Are Podcasters Shifting Again? | New Media Show Live 4/17/23

Yeah, that's the monitor that sits below my teleprompter. What you're seeing there— Max Cutler is launching AVE Studios.

Is that— here we go.

Okay.

Okay, welcome to the New Media Show.

We're back doing the New Media Show again.

People are actually going to listen to this junk.

You do it live.

We're live right now.

We'll just do it live.

We're doing live. We're doing live.

You just can't get enough. The New Media Show.

Let's go.

Just do it live.

We'll do it live.

We'll do it live. The New Media Show. We do it live. Just do it live.

We'll do it live.

The New Media Show. I'm like Adam Curry and you're more like John C. Tabora.

I think I am Adam Curry and you're the old curmudgeon.

We do it live on the New Media Show again.

The New Media Show. Technology. You make it sound so special. And it absolutely is special. Here we are at the New Media Show. Rob, welcome back from NAB.

NAB, Las Vegas. Another trip to Las Vegas. Wow. It's, uh, it's not something that I look forward to every year.

Yeah, it's, it's the, the down and back is the smart thing to do. And, uh, and I'm sure we've got some things to talk about of your attendance at NAB. And, um, but, uh, yeah, we, we've, uh, you, you said when you were— we're doing a little just pre-talk here— he said you haven't been watching what's going on in podcasting. And you know, this week I was actually adding up meetings And I just, you know, I have this ongoing list. I just write down because we do sprints. I write down everything I do. And when we get into sprint meetings, I'm like, well, there's like 15 Jira tasks that I wrote. And, you know, I had 8 hours worth of meetings in the last 2 days and customer meetings. And yeah, you know, I hardly have time to just stick my neck up to see what other people are doing, let alone Yeah, you know, so I can understand. And being in Vegas, you go into the time warp.

Yeah, you do. And you're kind of fully engulfed in other, other topics and other things that are going on around media and the landscape. And I, I don't spend my whole time looking at my phone when I'm on the show floor. I'm doing presentations at, at the National Association of Broadcasters event. It's, it's an all-encompassing kind of thing. It's very tiring too. I got back late last night. And, um, and yeah, it's, it's hard to get recalibrated. New time zone, new everything.

Well, it's not so much the time zone, but Vegas just sucks the life out of you.

Oh, it does, it does.

You know, if you don't drink, uh, you know, and I'm trying— I have a new thing here, I'm trying to drink a gallon of water a day. And I'm doing the same.

I got a little dehydrated at the event. It's really easy to do that.

And I, you know, and I've just found that if I don't have a gallon jug to see how much I've drank, I won't drink it. Now I can't do that in Vegas, haul around a gallon jug. But, you know, you can only carry so many water bottles. And of course, then you go to buy water and it's $8 for stuff you can get out of a fountain for free. So it's— yeah, it's, it's an event. So tell me, what, what did you see? First of all, what did you see?

Well, I saw a lot of, you know, new technology. I, I was attracted to, you know, the Central Hall is where a lot of the activity was.

Yeah.

And though I, I did spend a lot of time in the West Hall, which is the, the new hall, and the North Hall is completely under demo and reconstruction. So, wow. So that was, that was the big change at this event.

The north or the south?

The North Hall is completely under construction. That whole section is completely under construction.

So they had everyone shoved into Central and West?

Yep. Oh, exactly where everybody was.

That's interesting.

Well, Central, West, and South.

Oh, so they were using South.

Yeah. So I spent a lot of time up in the South Hall, up in the upper level of the South Hall, because that's where the new Creators Lab, uh, conference was, was up on the top, top floor of the NEB in the South Hall, way in the back. So there's lots of room back there so they can have large panel sessions and things like that going on. And there wasn't going to be a lot of noise around because there's not a lot of traffic.

Yeah, because that's, you know, so for CES, I was in the back left-hand corner of South Hall top before. So yeah, I know how far it is from anything.

Yeah, exactly. It's a great place to, if you want to put on panels and sessions, right? And that's exactly what I did. I, I moderated a panel session on the topic of audio and video editing. In the kind of cutting-edge trends that are going on around that, which was, you know, it was a little bit of a departure for me, right?

Right.

I mean, I usually talk about podcasting trends and things like that, but I'm, I'm trying to branch out and get into other types of topics in, in media and production and things like that. And I had an opportunity to do this. So the guys on stage with me, uh, represented kind of, kind of divergent kind of aspects of post-production and editing and things like that. You know, a guy from, you know, that was working on music licensing, and a guy that is a well-known director. He actually produced the Computer Chronicles series back in the early days.

Wow.

Yeah. So he was up on stage with me and we were talking about the trends around. And then a guy that works for, for Magix, uh, the Magic kind of company with the Vegas software and things like that. So, so that was a good conversation about AI integration and editing, post-production, and how the trends around, you know, just productions in general utilizing AI and also what's happening around like a creator like MrBeast and how he's come out publicly and stated that he hates the productions that he's doing right now. And that he's going to change. And so you see, yes, you see this, this movement towards everybody seeing his success, MrBeast with his hundreds of millions of views. And now he's shifting over to doing deals with, you know, these big cable companies and also the streaming platforms to create his content over there. And, and I think the feeling that he has is he's been looking critically at his productions, and he feels like maybe he's gone too far down the rabbit hole of overproduction, um, and this, this fast cutting explosions and, and fast moving camera scenes and, and him, him yelling at the camera all the time because there's so much noise or something going on around him or too much going on. So it's almost like he's having an existential kind of rebirth of sorts, or maybe growing up. Yeah, well, that's what my comment was, was maybe he's just getting a little older and he's getting a little more conservative with what he's interested in doing. And so, so we may see a big shift. But what we've seen in the industry is his influence has really impacted a lot of creators, right, that want to duplicate what he's doing.

Right.

I think a lot of the creators have a hard time duplicating MrBeast because he's such a big budget with his productions and he'll give away $500,000, that kind of prize money at the end of his shows, because he's generating that kind of money with his productions. So you can kind of see how we're in this kind of the shift phase of media production and shifting back. And I think we got a clue that MrBeast is starting to think more about genuine productions and more genuine experiences, slowing things down a little bit and not yelling at the audience and not being too bombastic. Is kind of the direction as he sees going forward. And that has a big influence on what other creators do in the space. And I raised this point that it sounds like he wants to become more like a podcaster.

And what was the reaction to that?

Well, I think this concept— I mean, all the folks on the stage are definitely clued in to podcasting and in this, you know, this convergence that's happening between video and audio and how important audio was up on stage in our— well, was and continues to be.

Don't use the word was. It makes it sound like it's in the past. It's still valuable.

I just said it is.

So, okay, but don't use the word was because was implies the past was important. It is.

Oh, it does. Yeah. Well, I think what they were trying to point out was that it's increasing in its importance, the audio quality. I mean, I think television and video productions have historically de-emphasized audio. And so what they're seeing is kind of like a re-emergence of audio quality as something that's a higher priority for a lot of video creators.

It's curious because I've always said they'll forgive you for bad video, but they won't forgive you for bad audio.

I don't know if that's entirely true either. I think good video is fully appreciated if you're a video creator.

Yeah.

But, but the audio has historically been kind of the, the stepchild of media creation on television anyway. So you've seen this kind of this resurgence of quality in, in, in the actual experience of content production. And but yet, you know, you're seeing like a MrBeast kind of shift away from this bombastic high-speed, lots of camera shifts and things like that. So maybe he's going to slow it down. And that could be indicative of a different type of content that you're seeing. Even, even you're seeing this on, on places like YouTube and other platforms as well as the video creators are starting to think more about, you know, more intimate experiences and more genuine and authentic type of stuff, less high-produced content.

Yeah, right.

So that's a big uber trend in all this, right?

So what about, you know, what about the gear? Because usually NAB— oh yeah, is not a creator event. There's not that many creators at the event. That's the reason, one of the reasons we stopped going.

Yeah. And I think that NAB is having a little bit of an identity crisis right now. I think that they are seeing what's happening in the broadcast side of things. And I think that there's some pullback in the support of the NAB because of kind of the mainstream media and stuff kind of struggling. And, and that's why I, I went to this year's event because I had an opportunity to present at a new section or a new content area at the NAB. It's called the Creator's Lab. And, and it basically is trying to focus on trying to talk about creators in the digital space and trying to highlight those and bring in experts that can can talk to these, these more digital topics, right?

Well, the analog topics, you know, then they're going to have to— they're going to have to change your complete strategy because there used to be a lot of talent, and I'm just going to use the word talent, that was at the event, and the talent disappeared. The talent wasn't there anymore. So what, what was the attendance then of your event? Was there a lot of talent or was it a lot of lookie-loos, or what, what would you, what would you typify the audience that was at this Creators area?

Well, I think it's early, early days for this shift for them, so it was, it was, I mean, on the scale of an NAB where there's like, yeah, yeah, I believe they had like 70,000 attendees at this Uh, which is still not back to what it was, right?

300 plus.

Yeah, back in like 2019 time frame when it was a much bigger event. Um, but it's— I think it's going to take some time for them to shift the perception of the event to be more of a creative event. I mean, it's still got the, the name broadcast in its name, so— but, but I guess as they shift more to just using the acronym, maybe they can extend that.

Well, it's just like, just like CES. Yeah, CES did how they changed, right?

So I think that may be what's, what's going to happen here over the next couple years.

Yeah, well, we'll see. But you know, they didn't do it. They drove us away.

