Discussing Closure of Stitcher, New Libsyn CEO | New Media Show Live - 6-28-2023-Edited

Welcome to the New Media Show.

We're back doing the New Media Show again.

People are actually going to listen to this junk.

We do it live.

We're live right now.

We're just doing live.

We're going live. We're going live.

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

Let's go. Just do it live. We're going live. We're going live.

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

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

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

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

We do it live, do the New Media Show again.

The New Media Show.

Technology.

We make it sound so special. So here we are back with the New Media Show. And Rob, I got you cranked all the way up. So hopefully— and it was just one notch. So hopefully you're just as loud as me. People have been complaining that you're quieter.

Yeah, I don't know if it's just because I'm— I have a quiet personality, if that's, that's what it is.

Well, you're, you're definitely blowing me out now. Hang on. All right, so I just, I just turned you down in my ears because I, I don't know, it was a little loud. It was just a little bit loud, but, uh, yeah, here we are. So, uh, you learned something new today about, uh, live streaming, didn't you?

I did a little bit trying to, trying to work with YouTube on trying to stream this show on, on, on my channel.

Yeah. So what happens is in StreamYard, you authenticate your account. You can do that with Livewire too. You can authenticate the account. So when you go live, instantly YouTube goes live. I can do that with Restream.io for my account too, because I know my credentials. Now, if I had your username and password to your YouTube account, I could authenticate your account as well. But so what we did is you have to set up a manual stream, and I do that anyway as well so that the YouTube channel isn't there sitting there running for 60 seconds while we're getting going. And then when everything's ready to go and everything looks kosher, then I can go live and then I don't have to do a post edit in YouTube. So. Anyway, but yes, we're streaming live. This show is live now as a live show, and it will be available later as a recorded podcast.

So, right, there you go. There you go. Now that we got that cleared up, right?

You know, there, you know, there, we did get some action last week that I didn't pay attention to, sadly, with the boost that came in for the show. We're— of course, we were lit and live as we are today. We're live streaming on a variety of podcast apps right now, audio and video, two different channels of content. And people can watch live in those apps and they can participate in the Value for Value program by sending us boost. And the first boost that we got last week was Matt says, I can't figure out if I'm— if you're— if I prefer telling YouTubers that they don't have a podcast but a show, or say nothing and feel all smug inside. That was 2,112 sats. Bob says, thanks, Todd, here are a few geek bucks, take care. That was from Bob. Dave Jones says, keep preaching the gospel. He sent us 25,000 sats.

Wow, okay.

And then, and so, uh, we appreciate that, Brian. And, and Brian says, hey, I appreciate you guys, but I would have loved to hear each of you actually be able to define what you're trying to say and make a point without being interrupted. I have an opinion on this, but I don't feel like I actually heard either one of you actually share how you actually think about these points in a clear way. I think we solved it near the end of the show, if you— at least after about an hour, Brian. So if you weren't there, Todd's basis is we don't care where listeners listen and let's educate podcasters. That's it. That's it.

Well, I think we had definitely agreed on the last part of that is that the podcasters do need to know the difference between doing a podcast and maybe as the momentum is growing out there of calling every other online content distribution platform a podcast too. So that's the, that's really the crux of the, of the question is whether or not as a podcasting industry, we're okay with the word being used to describe what's being distributed on YouTube or Spotify or whatever, because they're, they're already calling it that. So they're already telling their audience that it's that. It's just, are we as an industry, are we willing to accept that in addition to our technical definition of what a podcast is?

So I say no. And I think Rob says yes.

I think I'm open to it. I'm not sure that I— I mean, I've been a purist for most of my life, so, so it's, it's hard for me to kind of change too much on this.

But again, it's, it's, it's about— again, we don't care. The listeners can do what they want to do. I don't want to beat a dead horse.

Yeah, and they can call it what they want.

They can call it what they want. But they are— if we, if we educate the podcasters then maybe they'll do a good job in educating their audience.

So, and as that happens, these proprietary consumption platforms like YouTube and Spotify are, you know, taking hold of that word and applying it to what they're doing. And so that's the pressure that we're seeing. So I hope that clarifies the core of the issue here.

It's really not an issue. It's just an ideology.

Yeah, it's— there's nothing really new about this because this has been a topic that's been discussed for years. It's just really, I think when YouTube made that shift to having the ability to convert playlists into what they term as a podcast has kind of muddied the waters on this discussion.

And just, just so everybody's clear, I don't care what you do with your own show. You know, but I'm just pretty passionate in the, in the space and I have strong opinions. So, you know, I'm a podcaster. So, uh, right.

And right or wrong, video is increasingly becoming an important element of podcasting.

Some shows, right?

But in the minds of new content creators and many out there, and some of the ones that are advocating out there, um, it, it appears that video is becoming— coming back somewhat. And that's That's what we were trying to do.

I think, I think the key here is with that too is good luck with that.

Yeah, it's not an easy answer.

It's not easy. And if you're just putting a YouTube embed on your website, you're not really— you're doing a show if you're the creator. For listener, they don't care.

Uh, David, you could just, just make the overall argument, and I've made this argument for years myself, is that, you know, what we are doing here is a show. It's not really a podcast, or it's not a YouTube channel.

That's not— it's just a show, but it is distributed as a podcast and it is available on a YouTube channel.

Yes. That's a, that's a descriptive term to describe what has been traditionally defined as the distribution approach.

So, so I do want to thank David. They say, Todd, Rob, thanks for clearing that up. Beauty Bubble says, I'm taking notes on authentication jargon. I must work that out. You know, it's, it's just technical stuff that Rob and I go through here doing. Because we're multicasting, we're streaming to about 8 or 9 different locations at the same time.

I mean, Todd, Todd, to be honest with you, I don't want to come across as a hypocrite on this. So we're, we're doing all the things.

It's just what we say we are doing, and we have been doing it for more than 10 years.

Yeah, right.

So this is not new for us, for live streaming. So, right.

Well, I, back in the early days of podcasting, I worked on the Zoom platform for, for Microsoft, and that was a huge video platform with podcasting. So, you know, I go way back with this. And that's why I have passion for it, because I think that there is a place for it to come back in a stronger way to help build better connections with audiences, just like what we've done with this show, I think to some degree.

And Beauty Bubble says as well, maybe it does help to understand the etymologies. And from my research, there are a few that follow the term podcast. Well, Again, it, it, I think in the, in the end here, what we, what we really want is just an education process. I was talking to someone yesterday and they said, well, monetization is much easier on YouTube. And I was like, no. I said, today, at least with my company, if you are a brand new podcaster, if you got one listener you're not gonna make any money. You can turn on monetization immediately, you know, you, you can turn that switch on right now. So making, making money is not difficult. And, you know, and if you— depending on— it doesn't matter where you are creating content, you have to have multiple strategies when it comes to being able to, you know, if you want— if monetization is the goal, again, if that's the goal of the show then, you know, what we're doing here with this new value for value, it's not new, but what we're, what we're trying to make people understand is that I can monetize in podcast apps today, in which you have to have 3,000 viewer hours in a rotating month on YouTube before you can even turn that piece on. Um, so anyway, so just, just know your options out there as content creators. But let's talk, let's switch to the story of the day. And this is a funny one. This, I saw this and I scratched my head a little bit. What an absolute fall from grace. Stitcher.

I think it was destined to happen. So we can, we can dive into the details of that. But, um, but yeah, go ahead and keep going and just kind of set it up so we can.

How long has Stitcher been out, Rob? I don't, I was, I didn't have time to go back into my archives and see when the first appearance of Stitcher was, but.

They, they initially launched their platform officially out of kind of like a beta phase in 2008.

Okay, so they've been around 14 years, 15 years. And at the peak, and I again, I'll have to go back and look at data, at peak they had captured globally, I want to say 4, 4.5, something like that, maybe as high as 5. Which was, in all circumstances, that was a home run. Yeah.

And a little background around me with Stitcher, I'll be happy to share here, but, um, I had the choice between going, going to work for Microsoft Zune or going to work for Stitcher back in 2007.

