Google Podcasts Sacrificed to YouTube Gods | New Media Show Live 4/3/23

They're going to break it down from tips to tricks and everything in between.

Step and cut, yeah, cuz it's going to be a wild ride.

High on fire, got that desire. It's the show that will make you inspire. Here we are, Rob, with another edition of the new media show, Pot on Fire.

Yeah, it's definitely a little loud still. Yeah, a little loud.

Well, you know, I, I have to— it comes across to us loud, but it doesn't go over on the stream super loud.

Oh, that's good.

I've got, I've got to get it leveled out yet, so, you know, that's the, that's the thing that has to happen. But anyway, Welcome to the show. Are you still here?

Right.

Oh, okay.

Awesome.

Okay. Awesome. You disappeared there for a second. So here we are, and I am back from Podcast Movement Evolutions. Are you there, Rob? I'm not hearing you.

So Podcast Movement.

Okay.

So you were there. I was not. Um, but I did try and, and participate by doing a live show on Wednesday night.

So, oh, so how, how did that, how did that go?

It went okay. It was just a little bit hard because people are so busy at the conference running around. It was hard to catch people in between going to meetups or going to different sessions to get them to call into the to the app, the guest app that, uh, the StreamYard has.

So, well, I tell you, the, um, the event was— man, it was B2B big time. Um, I think we talked to 10 existing podcasters and, uh, a few new podcasters, but a lot of people were there to talk business and To be honest with you, I don't know if we'll do the show again. We did sign up for another booth. We got our number one pick where we wanted to be. But, you know, I don't know. This thing's going to Chicago and it might be just worth it just to go and not have a booth. I don't— we had some, you know, had some decent meetings. But again, I could have done those without a booth. We talked to a ton of people about Bid the Pod. Matter of fact, we, um, we signed up about a dozen creators on Bid the Pod right at the show, um, which was curious. And, you know, they, they were blown away. That was good. But I'll be kind of frank with you, the, the, um, the networking really besides the general crowd you and I hang out with in the evenings, wasn't much better than that. Um, LA Live is very, very expensive, that area. Um, you know, we— the cheapest place we found was a Smashburger for two of us, and I think we got out for $50. We considered ourselves lucky. And every other meal was, you know, $200, you know, and not a cheap place to go. Drinks in the hotel were $16. For a mixed drink, $10 for a beer. And it was very, you know, as you would expect, a place to be seen. And but next year moves to Chicago. So I don't know. We'll see.

But they have chosen to move it to, of all places, Chicago.

I don't know. I really don't. And Well, it's closer for you. Yeah, it's closer, you know, and, and the, and the booth prices were a little bit, I guess, more reasonable. I think it's the same as we paid last year. I don't know, $3,250 for a 10x8. Uh, that's the early bird special if we pay for it, you know. Again, I have to pay for it in the next 30 days or something like that to get that discount. So again, it's really gonna— if Mike and I can close the B2B deals, then maybe it's going to work be worth going again. And we had networks we talked to, so, you know, if we get the two network clients that had fairly large shows, they're largely moving because we're doing Podcasting 2.0. They want to implement that stuff, and the host they're on is not doing that. Um, we did have a PSP meeting, um, and yeah, I heard about that.

Yeah, because I had, um Sam's— Sam Sethi called into my live show on Wednesday.

So, so Sam is going to be our spokesperson for at least the next year and coordinating messaging and everything that's going on with that. And there was some decisions made on things that we've already implemented that other hosts are going to try to get implemented, pod roll and some other things. So, you know, from that perspective, it was, uh, it was good. Um, But I'll be honest with you, they saved the YouTube thing near to the end of the show. I don't know if they did that to get people to stay on Friday because we had— I mean, we had no traffic. I think we had talked to one person at the booth Friday. There was no reason to have the booth Friday. We should have just Wednesday, Thursday. That should have been it. And I would have went home Friday. I would definitely would not have stuck around for the YouTube announcement because what a bunch of arrogant condescending, we are God. It just came across to me as that, you know, they act like they own the space. And without addressing, really without addressing any of the feedback that they're getting from creators, everything that has been said to them they have ignored. And I fully expected this because they're just doing YouTube channel stuff. They're doing YouTube, they're not doing podcasting. They're calling it that. And, you know, they do it. They put out a bunch of, you know, they showed a couple of shows that I looked at, um, that I've never heard of before. Um, and but they didn't highlight, you know, they— the— and then we go— if you go through that podcast playlists on YouTube, there's very few shows that are, you know, that are indies. You know, they're— you're buried down in the, in the bowels of YouTube. Um, I started writing a, uh, uh, you know, about the Google, Google Podcast shutdown. I started writing. I, as a matter of fact, I've got it about 3/4 of the way down, and it's, it's, you know, it's Angry Todd. On them pulling the plug on Google Podcasts and their indecision and non-trusty worthiness of, you know, and, you know, maybe they, maybe they need to hear this. It's just they're doing API stuff for developer, for podcast hosts. I, I could be honest with you, I don't care. I really honestly don't care because we have not gotten any pushback from any of our customers. Um, a lot of folks are waking up that video is hard, uh, not worth the time and effort. Yeah, some shows are going to be doing well, but I, I'm, I'm kind of over it, to be, to be frank. And the way they— and the presentation that they— I was really, really surprised. They should have practiced their presentation. I'd be fired. I would be fired if I gave a presentation as being— it appeared to be unprepared. So, you know, nothing against those two, but maybe someone put slides together and then they had to speak to them because it didn't feel like they had actually put the slides together themselves. Probably their PR team or somebody did.

So, so what were they, they kind of pushing on stage? What was the aspect of the platform that they were highlighting?

My takeaway was we're YouTube and we're God.

So how did they symbolize that?

No, it just basically, you know, they, they give them credit. They tried to say, hey, this is for all, this is place to get discovered and you know, all the same talking points and we're going to have a, you know, we're going to have a YouTube Creators Day or something where we're going to be doing, you know, sessions and how to do it the YouTube way, not the podcast way and oh we're going to give you square Images instead of 16 by 9 on your profiles and how to surface more pot, you know, some of that kind of stuff. And it was just like, to me, it was, You know, I said, well, at least they didn't announce they were producing RSS feeds. You know, that was the only good thing, knowing Google's history on RSS feeds. You know, at least they didn't announce we're creating RSS feeds for podcasts on YouTube. So, you know, I guess I'll give them credit for that and not, you know, destroying the industry.

So, well, you're going to be doing that.

Well, yeah, we are. And yeah, right. But it's, you know, we're not, we're not in print, we're not going into the video realm, you know, for those, for those video YouTubers. Um, and you know, it was the same old story. It's, it's an education thing. Some of the YouTubers we talked to— RSS, what's that? Apple Podcasts, what's that? What is that? I'm like, give me your phone. I mean, I see this little icon right here. Have you ever, you ever looked at it? Oh, oh, that's interesting. You know, come on.

So really, is this kind of a really for, for Google, this is really kind of a convergence of bad timing for them based on really, I think, kind of some poor choices that they're making. I think a lot of people— I've seen articles online talking about this, that the, you know, I guess yesterday was the last day for Google Podcasts in the US. But from what I understand, they haven't taken Google Podcasts down outside of the United States. Well, only in the United States.

You know, what did we get this morning? We, you know, what are we hearing this morning? What happened? Where'd it go? What's going on? Why don't you have it as a destination? The average podcaster doesn't have a clue that this has been enabled because the average podcaster is not tuned into the New Media Show.

Well, that and also they haven't, uh, the way Google rolled this thing out was, was pretty transparent, really. I mean, not, not transparent to the podcaster, um, because of how they did it, right? By picking up the RSS feeds off of websites, right, is how they, they did it at the very beginning. So, you know, they did that contrary— even if you go back, um, to all the advice that I know that I gave them and Rob Walsh gave them is don't do it through a link that's on a webpage somewhere.