Well, they, they backed away from doing a podcast pavilion, you know, and they, and we got put in the South 40.

And, and basically I said, you know, you, you put me in the back in South 40, I'm not coming back. We did get moved to Central We are in a great position. We did all our marketing last year and the ROI out of the event was absolutely horrible. So, you know, it's, it's a situation now. And I think Podcast Movement, Podcast Fest, other events, they're going to have to really start paying attention. Okay, if you're going to have an event where there's going to be 3,000 creators there, then you need to make sure you're doing— and Chris at Podcast did this very well. He got the creators into the exhibitor area, and you know, it was liquor, you know, and, and got him in there and got him circulating, got him seeing us and got us talking to people. And but if events don't take care of the exhibitors, those events will not exist. If the— I think, you know, because, well, they can exist, but they'll exist without exhibitors because I have to have, you know, I have to generate ROI. And we're going back to Podfest. We're excited to go back to Podfest. Matter of fact, I'm headed to Manila 2 weeks from— 2 weeks from tomorrow.. And I'm going to be going out and participating in Podcast Asia, be speaking on the one-day event in Podcast Asia. So a friend of mine who basically has a pretty big business in the Philippines, not podcast related per se, but she does have a podcast, approached me and said, hey, would you come out? And I was like, oh, that's a long ways to go. And, um, so essentially I made the decision to go ahead and pull the trigger. So it's a long ways to go to speak and then come back, but, you know, I, you know, the numbers look pretty good for a short-term event, and it's just a one-day event. So, you know, I'm going to fly out, have a couple of days in advance to, I guess for a better word, to recover a little bit from jet lag, then hit the event, then fly right back because Soon as I get back, I'm like back a week, we go to London. So, um, so I think what really ultimately has to happen in these big events like this, if they, if they're worried about loot, because broadcasting is, and those people that sell equipment to any, to broadcasters, television's probably okay for a while because it's not going down. Or, you know, people are still gonna need cameras to shoot videos and TV and movies and all that stuff. But what did you see from the vendors? Are the vendors— have they been awoken? You know, RØDE obviously has. Shure has been serving creators for years.

Uh, yeah, RØDE was not at the event, so they did a, like, a co-booth with, uh, H&L out of New York.

Oh, that's— or you mean H&L, you mean, uh, B&H.

No, no, was it B&H? Yeah, out of New York.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so they basically— or did they have RØDE people there, or was it just B&H people showing off RØDE gear?

Yeah, I didn't actually see the booth, but, okay, uh, but I do know that the RØDE folks, at least they, they used to have staff out of, out of the Northeast.

I can't remember. I've met them.

But yeah, I've met them before.

So as you— I don't know how much you got to traverse different booths because I always go seeking different stuff, see what's going on in the NDI front.

And I didn't go to NDI, I went to the DJI booth and I went to—

I— oh, I bet you DJI was busy.

Yeah, and the IMAX booth, I went there too. That was really interesting. They're coming out with a consumer camera as well as, uh, as a whole platform around a digital projector in IMAX as well as laptops and, and, and like iPad type of— that's interesting— tablets. So you'd be able to have the technology to support IMAX encoding built into your, your computer.

Ching, ching, ching. Very expensive, I'm sure.

So yeah, but so it's a consumer product line that they're coming out with, which I thought was very interesting.

So when you went into DJI— I know I'm a big fan of their Osmo handheld right now, and it's— I think it's kicking, uh, GoPro's butt. Um, you know, what was the vibe at DJI?

Yeah, it was a very highly attended booth, uh, no question. That— I mean, from the drones to the cameras and all sorts of stuff that they have there, it's, it's quite a Quite a very popular attraction at the event. And so, I mean, I saw robot dogs and flying kind of like transmitter tower.

How many, how many times did you see the word AI enabled in every booth?

Oh yeah, everybody, you know, all of the, all of like the editing software and things like that that are being, being shown at the event have AI technology built into them. To segment video, to stitch them together, to do transitions. I mean, it's just amazing how technology, how the AI technology is being rolled into just about everything. And that's, and it's all, you know, that's the common theme here is it's all supportive technology. It's not primary. So it's not like people are creating everything with AI. It's, that's not the emphasis that's going on right now. This is all about— it's the same thing that you're doing with your platform, Todd. It's all augmenting. Yeah, yeah. Saving time, optimizing, trying to make things easier for the production.

It's interesting that you talk about Adobe because, um, I had Adobe announce some stuff yesterday, I think, and basically talking about Gen AI coming to Adobe Premiere. And there's a YouTube video out there that's gotten quite a bit of buzz and it's been talked about. And actually I had a call with an Adobe rep on their generative AI within Premiere. So I kind of got a little bit of a sneak peek earlier this week. That's one advantage of not going to the show. I can talk to people that want to promote what's going on in the show. Because I'm not at the show. Right. And so, but the thing that really caught my eye, and I don't think it's NAB related, but are you familiar with the app called Captions?

Not specifically.

No. It's no longer an app. It's an AI creative studio.

And so it's a cloud-based software?

SaaS model? I don't know how it works. I haven't used it. I'm probably cloud-based, but a podcast that I listen to have stopped using Descript and they're going to use this now. Oh, and what, what caught my attention was that this company or this podcast was hardcore Descript users. They were like, and so when the captions came out, they had their staff do a compare and contrast. And, and basically, even though they're promoting it as a video studio, I guess the audio stuff in it is, is off the chart. So, you know, so I'm, you know, going and looking at their website and saying, okay, they got an API, you know, what's, you know, what's going on here? And, um, you know, there could be, uh, there, there definitely can be You know, there's, there's some stuff here that's going to happen. So what, what I see happening, nobody better rest on their laurels at all. No, because I don't think they are.

I mean, I think a lot of these big companies are pushing pretty hard on this, you know.

And, you know, and it's what's going to end up happening here is it, it's do or die. And, um, you know, and just looking at some of this stuff, I'm like How can it make my life easier for someone that does both audio and video and I don't edit? That's my issue is I'm not an editor, so I don't ever— I've never had to edit even the video. I don't edit. But I know a lot of people worry about that. I had a phone call yesterday. Matter of fact, this is— I'll tell you something here in a second that's going to blow you away. But it just tells me that, and again, I have no idea based beyond what this people in this podcast said, that this tool is, you know, they've stopped using Descript and they've moved to this. That when someone says that, that makes me go, you know, and because I, you know, Descript's pretty powerful in my opinion.

So it's far from perfect though, Todd. I mean, I use it all the time and it's, it's a little slow sometimes and it's, and it, it likes to kind of crash and then restart to some degree sometimes. So it's, it's still a little buggy and the UI is certainly not intuitive. So I think they've got a long way to go to help that tool be a little easier to navigate. But I did want to mention too that I did put on a StreamYard workshop at the NEB. So that was a very dedicated topic workshop with video.

Did you guys have that right at the StreamYard booth or?

There was no StreamYard booth. It was at the Creator Lab.

Oh, okay.

So it was one of the sessions at the Creator Lab. So I got up and actually demoed the whole platform to an audience at the event. And so that was, you know, and even StreamYard is incorporating some AI technology into their platform too, but But the big news about StreamYard is they got sold to a company based out of Italy. Uh, it's called Bending Spoons out of Italy, which also owns the Evernote, um, application as well as the Meetup application. And they also own a video editing platform called Splice. And so, so there's a big transition happening right now at at StreamYard. I believe both of the founders may not be with the company anymore. I don't know. That's not confirmed yet, but I get a sense that that has probably happened.

That's interesting. They're not going to hang out for a couple of years and—

Well, they got acquired by Hopin like, like 4 years ago. Oh, and then this is the second acquisition that they've, they've endured. Wow. So, so this purchase is, I think, is, is going to dramatically change the company. And it looks like after doing some, some research into the new company that's, that's acquired, it's a company that most of the team is based out of, out of Milan, Italy. So it's an Italian company that bought it.

But where is most of StreamYard team? In the US. So what's, you know, so what's that mean for the product? Is it going to turn sideways and flip over?

Nobody really knows. I mean, I don't know yet. Um, so it's, it's only been a week since it was announced. Yeah, yeah. So it's still early days on that. But, you know, I have a, I have a relation, a contract relationship with, with StreamYard. But, you know, who knows?

Yeah.

You know, change happens in these type of situations. So, you know, who knows what that looks like going forward.

But so I'll tell you a call I had yesterday. And I got a call from this lady, and she was exasperated. And she's not a hosting customer, got recommended to me through a third party. And she says, tell me how much your guys's hosting costs. I said, well, our plans started— most of our customers on a $20 plan. But it's 12, 20, 40, 80, professionals 100, and I explained what the pro account was. And she said, 20, 20, really? 20? Are you serious? It's only 20? I said, yes, it's $20 a month. She goes, you're not charging enough. And I laughed and I said, well, I wish all potential customers had this type of an opinion. She goes, because—

Well, Tug, can I make one little comment on that? Sure. I don't think any of the podcast hosting platforms have taken into account inflation, have they?

None of us have raised prices.

It's an interesting point, I think.

Go ahead and continue. It is an interesting point, but yeah. So I don't even want to say what I think everyone should do, but that would be considered collusion.

So, um, but I can, because I'm not a part of it.