So which would, which should have you picked?

Um, well, I'm, I'm happy I picked going to work for, for Microsoft. That turned out to be a 7-year career. Um, but But I, I would have been working with Noah, the CEO of Stitcher, if I would have taken that position.

And you might have cashed out.

Well, yeah, but as we've seen over the history of that, that app, it has struggled over the years and it has changed hands many times. And there may be a lot of, a lot of people are just not familiar with what actually, what the trajectory of that app has been. Over, over the years, that, that app was actually modeled, uh, to some degree. And I talked to Noah about this very early in the days after the platform I was working on back in 2005 called Mobilecast. So they actually took a lot of the thinking around, uh, making audio podcasts available on mobile devices from Mobilecast, which was really kind of pioneering this concept of being a platform that converts audio from MP3 into usable formats that can be used on the early dumb phones, which would be pre-smartphones, right? Back in that timeframe, because even back in 2008, a lot of, you know, RAZR phones and things like that were accessing podcasts. And that was about the same timeframe that the iPhone launched. So that was kind of a transition period. But Stitcher had been architected to deliver more than one type of file format, which put them in a position where they had to transcode or re-encode audio files. And they took a lot of heat for that because they were ultimately hosting those media files.

Right.

Caused a lot of consternation with content creators, as you might imagine.

So, you know, it's went through multiple owners, lots of money, lots of money has been spent. Now the platform. So just my understanding is from the announcement, it's just The website and the app is going away, but the other creator stuff is staying. So that's kind of Pandora's current owner's gateway, I guess, into— again, it's going to be interesting to see what happens here because people are worried about how they're going to get on Pandora. And just makes you wonder if Pandora's pulling back. But, you know, to achieve a 4, 4.5% global market share was significant. And, you know, we had a request that came in via text this afternoon, and I didn't have a chance to pull all the data. Matter of fact, my phone is not sitting here. Forgive me. Who sent it? He's going to shoot me. It came from what's his name? Darth Vader. Uh, oh yeah, so people are like, who the hell are you guys talking about? Uh, what's his name? I'm, I'm sorry, he's shooting.

Jay Soderbergh.

Yes, Jay. Oh my God, I'm sorry, Jay. I'm having— had a senior moment here. Jay had asked, um, you know, he knew we were going to talk about this. He says, where are— you know, there's all kinds of survey data and where everything stands right now. And we've made some changes at Blueberry here recently, and I don't have access, so I had to do some like quick work to get some math. I guess I had to dump stuff into a spreadsheet. I didn't have my nice pretty GUI, but at Blueberry today, Stitcher was at 0.3% with about, um, 0.3. Wow, 0.3% with about 2.4 million listens in the month of May.

Wow, that's a big fall.

Big fall. So compared to Apple, specifically Apple Podcasts is at about 58, 58.5%. Spotify for Blueberry is only at like 7%. Web browsers, believe it or not, because you would think this because we have a heavy WordPress usage base, is about 7, 7.5% on people that go to actual website and still listen to podcasts. And that's, that's a, we always run 3 to 5% higher than everyone else just because of the makeup of our customers. Google Podcast is about 6.5, Overcast 4.7. And you see Overcast today is carrying essentially the same type of traffic that Stitcher did before.

Right.

And then it's Podcast Addict and Pocket Cast. Um, Podcast Addict with 3.7, Pocket Cast with 2.6. That's the ones I did the quick, quick math on. Uh, on the web browser breakup, Chrome gets about 90% of that total traffic, uh, with the Firefox and Safari and the rest of them getting the, the rest of it, at least at Blueberry. So Um, but for us, Spotify is very, very low compared to like Buzzsprout or someone else.

Yeah. And I think that's the key thing to keep in mind as, as you see these specific platform distribution kind of breakdowns on this is that it does vary. It's the same thing that I saw at Lipson. Uh, Lipson has a very high percentage of longtime podcasters on their platform that have been doing podcasts for many, many years. And the distribution of, um, on Spotify is significantly less than Apple, where, where you look at like a newer platform like Buzzsprout and the platform distribution to Spotify is a lot higher percentage. So it depends on the content creators that are in that platform dictates a lot of that distribution.

And, you know, in, in my site, my personal site, because I have built such a huge web-based traffic to it. My web traffic is, is massive. My personal show gets about, uh, around 27% of its audience listens on the website. Wow, it's incredibly high, right? Um, and that, you know, that is way outside the, the norm, but it's just because of how I built my show and because we're driving people to the site and so forth.

Yeah, because you've got a real aggressive kind Google SEO strategy, right?

But still, if I look down my personal site, Apple's right up there, um, Podcast Addict, Overcast, Downcast for iOS, Google, and that's kind of, kind of my stack. So my, you know, again, my, my makeup for my show does not fit a typical norm. Um, which, you know, I, I'm not— I am not on the, on the, on the curve, right? And I even have a high percentage of Linux users too that come to the website. So that, you know, it's a tech show, so, you know, what would you— what would you— you know, what would you expect?

You get all the geeks.

Yeah. Um, all right, so, um, but go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if you want to dive into a little bit of the history, a little bit more of the history of Stitcher and kind of what, what this means beyond, you know, I know that James Cridland did a, did a pretty thorough breakdown of this and even, even created a special features page on his platform that was talking about the kind of looking back at the history of the sometimes, as he says, 'Controversial Podcast App' in a special article, and he links to an article that I wrote back in 2015 about business models and podcasting and mentioned Stitcher as an example of something that was developing in the industry at the time that I was concerned about, and that's the listening apps trying to monetize without including the content creators in that business model. Spotify. So yeah, there's that. There's been pressure on that. And it's, it's something that I raised in the article too, is, is this reality that these listening apps, if they don't have any other business model strategies attached to them, tend to have a difficult time bringing in revenue unless they're a subscription platform, which some have chosen to go that route too.

Yeah. Now, Rob, this show iOS is at 56%. Podcasts for iOS is at— or Apple Podcasts, excuse me— 56%. Overcast, 13%. Podcast Addict, 12%. Um, and then it's just an intermix of stuff. We've, you know, example, our browser share for New Media Show is at 2%. So, you know, it goes completely the opposite way.

So Spotify on the list anywhere?

No. Well, let me go look. Let me see how far down it is. Uh, Spotify, how far do I have to go? Uh, it's, it is literally, um, less than 1%. Um, but again, the top, really the top 10 is Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Downcast, for iOS, believe it or not, Castos. And then the next is, well, Spotify and Stitcher and Alexa and CastBox. They're all— I'd have to pull the spreadsheet to get the actual total download numbers, but it's again less than 1%. And there's a lot of apps in there. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Well, let me do it by page. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60-some apps are less than 1%. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they don't even break the 1% curve. So, you know, it's— it is what it is. You would think a podcast about podcasting, everyone's going to be using apps. That's exactly what it— you know, it's what it kind of pawns out here. Operating systems, you know, it's kind of funny. Yeah.

If you're a podcaster, you're probably—

yeah, you're listening on an app.

Well, if you're in Stitcher right now, likely what's going to happen is you're probably going to be listed in the upcoming update to the SiriusXM app. And then I heard that the web pages for all those podcasts are going to be available through Pandora.

Yeah.

So, so it's kind of a blended strategy. And, and I talked to that team back then when they, you know, when SiriusXM acquired Stitcher, I said, so are you guys going to manage having 3 listening platforms? As far as your, your media company? Because I, I'm skeptical, you know, back when that happened, I was like saying, well, you guys gonna roll these up together? You're gonna shut stitch her down eventually and put all the podcasts into some of the other listening platforms because, you know, it takes resources, it takes staff, it takes all sorts of things to keep 3 listening platforms that compete against each other going. And so just from an efficiency standpoint in a corporate organization or from a revenue standpoint, you kind of want to focus a little bit, right, and not spread your resources so thin across you know, especially as you've seen with Stitcher, a declining market share because it just didn't get the investment behind it to keep it, the market share up. So, you know, this whole thing was inevitable. Rob Greenlee, right?