And even when you did tell them what your right RSS feed was, about every 3 weeks they switched it to what they thought it was. You know, here, here's the thing. They blew it. Google blew it. They could have had this huge opportunity, but what it really boils down to, and let's not— let's call a spade a spade. They wanted everyone on YouTube. That's the cash cow. That's where they monetize against people's content. This is where they make money. This is where, where creators get screwed and not make cash and they run advertisement around it. This is where the cash cow is. Just like Google Reader. We can't have people on Google Reader because you're reading RSS feeds. There's no way to monetize that. So we got to kill Google Reader. So we put them on platforms that we can monetize against. So same thing with Google Podcasts. Oh, we can't make money against these folks on Google Podcasts. Instead of being a good net citizen, they said for the third or fourth or fifth, sixth time, change your strategy. And it's very apparent. And you know, if podcasters don't realize this, if podcast hosts don't realize this, I'm looking at Libsyn, they're all in. Kissing YouTube's butt and doing an API integration. Why?

I think they've already done—

I know, but there's stuff already. But why didn't they learn their lesson with Spotify?

So yeah, but Todd, I think you have to look at— they were going after a different— I think maybe a little different client base based on a different priority, which is around the ad business. Um, and I think that's— I mean, increasingly these larger creators, um, are are doing YouTube and audio podcasts.

Libsyn ads cannot run their ads into YouTube.

So— Well, YouTube will run baked-in host reads.

Yeah. Okay. So the, the, what, the 4% of shows that get host reads? Okay. So, so stop. It's, it's a, this isn't—

Yeah, but it's coming from the creator side here, Todd. It's not entirely coming.

We have, we don't have—

It's also coming from the buyer side.

We don't have creators. Begging us to do integrations with you.

No, no, you don't. But if you look at some of the other hosting platforms, they are catering to a different, probably a different client.

I don't think so. In the end, yeah, they are. I don't think so. Because who's— okay, again, are you— again, what—

again, major, major kind of network that's part of— so, so if this is the case, then, then Libsyn, a bigger media company, right?

We have lots of big media companies. So Libsyn and these other folks should start saying, hey, we have great success with these shows on YouTube.

Are you selling advertising for those, those, those podcasts?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We're not doing like host reads.

No.

See, that puts them in a different dynamic with the industry.

Well, so, but again, for the 4% of shows that are going to get host reads, or 5% at the max, um, but why? Why?

That's a reflection of your client.

But why get in bed with the devil?

Well, okay.

They have not learned. They have not learned.

You're focused on making money here, Todd.

Okay. Okay. So guess what then? If I, I'm not going to, I'm not going to use my podcast host to try to make money on YouTube. So.

Well, it's not that, Todd. It's the ad sales part because they're bundling the, the YouTube views in their ad buys now.

Well, again, for 4 or 5%. For very little money because very few shows are showing success. I don't— again, why, why, why work with someone that's— their, their job is they want you to go away.

Why are we against— I'm not much against—

I'm not against you. I'm not, I'm not against YouTube. I'm against what YouTube is claiming they're doing for creators, which is in large part nothing.

Well, I, I'm not arguing that point. I'm, I'm arguing more the point of if you're selling advertising into shows and increasingly the ad buyers are wanting to buy bundled purchases of views on YouTube and plays in podcasts, if they're bundling it and your company is focused on selling those brands that have those priorities in their expectations of your representation, then the platforms that are associated with that are going to prioritize that.

But you're not, you're not getting views.

Okay, but, but that's not the argument here.

The argument is— I understand what you're saying.

When Libsyn acquired Advertisecast, they, they started to shift their emphasis over to bundling YouTube with the podcast side.

Okay, so that's fine, but you're not getting views with podcast audio content on YouTube. You're getting listens. It's still listens.

So, you know, okay, semantics change the argument. It just, I mean, each, each podcast or each show has a different dynamic. Some of them are successful on YouTube, other ones are not. So if you're an ad representative company, right, and you happen to be connected with a podcast host, you're going to be linked up with that, right?

Well, that's— it's great, great. Yeah, good, good luck in getting in bed with, with them because we've already learned this one time, right? So, you know, fool me once, shame on me twice, uh, whatever that's saying.

It depends on what your business model is. You know, it's not an argument about what's, um, what's right and wrong. More it's I agree with you 100% that YouTube is kind of, or Google in general has kind of dropped the ball here and not really done a good job in the industry. And I don't think that they think of themselves as, as having that kind of responsibility. So I think they do think, I mean, I used to work at Microsoft. I, I know how these big companies think. They don't think in the way that we think, um, as it relates to the podcast industry. Per se. They don't care. What they care about is what they want to do. And that's— they live in their own bubble. And I think that's what you were talking about.

Oh yeah. They're living in their own stage. Yeah. Regardless of what Libsyn's doing, they are living in their own bubble. Yes. Yeah. Right.

And their bubble is video, right? Their bubble is really not audio. Audio is just an effort on their part to capture more content that they can encourage people to create more video around as well. So, so they're tapping into this momentum that they're seeing in the market around, you know, creating more video.

Yeah. Well, I think that— I think people are waking up to understanding.

Some will and some will keep going down the path of the YouTube.

A lot of the big folks I talked to, they're, they're already over it.

Because they haven't. Why do you care so much?

Why do I care? I, I guess I don't care, but what I do care is, is of listeners. In the end, this is— back this out— in the end, listeners have lost here, and podcasters have— over podcasters in the United States, I don't think anybody's lost anything. Absolutely.

About more more choice.

Okay, so you wake up this morning as a listener. Let me get my Android device.

Oh, okay. Okay. You're talking about Google Podcasts now. I was talking about YouTube.

And I go, oh, where'd my podcast go? Right. Oh, I got to go find— how do I listen to that show again? Well, oh, there's nothing native on the phone.

If we want to go there, Todd, I think that the spectrum of Google's failure here is much broader than just that. Search too. I think both of us many years ago talked on this program about this is such a big opportunity. That was huge to tap into search as well as having their own app on Android.

So, you know, I, I guess I'm just— I'm probably what I'm angry about is how podcasters woke up this morning and potentially have 4% less of their audience.

Well, that's, that's what Google walked away from was what?

Again, again, I don't care that, you know, they've walked away. And now how many of that percentage of those listeners will take the time to find an app? We'll take the time to find the shows that they— I'm sure there's going to be a huge purge. We'll see. We'll see what the results are. I bet you there is another— I bet you 3% haircut. Globally from this action because, you know, unless the listener is really motivated, uh, they might add one or two shows back, but that's probably what it's going to end up being.

Yeah, isn't this an opportunity for some other apps?

Sure, it sure is. And, you know, capture users. And Pocket Casts and some others were running ads, and yeah, absolutely, it's a— it's an opportunity. So some apps are going to gain, you know. I hope you go over to podcastapps.com and pick up a new modern podcast app, right? But, um, In the end, who's lost here? Ultimately, who has lost? Our podcasters. And that's where I get pissed off.

And, and probably from Google's perspective, they, they're having to spend less money on staff and engineering resources to keep them up and running.

How much resources? I could have run Google Podcasts. Probably with 2 or 3 people and probably done a 10 times better job.

Yeah, I think we saw this with FeedBurner too, right? I think if you look back in the early times, and a lot of people don't even really even know about FeedBurner, but, uh, that got acquired by Google.

Don't tell anybody about FeedBurner. We don't want anybody going over there.

But it was one of those things. I mean, there's 2 ways that this can go, Todd. There can just be a platform that just lingers without any development on it, right? And just there's no staff to support it, which has happened at Google as well. Do we want them to just shut it down, get it over with, people can move on, or do we want to have it just kind of linger there without any support? Well, that's a bigger— that's a much bigger question.