Well, okay, I know, but still, it's, uh, you know, people in it, but And here's where the kicker was. And this is where her point of view is. She says, I'm— my company's spending $4,000 a month for— to produce 4 episodes a month. And I said, I said, that's insanity. Audio only? Audio only. And I said, what are you getting for that? She said, 4 interviews. So whoever— I know, I know who she's with, so I'm not going to say which company she's with. I'm not going to van-based anybody. Or they get 4 interviews a month. They're also using another— she— their company's also paying another company to try to find more interviews, so they're paying more money to another company. They get 4 shorts a month, 1 short for each episode. They don't edit. They do post the episode and the show notes. And she says the own show notes look to be AI-generated. And yeah. And she says, how much does your pro hosting— I mean, you're— because we have a pro service, right? And I said, for 4 episodes a month, I can save you several thousands of dollars. Because, you know, our pro, our pro production team, it's, it's still, you know, it's not, um, she's still gonna, she's gonna still spend $1,000 to get 4 episodes out if she wants a pro production team. But I said they'll do the editing, they'll do show notes, they'll do, they'll be with you online when you record, blah blah blah blah. And I just kind of laid it out. And to me, I was just like $4,000 for 4 episodes a month. And really all they're truly getting is— so this also is a part of the podcasting business that probably is set for disruption.

Um, I don't think there's that many people that are actually doing that, Todd.

I'm hearing—

do you think there is?

I think there is. I saw, I saw a Facebook post today and it was, it was ironic because I hadn't really paid attention. I knew these booking services were getting expensive, but I, I heard this, um, I saw this Facebook post and it's in some favorite channel, so I have to be careful. Well, no, it's, it's from, from, uh, it was a post by Jessica Rhodes We know how good we are at interview connections, and I'm familiar with interview connections, and we don't need to prove it with a client of theirs, and we don't need to prove it with a 2-booking audition for a fraction of what we charge. And, and she is not the company that I'm referring to with this other lady, right? But she says we offer a program which is $17,000 or 10 payments of $1,850 for 30 bookings. With 11 years experience, we do not do 2 booking tryouts. So that's what she said. So I don't know what all they do. If they just do interview connections, only interview connections, um, and I don't know if they— again, I don't know, I haven't filed. Do they do production and shorts and, and everything?

As far as I know, no. I've, I've been on a 1-year contract with the interview connections before in the past.

So $17,000 divided by 30 bookings is $566 a booking.

Yeah. Well, and there are shows out there, Todd, that are charging for placement now. And it seems to be the, with a certain part of the community, kind of a hot new business model is to charge guests to be on your program.

Well, I don't think in this market that these prices of people paying $4,000 for 4 guests a month or $566 per interview is sustainable. This market's changing and people are looking to save money.

So I don't know. It's the shift.

Yeah.

So part of, part of the shift that's going on right now is it's really interesting how this podcast market is is shifting and changing a little bit, and, and how, you know, what's working and what isn't working is, is different too.

But in the reason that she called me an exasperation was— and here's the reason— the, the gal is a contract. She's, she's doing a podcast for a brand. She's the talent. And the company's trying to decide with their overhead as high as it is, $50,000 a year to do an episode a week, whether or not this investment is worth it. So here I am charging $20 a month for a hosting account. And you have a business that is now about ready to abandon podcasting. Because they're spending $1,000 a month.

So per, per episode, you mean?

Yeah, per episode. Yes, $1,000 per episode per week. So, right. And so I'm just sitting back kind of like, these people are going to put me out of business, you know, that are charging $566 for one guest booking. And then, and then people have the gall to say that your hosting costs are too high at $20 a month. And don't get me wrong, I, you know, it just, it just two things, two, two things that just presented itself in front of me in two days and made me really sit back and say, first of all, I'm going to help creators with whatever I can do. At my company. We're going to do whatever we can do to help creators produce podcasts at a very low rate, very low production cost rate. And so for her, she's like, um, she says, who am— she said, I don't even know the lady that called me. She said, I don't even know who I'm hosting with. And I went and looked, didn't even know, has nary a clue. And, uh, I, I looked it up. I said, oh, you're hosting with such and such. Says, how much does their service cost a month? And I told her, and she's just like, you can hear it on the other end. You know, she, she was a very polite woman, but she could have been cussing. And her livelihood is now being impacted because of these very high-end, very, very high-end productions that their company is doing to have a branded podcast. And You know, they look at the stats numbers and just like any other show out there, 100, 200, actually, I think they're up to about 600 people an episode listening, which is pretty good for a business podcast. I didn't look it up. She told me because we don't host them. But the— it just to me was just like, yeah, if I'm a— if I'm a business owner, I'm looking at that ROI as well. You know, I'm going to say, okay, we're reaching how many people and I'm spending $50,000 a year? She didn't tell me how much she was getting paid. So there's more money because they're paying a talent to do this too. So if you're—

go ahead. Yeah, I think I totally see where you're going with that. I mean, I think that's part of what one of the uber trends that are going on right now is this recognition that people have been way overspending on producing podcasts. You know, even, even the big media companies are cutting back on how much they're spending for a, for a show production. So I think this is part of a big uber kind of trend that's going on in the podcasting space is that we're getting back to really what the podcast medium has really been all about is, is very efficient production of content. And, and that has been a direction the industry has kind of abandoned because of the pursuit of the almighty dollar. But before we kind of expand further on that, I wanted to ask you, because this came up online in a, in a discussion thread that I saw about this perception that people have about what a branded podcast is. What is your particular perception of what a branded podcast is versus just a regular podcast?

Well, we have— again, I don't call them branded. Podcast to my customers. They call themselves— no, but what to me— yeah, but to me it's—

yeah, what does it mean to you?

Podcast Insider that Blueberry does is a branded podcast.

It's a podcast in support of a, of a company or a business.

Yes. Is that—

yes. Kind of what it is? Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, because this conversation came up, uh, on with a fellow out of the UK because he's been hearing conflicting definitions on what a branded podcast is. And mine is really clear. It's any podcast that's really being produced in support of a company or a corporation. Yeah. And isn't really—

or a product or a service.

Again, it's— which is a company or a corporation, right? It could be a If you as an individual have a company and you're doing a podcast that's around the topic of your company, then that's a branded podcast. This show, if you were to define it, I wouldn't define it as a branded podcast.

No, it's not a branded podcast.

Right. But, but a show like the, you know, the Trader Joe's podcast is a branded podcast.

Yeah. Podcast Insider is purely a branded podcast. It's— we're telling our ideology, our products and services, what we're doing, how we think you should be doing it. You know that? Absolutely. And we put the blueberry brand behind it.

And it's not necessarily— it shouldn't be actually kind of just like a commercial.

No.

Or for that brand.

It should be about education, helping people understand the market that maybe that 90% of the stuff we do in Podcast Insider is educational. Right. And if we have a new product, we'll announce it and talk and go over it. But we don't.

Yeah, it's the same thing I'm doing for for StreamYard with the show, the podcast tips that I'm doing. It's, it's not a commercial.

It's like, it's like Libsyn in their podcast and whoever else does one for their companies. Yeah, same thing.

So, so I mean, just to be clear, I was just— because this had came up online in a big thread and it's like the person that posted this thread was like saying that everybody understands it to mean something different and That's very confusing.

We did get a few boosts, I think. Let me see here. Of course, the stream is not working in Fountain, still says scheduled. I have no idea, Mike. Let me, let me send the live bat single out again. I don't know why it didn't go. So thanks for the sats there. Let me know, Mike, for 1,701 sats. Let's hear what else. Did we get any others? No, that's the only one so far. Um, so we are live and lit with those new podcasting apps at podcastapps.com. So be sure to get one and give it a try. Um, yeah, I just, uh, it blows whenever I hear— it's just like last year I heard of a company that was a magazine. I'll leave it at that, financial magazine. That was spending like $40,000 a month for their podcast production. And I basically said, you know, what brother-in-law got hooked up? You know, I was like, what kind of deal was that? You know? And so, you know, I think there is going to be at some point here a reckoning as people's belts— I don't know, what did it feel like? Everyone was living high on the hog at NAB or was it a, uh, you know, what was the price point you were seeing for products out there? Was it $99.95 or $39.95.95? You know, what was the price point of stuff?

Are you talking about the, the devices and things? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, usually at the NAB you don't see pricing. Um, yeah, yeah, I don't always ask, so I can't really speak to that specifically. It's more about sharing the tech of it. And, and there wasn't a lot of companies announcing new things at the event. Um, so it was just one of those things that, uh, people are just, you know, showing their wares.

I have not been on the— I, because I was not registered, I haven't been on the deluge of emails. So my— a few people that are in the press know me have said, hey, let's meet. And I'm like, well, I'm not there this year. And they're like, what?

So, yeah, so Todd, I wanted to mention too that I saw that, uh, Stephen Bartlett, um, of the host of The Diary of a CEO, um, has launched a podcast company and he's hired, uh, a couple of former Acast folks to manage it for him. So he has a very popular YouTube show that's also a podcast and is basically jumping in with both feet trying to do this, like we've been talking about, this convergent strategy of doing YouTube as well as podcasting. And he's started a new company that's focused on doing that. He's based out of the UK, but he's going to have an office here in, in New York. So if you haven't ever watched the Diary of a CEO, he has some very compelling guests, and he has a very compelling production too, um, not unlike, like, the Impact Theory, um, kind of video show on YouTube. And I think that there's some lessons to learn from what they're doing. It's a conversational interview format, um, that's there, and it is transferable over to an audio podcast. So there are successful examples that are starting to pop up, um, that are trying to walk this divide between audio and video increasingly. And so I think we are seeing this happen, Todd.

