Live On Stage @ Podcast Movement Conference in Denver - Aug, 2023

I want to welcome everyone to the New Media Show. Of course, this is being streamed live at the same time this is going to be recorded. It'll be available at newmediashow.com. For those of you that are watching live today on our multicast stream today, please subscribe to the show. But I want to, of course, welcome my co-host, Mr. Rob Greenlee.

First couple of days of Podcast Movement in Denver. Excited to do the New Media Show, Todd, and we've got a couple of great guests as usual. James has been on the show many times, but we do have a new guest. And Kavanaugh from the OSA, is that correct? OSA Collective, who's been, who's been anointed as the new CEO. So this is kind of like your coming out, right? Yeah. So it's great to have you with us. So did you want to start off, Todd, or is there anything you wanted to say?

When we start the conversation, if you want to do a quick introduction yourselves, we can, but we're going to get right into the topics at hand. This show is normally non-scripted. So the only time we ever have a script is—

It's still not scripted.

Well, it's not, it's talking points. So of course there was a big acquisition here a few weeks ago with Descript buying Squadcast or acquiring or however it might be. So what does that tell us about the podcast market today? Are we going to see more consolidation? Where is this headed? James, you want to start?

Yeah, I think this is— and greetings everybody. It's wonderful to be back. I think it's really interesting. It's a really interesting time seeing lots of different tools that podcasters are using, basically. Consolidate. So now Descript has a remote recording tool. If you look at Libsyn, they have a remote recording tool. Descript has editing with text, and there are other podcast hosting companies working on editing with text and all of that. All this stuff is going on. And so I think what we're seeing is less sets of different companies doing stuff and more large companies who are offering a whole range of tools to work on.

But it is interesting that Squadcast does support video and audio. So does Descript. So it's a perfect fit. So does that really mean that we're seeing a convergence in audio video? What do you think?

Yeah, I think it's been very fragmented or segmented on the video and the audio side, and the tools coming together to make that easier for the podcasters or the creators is incredible because it gives them more opportunity and to be able to take their audiences from one platform onto another, good or bad.

But we've heard lots of folks say, oh, video is important, video is not important. It's been from all session to session where folks have had disagreeing opinions on whether or not you should do video. Now, we've been doing video for this show for a long time, and video has been part of podcasting since podcasting started, really. But I also think too that some people like to watch, some people like to listen. So I think there's a place for video. The question is at what cost? Like Rob, you were having some challenges today to get the stream set up there. You were scrambling. So video's always harder.

Yeah, it does take a setup and stuff. We're streaming this live on my iPhone of all things through StreamYard, which really makes it really easy to do this kind of stuff right from your iPhone. I think we're going to see more of that kind of stuff happen. Really, the simplification of doing this is really— technology is really helping with that now, and it's really exciting to see the production of content to be as easy as it is today. And I think it's going to get easier too. Yeah.

How many of your podcasters are using video at ASA?

Really great question. I think right now we actually just started offering the opportunity with the simulcasts. I want to say maybe 10% have already opted in with their video. But what I will say actually is interesting is we've got some podcasters that are on a way smaller scale, like less than 1,000 downloads per month on audio, but they've got 10,000+ on video. And so those podcasters have been restricted in their access to brands because there hasn't been a way to be able to reconcile are consolidated, now they have an opportunity because we're able to track across platform and with some of the attribution solutions.

Yeah, I think it's an exciting time. I think video coming into the space, becoming more of an emphasis, is nothing new, but it's also, I think, just like I was saying, it's about the tools getting simpler to use, and podcasters just need to have really a strategy for how they're gonna merge audio with video and to do it in a way that's right for the audience. I don't know, what do you think about the convergence here?

Yeah, I think it's fascinating seeing a ton of different converging things going on. Lots of talk about video, lots of clearly podcasting. Audio podcasting is still— I can hear Adam Curry spinning in his grave if I'm talking about audio podcasting. He'll be shouting at me next week. Definitely. But I find, I find the whole thing interesting and I think it goes to show there was some research that was talked about about today here at Podcast Movement, about 75% of normal people out there who listen to podcasts think that podcasting can be video or audio. And I think from my point of view, I think that podcasting is an audio-first experience that may or may not have video. But if you can close your eyes and still enjoy it, then it's probably a podcast, right?

If you— if the listener thinks it's a podcast, It's a podcast to them, right? So that's what we're seeing. I think YouTube is really pushing the envelope on this in the perception of consumers or listeners or viewers, right? If it looks like a podcast, it must be a podcast. So I think it's really interesting what's going to happen. James, you broke some news today about YouTube and what they're doing and what's coming up. Why don't you tell us about it?

Yeah, I think YouTube's move into podcasting is an equal parts exciting and terrifying. But I think the really interesting thing was actually something that Steve McClendon, who was here from Google yesterday, didn't say on stage, which is that the YouTube Music app will accept RSS feeds. And I clarified with him this morning, it's pass-through as well. So it will actually properly, in inverted commas, play RSS audio if you subscribe in that way. So you may have a choice in the future. Obviously you won't be on YouTube properly if you don't upload your show onto YouTube, but at least you can have a listen to an RSS show on the YouTube Music app, which I guess, Todd, makes it a podcast app.

Well, it does. And actually, in the simple fact that they are going to do pass-through allows anyone that is monetizing their shows to at least have their podcasts on YouTube Music, get the content delivered the way you want it to, and then if you still want to have a YouTube channel, I would assume then you would uncheck that from being a podcast channel so there wasn't confusion in the YouTube app, I would— or YouTube Music app, I would think.

