Rob Greenlee argues podcasting should replace RSS downloads with HLS streaming, citing 2025 data showing flat audio consumption among younger listeners while video rises in older demographics. Streaming offers adaptive bitrate and better analytics, but sacrifices offline playback and gives platforms more control over monetization.
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Well, welcome to Podcast Tips. My name is Rob Greenlee. Thank you for joining me and being with me tonight. I appreciate it. In tonight's episode, this is going to be a, a real doozy. I'm excited about it, to talk about it. I've been thinking a lot about this topic actually for many years. And I think the time is right for me to talk about this topic as it's, I think it's a very important one. And it's what if, and I'm using a big if, the future of RSS-based podcasting, and I'm gonna show you what an RSS feed looks like if you don't happen to have seen one. Which is part of my issue to some degree, but what if the future of RSS is actually HLS streaming of audio and video versus what we spent the last 20+ years doing is downloading media files into the consumer's devices and media players? So You know, this has been a hotly contested topic for many years. You know, streaming has been around for a very long time. And, you know, even if I look back to it, to the very early days of my online creation, most of my consumption in the early years of making a radio show available online, I was streaming. Most of my audience in from about 1999 through 2004, approximately, uh, in that time frame, 2007, most my audience was coming through streaming. And that's— there's some irony tonight in that for me. And so let's think about this, uh, what if the download was replaced by a streaming link in the enclosure tag in RSS. Now, the Podcasting 2.0 initiative has been pushing for this Live Lit tag for a few years now. So this concept is not really something that's tremendously new or overly, you know, groundbreaking. But what it is is a realization of Things have changed, you know, and maybe it's, uh, it's really a classic example of, of, uh, Back to the Future, you know, that, that movie that we enjoyed in the '80s, um, where you travel back into the past, um, and into the future. And to some degree, that's what this topic is for me, uh, because I think it may be time for us to return to streaming. I think the reason that we had downloads, that era has passed. And one of the reasons that we still do the download thing is because we built a lot of technology and infrastructure to support downloading. And I think it's getting a little old, it's getting a little dated, and it's causing more problems than it's solving. I think is the big takeaway. And the other part of streaming too is that it converges this idea of live streaming with podcasting in the same app, right? So you can, you know, and we're seeing this today. I mean, you're seeing it in this show tonight. You know, I'm streaming live to YouTube, to LinkedIn, to X. To, you know, all of the live streaming platforms. And so that is something that I'm doing today. But yet I take this show and I get a recording of it and I do editing on it and I upload it to a platform that will host it as a downloadable media file, right? And that model existed in the past, in 2004, for a reason. Users and consumers of this content had limited bandwidth to get access to the digital content. So you had to give them overnight to download it to their computer or their, their device, and then have software, podcasting software like iTunes, or Windows Media Player back in the day that would take that media file and automatically drag it and drop it into your portable media player. That was why we had downloads. And you ask the question now, why do we have downloads today? And I can't give that reason. So why do we have downloads today when we're clearly moving towards an era of streaming? And so before I jump too far into that, I did want to share a, a slide, uh, that came out of the Infinite Dial research that was presented today online. And, and it shows an interesting trend line, and this, this points to part of what I've been talking about in this series, uh, for a while now. And so let me pull this up full screen here so you can kind of see it better. But in this research study, and this is for 2025, what it's showing is monthly podcast consumption. And it's showing different age groups. So the first age group is 12 to 34, and the second age group is 35 to 54. And the last age group is age 55+. And so what we've seen from 2024 to 2025, pretty much across the board, at least with the younger generation, the audio consumption has flatlined from 2024 to 2025. So any growth that we've seen in this for the younger age group has come from watching, not listening. So we haven't declined on the listening side, and that's a good thing, but we're also seeing growth in watching. And what does that mean? That means the growth is happening around video, and so we're increasingly seeing video start to take a bigger chunk out of the consumption of what is being termed podcasts, right? So how do we better get video into podcasting? And I think what we're doing by not thinking about what I'm talking about tonight in the context of the industry is leaving ourselves wide open for big platforms to disrupt us. But let me finish on this slide that I have up here and just share with you what this really means is that audio is not growing. It did grow in the 55+ age range. So the growth in audio and video consumption in the podcast perception right, is happening in the 55+. So both are accelerating very quickly. And I think that's an interesting trend. And I think it's indicative of what we're seeing, a shift happen from legacy mainstream media over to digital sources of content. I think the older generation