Podcast Festival Boom: What's Really Happening in 2025

Should be coming any second.

All right, I think we're live on X.

Here comes YouTube. Hey everyone, welcome to the New Media Show. Rob, how are you?

I'm doing terrific, Todd. How are you?

I'm doing, doing great. And in the new studio— well, not new studio, back in the Philippines. And We've got the new gear set up. So far so good, although RODECaster is always being picky, but I've done some mitigation. I have a little bit of a clue. Once in a while when you hit record, it just decides to disconnect from the computer. So I've hit record well ahead of the start today. So we'll see. Hey, but, um, getting right in the stack, we've got a— I've got a bunch of stuff to talk about.

Yeah, hopefully we can do it all in an hour, right?

Yeah, well, we're going to do it in an hour and we'll get everything covered in an hour, but there's lots of news on the festival side. Of course, the Podcast Awards kicked off. And podcast movement, that should be interesting. I don't know what you're hearing on your side.

Well, I want to hear what you're hearing.

Yeah, that's kind of the— well, we'll get into it.

Yeah, right.

The HLS discussion, which I giggle a little bit about. True fans. Just, yes, a whole bunch of stuff going on here. Apple in 20 years, that's probably the one to start with. You know, okay, well, I, I don't know, but you know, just thinking about here we are.

Yeah, yeah, it's an important, important date, right?

Yeah. And they, and you know, they did a good job of, uh, promoting and sending emails, and I saw lots of web discussions and social discussions about, wow, wow, Apple's been supporting podcasts for 20 years.

Wow.

Yeah, but I wish they would have, uh, promoted some shows that have actually been podcasting for 20 years.

So, well, they, they went back. I, I guess they had shows in there that were kind of grouped. Yeah, by blocks of time, like I think 10-year spans or 5 or 6-year spans or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah, it was definitely this, you know, and they basically had made an impact. My list might have been a little bit different, but, um, yeah, it was a good list nonetheless. And for the, for the modern audience, they, they could give two hoots on shows that have been doing 20 years. So I understand their, their, uh, their methodology and trying to get the most bang for the buck for, you know, this modern-day audience.

Yeah, if you're new to podcasting and you haven't been around it that long, it's probably not that relevant to you to know the shows that were around 20 years ago, right?

Yeah.

But the truth is, is that there's a few of them that are still around.

Yeah. Yeah. This is not one of them, by the way. So we're not a 20-year show, although sometimes it feels like it.

But I don't even know exactly how long we have been around.

I have to go back and look, but it's, it's close.

Probably at least 15.

Yeah, I have to— yeah, we keep bringing this up and I, I just, I need to get the actual number again, uh, because I kind of don't pay attention to it, to be honest with you.

Yeah, I guess it depends if you count when we actually started the show, which is the Saturday Morning Tech Show, right?

Right.

Um, if you count that or not, or do you only count from when we switched to the new name?

Yeah, because we went quite a while with the other one. But I tell you, the— it was though kind of heartening, and there was a lot of discussion on X about the, about the 20 years. And I think the, the, the nice part about them announcing that is reasserting that, hey, audio is still fantastic and doing well. And that, you know, we've been here from the beginning. And if anything else, it just reminded people, you know, we've seen a bit of an uptick in Apple Podcast use. We'll see how July turns out. We haven't run the numbers yet. But June, they had a, they had a bump. And I think someone I saw on one of the other socials said that Buzzsprout saw an evening as well where Apple made some some gains here. So maybe, um, you know, people are coming back.

I wonder what that could be attributed to. Is there— what was there, some kind of a software update that Apple made? Or—

I don't think so. I think it's— there was just, you know, uh, maybe volume. And maybe it's— maybe it's inclined— it's June, it's, uh, or May, May, June, July, you know. Maybe we are in a situation where people are on the go more and maybe they're using Apple Podcasts more than they are Spotify. So again, that's just pure speculation on my part, but you know, we're not a good barometer of Spotify to begin with. So right from our, you know, our percentage. But anyway, it's good to see, uh, you know, them to make the announcement. And, uh, I think they had an opportunity here and they did well. It was was, you know, Apple-esque in its, in its style. So it was good for sure.

Yeah. And so let's go ahead and mention something. I mean, I think we've both been talking about on this show for a while now that we kind of feel like the conference side of podcasting might be waning a little bit, um, at least in the U.S. I, I can't really say that about the podcast show in London. But it just feels that way here, Todd, doesn't it, to you? Is that an accurate kind of feeling?

Yeah, it does.

And this topic popped up in Pod News about this live podcast festival of sorts, or live podcast event that's starting to— looks like it's starting to grow, and it's moved from being outside of the US to including an event in New York City. And I know that, Todd, both of us have been involved in podcasting events that have included live onstage events. Right. And I think, what was the name of the one that we did together in Seattle? What was it?

Oh, that was VidCon. Yeah, PodCon. Yeah.

PodCon. And I remember that event too, and I'm sure you do too. There were a couple of live on-stage podcasting events at that event that had a lot of people in the audience.

Oh yeah.

It was very—

Big numbers.

Very, very well attended. And I've been to a lot of live events over the years too that have had a lot of people attending in person. To a live onstage performance, right? And I just wonder if maybe the popularity of podcasting has reached a scale and a scope that maybe it makes sense to start doing more onstage, in-person kind of, you know, podcast events.

I think it works for those shows that are big, but you have to be big.