Yeah, I think if you're going to use it cleverly and It's not going to be, it's not going to be particularly easy from the start, but I think if you're going to use it cleverly, you would use YouTube for clips of your show, but make your full-length show available as an audio podcast available through RSS, which is, by the way, the work that TikTok is currently doing as well, where they're encouraging content creators to produce clips rather than to put the whole thing onto TikTok, but link through to the podcast. I wonder, is that something that Ossa is doing?

Actually, we just, we hosted a 6-week accelerator program earlier in the year, so we had 72 podcasters for 6 weeks, 2 sessions a week, and we recorded all the video content. And we recently just actually took the video content and turned it into a podcast. So we're using the video snippets to promote it, but driving traffic to the show. So something that we're actually doing ourselves to try and get the crossover between audio and video content, but Yeah, a lot of our podcasters use it for promotional content to drive it to whatever streaming service that their listeners are listening on.

If you think of what TikTok is doing though, you know, their approach, at least at this point, is you use TikTok to promote an episode of a podcast. It's not going to be a direct listen app. It's a place where you could listen all the way through, but probably they won't. They'll probably use that more as a way to sample. So it's going to be really important. And I've heard many people people say this many times, your first 30 to 60 seconds of your show has got to be the most important part of your content to get that lead in, to get people to stick and say, oh, this might be something I want to listen to more of. You got to get them in and get them started and get them hooked quick, or otherwise they're just gonna swipe up and you're going to be off the screen as far as TikTok goes.

But there's also a perspective on this too that each of these consumption platforms have a little different audience. So the issue with this strategy of using one to drive listeners to another may not pan out. So you may want to have a dual strategy, and that's what I've been advocating for a little bit, and I think I'm starting to feel a little bit stronger about that. Now, granted, that adds a heavy lift to the creator to actually create like two different versions of their show or something like that. But I think if you can make one version that will work in both places, I think it's— that's the— I think that's the best way to do it. But that may not be the right content for YouTube. And I do wonder about if you're primarily a YouTube creator that is producing your show like a podcast, that it may not make sense for you to submit your audio version to YouTube, right? I don't know if it's already going to be listed in YouTube Music as the video, right? So does that— what's your comment based on what you learned? Is it going to make sense for somebody that has a full video podcast right now in YouTube to submit their audio version to YouTube as well?

I think my understanding is that you submit one version to YouTube and that's the version that goes on. And yeah, and you can turn on or off the picture. But that's about as far as it goes. But I was listening to a Bandrew Scott podcast. He was explaining how the YouTube algorithms work, and if you listen to a show and you skip out after 20 seconds, that is essentially telling the algorithm that show is rubbish. Now, that is— if you listen to Wait, Don't Tell Me as a podcast, the first 30 seconds are the intro music and Karl Castle, or whoever the new Karl Castle is, talking about live from the such-and-such theater in beautiful downtown Chicago. All of that stuff will work really badly on YouTube in terms of the algorithm. And so what Andrew Scott, for example, has been doing in his podcast is he's been editing a different version for YouTube, and then— and that which is a different version to the audio version that he puts everywhere else. And perhaps, obviously, the real scale on YouTube is The video website where all of the videos are, and perhaps the plan there is to upload something that you edit slightly for the YouTube algorithm and put the normal audio show everywhere else.

For those of you that are here that are not subscribed to our show, we had a guest last week to talk about dual strategies for having a successful podcast and having a successful YouTube channel. So I encourage you to go over to the website and listen to that episode. It's real world on how it's being happened. But I want to change topics. AI. I've had half a dozen folks stop by the booth today or past couple of days and say, hey, we got an AI solution. Let's work together. And I think AI is moving quickly. We've talked about it a lot on this show in past episodes, almost probably to the point where we're driving people away. But Is AI enabling a new type of podcast SaaS service, as you say in here, model?

Yeah, I kind of wonder about that. Yeah. I mean, it's, they're going to be a consolidation of some of these AI services into, and I thought that maybe the Descript and Squadcast was kind of like an early indication of that because Descript is using AI technology to some degree. But I do think that more and more of these platforms, and Todd, you're an example of this, you're starting to embrace AI technology in your publishing platform. But are we just going to see AI come in and have an influence over every aspect of podcasting?

My, my thought process, and it's pretty public at this point, the AI is going to be—

I have noticed this.

The AI is going to be a great tool for all of us to use. But just remember, there's going to be mass production of content being put out by AI, and the 135 million listeners, they're going to be seeking original voices. As long as we stick to our core and our original voices and don't let AI affect our content and our voices and our opinions and our stories, I think we're going to have a very positive future ahead. Now the AI tools can be used in pre-production, post-production, social sharing. I think that's all going to be fantastic. As a matter of fact, it already is, and we're already using the dumbest AI we'll ever use today. I think it's going to have a big change.

Yeah, I was going to say that I think that the real benefit of AI is doing not necessarily the podcast itself, but doing some of the other stuff around the podcast. So the Pod News Weekly Review, which you may be listening to this on, which is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Sorry, Todd. Buzzsprout has AI tools built into it. So when you upload, it does a transcript. It then works out what the show notes should say. It gives you a title and all of that kind of stuff, which is using Podium under the hood. And it's a very good first step to basically go, okay, that's a job that I don't have to worry about right now. And I think that actually that's where AI is going to be super useful to us as podcasters. It's almost as if AI stands for assistive intelligence rather than anything else.

