Is Podcasting All about the Money Now?

Hey Rob, here we are for another New Media Show. Everyone, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, it's great to be here, Todd. The post-podcast movement.

Yes, we got it, we got a live one today.

Show me the money, Todd.

Show me the money. Is that— that's your theme. Me is, uh, I'm being a little nicer. Uh, recap. I got the recap going on here.

Well, that's That's also part of this.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm, uh, I'm shutting down some preview streams. Okay, let me do that. We save some bandwidth. Um, you know, I walked away from— let's just put this way, my biggest complaint is always, do we see enough creators? Yeah, I saw enough creators.

Um, you know, they were all pretty much local. Oh, they were local to Dallas, right?

Yeah, I guess. Let's back up. Let's, uh, let's start. We, we got in there— well, I got in Sunday. I probably really didn't need to get into Monday. Yeah, because they didn't let us in to set up until the afternoon, so I could have saved $180 or $200 or $300 or whatever the hotel cost was for one night. So anyway, got in there, got set up Monday. And then, uh, one thing I noticed immediately was, whoa, way— you know, Libsyn's got this big massive, you know, 20 by 20 booth or whatever it was, and then there was just a smattering of other vendors. I don't know, what was there, 20, maybe 20 other vendors?

Yeah, yeah. And so before we dive into too much, I mean, yeah, there may be people that are watching this that maybe don't know anything about Podcast Movement. So yeah, so let's just share. Podcast Movement happened last week in, down in Dallas, and, and it has been historically, it's about 11-year running annual podcasting conference. It's been known as the, the largest podcasting conference really in the world, though I would say it's maybe lost that.

Well, in the United States, right? Not in the world anymore.

Right. And I'm not even sure it's even the biggest podcast conference even in the United States anymore.

Oh yeah. Compared to this year's numbers, for sure.

Yeah. I think Podfest is probably as big or bigger than Podcast Movement now.

Yeah.

So this is a conference that's been pivotal in the podcast industry since 2014. And so, you know, each year has been a completely different experience, but also a reflection of where we're at in the podcast medium, right? From this balance between kind of the business side of podcasting and the creator side of podcasting, which historically have kind of, and this year was plain to see, is a conflicting prioritization for the industry.

Yeah, you know, I was worried about the numbers. We talked about it 2 weeks ago, and a buddy of mine in the Dallas-Fort Worth area had gotten an email 3 or 4 days before Podcast Movement, uh, said, hey, we got a special price ticket for you that are local. And I think his ticket was $170 or $100, something like that, $170 maybe. And considering what everyone else paid for a ticket, uh, it paid off to be in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

And the, the normal ticket that a creator— if you came in as a creator, yeah, um, they— if you got, let's say, uh, you know, like a discount code or something like that, they got you a discount in, into the event. It got the price down to just a little bit over $300 for—

so significant discount then for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. But be honest with you, I'm glad they did it. It made the show be, you know, and we'll talk about that here in a second.

But yeah, it really tells you something about what, what they need to do in the future.

Yeah. And of course, Tuesday morning, uh, the first, or maybe when they made the announcement, there was an announcement that Podcast Movement had acquired Sounds Profitable. And of course, there was much discussion about was it actually Sounds Profitable acquiring Podcast Movement.

But after we heard the explanation Well, it was also said it was a merger, which, yeah, confuses it even more, right?

Yeah, so there was some conflicting language, but my understanding is, is that Podcast Movement did acquire Sounds Profitable. They made Brian Barletta of Sounds Profitable the president of Podcast Movement and everything else. Dan, who was— he was— I, first time I ever seen Dan smiling at me an event. I mean, he was— he's always running around giddy. Yeah, you're always running around like with a scowl, you know. So Dan now is in charge of their events.

Yeah, event side.

So the event side. And then so now Brian and Sounds Profitable— and Tom is still going to do Tom's stuff at Sounds Profitable, that's my understanding. So now you've got Brian in charge of podcast movement, and, and sounds profitable, and sounds good, continue its brand and its presence out there, right? So our initial— my initial reaction was, hmm, interesting. Um, and you know, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. I'm just trying to, you know— and then so I guess it was Monday night Um, or maybe it was Tuesday night, I don't know. I ran into— they had, um, Sound Prosper actually had an open bar event, and, uh, I ran into Tom real quick. And, you know, it didn't— everyone's got a cocktail in their hand. Of course, Tom's not drinking, he's drinking water, uh, or instant death, whatever that thing he— you know, that whatever that drink he drinks.

Yeah. And, um Liquid Death.

Liquid Death. Yeah, there you go. And I didn't want to talk too much business, you know, because I'd grabbed a cocktail too. And I basically said, hey, Tom, congratulations. And, you know, got to get— my main thing is get the creators back. That was my really my 30-second or 60-second interaction with him. And Tuesday when the event started, You know, I was— I had low, low expectations, and we had already decided internally before the event that we weren't coming back. We weren't going to renew. And, um, it was evident that a lot of the people already made that decision because there wasn't a lot of people there. But lo and behold, at least from my perspective, we started getting people to the We weren't— in the old days, we'd be 4 or 5 deep, and I'd have 3 or 4 people there, and we would be talking. We'd walk away from the event with 250, 300 contacts. So we weren't— we might be 1 or 2. There might be 1 or 2 people at the table. And again and again, creators, new creators looking to create content. And again, where are you from? Dallas. Houston, uh, Dallas-Fort Worth, um, and then the surrounding Waco. It's all surrounding the Metroplex within about an hour. Of course, Houston's 5 hours away. But, um, so anyway, we had— and, and it was, again, the people coming to the booth were somewhere relatively new, and there was some that were there that were looking to leave. Matter of fact, there was a definite winner on who's losing customers. I won't talk about that certain company. It was different from the event before. And, you know, so we know where there's weakness now based upon those conversations. But, um, so, you know, I walked away from the 2 days of, you know, we had our slow times, but I walked away from the event thinking that we would have maybe 50 badges scanned. And it turned out to be about double that. I think we had 84, and there was some people I couldn't scan, so I had cards or contact information. So between the intermix, probably about 100 that will be—

So was it a balance of people that already had a podcast that wanted to shift their hosts, or was it entirely new podcasts? It was a balance of the two.