Comments are exploding. People tune in for round 2 of the cage match. 5150 sats from Dave Jones. I tuned in this week for part 2 of the cage match. 3,330 sats from Mike. YouTube channels are not podcasts. 5,150 sats from Dave Jones. He says, here's my basic issue. If suddenly TikTok sucks all of the monetization out of YouTube, well, that's what's happening. All the podcast consultants will start calling TikTok podcasts also. The digital ad sector of podcasting changes the definition of podcasts whenever the money trail leads to some new platform. I remember for a brief moment Clubhouse was a podcast. So Dave is absolutely Right. And another 33, 33 sats again from Mike Dell saying, Mike, YouTube channels are not podcasts. Now we go over to the YouTube forum. It says, Ross says Facebook is actually the fourth app for listening to podcasts and they don't even have any integration. Again, that's somebody saying some, some stuff that is blowing, blowing smoke.

Well, that's the Signal Research that came out this past week. Actually, I'm going to have, uh, Paul Rismandel on the show next week to run that down for us.

No, okay, the only time someone watches this podcast on Facebook is when we're live, and everyone's on YouTube today. There is a bunch of people on YouTube, and on Facebook, uh, hardly any. One, one's watching the live stream today on, on Facebook. So it's not a podcast, right?

I know, Facebook, Todd, right?

It's— yeah, it's just a show. Eileen says, hey Todd and Rob, what's What's up everyone? Ross again says— oh wait, um, Eileen says, I remember with Stitcher was the only podcast app to send Android users. Oh, that's true.

Well, and in cars too. Yeah, that's, that's the thing that, that's what their calling card was in the early days, was that they were the, the app that had the integration in vehicles.

Eileen says, I listen on Overcast. Why are you using that old legacy app, Eileen? Get on, go over to podcastapps.com and get yourself a modern podcast app. Darren says Podcast Addict user. You're on the right track there. Podcast Addict's adopting Podcast 2.0 stuff. Beauty Bubble says, can you assess when precisely things started to go wobbly for Stitcher? First, it was really that first transaction when they were bought by— what was it, Scripps?

Yeah, well, it was really— Stitcher was really kind of a tag-along to the real property that was valuable, and that was mid-roll. Yeah, so that's actually what, what everybody was buying was mid-roll. It just so happened Stitcher was part of, part of it.

Ross says again, so should new shows still add their podcast to Stitcher? I'd say no. Well, it's kind of the gateway to Pandora.

Well, no, um, or is it? What they're doing is they're, they're, they have created submission engine through, um, uh, the, um, the SiriusXM platform. So you can go— sorry, go to Sirius and submit your podcast there. They've been— actually, I talked to the team, this was probably a year and a half ago, that said that they were going to consolidate the submission process. Um, so all new podcasts would go into one submission process and they would get made available to all three of the Yes, yes, the number one podcast listening app in the world. iHeartRadio, right?

Yes, yes, yep. And then again, global reach less than 1%. So again, the number one. Woohoo! Yeah, they're the number one. Yeah, whatever, for maybe for their shows.

I thought, I thought Spotify was number one now, Todd.

Oh well. For their shows.

But who at the end of the day has the most consumption and downloads?

Apple.

It's Apple. Right.

Well, everyone says Spotify does because Spotify has a big—

No, no. Spotify has the most listeners or the most users or the most, you know, but they don't have a history of consuming a lot of content.

No one ever from Spotify has ever emailed any of my shows saying, listen to your show on Spotify.

Um, I, I agree, Todd, but oftentimes what they talk about is apples and oranges, right?

And we're not—

Spotify never talks about how many episodes are actually watched, right? Or, yeah, or listened to on their platform as a comparison to Apple.

Beauty Bubble says, watch out, Todd is wagging the finger. So that's, uh, that coming across Hawaiian. Uh, I mean, same people who thought they were listening to podcasts on YouTube last year, now they think they're listening to podcasts on Facebook. So Eileen sounds to be in our court. Ross says, I call my podcast the ones that serve through RSS shows just the same as I call live streams. It's never just a show. Yeah.

So did— so does this imply, Todd, that when Facebook decided that they weren't going to support podcasting anymore, that that was actually a smart move on their part because now they're the number one platform?

I, I have yet to actually see— I don't see— I'm on— I live on Facebook. It's a, it's a permanent tab that's opened on my, on all my browsers, whether it be my laptop or my iMac or whatever. I, and I subscribe to a lot of podcasters. Matter of fact, probably of my friends that I follow on Facebook, probably half are active podcasters. I've never seen their podcast in my, in my— I've seen a promotion for their podcast, right? That leads back to an episode somewhere, but I've never I. Where is this coming from? Are people thinking reels now or podcasts? You know, I watch reels. I don't consider reels on Facebook to be a podcast. I don't see promotions for podcasts on reels.

Well, Todd, tune in next week for the next episode of the new media show where all that will be clarified.

Oh, well, is it gonna. Is it gonna be round three? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

It'll be. It'll be round three. So you don't want to miss it.

Okay.

It's gonna be. It's. It's gonna be between YouTube and Facebook.

You know, because guess what? It's— no matter what we're gonna say, we're all fans of the space, right? We're all fans of podcasting, right? It is the last bastion of free speech because it remains and has always been an open medium that no one can control, and everyone wants to control it. And guess what? And at the same time, give creators Nothing. Zero. Zero. Thank you very much. Zero. They give you zero. Run ads around your content. Zero. Creators always get screwed and get zero. You know, creators have a choice on where their content resides. They have a choice.

Yeah.

Why, you know, we talked about this last year. Just imagine, just imagine about 50,000 podcasters or 100,000 podcasters said, no, I don't want my content on Spotify. The power in that, the power you have, but most don't understand that. We have, you know, the 10,000, 12,000 people that listen to the show that fully get it. Mm-hmm. You know, because we pound them into submission. So I don't know, but the Stitcher thing— go back to Stitcher. And what a— what a— yeah, you know, too many, too many different pla— just too much. They bought too much. And you know, it's—

I mean, it's, it's just almost like a, like a drama series. I mean, you could create a whole, you know, movie documentary on the history of Stitcher. You know, Blueberry has all of the companies that acquired it and then sold it and then did different things with it. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a remarkable story.

You know, Blueberry has a directory and we get a massive amount of traffic to that directory. You know, literally a million or more hits a month come into the directory itself. People come in and checking shows out and, you know, it's, but it's spread across, again, you know, several million listings. So it's not like each individual listening is getting a lot. Some shows over there on the director get a lot. I, you know, I just think, wow, you know, maybe I can replace Stitcher, you know, um, you know, maybe there's an opportunity here, but I don't think so. I'm not building an app.

So yeah, it's tough to compete in the, um, in the listening side.

But at the same point, it goes back to, in the end, You know, what do you want for your show? How do you, how do you want your show represented? And, um, and that's up to each individual podcaster. But, you know, I keep saying it, Todd can talk to his blue in the face, but you, you do it. You do you, boo. You know, you do how you do, do what you want, because in the end, it's your show. That's the beauty. I'm not a gatekeeper. Rob's not a gatekeeper. We just, we just try to caution you about the gatekeepers.

Well, we are surrounded by gatekeepers. So, um, back in 2020, E.W. Scripps sold all the podcast assets that it owned, um, and, and it basically— Triton Digital went to iHeart while Stitcher and Midroll were acquired by SiriusXM for $325 million is what the speculated purchase amount was. So what did, uh, SiriusXM get out of that deal? They got— I, I think what they got out of it really was expense of Stitcher and revenue from mid-roll, right?

That's what they got, right?

And, and also you can't factor out their content creation studio that they had, that I think it was called the Earwolf Platform is a kind of a comedy talk platform that was— that also has a long history in the podcasting space too. But yeah, so they paid quite a bit of money for all that. And that's just another example of how these larger, larger media companies kind of had to acquire their way into podcasting versus build it themselves.