Well, sure.

Yeah.

Well, sure. But that's, that's kind of always been the case. Yeah, I think, you know, even the shows at, at PodCon were big popular shows, right? I mean, it's obvious if a show gets a big audience to pay for a ticket, you know, you know, Smodcast was another one of them, you know, with Kevin Smith out of L.A., you know, he's a big moviemaker and had a very popular kind of cult following around him. You know, he would do his smodcast podcast live on stage and he'd get 1,000 people showing up.

So it's called the Cheerful Ear. So is this a comedy group? Is that what it is?

Correct.

See, they've always done well. The comedy folks have always done well with live events.

So, but if you back up and you look at what's going on here, they've decided to put on a US event. Here in New York City here in October. So it's coming up. And, you know, Todd, this is kind of the first time outside of like maybe Comic-Con or other, you know, kind of more cultural events, kind of geek culture events, or even like the event that we went to a lot down in, down in Atlanta. Um, not Comic-Con, VidCon.

I mean, uh, no, um, DragonCon. All the cons, right?

Right. So those events have always had like live on-stage podcasting events. Um, so I just wonder if we're kind of moving into that phase now where we'll see more of this. I'm, I'm being a little speculative here about maybe what we might start seeing happen more. But what's your thoughts on this, Todd?

Well, it's, you know, I, I remember having attended some in the early days, um, where musicians and so forth were doing, you know, doing, uh, live events as part of their podcast audience. So it's a, you know, the Rock and Roll Geek Show and Brian Albee and, um, Coverville. And if I pronounce— if I'm getting names, Mrs. Show Shade, wrong, I apologize in advance. So we— I— it's not— I think it's— those had huge followings, uh, so I, I think that it just makes sense if you can get in a geographic area that you can pull enough people.

Um, yeah, and it's a big enough show. Yeah, group of shows. Yeah, because I think even the podcast show did some live onstage events.

Yeah.

At their, you know, I think they've been doing that the whole life of the event. And then there's, I went to for many years, the Los Angeles Podfest or Podcast Festival, I think it was called back then. And they did the same thing. They brought in a bunch of comedian podcasters from LA and they packed the house. So I don't know, it just seems like maybe we're heading into a phase that's much more fan-focused. And I don't know what that means for the business side of podcasting. If it's a whole domestic thing.

I think it means for those shows, maybe a payday. You know, that's—

well, I mean, that's certainly true, but, but as we think back on all these events that you and I have participated in, there's always been a little bit of an exhibition that's been associated with it.

Yeah. These are not—

they're like a day or two or something like that. And that might be an opportunity for some of the podcast hosting companies to get in front of new people again, potentially like we did back then. I'm not exactly sure why those events kind of faded away, um, but maybe they're coming back.

Well, if you have a receptive venue and it doesn't cost too much, you know, in comedy clubs and so forth, they're set up to support this anyway. So, um, you know, if you, if you, you know, organize with a promoter and you can come into an event for a day or two and guarantee that you're going to have, you know, you basically buy the venue and liquor and seat sales and all that. It's probably relatively low-hanging fruit and low risk. I'm sure there's some cost involved, but I would assume that it's, you know, probably not that big of an outlay. It's not like they're going to be outlaying hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't think that's the case at all. And if you've got a big enough, big enough audience and a big enough, you know, your budget probably is not— probably, you know, and it does well to build community. So yeah, I, you know, but first a small bit, you know, but, but what does— what would a show size have to be in order to, to pull this off? It's just one show, it's hard, but I would imagine 4, 5, 6 shows. How many, how many folks are they talking about in this New York event? Looks like, uh, What Went Wrong, Go Touch Grass, The Puzzler with AGG. I don't know any of these shows. So 3, 3 shows, I guess.

Okay, it says for, um, for New York, all, all of the events there They're expecting about 15— oh no, 15 days of live podcasts. Oh, um, the thing to take away is that just because we don't— we haven't heard of the, of the podcast before—

I know, I know, I know, I know.

Not a popular show.

The New York, the New York date says 7 to 9 October, so they're doing something more than that. Oh, it's over 15 days in 3 different cities: Melbourne, New York, and London. I got you. Correct.

Yeah, and it doesn't list how many podcasts are going to be doing it. And oftentimes these events are either held in one venue, right, a theater or something like that, like a community movie theater, and they just have the shows do back-to-back shows and they sell individual tickets or they sell an all-day ticket. So it just depends on what the organizers want to do with it. But that's how I've seen it organized in the past. Also, the Vancouver Vancouver, BC podcast festival did a similar thing as well. And I went to a bunch of different movie theaters across Vancouver to go to different live onstage recordings. And so it just feels like this is a way for some of the larger ones and to some degree smaller shows can probably get involved in this to some degree. It's all proportional to the size of the venue.

Yeah, and, and I think they're also— they have some headliners. That means there are definitely some others that are participating, but they, you know, they've got their main pulls. So that's, you know, we'll see. And of course, you know, the— you know, we're just about a month, a little more than a month away from, from, from Dallas. So, you know, that, that in itself is going to be a bellwether of what's really happening in the podcast event space as well.

Yeah, so let's, let's talk a little bit about Podcast Movement. Um, I mean, what are you hearing? I'm not really hearing that.

I'm hearing nothing, honest with you, hearing nothing. Absolutely. Except for their announcements, their emails that are coming out.