There was, of course, some people that had some— like, we talked to one gentleman, he has 80 shows, he's looking for a new home.

Oh, on the network side.

On the network side. So, you know, that if we'd had that conversation with just that guy alone and if that converted, that, that takes care of the whole show. You know, that, that's a big deal. That's a big move client. Um, but the rest of them are just getting started or some people on Spotify and they didn't know what they're doing or, you know, so the conversation was good. Now there was some B2B stuff intermixed in there. But not as much. And I know we've talked to almost all those vendors in the past. Someone was complaining on my LinkedIn post that we weren't being friendly to other vendors, but you know, you're, you're staying focused, you're trying to talk to people. It isn't my job to go and talk to other businesses unless I think there's a business opportunity, right? And some of the businesses, you couldn't even tell what they did because they had nothing on their table, you'd see just a name, you know, like, what is this? And there's— there was— of course, we've always been known for having a lot of paper and swag, but, um, the, um, the traffic was, you know, I— and when I got done, I'd seen Tom in the hallway just passing out, same floor of my hotel, and he was on his way somewhere and I was on the way to my room. I said, hey, Tom, I'm satisfied. That's, that's the word I use. I'm satisfied with the show. We had good traffic, um, You know, excited to see what this potential for, for the next show. And Saturday, no, Friday morning, sitting in the, um, waiting for the airplane because they changed my flight. And anyway, I had some extra time and I typed up a LinkedIn post that got quite a bit of— I think it's still getting traffic. And basically say podcast movement 2025 and inflection point and and Brian weighed in and took the input, and a lot of other people did too. And I think there's a lot of good stuff in there for them. But podcasting, at least up until today, um, they— it has shifted from its grassroots beginnings, and it's definitely largely mainstream Um, yeah, we've grown up, Todd. Yeah. And so I think— and again, my, my biggest griper has always been that cost. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday show. Yeah, this is nothing new. I've talked about this a million times, so have you. So I think they'll take into consideration wherever they decide to go in New York And that's nothing. They said no San Diego, we're not going to San Diego, we're going to New York. From my perspective, going to New York was probably— well, it's probably the smart thing that they, they should have done because— or have done because there's a— that's a, that's a, you know, what, what's New York, the third largest city in the world or something? Or maybe then it's huge, right?

Yeah. All the boroughs around.

Yeah. And in Boston and you got Jersey and, you know, you've got this huge metroplex. They're gonna draw people just because, you know, they're gonna make the numbers probably worth it just because of the where the show's gonna go. I don't think you'll draw people outside of the Metroplex because if, you know, September in New York— and well, it doesn't matter when you go to New York.

I think that they definitely need to do like you suggest. They need to have one-day passes.

Yeah, one-day passes.

You need to have a a, a 3-state, uh, marketing outreach campaign.

Yeah.

To get local people aware of the event. And, and with a decent price ticket, they can come in kind of like what the podcast show does. I think there's a lot of lessons from that.

Oh, there's for sure.

But, uh, podcast movement needs to learn.

Now the, the challenge that they've got to balance, and I understand this, business people don't like to be at a show on Saturday. They don't. They want to be home. They, they want to be home with their family. They want to work. They want to work 9 to whatever the hours are Monday through Friday. They want to fly in Monday, fly on Friday, be at the show in the middle of the week. That's perfect for business people. Whereas creators, we're working. And I'm a creator and I'm working too, so I have to take— I don't take time off for work because I work for a company, but work doesn't get done you know. So I understand the PTO situation because I, you know, I balanced that for years. And, you know, so, you know, you work the industry, so you, you know, that's not necessarily had to take PTO to go to the event, but the majority, 95% of the people that will be attending will have to if they're working a regular 9 to 5.

They would prefer not to have to take a vacation time to, right, to do that.

So if you have creator events Friday, Saturday Yep. People can get into New York Thursday, Friday, Saturday, go home Sunday, or even fly out late Saturday. And then the business people, you could do a Thursday, Friday for the business— Thursday, Friday for the business people, Saturday again. So, you know, you, you go heavy on business on Thursday, mix track on Friday, and then Saturday is all creator track, and then I think you'll have a good mix. Now that's going to piss the vendors off that have to be there because they're going to not, you know, their people are going to have to be there on, on Saturday. But for me, I'd rather be Saturday, Sunday. But you know, that's— I don't think I'll get Sunday.

Uh, that's why, that's why splitting the difference on a Saturday, yeah, basically allows everybody to go, yeah, and then go home on Sunday, right?

And then So hotel costs though, the only good thing about being in New York City is you do have options. I think the last time I was in Manhattan, I stayed at like a Hampton Inn Midtown. I think it was like $180 a night. Um, if you shop, you can find a place to stay. Now I don't think And I might be wrong, um, especially if you do a Friday, Saturday, people can then do something on a Sunday. They can maybe Saturday night and go to a play, Sunday go, you know, go shopping, go to the World Trade Center Memorial. There's lots of things to do in New York. I mean, more than you could ever accomplish in a day. So you could leave on a Sunday night and still in most cases get back because you're on the East Coast. So even if you're in California, you leave Sunday night, it's still Sunday afternoon, you get back home into California Sunday evening with a direct flight.

And a lot of people are going to come in from the, the tri-state area here via train, right?

That's true too.

And just do, do a one-day in and out.

Yeah. Or if you're coming from another coast, it makes it easier. See, when you— when I was like leaving Dallas I left Dallas Friday morning bright and early, and I didn't get home until 4 o'clock in the afternoon here on the East Coast, even though it's a 1-hour time change because I'm going against the sun. So anyway, being in New York is smart. We'll see where they— hopefully it's not in Brooklyn or something. Hopefully they can have it in, in Midtown or find something like that. It just makes it more convenient from Uber and everything else, but There is a venue that the Advertising Week folks use.

It's an old multi-story shopping mall in Manhattan that they take over, and that's where they hold all their sessions. And it would be great for Podcast Movement to do that. It may not have that big ballroom type of big stage or something like that, but it would create this situation where there would be separate rooms instead of putting everything in one room, which I think is— I don't really like that anymore. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think it's— they thought it was a good idea.