Yeah. So Ross says podcast hosting companies have no restrictions on free speech as long as it's legal in the US. I think here's the key with that. Ross, we have terms of service, and if you invoke hate— in other words, are— and basically hate speech is obviously protected, but at the same time, if you invoke hate and said, I'm going to go, you know, off someone, you know, and that's reported to us, you know, you're gone. You're not going to be on Blueberry anymore. There are certain use, you know, certain things that we will, we will cancel account. But, you know, just because I cancel their hosting doesn't mean that show can't still exist on their own.com. With their own RSS feed and host their own media. So, you know, that's, that's the delta there. That's, you know, from my perspective, you know, there is a lot of companies that are blowing up my inbox. Matter of fact, I had one this morning. Someone on LinkedIn says, hey, you know, we see, we see your, we see all your content on your website. We want to come in and tell you, you know, we want to run through all that and tell, tell you which one of those episodes are are not brand safe. And I said, no thank you, I'm not interested. I'm not, I'm not busting my Section 230 protection by becoming a, you know, someone that is going to scrutinize the content. If someone reports something, yeah, we obviously investigate and we have a DMCA takedown process for that, but I'm not, I'm gonna go and be the, be the speech police.

Well, it's the path towards content moderation coming into podcasting. And I think we have to be aware of that, that that's kind of what's happening there.

Well, we, and again, like I said last week, we need to start a list of companies that are being known to use content moderation and have that list be publicly known. So podcasters again, know who's doing moderation on content. I don't think hosts are doing that. I think it's, I don't believe that any hosts are, but I do think that certain platforms, I think, add in DAI. Probably those that are doing it. Yeah.

On some shows and those shows may not even be aware of it.

Yeah. I believe that too. Well, they should know.

Well, they should. And that's, that's the key takeaway there is that they should know that they're being analyzed and that that data that's coming out of that analysis is being used to decide on scope of campaigns.

Yeah. Eileen says, I'm going to pick YouTube over Facebook. Uh, Eileen, I'm picking my website over all of them.

Yeah, right.

Because when YouTube doesn't like what I say and take my stuff off, it's still— it's still— it's— or it's still available on my website, and I don't have a YouTube embed on my website, so I have to worry about that disappearing either. So—

though I do wonder, you know, one aspect of Stitcher that was well known back in its heyday was its work in getting integrated into cars.

Right? Right.

Um, I just wonder what's going to happen to that part of it because I saw that early as a big value prop for Stitcher, uh, was getting integration into the cars. And I just, I think what's happening now is, is, you know, we're seeing, uh, the Android platform and Apple's platform CarPlay and things like that get integrated into vehicles more now. So those big platforms are, are are really being the funnel for what Stitcher was trying to do early on. And so there just may not be a place for Stitcher anymore in the car.

I had to go run an errand this, this afternoon and on the way into the office this morning, which might be— it's only 10 minutes. I had— I'm using Fountain, the app, and it works on Apple CarPlay. So basically, you know, I'm listening to Fountain and I'm able to control it on the dashboard. I don't even use the Apple Podcast app in my car. I use my, my, my third-party app or my modern podcast app. And through your phone? Through my phone, you know, so I just— it's through my phone. I don't, I don't ever use any of the, you know, it's all through your phone for Apple CarPlay. And the same thing, I've got an Android device too, and sometimes it syncs it instead and it goes to the Android Play, and it's the same deal. So I think most of us that are in vehicles doing any type of commute, I just, I have to look at that sometime and see if we can see how much listening is actually happening on Apple CarPlay. But again, I think it's through the Apple Podcast app, so maybe it doesn't even show up as CarPlay.

Right.

But again, I use Fountain, so through Fountain.

And if you look back in the, the history of Stitcher, they were— their original name was Stitcher Radio, right? Many people don't know that or remember that, but, um, the whole concept of Stitcher when it was formed was basically creating more of a lean-back experience, more of like a playlist type of a listening experience. And what they, what they faced criticism for was basically inserting audio ads in between episodes of, of a playlist of podcasts. So let's say you subscribe to 5 different podcasts and they would basically auto-assemble those episodes into a playlist that would automatically be updated and you just click play and it would play your playlist and then they would automatically insert ads in between the episodes. And there was no revenue share in the early days of that with content creators. And since the content was being rehosted, encoded, re-encoded, and then they were running ads against, uh, around the content, not in the content, but around the content, they felt like they could monetize this app. And that's, that's where they faced a lot of friction. And that's where the article that I wrote really was addressing that. Um, methodology and, and how a lot of these listening apps were struggling to justify the investment in the existence of the app. Well, you look at developers and things like that because there was no revenue model.

Were you working at PodcastOne at that time when you wrote that?

Uh, yes.

Okay, so I know, I know.

No, no, no, no, I was working for, uh, Spreaker.

So I know the late Norm Pattis.

Well, I used to work for Norm.

I know, but the late Norm Pattis had a huge issue with Stitcher.

Uh, yeah, he did.

And he didn't want—

actually, Norm, Norm wanted to buy Stitcher, actually.

I don't know if that's ever been said publicly, but I guess you're not under NDA anymore.

No, I'm not. He's, he's left Earth, so—

well, some entity of the company is still there, so, you know, anyway, but I know what you're saying. Yeah, so he, he was a big, big no, no, no. And he's also as big on not going to Spotify when Spotify was not doing pass-through— well, when they were doing caching.

Yeah, it was the whole rehosting was the issue. And, and many of the larger, larger media companies objected to that back in those days. Um, so, you know, you can't really beat up on it too much because, um that was a lot of the revenue models. And we're seeing some pressure around that coming back again. There's always an interest, you know, we've heard this with YouTube and things like that. And Spotify, like you said, they started out caching too. So, right.

Yeah, I wish I could talk about a certain topic, but I can't.

You can't?

I can't. You know, I, I think this caching issue, um, you know, if— and that's part of the problem with the YouTube piece is they're caching the media too.

So, um, well, they've been doing that for years.

I know, but I, I just got a new thing, but I'm talking about YouTube is caching the— well, yeah, of course, but I think that's going to be a big detriment to wide adoption by people submitting RSS feeds over there when they get that done. I just don't— you know, I think the big shows are gonna be very, very hesitant to do so unless, you know, unless of course big shows are probably gonna get some deal. And again, the small shows are just, you know, tough luck, Charlie. You're, you know, send me an ad-free version of your show and suck it up, and we will monetize on top of you and give you nothing.

So I think where they're going to want is, um, episodes that don't have dynamically inserted content, uh, I think is what—

but Rob, that is, you know, it's a— I can dynamically insert a host endorsement just as easy as I can dynamic Geico ad, you know. So it's, you know, it's one half dozen.

Yeah, but even if you look at, uh, YouTube more broadly, they're okay with host read ads.

Yeah, of course, but you have to—

but the problem is there's no replacing it, right?

Right, right. That's why businesses like doing collaborations, because that collaboration's always in there. Yeah, that's why you see, you know, AG1 or whatever, that Athletic Greens, you know, it's about— I, I see that green stuff and I'll hear— I'll probably never— obviously I'm gonna say this and I'll never get Athletic Greens ad. I— that stuff, have you ever tasted it?

No, I haven't.

I don't know. But I also, to me, it's sure it's healthy for you if it's, if it doesn't, they're never going to advertise on this show for sure. But I see a lot. Oh, it tastes good. It's wonderful. It's healthy for you.

Yeah.

Okay. Sorry.

It's going to get flagged in the content Moderation. So I don't know if that's a category in the content moderation algorithm.

Oh, I'm sure.

Just tame.

But you know, it's on YouTube. It's the same advertisers all over the place. People, you know, shilling for, you know, the same companies again and again. They must be having good success with it.

Yeah.

So.

They probably work for something.

VPNs, every VPN on the planet is advertising on YouTube.

So people will take the revenue, right?