Well, that, and I have been getting asked if I'm going. So it's on August 18th through the 21st.

Yeah.

And I'm sure that you're going.

Yeah, I'm going. Yeah. And you know, we're out in the middle of the boondocks again in a, you know, in that Gaylord. So, you know, you're kind of landlocked to that place. You know, they've got some deal with them and instead of having a venue where you can walk out of it and go somewhere else, You know, we were looking at, we were looking at, you know, trying to save some money and being in a hotel in a different location. And it just, by the time we did the Uber and, you know, figured out, you know, what the logistics would be, we decided it wasn't worth it.

I mean, that's a double-edged sword, right? If you have it in a place where everybody leaves, yeah, that's not necessarily good for building community.

But the community building doesn't really happen too much anymore in The, you know, it's podcast movement has turned—

well, it's never going to happen if you have a venue.

That's true.

Everybody leaves.

Yeah, but again, it's, you know, it's turning into more of a real regular conference where, you know, it's a business event. Yeah, the, in the business is not happening as much in the bars as it used to, or in the side lounges, or wherever after the show.

Um, yeah, I think it I mean, Todd, to kind of bring it to, I think, a logical conclusion here— it's not so much a conclusion to the event, but just kind of an observation what's going on— is that increasingly most of the people that go to this event don't really care about the sessions anyway. They go there and they're booked up all day, right?

Meetings, people, and they're doing side meetings, not really about going to learn anything. Yep.

You know, and, and, and there's probably a good percentage of the people that go that are actually on stage presenting.

I, I had— or on panels, you know. And here's the thing, and maybe, um, they've, they've really impacted their own demise because— and maybe I shouldn't use that word because I don't know if that's the case, but again, the Well, it's not in the growth phase anymore. No, no, it's not in the growth phase. And, you know, we'll have a hard decision to make this year when we go, um, you know, based on traffic. If the traffic's not there, then why go? And it was a flagship event that I said we would never miss. And, you know, if it's, if it's not a flagship event again where we're meeting people— and it doesn't necessarily have to be new podcasters, we know the new podcasters are not going to that event I mean, they're not, right? Um, so for us, we're going with a different strategy this year, um, and basically promoting our new product that we're launching and get the word out on that. Um, because going as a podcast host has little appeal to people that are existing and haven't already, you know, already are with a, with a podcasting company. You know, like the podcast show London, we've probably got 40, 40 to 50 that moved to us from other hosts, which is a remarkable number. We don't— would never get that from an event like Podcast Movement. It just won't happen because those people don't come talk to you. They look at you and say, oh yeah, here you are, wave and keep on walking.

So yeah, well, and you're, you're part of, you know, 5 or 6 other podcast hosts too. So everybody's got their show at different places. I don't think that there's a lot of new podcasters that go to that event. I think if they're attending that event, they're probably already a podcaster.

Yeah, absolutely, for sure. So like I said, so this year—

It's not like the old days.

No, so it's why we're promoting our new product that we should have in beta by the time the event starts. I think we'll see. And I think for Chris down at Podfest, I think he has a huge opportunity here to capture that audience that may have originally went— and again, Podcast Movement, again, it's middle of the week, 18th to the 21st of of August. So, you know, half my team this week is out on vacation.

So yeah, what's the holiday weekend in the U.S.?

And it's— but at the same time, it's summer, and you know, you're 18, 19, 20, 20, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, your whole week is shot. You know, we fly out on Friday to come home, and, uh, and the average— and we've said this on the show 100 times— the average independent content creator, they can't, they can't do it. They can't take that many vacation days. Whereas someone that's there from a business, for me, that's perfect. I leave, uh, you know, I fly out Monday morning, uh, I get in there Monday, uh, mid-morning, we set the booth up Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then boom, back on Friday, and I'm, I'm home for the weekend. So In that regards, it's perfect for a business but not for a creator. Yeah, but anyway, go ahead.

We'll see, right?

Yeah, we'll see. And I'm not holding out a lot of hope, but keep my fingers crossed here.

Yeah, I mean, I would like to go, but you know, we'll see on that.

I might The ticket cost and hotel cost, uh, you know, it's not insignificant. Yeah, I'm looking at the hotel bill, what it's going to be. I'm like, good Lord, I'm not staying in New York City, I'm in Dallas, for God's sake, you know. And right, the room should be, you know, $100, $150 a night. Um, yeah, not—

that's what they've done in the past, right? But yeah, this deal with Gaylord made it Made it $300 a night.

And then you top on it because you're locked in there and you talk about food. So, you know, you're going to blow per diem staying there because unless you order Uber, you know, Uber Eats.

Yeah, or you're fasting during the whole event.

Yeah, exactly.

Which I've done before. I've actually fasted and only eaten once a day.

So, but anyway, it still costs you $50.

Yeah, right, right. So you announced that, uh, your voting's open for the 20th anniversary of the People's Choice. Yeah, Podcast Awards.

Yeah, registration's down a little bit this year, so there's some opportunities in a few categories. It'll all fill in, but, um, there's just so many award systems now. There was we got hit up by the British Podcast Awards and it's like, where do people focus when there's 20 awards? And it feels to me like everyone's trying to get their 10 cents out of the space and having awards and we've got enough people registered to cover our costs, thank God. But it's a good opportunity for some categories. If you're a Spanish podcast, You need to go over there and get listed. We don't even have 10 Spanish podcasts that are registered right now. But the other categories are pretty full. Some that are a little—

Yeah, it does seem like every week there's another award ceremony being announced.