And here's the crazy part: lingering with 4%.

Well, and I think a good example of this is SoundCloud, right? Yeah, nobody talks about SoundCloud anymore as a podcast host, but if you look at the, the number of podcasts that are still currently hosted by SoundCloud, it's, it's a huge number, right?

Well, we just— there was just a sound— someone that was on SoundCloud that migrated to us about a week ago and they said, oh my God, yeah, I didn't have all this. I didn't have all this over on SoundCloud.

Well, there's a lot of stuff they don't have on SoundCloud. But still people are there, right? It's, it's really, you know, and I think this gets back to a bigger issue in the industry too, is this industry has been around long enough to have legacy platforms, right? That if, if they don't get updated, they don't get improved, they don't get worked on, then over time they become like an anchor on the industry to some degree. And that's, I think a good example of that is SoundCloud.

Well, I don't know. I just, I really woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning on Google Podcasts in a big, big way. And, you know, again, a great opportunity for, you know, lots of podcasting apps out there. But, you know, you've got some individuals in the podcasting space that are old curmudgeons. Yeah. And not willing to move the ball forward. And, um, you know, I won't go into the drama that happened at Podcast Movement, but there was plenty of drama.

Well, there— well, share the dirt, Todd.

I cannot, cannot share.

That's what this show is about.

No, no, no, no, I won't go into that, but You know, I think that we can't wait on Apple to do everything. Apple's going to do what Apple's going to do. And then, okay, so there's no drama around Apple. Let's just be clear. Don't take that.

Did you see anybody from Apple?

They had a huge, huge TEDx. I think they had like 14 people there or something. A huge number of people there. So I got to talk to 2 or 3 of their team members plus an intern and great discussions. And, you know, I think everyone knows Apple's going to do what Apple's going to do. They're not going to tell you what they're going to do. And if you're nice and you ask gently and say, we would wish or hope or, you know, sure be great, you know, I call it contractor speak. I used to do contract enforcement. Someone would come into the office with a sprit with a drawing and said, what do you think about that? And if I had said that's perfect, I would have just spent $80,000 of the US government's money because I basically signed off on something. So instead I would like, well, I'm going to have to review that. Thank you for bringing to my attention. I'll get back to you. I would never say committal terms because anything that would be a committal term They would take that to the boss. Hey, Todd said it looked great. Let's go ahead. And the next thing I know, I'm getting called by Navair saying, why did you spend $1.2 million of our money? Right. So there was this language I had to speak. So Ted's in the same situation. Oh, that's great. Sounds interesting. Oh, hmm. That's good. You know, so Ted is in the same position of being— he cannot be committal because he's not allowed to be. So we as podcast hosts and podcasters have to say, well, I'd love to have this. He's chuckling. Ted's in the team's listening and they're chuckling right now. But it's one of those things where we have to kind of express what we think would be cool and, you know, cross our fingers and, you know, maybe in 5 years we get it. But I did learn one thing, and this is, um, if you decide to use your own transcript, yeah, make sure it's pretty good because they are scoring. And I don't know exactly how this works, but that was kind of the word that was used. Apple is scoring the transcripts that are being submitted, man. You switch and use your transcript, they are scoring. I don't know exactly what happens if you go below a certain score, but I don't think it's probably good.

Okay, they're, they're considering accuracy before they actually use—

have you seen how—

let's say that they, they won't use a transcript if you upload it to it if it doesn't meet a standard?

No one said anything like that. Okay, but there's some sort of scoring going on. So make sure if you're submitting a transcript that you're using a decent transcript. Also, there was, um, an awareness made through some other podcasts of a bug that they're looking into as well, Adam and Dave. So they're looking into a bug with one of the tags that isn't working so well, so they're looking into that. But again, You know, um, and here's another thing too. If you see something really, really weird, it's not working, they are very open to getting an email. And if you see something really, really weird, it's not working, and your podcast host should have a contact. Oh yeah, I'm not going to give their email out over the show because that would not be right, but you know, forward it to your podcast host. Say, hey, I'm seeing this problem, is it an issue? If it is, please forward it to the appropriate member on the Apple team. So at least they're engaged. Spotify, Spotify, crickets. I don't know if they were there. They might have been there. Megaphone was there.

I'm sure that they were there. I'm sure they were probably there. So I'd be surprised. But otherwise, did you hear the rumors that are coming out about what's called Apple AI? Have you been following this at all?

Well, if their transcript machine is as good as what's coming with Apple AI, they're going to blow everybody out of the water. But I have not heard no rumor about it.

Well, there's talk now that there's a, there's a big push that's coming for the iPhone to have its own, what's called, real, it's like R-E-A-L. ALM, or Realm, I think is what it's called. And it's going to be the Apple AI that's going to be built into every iPhone.

I'm going to be a little hesitant to follow in on that rumor because Apple's been in discussions with OpenAI recently and some others on some stuff. So why would they need to talk to them if they already have their own thing? So again, I don't know.

But do you, do you really think that they're going to do a deal with OpenAI when OpenAI is almost solely owned by Microsoft?

Well, but maybe it's going to be, uh, Anthropic. Who knows? I don't know. You know, in the end, there's only going to be 3 or 4 top dogs. So on big models that are really getting heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy cash investments.

So I won't go in, you know, I don't really want to go, we don't need to go into the full AI thing today, but no, but it just might apply to podcasting at some point as they build AI on top of Siri and have Siri have visibility to your full phone and It could be like your personal agent that helps you manage all your apps.

Oh, user agents are going to be big this year. So I think we'll see a lot of that stuff.

But I will say that's what this is kind of based on is, is the ability to create a different kind of human interface with your iPhone.

I had to laugh though, because someone came up and said, oh, everyone's doing AI. I said, no, not really. I said, from a podcast hosting company standpoint, there's only 3 of us that I know of that are doing AI. And one did it, well Buzzsprout did an integration with a third party. Podbean, I don't know what they did. They built, they may have built their own or it looks like maybe they built their own and of course may built their own means they built API calls. Um, well, you know, we built API calls. We didn't, we didn't go out and build our own model. That would have been insane. But, but the main difference is, is I'm fully integrated. And, you know, it's basically you can go right from production to draft to publish. And that's, you know, and maybe the other, maybe Buzzsprouts and PodBeans is the same way. But I was like, no, not really. I said, there's a lot of third-party stuff out there. I said $47, $99, $29. I said, you know, why do that when for $10 you get it with us for, you know, right.

And it's all built into your current workflow, which is so just kind of where this is going to go.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's—

and I get emails.

I'm going to be 10 different apps that people use to do their podcast.

I got an email from a company. I had to send 2 emails. I'm saying, no, we do. Don't you understand? The first email I sent you, I don't need you. We built our own. Well, we can help you. How? You can't help me. The 7 things on your list I already have. And the 3 more I don't need, you know. And thank you for the idea, by the way, right? You know, so I— again, it's just a tool at this point. And there's—

yeah, do you see this, this research study that came out, uh, from the Edison folks, the Infinite Dial, talking about podcasting and how, um, 47% of US 12+ age-wise population has listened to a podcast in the last month.

I missed that presentation. I haven't reviewed it. So that's up, how many is that up? 2 points?

Up 12 points.

Wow. 12.

Year over year. So that's a 12% increase year over year.

35 to 47?

34 to 47.

That's huge.

Yep. And then also, uh, there was a big jump in women getting involved in podcasts.

I would say that the attendance at this event, there could have been more ladies there than, than men.

Now this is on the listening side, right?

Yeah.

So yeah, it went from 39% in 2023 to 45% of U.S. women 12+.

That's huge.

That's a big, it's a big jump. That's a, what, a 15% jump?

Right. Massive.

Um, no, it's not 15. Wait a minute. 39 to 45.