is starting to get it. And they're starting to shift their consumption as well. So as a podcast industry, if we want to continue growing, I think we need to get better at video. And video podcasting has been around since the very beginning. And I know I've talked about this on this show many times, but when podcasting started and when YouTube started, video podcasting was a big thing. And so here, let me take this down and, and I can talk, talk a little bit more in, in detail here about what I'm trying to get to here. But the, the YouTube has been part of podcasting since the very beginning, and a lot of people don't realize this, but video podcasting, this is attaching an MP4 file to, to an RSS feed. And I'm going to talk about what an RSS feed is here in a, in a minute. So those of you that are just not that familiar with RSS, I can kind of share with you what this really means. But when podcasting started, it was video and audio. Apple Currently, today supports video podcasts in the Apple Podcast ecosystem. So this show is available as a video podcast by a download definition in the Apple Podcast ecosystem. Pocket Cast supports the playback of video podcasts in their ecosystem. But there is only a couple of podcast hosting platforms that support the creation of an RSS feed with a video enclosure, and that's Podbean, Blubrry, and Libsyn, since those were the very first— those 3 companies were the very first podcast hosting companies to exist in the early years of the podcasting medium. When video was 30% of the podcast market. I would say now it's probably at least 30% of the podcast market. Maybe it's, maybe that's growing right now. So I just wanted to set the stage on that, that what I'm talking about here is really a shift to what makes sense as we look to the future. I don't know if the industry is going to be able to come together to pull this off. You know, it's so difficult to move the needle on anything with the podcasting space because it's like trying to corral a bunch of stray cats. Everybody likes to run off in different directions and people don't like to work together. That's an unfortunate reality, but that's a reality that I've seen in the medium going back to 2004 when I got involved in this and have worked for Lipson and Spreaker and PodcastOne and Microsoft. And so I've seen all this stuff happen. Over the years. And, and it's, and it's just a harsh reality of where, where we are right now. And for us to adapt to the new market, and I'm going to go into that too here in a second, and, and really talk about what's happening here and what we should do as an industry to, you know, kind of evolve and adapt to what the consumers want, right? What does the viewer and the listener want from podcasting? I think we get so insular about what we as an industry want and we just kind of hold back and put the brakes on and say, well, we're not changing anything because it's too hard. You know, our competitor's not gonna do it. You know, these big platforms aren't going to do it. Well, I think it's time for podcasting to kind of, you know, take, take the bull by the horns, as they say, and, and control its own destiny. But before I, I dive into the details of all this, I probably need to explain what all these factors are that are going into this. I'm not going to spend a lot of time doing this, but I'm going to kind of just set the stage around talking about RSS. So I'm going to bring up— this is going to be painful, but I'm going to bring up on the screen what RSS is and what people see when they— let me pull up this onto the stage. It's not letting me. So let me pull this down and Add this up to the stage. This is an RSS feed. So what you're seeing here is basically a bunch of code that's off of a URL. And there's a link to the media file that's, that's, that's buried in here. I can, I can highlight it here on the screen so you can actually see where that link to the actual video file is. It's right there. So what, what we're doing is we're giving Apple or Pocket Casts or whatever platform that's taking this RSS feed and giving them that media file to link to. So when a user clicks play, it activates the playback of that link right there that you see in front of you on the screen. And all I'm proposing here is that we replace that link with a direct link to an HLS stream. Now I'll go into more detail on that a little bit later, but that's all I'm proposing is that we change that out or we, or we use a different tag like a, like a lit tag that's part of the Podcasting 2.0 initiative. Now there's going to have to be some coming together on this in the industry to figure out how we need to change the enclosure tag to incorporate a streaming link, because it may not just be as simple as trading out that link because there is protocols here and that needs to be worked on. But that's basically what I'm talking about here. RSS. And most listeners and most podcasters don't even really care about this stuff. They probably have never even seen their RSS feed, most people. So it's, it's really a factor of, of changing what we do from the infrastructure side of podcasting. And RSS really just means really simple syndication. So the, the concept of it is good, and it's always been an open standard that was established by Dave Weiner in, in the early days, uh, with the, um, the RSS kind of standards group that existed, which was a very contentious group of people. But it, it remains a backbone of podcasting and what podcasting is. Um, and, and I think it's a good thing. I think we need to hold on to it. But the problem is if we don't adapt or adopt this new concept that I'm talking about here, I think RSS is going to be disrupted, you know, and, and it needs to embrace where we are in the market today and where we're shifting to rapidly. And that's more support for video. I hate to