Well, it worked pretty good. It worked pretty good this year, and, and actually some people liked it because people were on headphones. And for those who don't know, everyone was wearing headphones. You— I saw more people paying attention wearing the headphones than if they were just sitting in a room and they're looking at their laptop.

Well, that's true. Actually, people work in booths had headphones on listening to their sessions.

We had stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And it does create a little bit of an antisocial environment.

Yeah, a little.

Um, that's the only problem is, you know, everybody's walking around with headphones on, not talking to each other. So you know, it, I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it, Todd. And I mean, I don't, I'm not a big fan of everybody walking around with headphones on.

So I think Brian can, even if they do, let's say they do a Wednesday and it's media day, it's just media day. All the media buyers can come in. They have meetings. They could do that on Wednesday. See, they could make this a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday event.

Well, Todd, they already announced that they're gonna do a companion upfront.

Oh, and the same time?

At the same time is what I heard.

Now the other announcement about—

I don't know if that, that's been publicly announced.

Oh, maybe I heard something about that, but the—

so that could be on Wednesday, right?

It could be. Yeah. So the other situation is going— they're doing South by Southwest, and South by Southwest, that's, uh, more expensive than even New York.

Oh yeah.

And if you don't have a hotel room now for South By 2026, good luck. You're 30 miles out of town, or you're paying $500 a night. And a South By ticket, if you get— I think I haven't been there in a while, but I remember spending at least $1,000 for a South By ticket for the digital portion of the event.

Yeah, I don't know that I agree with them making that event Sounds Profitable, or the Podcast Movement Evolution event.

I won't— we won't go.

Needs to be the Sounds Profitable event.

It's just— it's South by— it's just too expensive. Again, I'm serious. It'll be more expensive to not necessarily fly in, but the hotel accommodations.

Oh yeah.

And Austin is— is— it's bad. You know, and, you know, great entertainment, lots of liquor. There's a party atmosphere. That's my problem too with South by Southwest. If you have 8 hours of stuff, but a lot of business gets done outside, but you've got 8 hours, everyone scatters after that.

So when was the last time you went to South by Southwest?

It's been 6 or 7 years at least.

It's been longer for me.

Maybe me too. I'll have to go back and look, but And maybe it's changed, but still crazy expensive.

Oh, it is. Yeah, it's a very popular event. It's a music as well as a technology event. Yeah, it's a film or, or video event too. So this whole podcast piece of it is just one piece of the puzzle and it's an all week long event. It's not like through 2 or 3 or 4 days or something. It's a full like maybe week and a half.

Yeah. Well, it's, it's 2 weeks for the full event, or 10. Yeah, I think it's 10 straight days or something. But yeah, but you know, we, we did have some interesting meetings at Podcast Movement. Uh, the podcast, um, the PSP, Podcast Standards Project, had a room. Uh, we had meetings every single day. The biggest one attended was the HLS. And this, I kind of got a funny story about this, Rob. So we're talking about Well, Justin from Transistor was demonstrating on the Fountain app the ability to switch between audio and video.

Yes.

And I'm kind of over in the corner and, you know, I'm doing ad-lib, you know, Open RSS, since he supported video from the beginning, you know, did you know Apple Podcasts supported video? And, you know, I'm kind of— and lo and behold, Ted was outside the room. I didn't know it, so I'm like, you guys need to run Ted down. Look, look for Ted here from Apple. Look at the badge if they don't have it turned around. I said, he's got a beard, keep an eye out for him. And, um, so I— little did I know Ted was outside the room, and I'm, you know, I'm rallying the troops to go.

Well, he couldn't, couldn't get in, actually, because it was full. The door was blocked, so they couldn't get in.

Well, the door was full. We had a full room.

That's what I mean. He couldn't walk walk into the room.

So anyway, so Ted kind of caught me later, said, I heard you, you know. So it's a little bit of a, a little bit of fun time there. But, um, the HLS thing is, I think, a great way forward, but it's so early for that piece.

Um, well, it is, but it's— that conversation has got to start sometime.

Yeah, and it's starting. So Blueberry is going to support HLS in the alternate closure. That'll be out in a couple of weeks. We're not going to do the HLS encoding though, so if you want to do HLS encoding, you can do that on your own.

You'll just create a form pathway.

Yeah, we're going to— yeah, to provide the URL in. Yeah, right. Yeah. And then we'll see, you know. And again, I, I know how many video shows I have. We'll send a mailing out to them and let them know And then we'll start doing some education. But I hate to say it, um, I know what it's going to cost me now. Um, the cost is not as bad as we originally thought if you're doing small scale and just, you know, spin up a couple of servers, do the FFM encoding, whatever is done. There's a process to create the HLS file, then it's just data. It's just, you know, then it's just stuff that moves via the CDN. It's all good until it gets really good, and then it becomes expensive. This is the thing, um, you get a Rogan that's doing HLS and people move to an alternative app, it could get very expensive very fast. So, you know, if we decide to do HLS at some point, there's going to have to be a limit. There's gonna be no way I can just say, okay, for $20 you get all this for free.

Um, so is the cost escalation really just the bandwidth?

Yeah, the escalation is the bandwidth. There is initial upfront encoding. Long as you don't— as long as I don't use Amazon to do the encoding. If I use Amazon to do the encoding, it's about a dollar per video to do the encoding. And then it's like— I think it's actually 85 cents. And then it's bandwidth. Um, and the bandwidth—

yeah, so what's the spectrum on the encoding? Are you creating a like a, the equivalent of a variable bitrate playback.

Yeah. Um, and you have to decide the settings therein. So depending— and that file could get pretty big. But again, if you're just doing small numbers, let's say under 1,000 shows a month, 1,000 episodes a month, you can just do this encoding on a, on a couple of small boxes, $20 boxes, and they'll incur that dollar fee. And you just then just drop the, and then you get storage and the bandwidth that's involved. But again, if let's just say there was 1,000 shows, I can scale that today. That's gonna be, that's no problem. The problem is, is okay, so now I've got all this HLS done, then 3, 4 apps.

Who's gonna support the playback?

You're right. So if Apple in 1 or 2 years, because I don't foresee anything coming any sooner than that. Um, well, I said when I actually told the Apple folks, I said hell will freeze over before you support alternate enclosure. Now I've already been proven wrong because my fiber got blown in, in front of the house. So I'm waiting to get my fiber hookup here, probably a couple months. So hell did freeze over once already because I said hell would freeze over before I got fiber. And, um, so, you know, I'd love to see lightning strike twice in that regard.

