, you know, you got job security like, like, how much of your life does this take up for Dave?

Well, one of the things I use it for, another one is, and I never use them straight up. I'll be like, here's, you know, here's my transcript. You know, transcribe this, et cetera, and I'll say, give me 15 titles for that. Episode. And I rarely, if ever go, oh, that's it. Number nine, is it? It's always, oh, if I take part of three and mix it with six and take the ending of 14, that would be a cool title. So a lot of times I use it. Like you said, the copilot. I use it to brainstorm is another thing I use it for. So I haven't really implemented it yet. The school of podcasting is kind of based on a pretty human touch. I mean, one of my things is endless, you know, unlimited one on one consulting. So I do have a company that has ingested all of my episodes. And that's kind of interesting because you can type in a question, you know, what's the best microphone under a hundred bucks? And you'll hear me say, it'll pull. It'll go right to my transcript and say, oh, here's where Dave talked about the Samson Q2U, et cetera, et cetera. You can click a button and it takes you right to the text. So that's. I'm kind of like, oh, that's neato. And could replace me as a consultant. So that's where I kind of go. But on the other hand, if you ask a book a question and you don't like the answer and you ask it again, you're probably going to get the same answer. So that's where I kind of go, all right, I think I'm okay at this point. It can handle the easy questions. At this point.

I think I agree with everything you just said. I think what's, what's interesting is there are market forces at play here that I think are going to require us to do a little bit more and react a little more little. Look behind the scenes. I was telling many of my clients, AI is going to change everything. AI is going to change everything. And they believe that. And, and I appreciate that. But then they were kind of waiting for the next step. So, Paul, what changes? Like. Like, I'm not going to start, you know, until you give me that new, that new thing. So. So I, I think it's there. The best description I heard and I love this, was, AI is a grad student with A's, with the social intelligence of a four year old who wants nothing more than to please you. You and I discussed before this. I had it write a. I had to write a bio for me for an event I was at, and it actually listed me as being the author of a book that simply did not exist by me or, or otherwise. And, and so well written. Stuff, you know, and a little emotionally absent. But I didn't say use emotions. So there we go. And then, you know. But then it invented this book because it is what, you know, it's so bad, they wanted me to make me look good that I think it's be interesting to see. You heard about that court case where people have submitted briefs of like, court cases that don't exist because they found.

It on AI and stuff. Well, the one thing that it reminds me of, because I've been helping people with technology forever, so this is hard to believe, but I used to teach people how to surf the Internet and that was before Google. And I remember when I had a class, I was leading a class on email. So you think about this. It's new. And I remember I have people pair off and I'd be like, okay, here, type in their email address. Now click this and click send. And I remember this one student going, dude, it's already there. Like, how did that. Like, it was like voodoo magic, right? And I remember I showed chatgpt to my brother, who's a little older than I am, and he said, what is this voodoo you are playing with?

Yeah.

And so that's when I went. Because part of me was like, ooh, I don't like this. This could replace people's jobs. And it's scary and spooky and I don't understand. I'm like, yeah, well, so is email. And I was like, so I know I have to, somewhere along the line, get ramped up a little bit on my prompting. And this is another tool I want to use. So I've got to, you know, if I just sit there and go, ah, get off my lawn. I'm just going to get passed by. So I got to learn my prompts and make sure if I need to use it, be efficient at it.

Two hacks for the audience. One of them I got from Tim Ferriss by listening to Tim Ferriss. So it's also on his show, if you're looking how to ask the right kind of questions, go to chat GPT. Describe who your guest is, describe what they're like, and then say, give me a series of 10 questions in the style of Tim Ferriss, you know, or. And I've done it before, you know who my favorite one is? Before I heard that one from Tim, my favorite was in the style of Howard Stern.

Ah.

