Podcast Movement: 2024 State of Podcasting | New Media Show Live 8/28/24

Todd and Rob in the afternoon. Hey, afternoon delight with Todd and Rob. Oh yeah. Well, Rob, here we are. We survived podcast movement and we are, uh, in, in process of switching data streams. So I literally unplugged the ethernet cable to the Mac Mini and put you on Wi-Fi to Starlink. So I may need new two cables on that Mac Mini to be able to switch. And so having you on Wi-Fi is not the best solution, but here we are. And, uh, but I've been seeing 300 down and about 20 up on Starlink lately, so speed-wise it should hold.

Yeah, it should be enough. Yeah, yeah, it should be enough to handle this.

If the latency isn't, isn't bad enough.

It doesn't appear to be bad. I think it was worse when we first started talking, but it's definitely better now. But, but yeah, podcast movement, uh, wrapped up, and I think that there's some interesting takeaways from what we saw there, isn't there?

Yeah, and probably there's a lot of people listening, uh, you know, I had taken a picture people, oh, the show hall wasn't even open. And but it didn't get much better from the time I took the picture to— well, I guess let's just, let's just talk about it, you know. Um, and Dan and Jared, if you're listening, please listen. Um, it was a different event. It felt completely different. Yeah, it felt like we were in LA again at an industry event, not at a creator podcaster event.

I've never really felt, Todd, much of a difference between the two of them, actually. I mean, I guess that's— so let's be clear what we're talking about here. We're talking about The Evolutions event that typically happens in Los Angeles at about the 6-month part of the year, and then it pops over to the main podcast movement event is what just happened. So the one we're talking about is the one that just happened in Washington, D.C., August 19th through the 22nd. And it was, you know, the 10th, I believe it's the 10th time that that event has been held, that main Podcast Movement event, which has held the mantle of the world's largest podcasting conference for many years. But I'm not sure that it's up to that level anymore. So it's really kind of, you know, there's a lot of stuff to unpack about this topic. And, you know, I was there, Todd was there. We spent most of the time at the event and, and saw a lot of stuff that is concerning, right?

Concerning.

And nothing to take away from the efforts that Dan and Jared has put into the event. I think they've, they've done a terrific job of organizing it and pulling it together and doing what they need to do to, to keep the event moving forward. But I do think that what we're seeing and we're going to dive into it a little deeper, is really coming out of what's happening with the industry of podcasting. And it's coming out of the economy, coming out of people's attitudes towards podcasting, I think are all part of a shift that's happening right now. And I think podcast movement is a very stark reflection of that. Would you agree, Todd?

Well, I, you know, I go to the event as an exhibitor. Yeah. And we measure success of a show based upon the number of— I know when we go there, we're waving a flag that we're still in business, we're still here. So there is a cost associated with basically saying we are— we're still here, we're still alive. Then there is the who we're talking to. And this year, the number of people, fresh creators at the event was horribly underrepresented. I mean, it was bad. We've pulled the spreadsheets. We, we scanned every person we talked to. And, um, I will say this: under 10, under 10 new podcasters that we talked to over 3 days. 10. 10. That number should have been closer to 100 or 200 because I went and looked at previous years I've done, you know, and looked at the— looked at our data. That, that tells me that new creators— there was plenty of existing creators, but new creators were not there. And I think we attributed to maybe 3 things: shows on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, cost, and yeah, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and cost. And you know, it's who, who, who is a, a new creator that is exploring the medium, that is trying to get started and wants to go to an event to find out information— airfare, hotel, expense of a ticket, and PTO— it's just too much. I know what our costs are, you know. I think we probably had $2,500 per person by the time you get done Well, more than that, after your time you get done with food. Right. So there was a lot fewer participants. Now, what really made a difference, and again, um, the exhibit hall was immensely oversized and there's a certain dynamic to trade shows. And I hate to do a trade show 101. I've been doing this 20 years. But when the— when people are going to laugh when I say this, but when the aisles— when you have a booth and another booth across from you that's 10 feet away, there's kind of a dynamic that happens when people walk down the aisle. You can say, hi, good morning, get their attention. And oftentimes they're more or less— you kind of pull them in, right? And that, that is just a thing that happens at trade shows. That's a trade show dynamic. The aisles were 30 feet wide. So I couldn't yell, hey, good morning, and get someone's attention. So the dynamic of just being able to having the show floor being so spread out, just from a layout standpoint, impacted exhibitor traffic, which I care about. Now, if you're an attendee, you could care less about exhibitor traffic, right? Well, it's my job to get them into the booth and talk to them and raise awareness. You know, that's all fine and dandy, but when you handicap me from the beginning of the 30-foot aisle, not to mention no carpeting on the floor, and people don't want to stand because their feet hurt, right? Um, and people say, why are you worried about the carpet, Todd? It's a big deal. If you make the aisles smaller, the carpet bill's smaller. You have one-third less carpet to put down when you shrink the exhibit hall. So you have one-third the cost on putting carpet down when you don't have this big expansive area. I'm not telling Dan and Jared how to do their business.