Yeah, I think that's a good use for it.

And I think too is— and I'm sorry, I— what I've seen over 19 years of podcasting is podcasters are horrible at writing good episode titles, writing good show notes, because you're recording for your audience but you're writing your show notes for Google. And if you don't give Google enough to chew on, of course your episodes are not going to be discovered. So I think AI will solve this for people that have been lazy in creating good show notes.

For us, we started working with the PodScribe recently and we're using it for all the air checks. And from an operational perspective, it's been night and day. Like actually, Victoria sitting down there has to listen to all those episodes on a monthly basis, it's completely offloaded operational side for us. And then also internally, what we're thinking about or how we're thinking about AI is I think one of the challenges that exist in the market and the reasons brands continue to work with the same shows over and over again is because they're taking a risk on smaller shows that have no historical performance data. You don't know how they're going to perform. Is how can we leverage AI to understand what type of shows work best for brands based on shows that have converted well in the past. So really thinking about how do we do that to unlock monetization for podcasters way earlier on in their career than— or their journey versus having to wait until they get to 10,000, 20,000 downloads.

Yeah, I think that, uh, tools, I think, should be thought of as assistive right now. There may be a day when you can trust them, but I think that the big thing is that they need to give you choices, give you like 3 or 4 or 5 different episode titles to pick from. You can edit them still, but it just makes suggestions. And I was talking about this earlier today with someone. I was doing another interview and I was thinking to myself, What if the AI really was smart enough to know what works the best with YouTube, what works the best with Spotify, and it makes those suggestions back to you based on that knowledge and that understanding? So it takes the heavy load of the podcaster to know all these intricate details about how each of these platforms works. And how to reach the proper audience. And I think that the listening platforms are probably like that too.

I think it also can help depending how the platform you're using is configured. If it knows your goal, if it knows the goal of your show, if it knows the goal of the episode, and it can analyze the content that you recorded for that day, it might just write a better title to have helped make you reach your goal for not only the show but for the episode in ways that maybe we weren't able to do ourselves. So I think there's lots of opportunities here from utilizing these tools smartly to gain audience because everyone says, oh, I can't be found, I'm not growing. Often it's because, again, we've heard Tom Webster this morning, you need to, you need to be talking to that specific group and attracting them to your show. You can't be everything for everyone. And if you know what the goal of your podcast is, maybe this can help.

Yeah. James, you try and automate a lot of what you do with PodNews because I've seen you do it before. I was just curious if there's any inkling of possibility that AI could help you.

I wrote a, I actually went to see a presentation last week from Adobe in, at home in Brisbane. Somebody came to Brisbane to talk. Who Who would have thought it? And, and that was interesting because the guy from Adobe, he was talking about pictures and images and stuff, but he was saying that they've worked on a specific tool that helps people looking at pictures to know how fake they are, how real they are. What was the initial part of this picture? Was it a prompt? Was it another image, etc., etc.? And I basically, I came home from that and the first thing that I wrote was the AI policy, which you'll find on our About page, which basically says we don't really use AI. I've used AI a little bit for taking a press release, an impenetrable press release that I sometimes get, and asking Google Bard or whatever, please, could you tell me in 2 sentences what this press release is about? That's quite helpful. But to be honest, most of the times it gets in the way of the of my speed, but I think if you're slower at writing, you need some help with those sorts of things. It's a totally useful tool and really good. I'm not necessarily using it for that, but what I am using it for is obviously things like transcripts. And for this show, for the Pod News Weekly Review, I also use it for— I'm also using the other stuff as well. So I think that there's certainly something there, I think, in terms of that.

So I want to change gears a little bit and talk a little about this tension that is growing to some degree between these large platforms, Spotify and now coming TikTok, Twitter, and possibly Twitter might jump into podcasting at some point, and YouTube, and how that conflicts with Open RSS. Todd and I are involved with the Open Podcast Standards Project. Of trying to extend RSS, make it a much more robust kind of protocol for podcasting with much more capability and features. And I know, James, you're a proponent of the Open Podcast Project, Podcast 2.0, all that stuff. What do you see as the role of the Open Podcast Standards Project to be, and how should it be deployed, do you think?

Yeah, I think that there's two things here. There's the open standards for new podcast features, and Blubrry has really been leading the way in terms of this. The amount of work that your team have been doing, Todd, in making sure that as many of the, of the new podcasting features are being supported in Blubrry and in PowerPress is super impressive. So you've been really leading the way in terms of that. So I think it's partially that, I think it's just partially reminding ourselves that we are, we come from an open environment, we come from open podcasting. Podcasting was always designed to be open. That's what Adam and Dave did when they invented it. I find it interesting that Acast last week made an announcement that they didn't want Spotify ad attribution to be used on their services anymore from the 1st of September. Now I got an instant quotation sent to me from Spotify telling me how much Spotify love the open podcasting ecosystem. And we love, we love talking to all of the industry. I would just point out that we are in a large hall, as you can probably hear at home, we're in a large hall full of other stages, other speakers, other booths. Blueberry is here. StreamYard is here. Nimono is here. Who isn't here? Spotify. Spotify has a room, but it's the other end of this hotel, and you can only get in invite only. That's not really a company that is too excited about open podcasting, I don't think.