break people's glass bowls here over this, but that's where clearly all the signals are pointing to. And all these platforms that have said that they're audio only and they're only going to distribute audio are, I hate to say, but they're going to get disrupted. And you're already seeing it in the In the research, I just brought it up on the screen there, and you can see it for yourself. The growth is coming from video. Audio is flat. So how do we better support the video side? How do we How do we make that a first-party player here, or at least equal to the audio? And I think this is the opportunity for the Podcasting 2.0 project to really step up and make this happen. I know some of the folks in the Podcasting 2.0 project are not exactly the most supportive of video, but I think mainly what they're opposed to is video that is driven by walled garden platforms. And so this is a way for the media creators to kind of, you know, take a little bit of control back and, and go back to the roots. And, you know, because traditional RSS with the download has limitations. It's built on static media files that don't need to be delivered like that anymore. We have enough bandwidth to just stream this stuff to the user. The user wants to just click play anyway. So we've been faking it for all these years. When somebody hits play on their podcast app, on their Apple Podcasts app, it starts playing, right? Well, it's a little bit of smoke and mirrors because it's really downloading, and there's no reason for that. So, and it also doesn't embrace the real-time streaming like I'm doing tonight. This is— it's a missed opportunity, and I think the industry needs to, you know, kind of move with the, the changes. And live video and also on-demand video— and we're talking about two things here, on-demand video and live video, which are two different things. So when, when I'm streaming this live, it's going live to all these platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn and X and and Facebook. That is the live streaming part of this. But as soon as my show is finished, my show is done, it converts into an on-demand stream. This is exactly what I'm talking about. So if you can envision, every podcast app out there can have this very same capability. And that is being delivered by, potentially by RSS. If we wanna hold on to RSS, there's nothing to say that we have to hold on to RSS. You know, it's a choice that we have to make. 'Cause unfortunately, if we don't adapt, then RSS is increasingly going to be disrupted. And because it currently feels like it's stuck in the past, and it needs to evolve. You know, how do you feel about RSS right now? Those watching this tonight, how do you think RSS is holding up in the media landscape today? Do you think anybody cares about RSS anymore? Does, does the industry really ever talk about Really Simple Syndication anymore? It's not like the early days when, when users or listeners or even viewers in the earlier days were cutting and pasting RSS links and putting them into podcast players, or podcast catchers is a term that was used quite often. And that's just not happening anymore. RSS is disappearing into the fabric of computer-to-computer communications. And that's, that's what's happening right now. So RSS could very easily disappear and everything that, that will happen in the future is heading right now towards API communications between distribution platforms and the big platforms or direct upload. We have to decide what we want. Do we want to have a direct upload relationship with every one of the proprietary platforms that we want our content to be in? Or do we want a central publishing platform that will enable us to upload once and have it made available everywhere? That's the magic and the power of RSS. It's is publishing simplicity and distribution syndication out to hundreds of consumption applications. Now, I don't know what's gonna happen with AI. AI could completely disrupt all of this. I'm not, I haven't fully thought through the implications of AI when it comes to streaming versus downloading. And what that could, could look like. That's probably the next thing I'm going to be thinking about. But let's now shift to talking about, well, what's the potential of HLS, or what's also termed is HTTP live or on-demand streaming as a replacement for downloads. You know, HLS is a proven streaming protocol. That's what, uh, that's what YouTube uses to make this show available right now. It's passing via an API connection to YouTube, LinkedIn, X. It's not passing to those platforms via RSS. So what I'm doing here tonight is a, is a clue about what we could if we chose to as an industry do via RSS and thus taking back control from these big platforms to control that connection? What if we decided to withhold our content from these big platforms unless they accepted our streaming HLS stream? Just like what we've done with the enclosure tag for audio via RSS, or for that matter, even video via RSS. The only thing that's changing here is the technology or the protocol that you use to deliver the content. And do we want to have a central distribution of this content, or do we want to just kind of distribute this content to all of the big proprietary platforms to own that distribution for us. And that puts them in the, the control seat for monetization, puts them in the control seat for every aspect of this that puts the creator at a disadvantage. Because I think most podcasters want to control their monetization. They want to take advantage of dynamic ad insertion. They wanna take advantage of programmatic advertising. They wanna be able to be in control centrally and be able to get central metrics and to be able to centrally control the advertising that goes into those programs. And if we pull back and start supporting streaming, then we're aligned