Well, man, welcome all of the video-first creators to the podcast community. Welcome to the—

well, yeah, you've got the tool now, right?

That's right. Yeah.

Make that jump. So if they want to primarily create for YouTube, then work with Todd and the Blu-ray platform to get that channel fed into his platform and get it out as an audio.

Yeah. And don't have to do nothing. Set it up and set it and forget it. Yeah. Um, you know, and it's, it's, um, it's interesting because basically what I've— here, let me, I'll just do a little preview here. I'll tell you what I did. Um, the, uh, the Podcast Asia event is, um, going to— the agenda was a little little video, a little video heavy. So I've been thinking about it.

Yeah, I talked to Chris last night before I flew back because he was at the NAB too, so he had a million questions for me about what, what I saw at the NAB, because he's, he's trying to take what he's seeing in these big competitive kind of conferences and trying to make sure that he's at the cutting edge of what's going on. So, and I would say that too, Todd, is that what I'm seeing at the NAB is this emphasis towards Digital video is, is really kind of on everybody's mind right now.

Well, how about, how about this for a title? Yeah. Beyond the Visual: Mastering Multimodal Podcasting.

Yeah. Okay. So what is that from?

That's the title of the presentation I'm going to give at Podcast Asia.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, awesome. Beyond the Visual: Mastering Multimodal Podcasting.

Okay, so you're talking about going from video to audio, is your— which makes sense.

No, I'm going to talk about the benefit of what I— and I'm going to be very realistic. You know, you know my stance that a very small percentage of people, very, very small percentage, tiny percentages of people can be successful in the video sphere.

So, yeah, but there clearly are people that are being successful.

But again, if you look at the masses— no, of course, right?

You know, if you look at the same thing with podcasting, Todd, not everybody makes it big.

I understand that, right? But you have a higher chance of being successful in audio than you do in video by far.

So I don't know that that's necessarily— I mean, is there any evidence that you have of that, Todd?

Yeah, just look at the percentage of the small percentage of people that make it in YouTube. So small.

But Todd, you can't really capture that data.

Oh, they say what, how many people are monetized on the platform. So you know.

Yeah, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything in my view.

Yeah, because you could be monetized and not making any money. Just like in podcasting, you can be monetized and not make any money either.

So all things that you can also be monetized without being a part of the YouTube monetization program. That's right. So it's—

you could—

it's not a good kind of gauge on—

well, again, metric— again, you know, why are you— why are you going to— okay, again, I predict that if everyone that wants to do all this great video stuff, they, they're going to burn out faster than anyone else because of the higher end and the way people like to edit, the production time, everything. I think the burnout rate is going to be off the chart and people are going to do it quicker.

Yeah, but don't— I wouldn't discourage people from—

I'm not discouraging people.

Well, not at all. That's kind of how it comes across.

Well, you know, it's because it's true.

I don't know for everyone that it is true. I think there are people that have a lot of natural gifts on the visual side.

Well, maybe they do. Again, I think it's, again, I said multimodal.

Right. So I mean, podcasting has really always been audio and video.

And until 2 years ago, You know, people forgot about video.

I don't think anybody forgot about it, Todd. I just don't think that the industry of podcasting was embracing video. I think it was more, more that they were focused exclusively on audio.

When did the narrative start to change that video is everything? YouTube didn't make this plan to bring— to do what they were going to do just overnight. They've had a long-term to me, to me, it was very strategic. What they did was very smart. And, you know, so they fed a narrative and people have bought into the narrative. I don't 100% believe the narrative. So, because I just don't see it. I see the data. I don't see it.

So it doesn't, I mean, I mean, you're You've shifted, Todd, to a strategy that is embracing video to audio.

Absolutely. Because they don't know what they're missing.

Yeah, but there's no reason why a creator can't start in video and then just shift over to audio.

They could. They could. And if they are, that's part of your strategy. If they're doing video, then they are YouTuber and they are doing—

But Todd, you're okay. Capturing creators on your platform that are absolutely doing, doing video, right? Absolutely. So I wouldn't discourage you.

I'm not, I'm not discouraging. We're going to bring people over from the dark side into the light, you know.

So, see, it is an opportunity, Todd. Oh, well, I know that you are, but you're not always, you know, telling me that.

For audio podcasters that are currently audio podcasters, and I don't have to say it 100 times because I've already said it 100 Yeah. Be careful. Be strategic. Don't think that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. This is the thing. This is— and that's all I have to say.

It's tough on both sides, Todd. Let's be honest about it. It's not easy to be a content creator, period.

Oh, it's true. But I will say this. Audio shows right now are on a major upswing because of this narrative that's going around. Podcasting is, is, is dead. Well, no, the audience members haven't left. They're still here and shows are growing.

Well, existing shows are growing. Oh, absolutely. I would profess to say is that the energy around new audio podcasts is not really there.

Well, those that are starting are new video creators.

The energy is there.

I don't know about that. It's, it's, it's not changed.

Then why is everybody talking about video then, Todd? Because everybody talks about video. Nobody is really talking about an audio-first strategy right now.

Well, then let's let it play out.

I'm not arguing with you necessarily on that point. I'm just arguing with you that what we see in the market today, and I saw it at NAB big time, is this emphasis around video opportunities. And, and it's increasingly everybody I talk to, it's like, that's, that's, that's what everybody's interested in doing. And if you're a platform that's not kind of catering to that, of which you shifted and you are, so, so it's, it, it's just confirmation to me that, uh, that this is, this is where the opportunity is to grow going forward.

New, new programming that's coming online all across the board. Across the board, audio content at this time is growing at faster rates than we've ever seen before.

Growing in what?

Audience size. In audience size. Because again, we're down to 300. Let me go over and look at the numbers. What are we at right now?

But Todd, if you look at the new audio podcast show creation numbers, it's pretty flat.

Uh, we're keeping our head above the water. Last 30 days, 355,000 shows updated. So it's down again, but guess what?

Well, that's up and down every week, so yeah.

Uh, it continues to nudge down on the number of new audio shows, but those that are—

okay, okay, you talk about new show series? Oh no, we're talking about publishing of episodes.

Yeah, yeah, publishing episodes.

So I see it up and down almost every other week.

But here's the main thing, is that the shows that are publishing are growing. It doesn't matter if they're new or old. My personal show at Geek News Central, yeah, I'm up like 16% already this year.

This year.

And yeah, okay, why?

I don't disagree with that. Why am I—

existing shows are, are, are typically doing okay, and they're And therein lies the opportunity.

So it is, but the problem is people aren't thinking audio first right now. They're thinking of video.

Well, then that's why I'm here.

Yeah, I know you are. And it's, and it's, it's okay. But I also think it's, it's definitely, it's definitely, there's a reason why people are not starting audio shows right now. And it's because all the attention is focused on, on video. And I, I see your point. I mean, if, if people really dedicated themselves to creating a quality audio production, they could probably grow.

And it's sure a lot easier to create a quality audio show than it is to create a quality video show.

But those creators that are going to consider starting a new audio show are going to be, are going to feel the market pressure to create video too. Well, that's, that's just the reality of the market right now.

The majority of people that have asked me about that, and we look at the realities of the upfront cost and production time, don't do it.

So, yeah, some will, some won't. Yeah, it's like telling somebody not to do something that they hear from everybody else in the market that they should be doing. Well, okay, it's a hard thing to convince somebody not to do something that they're hearing from all the experts.

Not, not everyone has the talent to do video.

I don't, I don't disagree with you on that point either at all. I'm just saying that the market is telling creators right now to be—

why, why is it? Why do you think that is?

Because of— primarily because of YouTube.

Yeah, exactly. And that's—

and, and that's a factor that we can't, uh, exclude because they are the number one platform to find content in the world right now.

So, you know, gotta do a small percentage of shows.

No, it's the number one platform. It's the second largest search engine.

I understand that. To a small percentage of channels. No, you're talking about YouTube.

If someone's very specific here, if you're searching, you're saying to a small number of channels that are podcasts.

So no, I'm saying when someone goes on YouTube and searches for something, AKA something, they're going to be presented a small number of the top channels. In YouTube. Yeah, there's a lot of search being done, distributed to a small number globally, a small number.

We're talking about two different things. No, we're not.

So if I go on, if I go, if I go on, you're talking about the algorithm versus search. Okay, if I go on, if I go on YouTube and I search for a topic, what do they show me? They show me the top shows only. And those categories for that category of content?

Sure, I would say some of them that come up in the results, but they also have to be relevant to the search query, right?

And again, but they only surface— there's millions of shows on YouTube.

Yeah, right, that was kind of my point. It's, it's, it's not a small—

no, no, content pool. So the content pool is— makes it Nearly impossible unless you're con— unless you have climbed the ranks to be found.

That's— oh, you better, better get in the search results.

Well, everyone is in the search results if they're doing a YouTube channel. They're writing a title, they're writing, uh, but again, YouTube— the same thing with podcasting, they may not be doing it right, but YouTube puts more emphasis on YouTube channels that have had high amounts of playtime, and they may have the same exact— they may have a topic that's rated— they're going to get ranked higher than a show that's brand new or someone that's new trying to grow. If they don't have very many views, they're good. They're not going to be surfaced.

Well, they're an ad business, Todd.

Oh, that's true. They are. They're—

they're—

so where you go, there you go. There you go. You just— bam, you hit it on the head. They're going to surface them that they can sell the most advertising to. Right.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's— I think everybody should know that, right? That that's what they're doing.