If you think about what Acast did, it's something that we've talked about on this show for a while. Spotify bought Chartable and PodSights, and essentially anyone using Chartable or PodSights Again, you have to use the assumption that Spotify bought them for a reason. What did they buy? They bought intelligence. Did they buy intelligence on your shows? Speculation. Or did they buy intelligence on your audience? Speculation. So the question that a podcaster has to ask is, whose services should I use to guarantee that my audiences are not being resold to? Again, this is just my opinion, and we don't know if that's exactly happening or not. So just be clear on that. But I think as podcasters are picking services to work with, they have to consider their audience members. At Blueberry, we've been very public for many years about wanting to make sure our listeners' privacy is foremost. That's why we adopted GDPR globally a number of years ago. And some other companies do that as well. And that's just not us. So I think that it was interesting. I think it was— that was the most telling announcement that I had seen in a while. So if Acast was worried about their audiences or their shows' intelligence being collected upon and then used against them, or poached, or poached, and Spotify's down the hallway down here, I don't know. Does Spotify have all podcasters' best interests at heart? I would contend that's up to you to decide.

Yeah. So, Anne, what's your thought on this? How do you think your podcasters are thinking about this topic?

Our podcasters are one side of the spectrum, the other, which is they get the full— I don't want to do prefixes. I don't want to do attribution. We actually had a show recently on a campaign. It was like, I am not running any campaigns with a prefix. And unfortunately, brands more and more so now are making that a requirement when you're working with them. And then there's the other side where they're like, sure, where do I, how do I do it? And we work with multiple providers and we've been working with Spotify historically, or pod sites. I think in terms of there's also a lot of benefits for companies and for podcasters to be able to gain insight themselves into how they're performing and what they're doing. But I think, like you said, it's like understanding which providers are the best ones for you individually as a creator, as a company.

Yeah, and I think it depends on the priority of monetization, because I think we're in a tension point here too of, as a creator, who is your real audience? Is it advertisers or is it your listeners? And this is an issue that has impacted radio too, is radio thought more about their advertisers than they thought about their audience. And that's why they got to some degree— and James, jump in on this too— and that's the tension that we're feeling in the podcasting space right now. I think that there's a strong ethic in podcasting that we want to maintain a low advertising load medium going forward, and that's what's best for the listener. What's best for the content creator and should be good for the advertiser too, because there's fewer messages and their messages are going to get through.

So one thing to remember though is because they took that prepend out, that only removes their intelligence access to what's not being consumed on the platform. Whatever is being consumed on Spotify and Click, they still have that detailed information. So maybe it's enough. Maybe they don't need any more information. So maybe it was like, okay, we didn't get the Apple Podcasts, we didn't get the Amazon Music, and we didn't get the other stats, but we got the 8, 9, 10% of the audience over here. Maybe it's enough to say, okay, we know what this audience is.

But I also understand that's why Acast doesn't take part in the Triton rankers in the US and in Canada, because of course Triton is owned by iHeart, who I would remind you, Todd, are number one for podcasts. And, and so therefore, quite rightly, I think that may well be one of their reasons. We don't really want to give our entire log files, thank you very much, to one of our competitors. So you can see that consolidation has been helpful in some cases to the industry, but actually hasn't necessarily helped some parts of our industry as well.

And for the average podcaster, it's not putting any money in their pocket when they want money put in their pocket. And that's where you guys come in.

Yeah. And actually, this is a question we get asked a lot because we're host agnostic, right? So why are we host agnostic? For us, it's we want creators to be able to monetize without putting as many restrictions in as possible. But the downside to that is you're managing X amount of platforms and having to understand all of the good stuff that comes with that, right? But, or bad. Yeah, I think like also on the— or as we actually just started to work with the Podcast Index for it to— on the onboarding to be able to pull that out for the podcasters that are signing up for ASA. And like, we look at tools like that as a way to be able to make enhanced user experience where it's not dependent on a hosting provider to be able to give us certain access to information to make the creators' life easier.

Yeah, I think also, and I wanted to ask you a little bit more pinpointed about the Open Standards Project, the Open Podcasting Standards Project, James, and just kind of get your— what do you think that group should do going forward? I know many aren't that familiar with the Open Podcasting Standards Project, but it's just a group of podcast hosts and trying to build alliances with the listening platforms to extend some of the namespace tags in RSS. And I know you've been outspoken about the Open Podcast Standards Project, and I was just curious what you would recommend to that group going forward to help have more of an impact.

Oh, I can't believe that I'm now being called outspoken on a—

You're always outspoken, James.

On a podcast with Todd and Rob on it. I think from my point of view, I was very excited about the Open Podcast Project because I saw this as being something which— the Open Podcast Standards Project— because I saw this as being something which could bridge the gap between what some of the podcast hosts were doing, adding new features, transcripts being an obvious one here, and then talking to the podcast app developers. And we've seen a lot of really good but very small podcast apps like Fountain, who I advise for, and Podfriend and all of these other, all of these other smaller apps adding some of these services in there. But once you start looking at Overcast or Pocket Casts, or even of course Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple, there's absolutely no move in terms of that. And in fact, one of Spotify's announcements today was finally we're going to give you the chance to choose the order in which your podcast appears on your page. What, like Apple did 3 years ago with an open tag that you could be reading Spotify? From my point of view, this is all open stuff, collaborative stuff that we can all be working together on, and actually making sure that there is transcription and other new features such as that I think would be really exciting. So from my point of view, I think that what the Podcast Standards Project what we could be doing is being a bit more visible out there, being a bit more obvious that there is work underway, and basically picking a feature. And that might be transcripts, because there are benefits for accessibility but also benefits for advertising in there as well, and seeing how we can get that into as many possible podcast apps. And I don't see why Apple or Spotify would turn around and say, we're not having transcripts, that's a dreadful idea, because of course it's not a dreadful idea. So maybe that's a good feature to actually start with.