Because, you know, how did you do this and how did it ruin you as a child? You know, you know, type of questions. So that's one the Second one is, as I'm playing with YouTube, the chapter markers in YouTube are really, really powerful tool. And all you have to do in that is just say what the chapter markers are. And what's funny is we've been paying writers to go through an hour and a half long podcast, you know, find the chapter markers. They come back, you know, after about two hours of work, which is about what you need for that. And I just gave it the transcript and said, give me chapter markers and then just used a script to figure out where that was in the time code. And then in, you know, no time at all wrote better chapter markers for YouTube with, you know, AI than before. So question for you. We're skipping a bit, but it's all going to come together, you'll see here. Social media. Now, Dave, you once said something that I still debate you to the end of times on this. You say not having a play button on your podcast website where all the podcasts are available is, is, is, you know, just, just terrible. One time you said, and I remember the, the episode you said, you know, it's like you're walking down the street and there's that pizza restaurant, and the pizza restaurant, you know, is handing you samples of the pizza and you don't know how good the pizza is until you've had the pizza. And that was the analogy you used for the show. And I like that analogy. But the problem is with podcasts, well, it's like here's a whole pizza, you know, and so you take the whole pizza with you down the street and now you're 18 blocks away by the time the pizza's done and you don't even know how to get back to that pizza joint anyway. And you're full because you've had the entire pizza. That's the analogy perhaps gone too far. But the solution that a lot of people say is, well, that's why we do our videograms and our audiograms and our quote cards and our little snippets, which is true, but many times I'll sit next to my wife in the theater, we'll watch because, you know, movies. Now it's a two hour movie with an hour and a half of previews, as you well know. Oh yeah, and we'll watch the hour and a half of previews. And here's the way it goes. 3 minutes and 30 seconds of a preview. Then Heidi looks at me and goes, we've just seen the best parts of the movie. We don't need to go. Next preview, we've just seen the best parts of the movie. We don't need to go. And then every once in a blue moon, you know, oh, that one looks good. So with these audiograms, these videograms, these clips, these snippets, you know, we got Headliner out there. We've got all these, you know, we've got Opus. We've got all these people doing things, and I'm going to try to chop some up from this show. When do you give too much of your show so that they look at that blip, that moment, that highlight, and go, you know, now I don't have to listen to Paul and Dave Ramble for an hour. Is there a code there? Is there anything people could think about? Or am I just, you know, panicky?

Well, though you. You brought up the name Howard Stern, and I'm a kind of person that I will subscribe to Howard and then go through the extremely painful process of unsubscribing. And then after about six months, let's see what's up with Howard. And Howard plays. Puts a lot of his stuff on YouTube. Now, case in point, he just interviewed the band Green Day, and so they played, I think, two songs. There were, like, three or four clips of how he grew up and such and such, to the point where I'm like, I'm not sure how much I like what's. What is left that I haven't seen? And I don't know, because I'm not a subscriber, but do you have time.

For what you haven't seen?

Right, that's it. That's another one. So I'm kind of like, yeah, I'm good. You know what I mean? I don't really. I don't know if I need the whole chicken. I'm good with just a leg and a thigh. That's good. You know? And plus, again, I don't know how much of the chicken is left. So in my mind, I'm like, I feel like I got most of the chicken. You know, the only thing that's left is, you know, a wing. And who wants that? Well, we all love wings, but anyway. But you get the point. So I don't know what I'm missing, but I'm happy with what I got for free. So on one hand, that should make me want more, but because Howard gives me what I. Unless he talked to him for an hour and a half, there was a good, I don't know, 20 minutes, by the time you count the two songs and the little bits and pieces of the interview. And I was like, huh, all right. You know, and I, I love Howard's interviews. Is. It's weird when I listen to him now, his older stuff kind of doesn't almost fit his, his new style. But same thing with Rogan. I, to me, I've always said Joe Rogan is a podcast that needs an editor because I know it's three hours long, but he loses me and stuff like that. But I love that. I can see like the best of and I understand it's supposed to make me go, oh man, it was really good. I want more. And I'm like, oh man, that's really good. I'm sure there'll be more tomorrow.

I've never listened and I'm going to lose my podcast. I've never listened to a whole Joe Rogan episode.

I've listened. I think three and one was, was really, really good. He interviewed Barry Sanders and Barry Sanders was giving the behind the scenes dish on politics, on how the, the debates are completely worthless. He goes, it's just a, it's just a sound bite farm. And the person with the best sound bite wins. He goes, but the American public isn't really learning anything. So that was really, really cool. And I've listened to the couple times when Adam Curry was on there, but most of the time, you know, it's.