And, you know, I got an email from the folks in the UK and they say, hey, we're looking for sponsors. And, you know, gave me some very eye-opening social media impact numbers. And I'm like, okay, uh, like, like 140 million or something like that. You know, even, even at our peak when we had like 7.1 million people that were participating, of course listeners participating, um, we never hit those type of social media, uh, you know, impact numbers ever. Um, So, you know, it was— and I said, can you send me your breakout? And they did. And, you know, you have to take it for, for what it's worth because they look at, you know, every little squeak of the, of the space. But, um, you know, last year we had about 5, 5 point— I think it was 5.7 million listeners vote. So, but you spread that across all those shows in multiple categories. It's still, it's amazing to me when we get down the end that the separation between the winners and losers are often a handful of votes. Yeah, but really, you know, the big part of the People's Choice Podcast Awards is making the slate. You make the slate, it's as valuable as having one, just from a traffic standpoint. Yeah, so if you're a podcaster, you haven't registered, get over there and get her done. 50 bucks gets you in the game. And no, you're not paying for my vacation. You're barely paying for the trophies. Last year's total trophy bill was about— with shipping and everything— was about— and duty, because we had a bunch of international shipments— about $19,000 to ship all the trophies last year.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's a lot of trophies.

Well, it's 30 trophies, but the cost of trophies and shipping And you go international and you declare the value of the award and then you pay duty on it. Yeah, it's curious.

So, Todd, the debate continues to rage, right, about podcasters trying to decide if they're going to do video or just audio, right? And, and I know where you stand on this. Yeah, that, that, that's for sure. And, and I guess it just gets back to— and why I wanted to bring it up on the show is, is just to emphasize this again, not to take up a lot of time on it because then we've beaten this topic to death.

Yeah, yeah. And you took a little heat, by the way. I don't know if you did. Yeah, you did, because people were saying, Rob, you, uh, you, you you change horses in the middle of the stream. And so there was a few people that called and were— had basically said, uh, you, you're coming back to audio. I, I know you've never really left audio, but there was a few people that kind of called you out on it. It was kind of funny to me. I think I heard— I heard it from at least 5 different people that were like, chuckle chuckle, Rob swinging back to audio.

Well, I I don't know what to say about that, but I, I've never really been against audio. It's more I got caught up in the, the enthusiasm. Yeah, of course, the video side, right?

The silver lure got you.

Well, yeah, I've always got— had the lure of video. It's just that the industry was kind of like not talking about it. So, yeah, I mean, I spent a lot of the years, early years in this medium, spending a lot of time working with video. And that's why I kind of have had a little bias towards it coming back like this. And so there's advantages and disadvantages. And so I think one of the things just to reiterate here is what's the advantage of video and what's the disadvantages? Well, the advantages are, engages the audience very visually, right? And it does allow for creative elements to be added to your content that give a deeper level of communication. Well, you know, the downside of it is that it definitely requires a lot more resources and it requires a camera and—

And you have to be creative, right?

Well, you know, and that's it's one of those things that I think we are going to move to a period of time. And I think this is happening right now as we're increasingly— creators are thinking video audio first, not video first or audio first. They're thinking, I'm going to launch my show and I'm just going to do both at the same time. And I'll optimize it for audio and I'll optimize it for video at the same time as best as I can. Right. And that's that. There's going to be a certain percentage of the community that's going to make that choice. And, and it's— I think it's okay. I mean, at the end of the day, it gets back to how is the video being distributed? And that's where we get into the real conflict here is the influence of YouTube, right? And what role do they have in the future of this? And that's where the topic moves to. HLS, right? And that's why, that's why the industry is talking about HLS now.

Well, certain players are talking about HLS.

Well, I hear it being talked about a lot in a lot of different places. There's people that are resistant to it, and there's other ones that are like, you know, that's kind of inevitably where we're going to be.

Um, it boils, it boils down to app support.

Yeah, and you know, in the end, um, well, the whole Podcasting 2.0 project is dependent on apps, of course.

And, and I, and I think that, um, you know, we were streaming this show HLS for quite a while and it just got too expensive. I couldn't afford the bill no more, um, even at an hour a week. And actually, actually it was more than that, 12 hours a month, because I was doing the uh, Geek News Central and this show. So it was like 14. The bill was just too big to do it. I just, I couldn't afford it. And, um, based upon the number of people that would go and look at the HLS statistics, and there was 1 or 2 people that were watching the video stream. So for the cost, you know, and I'm not doing it—

why would it be so expensive if nobody was watching it?

Because you're streaming.

You're—

that means it costs so much to have that HLS encoder up and running if you're live streaming.

So it doesn't have anything to do with the bandwidth?

No. Okay. No, it's just that overhead of doing that. Now that was for a live stream, and we're not talking about on-demand. On-demand's different, you know. On-demand, the bandwidth is the bandwidth, whatever your cost of your bandwidth is to deliver slices. So You know, and I saw some discussions about measurement. Well, they've been measuring HLS for a long time. There's a standard for measuring HLS and they'll just have to get into the spec and determine that, what they're going to implement. But, and I, you know, I'm supportive for those that want to do it at this point, but I go back to the argument, this show, And for those of you that are watching, you've been watching this show on a podcast app or Apple TV via MP4 for 10, 12, 13, whatever the number of years is here. And it's, and it works.