Bad news for Elon, right? Is that what that is?

No, I'll keep one Starlink up once we get— oh yeah, I've always had a backup connection. Um, you never know until it's trusted, and it's Frontier. Frontier doesn't have the biggest reputation, but— so the video conversation was just, you know, that And then the Podcast Standards Project again had a couple more meetings. We actually had a PSP meeting where we had, I think there was 20 people in there. Adam Curry was there for a little bit. He had to bug out early. He says, oh, you guys are crazy. You know, basically you should, he said you should be ignoring video. And you know, it is what it is. You know, Adam's not in the podcast hosting business and you know, I have to do what my customers want. Uh, but at the same time, there's certain things I can't do because I can't do it for 5 people or 20 or 30. I have to do it for 100.

Well, time will tell on the videos.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I think, you know, podcasting has had a deep history.

Yeah.

Uh, with video, it's run, you know, parallel to some degree with YouTube. So it's, you know, as I've said many times, it's You know, it's been always a part of this medium. It's just we went through 10 years where it, it wasn't.

Yeah, it wasn't.

So, right.

And people forgot, you know, I think it was more than 10 years, but you know, I think, I think it, yeah, I think too is the, the HLS discussion goes beyond just delivery video. Could be HLS delivery audio too. And then what it really then does is could open up a whole new realm of retention graphics, because I can very well tell then retention data. We're doing some experiments right now in chapter files to look at retention data from chapter file data, hiding little bits in there on a couple of feeds, test feeds, and, you know, seeing what kind of signaling we get. But again, if you're, if you only got 3 or 4 or 5% maximum of apps supporting chapter playback, Again, and it's one thing James had said to me in a chat session, he says, hey, you know, there people have different habits on different apps. And oh, I agree, we see that dramatically. You know, people consume data differently on— when they get off the Apple Podcast app, that's an intentional switch to a different device to consume a show on a different app. So a fountain or a Podverse or any of the other podcasting 2.0s, if I've moved a listener to those apps, that, that, that listener's a P1. They're going to listen all the way through because this is— they're into it. Whereas an Apple Podcast subscriber may not have the same retention. And I, I don't know if I can get a true picture. You'd have to disclose that, okay, these 10— these 6 apps support what we're showing you for a retention graph, and it's 3% of your total downloads. So is that valuable? Again, we don't know. But again, if more— if Pocket Casts and other apps start adopting, we could get up to 8, 9, 10%, maybe. Maybe.

Yeah, at least we have a fighting chance of pushing back against the the data that's going to be available on YouTube as well as Spotify around playback that could at least keep RSS in the game around, you know, this where's the money theme here today around monetization.

And it could get, it could get real crazy. You could have an app that would support HLS audio, but also at the same time support download of an MP3. Yeah, you know, someone comes into the app and they're connected and they go play, it could grab the HLS. But if they have no connection— again, there's all kinds of crazy scenarios.

But well, even, even YouTube supports that. Oh yeah, today.

Oh yeah, right. That's what they— well, everything on YouTube is HLS.

Well, no, but I— you can check a box and have it store a copy of it locally.

I wonder what format that's stored in. I wonder if that's stored in—

doesn't matter as long as it plays back, right?

Yeah, I guess so.

Hmm.

I've never done that.

Well, that's, that's the bigger issue, Todd. How many people are really going to do that?

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, and that's, you know, you know, over the years we've had this argument on this show that, you know, that download thing needs to be there just in case you're not able to connect to the internet.

Right. But now I'm, I'm on— I had Starlink. On a flight from San Francisco to Chicago, no cost to hook up, and I was getting speed test of 120 megs down and 20 megs up on a United Airlines flight.

Yeah, well, I get, you know, whenever I fly on Alaska Airlines, I get free Wi-Fi on board, so But what— watch videos or listen to audio?

Are they connected to Starlink or who are they connected to?

I don't know. No idea what the— yeah, what the connection is.

Well, up to this point, you haven't been able to watch videos on— on, you know, video is no way you were gonna— I couldn't do that in United. But when Starlink was in, they— I was able to play stuff back, videos back.

So I could on the airlines on Alaska, I could play any content.

So maybe they're using Starlink already, you know, maybe they've made it possible.

Yeah, possible. I know that they have a close, uh, partnership. At least Alaska Airlines has a close partnership with T-Mobile. Oh, and I know T-Mobile did an integration deal with, uh, SpaceX.

Yeah, so maybe that's all tied together. Who knows? Could be. Yeah, but if you read through the comments— you did, you got involved in the back and forth on the LinkedIn post. Um, there is a—

there's a blowback.

Some people don't like this, uh, acquisition, this merger.

Well, it gets back to like what, what I kind of led off with this thing too. It's the— it feels like, you know, it's all about the, the money now. It's all about You know, and we're moving down this path, like you said earlier, we're— podcasting is now the mainstream media. So expectations have escalated and the desires to make revenue and profits have escalated and expectations of creators have escalated.

Although—

which may, may explain why we don't have as many new creators coming into the medium.

Although you'll be— this will be curious. And I asked Mike about this. I said, did any of the people, the new creators, talk to us about monetization? Not a one. Oh, so, but they're early, so, you know, if they haven't launched a show yet or they've just getting started, 2, 3 things, they're still trying to figure out what the hell they're doing. So, you know, maybe that, you know, we went through the spiel. Yep, we offer monetization, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, but you look at that commentary in that LinkedIn thread and there's people that said, I want the business part of the— you know, this is an integral part. I'm there to that show because of the business aspect. And I respect that.

Sure.

You know, I think there's a way I've always been there.

Yeah, from day one. It's just people— I, I don't know what it is now. It's just this It seems like it's every year there's been this tension between independent creators and more professional creators, right? There's like this, I don't know what it is, jealousy, envy, anger, being upset at celebrities being involved in podcasting. Celebrities have been involved in podcasting since 2004, you know, so there's really nothing new going on here. It's just people are are, you know, got their panties all bent, you know, and hold it up and are upset about things that are, that are not new. Um, but it bothers them still.