Well, I think what they were doing was, was probably doing, doing the right thing for kind of the business side of the events. And, and also, I think I want to say too that I think that they, they did at this event what they needed to do, right? And I, I think that that is another sign, you know, the lack of carpet on the floors. Um, yeah, the, the fact that they had 6 presentation stages that were on the exhibition floor, on the floor, right? Which It was good because they did have, you know, those wireless headphones that you could wear and actually hear the presenters, which is— we've experienced doing a live show, live version of this show at conferences can be a challenge where people can't hear each other and it's hard to actually do content in that kind of environment. So I think they did acknowledge that they were going to have an issue with just the expansive space that they had at this event tells me that they were thinking that this event was going to continue to grow every year and get bigger and bigger and bigger. And so they got this contract with Gaylord and all of those hotels are very large and they're very professional hotels. They're very nice. They're perfect for a show that's growing, right? And a show that's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The problem that we ran into with this is that the attendance of this, from what I gathered from others that were looking at the, the Swapcard mobile app, was that there was only about 2,000 attendees, which, you know, on the surface of it doesn't sound like that's horrible, but I think when you compare it to, let's say, the event like 3 or 4 years ago, it was probably over 3,000.

Right?

So you're, you're off by about a third on the attendees. And I do kind of wonder if it's creators was making up that difference, right? And so you have to, you know, kind of look at what's happening here.

Yeah.

And really, really back up and look at the, the aspects of what's going on in the industry too. I think that it's a multi-layered thing, right?

It's not— yeah, it's not just one one, one thing.

You know, it's not Dan and Jared's fault in some ways.

No.

I mean, it's, it's definitely kind of a reflection. I know that those guys went through some tough times during COVID right? Sure. Where they were trying to put an event together and they were get— having a hard time getting people to show up to those events too. I think at one point they, I think they had like 1,000 people.

Wow.

But that's understandable. But now I think it's a different dynamic now.

Yeah.

I think that the industry is, is professionalizing. It's, it's not seen as a, as a medium that is as easy for people to build shows and create shows that are successful. Um, that, and I think the big takeaway from this is that I think it's also a clash of expectations because I think you and I have seen the past, right? We have an expectation that we go there because we both work for the hosting companies in the past. And you and the president. And I think what we have always seen and what we expect is that there's going to be new creators there. There's going to be business interests there. There's going to be commercialism there. The radio companies are going to be there. But what we're seeing happen now is really a shift towards professionalism, towards the bigger shows getting more attention and more audience. In getting more monetization. Yeah, I think there's examples of that that I'll share later in the show about what was in PodNews over the last couple of days about this big show that was signed a $100 million deal with the Amazon Wondery folks. And it's just a reflection of how kind of disconnected big podcasting is from the 80% of—