with the protocols that these big proprietary platforms are already starting to adopt. Even Spotify. I'm sure when they get your direct upload of your video file up to their platform that overwrites your audio file and disrupts your audio via RSS, they're using HLS streaming to deliver that, that video, and then they're using HLS to deliver the audio. So why aren't we adapting to that? You know, that's the power of this. You know, podcasts could stream live with lower latency, could adjust for the quality of the connection. It would give us more capability to do everything we do in 4K and then eventually 6K of quality. And if the internet connection is not at that level, then the quality will will adapt. It will downscale it. We don't really have that. Most of the— all of the podcast publishing that we do today is at a fixed bitrate. It's not— it doesn't take advantage of what's called adaptive streaming, which is basically adapting to the speed of the connection to deliver a higher quality media file like YouTube does. And what likely how Spotify is doing it. And it's a way to create a better consumption experience for the consumers of this content. So, you know, you can hear in my voice, my passion for this, because I came out of an era when all my audience was coming from streaming, 'cause I was doing radio and I was doing live radio, on-demand radio, and it was all delivered via streaming. So I totally understand how this stuff works. What the advantages of it, there are very little disadvantages, not the least of which is, you know, on the listener and the viewer side, you're not taking up, you know, storage on their portable media player. You're now granted, just because you click play in a download situation doesn't mean that your device is always storing all that. Media, they will do what's called a temporary cache on the playback, but it's still a download protocol. But there are processes that happen that when you click play, it basically saturates your bandwidth and it downloads the whole media file to your device's storage. And then you continue watching or listening. As it's playing from the full downloaded episode. So, you know, there's advantages here, you know, and I think what we want to do is think in a forward way, think about what we're doing here. And I think in a lot of ways, and this is another way to actually think about it, is HLS streaming live or on-demand streaming will kind of seal the— put the last nails in the coffin of legacy mainstream broadcast media. Because guess what? We've now fully replaced what they do. And we've moved into an era where people are looking for digital sources of media now. So, you know, this would disrupt radio. This would disrupt television at even a deeper level. And everything would now live in the podcasting space. And I do believe most digital audio and video content now is evolving into being termed as a podcast. Some people won't agree with me on that. But I don't know of any other term other than audio or video that people recognize as a term to describe a digital audio or video experience. And it can include audiobooks, it can include documentaries, it can include true crime stories, it can include a chat show, it can include a solo show like I'm doing tonight. It basically can include everything. And I think that's what we're moving towards. So, you know, and the limitations of downloading is that we have to deliver these full media files. And in many situations, they have to be completely downloaded. And they're a fixed rate, like I said earlier. There's no quality adjustments or reward for the, the listener or the viewer to have a fast internet connection, to have a better experience. And it limits the quality that the content creator can create. Maybe we create a master file that's a 6K video file, I mean, 4K is great, believe me, but eventually we're going to get to 6K and 8K quality. And to have to publish at that highest quality and then be able to downscale that to various legacy devices that maybe don't support 8K, maybe it drops it down to 1080. Adaptive streaming will allow for that to happen. Now, one downside is that there's no or the ability to do offline playback. So if your device is not connected to the internet for some reason, but there is a way to, you know, tell a platform to temporarily cache that file on your device if you opt into doing that. That's not the default choice, but that certainly can be a cached version that can be stored. And I do believe YouTube already does that. Which means that you can tell it to cache it, store it, or I think what they actually do term— use the term download it. What it does is it downloads a copy to your device in a temporary file, an encrypted file, and then if you don't have internet connection, you can still launch the app and play the content even if you don't have an internet connection. So there really isn't any loss of capability here. And I think that that's the part that we have to increasingly think about. Okay, well, let's talk about what HLS media streaming is. And I can draw some connections here to help you understand what's different here. And I think A great place to just start here is to say, this is what YouTube uses today. This is what Spotify uses today to deliver your content. If you're uploading directly to them, if they're caching or redistributing your content, that's what they're using today. Spotify is on a pass-through relationship for most of the podcasting, which means that it's pulling off of the host's servers for the MP3 files. And it's the same thing with the video podcasts that are hosting MP4 files. Those are being delivered via a download protocol. So oftentimes when you click play on a video podcast that's linked to an MP4 file that's downloading to the device, you have a little bit of a latency by clicking that button and