Yeah. So someone sent me a text today, someone that's well known. I sent me a message, says, hey, during your presentation you talked about there only being 300,000 active shows, and where did you get that? He didn't believe me, and I sent him the link. Let me see if I can bring this up. I brought the, you know, I sent him this link. I said, here's the podcast index, 314,000 shown the last 30 days. Now this, this number's gotten scary. 395 in the last 60, that was well in the— and 461 in the last 90 days.

Yeah, that number was well in the upper 600s, right? Not that long ago.

Not that long ago.

So Um, that's the question that the industry needs to be— this is the question really focused on, right? Why are we not getting new creators, right? And why are people podfading? Yeah. Um, that's what we need to get to the bottom of. But I didn't hear anybody talk about nobody.

Nobody's willing to talk about it. Everything's good now. I did— I, I'll be honest with you, uh, I heard some stuff coming from some host that I have never heard before. And you know, I've been saying for a year things have been flat, year and a half. And some other hosts are seeing the same thing, you know, that what it's like, flat, flatter than a pancake.

Well, all you have to do is look at that, right? That, that chart of where the industry is right now.

Now, I think we also— there was a, um, and if you're watching live, make sure you say hello and let us know you're here. Um, there was a— I lost my train of thought here. We're talking about a number of podcasts. Well, um, yeah, yeah.

What's causing that, um, that to happen? I don't know that, you know, that's maybe what Edison Research needs to do. Maybe that's— maybe, maybe we've already done this. That's why Tom hasn't dug into this. But that's the number— I think that's the number one issue in the space right now.

So why— I got a little clue I told my entire team, I said, you guys got to listen to the first 45 minutes of Podcasting 2.0 episode 229. And in that, Adam Curry talked about how he had been at a— I think it was a church event. I think there was a bunch of, uh, either was a convention, I don't know, there was a lot of people there from, uh, faith-based, and they were all talking about content. And Adam was talking about Godcaster and everything they're doing there, and about the virtues of open podcasting and how you can intermix stuff and it's open and you can't be deplatformed. Well, you know, all the spiel we've been saying for 20 years, and they were shocked. They didn't know. So here's what I think. Step 1, and I said this during the PSP, but I think it just went over everyone's heads. We need to start again as a community, host, creators, anyone that is dependent upon the ecosystem. That's everybody. Um, maybe not creators. Everyone needs to go out and shout from the top of their lungs the values of open RSS and retrain a new generation of people of the value that Open RSS brings. Now, is it going to help make people realize, oh, I can do this on my own? Book authors, as an example, are tired of getting screwed by Amazon and everyone else, taking— I mean, taking like 80 cents on the dollar of every penny earned. I mean, it's crazy the amount of money that gets in, and they're looking for new— so podcasting can help with audiobooks. Podcasts can, can help with, with content. I mean, you just— we don't have to be just talk, right? So I think we have to start re-sharing why this space is important. Well, I think we've lost that. Everyone said, oh, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, we'll just do it over there. And it's become the norm.

That's because this conversation is true. It's because the conversation has shifted a lot to video. There has not been an avenue that people understood or thought was even available on the podcasting side for video.

We had creator after creator come up to the table and who were video first that were like doing backflips. We set people up in the booth to for Bidipod.

Bidipod, right?

I mean, you mean I don't have to do nothing? All I have to do is set this up, tie to my playlist, and it happens? Yep. And they were—

you have to make sure that what you create with your video is going to be podcast friendly, right?

And then I always added that. I said, just remember, people are listening too, so you need to think about that, or you're going to hear a feedback from those audio listeners that they're going to say, what the hell are you talking about? But again, going back to the RSS thing, You know, Podcasting 2.0 is fantastic, but we didn't make sure people understand what RSS is and why it's so valuable and stop these naysayers from saying, oh, we need to get rid of RSS, you know. And finally, I did hear someone steal one of my lines saying that, you know, Open RSS was the last bastion of free speech. I was like, yeah, we got one, you know, someone else copied my line.

But yet at the same time, Todd, RSS is disappearing from the listeners' We don't care about the listeners.

We don't care. We want people that are thinking about becoming a creator to understand there is an option for them.

But a podcast listener is usually the, the entry door into becoming a part.

And therein lies the reason why we need to educate everyone. So you set the seed. All you got to do is set the seed, and they only need to be said once. This just shows available because of OpenRSS and distributed everywhere because of OpenRSS. And again, Oh, is that— and later on they start their YouTube channel and say, what is— I heard about this thing called Open RSS and, you know, distribution. What is that? That's all we need to do.

Yeah.

And they can Google what is Open RSS and they can learn, you know, because if you have a room full of faith-based ministries that are creating content and they didn't understand the value of Open RSS or what's possible today there's a problem.

Yeah, it's just the conversation has shifted away from the technical distribution side of things.

We don't have— again, you don't have to talk about the technical, just talk about the values of open RSS. We don't have to talk about the mumbo-jumbo and the stuff that causes people to— their eyes to glaze over.

Right.

You don't have—

that's always been the problem.

Yeah, we don't, we don't need to talk about that. Yeah, you know, just set the seed of here's the value of what this provides.

But most people don't even know what RSS means, that's what it is, that's how it works, why it's important to even care about it.

My point exactly.

Yeah, so just because it's been, it's been removed from the kind of modern zeitgeist. Yeah, I mean It's something that's old and outdated.

You know why? Because we've made it easy for listeners to get the content via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, which is a good thing. Everything is— it's good. But they— if again, if we're— again, like you said, center anymore like it used to, right? Like you said, a lot of creators are born out of listening to shows like this. My Tech Show.

Lots of podcasters that, you know, you say Can you send me your RSS feed?

Oh yeah, they're like, what?

They go, what, what's that?

Yeah, even Libsyn's even got it almost buried.

Oh, it's— oh, it's definitely buried, you know.

So we just have— and again, if we just start this and work on this over the next year or two, I think it'll be good. And it doesn't have to be like this big in-your-face, you know, you know, this orange logo thing. No, no, no, just We just need to talk on a— here's the reason why it's important— and just softly drop it in there so that it sets a trigger in people's brain that they get a little more creative. But, and going back to what you're talking about, this tension between independent creators and professional media, I don't even know. It's— here's where the tension is. Some don't give a shit about money. It's those that don't care about making money for their show against those that are hell-bent on making money for the show. That's where there's the little rub.