Okay. So do your math, Rob. That's—

well, no, no, this is in pod news. I need to do the math and not read what's on the page.

We're missing the Sounds Profitable event going on right now as we speak. So I, you know, we're missing—

yeah, yeah. I saw Tom, Tom, uh, And Tom totally knows that we do this live at that same time, right? So, and then it looks like 32% of women 12+ listened to a podcast in the last week. I've been more interested in weekly podcast listeners for a long time versus monthly.

Yeah, that's a better number.

Yeah, I think it's a better indication of engagement. With the medium. So that's, you know, it's up from 27%. So it's, it's up a little bit. I don't know where they're getting these numbers, these numbers that they're using.

Meanwhile, you're going to have to give more money to Spotify soon. They're going to raise their rates.

So it's going to cost you for a subscription.

Yeah. They're going to raise their prices.

Well, that's a big factor right now. And I, you know, I didn't want to turn this into an economic show, but there's a lot of, you know, there's things that are going on with people, companies still laying off people. Um, the advertising industry really is kind of struggling. Um, I mean, a lot of people won't tell you that, but there's just not as many campaigns and people aren't spending as much money as they used to.

Lipson must have had an unlimited budget. They had like 20 people at the, uh, event.

Yeah, but also the other story with Lipson is there's been a lot of There's been a lot of people that have left, um, Lipson in the last couple months too. Um, so yeah, there's two ways of looking at it.

Yeah, Rob Greenlee and I chit-chat a little bit.

I'm—

and he didn't talk anything about the employee situation at all, but yeah, he did kind of indicate to me what they were working on.

So yep, they're still working on trying to up upgrade the platform to the Libsyn 5 stuff. So that's still—

that's, that's essentially it.

That's like a 4 or 5 year project to actually do that.

All right, no comment.

And a lot of, a lot of podcasters, um, you know, still want to use the old tools.

Well, we, we force people off the old tools because sometimes you just got to bury the hatchet.

Well, unless you have feature parity.

Well, that's the key. You got to have feature parity. And if you don't, if you have a feature that someone loves that you've removed, then you will find the wrath of that podcaster. Yeah. Where did my, where did that widget go?

Yeah. I mean, it's not the end of the world, but it just, it just kind of speaks to, you know, if you have a lot of legacy code, it takes a lot of momentum to you know, really kind of work on two different code sets.

Yeah, that's, that's different than, uh, and maintain.

That's, you know, maintaining at the same time.

That's why we buried the hatchet. And, you know, we didn't get very— we gave people about 3 weeks. Here's the old, here's the new. The new— the old's going away in 3 weeks. If we're missing something, let us know.

Yeah, and I also noticed, Todd, that in this this Edison Research that came out too. It looks like smart speaker ownership has declined.

Well, everyone's got one. You don't need to update. I've got my same.

No, no, it's not buying new ones. It's just that the people that have them have declined. So it's really, yeah, it dropped 2%.

That's curious. Of course, I don't find myself using mine too much. Matter of fact, my Apple speaker, whatever you call it, I get annoyed when I'm in the house and I ask Siri for assistance. The speaker takes over and for some reason it keeps going down to low volume. I'm about ready to just pull the plug on it and throw it in the trash. But I have some Alexa in the house as well. And generally the only thing I ask is what's going to be the weather tomorrow in a certain city. That's, you know, what is that? Hey, hey, you know who, uh, what's the weather in LA for the next 5 days? Or, or London or whatever.

Use the Amazon smart speaker. Yeah, yeah, really to play, play music.

Yeah, so I don't even play music anymore. Well, sometimes I'll say play, play the jazz channel or something, but that's it.

And occasionally the it helps with the weather. But, you know, there's so many places that you can get weather now on. Yeah, you get it on your watch or you can get it on your—

we had, we had, uh, potential bad weather last night, so I was looking on the Weather Channel and it just about 40 miles south of us, we missed the window. Ohio and all those areas got whacked and tornadoes and all kinds of crazy stuff.

I don't think that you're in the path of totality coming up on the 8th.

No, I am not. I, and I I'm, I'm so busy. I have to drive about 2 and a half, maybe about 2 and a half hours to get in the path of totality. I don't know. I don't— I guess I'll probably look at the weather on the 7th. I didn't order glasses or anything, so I'll be using the pinhole method or whatever, you know. That'll—

yeah, I've done that before too, you know.

So, but really, you know, do I want to go and watch it get dark real quick and then You know, there's going to be so much news coverage of this.

Well, there's going to be crowds. People are going to be crowding the highways and the freeways getting there.

Yeah, well, good, you know, then maybe I'll just stay at home. And of course they predict doomsday on the 8th too, so keep your ammo dry. You know, that's one of those things, you know, you— because the doomsdayers— so this is the prepper's dream. This is the time. It's, you know, just an excuse to go out and, you know, buy another 1,000 rounds and some more dry food, which, you know, I can get into too. I understand that. Not saying that preppers are making bad decisions.

Um, I mean, unless it's being used as timing to do something else, but usually a solar eclipse is pretty uneventful. And especially what I'm hearing on this path of totality on, on April 8th is that there's going to be a lot of cloud cover for most of the country that day.

Well, are you in the, are you in the, you're, are you off the edge or are you in the middle of it?

I'm in the area that would get like 90%.

Oh, so break your cell phone out and just record, livestream it, and then we can tune in. That's what people are going to be doing. There's going to be 100 livestreams on YouTube, and they're all going to have special filters, and I'm just going to watch it on YouTube.

Well, I think it's like a 5-hour drive for me to get up to upstate New York to actually get to the path of totality.

There's one place in Michigan they'll have 19 seconds of totality. 19 seconds? Yeah, just right on the edge of Michigan and Ohio. There's this little, little sliver.

The outer edge of the path of totality?

Yeah, so they get 19 seconds of totality. Woohoo! All you need is just a whisper of a cloud and you've missed it.

Yep. But yeah, I mean, I think that there are states that are declaring it a state of emergency that day. What? Yeah. Well, I think what they're expecting is just an overwhelming surge of traffic to areas that are not accustomed to having thousands of people.

I've had no companies— never mind, doesn't matter. We've had no employees ask for the day off.

Oh yeah, I'm not going to go up there and fight the crowds to actually do it. Yeah, the last time this happened was back in 2017. I was out in Washington State, and I was just a couple hours north of the path of totality when it passed through northern Oregon back in 2017. I didn't go down there, but I did go out and watch it in the sky. Yeah, I do, I do. Yeah, I think I did see it But it was, and it was, it covered most of the sun, but it didn't cover it all. But anyway, that's not nothing about podcasting. So, so anyway, and I did, let's see here.

So let's, let's go back to something you're talking about earlier on layoffs. Have you heard about more layoffs or?

Well, I do think that there are people getting let go from jobs that we don't hear about. And I do think that's happening. And there's a lot of talk right now that that could— I'm not specifically talking just about the podcast industry. I'm talking about more broadly in the economy. And I think as we talk about this topic, I think it is helpful to keep in mind what's going on in the economy as it relates to podcasting, not As that everything that's going on with podcasting is just doomsday for podcasting. Right. Right. Podcasting is not immune from the impacts of economic fluctuations.

Only for those that are trying to get advertising.

Right. It is a, though I would say that it does impact people's resources on, on and willingness to create podcasts.

Oh, that's for sure. Well, you know, it's the slowest growth that we've seen ever, you know, and going on what now, 18 months or whatever it is, what's the number? Uh, of course the economy's just fine. You know, there's no recession, people aren't suffering.

Uh, and I haven't noticed that the podcast hosting platforms have gotten caught up in the inflation side of this, like we see with just about everybody else in the industry increasing prices. Well, so do we think that that could happen at some point, that the dollars and cents don't, on a value basis, don't make sense anymore?