Just, I love, but I've seen long term Adam, you know, I know they're stick. I, I don't know, you know, nobody starts talking about the new stuff. That's great. But yeah, yeah, I've just never listened to a whole, you know, and the clips will come by and I'll listen to a segment of her, that kind of thing. But should podcasters worry about that? Especially with like, you know, Tick Tock being the big rage? You know, again, that idea that you, you know, YouTube was like, half the money is a tick tock. Half the money's in podcasting. Tik Tok is everything in the one minute segment. You know, do we as long formers should we. We can't deny its existence. Does its existence cannibalize us if we don't do it right?

Yeah, that's the thing. Because if you think about it on one hand, if you don't create some sort of gap between like, because you want them one going wait, I want to hear the rest of that. And yet. So if you don't really give them anything of value but just scratch their curiosity itch, that might actually eventually get kind of annoying because you're always giving me Half of an idea and asking me to go someplace else. Whereas if I give you. Hey, the, you know, hey. On this week, we talk about how the best microphone under a hundred bucks is the ATR2100X. It plugs right into your phone. Okay, well, now I don't need to go listen to your show. You just gave me the punchline. So that's gonna be the tough part because you have to deliver value, but you still want them to go listen to the other thing. Now, I know with YouTube shorts, I understand you can tie a short if you've done a long form video. And this is just a clip of that. From what I understand, you can kind of have somehow a button or something that shows up that says, oh, click here to listen to the, you know, the rest of the story. For those of you that remember Paul Harvey, they actually took that out.

That's, that's no longer part people. Oh, is it spammers? It's why we can't have good things.

Dave said marketers ruin everything. Yes, exactly. So that's a, that's going to be a fun balance because everybody is all hot and bothered about it. I know when shorts first came out, I was like, this is the dumbest thing ever. And thanks to YouTube's front page, I can't escape them. Like, they're just like this thing you're trying to move and they're like, no, no, you have to watch. It's like a Walmart greeter that just will not let you pass until you say hello. And so I'll watch one, and that leads to two, and the next thing you know, you're like, wait, it's 1:30 in the morning. So it's. But I, I don't know that I've, I think it's maybe two podcasters that I actually went, you know what? I like, every time I see one of this person's shorts, I always stop to listen to it and I like it. And I finally subscribed to their show. Now, have I watched any of their long form stuff? Nope. But I, you know, I felt like I needed to. I was like, oh, I should check this guy out. And instead I just, here's another short. I'm like, ah, that was good. So that's, that's a good question. I don't know. What, what are your thoughts on it?

I believe they are different formats. I believe they are different purposes, different means. But I think what happens is I think there's a lot of podcasts that really could be summed up in a minute. You know, like that example you gave of the best microphone. Like, like that's all I want to know. So I think there's a lot of people who you haven't thought through a show that really has value, you know, and then when they take the snippet of that one moment of value that they found 45 minutes into the interview process, you know, it's, it's almost like you're doing people a service, you know, and so, so I, I think two things. A, I think we need to think about this format, but B, if our shows are so bloated that this format cannibalizes it, maybe it's a wake up call to the nature of our shows. I really enjoyed your, your end of the year, my fav episode. I, I, I, I always do. You know, there's no one minute version of that, you know, you could really run. Hey, for those of you who know every year I talk about the favorite podcast following podcasts, you know, like, I mean that could have been a, you know, a short or a tick tock or something, but it wouldn't have had value. So that particular one really enjoyed, you know, but if you did and, and you haven't done one like this, you know, you know, if you spent an hour having to disclose of your favorite microphone, I just, I do want to know what your favorite microphone is at the end of the day. So that one f and me and our love of the microphone shootout. So I think it's interesting. So have you done any shorts work or TikTok work that isn't clips from a podcast? Have you ever just sat down and declared something in a minute?

Yeah, I've done the more or less a power rant. Something has come along, somebody has pushed my button way too hard and I'll fire up my phone and I'll be like, would you please quit saying find me wherever you find your podcast, Please point people to your website. You're reinforcing your brand, you're boosting your SEO, and by the way, search in most apps is horrible.

You know, and how's those do for you?