Yeah, I mean, if there's some pressure on them to some degree from competitive apps, but some of the competitive apps that have adopted some of these namespaces, they don't have big market share, so it's not like they're taking away market share from the big guys. And I think that's the challenge of the strategy of trying to launch with a bunch of small apps to try and get the big apps to to add these capabilities, I don't see a lot of motivation on their part yet unless the organization is doing something that it gives them something. Go ahead.

I was going to say, I think as a startup, if we had known 2 years ago when we started engineering that those options were available to us, we probably would have maybe built a little bit differently, faster. And it was— and even though we know you guys, it was by chance that we came across. So I feel like even in the startup community or the tech community, who are building products or technology around audio in any capacity, it's an incredible resource and tool that's available to be able to actually build innovation and product.

For those of you that are like, what are they talking about?

There's a danger.

Let's back up. And when podcasting started, RSS was basically this invention that was with enclosures that allowed people to have syndication of content that was free and open that no one had ever really been able to do that before because there was gatekeepers. You had to sign contracts to be on platforms. And of course, you could have a website with your content, but that distribution was difficult. So when Apple introduced podcasting in 2005 into iTunes at the time, and remember, this is pre-iPhone, we're still iPod era, they set up a set of specifications that podcast hosts would follow that you fill out when you're hosting your show. Name of the show, description, those types of things that you've set up with your podcast host. From 2005, literally until probably 2019, 2020, Apple dominated that specification space and Google added a little bit here and there, but in the end, they controlled the narrative. So starting about 3 years ago, Adam Curry and Dave Jones started the Podcast Index, Podcast 2.0 initiative. To add features to podcasting, to RSS, that would make podcast apps more robust. To break this down so it's not technical for you, example, there's a tag that's commonly referred to as the credit tag, and all you do is you say, okay, here's the host name, here's a link to his LinkedIn page, a picture of him, the co-host name, picture of him, picture, a link to his LinkedIn page, my guest name, and so on. And what that can ultimately end up being is surfaced in the app when they click on the episode, that additional metadata is there. That's just one feature that is being done by Podcasting 2.0. So part of the challenges with the open and PSP, the Podcast Standards Project, is as host and the participating apps, we're setting, hey, we are going to try to advance the space and adopt these new features to give podcasters more exposure, grow their show, make it more interactive for the audiences. The challenge goes back to what you were saying. Apple and the others, they move at their own speed. And you talk with an Apple representative and we're friends with many of them. They have their own language and they're never committal to anything. You can ask nicely and maybe 2 years you might see that feature in Apple Podcasts. So it's a big challenge for us to get the big apps to move. But what you can do as a podcaster, number one, is ask your podcast host to adopt the Podcasting 2.0 tags and features, and then ask the apps that you use to add those features. You will have as much pressure on this growing ecosystem as anyone else because You as a creator want your listeners to have the best experience, and we're trying to make that experience better. Yeah.

And I think to add another layer onto that, the history has been when Apple makes any changes to their RSS namespace, the whole industry kind of sits up and runs to, to adopt it. And that's one of the challenges here is that Apple has been dictating to the podcasting medium for a long time. What features and what functions this industry has that aligns with their product and their service. And so what we're trying to do is take that control back and say, we as an industry, we want to have a say in what these capabilities are across all of the listening platforms instead of basically being the, the tail that's wagged by the dog, which is what we've been up to this point.

And you can start by trying one of the new podcast apps at newpodcastapps.com. Go try one of them as a a podcaster and then see what this is all about. That's the best thing to do as well, to get educated on this.

Yeah. So there, there's some movement on planning and organizing for the Podcast Standards Group about escalating this and working with some of these listening platforms and other podcast hosts to certify them as being supportive of certain tags in the industry. So hopefully we will see this adoption start to spread across some of the larger apps, but definitely go check out some of the newer apps as well. There's some fun features in there. It's called— I don't know, Todd, why don't you explain some of the cool features like the Lit Tag and things like that?

I think it's just best for them to go try the apps, experiment, play around with them, and see what happens.

And sure, passing the buck.

Yeah, passing the buck. So I do— we've hit on this for a while, but I do want to ask the audience one thing. How many of you here are new podcasters that have not created an episode yet? Oh, okay. So we have a few. All right. So one thing as a podcast host that I see is someone will sign up for a hosting account and they'll never get to episode 1. So for those of you that have got to episode 1, congratulations. You're, you're already ahead of 50% that have started, but yet podfading continues to be a significant problem. Because historically, and this is a number that I've talked about for many years, really about 50% of the people who start never make it to episode 7, and then 50% of those remaining people never make it to episode 20. And once you make it to 20, you've got a pretty good chance to making it to 2 years. Will some of this new stuff help us?

I don't know. A lot of the podfading, and that's I'm not sure we've clearly defined what podfading is. There may be people in the audience that don't know what that is, but it's just when a podcaster starts and then they start to fade in their passion for podcasting. And eventually, after usually about 7 or 8 episodes, no more new episodes get published.