When you have certain podcast hosting companies that have staff in China that are having to pay less wages because of the economy being absolutely in the can, it's bad there too. It's, it's horrendous there. So when they can get people cheaper, people can get offshore workers cheaper. You know, we don't use any offshore. In fact, we just, we just brought someone on for a consult, uh, you know, another American team member. So we're in the opposite situation. We're under pressure to raise wages to keep up with the inflation. So I think that, um, I think a lot of companies use offshore help more than, you know, and I, again, I, I try to keep our dollars here as much as possible, but, you know, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not the one to be— I'm not saying I will never go offshore. That would be stupid to say that. But, um, I, I think because people have moved a lot of their help over offshore, they have a little more wiggle room And also a lot of the podcast hosts that are new to the space have not had to pay the economy of scale pricing to get their bandwidth pricing down. They didn't have to suffer through 10, 12, 13 years of every year battling for, you know, a penny discount on bandwidth. You know, everyone now is, you know, probably paying sub-penny per gig on bandwidth. And, you know, didn't have to do anything to get there. They just get it because competition's so tough and people are desperate to, you know, make sales. So from that standpoint, I don't know, you know, I look at what my team's doing and we're staying pretty, you know, I got a full slate of stuff for people to do and we're now adding more stuff. You know, we're 6 months ahead of our development schedule. So I'm good now. I'm adding more We're getting deeper into the pie, you know.

So I do wonder though that at some point, if inflation continues to be with us, that the hosts will have to raise their plan pricing.

Well, you know, I paid a massive increase in healthcare this year. My healthcare costs go up between 7 and 13% every year. Every year for healthcare. And we haven't raised a dime of price on any product in 10 years. Yeah. So am I under pressure to potentially raise rates? Yeah, but I think it would be— it'd be a death sentence to say, okay, we're going to raise the price a buck. Let's just say a dollar.

Yeah, it's, it's tough when demand is a little soft to be raising prices. Yeah, right. It's a tough one to swallow.

And then you've got one or one-man or two-man teams out there. Again, they're using a lot of offshore help, so they're paying pennies on the dollar for development— I mean, 20 cents on the dollar for development work. So, you know, they can continue to expand and keep their prices down because they maybe have one or two people they have to pay a, you know, a Western payroll. So, you know, I look at my payroll cost and it's just, it's the most expensive line item of any company that's in the world. So for us, it's a lot of money. Developers are not cheap. Team members are not cheap. Healthcare is not cheap. 401(k) is not cheap.

All that stuff. It's going up and the coverages are going down at the same time.

Right, right. That's right. In our healthcare coverage, you know, oh my God, it's horrible.

It's not as good as it used to be.

No. So, you know, to me to say I'm going to raise prices 25%, I think that would just doom us. I don't think I could. I just, I don't see it being done. Someone's good. At some point someone will, because they'll have to or they won't survive. Yeah, you know, I keep looking at the— where the red line is and where the black line is. I guess that's our green line or whatever, you know, the, the profit line and the, the loss line. If I can keep the, the money— more money coming in and going out, you know. But then again, as we start, as we come into payroll, I come into pay raise season, then that, that, that gets narrowed a little bit. You know, so you have to continue to add business.

And so what do we think is going to turn around the demand problem on the, the new show creation side of things? I mean, it, it almost feels like this is, this is, this is a new normal.

I don't, I don't know if it's going to turn around.

I know. Well, that's, that's what I meant by a new normal on this.

Is there a lot of, a lot of competing, a lot of competing mess? And I'm just thankful we have a, you know, a lot of our businesses set that they'll continue because they have to continue. Companies that don't have that type of a diversity in their, their, their creator base are going to be in trouble.

And is there going to be any new potential revenue streams that can be created that haven't existed before that can help with this? I oftentimes wonder about that because I do worry that as we move into even the latter half of 2024, that we're going to potentially see maybe a couple of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve that could spark, you know, additional, well, money into the system, right? Which could be good in the short term but maybe ramp up inflation long term, you know.

And this should not— this is just a basic 101 for any company, you know. We look at the list of revenue generators. In other words, will this add revenue, right? That goes into a pile. Will this set of features be more inclined to help us and help us keep customers, right? And not charge anyone for that, just add those features. Matter of fact, we're having those discussions today and a couple things we got coming and where— how it's going to tier. And then, um, and obviously everything is looked at from a revenue standpoint. What— and what are new revenue streams? And, you know, be in this— you know, I'm not being— we don't want to be a doomsayer, but people that are serving the third-party market, in other words, they're coming up with these siloed products that support the podcasting company, I'm going to bring that into this, into our platform, right? You know, I will start— I just like the AI stuff. I'm going to start bringing stuff in that is going to compete with people that have had no competition for a long time because We just haven't— none of us have had time to build it. So we're going to start building pieces that are going to, you know, essentially, yeah, try to preview everything in-house.

And yeah, because right now, um, I would say that many podcasters are, are paying additional subscriptions for external third-party tools right now. Tools and services. Right. That, that I wonder though, if you take those same exact tools and those same exact functionality and you build it into the podcast platform, is that going to be perceived as enough of a value add to justify a comparable increase in the subscription fees to be on that podcast platform? Or are you essentially adding all this functionality and having to hold prices because of legacy expectations.

Depends on the model. You know, we just, just, just as an example, without giving away this contractor I just hired that I've worked with before, they're building something that will be a new revenue stream and will not cost our current hosting customers another penny.

Okay. Okay. So you're looking at it from the other perspective of increasing the potential revenue to a podcaster as an offset for—

I have to help podcasters grow and I have to help them monetize, whatever I have. My job is to help the podcaster grow. I have to bring them things that will help them grow and make their jobs easier.

But is that going to make it easier for you somewhere down the line, especially with inflation pressure, that you're going to have to raise your prices because you are bringing so much more value?

Not if I— that value I bring is a new revenue source that doesn't impact the hosting customer.

Yeah, if it doesn't increase your cost, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But inflation will increase your costs in some areas.

And there's some stuff that we're building is like, something we're building is for a power user. But until someone uses it, they're not going to understand the value of it. So we have to make, like, maybe I'll make a version where you only get to do something a limited number of times. I'll just kind of leave it at that. Let's say we give them one of those things, you might be able to do 20. Let's say we give them 2 to do a month. And if you want more than 2, then you got to pay for the extra benefit, but you're not going to know the value of the additional 18 things you're gonna be able to do until you use the first 2. I guess that's the best way to say it. So yeah, so you know, sometimes you add a feature and people are like, well, what's that feature for? And until you use it, you don't understand the value of the feature. Right. And everything that we build now, it's a question that a podcaster's asked us. How come this? How come that? Why can't I see this? How come I can't do this? How can you— it's, it's filling— we're answering a question that's being asked by a podcaster. Yeah. So, you know, if it doesn't have, you know, a clear-cut, this fixes this problem for this group of podcasters, I'm not building it. Yeah. And, you know, it's hard. It's hard. You know, I've got a stack and it's— this is kind of a living list of what's next.

Yeah, you know, it's your prioritization that you have to evaluate. Yep. And each time you roll out a new feature, it frees up a spot on your prioritization.

But it's— but at the same point, you got to build stuff that— okay, so let's say you got a 12-inch ruler and I have inches 3 to 5, 7 to 8, 9, but I'm open on 1 I basically have open spots on that ruler to fill. So now, and what I'm really getting at is this end-to-end experience. So where do I start filling those holes and when? And what do I put resources at to fill something that we don't have that we need that once we're done, we'll have a pipeline that is, you know, very, very full-featured and then with tiers off it that will help different ways. So that's kind of how I'm looking at it from a, you know, I have this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and you know, where are the holes missing that we need to fill? And some of that stuff is hard. You know, some of those, you know, some of those, some of those projects are, you know, it's going to take every, it's going to take every one of my dev team members to work on to get it right for maybe 2 or 3 months. Just because it's really, really hard to do. So, you know, I think every company's got to be facing that.