Yeah, 90, independent 90%. Hey Rob, bump your audio just a little bit on your side. Um, one thing that, um, was a tell really for me, and what was the— what was interesting was that one thing's for sure, the, the amount of traffic, the amount of people. So I took all our— took all our data, we exported everyone we talked to, and I broke it into really 3 categories. For really. Thanks for, you know, people that we see that really have just friends and family. Um, yeah, people that are basically potentially new podcasters, those that are podcasters, and, and potential business prospects. And, uh, the number of folks that were talking to me looking for money for different events and things are going on was a huge part of it. There was a lot of existing podcasters that were looking, believe it or not, to move. We talked to more people about migrating this, uh, event than anything. So if all the people that talk to us that want to migrate, it'll be a little bit of a savings grace. But you know, that still— we'll see if that actually pulls through. Um, and then, you know, and you always expect to get one or two— success for me is one or two really big deals out of a show. And I don't know, you know, I don't know if I'm gonna get a big deal out of this show. And again, as an exhibitor, I have a little different perspective. But at the same time, I heard speakers who were speaking at the event, they were complaining because they couldn't— they weren't getting any feedback. The little speaker they had there was, you know, they're used to having in-ear feedback, and so they're on a mic dry. Talking and they were having a little bit of challenge in that regard. So I'm sure the speakers will get feedback to them to, hey, boost that feedback speaker up a little bit. The, the, the attendees to the, uh, the, um, sessions were probably did well because they could hear really well because they were dialed in with those headphones. So I think that was a success from that standpoint.

Um, but you know, unless you're wanting to get questions from the audience, I don't see it's a big—

yeah, but, but it, it's some sort of feedback that they were complaining about. But for us, you know, we've had a 10 by 20 now for 4, 3 or 4 years. We downsized, we went back to a 10 by 10. So did Podbean, they went back to a 10 by 10. Um, Red Circle and Buzzsprout were there, they've always been in a 10 by 10, so Um, I'm sure they'll be back with a smaller booth, uh, but really there's no need to have a big booth. And we're going to reduce the number of people we take to the show for the following year. I, you know, and the only thing I'm going to say is Podcast Movement can't rest on their laurels. They have to go out there and work and promote this show in order to bring a full spectrum of podcasters back to it. If they don't, um, I'll have a hard consideration to make a year from now. Yeah, you know, be honest with you, and, and I understand that the large percentage of people that were there were chasing 1% of money. They're all looking— a lot of people are looking for deals.

Yeah, it's a business.

Yeah.

There were, you know, Spotify, the ESPN folks, which is part of Disney.

Yeah.

Um, had their own private room, private rooms gated and didn't have any exposure to the public event at all. And there's other, other networks that did the same thing up there I saw. So, you know, it's, it, it's really turned into something quite different than I think.

It's, it's a, it's a, it's an elite, it's an elite, elite club.

Yeah. And to kind of double down on the thought that I had around expectations is that I heard some say that, you know, exhibitors, what I'm talking about is that some of them that are doing well, right, in the industry, they're still doing well, they're not struggling, are increasingly looking at this event as just a thing to do to connect with their existing customers.

That's— we've done that for years because we know the ROI is going to be different, right?

Yeah, motivated situation because they realize that this event is not going to drive much of an ROI. So, you know, so in some ways it's an investment spend that you can't really expect a strong ROI on.

But when RØDE— when RØDE is there— not RØDE, who is there? One vendor left because they sold nothing. And when there's— when there's—

before the event ended?

Yeah, they left. They left a day early. Well, they didn't exhibit on Friday.

And you know, when there's so slow on Friday, there's no reason to be there.

Well, it was actually— believe it or not, we had good traffic on Friday. The traffic— the traffic we had stayed steady in when it was. But I didn't need 3 people. I just needed 2 at the max.

Yeah. So yeah, it's only a half day anyway on the final day.

Yeah. So I was like 4 hours or something, 3 and a half hours or something small. It's not that many. But the simple fact that, you know, so I know one vendor, the only reason he was there was because someone said, hey, you can piggyback, you can be in here with us. So, you know, if you don't fill the exhibit hall That's a problem. Then the event is going to change. If the exhibit hall isn't there anymore, um, and you have very few vendors showing up, then it just becomes— I don't know what it becomes. Um, you know, and I understand the contracts in these devices. Oftentimes you get the exhibit hall if you guarantee so much in food and beverage. It's, it's all this, you know, and, you know, they're between a rock and a hard place because they play this game. You know, the way the— all these big convention centers, you know, and it's never to the advantage of the group that's holding the event. Doesn't matter who it is because of the big, big, big numbers they have to pay. So I, I don't envy them at all. Um, but maybe to help this summer event, something has to change too. Let, let the corporate come in on Thursday and let them go home on Friday. And then Friday and Saturday have a focus for people that want to come at a cheaper price. Let them, because the ticket price is another thing is keeping people away. You look at the, the podcast show in London, they have daily, daily sales. They— you can go.