In podcasting, when someone searches on Google, yeah, you're going to have some ads maybe in search, but you still have the chance of being surfaced much higher in a Google search than you ever will in a YouTube search.

Well, then I would say that Apple needs to get their act together because what they're doing in their search sucks. So it's not going to generate links to active shows. It's going to clutter your search results with a bunch of archive shows. And that is not what YouTube primarily is doing. That's for sure. So, you know, I think that podcasting can learn from, to some degree, what YouTube does. I'm not, you know, it's this, this conflict between search results or automatic starting to play things. So let's say you watch one video and then once you finish that and you didn't click to watch something else on a purposeful basis and it just defaults to the next video, oftentimes YouTube will default to a more of an archive show, but it'll be relevant to your interests, right? So you look at what Apple does. Apple doesn't really make any suggestions to you that is intelligent around the topics that you enjoy listening to.

But that's not how podcasting is. I don't want to be force-fed another show by Apple. I want to feed my brain and my intellect with the content that I have picked out. And that's what makes podcasting a huge difference. And there's very few times, very few times when I get done playing an episode on any podcast app where there isn't a show that I'm subscribed to doesn't have an episode I haven't listened to available for me to listen to. So the consumption is different.

Well, just keep in mind is that we see, we're seeing this algorithmic model in pod— in for podcasts in YouTube, I think it's going to wind up coming to Spotify and Apple at some point. The same model of algorithms deciding what the next episode that you might want to listen to, or lean back, back experience.

Well, I don't want to be fed content that I'm not supposed to have.

I know you don't, Rob, but there are people out there that may be okay with that.

I don't know.

I don't think that's the way they try to— It's more like a linear radio show.

I think, I think I think the— I think podcasting more is more of a, I have chosen to listen.

I agree with you, Todd.

I think the number of people, if someone forced some content on me, I would quit using the app.

Yeah, but I think you're thinking of it in a very negative light.

It is negative for me. It is negative for me. It's a very negative experience to be forced to listen to something that I don't want to listen to. I don't like being fed different content on YouTube either. I have a big enough channel list that I can go and listen to something else. I don't like being force-fed stuff on YouTube. So maybe it's just me.

Well, it does force the user to make a decision. So let's say they've listened to an episode and they want to not get what the algorithm will recommend to them. They have to go back to their wall and select the next video.

Absolutely. But I've got a playlist, so I don't have to worry about that. I'm always got stuff in my queue. I have to go back to a wall.

So what, what the difference is, is podcasts are basically very similar to a channel on, on YouTube. It's a series of episodes, right? And, but it can be multiple, um, series of episodes. Like, I have probably 4 different series on my one YouTube channel. So in each, some of them are podcasts, considered podcasts in the algorithm, and other ones are, are not. It just depends on what they are.

We understand what that works. But again, Rob, it just goes back. And really, the only argument is here, I think podcasting has been to the point where I don't— if someone wants to be fed, and I'd love to hear this from the audience, do you want to be fed something that an algorithm tells you what's good to be next? No, what I want to do is I want Todd to make recommendations to my audience of other stuff I think, and I want my audience to make recommendations. I just don't—

I'm talking about this. I'm not talking about that. In my view, it's ideal that this is the shift that's going to happen. But I think that the logical conclusion these big tech companies are going to have is that they're going to apply AI technology to create these automated playlists.

They have to, because guess what? They— I don't think Apple will, but I— it's Spotify definitely will, because guess what they want to do? They want to monetize in between that content. They got to pay bills. So, you know, of course they will. And that's what YouTube does. They got to make money. That's why they force you to watch, because you're— if you're not paying for whatever their package is, they run an ad right at that beginning of that next episode that you've been forced that they're forcing on you, right? Because it's, it's all about the money. That's what we have to continue to remember here, is that it's— they're in the business to make money, not put money in creators' pockets, unless you go through huge amounts of jumping through hoops, unless you have huge number of listening hours, and then you get paid a CPM that's absolutely dog crap.

Um, So yeah, and so, Todd, I think this, this kind of takes us down this, this next kind of rabbit hole path on this topic. All I can say is thank God podcasting's free and open, as is, um, the concept of proprietary, uh, platforms, right? And, and that is— that cuts to the chase of this whole conversation.

Well, Spotify's learned podcasting doesn't work on a proprietary platform. So they've, they've opened up and they're now distributing their shows through open RSS.

Well, they've actually been doing that for years now.

No, on their signed shows that they had underneath lock and key, like Joe Rogan.

Okay. The exclusive shows that they have.

Right, right, right.

Yeah. So, but they've, but they're kind of abandoning that, the exclusive I think the days of exclusive content are kind of numbered at this point.

Yeah, they've learned.

But, but you still have to look at like a Netflix and Amazon Prime, and there's exclusives.

Of course they're going to be exclusive there. But I— what percentage of the market share does Amazon Prime have in the podcasting space? Less than what, 1/10?

Well, I'm not really saying it. Yeah, I'm not really saying it as a— is really the same thing as the podcast industry, but it's It's just analogous to the trend lines that we're seeing in media right now around this concept of proprietary versus open, right? And I think we have seen the shift, like you said, Todd, with Spotify shifting back to more open distribution. And I think the big reason for that is that they saw more ad revenue opportunities by getting their content even outside of their platform. YouTube won't do that. It was really a profit motive to actually make that move. It wasn't because they all of a sudden got altruistic about open And yeah, YouTube, YouTube won't do that though. No, because they've, they've built their model around— actually, everything that's going on, Todd, uh, drives more content to YouTube, right? So even, even— well, I guess your strategy is to take content out of their platform and drive it into a new medium, which is right. It's a smart approach. I, I, I think that's a great—

and why do I have different media types, not podcasters. Why do I know different media types saying we want out of X locked-in platform, we want to be open, we don't want to be tied? I think there is a shift even amongst creators, and maybe MrBeast or whatever his name is has figured out that maybe he's worth a lot more on the open market than he is in a closed market.

I would say, Todd, MrBeast is the number one um, online content creator in the world. So I mean, he's even bigger than Joe.

So would you— he probably has realized that he's worth more on the open market than being restricted to a closed market.

So if MrBeast says I need to be other places beyond YouTube, hmm, yeah, I mean, it's interesting, but I don't see his content ever becoming a a podcast unless it's a video podcast. But that's kind of, that's kind of what he's already doing.

He has different content.

So it's kind of what he's already doing.

So, but it doesn't make any sense. But again, it's, uh, people are starting to realize, and it's not just YouTubers, it's not just, it's people that create audiobooks, people that create documentaries, include musicians. They all knew they're getting screwed. Now I saw a That's a TikTok from, um, oh my God, smokes a lot of weed, um, rapper Snoop Dogg. Um, he had, uh, he announced his earnings from Spotify and it was something like, I don't want to say, it was either $52 million or $52 billion one of those two numbers, views on TikTok, I mean on Spotify. And his check was only $52,000. Really? His royalty check that he got. So let me see here. Let's see if I can find this. Snoop Dogg announces earnings from Spotify. Okay. Yes. Snoop Dogg unveiled the stark reality of streaming economics, disclosing a mere $45,000 for a billion Spotify streams. A surprising revelation on Business United Podcast. Now, if you have a billion plays of your music track and you get a shitty little check of $45,000, Then if, if an artist, music artist like this, who has gotten a billion plays on a streaming platform only gets a check for $45,000, there's something seriously wrong, seriously wrong with the compensation for creators. And he hasn't pulled his music from Spotify. But why, why are creators— because these companies don't care about creators. And if we looked at the rev split that probably YouTube and others take and how much money they earn off creators, I think creators, YouTubers, podcasters, music artists, um, book writers, movie creators, maybe it is time to take control. Because I bet you that if I had Snoop Dogg's music in Wavelake and he was doing value for value, that he would have made a heck of a lot more than $45,000 on probably less than a million plays. So there's got to be at some point, regardless of people where, what they want to do and how people want to be moved to live streaming, is it in the benefit of a creator to go all in on this? I, I, I.

Well, Todd, then that begs, begs another question is, well, where do they go and how do they approach? I know that there's a big upswing, and I saw this even at NAB, around platforms that are coming out that are, that are being built, you know, like Patreon and Memberful. And exactly, and, and that are, that are building platforms to support creators in other ways of monetizing and building community.

I think that is What, what have we, you know, yes, yes, yes, and yes, and yes, and yes. Yeah, sure.

That's the blowback from this, is that more creators are going to go out and build their own communities and build their own.

And the challenge is, is maybe you won't, maybe you, maybe you won't be discovered and get so big on YouTube, but maybe you can make more money on your own without The big machine taking a chunk.

So I would say that most of these creators are going to look at and say, well, maybe I need to take like, like a freemium model, which is like put some free content out there in these big platforms to attract people to my—

I think most people like my Close platform. You know, I more and more I participate in value for value, the more I think it's— that's the way to go. It's just because if you're giving value, you get value back and you don't need, you know, you know, the example I gave to a podcaster the other day is like, okay, you know, they wanted to monetize and they have a small show, you know, 2,000, 3,000 listeners. And which, you know, we can probably get them a host read deal for 2,000 or 3,000. I said, you know, for 3,000, let's just say 5,000 listeners, you're probably going to make a gross revenue of $125, after the split, you're left with 70%. Let's say it's $100. You know, gross $100, after split, you're left with $70. For your audience, I said, all you need in your audience is 1 or 2, maybe 3 people to make small donations, and you have already met or made more than what a CPM model is by providing, you know, value, getting donations, Patreon, whatever you want to call it. Um, so again, I think there's economics here that work the other way around. Now, MrBeast, you know, would he have been able to earn the type of money he earned being off YouTube? Probably not. But again, he's an anomaly. He's the, you know, 1/1,000,000th of 1% of the YouTubers out there see his type of success. I'm, you know, again, I don't know what the number is, but yeah, he's actually moving, moving more of his, uh, monetization and distribution off of YouTube because I think probably he's woke up and said, I can make more, I'm worth more off this platform than I'm not giving up 80% of my revenue back to YouTube.