Um, yeah, it's this tug of war between, well, do I create things that drive revenue to my customers themselves, right?

Or do I create things that add value to them that justify a higher one? One— well, not necessarily higher subscription fee or maybe an add-on, but the key really is, is that's essentially a higher subscription fee if you have an add-on, right?

Have an add-on plan, right?

That's basically an upgrade. And you have to make that add-on enough value that they say, oh, this is basically— I'm getting this for free, just pay. You have to get it right.

Yeah.

So really, it's like stats.

Yeah.

And in the long run, you really have to because we're all on a budget. So, you know, what, what do I hear? What do I hear? I hear grow, grow, grow, grow. How do you help me grow? You help me grow. How are you gonna save me time? How are you gonna help me monetize?

It's not an easy question to answer for everyone.

Yeah. And I think the advantage that we have— I Podcast, Mike Podcast, Dave Podcast, Sean Podcast, other team members' podcasts, Kathy's podcast, Barry's podcast. So we got team members that are in the trenches every day digging a ditch. Yeah. And we're saying, what are we having trouble with?

Right. There's a lot of areas.

That's a lot. And there's only so much time as a one-man or woman show can do. They only have so much time. Right. You tell them to do these 13 things to grow your show, they're gonna, you know, it's like sticking a fire hose in someone's mouth and turning the water on. You die. You can't do it. You drown. That's kind of a real literal, but you know, so you gotta, gotta get it so that they, it's, they can chew, they can eat, you know, what, you can't eat a buffalo in one sitting. You gotta make it so that they can, you know, work through it and digest it. So it's hard.

It's hard. Though I do think that the Podcasting 2.0 tags may, may be part of the solution here.

Our widget stuff, people are going crazy for it. Right. People can now send a boost, which with splits from our web-based Boostagram, and people may see that and they go, what is that? Listeners do, what is this? And then podcasters go, what is this? And it leads to them going to our site, reading about it, getting educated and saying, ah, so it just, again, you don't, it's you, you, you lay a, you build a building one brick at a time or one layer at a time or one floor at a time. This is where we're at right now.

And I know that the Satoshis that are exchanged around that have been growing in value.

Oh yeah.

Might have doubled.

Yeah. So, and I did announce it, I did announce at the PSP meeting the approximate number Blueberry Podcasters have earned, uh, from Satoshis at this point. It's, it's north of $30K in real fiat dollars. Yeah. So, but again, there is some growth there, you know, that's happened as well.

The value.

Yeah, that's based on Bitcoin. Yeah. If I looked at, if I go back, so it's probably maybe If they don't take Bitcoin inflation into account, you know, yeah, maybe it's like 25 or something like that. So, but still, Sam Sethi over at PodPants has made it real easy to get involved with, with Sats. Yeah. So speaking of which, 2112 Sats from Dave Jones. As a provider, every time you release a feature, you're committing the rest of your life to it. That's exactly right. Dave says again, another 2112 sets of every 2.0 feature after DOPS is to the quality of the transcript feature. I'm willing to give them all the time they need. It's high quality. I could tell Ted was proud. I'm going to tell you something. If you look at that transcript feature on iPod, that no one's going to beat that for a while. It doesn't start the transcript until the ad is over on my pre-roll. It gets— when I say newmediashow.com, it puts newmediashow.com as with the hyperlink. It does it.

It's—

man, they have an engine, transcription engine, that is unbelievable. Another 1,000 sets if every 2— oh, oh wait, that was a— hey, that was a double, double boost there, uh, day we think about it. Um, 1701 sats from, uh, Mike. He says, hey guys, Apple transcripts are very good, so we thank you for your boost. That's true, everything you add— I've got the code, it's, you know, it's just like re— okay, one simple thing: do you want us to increment your episode number every time you publish an episode? That was in the first version of our publisher. That code is more than 12 or 13 years old. Yeah, it still has to be maintained and updated and made so that it isn't, you know, you're not as susceptible to hackers and everything that goes along with code. You know, you got to go back and refresh, update the library, library expires, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, some of the stuff we're adding right now, oh my goodness, it's, it's new territory for us. Not just simple PHP anymore. And PHP isn't that simple, but—

Todd, I think we've reached kind of a pretty close to an inflection point with the 18 to 34 age group. They are seeing podcasts or they're consuming We're seeing podcasts as almost as popular as television. Are you surprised? No, I'm not tremendously surprised. It's just an interesting thing to think about in combination with what's happening with the video side too. It says that 48% of 18 to 34-year-olds listen to a podcast each week, nearly as large as television at 50%. So there's a Still at 2%.

But what kind of television are they watching? They don't specify. See, they're not watching CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these other channels. They're watching Netflix, considered to be YouTube, Hulu, you know. Yeah, I can't, I can't tell you the last time I watched a— well, I can. My television in my office here I was forced to buy triple play, a telephone, a cable subscription, and internet for my business thing. So obviously I don't use the wired telephone here. That's the stupidest thing on earth. Why would I need that? I get about 14 or 15 cable channels on the basic plan that I had to buy, that I'm forced to buy. So when I eat my lunch, I usually turn it on and I'll cruise through one of those 14 channels and, or watch the thing on YouTube because it's a smart TV. You know, TCL, nothing expensive. Um, so yeah, I'm watching TV, but I'm not watching ABC. I, I, you couldn't tell me what's on TV anymore.

I don't even know. Yeah, and what does that, that term mean, right? Um, well, does it include YouTube?

I'm sure. Matter of fact, that's something YouTube was proud of, is the amount of TV watching people are doing watching YouTube.

I believe that. Like in a Roku app or something like that.

Well, I watch— I watch YouTube as in my Sony TV at home that's got a YouTube app and you just load your YouTube channel. So they're going to be putting work into making your YouTube interactive experience as good as what happens on your mobile device.

Yeah, I mean, it's being built into computer monitors too, these apps, right? The YouTube app, the Netflix app, all those.

But where's the podcast app?

Well, Apple TV, that's it. Yeah, that's true. And there are still video podcasts in there. So I kind of wonder what's going to happen to that. I've thought oftentimes about asking Ted at Apple about his, his views on RSS-based video consumption. On the Apple ecosystem just to see where we're at.

You've been able to consume this show on an Apple TV for years, so go, go check the experience out, ladies and gentlemen, if you have an Apple TV.

Yeah, then I'm doing my podcast tip show, you know, as part of, part of the StreamYard channels, um, as a video podcast as well.

So we got a lot of people listening on YouTube. You're not commenting. You're all being very quiet right now. Don't be afraid to say something. Same thing on Facebook. You're here, I'm watching you. I see you guys on.

Don't, don't be shy. It'd be great to be able to pull them across the screen and, and show these comments. So it's a big incentive for people to, to comment is to know that they can get brought into the show.

Well, all they gotta do is say something, they'll read it right here. Yep. I've just been too lazy to put the template together to pull it into, into here. I can do it, but just too lazy. Um, hmm, I don't know. I guess we'll see. I just, uh, I'm, you know, we had a demo today with my team. I'm super excited by some of the stuff and how quick it's coming together and designs and One of the things we're working on is, you know, very, very hard and, you know, going through, you know, that's going to take multiple weeks of development work. And so hard is good for developers though. They get bored on easy stuff.

But are you going to the NAB?

No. Okay. Yep. We pulled the plug on that show. There was not enough ROI. Rob Greenlee's going.

Lipson's going.

Yeah, I'm going to be there too. So, 1701 says, for Mike, I'm watching on YouTube on my TV, can't comment.

That's actually true. That's a good point, you know, because I watch YouTube on, on a big screen television too through the Roku.