Here's the bad news. I, I have not gone back to really check and shame on me. If you're going to create content, go back and see if it worked. But that was literally just a rant. I did have someone that was making shorts. He'd take my one show and cut it up into pieces. And this is the thing I consider, it's weird. I consider myself more of a podcaster than a YouTuber. And so I, this year I'm taking YouTube much more seriously, but I still haven't gone in to really dig into the analytics like I should. I'll go in and like, oh, that one got X amount of views. Okay. And oh, this one. And the thing I always look at is how many subscribers did I get from that type of video and things like that. So I am lack in my YouTube data consumption which is insane because there's so much over there that's just chocolatey goodness that you could go, oh, I didn't realize this. I need to do more of that. So I'm, I, you know, I, I'm sure I have a detention from Principal Paul School podcasting.

I have a client who, you know, took a moment from one of his shows and it made the perfect short by itself, but it really had nothing to do with his audience or his topic or his client. And so he's got this shorts literally the short literally in the millions. But what you said but hasn't brought him a single subscriber. Yeah, you know, it's commented, it's debated and, and you know it's, it's a polarizing political topic. So both sides are there, you know. And yeah, so I did do when YouTube had their webinar or live stream or whatever they want to call it about the ingestion and stuff and all of our little group was, was going back and forth. I started to write something. I know I could sum this up in one minute. And I did a rant kind of like you. And that's one of my most popular shorts, you know, and, and part of, because it was topical, you know, in a minute. But then I was on the, I was on a sales call with somebody yesterday. Yeah, yesterday. And what was funny was he. I've been playing with the space a little bit, which is part of why I wanted to hear your thoughts. Amy said, Paul, I've been enjoying your one minute video series on LinkedIn. You know, and it's interesting because it's not a one minute video series on LinkedIn. It's stuff that I've been doing for shorts and tik tok that I figured why not put it on LinkedIn as well. So. Yeah, well with that said and done, let's, let's take a break. Why don't you pull out your watch and, and let give me a 60 second or less. Now the really, the rule is for this to work, I want a, I want a rant between 50 and 60 seconds, Dave Jackson style. So so if you want to think about it, I'll just riff for a little bit while you're pondering. But I want to take that. I actually want to slice it out, and we'll put it up and. And see how this bad boy performs. So are you ready to give us a Dave Jackson rant, or should I ask?

Sure. All right, I got. I got my phone here, so I'm ready to do 60 seconds, ladies and.

Gentlemen, a Dave Jackson School podcasting rant.

If your podcast consultant is quoting that they are in the top 5% of listen notes, run, do not walk away from that person, because that stat is based on, you know, that WordPress show that hasn't put out an episode since, like, 2012, and that. That one about the TV show from 2008. Congratulations. That guy's better than those shows. And this means they're either a don't know that that's a bogus stat, or even worse, they do know that it's a bogus stat, and they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes so they can charge you more money because they're in the top 5% of listen notes. So if you hear somebody using that quote, please tell them, hey, you do know that's bogus. Go talk to Dave. Or just run away, because they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes. So it's just a stat, and I'm hearing that more and more and more. So stop using listen note quotes. It's awful. It's stats. They're horrible. 58 seconds.

Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. I actually did a. I did a Facebook Live about this, and I'm going to do a whole episode about this. I just. The Facebook Live. I did the whole thing, and it was great, and I was proud of it. And then I realized I did that lame thing where I showed everything on the screen, and I never said the. And for those of you listening to the audio version of this, what you're seeing next. So I need to do this again. But my. My.

My.

My book. And I have full permission to say this because, you know, it could sound slanderous. My. My. My project manager, she literally called me one day and she said, would you please take my husband out to dinner? He thinks he's a podcaster, which is like, you think, oh, man, I'm so doing this. So. So, you know, I take him out to dinner. Fun guy. He does a show. Dave. He does a show about celebrity cadd.

Okay, okay. That's a niche.

And his quote is, and I'm Quoting him dearly. And he's given me permission. I sometimes get up to 20 downloads.

All right, okay.

Now he's having a blast. He's having a good time. He's hanging out with his buddy, drinking beer, talking about Caddies, which is an obsession of his. So personally, I consider the show to be a win. What do you want? I want to talk about Caddies with my buddy and drink some beer. Are you doing it? Yep. You've won, so I'm thrilled with it. But here's the thing, Dave. Dave, He's a top 10 listen notes podcast.

Yeah, there you go.

My friend sometimes gets up to 20 downloads per episode. You know, and the great thing is, so I have permission to go into his. Into his, of course, Anchor Spotify account and look and then see how he's doing with Listen Notes. So I got to do that video again. But yeah, yeah, that's. That. That's a big one. And I think what's funny is I chatted with another guy who just. Yeah, he goes, and apparently we're a top ten show. Like Truth.