You got absolutely right. Hey, oh, that reminds me, um, I did listen to it. I'm not going to say the show because it's going to get a reaction. Um, and I listen to a lot of podcasts. I very rarely listen to the top podcasts, right? And I grabbed one that, let's say, is in the top 25 just because I want— I hadn't heard it before. I wanted to hear, listen to the format. It was— I could only stand it for about 30 minutes. And here's the reason why. Two pre-rolls in every 4.5 to 5 minutes, 2 ads. And I listened, I think, to 7 total ads, which I started hitting the 30-second advance button on because the transitions were horrible. There was at least 7 ads in the first 30 minutes of content making up— and I started counting it. I didn't want— because it was— some of them were 30-second reads, some of them were 1-minute reads. And host reads, kinda, and that's like 15 minutes of content and maybe 10 minutes of ads. I'll never listen to that show ever again. I will never, I'll never ever listen. So I was blown away at the ad load in this particular show. There's got to be people that— how this show stays in the top 25 is beyond me. Who would listen with that many ad insertions?

So, Todd, how many ads in an hour audio program do you think is acceptable? 30-second ads, let's say.

3.

3 in the whole episode, uh, pre-roll, post-roll, uh, 3 mids.

I don't— 3, no one listens. You know, you can have it. I would say 3 mids would be— well, I'm just telling you what my show does. If I do an hour and if I do 2, I'm good. 3 is pushing it. But I, I, I couldn't. I, I got so pissed off, I was like, I'm not listening to this ever again.

So are you doing a, a blend of, um, programmatic as well as host reads in your show? Is that what you—

I do one, one pre and one mid for my personal show.

Okay.

Programmatic for the pre and then GoDaddy for the host thread.

Okay.

And it's a host thread. It's not— it lives. It's going to be in the media forever.

And don't you usually do like a minute and a half on that or something like that?

Yeah, I do a minute. Yeah, yeah, right. But you know, sometimes I do short, sometimes a little longer. Depends. I tried— I try to get, you know, I try to get in and out in about a minute, but it was— I, I And it was all stuff that I would— how should I say it? Okay. Yeah, exactly. VPNs, some food program, AG1, you know, it's all the thing. And I just like, really? And there's no emotion, no emotion by the host. It's just this kind of read the script. Now here, you should try this because this and use this as such and code slash such and such this and that. And make sure you get your, you get a, you know, 90-day trial instead of a 30-day trial by still using such and such code, such and such. And I just like, there was so many that I was like, shoot me in the head, because it interrupted the content. And I was like, what was, what was the individual talking about before the ads start? Because it got so— because again, every 3 and a half, 4, 4 and a half, 5 minutes, bam, another ad.

Do you remember the, uh, early episodes of Kevin Smith's Smodcast, uh, network? Did you ever listen to any of that?

I don't think so.

Okay, well, he had— he probably had like 7-8 minutes of promos and ads at the beginning of every episode that he, you know, God bless him, he got paid because I'd have been going one hit, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds.

I'd have bit that thing about 10 times.

Well, that's what That's what he would get on the show and say at the end of that 8-minute run. He'd say, you know, I know I've got a lot of promos at the beginning of the show. If you just don't want to listen to them, just hit the fast-forward button.

Oh my God. He said that, huh?

Yeah, he actually would say that right at the beginning of a show. So the next time somebody would listen to a show, they would skip through all that.

And he'd get paid for all of them. Probably performance that was junk.

Right. So he was playing a game with the audience, right? So he was telling the advertisers, you know, I'm going to have you at the very beginning of the show, telling all these promos, promo swaps, and comedy shows and all this stuff that he was promoting at the beginning of the show. And then he tells audience to just next episode.

So, so as a podcaster, because we're talking to podcasters, go— and I don't know how many top shows you listen to. I don't know. I don't know how many you listen to. I rarely listen to any of them. I'm down in the weeds. Yeah, I'm down in the, you know, the 200, 300 level area, you know, and go and just grab yourself 5 top shows, grab a couple of political ones, and then listen. I know maybe you won't be able to stomach it, but listen to how many ads. And I think you're going to agree with me. It's too much. And I just don't understand. I don't understand how loyal I would not be loyal.

And Todd, the second question is, where are those podcasts hosted? That, that's the second question on that. Um, are they a platform that's associated with a radio network by chance, or— that'll give you a good clue.

No, actually not. This one wasn't.

No, no, this one wasn't, huh?

Uh-uh. But if I said the name First of all, I was just checking the show out because I wanted to hear, you know, I heard about this podcaster, how great the show was. I just— I know someone said earlier they don't like listening to us at one speed because it sounds too slow.

Well, I'll have to speak faster and then you won't be able to do that.

Yeah. Come on now. Don't listen at one and a half. You miss the nuances of the show, those dramatic pauses.

Yeah.

And here's another thing I found out, that if you listen at 1.5, there's something psychologically negative that happens to you. Try—

I would think your comprehension drops.

Well, there's other things that happen. So I'm just cautioning you, go back to 1.0 on all the shows you listen to. Do it for a week. Do it for 7 days or 10. Tell me if your anxiety goes down. Oh.

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

I don't think it's healthy to listen at 1.5 speed or 2. Really don't. I don't think it's healthy at all.

Well, it's not a normal way that people speak. That's the thing. You know, your brain has been developed to listen to speech in a certain way. That's unnatural.

So that's just my opinion. And I just, you know, just try it for 10 days and see how you do. You're going to be anxious. It's going to be painful. Those first few episodes you listen at 1.0.

Right.

But yeah, I've heard other people talk about this, this this issue that they've had and where they've switched off of being going from 1.5 to 1.

So, Todd, you want to talk about a couple other—

sure—

things that popped up in the space? Yeah, um, there's a new CEO at Lipson. Oh yeah, John Gibbons.

So why are they doing switching hats so often over there?

Well, I can only speculate on this, but, uh, John was, uh, hired probably about a I don't know, about a year and a half ago as the president and chief product officer for, for Lipson. He's a terrific guy. He's a former CEO of Pocket Casts, so he's got a long history. He's, he's been CEO of, or CIO or whatever, of a variety of companies in the past. So he's a very experienced CEO and tech leader. So it's not entirely surprising to some degree that he would be picked for that potential role. Um, I'm, I'm assuming that, that Brad, the former, uh, CEO, um, chose to move on and maybe take on, you know, some new projects. It's not unusual for, you know, investors like that.

With the company, or is he doing something else?

Who's this? I would imagine he's staying on the board, probably.

Okay. I met Brad too. Brad's a nice guy.

Well, I don't know.

Right. Oh, you've never met Brad?

Or who, me?

Yeah, you knew.

No, no, I've worked a lot with Brad over there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, over the time of that.

So the new, the new guy. Yeah, the new CEO, right? Yeah, I've worked with John too, with John a lot.

Yeah, yeah, he's a good guy.

I don't know if I've met John. Maybe it's possible. I'm horrible with names. I need someone to follow me around and tap me on the shoulder and say, hey, that's That's so-and-so, you know, go to parties. I need a name tag on you, you know, because sometimes people come up to me and say, hey, Todd. And I'm like, hey, how you doing? How's it? How you been? I'm kind of looking at their conference badge trying to figure out who they are. So.

So I think that Lipson is in good hands with John. So I think it'll work out okay. And then maybe Brad can move on and work on a different project. I know Brad owns a lot of stock in, in Lipson. I mean, he, he kind of came into this role as an activist investor of sorts, is what I would say. I mean, he was— he bought in a significant share of the company. There's nothing he can do with that stock, not currently, but I'm sure that they have a plan to bring it back into the public market at some point. You know, who knows when, but that is likely the outcome. But this probably isn't the best time to be taking a company back out into the public market. So it may be good to just hold for a little while until the economy turns around.

Eileen says they use Libsyn as a resume builder. Well, you know, that's okay too.

Yeah. I got, I got some benefit over the years from formerly working at Microsoft, so I can, I can definitely see that.

It's always good to have a rich CV. My CV is pretty thin.

Well, that's because you only worked at one company over the years, right?

Well, I worked for the government and then built my own thing, right?

Right. And then, you know, I think now as you look, look at it, I mean, I think a lot of people that build their own companies now are highly respected people, so I think it's, it's a good thing.