And it works.

And I would say it's a pretty good experience.

Whereas As long as you're not putting up a 4K file, right?

Right, right. But at the same time, if a lot of people are connected to Wi-Fi or whatever, they're watching, they're watching a lot of YouTube stuff at pretty high resolution right now. Yeah, as well. So again, I think in the end, um, it's, it's, it's, it's good and they're on the bandwagon and everyone's kind of woken up But it to me is okay. I, you know, from a company standpoint, I have to look at adoption. I can't— I'm not willing at this point to adopt for less than 1%. Yeah, you know, for—

well, I think it— yeah, I agree with you, Todd. I think you do have to make a rational business choice here around implementation. Your platform already supports video podcasting, so there has to be a pretty strong case and savings there. So as, but I think it would be true that if video podcasts got very popular again, I think it would put some strain on your servers.

Well, the— Deliver that, right? Well, you know, there's two ways to go about it. We can support HLS right now with alternate enclosure. Anyone that wants to do this as an individual content creator, they can set up an HLS stream. They go over to, um, to CloudFront or one of those groups, and they can stream their show today via HLS without Blueberry implementing anything. Uh, if you want to, you want to play ball, no sweat. Just drop that HLS link into the, uh, field. We, we call it M8, it's an M8 something, whatever the format of that is and hit save and you're good. If you want it, it's available immediately. I'm not going to take an MP4 that has been uploaded to us and chop it up and create an HLS stream. I don't see the point at this point. If Apple decided to support video more aggressively. And if, you know, and at this point all Apple supports via video is MP3 and M4A and MP4.

So on a download basis.

Yeah. Or progressive download, whatever you want to call it. So, you know, they support it today. And if they say, yep, we're going to support the alternate enclosure and HLS, well, that's a little different deal. This is not necessarily a chicken and egg situation where I'm gonna build it and maybe they're gonna come, which we've done with all the other Podcasting 2.0 stuff. We've stuck our neck out on that and they're promoting it as features that are being pretty well adopted across more devices. You look at Pocket Casts and others have done recently, but the HLS piece, I have something that works right now that's not broken. So, right.

Unless the industry decides to push this direction because the opportunity with video podcasting starts to unfold again. Yeah. At a scale that doesn't really scale well. Well, with a download model, the industry has to be the apps.

You know, if, if the apps— if Overcast and all the apps will support the alternate enclosure, and I can put an MP4 in the alternate enclosure too, right?

Well, you can have as many alternate enclosures as you want, right? So, so, you know, I mean, you could have an MP4 in there plus an HLS. Yeah, just depends on what the app is that want— yeah, what the app wants to support.

So unless the apps support it You know, and if the apps get on the game, you know, it's very slick on how it works currently in Podcasting 2.0. You know, again, there's, I mean, all this HLS thing is something fantastic. We've been, again, we've been doing HLS when Podcasting 2.0 apps now for more than a year. And again, people would watch this show live via an HLS stream. And, um, and I, you know, I paid by the minute on that for just having that streamer turned on. And there would have been additional costs if it had got popular, then it had been even worse because then I'm paying for bandwidth too. So, but just to turn the streamer on. Now the conversion of that media, uh, we were talking with our Amazon rep, um, AWS, and we're gonna have a meeting here in a week or two talking to them about this because I broke down the cost. I said, this doesn't work. I said, it's just from a cost standpoint, you know, I've done the math here, and, um, there's a reason that YouTube owns all their infrastructure, you know. There's a reason they own all their fiber, you know, and we don't even know if those if that, uh, if YouTube's even profitable. They've never reported it or not, you know. They still could be bleeding money. Um, but I think the— I think you can measure this. There are stuff in the IAB spec that allow— you know, that YouTube's measuring it. They're streaming stuff. Oh yeah, just the methodology has to change.

It, it is remarkable, the metrics that YouTube has.

Yeah, because you can get down to the byte or to the, to the slice, you know. Yeah, yeah.

So into the second, right, under the second. It's, it's remarkable the level of information they, they have about audiences.

And it's, you know, you get the good amount of client-side data, but again, once the, once the apps implement, you might not get as good a measurement back. You're so, you know, again, until there are I'm not going to put an ounce of brainwork at it as far as measurement goes until there's, you know, substantial, substantial download numbers. And I know that, you know, some, uh, Sam over at True Fans and other places are probably not happy to hear me say this, but there has to be, you know, the apps have to pick the speed up at this point. And do the apps want to be viable?

Well, it's the chicken or the egg thing, right? Who comes first? Is it the hosting platforms making it possible, or is it the apps making it possible? They kind of have to do it at the same time.

Well, for two, for two years I've done the chicken and egg thing here with being the chicken, and the apps have been slow on adopting, uh, you know, all these stuff.

They just don't eat the eggs, right?

Yeah, they, they don't implement stuff. You know, and it's, you know, it has to be a two-way street. The Podcasting 2.0 apps are adopting, you know, but let's get Apple to say we're going to adopt.

Well, from what I gather, HLS is an Apple technology.

Yeah, it is. It is for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, All Apple would have to do is make a, make an announcement that we're going to support HLS and it changes the conversation.

It does, it does change the conversation. And but you know, Apple can fix— if, you know, heading in the gang and whoever's listening, um, all you have— it's, you know, again, they move at glacier speeds over there just because of the, of the ecosystem. You know, they don't get— their developers aren't— they don't like— they have— they don't have 5 developers dedicated to Apple Podcasts. They get timeshare on—

yeah, right. And those developers are working on multiple things in their ecosystem. Yeah.