They quit.

So from your perspective, why do you think that happens outside of maybe losing passion for it?

Oh, I think there's a lot of reasons that people podfade, and it's probably too many of them for me to even mention here, but life changes, people lose a job, or people just run out of stuff to talk about. I think it— this is where the niching down of your podcast can bite you in the butt, because if you niche down too far, you can kind of run out of things to talk about. So you have to find stuff that— a topic or a genre that there's a lot of stuff that you can cover and a lot of people have an interest in. I don't know, what do you think about pod fading, James, as you think about the medium?

Yeah, you know, what we do know is that the thing that works in podcasting is consistency. This show, The New Media Show, goes out every single week. It is a consistent listen. What you're going to get when you tune in most of the time— sometimes it turns out it's just Todd shouting at Rob for 40 minutes. Did you enjoy that one recently? That was good. But so consistency is a massively important thing, and I think once you lose that consistency, once you drop a week because life has got in the way, or you drop a couple of weeks, and then all of a sudden it's difficult to come back. But actually, that's also a business issue for podcast hosts because you want people to come back and you want people to be paying that monthly subscription. That, that's an important part as well. The thing that I also look at is the total amount of podcasts which are being updated every 90 days is the figure that I look at. And there's a massive big graph at podcastbusinessjournal.com/data, and that is showing a quite a ski jump and it's a ski jump going the wrong way. And I wonder why there are currently fewer and fewer podcasts being, uh, being kept, being worked on. And I wonder whether some of that is just actually it's still the end of the COVID explosion of new shows being made because frankly we couldn't go anywhere, we couldn't do anything. But all of us could make a podcast. I wonder whether it's a little bit of that.

One thing I will say, and based on— I agree with James. If you look at the 10-day running average, we're down 50% from maybe 13 months ago. So it is a great time to be a podcaster. And here's why. That audience is still there. We're seeing indie growth now that is 10, 12, 15%. Where shows have been stagnant for a long time. So audiences are seeking new content now. So this is a great time to make hay when others have hung up the microphone or hung up the headphones or whatever you want to say. It's a great time to be a podcaster because it's, it's a unique time.

I think there's fewer competitive shows out there that are active because I was going to say both fewer competitive shows, but also, and are you seeing consumption going down? Because I'm not seeing consumption going down.

No. And actually, it's interesting for us. We've got maybe 10% churn, which is way below what typically is. But I think it's also the profile of the creator, right? You have some that are content creators. I don't want to say they don't care about monetization, but that's just the icing on the cake for them. And they show up and they— and then there's others that are it's a business for them. So I think it's understanding too where they're at in their journey. And you know what, sometimes maybe it might be okay that they just do 10 episodes. And so yeah, I think a lot of it is around the community engagement as well. It's like, how does the creator community support each other to keep on going?

But I think at the same time, I do calls with all of you, not you specifically, but podcasters every week. And the number one question continues to be to me at least, how do I grow my show? And the first question I'm always asking podcasters now is, what is the goal of your show? And oftentimes I get a pause. And if you don't know what the goal of your show is, then how can you focus that content to grow your show? So that's a start. And number 2, oh my God, please make it easy for your audiences to subscribe to your podcast when they come to your website because If I have to click 3 times to find or follow your show, it's never ever going to happen.

And then the next question is, how do I make money with my show? Right, Todd? Yeah. So that's a whole nother topic. There's millions of ways you can make money with your podcast, but I think both Todd and I realize that if we think back to the 18, 19, 20 years that we've been doing this medium, making money with your podcast has never been really the priority. So it's really a matter of building community, building an audience, and maybe you can monetize is what always has been the thought process. So how does Ahsa look at that topic?

All of our shows are there to monetize, but it might be— we've got some shows that are like 20, 30, 40,000 monthly listeners and they've never monetized before. And they're like, I should probably start monetizing my audience. And then you have some shows who've 10 episodes in and they're like, I need to make money now. So I think again, it's like the spectrum of who is the creator, where are they at? And also maybe advertising's not the right way to monetize. And that can also be, if you have a business, you use your podcast to drive leads to your business and you make money that way versus I think it just goes back to the audience as well. Is your audience gonna. Like it, or are they going to be like, I'm going to tune out now?

It goes again back to the goal. Is the goal money? Is the goal authority? Is the goal to help someone? Is the goal to drive leads? What's the goal of the show? And I would almost bet if I asked people to raise hands, how many of you is your number one goal of your show is to monetize? So a few. I would expect it a few more. Yeah, because typically about 50% of podcasters want to monetize, but really only about 15 or 20% effectively do.

Well, those two topics, finding an audience and monetizing, may be the answer to why we're seeing so much pod fading.

Yeah, you could well be. And I think we, when we talk about monetizing, there are some people who are thinking about thousands and thousands of dollars a month. But as I think you say quite often, Todd, there are some people here who are essentially, when they podcast, they're making enough money to pay for Netflix. They're making enough money to take their partner out for a nice meal or to pay the monthly installment on the car. Those are still incredibly useful things. And yes, of course, we'd all thousands and thousands of dollars every single month from our show, but actually even paying the Spotify bill is a useful thing.

Yeah. Oh, it's always good to make a little bit of money on your show. And that's a little bit of a success right there.

