What Is Podcasting Anyway? - The Podcast Industry Report With Paul Colligan Episode #106

If you don't know what podcast is, you might want to consider another medium altogether. It is the Podcast Industry Report Episode 106 show notes, links, conversation and more at the podcastreport.com 106 this is going to be another episode of the Podcast Industry Report. Unlike others, I kind of had a theme for season three. I've got the big list on the wall of all the places I thought I want to go. But I'll tell you, I'm not quite sure if this is what the industry needs. And moving this to the industry report, moving this to where I want to go. I want to serve the industry. I've spoken before to the band over the rind and that lyric, I don't want to waste your time with music you don't need, continues. This is a thought. This is hopefully music you need. Let's get to it. The big idea, as I said, was if you don't know what a podcast is, you might want to consider another medium. There's been some interesting press these days. There's a company called Bumpers at Bumpers fm. Now Bumpers FM has a fascinating product. It is an app that lets you record and edit and share talk. Edit. Share Bumpers. That's what their, their website says. And the idea here is speak directly in your phone, no equipment's needed, your audio is going to sound great. And they put it up. If you head out to their Twitter account and they've got some press about it. But sometimes people get press that isn't necessarily what they're about, it's what other people say about them. But if you look at the Bumpers Twitter account, which is Bumpers FM by the way, you can see they say talk about stuff, share it on the Internet, create and discover podcasts on Bumpers. The idea here is the Bumpers app is a podcast app and it's got some press for it. Some people have herald, this is great. Finally, podcasts are easy to do. Yada yada yada. Others have gone, these people don't have the first idea what a podcast is. Yada yada yada. And what's interesting is in this mixed up industry that we're in, both sides really have a lot to say about this. The fact of the matter is Bumpers doesn't do rss. The fact of the matter is Bumpers sort of does subscription, but it's kind of funky. And the fact of the matter is there's no way to get your Bumpers podcast into itunes. Even some of the industry games and industry players and you know, the ones that are sort of on the outside, all of them seem to have some way of getting into itunes. And well, this one doesn't even have that. Some would say is, does podcasting need to have an itunes option? Are the two required wired? I was listening to the feed over at Libsyn. Rob Walsh believes that a podcast to be a podcast, has to have itunes as an option. I think for many of us that makes some logical sense. But you know, I went to my book and the definition that I put in the book was that audio or video made available for easy on demand consumption and or subscription based delivery. I didn't mention itunes. Now is that a problem with my. Is that a problem with my definition? What's interesting is Wikipedia podcast. Podcast is an episodic series of digital media files which user can set up so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web syndication to the user's own local computer or portable media player. Wikipedia doesn't speak to itunes as well. I think there are a number of us who would feel and agree with Rob, either consciously or subconsciously that if you're not available on itunes, you're not a podcast. But it's funny. That's not what the industry is saying. And I think this is something that we have to deal with. I've met a lot of people. I've been doing this for over a decade and I meet a lot of people who tell me, oh, I've been podcasting for 10 years. I always put audio files on my website. That's not podcasting. But then again, there's no governing body for podcasting. There's no group that says what it is. We kind of as an industry claim what it is. And then if somebody comes in with a lot of money, and by the way, Bumpers has a lot of money, they did a post a little while ago to the Google Podcast group offering an interview series and offering some pretty good money for it. I followed up with them just to see what their response was. It wasn't something I was necessarily interested in, but I'm curious how they respond. They never responded back. So I don't know what the situation is there, but you can tell it's BC money. It's people who want to cash in on this whole thing. And are they fantastic? Are they evil? Are they what finally is going to make podcasting happen? Are they finally what's going to make podcasting die? Fascinating stuff. Two razors out there. There's Occam's razor. The more assumptions you have to make the more unlikely an explanation is. I've heard people say that these guys are here to kind of try to take over itunes. I don't think it's going to happen. I think the funniest thing that happens here with bumpers is if you look at bumpers right there on the main page, these people who won't let you put the thing on itunes in the upper hand corner, the very first space your eye goes is a download this in the app store link. The more assumptions you have to make, the more likely an explanation is. This idea that they're trying to super implant go around itunes, I think it's kind of silly. There's Hanlon's razor, which is the whole idea that we never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. And I don't know, I feel like that's more like this. To make podcasts and then not put them in itunes, you know, is sort of like, I don't know, I could come up with some snappy analogy, but I'm not going to. So we have another product, we have another thing that's claiming what a podcast is. We have people who come to us who claim what a podcast is. Some people say it isn't a podcast, Some people say it is a podcast. And then we have industry reports that are saying this is it or this isn't it, or podcast is it or this isn't it. And the industry is in a mess. Now who gets to decide, is it the big money? Is it the people who have been there the longest? Is it the biggest numbers? Is it, is it, is it, is it? And this is the frustration that I'm dealing with in the industry. This is kind of what I wanted to talk about here in the podcast report. Is bumpers a problem? Is bumpers a symptom? Is bumpers a logical result of what's happening in the industry? I mean, gosh darn it, someone trying to make sense out of this is certainly a good thing today. Today I took three phone calls. This is where the podcast is getting out late. I took three phone calls from potential clients. All of them said they wanted to go further. My little firm is growing. And all three of them read the book, and all three of them said they like the book and they want to go with me. And the funny thing was the book never mentioned itunes as a requirement. Now, later on, we have the four step process in the book. And step four in the process is tell the world. And the very first thing we do is tell people to tell Itunes. So I'm not ignoring itunes by any means, but I had four people read the book and said, this is what I want to do. Some people love the book. Some people hate the book. Some people think I'm great for podcasting. Some think I'm terrible for podcasting. I'll tell you this, I'm working on another product right now. It's going to be out before the end of the year. Some of the podcast prognosticators are going to hate it. Are going to hate it. But I'll tell you this, many of the people that I work with on a daily basis love it, want it, are calling for it. Now, will it go to itunes? Yes. Will it work with Libsyn? It actually will. And there are going to be a number of other things that we're doing with it. But, you know, I'm kind of the cause of this problem as well. I've spoken before that I think leadership in this industry is a problem because the people who say clearly things like, if you don't do this, you're stupid. If you don't do this, you're an idiot, yada, yada, yada, they're getting in the way as well. So what do we do? What do we do about the definition of podcasting? What do we do about the podcast industry? What? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? And then even more deeply, what am I going to do with season three here of the podcast report? I would love your thoughts. I would love your ideas. You know, all the usual social. By the way, if this is your first episode, go back and listen to others before you listen to this one. ThePodcastReport.com 106 is a place to make comments. You can reach out to me@the podcastreport.com Twitter or the podcastreport.com Facebook. Would love to hear what you think. But here's the thing I preach. Make a podcast that's good for your business. If you're claiming it's a commercial podcast, obviously, if you're doing a podcast for passion, that's an entirely different thing. But I'm claiming the podcast report is a business podcast. And here's the thing. The people I'm speaking to, the people I'm sharing to, the things I'm dealing with are not the customers who are coming through my door and paying the bills that keep the lights on and pay for the microphone and this kind of thing for the show. As much as I'd love to explore the industry, there's no Money in it. There's no business in it for me. As much as I would love to prognosticate and direct on the industry. There's no money in it, there's no business in it for me. I've thought about trying to maybe be a consultant in the industry, but they don't want to listen to the old school podcasters. In the meantime, I got three people today, just today, who want our boutique service. And I got to figure out how to make all that happen. The podcast industry report, you know, we'll keep it for a while. I've got some ideas of some things I'm going to change. Season three might be pretty short. We might go to season four very, very quickly. Is bumpers good or bad? I personally, you know, we're going to go to Hanlon's Razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. It's a really bad idea. You know, forget anything else. Bumpers is a really bad idea. But there have been some other really, really bad ideas out there before. I've seen them come and go. You've seen and go. Some of them have so much BC money that they're still around. I'm not going to attribute it to malice, but I am going to attribute it to. We have a problem in this space and anyone who claims that they have the solution, they may very well have the solution. But here's the problem. If you think you have a solution and the majority of the people don't embrace you as the solution, do you really have the solution? This is one of the places that we have to go. I think. Podcasting is audio or video made available for easy on demand consumption and or subscription based delivery. Technically, bumpers fits that. I don't like that. I might change it. The next version of the book might have a bit of an update. But then again, do we have to have itunes? I don't know. It's an interesting space that we are in. I recommend that you take an examination of what you're podcasting about and how it matches your business. I've got a client right now, the Genius Network show. It just doing gangbusters and the conversion results that we're seeing and the audience that we're building and all these things is just fantastic because there's this great market to message match. My best clients have a fantastic market to message match and then here I am working things out with probably one of the worst market to message matches. I don't think. I don't know if anybody's come to Me, I got to go through the client base. I don't think anybody has heard the podcast first and then come to us as a customer, either for our boutique service or for consulting. There have been a number of people who have researched, picked up the book or started with an event and wanted to learn more. And I said, go listen to the podcast, but I don't know if someone. And by the way, if you're one of my clients and you started with the podcast, let me know. I think the podcast was the type of thing that kind of, I don't know, nailed the final nail in the coffin or that type of thing. Obviously, I have to practice what I preach. Obviously, I have to speak to what I'm doing. But I've got podcasts now with millions of downloads. The people that I'm working with, I play in this space. I don't have to prove anything else. The industry is at an interesting place. Thank you for going with me on this journey. Who knows where I'll be with the next episode of this, but the fact of the matter is, we don't quite know what we are yet, and we're a full decade into this, and there are different pockets who are absolutely sure that their definition is complete, but as a whole, we're not there. This little product that I told you I'm going to launch, again, I got people who want it. I got people who want it bad. I got existing podcasters who are really, really excited about it, and it could be very profitable if I were to take a booth of that at podcast movement. But then again, even there, podcast movement isn't necessarily my audience. So the market to message match thing, again, a bit not rambling here. These are my thoughts, These are my ideas. Many of you appreciate that part of the show, but I'll tell you, we got to figure this out. We got to stop making assumptions. We got to stop attributing things to malice. We got to figure out a plan. All of us need to act on it to bring this industry to where it needs to be. And for those of you who think it's at a great place, I think it can get bigger. I think it can get a lot bigger. And it's going to happen. When there's a common language, there's a common discourse. I don't know if I'm the guy to do it. Sometimes I feel rather Don Quixote in perspective. So there we go. That's this episode. Some of you are going to love this. Some of you are going to hate this. Either way. I'd love to get your interaction lepodcastreport.com 106 for this episode and again reach out on Twitter or Facebook or that type of thing. Thanks so much for listening. We will chat next week. I'm sure the topic will be a bit different, maybe a bit more focused, and who knows, maybe we'll launch season four with this new approach that I've been contemplating all the time. Thank you. Chat with you next week. Bye.