Yeah.

And it's, uh, there's a lot of features that are missing in the TV experience. Yeah, there is. So yes, I saw in the, the podcast host ranking chart that James Kridland does, the top podcast hosting companies by new episodes share for March, looks like. And let's say it was March the— yeah, that's the most recent one. And it showed that the only one that went up in new episodes publishing was Spreaker.

Everyone else is down on new episodes.

Um, like pretty much flatlined.

Um, Spotify even had a drop. I'm not surprised there. They, they are removing features from their platform, and I'm not surprised.

Yeah, they, they were like 28.9% of all new episodes published.

Hello, test, test, test, test, test, test, test.

Can you hear me?

To the Infinite Dial. So yes, I can hear you, Rob. I'm just joking about Spotify episodes.

Oh, test, test, test, test. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And it looks like Buzzsprout got 8.3%, and I guess Spreaker had the biggest jump.

So I'm not sure what happened there. Yeah, the Buzzsprout guys, uh, of course they released their app for their, for their users. So, you know, that's what they'd been working on for a while. They're working on some other stuff too. I heard some, some rumor control, something about a lightning rod or something to that effect. A lightning rod? Yeah, that's— I guess that's about as far as I can go. And I don't think it has anything to do with sets.

So if anybody— well, that's interesting.

I wonder what that's all about. That's me too. Oh, because that's a— that was a rumor I was told in passing. I was like, oh, lightning rod.

Well, they do have a tendency to use terms like magic mastering and magic mastering by rods, magic mastering by Ophonic, just like media mastering that we have by Ophonic. It could be some sort of new AI feature of some sort. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. It says Pocket Cast is ready, ready to support Podcast 2.0.

Yeah, Pocket Cast was at the PSP meeting and I think they're doing some stuff. They didn't go into any detail or I don't know if I can actually say what they said, but you know. I think Pocket Casts would be the, probably the Podcasting 2.0 leader as far as features go. Well, not leader because there's lots of Podcasting 2.0 apps that have everything already, but there are more, there are more mainstream apps. And you know, I brought, I brought this idea up and we'll see, you know, I, here's the thing, what, what incentivizes app developers to implement something? What, what is the incentive? The incentive is usually cash, right? Making money.

Making money. So, or, or getting more users that then translates to more money.

So my, my kind of thought process was, is if some of this stuff is kind of hard and really out there, let's use the term like cross-app comments or something like that. Um, that's a hard one to really get the developers on board with. But what if I said, okay, Blueberry is going to put, uh, $5,000 in a, you know, in a pot, and anytime a listener, um, makes a comment, any cross-app comment supported app that goes to other apps What if I pay that, that app a bounty? Yeah. So, and it wouldn't be a lot of money, but let's say whatever that transaction fee would be, whether let's say it's $0.25 or $0.20 or whatever it may be. I don't know what that number is, to be honest with you. For them implementing a feature that listeners use to be basically there's, it's a reverse way for them to, to make money is basically some sort of bounty program. And again, I don't know if the right word is bounty or not, but you know, what if, what if an app developer puts in the people tag or the credits tag, they put that app in and every time, then every time a podcaster, it shows up, you know, there's got to be some methodology that we can get Marco and other apps to say, okay, let's add this feature. And yeah, it's, it's early, but it's again this cat and mouse thing, because if we implement it, we'll say, oh, you're incentivized. The more developers see these features, the more they're going to be obligated— not obligated, but want to implement it. Whereas on the other side, if they say, well, you know, there's, there's a there's some bounty out there. Yeah. And maybe it's a one-time payment. Maybe it's— maybe I pay— maybe we pay for 20 hours of development time, or maybe there's a pool or something that is set up to get these app developers to, to add these features. And again, like Dave said here a little few minutes ago, every time you add a feature, you have to support it. Right. And some of these come with their own headaches. So again, it's, it's, it's tough, but there's got to be a way we incentivize app developers. They seem— none of this stuff for podcastapps.com, they all got it already anyway, so just go over there and get one. But some of these other apps, they're above the, you know, the 1% threshold— Pocket Casts, Overcast, those apps. You know, you start getting above that threshold and then strategically, I think they have a good marketing advantage to continue to, you know, track these people from Google Podcasts and so forth. So, you know, here we are on Subscribe on Android where we're looking at that, making sure all that stuff's working because again, Android users have been left high and dry. Where do they find an Android app. Well, I'm just telling them, come over, subscribe on android.com and find one so you can have one-click subscribe on. So a lot of podcasting 2.0 apps, well, some have already adapted it.

So, so, Todd, did you see this, um, this YouTube Podcasts, uh, 101?

Yeah, that's what we're talking about. They're having this.

Yeah, I encourage you to— coming up on the 26th.

I encourage you to attend that, Rob. Really? Yeah, since, you know, since you have an abandoned podcast space and are a YouTuber now.

I've got more podcasts than some—

than most people out there.

I know, I know. So yeah, it's— it looks like it's put on by, by a couple of women from the team there, Stephanie Chan and Emma Sweet.

I don't know. Hey, I'll show you something here real quick. Let me see if I can get it up on the screen. I gotta close a few windows first, just make sure I don't show something I'm not supposed to. Uh, yeah, let me go over here. This is the button. Ah, here you go. What?

Do you see it?

I do. That was great. That was, uh, OpenAI created that. Oh. So I'm just playing around, you know. It's actually spelling it right. Yeah, and then here, I'll show you something else. Here was their other attempt that wasn't so good. Let me get the right screen up. That's the problem that I have with all these. Here's one that they utterly failed on. Yeah.

Doesn't it seem kind of weird to you, Todd, that these are large language models? But understand, they have a terrible time generating language.

But they're not creating in an image. It's a whole different process. They don't actually— they just make shapes.

Right. It is ironic, though. It is a little ironic because the whole thing with OpenAI is that it's a text generator, right?

Yeah. Now, this one here I can fix. I can take that one and I can black that out and then put in the new media show with—

Try scolding OpenAI about it. Say, I do spell this right.

Come on. When I was having— I think I told on the last episode when we were having— when I was having trouble with the the email template that we were putting out, I was saying bad words.

I was cussing it. I think I've done that in the past.

The AI creates worse. Yeah, I was cussing it out significantly. Oh, and we're working on something we're working on now. We're having challenges with the prompt. Like I said, the email prompt, they took me like 150 tries, you know, to get it to where I was happy with it. Yeah.

So you have this kind of spectrum of emotion with these AI agents where you like, at first you get really mad at them, but then it generates worse results. Right. And then you start getting to the point where you're like pleading with them.

Well, you know, it's what it is. You know, it says, well, let me annoy this person a little bit more.

Right, exactly.

I'm going to make it worse. Yeah, that's what this is like, you know. I should wear red to the show or to a hockey game or something. It matters nothing. It's just stupid at this point.

So I'm still waiting for the meme to come out.

AI have feelings too. Yeah, well, you know, I still was pretty impressed with our little intro here.

You know, that doesn't have a high fidelity sound to it. No, it doesn't. Be nice if it had like deep bass and stuff.

I'm sure if I ran it through an audio editor, I could beef it up. But, you know, it's— I'm not that. If anyone wants to take this pot on fire and beef it up, let me know. Send it over to you and you can enhance it and make it sound better.

Make it a deep stereophonic sound with spatial audio.

Yeah, it's the current buzzword. I had some fun with it in, you know, trying to do like the blueberry jingle or something. And, you know, it, it, it works good for certain things. It's not good yet for creating like commercials where they probably would make the most money. And, you know, because people like me are like, oh, I want a commercial. Yeah, you know, we used one of the clips in a, uh, in a reel that we put on Facebook that got pretty good traction. So, you know, it's not like it's, you know, just when you're not paying, you're paying, you know, whatever it is a month, $20 a month, you know, who cares, right? I just saved myself $1,000 and having someone making me a jingle. So, which we would have never paid for to begin with anyway.