Well, he is seeing it just like what, um, Joe Rogan saw it as, as if he does a deal, right, a distribution deal on some other, sure, more monetized platform like, let's say, Amazon Prime or Netflix or something like that, put his content out over there or off of some cable channel somewhere that he can, he can get a royalty check out of that. That's in addition to—

sounds like, sounds like MrBeast is going to be a trendsetter. Come on, come on, YouTubers, come on. Come on. We'll leave the light on for you.

Come on down.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

I don't think he wants to be yelling at his audience anymore, which would make him a bad podcaster.

You know, and here's the thing too, Rob, I have to play devil's advocate here because you, you have bit the YouTube bug.

It's you are, you've been hypnotized and, uh, I mean, we're playing our parts here, Todd, that are reflective of the market. So, right. Yeah, I also went out and did a meetup at the NAB with a company called YouScreen, and that's not YouStream, it's YouScreen. YouScreen, like in scream?

Screen, like. Screen.

Like. Like you're watching me on this screen, Uscreen, uh, which is a, a, a platform for video creators building profitable membership groups. So that's the purpose of this platform.

Oh my God. Yeah. Look at the price.

Mm-hmm.

I can do better than that. Wow, look at the price.

It says it's the only platform focused entirely on making it easy for video creators to deliver a premium membership with video content, built-in community and mobile apps, and a subscription revenue model built into this.

You're forcing a listener to get another app. It's a failure already. $199.99 plus $1.99 per paid member. Plus you have, oh, $5.99 and then you have to pay for every member that, what is this model? Are you sure I'm on the right plate? Uscreen.tv, is that the right place? Yeah, that's right. This is insane. Why, why would— so I'm going to pay them $1.99 for every person that joins my community.

Well, Todd, let me explain a little bit more what's going on behind the scenes here. This is a platform that caters to— currently today caters to big content creators, right? Ones that have huge numbers that are part of their audience community right now. So that pricing is actually not out of the realm of feasibility for a big creator, right? But they are working on a version of this that will be open to, let's say, podcasters, like everyday podcasters that could utilize this type of an experience to combine audio with video in a community that would be off of, let's say, a YouTube.

So if I have 1,000 people that sign up for my channel, it's $500 plus another $1,500 for the pleasure of my audience joining my channel. How can you pay?

How?

Hey, Todd, I just said that they're going to come out with a lower price plan to accomplish this.

I understand. And you're focused on a kind of a mismatch.

Okay, okay, hang on here. But even a pro plan, even for someone that is famous, How can they afford to pay $1.49? That's like saying, that's like Rob saying, okay, each, I have to pay. Okay, this is the example.

Hey, some of the creators that they're working with are making a half million dollars a year.

Okay. But why do you pay? Okay. This makes no sense.

It's a whole different classification of content creators.

But at the same time, how do I extract $1.49? If I said, okay, Rob, because we're on Blueberry and because we have X number of people that are listening to the show, you have to write me a check for $1.49 for every person that listens to the show every month. That's insane. What model is that?

Well, Tom, they have over 4,000 content creators on the platform.

Well, then that company should be getting— go— if these creators being that stupid to pay this kind of price, Then guess what?

But thought it's working for them.

How are they making more than $1.49 for each person that joins?

That's what the platform does. That's, that's what you're buying when you spend that money is you're buying the tools to be able to monetize on scale like that.

Okay. So what do we get here? Affiliate integration, third-party Zapier integration, shoppable videos, member content migrations.

I, you know, don't need to think beyond just the $20 a month or something, Todd, on, on content distribution.

No, no, I'm thinking, I'm thinking there are tools that are more powerful. I'm thinking, how am I going to extract $1.49 from every person that listens to this show? How do I get, how do I get every listener of this show to pay for this service? How do I extract at least that much money?

What if you charge each of your members $9.99 a month?

Doesn't say anything about that in here.

Well, because the content creator can set whatever price they want. So if they're being charged $1.49, right, per user per month, but yet they're charging $5.99, that's a great—

that's a great model for Uscreen.

My goodness. Yeah, but they're also getting paid to provide a powerful service that can service that particular, uh, private community. Again, so 4,000 creators here on this that are taking advantage of either the Growth Plan or the Pro Plan right now. That's pretty impressive. It's a niche market, definitely.

How many—

so it's going to be like You know, 100,000 content creators. So, uh, let's talk about the top content.

So how, so how many of you that are listening to this show will follow me over to, uh, UScreen? We'll put all the content over there. Uh, Rob and I are paying the hundreds—

not all the content, it would be some derivative content like, like what goes on at Patreon. So, you know, the whole freemium model can, can play here as well if you want to. It's got It's got all of the capabilities that you would want to have a, have a member organization around your, your content. It can be different content from a podcast too. It doesn't have to be the same content.

So it's yoga, fitness, education, entertainment, lifestyle. I can't— it's amazing. It amazes me if people are spending that kind of money.

That's the shift, Todd, from this concept of, of audience to this concept of fans.

So, you know, building a fan community, it's the same thing. Fans is audience. They're all the same.

Not how a content creator needs to think about it, though. If you're building passionate fans, you want to have that additional layer of engagement. Right, that can be monetized. So it's not a kind of a more of a passive relationship that typically happens with a podcast, more of an active, active connection with your audience. Ross says, where that's, that, that's where the future is.

I believe Ross says you don't pay per subscriber only if you're managing a membership community. A subscriber pays $9.99 or $19.99 for access to on-demand videos. They are paying the creator. A lot of creators put courses, type videos, how-tos, entertainment shows up. But a subscriber pays $9.99 to who? YouScreen, or pays $9.99 or $19.99 to the creator?

I'm sure it's paid to the creator and then the platform takes that cut.

Oh, they're gonna— yeah, that $1.49.

Well, it depends on which plan you have. You're paying $4.99 a month. It's a $1.49 paid per member, or if you're paying the $149 a month, then it's $1.99. It's the same model that Patreon has, but it's not—

Patreon just takes a percentage. You don't pay for every creator. So you're, you're basically—

so you could split that down to per, per creator.

Yeah. And it's gonna be what, 3% or 4% or whatever their, whatever their number is. Right, just examples. The money goes to the creator.

Well, yeah, okay, well, again, uh, I mean, this may be— this type of model may be increasingly what we see creators start to move towards, but again, you're under the control of a platform.

Um, it's true. So again, you're going from one locked platform to another locked platform.

See, I think one other thing to take away from this is that it may be that this may be the only way that people can have some form of free speech as we look to the future.

Podcasting, you have all the free speech you want.

Well, I don't know that that's going to remain that way.

Yeah, it's going to remain until I die.

All right, I'm talking about the industry. It's definitely pointing— which, which is a good segue, Todd, because I had a conversation with, uh, some folks that are out there trying to educate people around brand safety and suitability.

Oh God, let's not get into this.

Yeah, so I, I asked a couple of these ladies to come on the podcast at some point to go head-to-head with us on this.

Please, please do that when I'm not on the show, when I'm somewhere, somewhere.

Don't you want to know the nitty-gritty on this topic?

I don't want to hear about censorship.

Yeah, but that's, that's only part of what's being talked about here. So it's— that's a, that's an outcome of this, but it's not understanding the process that is being rolled out in the industry right now. And that's the conversation that I want to have.

It's being rolled out in my platform.

But it is in others.

Well, good. Then people come on down. Blueberry is the home of free speech.

Well, Todd, it's, it's going to increasingly come to the consumption side, not the distribution side.

If I have an RSS feed.

No, but think Spotify, think Apple, you know, think these, the listener side.

And this is, and this is why we have Podcasting 2.0. That's why we have open podcasting app. That's why you have an RSS feed. This ain't going to happen. It's—

but this whole— I mean, Todd, think about it. What happens if Section 230 of the Millennium Copyright Act gets overturned? Because it could.

Yeah, if it does, I think it does.

Then we'll see this stuff roll out in full, full spectrum.

I don't think so.

If Section 230 gets overturned, yes, it will, because it'll be required.

Uh, I'm not enforcing any— any— you got freedom of speech on my platform. I get it. Long as you stay within your—

no, no, I want that terms of service. Saying that that's why we need to have this conversation because this is— people need to understand what's going on behind the scenes.

Did you guys get in a fistfight in the hallway?

There was a thread where I challenged their assumptions because they're drawing this distinction that somehow is— I'm misunderstanding somehow about the difference between— and it's like slicing hairs, in my opinion. Yeah, this difference between brand safety and brand suitability, and somehow there's some unique and valuable aspects of the distinction between these two things, and that's what they're going to come on.

I don't want— I don't want some company to tell me what I should not listen to. I don't need an organization, government, or anyone telling me what I should and shouldn't listen to.