Yeah.

He's like, yeah, let me tell you what that number is. And. And it kind of hurt him. So listen, Notes, if you want to get on the podcast report, just reach out to me, any of the social things, and we. We can talk through this process. I. I have no reason. Reason to slam. It's just not a real number, so I guess that's a slam, so. AI Descript. Fascinating. Fascinating. If you guys haven't looked at the script, the best description I ever heard of Descript was from Merlin man, and Merlin said it was really funny because I learned about the script in the January 2020 podcast movement, right before the whole world basically shut down. And I remember I spent a lot of time with the Descript people, and I walked away thinking, you know, this is fine and dandy. One day we'll get there. And Merlin man once described a script as. He said, if you've ever gone to description and you've looked at the video and you thought to yourself, one day, we'll get there. We're actually there.

Yeah.

So descript is amazing. And you and I, you and I are big fans, and it's mind boggling how good it is. And I describe it to people, and I have people who don't. Who don't believe it. I took. I mean, the school podcasting was reason one, but reason two, I actually took my how to podcast book off the shelf because the editing by AI thing now for the. For the people who don't enjoy the audio world of stuff is just such a prevalent thing that I didn't feel ethical telling people the only way to edit a podcast is, you know, with a sound editing kind of situation. So the guys over at Headliner came out with Eddie, and Eddie, you know. You know, for those who've been around long enough, Eddie is almost like the notes to Microsoft Word. It's so stripped down, it's so small. It does such a minor part of what the script does. But what's interesting is Eddie's grown a bit, and Descript has grown a lot. And every time I turn on Descript, now I'm not the editor, every time I turn on Descript, it's got all these new features and I can't find my way around it. And it gets bloated. It gets to be too much. And then Eddie with Headliner is so minimalist that it's not hard to navigate the way around. Thoughts on these two. Is Eddie just a cheap. You know, is Eddie just a cheap Descript? Is Descript a really expensive Eddie? Are they two different things? What are they, Dave, what are you telling people at the school to do?

Well, the thing I always say. Well, number one, by the time I tell you what Descript is, they will have moved something in their interface. So I just say, if you're not using it on a daily basis, it's going to be a little frustrating because I use Studio Sound, which is this AI tool that cleans up really bad audio, and it does a pretty decent job. And every time I go in, it is something completely different. Now I have to go in and select the entire file just to get the. The tool to show up. So. But on the other hand, I can throw a video into Descript and do all sorts of. You know, I can do my audiograms, I can do snippets, I can do my shorts, I can have my transcript. So it kind of does everything. And anytime you're in a tool that does everything, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve. And so that's actually one of the things I'm trying to do right now is get more ramped up, because I use it maybe twice a month. So I'm trying to use that a little more. And from. I haven't used Eddie in probably about six months, so I'm a bit behind on that. But I remember when I saw it, I was like, oh, this is for the person that just wants to edit stuff where I select the word and it removes it from the audio. And I just played with one called, I think it's resounding, you upload the file. And what it does that I like is, and I know descript does this, I'm assuming so does Eddie, is you can go in and listen to the edit that you just made, because that's the big thing. You don't want it to sound like it was, you know, they cut out half a word, but then it jumps to the next filler word. And right now it's a smaller list of filler words. It's the obvious ones, the ums, the you knows, and things like that, where Descript keeps adding to the list of filler words. So the one thing you don't want to do, at least right now, in my opinion in descript, is say, remove all filler words. Go ahead. Because you still need that human to go, yeah, that's good, that's good, that's good. So I need to go back and play with Eddie. I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember at the time I was, same thing, it was like, oh, this seems like a stripped down version and it's for that person. I don't need all the bells and whistles, I just need it. I'm just in here to edit the audio and I want to do it in an AI kind of way.

Are they, I mean, I, I, I wish I knew the price for Eddie and making this recording. Are they different tools? Or, or is it like, you know, you don't need a sledgehammer to, to put a nail on the wall kind of thing? Or, or, or, or is there, is, is there something the simplicity of Eddie that is, is attractive and viable and, and a significant, you know, is it just conceptually, is it just, well, if you only have to X use Eddie, or is it, Eddie's perfect for X, you don't need to go to something else?