And there's others that have this kind of generalization that those that are focused on profits are somehow corrupt or evil or You know, it's this demonization that happens. And we saw it in your thread, right, of people that are seen as maybe hard-nosed business people that are considered to be kind of evil, right? And they can't be trusted. And that is kind of like the undertow of this conflict is between people that think of themselves as at a higher level of ethics and values and all this stuff compared to these evil capitalists over here. And I think that, that really cuts to the chase of what's been going on in our culture and our society too.

But I will say that if you look at the podcast host, look at Buzzsprout, look at RSS.com, look at Libsyn, look at us, look at all the others. Yeah, we love creators. We're the advocates for creators. We're building tools for creators to be able to do these things. And yet I was almost vilified. You definitely were, to a point, in some of the comments. I'm like, wait a minute, I'm here, I'm, I'm the, I'm the biggest advocate for, for content creators, you know. I, sorry, I, I go to war for creators. You do too. And So does the other companies.

And, and sure, there's things that happen that are not, not always good. Humans make mistakes.

Yeah.

Humans do things and then regret them later. And but you can't really hold on to that.

I mean, some of the things that I was accused of in your thread were things I had nothing to do with, you know, and if I was in this for the money, I'd have sold the company 3 mergers and acquisition attempts already. I would have sold the company already. I'd have cashed out. Yeah, you know. So am I getting rich? No, I get a salary, you know.

So, but you can't work full-time on something, or more than full-time on something, and not make any money from it either.

So, shit, you know, you live and breathe this thing, you know. So, and I know a lot of other people do too. Yeah, it's not just me, you know.

There's this kind of other tension that's going on that there's been a lot of new people that have entered the podcast medium, right, at all levels. Either they're producers, they're hosts, they're, they're, they're creators. And oftentimes these corporations, you know, do a clean sweep and lay everybody off and shut companies down. And, and that's seen as, by a certain, you know, group of people seeing that as evil, right? Um, and, and that should never happen. And, but that's not the reality of the world, you know. It's—

well, I wasn't going to announce it here. I wasn't even going to talk about it, but on Monday we sent an email and put a blog post out for all of our creators. We're raising prices for the first time in 20 years. Yeah.

And Why? I think that's smart, Todd, because we may be coming into a new round of inflation here. Well, it's further in the future.

It's either that or— well, why do you raise prices? You have to. I can't— you know, people have no clue on how that—

you've resisted, and the whole industry has resisted.

But I found out at the show that a couple of companies have raised prices, and that didn't It's not been announced. You know, they've raised prices like, oh, you did raise prices 6 months ago. Oh, we just raised prices 2 months ago. Oh, make any big— kept it very, very quiet, you know. And so, you know, here I am spilling the beans, but it's okay. So, you know, it's no secret. You know, I had like a 14.7% increase in healthcare this year. And I had like a 13% the year before and 17% the year before and 19— I mean, insane increases in healthcare costs.

That doesn't even count the increased costs and travel and pay raises, everything, you know, and all sorts of stuff.

The only thing that hasn't changed in cost is bandwidth.

That price you use, the less you pay, right?

That price has stayed the same for the last 10 or 15 years. Right. And, you know, and then I'm like, but everything else, holy crap. Yeah. So I did it reluctantly. I didn't, didn't do it because I wanted to. I have to. Yeah.

You know, you can't service your customers if you're out of business.

Right, right. And, you know, and it's, it's like I could have went more, but I didn't go more. I did what we needed to do, and, uh, thus far the feedback hasn't been too bad.

Well, if you have to raise it, um, in the future, then you'll address that one.

Yeah, we'll go there. But yeah, I hope to not have to, right? You know, but some of the biggest podcast hosts in space have raised their prices. You never— you didn't know it.

Yeah, well, you know, I'm sure they're not out there.

No, they're not advertising, you know, screaming about it on a podcast.

So, but anyway, it's, it's, uh, you know, but things have changed. People are, you know, they need to make an income. Yeah, people need to, you know, people are— have thought of over the last few years that podcasting could be like a— I hate to use the term— the side hustle or whatever, but Yeah, I think, I think a lot of people found out that it's a lot of work and it's not going to generate a lot of money for you quickly. So, you know, that's the— and then people get disenchanted with it because maybe they don't grow their audience as fast as the expectations are. And so people podfade.

Yeah, we, we do this show with vow of poverty, you know. We, we make nothing. We've made some money from this show. We've had a couple of great donations. You know, thank you RSS.com in the past and a few others that have sent us, you know, a nice, a nice, uh, a nice, you know, a nice little bonus. But, you know, you know, Adam, this, you know, his, you know, No Agenda show is doing pretty good, you know, but he works really hard at it.

Well, he's also on a donation model.

Yeah, from the beginning. And he's, you know, he's got a, he's got a system and it works for that show. People just don't write you a $3,000 check that don't love your show. If you're not getting value, or $5,000, or, you know, $333, or whatever the number may be, you don't get those types of donations weekly. That, um, and again, they're not making millions of dollars. There's two families that are being taken care of, but They don't. They have a very, very small, small, small team.

So what does that say, Todd, long term, about the advertising market in podcasting? I, I just wonder.

You can make it with advertising if you have a big audience and a small team. You can do well. You can have a house payment money, your costs down, if you, if you stay small.

And what I mean by small, a team of 1 or 2, which is what, uh, Marc Maron did, Joe Rogan did for a long time when he got started. And, you know, I, I think a lot of this stuff is proven in the history of podcasting. He said most people don't know the history.

So at my, at my session, there was at least 50% of the people there had team, had team had a team outside their podcast, and these are new podcasters. I'm like, how are you doing it? How are— how are you—

they're investing is what they are, Todd.

Well, then it must be the same thing I did when I said on my show, I'm looking for a lawyer, I'm looking for an MBA, I'm looking for a graphics guy, and I'm looking for a programmer. We had no money, and what did we do? We started a business and built it out of our back of our pocket.

So Luckily, that's what a lot of people in this industry are doing right now.