Sure. It's true. So, so I heard that there was a resurgence in interest around this new professional association, the— it's, what's it called, the Podcasts Professionals Association.

Yeah, that's being headed up by Tracy, a good friend of mine. Tracy, right? And so it's designed to be a true professional organization. So time will tell on how that does.

Yeah, time will tell. Yeah, I reached out to her about it too, but so I just—

she wanted me to be part of their original board, and I, I just, I just didn't. I, I told her, I said, I don't have time. I just don't have the time cycles. Yeah, I can say in face value I'll be part of it and your board of governors or whatever it is, but I just, I just, I don't have enough hours as it is.

So, you know, I did see—

oh, good, good time. It's just, you know, like, I finished my taxes up yesterday and sent it over my CPA, and of course my CPA sent me a naughty note back like she always does, said, you know, it is, it is the second, you know, because it's, it's hot and heavy season. I didn't send it in in February when they weren't slow, so So when they were slow, right, when they were slow. So she'll probably get me a, a rough number and say, okay, send the IRS this much money, and then, you know, I'll file an extension and you, you can sign it later. But as long as you send them some money, right, they don't care if you file the paperwork late as long as you send them the money.

Yeah, but then it's— they create this dynamic, right? Well, it's like, well, if you know exactly how much money you owe them then why are you, why are you postponing it?

If you don't— here's the thing that most people don't know. I had a friend that didn't file taxes for almost 10 years. He didn't owe anything. It was all refunds he was getting. But the mistake he made is they will only give you a refund up to 7 years prior. So if you don't, if you don't owe the IRS no money and you don't file, they're not going to come after you. They don't care because in the computer they know how much you owe them. So if you're owed a refund, you have to file within those 7-year window or you lose it, lose the money. And, uh, so, but the opposite is if you owe them money, if you don't send them the right amount by April 15th, um, then you paid the penalty, and the penalty is not small.

So yeah, I saw that, uh, at Podcast Movement during James Cridland's keynote that he played a video from Adam Curry.

That's right, he did. And, uh, Adam didn't have much time, a minute or two. You can't hardly say anything in 2 minutes, but it was nice to see Adam come up on the screen. Of course, the guy, the man, you know, doesn't hardly age. So, you know, he's, he's, I think, the same age as me. He's fast approaching 60, and he definitely looks a heck of a lot better than I do. Um, he's aged much better, you know. I don't know if it was for all those years of smoking weed, or of course he's gave up the, the flower. He doesn't smoke any more flowers. So who knows, maybe that, that is, uh, maybe that was the found of youth or something. But I've seen a lot of people that smoke weed for a long time, they look pretty rough, but it didn't affect Adam. Yeah, yeah. But he doesn't do that no more.

He does not participate with the flower. Yeah, he, he was quoted in this video saying RSS is like a honey badger of digital distribution. No matter what they try, they cannot kill it.

Yeah. Yeah, believe me, they— YouTube and Spotify sure would like to kill it. Well, Spotify though, although all I did hear again in passing, yeah, um, and this is what I found curious, that at least some engineers at Spotify, um, would like to expand and potentially add Podcasting 2.0 features. At least some engineers at Spotify would.

Now, what engineers want and what, what the management wants are two different things.

But that, I thought, was a hmm. And I— that came from a very, very reliable source, uh, someone that's not— that I would He's never told me something that wasn't true. You know, people told some whoppers from time to time. But yeah, that was curious in itself. So, but I, you know, here's the thing. That'd be great. They're almost forced to.

Unless they—

why do you think they're forced? Well, just look what Apple just did with the transcripts.

You know, I guess that's the key, is that, you know, you get your foot in the door, kind of like what's, what's happened now with Apple, and it's like it's easier to visualize it.

We don't have our foot in the door, we have a pinky in, and, um, we're at, we're, we're at their mercy, you know. And here's the thing too.

Oh, here's actually, here's a good one. I gotta— when is Apple going to come up gonna announce something new too.

Well, Apple needs to— see, now this is a perfect opportunity for Apple to come out with an Android app. So let me tell you something about attribution, and I really— I was told this by someone that I asked him to send me the article. Um, if you have an iPhone and you're using Safari and you're behind the great IP firewall that Apple has set up, in other words, you're using the proxy service, and we don't know how many people are, but if you hear a podcast ad let's say you listen to podcasts, you hear an ad on a podcast, and you then load Safari and go to that website, the attribution means nothing. Yeah, that's true. There is no attribution. And because most people don't know this, all of the iPhone's browsers Chrome is not really Chrome on the iPhone. Looks like Chrome, smells like Chrome, but the backend of it's not Chrome.

Well, because it has to use the Apple libraries, right?

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. So does any browser on an iPhone, if you go to a site, is there attribution? And the answer is no. But no one wants to talk about that. That was told to me by someone that has been in the ad business a long time. And he says it's the little dirty secret of attribution in, in podcast ad sales. So Someone out there's ears just perked up. Am I— was that person right? Did they feed me the right information? And apparently this has been the case for many years, not just since Apple started masking IPs, because the original article about this was written up years ago.

Yeah.

Oh, interesting. I wonder, someone want to So prove me wrong. But makes me want to do a little research, actually. So you advertisers out there that want attribution are apparently missing any attribution coming from the number one podcast consumption device.

It doesn't work is what you're saying. Doesn't work.

How are they making up for that?

I'm not the expert.

Making assumptions? Tom? Chris, Tom's not listening. Tom, Brian, love to hear your guys weigh in on that.

Yeah, I wonder how they're still backing into those numbers somehow.

Am I wrong? Have I been fed bad advice? I don't think so. Again, this comes from— well, I'll tell you this, individuals not running any attribution on any of their shows and refuses to do so because exactly that point. Yeah. So all this attribution data and firing a pixel Well, maybe on a browser on a desktop, but on an iPhone, maybe not. So Attribution Party can continue to be shut down too if Apple ever decides to put everyone behind the great firewall of Apple too. So, right, for security reasons, sure.

Privacy reasons.

Well, that's— they're linked together. Yeah. All right, we are, we're at the end of the show. We are. All right. And, uh, I will share with you, uh, before we go, Rob, I actually played for the audience, uh, after we quit. I'm going to play you guys the intro that it made. Sano.ai made for my personal podcast at Geek News Central. I'll play it at the end here. Listen to it again. Sano.ai, I encourage you to go play and have fun. I'm Todd at blueberry.com, @geeknews on Twitter, @geeknews, @geeknews.chat on Mastodon.

Yeah, I'm on Twitter, uh, @robgreenlee and LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram and all the, all the major platforms and even on YouTube at Rob Greenlee as well. So if you want to find me over there.

That'll be great. Thanks everybody for being here. We thank you for being part of the show today. I will play this little short intro from Geekness Central as we say goodbye. So we'll see you back here next week. Everyone take care. All right.

See you next time.

Yeah. Bye-bye.

How about that one, Rob Greenlee? So how did you actually generate that? Did you write its script or did it?

It come up with that? Nope, came up with it. I told it to make an intro for the Geek News Central, a twice-weekly tech show. Ah, that's all you prompted it with? And it gave me 3 or 4 versions and I picked that one.

So pretty good. Yeah. Yeah.

Can you specify the duration of it?

30 seconds.

That's always 30 seconds? Well, the other one we created was a minute. But I may have goofed it up and caused it to go to a minute. But this one is actually 34 seconds. So as you notice, it kind of chops right at the end.

Yeah, so there's not much of— yeah, you have to get it in post-production.

Yeah, not much of an outro.

So, all right everybody.

All right everybody, we'll see you later here at the New Media Show and the Tech Talk