Yeah. I'm just—

did you also see— yeah. Did you all see the quotes from Matt Cutler? Um, the, the former kind of head of content over at Spotify. Um, he was the former head of Pearcast. Um, and I guess he did an, did an interview talking about Spotify and he suggested in this interview that It's a mistake. It's a mistake on the part of Spotify to go after Hollywood talent.

You know, the Rob and Todd consulting firm could have saved Spotify $800 million.

Well, because I experienced this myself.

I know, I know.

PodcastOne.

That's what I'm saying. We could have, we could have, you know, I told the Spotify team when they bought Anchor, I said, you know, I could have saved you you know, $100 million just for a little, you know, 1-hour consult. You know, they obviously think they know best. Can't monetize the network.

Yeah, and he also said that he also discussed the slowness of decisions at the company and shows that are resourceful rather than entertaining are what's next. I think that was a very interesting quote that I don't know if we want to try and dissect, but when he says resourceful, looking forward, shows that are resourceful rather than entertaining, yeah, shows that give information, have, you know, educate, you know, we have enough entertainment already.

I don't need, you know, And there's a certain— I don't watch. Do you watch? Do you listen to entertainment shows?

No.

I mean, either, right?

That's because they're low value, low mentally challenging.

Even, even if Harry and Meghan had created a podcast, I'd have never listened to it because I don't care.

Well, it's all gossip and, and activist stuff, you know.

I, I don't have no— right, I don't care.

Yeah, well, and lots of people just don't care about the whole, you know, English.

Well, some people, some people love and follow celebrities. I understand it, right? I understand why people create podcasts after television series. It's not necessarily the actors, it's the series. You know, you look at Yellowstone. I love Yellowstone. I'm sad Yellowstone's going away. You know, it's one of the favorite series after Lost that I've watched every episode, right? Right, you know, I'm not a— I'm not a country boy. I don't— I don't rope cattle. But, you know, it's kind of this cool thing, right? This cool show, a lot of drama, you know, big bullies and that kind of stuff. They're beating up people and, you know, gunfights. Hey, modern stuff, that's fun, but that's entertainment. But I would never create a podcast about it. Some people do, and I'm sure those podcasts have been very successful, but I don't want— I don't want to listen to Cardi B, and I don't want to listen to You know, I have no desire. I want to be educated.

So I think it's interesting that Spotify has chosen to kind of pull back a little bit on the, on the celebrity podcast because they are expensive, they don't always work, and, you know, they've had a lot of failed deals that have come through. So it's not surprising that maybe they're going to follow Matt's advice.

Rob, here's what it is. They are under major, major scrutiny. The free money is gone. Mm-hmm. They have to have success. They have to have shows that deliver major numbers because I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. I tell you already what's going to happen. Here's the crystal ball. And if it isn't happening already, every podcast on that platform is going to get a pre-roll played against it.

Right.

Spotify is going to run ads against podcasters' content, and podcasters are going to cry, 'How come I'm not getting no money?' Well, they have to put dollars in the bank, and the only way they can do it is through subs, people that pay for their Spotify subscription, and the ads that come into the system. Those are the— and maybe they're going to, you know, whatever else they're branching off to, movies, books, whatever, they're going to have some small small numbers on their revenue line. You know, it's a little blip. It's this much, you know, 1.5% of revenue based upon whatever. And at the same time, they've got a history of not taking care of artists anyway, in my opinion. So they have to figure out a strategy that's going to, you know, recoup some of this billion dollars that they've lost. Yeah, so I don't know. Uh, Beauty Bubble says, let's do it, that consulting firm sounds good, good to me. There's a whole bunch of people there in a podcasting space that would be great consultants, you know, that could— because they've been in this space a long time, they say, yeah, that might not work. It's been tried 3 times.

Well, the space keeps evolving and changing, and what people are interested in shows and how to go to market with them is constantly changing too. And that's why a lot of consultants are— don't always know what they're talking about because, you know, they're not keeping up with the market.

My tech team did have a— there was actually an explanation mark in the chat channel a couple of weeks, about a week ago. One of the— they actually got a consultant on the phone that knew what he was talking about. And I say, get, get that individual's name, make sure we know who that person is. So when someone needs a consultant, we can refer them to them because They didn't have to be educated.

Right. So Todd, did you see the news that Australia leads the world when it comes to podcast listening?

Well, that would be cool.

It says according to Edison Research, it says—

what's the percentage?

The Australian study showed that 43% of Australians listen to a podcast every month.

So don't eat me, James Cridland.

Why is that compared to 42%? So it's not ahead by much.

No, but still, what did they say? What's driving that?

I don't know. I think it's probably just a culture difference. Um, I don't think that commercial radio is as big there, but, um, well, commercial radio has been—

has driven most of their conferences, right?

Right.

Right.

It says, it says 43% of Australians listen to a podcast every month compared to the US 42%, a third every week compared to—

I'm not following this. You know, I'm a pretty big social bunny. I, I'm out and about and talking with people and I talk about, you know, they ask me what I do and I, you know, explain what I do. And of course I say I work in the podcasting space and they say, oh, what's your podcast about? And so I have to explain, you know, I do, yes, I do a podcast, but I also run a hosting company and they don't understand that, but they understand podcasts. I don't, I haven't run into anyone that doesn't listen to podcasts in a very, very long time on all age levels. Yeah. So for me, I think the penetration in the United States is much, much higher than, you know, Again, again, I've got the full exposure on age ranges, my age group all the way down. So I don't know, when's the last time you had someone tell you, Rob, that they didn't listen to a podcast when you met them?

I don't know, I can't—

I always ask what show they listen to.

I can't think of anybody right now that has said that. But, but the study also asked what platform they use to listen to podcasts too. And the Edison Research out of Australia is coming up. Spotify is number 1 with 34%. Now it says used more often. It's not talking about downloads. It's not talking about any other metric than how many, how many times they used it. Um, the number 1 is Spotify at 34%. YouTube is number 2 at 24%. And Apple Podcasts is 3 at 11%. It says Apple Podcasts isn't on Android. And the research says Android has 51.6% share of mobile, mobile devices in Australia.

Well, I'm going to be honest. If you know, once you leave the confines of Canada, the United States, and probably UK, the number of people carrying iPhones diminish greatly. In Japan. You know, again, we have to look country by country on makeup of devices, but Spotify for sure, based upon just that trip out to Riyadh, is very obvious to me that, you know, Spotify has a scorched earth policy in those countries. I have no doubt that they're doing well outside in those other markets. I have no doubt whatsoever.

Yeah. So if you look at this just on the, on the surface, if 51.6% of the devices are Android, that does mean that there's like 40, what, 8% that are iOS, right? So it's a pretty big percentage that are still, on, on the Apple platform. But what the difference is probably with Spotify is that Spotify's on the Apple and Android platforms versus Apple only available on, right, on the Apple platform, right? Which is another example of why Apple, it would make sense for them to put out an Android app.

But it's also, Rob, if, you know, going back to what we've done at Blueberry for many, many years, you know, we've talked about it 100 times on the show when we adopted that subscribeonandroid.com and integrated with those a lot of third-party podcast apps, including a new one just recently. We trained, we had our content creators trained to get people onto Android. So we've always led in Android adoption. And then that's probably narrowing a little bit now, but it's just because we made it easy for Android users to get subscribed to shows. So, and Stitcher's made it easy. I mean, that's Stitcher. Spotify's made it easy to listen to shows., on, on outside on Android. So yeah, it's no doubt it's, it's, it's Google's fault, you know, for their poor, their poor implementation, everything they've done with podcasts on Android so far. This is the thing I keep going back to. Google has a horrible track record when it comes to podcasts. Horrible. And I'm not convinced this YouTube strategy is going to work. Um, you know, they get the benefit of that because they're YouTube, but no one's talking about YouTube Music.

Well, if this means that YouTube gets, gets, uh, more video content, then they're happy, right?

Yeah, I'd like to— I'd love to see the, the deltas between those that are doing video on YouTube and those are doing audio on YouTube and what How many people are doing audio on YouTube? Are they happy with their numbers? Just doing audio only. Is it being discovered? By the way, I do have to ask you, what did you think of our album art from last week? Did you see it?