waiting for it to download as much of the episode before it starts playing. But if you were on adaptive streaming HLS, you click that play button and it will start playing virtually instantaneously, no matter what the quality is. And it will trickle the content to you that you need to get it started. And to some degree, you know, it's not going to be a big difference in the experience, but it will be a little bit. But HTTP Live or HLS streaming works with live or it works with on-demand. And it basically— how it works, just to explain how it works, is that it delivers the digital media content in small chunks to the player. So it literally streams small pieces of your content to the player itself and displays that, and it gets into a rhythm of doing that with your internet connection. It downloads whether it's audio, H.264 video file encodings, or H.265. Now, these are technical details that you don't need to know about, but streams are real-time delivery of just enough content based on what the internet connection is to display the content. Because it's creating like a playlist of sorts of each of your episodes. It's chunking it up into small pieces and it's just delivering those chunks as the player needs them to play your content back. So that's, and based on your internet connection, it can deliver larger bytes of data to your player that could support larger resolutions like 6K or 8K or whatever. Those chunks would just be a little bigger. So that's kind of how technically how it works, kind of explained in a way that's maybe a little easier to understand. But it's ideal for live or instant playback. So there's no large downloads that have to happen in the background or while you're actually watching. But it does require a stable internet connection and offline access. Like I was saying, it only happens through the app caching the content for you to play back if you don't have a connection. And really, like I said earlier, there's less storage needed on your, on, on your device. Everything just gets delivered to you real time. So I also think that downloading prioritizes offline ownership as really its selling point, right? So you can get a copy of it it's almost like you own that copy to some degree. And copyright holders don't necessarily like that. That's a big reason why we haven't seen music supported in podcasting is because the copyright holders don't like the fact that if you have music embedded in your podcast, in your audio podcast, that someone can get a copy of that media file because it downloaded to your device and actually rip out the music from there and steal the music. If podcasting converted to streaming for all its delivery, we could have copyrighted music potentially in our shows. So, you know, there's advantages here that we haven't really fully thought about. So let's quickly talk a little bit about Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. And other platforms too that want to get involved in video. There's TikTok, there's LinkedIn, there's Facebook that have a say in what's happening here. They are proprietary platforms. And how do we take more control of our content? Playing into the future along their pathway and not, you know, kind of standing up to them like we did with passthrough with the audio. We're going to lose our power and influence in the space. So, you know, let's, let's all work together and hold on to RSS, but just make it up to speed. You know, I would challenge that the Podcasting 2.0 Initiative really double down on this and really push for this. As its primary project, because I think this is our opportunity to hold on to what we have embraced with podcasting all these years, for 20 years. And it brings more creator control, and it gives these ecosystems, it gives these big walled gardens kind of what they want too. But it does take away some of their control around monetization potentially. So I don't know that we'll see YouTube embrace this, but we, but we could see everybody else embracing what we're doing here. So because I don't think that, uh, you know, as we've seen with what Facebook has done here recently, they basically took down all of the, the archives of your shows, right? So that tells me that they don't really want to store all your videos, some of these platforms, but some of them do. I think it gets back to how they're being monetized, and is it worth it for them to store all that content on their platform? So we may see a pullback. I don't see YouTube getting involved in this at all, um, because they want to control the monetization, the delivery, all that stuff on their, on their side. But I think all the other platforms would— there's a chance that we can get them to adopt this. So, so HLS in RSS could reduce our reliance on many of these big platforms and have a different conversation with them. But I do think that the creators need to kind of stand up for themselves. And say, you know, are you going to embrace RSS, HLS streaming via RSS? And are we going to be able to control the streaming distribution to our own ecosystems, right? If we're a content creator and we have a website or we have a presence in an app, that would give us the ability to stream live to our app, stream live to our own website presence and be able to, to do that under our own control and our own monetization to our own private groups or private communities. So, and that's, that I think is the other big thing that we're moving towards. So I think you've got the big picture of what my vision for the future looks like. You know, and, and, and let me know in the comments here. At the end of the show, I'm going to take your, your questions, and I've seen that there's been plenty of them come in. So hang in there with me and I will get to all your questions and we, we can talk about this. Um, but I do think that we are at a, at a