And that's— yeah, but yeah, it kind of goes beyond that, Todd. It's, you know, you're kind of jumping ahead to, to another aspect of it, which is, you know, more impact on what you can consume as a, as a content consumer. What I'm talking about is the application of this technology to the content creator, right? About what they can say and what they can do if they want to monetize their program, because this technology is being applied to content creators that want to monetize through advertising.

Then what's going to end up happening is there'll be a big boomerang that's going to happen. They're going to do this, and then there's going to be such little inventory left to monetize, the advertisers are going to be like, let's fire these people.

But we're losing— we've got to raise awareness to what's happening here.

Well, I think it's well known what's happening.

No, it's not. Most people don't even understand what brand suitability and brand safety is, let alone in the podcast industry or space. I mean, if you're involved in podcast advertising, you're probably more aware of it, but if you're not involved in podcast advertising directly at scale, you're probably not even affected by it.

So if you're not doing advertising, you're not going to be affected.

Well, that's the bigger concern that I have, Todd, is that this technology is going to, just like we've seen with, with YouTube, it's going to roll out, um, in the consumption side of podcasting, uh, and then shows are going to get— episodes are going to get taken down off of the podcasting platforms potentially with the same technology layer.

They won't get taken down. You think they're gonna— oh, I— if If they do that, then it is going to be World War III. Well, okay. So, okay, you start taking content down because someone said something that a computer didn't think was appropriate. When that audience finds out this content's being removed because they've been, they've been told on, on YouTube. Well, because— and that's just— that's the risk of being on YouTube.

It is.

So there's no argument on that. So again, when audiences start being waked up and being told, sorry, content's not available here anymore because the computer removed the content, then there's going to be a visceral reaction. People don't— being— again, people do not like to be told what they can and cannot listen to. And what will happen then— and we've seen this a lot on— I've seen this on YouTuber channels said, hey folks, I just got demonetized, and they're at a loss as to what to do because their ability to get ads, to get whatever this, uh, you know, Super Chat is, that's all been taken away. And the next thing they know, it's just like getting shot in the head because they, they have— they— YouTube has killed them. And killed their, killed their ability to make money. And as enough people have this happen to them, they will wake up. There has to be a better way. And that's what will be the demise of these platforms. When they bring the hammer too hard and piss too many people off, piss too many creators off, the pendulum will shift. But until it gets so painful, until it gets so painful, it won't— it's just going to continue to— the stupidity is going to continue.

Well, it's— the risk is kind of, uh, as a content creator, self-censoring what you're talking about in the program. And increasingly that is happening. Well, then, for a variety of motivational reasons.

Yeah, money in the market.

Money, money. Well, that's, that's the lever that's being used right now in the podcasting space. It's all about access to ad support. So if you talk about content in your, in your podcast, right, and it gets picked up by these brand suitability and safety algorithms, they will flag it as a problem content.

As soon as I mention the word Elon Musk, then this content is flagged for brand safety.

Yeah, that's, that's kind of how it works, right? And my question of, of those platforms is how sophisticated are they to understand deep context to what's being discussed. So are they still living in the realm?

You just want to give me a heart attack bringing these people on and want me to go to war with them.

Well, Todd, if we just let it happen in the background and nobody's aware of it, it's gonna one day it's gonna come up and it's gonna bite us all in the ass and like, so how come we didn't know about this?

Well, again, primarily now it's expecting people that are advertising, but I agree if it starts going beyond that, it already is on YouTube. It's already going beyond advertising.

I think we've already seen the, the fact that it doesn't really— I mean, it hasn't negatively impacted in any kind of tangible way that I've seen YouTube. So, you know, because if you think about the provisions—

if your favorite channel's demonetized, it affects you. Yeah, the creator's quitting.

Okay, but most of the creators, or most of the audience members, don't really know when something has been removed.

Uh, must, must channels when they are demonetized, specifically demonetized.

And oftentimes the consumer of the show doesn't know that. Well, so I've heard it a lot happening in the background. This is happening in the background. It's directly impacting content creators. And it's also a reason why we're seeing the growth of an alternative economy type platforms like a Rumble, is that people are you know, doing that shift between YouTube and Rumble, because Rumble won't take you down if you talk about topics that, you know, maybe are considered by YouTube to be controversial.

Or if, you know, if you're a government that tries to censor politicians and, uh, well, you know, welcome to our world, right?

Is, yeah, we're all being monitored and we're all being listened to, and, and increasingly that capability is growing. So, well, that's, that's, that's the reality of our world today.

All I can say is I think everybody knows that, Todd.

It's just that a lot of people aren't willing to say it.

Well, and it's— most people say, oh, it can't happen to me, until it does.

Well, it's like, if it's the old argument, Todd, if you don't say anything controversial, then, uh, you're never going to get in trouble.

But in the eyes of who?

No, just generally. Well, no, if you don't take a contrary view to whatever political position that's in favor out there, right, right, right, then you're not going to get in trouble. And as long as you conform to what the expectations are, you're not going to get in trouble. Conform! Conform! That's the danger here, right?

It is the danger. And this is why open podcasting, open RSS, is the ultimate form of anti-censorship.

Right. And this show is about what's happening in the media landscape, the new media landscape. And I'm not holding back on talking about important topics in this medium. I know that there are many people out there in the podcast medium and outside of the podcast medium that are very, very kind of hesitant to talk about what's actually happening. In the, in the new media industry right now.

Because guess why? They're gonna have—

they're gonna get all scared of losing their career.

They're gonna get— they're all scared of— they're gonna get ramifications. No, they're gonna get cut off from the cash supply.

Yeah, they're, they're concerned about losing their jobs, or they're concerned about pissing off the wrong person because they took the wrong position. Standing up and saying no Well, it's even beyond that, Todd. It's just helping people understand what's happening, and maybe that will inspire others to object as well, Todd. So I mean, we're safer in numbers than we are as individuals. So let's say there's only 5 people in the world calling this out. Those 5 people can easily be taken out, right? But if there's a million of us—

You got a bulletproof vest?

Rob Greenlee, right? If there's a million of us, they kind of have a hard time doing that, right?

So first, you know, it won't be the first time I've had to wear a jacket. Yeah.

I mean, and this, and this is the other point that I'm trying to drive here too, is that this technology doesn't have to be used for bad. It can be used for good purposes.

Most of it's being used for bad, right?

And, but, but what my pushback is, is that let's use this technology to better Target the brands with the audience based on psychographics and demographics, not political graphics, right? Or cultural graphics.

Let's, let's not be as concerned about that because I don't believe I can do that. I can do that without brand safety.

This is, this is, this is what I challenge, um, others that talk about this that are in the research side. I say, have you done any studies that actually correlate a reduction of ROI for being compliant with these brand safety platforms. So, um, are you seeing an increase in ROI? Are you seeing a decrease? Are you seeing, um, fewer numbers of shows?

No one's going to answer this.

No one's going to answer this because of these brand safeties.

No one's going to answer that, right? So if we want to hit— you know why? You know why they're not going to answer that? It doesn't fit the narrative.

Right, but what's true? That's the, that's the question. Or, or are we not playing?

What, what is, what is, what is true is that some people think that adults can't think for themselves and they think they need to protect us, uh, from ourselves. That's what they think. And it's ultimately stupid. And, and this is what they ultimately say back to the advertisers. Is that these people are too stupid to protect themselves such that you should not advertise. Maybe that's not the right analogy, but you should not advertise on this show because of the perception.

Yeah. Well, just think about it, Todd. The New York Times in an op-ed like about a month and a half ago came out saying that the New York Times podcasts are being negatively impacted based on brand safety platforms.

That tells you, uh, You know, that's hard to believe, is, you know, from their political standpoint, it's hard to believe that they're being—

well, they're being targeted because these brand safety and suitability platforms, uh, may or may not be as capable as they're being portrayed to be. Um, their, their argument was that, um, just to give you an example, the— some of the podcasts, um, you know, they're they're news shows, so they're covering like war topics and things like that, and they're using the word gun in there, right?

Just like me using the word Elon Musk, right?

And those are being flagged as not brand safe, right? Just— and my question for them is, are you really analyzing this on the context of what is being how that works.

How did that conversation go with these brand safety pundits?

I didn't really have that particular point with them yet. So that's what I wanted to have on this show is that—

Ooh, that could be a lively one.

Are these algorithms that they're utilizing to evaluate programs, are they taking into account proper context?

Well, I don't believe— You know what they're going to say?

Oh yes, of course. I know, but then why is the New York Times complaining that they got—

they're not using our service—

they used the word gun, they're not using our news reporting?

It'd all be deflection. They're not using our service. They should be using us instead of the, you know, the company that they're using. That'll be the deflection. Everyone does this.

Yeah, but it's happening from increasingly— it started out as happening at the agencies, at the ad buying agencies. Uh, and then increasingly it's been moving to the distribution platforms, um, this brand safety, because increasingly we've seen distribution platforms, um, have advertising.

Yeah, because they're advertising, they're advertising against the content and making money off that. And right, they're also selling the advertising into those programs and the creator doesn't get jack of that.

So Well, and it's also being, being done as kind of a default evaluation. And, and sometimes, at least I don't know that that's happening right now, that all the creators don't always know that they're being evaluated based on these criteria.

Anyone that's taken advertising has to know that already. If they're not, they're sleeping.

Now, now they do. But in the early days, I'm not sure that everybody knew that their shows were being run through these algorithms because they were they were being done at the agency level before they made the buy. So, but I do think that's changed now. I think it's now at the level of the agency, beyond the agency, it's at the platform level. So if you're like an ad sales platform that's associated with the hosting platform, those ad sales representatives will likely run their shows that they're repping into agencies.