Yeah, that could be it. I know you get into some people that are really frightened by technology and when you start explaining all the things that Descript can do, they might actually go, I don't, I, you know, it sounds great, it sounds neato, but the minute they hear the fifth one and they're just, if that's the person, it's like, I just, I heard this thing where I can edit text and it edits the audio. That's just, that's all I'm here for. And you're like, oh, but look, it slices, it dices, it even juliennes. And they're like, yeah, I don't know what that means. I just want to do this one thing. So that's where I could see somebody, you know, maybe drifting over to. To Eddie. And that'll be interesting then to see if they start to beef that up, you know how. And I guess as long as Descript keeps adding more features to there, because now they have a thing where it will redo your eyeballs, where if you're not looking at the, you know, the camera, it will make it look like you did. So they're now doing AI Stairs, I guess we could call that. And so we'll see. But the cool thing is there are more tools now coming out. You know, we've got Eddie, we've got Resound, and we've got Descript. So it's kind of like the Three Bears. You want this one, the middle one, or the small one. And you pick the one that works best for you. And for the price, I know the Resound one was like 30 bucks a month. And I was like, for 30 bucks a month, I'm just going to go get Descript or Descript, take your pick. And because that has all the bells and whistles, and as long as I can get ramped up on the interface, if they would just leave it alone for 10 minutes so I could do that, then I should be okay.

Did you see the Eddie promo pack, by any chance?

I'm looking. I think I'm at the. I'm at Headliner, and when I went to pricing, I don't know if I'm looking at Eddie pricing or Headliner pricing, but I see their basic is 7.99. But again, I'm not sure the promo pack for generated. Oh, artwork. I have seen that there's a tool called POD Squeeze. It's another AI upload the file transcript thing. And they're now doing pull quotes on images that were actually not bad. And I was like, all right, here we go. Five quotes, three show notes, three show note options. All sorts of fun stuff here. And that's the key. Editing. They I see here on their website, editing made easy and not the descript is hard, but when you keep moving your interface around, it's not. It's frustrating. Once you. Oh, that's where it moved. The Bic, they have a gallery. They're having some AI artwork made here with Eddie, which could be interesting. If it could generate the episodic artwork for you, that could be interesting.

What it does that's interesting is pull quotes are always awkward. You want to be careful with those. And of Course, nothing worse than. One of my favorite things are all these automated tools and somebody quotes, as we know from the great, you know, Adam Curry, and then it's spelled, you know, a T O M, you know, C U R U Y or something like that. And what. What Eddie does is Eddie will do four generative AI episode art pieces in the color scheme of your logo. But then we'll allow you to do the pool quotes on top of it, which I thought was. Was an interesting thing. Let's take a look at Pod Squeeze, who's doing it.

And as I'm now on the. The Eddie side, I see I didn't even realize they were doing video. The last time I played them with them, it was just primarily audio, and then they would make audiograms or something of that nature. So I see here further, if you do the yearly thing, of course, it's 20 bucks a month and you get all the bells and whistles and unlimited storage. So I need to. I know what I'm doing. When I get back from podfest, I'll be playing with this.

There we go. All right, well, I don't want to talk too much about PodFest because, you know, hopefully this will hang around longer than the. The After Effects podcast, but it's gonna be fascinating to the. The. The hall of Fame. I'll be watching that at home on the. On YouTube, funny enough. And yeah, that's interesting. The podcasting hall of fame is on YouTube now. I'm enjoying the irony of that right now. Let's. Let's just take that moment and go where everybody who say that YouTube's gonna kill it is saying it across YouTube, which. Which I think is. Is a fascinating thing. Always good to catch up with you, Dave. For. For you podcast report fans, more as common as you know, this show has always been about just playing with the tech, talking about the tech. Dave's one of my favorite people to talk about the tech with. And we're gonna do some fun things with this episode that I think are going to be fascinating. How it. How it discerns the. The nuggets of truth from this episode, I think will be fascinating. But, Dave, I'm going to let you go with the final quote, the final tip for podcasters, and then we'll just stop the video and we'll get it out to all those places, including, funny enough, YouTube. All right, Dave, the big quote.

I'm going to quote my buddy Glenn Hebert from the Horse Radio Network, because it boils down to this. Don't be boring.