And luckily, I had enough of a base of already pre-established business that we were able to— well, no, no, none of us went full-time for like 3 years. We all had regular jobs. So, you know, sweat equity, 20 hours a day.

So, Todd, let's Let's shift and talk about Podcast Movement versus Podfest and what that means.

Chris, you have an opportunity, my friend. You, you got to promote, promote, promote, promote, promote. People still don't know what Podfest is. What is Podfest? I was asked that at least 10 times.

I talked to Chris just a couple days ago, uh, and that was his first question was about what happened at Podcast Movement. So So what did you tell him?

Attention. Well, that's good. So he needs to double down on promotional, whatever he can do to get the word out.

Well, he's already doing his pod tours. He's— he just finished up last week with his— was his, his VidPod event down in—

was it in Atlanta or someplace?

Yeah. Yeah. And so he's, he's trying to diversify what he's doing and to be more relevant. And get out and connect with creators locally. And I think that's really the massive theme that I wanna take out of this show today in relation to what happened at Podcast Movement is if you have an event, the local people around you at that event are going to be where you're gonna be more likely to pull your creators from. And so that's what Chris is trying to do. Going to people, having local events all over the country. I mean, he's doing more cities this year than he did last year.

Yeah, they did like 20 or something last year.

I don't know if that approach is going to get people to Orlando, but he's going to chip away at it. And some people will go there to say, well, I'm going to get out of the icy cold January and go to where it's a little bit warmer, maybe.

At the same time— Right. With the economic situation the way it is, local, I think, is gonna reemerge as kind of a thing.

I think we're already seeing, I got invited to be a keynote at a podcasting, a new podcasting event down in Houston. So that's coming up here in October. And I'm doing another event, small event down in New Jersey. And, you know, they're starting to bubble, you know, I think back to the early days of podcasting with the podcamps.

Yeah, yeah.

And I did a lot of podcasts too, a lot. And those were just fantastic events. Yeah, you just walk into these, uh, these—

there's 400 people.

Yep. Yeah, you write the, the title of the session that you want to put on and you go find a room and gather people up for it, or they voted and then they decided who was going to speak right on the spot.

And he had 300, 400 people in the local area. It's a lot of work. Angela was doing Pod Camp Ohio or whatever it was, and, you know, it took, you know, so whoever holds these, it's, it's a huge, huge amount of work. I was talking with a gal that does military spouses, and they're having an event in, um, in, uh, Washington, DC in October. And, you know, basically they just, they don't need a lot of money, they just need a little bit of money And yeah, and I did a lot of them at, uh, the big universities.

I did one at, uh, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill one time. I flew all the way from Seattle to North Carolina to do this pod camp.

And, you know, and the thing that I keep asking on small events is, what's your agenda? If your agenda is 75% video podcasting, well, maybe it's not a podcast event.

Yeah, and I wonder sometimes if that term podcast is being increasingly interchanged with the word creator now. Yeah. And because people are thinking themselves as content creators now, because the expectation in the market is that you're creating all sorts of different kinds of content, not just podcasts. But yeah, so this balance between creator, show, and podcast is— is kind of at the, at the inflection point of what's happening with people's perceptions.

You guys are quiet on YouTube today and Facebook. I see you there. You guys aren't making any comments.

Um, well, we haven't been too controversial on the show.

No, no, no, no. And, uh, when, when people are, uh, quiet in the chat, that's usually indication that we have people that are eardropping. Are eavesdropping. Um, you know, and to be honest with you, I hope that Podcast Movement comes up with one hell of a plan for New York. I hope they come up with, uh, something that's going to be spectacular and wanted to be attended by many people. Um, I jokingly said to one of the Sounds Profitable members, I said, well, we know who they— who you're gonna get hit up to help support Podcast Movement. I said it jokingly. But I'm sure the Sounds Profitable members will all be, you know, there'll be some sort of deal probably put together, said, uh, you know, and of course then what is that? That's again all business. So, you know, I kind of jokingly said, but it's going to take more than that to make an event very, very successful. And, and maybe it's impossible. Maybe maybe Podcast Movement can't draw new creators and maybe it becomes an event where we don't attend as an exhibitor, but we attend as, you know, just attendees and talk to people.

Well, yeah, I think the big question is how much of Sounds Profitable is going to be a part of Podcast Movement, you know?

Oh, I'm sure there's gonna be huge bleedover.

Is Sounds Profitable and all their partners going to be the primary sponsors of Podcast Movement? Going forward? And what's the— how does that influence the, the programming too?

I know, you know, I think if they split it, it will probably be okay if they split it. And of course, I'm not at liberty to say who's been put in charge of— well, who's going to be reviewing the Creator track, because that person asked us not to say who that is. And when he announces it himself, it's going to fine.

But well, he already did.

Oh, did he already publicly say?

Yeah, yeah, it's already been in a couple different posts in the newsletter already that he's— oh, he's going to be— I think the question is, well, what's the scope of the work that he's going to be doing? Uh, I think is the big question. Um, you know, is he going to be booking individual speakers to, to panels and all that kind of stuff? Probably not.

Well, one thing's for sure, because I was watching the panel across from me, a lot of people, you know, I refrain. I, when I go and have a deck, of course there's stuff that Blueberry does that I talk about, but I also say, okay, you can get the same feature at X, Y, and Z, naming my competitors, not, and putting stuff up on, you know, I, I try to be as transparent as possible and give credit where credit's due. But boy, some of those presentations were just outright, this is what we do, this is how you do it on our platform, and a whole pitch. And I was just like, that has to be eliminated, outright eliminated, so that we can have true training, right?

What's the purpose of educational content if, if it's not educational content, if it's just pitching a particular platform or a brand? And the people that are up on stage are not really educators, um, maybe they're just business people, um, but they're not really, you know, skilled at education, um, maybe they don't belong up on stage.

Yeah, I think that's— I think you have to have strict agreements. It's— and again, even if Blueberry is hosting a booth doesn't mean Blueberry should qualify to have a Blueberry team member speak. The, the, the topic and the content of the training, yeah, needs to be such that people get value of it and you're not promoting your product, or you're not even talking about it, right?