tipping point here, and I think that we all need to kind of, um, think about what the future looks like. And, and I'm an advocate for RSS, I'm an advocate for streaming, and it's, it's, it's not really entirely about just keeping up. It's, it's really kind of taking a lead here. You know, let's imagine a podcast ecosystem that we could have that's open, adaptive, and creator empowered and driven, because I think that's what the potential of this could be. But, you know, that's my call to action to the podcast community, because if we don't evolve this, we're going to get left behind by these big proprietary giants that are out there. And, and please share your thoughts on this. Am I completely out of my mind? Um, you know, I think what we've shared tonight on, on the show, I, I think is, is very optimistic about what the future of of podcasting is and us fully embracing what podcasting is. And because most people don't care about what the delivery protocol is, you know, audiences just want to get access to the content and creators just want to have the best experience for their audience that they can, they can offer. And I think that's That's what this talk that I've given tonight is really all about. And, and I think that that's the, the key takeaway. And I'll be talking to the Podcasting 2.0 folks about this and see what we can get worked out. Talk to Adam Curry about it. And I think, you know, let's see what we can do together. Let's see if we can take, take the bull by the horn here and capture more, more control again. So, well, let's shift, and I can, I can start taking your questions here. So, and we can go through this and, and see what, uh, what thoughts all of you have about this, this rant that I've been on tonight on the show. So let me see here, let me go in here. Um, looks like the first one is, um, looks like Chaos 99, uh, free Samurai AI. Um, I suspect audio only is hidden in video numbers. Um, for, for example, are, are people putting video into the background. Yeah, I think I see where you're going with this, um, Chaos99, um, that I think there is a certain amount of audio consumption that happens around consuming the video. So, you know, this, this crossover between somebody like starting to play back a video and then they, they slide their portable device in their pocket and they're listening to the, the show in their EarPods or something like that I think that happens quite often, but on the screen it's playing the video, but the person's not actually looking at the video. So, and I do think that that happens too. So this blending of audio and video together is a big thing that's happening. And I think it's gonna increasingly happen. And it may get to a point where audio-only consumption is very much mixed in with the video. So, and that's kind of the direction, if you look at what Spotify is doing, they're pushing in that direction. They're basically taking the video file and many of the podcast listening apps that have supported the video podcasts have actually not really enabled a video player. What they've done is they've taken that video podcasts, and they will just play back the audio part of it. So I think your idea here is, is something that's been around podcasting for, for a long time. And so Chaos99, thank you for the, the terrific comment that sparked another layer here. So thank you. And then, uh, looks like Georgie writes here, good morning, Rob, and Georgie thinks, I think it's irrelevant now. I'm not quite sure which part that you're referring to there, because I guess I waited a long time to get to these. But, you know, there is this RSS via enclosure that's kind of irrelevant if that's what you're talking about. And I think that, I think we do need to move on. And so Chaos 99 also wrote here, podcasting 2.0 has demonstrated the extensibility and growth and, and no centralized publishing. Um, yeah, I think, um, I'm, I'm hoping for, for more centralized publishing. It depends on the context that we're talking about here. Centralized publishing is really offering simplicity to the creator, right, saving them time. Versus going to each platform and publishing directly, to be able to have a protocol that shares it to everybody in one RSS feed. Everybody gets the same thing. And it's just very efficient and effective and has been the real driver of RSS and podcasting and why it's been so successful. So, but I agree with you, the Podcasting 2.0 Initiative has been flexible and extensible into a lot of different scenarios. And I think that's the strength of what they've done. So Chaos also writes here, Chaos99 writes here, AI will replace content creation, including video. Well, I do tend to think that that could be the outcome here. AI could basically disrupt all of us as content creators, depending on how good it gets. And do humans trust content that's created by AI? Those are questions that we don't really have definitive answers to right now, though I think there's signs that it's getting pretty good. But I think it's got a ways to go, but it's likely to get there. I mean, what's the timeframe for that is the bigger question. And ChaosKnight99 also writes, Focus needs to be on distribution and content ownership. Right, I agree with that. Um, how do we get this out to as many listeners as possible? How do we get our content out? And, and how much control do we as the creators have in its monetization, its distribution, and its interactivity with its audience? So I think that those are key questions here. And, and Chaos 99, thank you for all the great comments. Um, and let's pull up Georgie again. Will there be a time when you have to select which platform you will upload to and just click to that one? Well, we kind of had that in the podcast platform. So if you go to like Spreaker or Lipson or whatever You can select, you know, to make this show