But if you, you know, once the first step is really just making video first-class citizen, don't bury it no more. And if you do that, yeah, just Just do that.

Easier to discover it. Yeah, just do like it used to be, right?

Yeah, make it easy.

That's all they have to do, right?

And if the solution is we're gonna— they're gonna adopt the alternate enclosure, which, you know, I don't want to sound like, uh, Rob Walsh, but this is one I think is a whole day in hell. No, I'm not going to say that because Apple's adopted stuff already. But I think it's—

oh, I know that.

I think it's a big— I think it's a big leap. Um, if they do, then fantastic. We're ready to go with MP4 tomorrow. Well, you know, today.

Are you talking about, um, if, if Apple— or you're talking about the HLS stuff?

Well, if Apple supports alternate enclosure and they— if they do, they're going to support an MP4 in that alternate enclosure.

So, right, you don't need their first move.

Yeah, right. Yeah, if they did alternate enclosure, if. And, um, you know, who knows, maybe Spotify will surprise us and wake up, but I doubt it. You know, they, they did something, you know.

I think it would be a smart move of theirs. Now the question is, is that are they going to continue to allow you to host it off of your hosting platform, or are they just going to grab the copy of it and host it?

Yeah, right. That's what Spotify is going to do. But again, uh, I don't know, you know, and people are already having conversations, you know, behind closed doors about, uh, you know, this ongoing push for video within Spotify.

But I think this is going to be a hot topic at Podcast Movement, so I think with it, I think here's to the—

I think with the— there's no app developers there. So who's the conversation with? Amongst ourselves, with among the podcasting— that's true. Complex. Yeah, right. The app developers. Now there was some app developers in London, so that was fantastic that we had some of those folks that were there.

That's interesting that they went to London.

Well, they were in London. They're in— they're based in Europe.

Well, they're actually based— yeah, okay.

But you're not going to see Marco at podcast movement. You're not gonna, you know, so the conversation is going to be amongst ourselves. And again, I'm, I'm not going to get too wrapped around the ankle with it. You know, first thing you got to do, let's just be kind of frank, you want to, you want to do video podcasting, freaking support video podcasting in its form that it works today. It's just supporting as it does now.

It's a good place to start. I agree with you.

Yeah. You start with where it is right now. There's been a path for 20 years. So just support it the way it works right now.

Yeah.

It may not be optimal.

That's a terrific first stage.

Yeah, that's a first step. You know? Yeah. But I don't think these folks want to do that. You start doing the math on this. You know, you're not gonna do this on a $20 hosting plan. Not happening.

No.

No.

I did notice that the Podpage folks decided that they were gonna support HLS podcasts too.

Well, it's easy for them to do so. All they have to do is put it in their player. I can support it too. I just gotta make a modification to my player to support it. No big deal. Easy.

Yeah.

But they're not carrying any of the load.

No, of course not.

No, they're not running servers to serve HLS. So their announcement was, you know, they put a little fix in for their player to support HLS. Okay, great.

Yeah.

Now you want to do something cool, Podpage, make it so that you support live item. And when someone goes, you know, makes— yeah, support the flip, audio or video.

Yeah. Well, They do do both.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I don't know that they support live yet. So yeah, through like the—

well, if they support HLS, they support live.

Well, they can.

Yeah.

Do they? Right.

Yeah.

Because you have to be able to support it off of a live streaming connection.

It all looks the same in the web player or on the phone. It doesn't matter if it's live or if it's on demand. It, it plays back the same. It's the same protocol, same slices, everything. The only difference is when you're streaming it live, in other words, like right now, it's, you know, it's, it's that video is being coded into HLS live, you know, as it's happening. Thus the cost to do live.

Well, Todd, like you mentioned just a few minutes ago, you said, well, you know, a podcast can go out and create an account with such and such platform and do an HLS stream and all that kind of stuff and get a link and all this kind of stuff. But I'm not sure that the podcast hosts want content creators doing that.

Why not? Do they really? It's an alternate enclosure. You can put whatever you want in there. So they could.

No, but I'm just saying from a customer support issue. First of all, want people to go off and host with other people?

Well, they're gonna— they're not hosting with a podcast host, they're going to be hosting with the, uh, Cloud Player or somebody like that.

Yeah, well, there's a bunch of companies that, that support HLS out there.

Oh yeah, for sure.

So I'm just not sure that the industry really knows who those players are. I guess it's probably not hard.

It's not hard. Just do a Google search and you can find 10 and then go look at the pricing. So the average, the average podcaster is going to see this and their eyes are going to roll back in their head and they're not going to do it.

Do you think that those platforms are, are gouging on their pricing on this?

No, it's expensive.

Yeah, but what makes it expensive? Is it just server resources?

All the processing? Yeah.

In slicing up the media?

Probably the biggest, the biggest piece of the expense is the processing of the video.

You know, you slice it up into chunks.

Yeah. And then, and then the storage, you know, how that's going to be stored, that package, because it's basically a package. It's a playlist package, essentially.