I'm going to have Ted. 10 Tylenol— not 10 Tylenol, I'll have to have 10 Tums before we talk to these people. So I don't know, and I'm going to sit and let you go to war because if I say anything, I'm probably going to say stuff I'll regret and get fired for.

Well, that's what makes this whole thing so unfortunate is because I think that there's a willingness on, on those platforms' part to to talk about this stuff. I'm just not sure that they're going to talk about it in a way that really answers all these questions.

Well, they're going to sell their narrative. They're there to sell a service. They're there to make money by analyzing this data. They're going to sugarcoat it in any way they can and make them sound like they're the perfect angels and doing the best for the consumers listening to this content to protect them from bad content and to protect The, the information and disinformation is the goal, Todd. Again, again, I don't need any Big Brother, any company, any service telling me, right?

If I want to— yeah, and brand safety under their definition is topics that are not aligned with the values of the brand.

Don't advertisers realize that if I'm listening to show 123. I'm listening because I like that show and that I'm going to support an advertiser that is running in that show. Now, where the problem comes in is you have some looky-loo, some looky-loo that doesn't— not even a fan of that show— it's going to come in evaluating it and they're going to say, oh, oh my God, Brand XYZ is advertising in this show. 'Oh my God, I'm going to boycott them,' instead of minding their business.

Well, that's kind of— that kind of— I mean, I think there's a good example of that out there right now, and it's Tesla. Um, I think it's got caught up in the political divide out there, and there are certain individuals out there in the world— and this is probably the argument that they're going to— they could make— is that there are perceptions on the part of consumers out there that are politically leaning towards supporting certain companies that have opposite leanings in their kind of political orientation.

You know, you know, Elon was the darling of the left until he bought X, and now he's the archenemy, right?

But that's a good example. So let's say you're Brand X and you look at advertising, for Tesla, which Tesla is not really advertising very much, but they, but they may start advertising. So certain brands may not want to advertise associated, uh, with, you know, what, or even the content may not align with, with, uh, running a Tesla.

So as soon as you throw politics into the, into the equation, people just lose their freaking minds.

Yeah, people are losing friendships.

People are— oh, that's been going on.

That's been going on since COVID Yeah, but it's even— I think it's even getting worse now. I think there's families being divided along political lines. Oh, that was happening.

Talk to each other. Rob, that was happening hardcore during COVID It was the vaxxers, anti-vaxxers, the folks that never say, I'm not taking the shot, you know. I agree with you. And then, oh, you're not taking a shot, you're putting—

but it's not getting any better.

No, it's not. But that's when it started. Yeah, that's when it started.

You know, I mean, I think even, even, even business deals between people now always have a political undertone now.

So let me, let me show you. Are you with us or against us? Let me show you something here. Uh, uh, let me get the— let me get it here. There we go. This is what we need to show on the show right now. Let me bring it up here. There we go.

Don't tread on me. Isn't that a military thing, Todd?

It is. It is.

It is. Yeah. I think the reality is we in our society, and this is the soapbox that I'm starting to get on too, we need to respect our opinions. Yeah, different opinions. And those opinions don't have to hurt anybody. You as an individual can only allow something to hurt you.

It's the old argument of sticks and stones break my bones, but words don't hurt us.

That's what—

that's been around for a long time. But people say words do hurt me now. So that's the problem.

We've moved out of that.

Rob, we're old. We're old. We're old, so of course we're old, so of course, you know.

Yeah, but it's the ideology of victimhood is what's kind of behind a lot of this, and that's the societal shift that's happened is that people are able to capture power by portraying themselves as victims.

I don't want to go into this. This turns into a conversation that has no good ending.

That's the problem, Todd, is that if nobody ever talks about it, it's—

I talk about it on my tech show all the time. I said I don't want anyone— and again, I'm not listening to anything radical, but I don't want anyone telling me what to listen to. And I'm smart enough to make up my own— the thing is, here is wherein lies the issue. I think the American public, or any public in the world, has the ability to choose what they want to listen to, what they don't want to listen to.

It's when the looky-loos— why does someone else have to decide what I can hear?

Right, right, right. Or how—

and again, that's really risky, actually.

Yeah. And I think everyone should be able to listen to what they want. They should be able— and this is where, you know, maybe we get to the point where advertisers won't be able to advertise in anything.

Well, I think it's a big threat to the advertising industry, uh, as you look into the future, and why, why we're seeing this shift towards like a U-screen. Right. Is, is that that's more member direct relationships with content creators.

So that's the only safe pathway. So again, we have that in place today in the podcasting space, value for value. Mm-hmm. You can participate in the value for value community. We're giving you value, give value back. Time, talent, or treasure. We don't need a fancy platform to spend $500 a month at $1.49 a head. Facilitate that. We have an open platform that facilitates that today on podcastapps.com.

Ding ding! And we have that as long as we have it, but, but the tools are not as developed.

Oh, we just put it that way. Well, we know it's a challenge for people to, to do streaming SATs, and that's, you know, that's—

I mean, that's why, that's why Patreon has existed for as long as it has, is for that reason alone is that podcasting doesn't really have that dynamic built into its widespread distribution.

So Adam and Dave, if you're listening here, you know, this, you know, we do need to make it easier for people to use real fiat cash in apps to do value for value.

So yeah. Yeah.

Some way to do that. Well, there is, they've got the, you know, we have that available. We just gotta get the apps to surface those donation links that leads to our PayPal and so forth. So, you know, that is covered, but it's not really embedded. You can't do, you know, streaming sats, you can't do micropayments, but maybe there could be something where you get to the end of listening to a show and said, hey, you decided to contribute $0.25 a minute. Here's your bill, pay your invoice. You know, I don't know, but, or pay in advance. I know some people are screaming at me right now. All right, we are like long, long, long. Yeah, we are. Yeah.

All right, I'm tired.

Almost 2 hours this time. I'm exhausted. So by the way, I will not be available the week of May. I will not be available 2 shows from now. I will be able for the next show and the next show, but no show on the 8th for me. And if you want to go solo and invite those brand safety people on and argue in my proxy, feel free. Um, it's just, I just get exhausted thinking to have to talk to those folks because I, I already know how it's going to go. I can predict, I can predict what they're going to say to almost a word. It's not that bad, it's not that bad, we're not really doing that. No, we're not doing that.

I can hear it now.

Yeah, yeah, well, maybe, yeah, and maybe we need to maybe expose the hypocrisy would be good.

Well, it just, I think making more people aware of how it works, how it's being rolled out, um, as more people want to monetize their shows and think sponsorship is the pathway.

Adventures in Audio. Or advertising. Adventures in Audio on YouTube said, we would love to see a show on this subject.

I'm sure, I'm sure they would. Especially after this topic discussion we've had on this episode.

Yeah, just to see, just to see the war that would break out, I'm sure.

I don't want it to be a war. I, I think both sides lose in that. But, um, I think it's really to have an intelligent conversation about it. Hopefully it— we can, we can peel back the layers of this onion a little bit and have a deeper understanding of how it works.

But the problem is I don't think they'll be fully transparent.

I don't trust them to be fully transparent, but well, it may not be in their best business interest to do so, right?

So are you really going to get the truth? Are you just going to get a, get a pat you on the head and be a good little dog and go away?

I guess we'll, we'll have to find out, won't we?

All right, we've had a lot of you on the stream. And yes, Stephanie, people are losing friendships over opinions. Yes, that has happened a lot. Now, lucky Rob and I are still good friends. We haven't lost our friendship yet. But, you know, if we get to the point where we need to do that, we'll just— we'll take a timeout and go to a boxing ring and, you know, strap on.

So, Todd, it's going to be around this whole topic of video. I definitely think that's what's going to drive us apart.

Oh, okay. Whatever. You're not going to get rid of me that easy. Okay. I know. I know. All right. Thanks for being here. And I'm Todd at blueberry.com, at geeknews, at geeknews.chat on Mastodon, the last reference, another place of free speech. And of course, at Geek News on X, where hopefully Elon lets loose on the Brazilians. I want to see that. The Brazilians, the Brazilian Supreme Court Judge. I hope we get to see that entire thread.

And Elon— oh, that's, that's, that's right.

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

But you know, he's— that company is, uh, going through some tough times right now.

So, you know, gotta admit, uh, you know, he's— he does what he says.

Love him or hate him. Yeah, I still haven't gotten my FSD 12X quite yet, uh, in my car.

You haven't paid the $99 a month for it, or, uh—

No, I was, I was supposed to get a free 30 days of it, but they haven't sent the update to a certain subset of vehicles. I believe that the subset of vehicles have ultrasonic, um, capability in them.

Now that it's, now that it's warmed up a little bit, you can actually safely drive somewhere, Rob.

No. I can? Okay.

I just drove, I just drove all the way down to Newark, New Jersey in my car. It's warm again. It's not 20 below. So yeah, just teasing you. I know you are. All right, everybody.

Rob. All right. I'm on, on X as well at Rob Greenlee. And you can find me at robgreenlee.com. I'm doing another live show tomorrow night, Thursday night at 7 PM Eastern. And I'm going to be talking about podcasting and the convergence with video and, and on that show for, for StreamYard.

So, so come check it out. And if you stayed with us for an hour and 50 minutes, we must have gave you some value. So, uh, the PayPal link is at newmediashow.com. Everyone take care, we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.