So it's a 2-day event and they sell 1-day tickets, and you don't have to go to the sessions.

You can just walk the walk things, and the exhibit hall's packed wall to wall. And they tell you the difference of it is their model, right?

I think it is a little bit of their model is what's getting in the way right now, because I'd say that the ticket prices are, are, you know, over $1,000 if you, if you, if you, if you get it late.

If you get it earlier, it's cheaper. But, right, you know, I've got people saying, what show? And also, here's another key thing. It used to be, where are you from? Oh, I'm from LA, I'm from Washington, DC, I'm from Colorado, from Arizona, I'm from Alaska, I'm from Europe, I'm from blah blah blah blah blah. Washington, DC, Washington, DC, Washington, DC, Washington, DC, New Jersey, Washington, DC, local, Virginia, Maryland. I mean, it was— I had only talked to one person, and maybe it's just based on who I talked to, came from Seattle. So it's a regional event now. It's not a national event. So they did not—

it's just expensive to travel.

And yeah, but airplanes are full though, Rob, so I don't necessarily give that an excuse.

Well, there's fewer flights. Yeah, well, that's the other thing that's going on. So it's— it may not be an accurate reflection of how many people are actually traveling. It just may be that the airlines are much being— trying to be more efficient.

Oh yeah. Adam say you're not monitoring Boost today. Um, I, I'm sorry, I have failed in doing so. Um, uh, 10,000 Sats from Adam Cree said, you should have yelled, yes, queen! And I don't know what that's referred to. My Facebook page is going— you— but I mean, my YouTube channel is going crazy here. Meta says, walking from one booth to another was a marathon, had to stop and rest. Beauty Bubble, an idea: we may have to return to the buddy system or dance card environment. Every attendee should declare who they want to meet and know what they see to happen from that relationship. Randy says the walled garden approach is going to hurt podcasting in the long run. Adam says not monitoring Boost today. Beauty Bubble, should everyone not be required to be on the conference floor? Well, they— everyone was on the conference floor. That's just it, because they had all of the they had all of the sessions on the conference floor. Uh, Podfather in the house. Yes.

And, and plus that's a cost savings too, which means that they didn't have to acquire as many session rooms.

Yeah. Adam, thanks for joining the troll room. Yeah. Um, yeah, but you have to still— okay. As I said, in a boost to Curry and the Keeper, happy birthday, Pop. Okay. I'm just reading down through. I was at PM to look for job prospects. Uh, clearly bits and knits cometh. Yeah, they have to meet here. Oh my God, these guys are having fun in the chat room. Keep going. Uh, say something productive when we're on tune, we'll cover it in the, in the show. But, um, hey, you know, I don't know, I, I just, you know, call me, you know, the old curmudgeon. Um, and, you know, I, I have to go back. This is, this is the thing. I have to go home to my board of directors and have to say, here's the numbers, you know, here's the numbers. But I started this session today, and maybe, Rob, we can, we can quit bitching about the show. We can talk about some of the, some of the cool things that happened.

Yeah, or things that are reflective of the broader scope of what's happening. And, you know, I think this event has been moving towards this for many years now, moving toward the business side of podcasts, right? The ad sales, the deals, the brands, the, you know, and being a basically a place for people to go to have business meetings.

Yeah. And try and— if you're on the invite list, yeah. To get into the room with the shrimp and caviar and, uh, you know, the—

yeah. And it's a battle. I mean, at a very high level, it's a battle over the big shows, right?

Right.

To some degree. I mean, not all big shows are there, but they may have representation that's there from those big shows. And they're all battling over representation, you know, which ad sales agency or which hosting platform or whatever will give them the best deal. You know, I had some conversations with a few people around ad guarantees and things like that. While I guess that's happening still, but just not at the, at the level of 100%. It's typically like maybe a 30 or 40% guarantee type of situation.

But again, Rob, those people aren't listening to this show. So to be honest with you, does anyone care?

I mean, well, I mean, it's just reflective of economic situations about what's going on with podcasting. Even the big companies are not investing. And this was another thing that came up a lot in my conversations with people is that the bigger companies are not investing in creating new shows right now.