But it also goes back to, there's lots of ways to monetize. Oh, there's my show. I've always had the ability for, for listeners to donate through what I call fiat funding coupons, which is like PayPal. They can send money to the show that way. I've had a sponsor for the show, which has been a traditional sponsor, which is my, my sponsorship's a little bit unique. But I'm also participating in the new value for value. And this is something you should think about for your show and your audience. The biggest mistake is not asking. Many of you, I listen to your shows and you don't ask your audience to donate. You're afraid to ask. If you're giving them value, why should they not give you value back? And taking the words straight out of Adam Curry's mouth, time, talent, or treasure is what you can get back from your audience. What's the talent part? The talent could be contributing articles that you're going to cover in your show or suggesting a guest. What's the time component? The time component may be helping with chapters, maybe helping with show notes, helping with social. And treasure, some people don't have talent or time, but they do have treasure. So then giving money back to the show in a monetary value. So I think the value for value model, if you think about it and are willing to ask your audience, is something that's— is an applicable way to earn money besides straight doing advertising. Although I do both.

Hey, Todd, would you like to take questions from the audience?

Yeah, and we can. We got a few minutes to take questions, and at the same time, I can go out in the audience and— all right, and just say, let's have questions.

Anybody want to ask any questions?

Uh-oh. Okay. Deshawn does. I know he does.

Yeah, I think I dropped out, so okay. Yeah, I also wanted to say that this is being captured on a 360-degree video camera, so you'll be able to see with your question.

Great show, by the way, everybody. So I've been podcasting for a long time, and the problem that I'm having is advertising. And I don't have an advertising budget to advertise my show, but I still want to monetize my show. And I do have a goal to monetize my show, but I also want to have more fan base. I have a different type of show with different types of segments, and I love doing even covering places like Podcast Movement or another podcasting convention, and I love doing it. So how do I advertise the right way for my show to be able to grow? Thank you. So was there— I think there was two pieces to this. Number one was you want to have advertisers, right? So most podcast hosts today have a very easy way to monetize, and that's through the programmatic advertising. If your host has that capable, I would encourage you to enable that or apply for programmatic advertising. But so far as advertising your show, if your budget is relatively small, there are a number of podcast apps like Overcast and others for a small budget that you can advertise your show on other podcasts. And that can be done at a pretty low level from financially.

Yeah, and also I would say it's not necessarily just advertising, it's letting people know about your show. You can do that for free. You can contact podcast newsletters. For example, iHeart runs a very good one of those. I believe it's number one for newsletters. But also you can, you can do leaflets in your local store, or you can— there are lots of different ways of reaching audiences depending on what the podcast is about as well. So don't always think about advertising in a sort of standard way. Think about how you can get your particular show in front of the audience that you want to get in front of.

Yeah. The other thing is there is a— if you have looked at like networks or other platforms with shows that are in your niche, a lot of networks will actually offer cross-promotion between the shows that are there. Example, on ASA, we've got a program called Pod Swap, which is completely up to every podcaster to opt in. And then let's say we're two shows. I'll interview you or I'll give you a script and you do a plug. And then let's just say you don't want to join a network. Another great way is go to Chartable or Spotify or Apple or wherever and look at shows that are similar to you and just reach out to them and say, hey, listen, I'll promote your show if you promote mine. And you'll pick up similar based audiences to be able to. But it's a really effective way, even if you don't have the money to invest in it, to be able to build relationships with other creators like you.

Yeah, hi, and that was great. That was one of my questions you just answered. Can I— was a little bit late. I do have an OT national network that reaches 10 million viewers per week, and I do— I'm doing it. I'm launching a podcast station and launch and being able to promote a lot of podcast shows. My question to you is specifically first podcast ads platform? What does Ossa do? The bottom line.

So we're a technology-driven platform that connects brands with podcast creators. We're host agnostic. We have no minimum download. You're in full control over the brands that you want to work with. And yeah, we connect you in whether it's baked in, embedded, dynamic. We just recently added programmatic as an option, and then episodic and sponsorship is soon to come, and your simulcast.

The other side of that question is, does the advertiser retain you or does the podcast creator retain you?

Both. So the brand— we do self-serve and direct. So the brand will come to our website, create an account, say, I want to spend X amount of money. And then use a podcast to receive a push notification that says, this brand wants to work with you. Are you interested? This is how much you'll get paid. Yeah. You opt in. So we do it a little bit different. You say, yes, I want to. And now the brand can see the 30 shows that are interested in working with them. And they say, 1, 2, 3, 4. You say, yep, I'm gonna take it. And you go and execute.

Yeah. They do that in OT and they'll do all that in broadcast.

I'm so glad you do it now.

And podcast. And to get your company, it's osa.com?

Yeah, it's actually osacollective.com is the web— is the domain name.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

And she's being shy. They have a booth here too, so make sure you go see them.

405, come see us.

Yeah, absolutely.

Does anybody else want to ask a question?

Or before we—

go ahead.

Before we close today, so James, trends and changes we're seeing in podcasting, anything you specifically see what's going to happen in the next 6 months?

Oh, great. Thanks. Thanks for giving me that one first, Todd. That's, that's good of you. I think we're going to see— I firstly, I would keep your eyes on Europe and the Middle East. I think that's where we'll see an awful lot of growth over the next, over the next couple of years. I think that there's differences in the economy in those parts of the world, but I think also they're starting from a lower base. And so actually we'll see significantly high growth there. But what I would also suggest is we'll see a bit more consolidation. We'll see more things like Squadcast and Descript. We'll see more companies joining together, and particularly around podcast networks. We've seen Evergreen this week making, making an acquisition of shows. PodcastOne making acquisitions of shows from, of certain assets from Cast Media and all that kind of stuff. So I, I think that we're gonna see a bit more consolidation in terms of the content side of podcasting. And I think that's going to be pretty good for the health of the industry as well.