available via your RSS feed and all of the major listening platforms. And so, you know, I think what you're talking about here is the potential of being able to individually select each platform to get your content separately, each episode, not unlike what I do with this show. I go into StreamYard and I select the destinations for each, each of the major platforms. And I connect it for just this one episode, you know, and that's how this show gets published into those platforms. So in some ways, you know, what I'm proposing here is kind of, you know, trying to even make it simpler than, than that, but it certainly could be enabled like that. And then Chaos99 writes, always connecting, looking at a screen loses key value prop for consuming podcasts, including music and books. Well, though I think we see in the research that is showing that there's a lot of video content being consumed on mobile devices now. So, but that doesn't say that there aren't people just listening to the audio. And certainly, as we saw in the research numbers from the Infinite Dial, it's sharing that audio consumption is still strong. It's just not growing, is what we're seeing with the younger generation. Which when you think about it, and I have thought about this, been following it for a few years now, is that the younger generations are getting pulled more into video now. And so that would cause their audio consumption to be a little more stagnant, so not growing as much. So I think we're seeing a little clues here about what the future looks like and where we're trending. And, and then Georgie also writes again, it's funny how my audio only was more successful on YouTube than on any other platform. Okay, that is an interesting observation on that point. I hope that's the case. I mean, I, I hope that those that upload their RSS feed to YouTube are getting good numbers in the, the YouTube Music platform. And I think that's what the intention of YouTube was in enabling that. So it's great, Georgie, to hear you say that you're seeing that happen. I think it's a great kind of compilation of what's happening in the medium today. And it looks like Georgie also are Yeah, thank you, Georgie. And then Chaos 99 writes, great thoughtful discussion, very much appreciated. Well, thank you so much for all your contributions. And if anybody else wants to make any other comments in here, uh, tonight about your thoughts on this topic, if you would like to be live streaming more, and maybe this plays into a the power that we're seeing happen and more and more creators using, um, like StreamYard and Restream and, and Riverside and these platforms to create their content, it basically enables them to, to do this same process but have this same process get published into their RSS feeds too. And maybe this is, this is a little bit of a disruption for the existing podcast hosting platforms. How do they, they adapt to this new world? Is it just a partnership with all of these streaming platforms that are, that are enabling live streaming? I'm not sure how this plays out. Maybe it's built into a new AI infrastructure that has to be built. And so Georgie also writes in here, um, RSS. Yeah, you know, RSS could remain, uh, a powerful direction for this medium as we look to the future, and I'm hoping that happens. But I also realize that it's a risk. There's a definite risk, um, to the existing constituents in the podcast ecosystem right now, because most of them don't really embrace the creation side of video, the least of all the creation side of live video. So, so let's, let's call it a night tonight. Thank you so much for being here with me, and please let me know Um, any, any feedback that you have, um, here's my contact information on the screen. I'm at rob.greenlee@gmail.com. I'm also on X @RobGreenlee as well. I also do a live show every Wednesday night at 8 PM Eastern, um, 4— was it— no, uh, 8 PM, 5 PM Pacific with my, my new media show. So you can check that out right here on this. And then if you want to go to my website, I'm at robgreenlee.com. If you want to check out my, my new network, it's called Adore Network, and you can get this show as an audio and video version in there because that platform is built on audio and video RSS. So you can watch or listen to podcasts that are in there. So, um, so I think it's, it's a, it's a direction that, that we all need to be thinking more about as we think about the future and where this is all going. I also have a YouTube channel too, @RobGreenlee. So thank you so much, like I said, for being here with me tonight and absorbing my, my rant. And please let me know your ideas and your thoughts on this. Do you think that this is the right path forward? Do you think that, um, we need to adapt to a new environment? I know there's going to be many that are just going to double down on the, on the whole audio-only side of this, and I fully recognize that that's, that's the reality of the market today. So like I say, well, thank you so much for being with me. I'm going to call an end to the stream here. It doesn't look like I've had any new comments come in. If you wanted to post something in the next couple of seconds, then I can pull it up on the screen. But like I said, I hope that your podcasting is, is terrific, and that if you wanted to have any, any help, direct help from me, I, I do have a free community at Skool, at skool.com/adornetwork. So if you wanted to come over there and join me and participate in some one-on-one or, or group, um, calls, video calls together to talk about what you're doing with your podcasting, and, and if I can help at all, that, that would be fantastic. So, so like I said, have a wonderful evening and thank you so much for being with me. I'm going to call an end to it. So thank you so much. Good night.
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