Yeah. Okay. It's just a series of chunks of Yeah, video content that are put into like a—

and, and, and where the, and where the cost can get expensive depending on who you're hosting with is those, those GET requests. Because every, every slice is a GET request. GET, GET, GET, GET, GET, GET. And if you're charged by the GET, that adds up too. And I've been before, you get one GET to get the media file. On HLS, there is, that's just hammering entire, just get, get, get, get the next slice, get the next slice, get the next slice. So that raises the cost of delivery depending on who you're hosting with.

So typically how small are the chunks as far as file size?

There could be, again, don't quote me on this, but I heard there could be 600 for an hour.

Okay, so 10 a minute?

Something roughly like that, yeah. So again, I'm not the tech spec guy on this, so don't quote me. I might be wrong. There's a whole bunch of— I had one of my devs did a—

Can you set that, or is that set by the server based on that?

I don't know, but I'm probably— I'm probably— there's some configuration settings there that you can set. But also you got to be able to support the downsize too. You got to be able to go to this, to the smaller video encoding. You got to be able to support 640 by 360, 1280 by 720, 1920 by 1080. So you know, it's not just 4K, right? So yeah, there's that too. So this is where the encoding cost and, you know, storage is storage and bandwidth is bandwidth.

So would you have to pull a different chunk for each of those formats?

I don't know, I'm assuming, I'm assuming you would have to have for every video format you're going to support for depending upon the internet connection, you probably have to— I, I don't know, I, again, I'm talking out of my butt at this point. I just don't know. I'd have— we'd have to have someone that knows how that encoding works. To explain, you know, how many copies of this media do you get? Do you get a, um, you know, 640 by 320? And, uh, does it— you have 8 different playlists and then it moves based upon bandwidth allowance? That I don't understand at all.

So, so yeah, it's, you know, only track down to— okay, let's say it pulled 10 times each minute. So it pulls, what, 6 seconds of content?

And again, I'm just thinking this is how it works. I don't— quote me, but I'm assuming it pulls so many seconds ahead, right?

Okay.

And then again, anyway, yeah, fun, fun stuff. So again, it's a MP4. Someone that knows HLS back inside and out can come on the show and tell us, but MP4 still works without any headache.

Well, and it also does its own kind of pack delivery, package delivery as well, right? Even the download has packets that are delivered based on the speed of the connection.

Yeah. It's chunked.

That's— but that's variable based on the speed of the connection.

Yeah.

Which makes the analytics of that, um, not as precise.

No, no, it's— and that's the, you know, that's the challenge with podcasting since the beginning, right? You know, because a lot of the apps—

just fast connection. Yeah, just to get more content.

Yeah, just—

it's one request.

Yeah, a lot of the apps now pull our, our number of apps that we're looking at to get partial, partial data is, is shrinking as more apps are just— because of the technology's improved and they update the app, they say, okay, we're just going to grab the whole thing at once. We're not going to, you know, the speed of the connection. Yeah, right. Yeah, just grab the whole file. And even on video, you know, so again, it's, it's funny. No one— we have nary once in the lifetime of this show gotten a single complaint from a listener that the video playback sucked on a download delivery of a video, right? Right. Not one. Okay, so if you're watching this on your phone and the delivery sucks, let us know, you know, let us know. Or are you watching on your Apple TV, which is connected with a much better Usually data connection.

Usually got a landline type of a connection. Right.

Right. Connected via Wi-Fi. So even here, I'm 40— what's my connection? I'm 4040. So I get 4K here, no problem on my Apple TV. So yeah. We're almost out of time, Rob. Or if we don't want— if we want to stay within the hour, Odyssey's doing something here. What are they doing?

They decided to work with, uh, iHeartRadio's app to make their podcasts available. So they're— they've teamed up. Hmm, thought that was interesting. Well, okay, the Odyssey app is not as popular, um, in the App Store as iHeart's app.

Uh, that's probably true. Yeah, so Odyssey just got their content in front of potentially more listeners, but at the same time, the same time, uh, you know, they don't have a lot of advertising. Well, you know, they— iHeart does not have a lot of market share. When it comes to podcasts, you know, for those podcasts that are on there being pulled by RSS, they— it's not that, you know, they're, they're down in the weeds. Someone said, uh, Amazon just broke 1%. I, I have to go and look this month, but I find that hard to believe too. And matter of fact, how is that consolidated number of, um, of Amazon Music as well as, uh, like, uh, well Amazon, Amazon, technically anything that's in Amazon being produced by Amazon doesn't have an RSS feed. So if you're on Amazon and have an R— so the only thing that they're tracking, that we're tracking, is anything that's connected via an RSS feed to the, probably the Amazon Music app, right?

As well as maybe tangential to a listing, maybe at amazon.com.

Yeah.

Audible.

Yeah.

So at least that's what it used to be.

Yeah. So I think we're in a— and it's an interesting time in the podcasting space right now. Lots of interesting, you know, hey, by the way, conversations I'm having in confidence with people and—

Hey, by the way?

Hey, by the way.

What does that mean?

Well, you know, I think there's some pain out there right now.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Yeah, I think there's, you know, I think there's some big pain out there. And I think this is where the panic is ensuing in.

So where do you think the pain is kind of—

Creators.

Being felt more.

Lack there.

Just the number of new creators?

Yeah, lack of new creators. So how are they going to feed the pipeline? How are we going to— you know, it takes new creators to build big shows, and if they're not there, you know, it's—

I wonder what that means, um, and the reasons for that.

Well, I think I just—

because people are disappointed with performance, or—

I think it's a combination of things. I think people are busy. I also think that, um, there's lots of choices. It's real easy to do a 60-second TikTok reel, you know. Um, there's no—

depends on what your goals are, you know.