Exactly. I did that for— and I know you did too, Todd— for many years at Podcast Movement. We would— I'd moderate panels and, and, and do all sorts of stuff. And, and, you know, to moderate a panel puts you in a position where you need to, you know, kind of, yeah, be, uh, all-inclusive, right? Not so much driving a certain company or brand or ideology or something like that. It was more about You know, how do I extract value out of this panelist that is helpful to the audience?

I gave— Dave Jackson was in charge of the creator track for one event on the previous show before Podcast Movement, and Dave had said, how do I navigate this? And I said, Dave, everyone has an agenda. Doesn't matter who they are. When you, when you get a presentation pitch, You got to think of what is the agenda of Blueberry for telling this, submitting this, a Blueberry employee. What is, what is the agenda? Is there agenda or is there training? I said everyone's going to have an agenda. I don't care who you are.

Yeah, it's going to slip in.

It's going to slip in. But if you— long as that person is understanding that they're not up there to promote their product and say, we have a special for you this month for $29.95 Um, I might use examples, but I try to just give to it, tie it to my own show on the benefit of doing X, Y, and Z.

So, Todd, do you happen to know what the history has been at Sounds Profitable events?

Um, no.

Has it been kind of a pay-for-play kind of a thing? I would imagine it To some degree it would.

I don't know, I haven't attended their event. I'm not a member.

Yeah, I've been to one of them, um, and it, it did come across as a little bit of a pay-to-play.

Now, upfront and upfront will be a pay-to-play for an upfront. That's all the way— all upfronts work.

Yeah, but it's not catering to creators.

No, that's, you know, that's selling to media buyers. So they're buying a spot to promote their shows. So that's a different expectations of the, you know, and I've, you know, we, we've never done an upfront. I, first of all, I couldn't afford $10,000 for 10 minutes or whatever they give you at the IB one. So it's expensive, it's expensive. But if, you know, if you have a big show or 2 or 3 that you can get on a media buyer's buying block and they're big enough, well, that's just, that's, you know, a rounding error for them. That's just doing business. Right.

So, yeah, I'd like to see a return more of this concept of a podcast festival. Um, not so much in the Podfest type of orientation, but, um, kind of like what we saw many years ago where there would be live onstage, uh, podcast recordings, right, that people could either buy tickets to or buy a block, um, and, and have those shows be available to fans too. So you have kind of this full spectrum. Yeah. You get the, the fans, the audience involved in the podcast movement.

That's where you could have a—

and then you get the business people.

Yeah. I don't know how you— New York's big enough to support that. Um, I don't know. We'll see. We're already over time here, Rob.

Um, I realize that now.

Yeah, so is the idea that podcast is purely about revenue, or is there a way that we can stay true to its original roots while embracing the future? Future? Have we done that here?

I think we've talked about it. I, I don't think we're done talking about this friction between profit revenue and content creators, but there is a lot of friction there. So we're not done.

Yeah, I don't know if we're going to answer the question forever. There's always going to be a certain segment of people that are going to be pissed off, right? Um, but I think, well, it's gonna be interesting to see what the next year is. Um, and what Brian decides to do. So Brian, we're watching. No pressure, but you know.

And also, um, Chris Kremitsos too.

Yeah, Chris too.

How is he going to respond to this? Yeah.

So yeah, Chris, I'd love to see— I know Orlando is your home But I would love to see an event somewhere else too. But that's just Todd's thought. But, you know, he's got such ties to Orlando, and it makes such good sense bringing families in.

And I understand, and it taps into that element that we're talking about here, Todd, is pulling from your local community. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with creators.

And if he can expand that window of creators coming in, and when someone says, yeah, I'm from Texas, yeah, I'm from I'm from, uh, I'm here from LA or wherever, because there is definitely— it's pretty regional, at least that's the way it's been. And it's gotten better.

Well, and also, is, is Podcast Movement, um, going to be in New York every year now? That's, that's a big question. Or is it going to bounce between New York, Chicago, and LA? Is that the game, or—

we'll see.

That, that we don't have an answer to yet.

No, but again, it's all dependent upon how they're able to get enough outreach to see if how many people are willing to come from New York that are not a train ride away or an Uber away. So because you can go and come in from upstate, you come in from Boston, there's a pretty— that's a, you know, that's a— you look where you live, you can get— how long does it take you get in the city from where you live? About an hour and a half. See, so you know, you're in striking distance. You can leave in the morning and be there and come to a one-day event. You could come back home that evening.

Yeah, I do.

Be a long day.

Yeah, I go, I jump on the train and head down and it takes me to Grand Central, and then I just go wherever I need to go from there.

Yeah, I'm, you know, I got a 2-hour drive to Detroit and 2 hours to New York, so, you know, and then the cost of a bed for a couple of nights and the ticket cost. And, you know, yeah, zombie, it's gonna be interesting. So anyway, there's our, there's our feedback on Podcast Movement and everything that happened there overall. Again, we'll see what happens. And I was— I, I've got close to 100 people to follow up with and I'd love to have it been $250 or $300 like it used to be, but I'll take $100 because last year was $37, the year before.

Hmm, that, that doesn't pay the bills.

That does not pay the bills, right? Yeah, yeah. All right, so, okay, anyway, if you guys have, uh, questions or comments— you guys have been real quiet today— Todd, uh, well, just, you know, todd@blueberry.com, bluberry.com, @geeknews on X. And by the way, those of you who watched SpaceX thing last night, wow, pretty exciting. Um, and then on Mastodon, @geeknews, @geeknews.chat on Mastodon.

Rob, uh, I can be found, you know, pretty much in all the social platforms. I, I think that's, that's where I'm at, under Rob Greenlee. And, um, so I'm on X at Rob Greenlee and LinkedIn and Facebook and all that stuff, so you can easily find me. So if you want to send an email to, to me about the show, or if you have any kind of topic suggestion or any kind of feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Um, that's at robgreenlee@gmail.com is a great place to send me an email.

And Chris and, uh, Brian and Tom, you guys are welcome to come on anytime. And, you know, let's, let's give James— yep, James, we'll give you guys some time to get because I know you guys are trying to figure out a venue. You're probably very, very busy, but when you get a plan, uh, come on and talk about it. So yeah, all right everyone, thank you for being here. We'll see you next week. Thanks Rob, and, uh, we'll see everyone here on the New Media Show. Everyone take care, we'll see you next time. Okay, bye-bye.