The international expansion is without a doubt going to be big. You and I were both lucky enough to go to Riyadh and speak in front of about 3,000 creators. It was an amazing event. You would have never thought that I would go to Saudi Arabia and speak in front of individuals that were giving finally for the first time in let's say 100 years to have the ability to have a voice and create content openly, yet with probably some restrictions. But yet it just showed me that podcasting is exploding globally. And I think you're right, the Arab market is going to just explode. But Rob, I ask that same question to you. What do you think?

Yeah, I think that the markets overseas has learned a little bit from the mistakes of what's happened in North America. And I think they've— and it's just a different market. It's a different media market.

Too.

You think about the UK with BBC and you think about Canada with CBC. It's just the population is very much in that mindset. So podcasters that start in those areas, and James, maybe you can speak to this too because this affects Australia too, but I think the expectations of quality of audio and stuff are a little higher, aren't they? And does that impact the professionalization of podcasting outside of the US?

Yeah, I think that was one of the interesting things that Dave Weiner was telling me about when he was podcasting, when he got into podcasting initially, that actually he was doing a show with Adam Curry and it was quite professional, and he thought to himself, actually, this is scaring some people away because Adam Curry is a professional broadcaster, he knows what he's doing, and actually there needs to be something which is a bit more rough and ready to allow people to understand what podcasting can be like, which is why Dave then worked on Morning Coffee Notes, which I'm actually working with him on bringing back to the internet. So you'll be having to be able to have a listen in a modern podcast app to that. And I think that's interesting that, yeah, radio, particularly in some other parts of the world, has driven some of the podcasting that you actually end up hearing. I'm wondering whether Ann has any thoughts about where the trends are over the next 6 months as well.

And we have to throw in a fire because you just become the CEO on Thursday. And by the way, ladies, everyone, please give her a round of applause. Isn't that fantastic? So go ahead, Annie.

Thank you. I think you guys kind of hit it on the head. I, as far as I think, the tools that are becoming available will make actually the content creation and the marketing of the content much easier. So hopefully that creators have the opportunity to do more of what they love instead of the admin and operations side of it all.

You know, I think the world is going to change in a big way. It's going to affect everyone. I was listening to a Google executive recently, and they said, "There's going to be creatives, and there's going to be subject matter experts." I think in this audience that's listening in here today, we have lots of creatives and lots of subject matter experts, because ultimately, some of the thinking that we do today, where we're writing proposals and we're doing spreadsheets, That'll ultimately probably be done by AI in the future. But again, because we are creative and we are subject matter experts in our content, and that there is going to be this desire for original voices, it's going to be craved. I truly believe this, that the landscape is going to change in the next 2, 3 years, and we are going to see the biggest upswell of listening to podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, wherever content's being originally created. I think the future is very bright because AI is not human. We are. And as long as we put forth the human emotion in our content, I think we're going to win the day.

Yeah, I also think that trust is a big factor in all this too. Podcasters have an opportunity and really inherently build trust with their audience. I think that's one of the— going to be the biggest challenges that we face going forward is all of us knowing who, what information, where it comes from, do we trust it. I think that's a huge factor that podcasters have a big role in going forward.

Yeah, I think trust is hugely important. You should make a show about that, Rob.

I should. It's called Trust Factor. Yes. Yes.

We're going to wrap this up. We normally do 90 minutes, but there's beer to be drank. We want you all to have— and those of you that aren't here, are listening to this later. Nah, nah, nah, nah. Anyway, James, go ahead and give them your contact information and how they can reach you.

So please, if you don't already subscribe to PodNews, it's free. You'll join 28,900 other podcasters getting that email every single day. PodNews.net is where to find that. And if you want my contact details, I'm james@krid.land. That's my email address.

Annie.

And our website is ossacollective.com for any podcaster who's looking to monetize. You can go to our website, download the app, and sign up easily. And then my contact details are, is anne@ossacollective.com. Thank you.

Yeah, and I can be found on Twitter, Rob Greenlee, @RobGreenlee. And I've got a podcast, Trust Factor. Definitely go subscribe to the New Media Show. And James also does a couple of podcasts too. He does a weekly Pod News Weekly and a Pod News Daily too.

Absolutely. And thank you for the audio for this week's edition. That's very kind of you.

Thank you very much. Yeah.

And I can be found at X. I think that's what we're supposed to be calling it.

That's right.

X at Geek News.

Though I think Twitter.com still works, Todd.

And I can be found in Mastodon at Todd at @Todd@blueberry.chat or Todd@blueberry.com for email. But hey, we want to thank all of you for hanging out with us today. Of course, all our regular listeners that are subscribed to the show, we want to thank you so much for your ongoing support of the podcast. Rob and I will be back for another live edition of this show next Wednesday at 3 o'clock Eastern on all our normal streaming places, including Facebook, YouTube Live, and everyone else. And those of you, we welcome you to enjoy— to join us. By going to newmediashow.com today and follow the show so that you can get your own PhD in podcasting by listening to this show. So everyone, thank you so much for being here. Take care. We'll see you next year.

Thank you. Thank you.