So I think there's a lot of noise, and I think there is also the hesitancy what I've talked about before. And we just need to keep making people understand that audio is a medium that is very viable, still growing, and that You know, if you're going to start a podcast and you're brand new, you know, get your podcast wings with audio, start there. And that's the messaging we need to be. And that's something you're going to hear coming from me. Otherwise, the landscape in 5 years is going to be very, very, very, very different. Podcasting will be here, but Will all these companies be here? That is the question.

Well, I guess the other question is, is there more energy trying to get new creators into podcasting as video podcast creators?

Oh, for sure. That's, that's the YouTube PR machine.

Well, no, I'm talking about outside of YouTube. I think there's HLS and download.

Yeah, no, I don't, I don't think so. Most people don't know what HLS even means. Industry people do. You and I know.

Oh yeah, yeah, as far as normal creators is what I'm saying is not interested in HLS.

Probably they don't care.

Um, but, but as far as realizing that they can deliver video through RSS, and I guess that the industry hasn't really— no, I don't think it's coalesced in prioritizing that.

I think there's only 3 or 4 of us that still support video to begin with. So how can the podcast industrial complex say that they want to support video when you don't even offer video as a hosting plan? Buzzsprout doesn't. They're by far the number 1 independent podcast hosting company now. They don't support it. And they don't seem—

And Spreaker as well is another one.

And they don't seem to care. So what's the emergency?

You could take the position that that's short-sighted on where younger creators are.

No, I think what it is is they don't want to incur the cost of doing that.

Yeah. Okay.

You know. Because, you know, you increase your, you know, you drop a video file in, you know, 1.5, 1.6 gigs when you really compress the hell out of it. So why aren't they supporting video if they're not? They don't hear them talking about being worried about video.

Hmm.

So interesting. Yeah. So if the industrial complex is not supporting video for podcasters, what? Why should Apple make the jump to help us support video for podcasting?

Well, do you think that, um, Buzzsprout would change their tune if Apple came out and announced next month that they're gonna— that they're gonna double down on video podcast support?

I think in about 15 seconds they would. They'd have to. If Apple did a big—

It's all keyed on what Apple does at this point.

So yeah, Spotify's already, we're hearing it from creators. Oh, I wanna have my video over on Spotify. Well, you know, we tell 'em the reasons why maybe you should have a second show over there, and which Spotify hates. So, but we don't hear a lot. That's the difference. We hear a little bit, like maybe every couple weeks someone asks us, not like every day.

Don't upload your video to your same audio version on Spotify is what you're saying.

For sure.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And someone that's from Spotify listening to this are flipping me the bird right now.

Well, I mean, you have to think of it from a creator perspective. I think it makes sense.

Well, when the creator's losing money.

Especially if you're monetizing.

Yeah, if they're monetizing on audio, then, you know, that revenue is gone.

Yeah.

And you hope that the video revenue— hope— if you're a big name, you're sitting pretty. If you're a big name who's making all the headlines, you're, you're golden because you've got a, you've got a deal, you know.

So, well, didn't Spotify announce that they were going to pay up to $5,000 to creators to start posting videos?

Select creators.

To what?

Select creators.

Oh, select.

And only 5,000 video creators. And only 5,000? Come on, 5,000? That's a pittance. 5,000? If you're a big show, that is like— that's not even one episode of revenue. So 5,000?

But to a, a freshly new podcaster, that, that would be some money.

That would be some money. That'd be more money than they would make in a whole year. But they're not going to do that for, uh, for Todd and Rob. No way they're going to write us a check for 5 grand.

Well, especially us, right? But yeah, but still, you know, anyway, they do that.

We are— we're over here. We need to get everyone out of here. We're trying to keep this to an hour.

Um, okay. All right, Todd.

So I'm Todd at blueberry.com, uh, at Geek— because this is going to mess everybody up here— at Geek News on X, at Geek News, at geeknews.chat on Mastodon. And we made it through a whole episode getting a master recording, and the RODECaster Duo stayed connected.

Uh, remarkable.

Yeah, we'll, we'll And if anyone works at RØDE, why the hell does this thing want to disconnect at 3 minutes into recording? Go ahead, Rob.

I can be found just about anywhere online. Just do a search for my name. So it's easy to find me. You can also send an email to me, rob.greenlee@gmail.com. It'd be great to hear from you. And get your thoughts on what you think is going on in the industry. And there's been this whole thread of discussion on X about AI slop and whether or not all the AI content that's coming into the social interest medium platforms out there should be labeled. And I've noticed that some of the the platforms out there, I think it was TikTok, I think is the one, is actually labeling content that's AI now. But does it need to happen more? And that's the raging discussion off of my X account right now.

Should it happen in podcasts? Should there be a flag set?

Right, right.

I think so.

So, but at what level Does it need to happen?

Well, that's the problem. That's where the argument is going to end.

That's the question, right? Yeah. At what usage level triggers it?

Yeah.

I don't think that we have consensus on that.

Oh no, that's where the war will happen in the discussion. For sure.

So anyway. Okay. So send me an email. Great to hear from you.

And everyone, thank you out here for supporting the show. Appreciate it. We'll be back with you next time. Again, 8 PM Eastern now, at least until the first week in August. So all the way through July. All right, everyone, take care. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Okay, good night.