No, I haven't.

Oh my God. You missed— you didn't look at our album art?

On— not the series art, but on the website?

Did you see the episode art from last week?

No, I haven't seen it.

Oh, Rob, look, look, gotta load newmediashow.com. That, that was created with Midjourney, and it's basically two dudes yelling in the microphones, and we got some compliments. I had people talking about that.

Wow, I think we found our, uh, our new, uh, up show cover art.

Well, that's for one episode. I'm gonna create something today different based upon everything we've talked about. Probably be something to do with stitching or something like that, unzipping a zipper or something, because we've talked a lot about stitching, right? So, you know, maybe a zipper with the infernal of hell behind it or something like that.

So What kind of a query did you put into this app to generate this?

I basically said two men yelling into microphones facing off each other like they were going to do battle. Basically, that was kind of the query.

Kind of a little bit like a wrestling match, right?

That's the analogy I would probably use. I had two or three things that I tried. Beforehand and was horrible.

Arm wrestling is what it should have been.

But I think this thing knocked it out of the ballpark. I was like, yeah, that was a great— it was great. Now, have you seen what I did to the YouTube channel? Oh, so you're slipping. I mean, let me—

I didn't know that you posted all this stuff.

Well, you know, let me go look. Let me show you what I did for the channel. So this is the, the Elmar on one side is a, is basically shows a picture of an audio studio and the extra one is a video studio. But if you see the big image of it on top, it says New Media Productions and on the bottom it says Geek News Central on one half and New Media Show on the other half. So you can't see the full version of this. I don't know how you actually Yeah, I don't think we can actually see the— yeah, I just loaded it. But if you go and look at this on YouTube TV, you can see the full scope of the art. But this is just playing around with Midjourney, having a little fun with it and see what I could come up with. So it kind of looks like Leo Laporte's studio, but it's just, you know, it's just, you know, kind of a cool little render thing. And it's, you know, it is what, again, this And I don't know how to show more links. I've actually got GNC and NMC, you know, both of them linked. Anyway, it's just playing around with this thing.

And yeah, that's cool.

I think Midjourney is going to be my best $20 I've spent this year. It's better than ChatGPT. And we're not going to go down that road, but I've been having a lot of fun with Midjourney. Yeah, looks like it. And when someone talks about our album art on another show, you know you've done well. And with Apple getting ready to support episode-level album art in iOS 17—

that's true, that's coming out, what, in September?

Yeah, I don't know when, but you know, when it comes out, the episode level— finally they're going to support their own tag, right? So there's one thing— have you heard about this new experiment they're doing in Podcasting 2.0 called Value Time Split?

Okay. No, I haven't, I guess.

All right. So the best way to describe it is, and again, these guys are like, they're truly, they call it running with scissors. They're truly running with scissors, you know, running down a hallway with the scissors pointed at them actually, and hope they don't trip and impale themselves. Sometimes they do. But this value time split basically allows you as let's say we are going to bring on a guest for a little bit and we could actually change our value block for a short period of time to our guests. The analogy, or actually not the analogy, the test cases they're using is they're playing indie music during the podcast. So they're doing their commentary and they break for a music clip, a 2.5, 3-minute indie clip, and the money that's earned from the value block goes to the show versus to the host during the time the music is playing. And then it switches back and then the value block, basically when people are using a modern podcast app, when they're streaming sats by the minute, if they're doing 100 sats per minute, per se, that artist would probably get like 300 sats for that listen and then it would go back to the artist. They've had some huge success just doing some experiments. So this thing is just, you know, it's— that is way out there, you know, on like fringe utilization. But I think you could see DJs starting to do things where they're doing music sets and streaming live from a value-for-value standpoint, audio, and basically having these artists earn money through a value-time split, the use cases of podcasting are starting to expand because, you know, music obviously is very, very challenging because you have to make sure you're not violating copyright, that you're actually using indie music and not, you know, someone's cover that's on, you know, some record label. But, um, and just some of the stuff that's going on here, uh, remember blogrolls? Yeah, well, now you can do a podroll, and you basically can, within your RSS feed— and it's not implemented with us yet, but others are starting to implement it— you can basically send a link and say, here's 10 shows I recommend that I listen to, and basically do like you did in the old days when we had a blogroll, podroll. Those would show up in the podcast app, said, okay, Todd recommends these 7 shows that you should listen to in conjunction with his own show. So we have the ability to drive a recommendation engine personally, that's personally curated and not machine curated. I can tell my audience, okay, I think these 5 will be good for you to listen to. So there's some cool stuff that's coming. We just need more adoption. And you need podcasters just to pay attention to what's going on here. We're the expansion of features is beyond anything that— you know, that shouldn't— the news shouldn't be YouTube. The news should be all this cool new stuff that we're bringing the marketplace for podcasters, for listeners.

And it's just a matter of getting all the apps to embrace them all.

Yeah, and that number's growing every day. I think there's 7 or 8 now, but still, the getting the audience to understand You know, what we're doing here is important, not just from the value stuff, not for V4V, but all the other new features we're bringing that are going to make the experience for a listener much more engaging on, on the podcast app they use. Rob, your video went away. Yeah. Oh, you're sure?

I pulled up a screenshot.

I'm gonna say, what is that?

It's actually from the Podcast Business Journal, um, about active podcast trend line. Yeah. So this is a, a chart that I'm showing that shows starting May 29th, 2023, so not that long ago, about a month ago or so, that's the trajectory of the number of podcasts updated in the last 90 days.

I could probably pull a corresponding chart to show you the increase in listeners that are basically— because this declining number of shows, I can show you an equal chart going the other way of podcast from the listener side where apps or shows are climbing in listenership. And some shows, as they get—

as there's fewer shows, there's probably more listeners available.

The audience has not gone anywhere. So the audience of these fewer shows, audiences are migrating to shows that are still active. So I've seen, I mean, incredible. I've seen, I'm looking at shows, I'm like, whoa, where did they get an 18% jump? You know, and it's just all these.

I would share that. I would share that number too, because that's, that's a confirmation of the concept that maybe this is a terrific time to start a new show.

Best, best time ever. Right now, I'm not kidding. It's, it's a, and it's, if you're an active podcaster, this is not the time to throttle back. This is roll-up promotion, double down on social, get out there where these audiences are hanging out. It's time. You've got— the sun is shining and it is bright and high noon for shows that are new, are basically creating content. It's a great time to grow audience. You know, my personal tech shows, I think we're up 15% this year. It's, it's, it's, it's big. I've never seen growth like this in a, in a short, this short of a period of time. Yeah. Because people are still listening. It'll be interesting to see what the Edison Research stuff comes out with Share of Ear and all that as we go forward to see what has happened. But I also think that a lot of listeners are You look at subs on Netflix and subs on these other platforms are going down. So what they're really seeking out, I think they're just, I think, I think the consumption habits of consumers are changing now too. I think there's a dual element here. And if you're providing compelling, good content, wherever it may be, I think you're going to do well in growth.

Especially, and I think you're, you're seeing a lot of the, the big competition, right? These larger media companies really pull back.

I don't know if you saw that. The free money's gone. They, they can't— they have to have success.

They can't have a loss. Even a, a historically successful, uh, network, uh, New York Public Radio, um, has, has initiated layoffs and cut bonuses. Yeah. So you're seeing, you know, platform or content platforms that are historically done very well to capture attention in the podcasting space really kind of pull back.

Everyone continues to say, oh, advertising is great, but something, there's some, something, there's not, there's someone's fibbing.

Well, I think that there's, I mean, let's, let's say it from what I'm seeing too, is that there's less trust in content coming out of mainstream media of all types right now. And there's a shift over to, you know, maybe giving the little guy a chance.

Maybe. It's never rolled down to the little guy. But our programmatic is doing well.

So I think that, you know, podcasting, like you keep saying, is one of the last bastions of free speech to some degree. And that that can either be a good thing or it can be weaponized against us. I think the world is kind of like trying to control conversation.