Yeah.

What they're doing is they're increasingly doubling down on the ones that they have. And we are seeing in the stats where audience continues to grow.

Yeah. Audiences are growing.

The question is that most of that growth is going into growing the pool of bigger shows.

I don't know. We see great growth on shows, just average shows.

Oh, sure. It's gonna happen other places too. But, but, but I do think that the big is getting bigger right now. And I think that's kind of a bigger kind of trend line right now. And then the, the focus on, on that, you know, if more brands are focused on a smaller number of shows looking to do ad deals, there's this tension that's been creating. And I'm, I'm hearing it at places like Oxford Road and some of these that ad loads are becoming a concern. I know we've talked about that many times.

We've been talking about that for 2 years.

So, right. And, and that, that now the agencies are saying, well, if, if your podcast has more than so many, um, ad spots in it, we're going to lower our CPM offer, right? So we have this tension, right, that's happening around ad loads and ROI on campaigns that are going into these big really big shows, right? And I see it at platforms like, like Spreaker. I mean, they have ad, you know, this programmatic stuff that they're, they're doing out there that their, their platform is capable of like 13 minutes or more of ads an hour in their content.

Right.

So it's, it's, it's this tension around commercialization of the medium. Uh, and then, then we also heard kind of backdoor conversations around what's going on with video too. And we can—

well, let's let you know one thing I'll tell you who wasn't there: YouTubers. They weren't there. YouTubers did not attend this event. So, uh, and there was some—

because they're all going to VidSummit.

Yeah, well, there was, there was some tempering on YouTube. There wasn't— video finally got a little bit of a drawback, maybe Maybe it isn't the end for all that you were thinking, but I want to bring up one thing before we get there and lose half the audience because we talk a little bit about video. Of course we're on video.

No, I wanted to talk about the tension at the event. Well, or video and how Tom Webster pulled—

all right, well, and that's my point exactly. So I, I named this show in the, uh, restreaming service as— let me look at it here— Does podcasting need a Got Milk campaign? And everybody knows what Got Milk is, right? You probably saw them on TV in the '80s and whenever that campaign run. You got milk? And they showed a milk jug, right? Or someone drinking milk. Got milk? And, uh, I think we need a Got Milk campaign.

What are you going to say?

Well, here's, here's saying that Tom hit on, and he nailed it on the head. The thing we have forgotten, the thing we have absolutely forgotten, and I should pull up the Slack channel because I talked to my team about it actually in a meeting, and I posted some stuff from Tom. Podcasting in the audio is a companion. It's, it's companion content.

Sure.

You take it with you. It's in the car, it's on the train, it's on the bus, it's at the gym. It's companion content. It's lean-in content. We have forgotten and we quit. We need to start promoting again that audio is your cup of milk and your cookie at night. It is, it is, it is something that is wholesome and pure and non-obtrusive. We need something to remind people of, of what podcasting is and, and the pure form of the audio. It's getting overrided by, you know, the screen time counts. You know, we have to remember that audio is— and Thomas, and I didn't make this up. This came from Tom in a subtle way. Tom Webster. Yeah. And so we need to advocate as a podcasting community the value of what podcasting offers. Let's quit talking about the bullshit advertising. Let's talk about— let's, you know, let's talk about the value of this medium.

Those conversations go to two different audiences. But so I do think that the advertising side is something that does impact listeners. I do think that that's the core tension that's going on in the media right now is that who is this medium trying to cater to? Is this medium trying to cater to brand advertisers or is it catering to trying to grow listeners? Well, it's ad or better community relationships with listeners as a longer-term strategy to advertisers. Because I think as we've seen this shift happen increasingly, as we've been pushing ad loads—

Well, we haven't.

No, no, higher and higher. I'm talking about the industry. That we are moving away from being a medium that's focused on building community and building audiences and more towards catering to the wishes of brands.