You know where it's all going? It's all going to TikTok. Yeah, you know, all the money's going to TikTok. TikTok has got, you know, that's why TikTok, you know, has been under so much scrutiny is because they're taking money away from all these other platforms. Yeah. And I thought I'd love to see the, the actual dollar amounts is shifting from one medium to the next.

Yeah. Did you watch at all any of the sessions out of VidCon out of Los Angeles?

No, I don't, Rob. I, I have a day job. I work. I don't have time.

Yeah, but you say you consume a lot of content.

I do, but you know When I go home from the end of the day, I watch sailing shows. I don't watch, uh, you know, I don't watch podcasts or, you know, industry stuff. I need to decompress. I do this for 10 hours a day. I don't need to do it anymore, right? Or I won't last. I'll be dead in 3 years.

I thought that the discussion at VidCon was very much aligned with the kind of current state of podcasting right now, is that they're seeing this change in behavior in consumption and content creators, it's, it's shifting more towards independent creators.

So are they saying consumption is shifting towards independent creators?

Yeah. And, and the whole event was very focused on talking about monetization strategies for individual creators. And, and at the same time, YouTube announced a reduction in the, right, the kind of requirements for being qualified for monetization. They dropped the requirement from 1,000 subscribers to 500 subscribers and 4,000 to 3,000 listening on the listening hours, right? So why, why are they doing that?

Yeah, so they, they can attract more independent creators to their platform because people are saying screw you, I'm going over because you can monetize on TikTok at 1,000.

Well, they're seeing a lot of uptake in independent voices creating programs on the platform and people shying away and not trusting content coming from the major media companies that have been historically publishing or redistributing their content on YouTube under licensing agreements with, with, with YouTube. People are just not watching that stuff as much. They're watching more niche. Targeted topic programs.

You know, I probably do a— I don't watch any news.

Zero. That's part of what the trend is starting to show is I don't either. I don't watch any mainstream news media anymore.

I might tune in if there's some national event going on. I might load something up, you know, like that, that sub. I, you know, I checked out a little con, you know, whatever. You know, was on the 30-minute repeat, I might check something like that out.

Yeah.

Or read an article, you know, maybe go to a major news site and read. But, you know, I do not trust the New York Times. You know, there's a whole bunch of media places I don't, I don't trust.

Right.

And I, you know, and I look at all this stuff with a skeptical eye. So I think podcasters are unique in that, and maybe even some YouTubers are unique in that you, you are the voice or face of your show, and your credibility is really based upon the data you put forth. And but, you know, one person's truth is another person's, you know, that's, that's propaganda. So because of this, you know, this political rift that we have.

Yeah, right. Trust and truth kind of ride along together, and that's kind of why I'm doing the show I'm doing now called Trust Factor. Right now I'm starting to roll it into looking at specific instances of, of, um, things that are happening in the world that are either creating trust or distrust. Um, and those are, you know, kind of interesting comparisons around, um, where those sources are coming from and, and who do we believe, right? I mean, at the end of the day, that's what all of us have to decide is What information do we want to believe and what other information rides along with it that either confirms or denies that ability to believe it?

It's just, you know, it's just like when I go to tech sites, I have to be really careful because there's a lot of agendas from tech content. Sometimes, do you know if that article's been a paid pay-to-play? Um, is it, uh, you know, they don't say it is, but you read through it and you're kind of like, yeah, this sounds kind of like an advertisement. Product reviews, you know, there's—

it's critical thinking. I mean, that's what we're kind of— some people are pushing away from questioning things, right? Yeah, it's, it's just taking what we're being told and that's what you have to believe. And if you speak out against something, then you— then it's weaponized against you. Um, that's not the kind of world I want to live in.

Yeah, well, we have made it here without killing each other.

We should, we should have these icons that are like boxing gloves, Todd.

Well, you know, go over there and sign up for Midjourney and play around with it and have fun with it. It doesn't do text well. That's the bad thing. It'll just, it'll create an image, but you know, I tried to get it to create some stuff the other day that was, I just wanted a picture of a Matrix box, Matrix theme with the GNC written in a, inside of the box. It couldn't do it. So you basically have to, if you want text on any image it creates, you have to do your own because it doesn't. It gave me a G one time, but it doesn't do text good.

So I wonder why it's shying away from text. That's very easy to generate.

I just don't know if I'm saying the terms right. Maybe I'm invoking the instructions wrong.

Or is it a font licensing issue?

Yeah, who knows? Who knows what it is, but it doesn't do text well. So you have to drop, uh, drop it into some editor and then put your text in.

So anyway, yeah. So it needs to know all of the existing fonts out there and to know that it can't replicate any of those, it's got to come up with its own.

Probably. And I, and I don't know if any fonts are actually in the public domain or not, but it's a good, good question.

Well, You know, AI needs to create some.

Well, that's, that's potential too. So, so anyway, did it— was this, was this a much nicer show today, everyone?

Yeah, we didn't come to blows at all. We didn't scream in the microphone.

It wasn't a cage match. Round number 2 really didn't, uh, progress.

So it just didn't.

But yeah, those of you hung out here long enough, Rob Greenlee and I have been doing this about 10 years. We know each other pretty well, so You know, we can agree to disagree and have a good conversation, and I can be a little passionate too. So, but that's why we do this. We do this so you form your own opinion. Right.

Well, somebody has to play a foil against you sometimes, Todd. That just kind of—

Oh, that's okay.

It comes with the territory. Makes for a more interesting show.

So by the way, are you wearing a— No. I see that shirt you're wearing. I know who, you know, how many of those you got in your drawer? 25 or 30?

I've got, I've got a few of them.

You seen you have a Tesla, you don't change oil very often. If you want to, I need some good oil change t-shirts. So I'll be happy to get 2 or 3 of those or wear it backwards and make sure no one can see the advertising and get a bunch of oil on it and then throw it in the trash can.

Right. There you go. Got a couple from a few other companies.

Yeah, I'm sure people do that with ours as well. But I'm just joking here.

But I don't actually have any blueberry shirts. You should, you should send me one.

No, you come to Podcast Movement and we probably will have some there.

I'm not, I'm not currently set to come to Podcast Movement right now.

So, huh? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Well, you know, interesting. We'll see. We'll see.

Huh?

Hmm. As far as I know, we're not doing this show live at Podcast Movement this year. Yeah.

We're too outspoken. Who knows?

Are we? Well, I try not to be too outspoken, but you know, on certain topics, but other ones I do shy away from.

Well, our YouTube numbers are dropping. People know we're going to quit. Todd at Blue— who cares, right? Todd@blueberry.com, Todd@blueberry.com, @GeekNews on Twitter.

I'm on Twitter as well at @RobGreenlee. I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you know, go through the normal list. And you can send me an email too if you want, rob.greenlee@gmail.com. I'm happy to hear from you. I'd love to hear any tips that you might have about things that are going on in the industry. I'm always trying to keep up with that. And, um, and hopefully I'll make it to Podcast Movement, so we'll see.

NewMediaShow.com, follow or subscribe to the podcast. You see that links on the website. By the way, Rob, Don't forget, you have to hit end stream on YouTube. So you have to load that tab up and remember to hit end stream so that when we're done, because otherwise they'll sit there and try to figure out what's going on. That's the difference when you run a manual start stop on YouTube versus when you're just authenticated with StreamYard and it just stops automatically. So just know you have to go back to that tab and hit end stream when you're finished. All right everyone, thanks for being here. Uh, we will be back on July 5th. Uh, I hope everyone has a— for those of you United States, have a a great Fourth of July.

Uh, Paul Rismandel is going to join us from Signal. Yep. To talk about the, the recent research they put out talking about the top ranked podcast consumption apps.

And we gave the Blueberry Team Monday off, so they're getting a good long extended, uh, 4-day weekend. So, uh, uh, as I tell people, uh, be safe because this weekend there'll be some amateurs out there. And, uh, be careful when you're driving because People will be partying up because of the Fourth of July. And don't blow your barbecue grills up. And for those of you outside the United States, have a great Monday, Tuesday at work. All right, everybody, thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week on the New Media Show. Take care.

Bye-bye. Okay, bye.