Well, that's in, you know, that's what people are doing. They're rolling over and dying on their swords because they're, they're, they're, they're basically to the advertisers. Now, Adam, another 10,000 sats boost. Less ad loads, more boost loads. Yes, go boost Podcasting 2.0! We hope you're listening on one of those. We are live and lit today, so I hope that you're listening on one of those new podcasting apps from podcastapps.com. My personal favorite is Fountain. Um, so I hope you're— hope you're listening. You guess you can listen on a podcast app if you didn't know that. And we are live and lit. So yeah, it is a— there is a drawback. You know, Tom said in his presentation, of course he's given more input today, and I've, you know, shut it off about 5 minutes before I met you here on the, on the online system, uh, that, uh, there's some pullback. And we know that. Blueberry knows that. We know where— we know where the—

from what?

Oh, the creator side. Oh, fewer, fewer creators. Yeah, yeah, right.

Okay.

And, um, you know, everyone smiles, business is great, and then you get people in private in there, you know, they're having a conversation. By the way, Um, you know, I always disclose I, I did get to talk to, uh, Ted from Apple. So Ted, you just found me via the transcript. I know you tuned in at this point, um, because he told me how he finds out if we talked about him. Uh, I shouldn't say his name anymore. We should just talk about it and force him to listen. Um, and I, I, I've shared with this audience already, um, I just— my advice to him was Apple needs to quit making video be a second-class citizen. And why? And we've been doing this show live for as long as we can remember, I think for 13 or 14 years at this point. And, um, you— the number of people I actually counted, so from the start of the show to the end of the show, when everyone talked about video, I said, oh, you want to watch my video podcast on Apple Podcasts? And they look at me And I would bring it up and I would click it and I would show the video on Apple Podcasts.

Now people would know it's there.

Their jaws dropped open. I didn't know that. How's that possible? Really? That's there? How long has that been there? I said since the beginning. So I think the number was 13 that I was able to have an enlightening moment with. So if these are podcasters been in the biz, these aren't new people. We even had a fun discussion on, on the Podcast Index. People were blaming— oh, you shouldn't, you're sending your audience over to Apple. No, they started on Apple because I don't— what year did YouTube get online? I don't even remember. I was doing a video podcast, I think, before there was YouTube.

I think it was 2005.

Oh, maybe not. So anyway, you know, if I had started on YouTube, I'd probably be rich and retired, Rob.

But yeah, they were, they were really quick to the, the medium. I mean, they saw something happening and jumped on it right away.

I have to give Apple a lot of credit for, you know, but, but, you know, let's, let's surface it so, so that we can see it. And, you know, and, you know, Ted, you know, to his credit, oh, thanks for the input, you know. And, you know, Ted plays the Apple role very well, and he listens to input. And, and surprisingly, I think he listens to a lot of podcasters complaining too.

Um, yeah.

And, um, so, you know, I'm sure that can be tiring, but I, I just, you know, I, I think the Apple team—

I think we're the ones that are probably the most vocal about it because we've been around long enough.

Yeah. Yeah.

To know that it's there. There's a lot of new people in the industry that don't know Apple supports video.

Yeah. When I— in a podcast, and to be honest with you, I never had to defend Apple before, you know, and now it's one of these things that, you know, I have to defend Apple quite a bit. And, you know, and Apple's not everything. We've got, you know, it— on this show alone, I think we're like 46%, 47% of folks are listening on Apple. The rest are on different apps. So it's— there's lots of great apps out there at newpodcastapps.com. Um, so lots of options. But I think that, um, what was I going to say? Oh, I had a great lead-in and I lost it. I'm having a senior moment here. But anyway, go ahead, Rob. I'll think about it here.

Yeah, I was just gonna mention that it just came out in in pod news, and thank you, James Critland, for that. Um, I guess, uh, Lipson reports that they've hit a new low in Apple Podcast downloads. I guess they're, they're showing it down to 46.7% of all downloads for shows on their platform.

Yeah, we're about 47%. That's about where we're at.

So there's a, there's a slippage going on there.

Well, they're moving around. It's It's not, it's not that people are listening, you know. Our Spotify numbers are absolutely, you know, are bad. For the record, Rob, um, I moved— I took Geek News Central and Podcast Insider off Spotify. So I wasn't going to remove this show off Spotify without getting your permission because, you know, you're— you got 50% investment here. So what do you think? Should we remove this show from, uh, From the, from the lair, the, the, the, uh, dragon's den.

Oh, he probably not just, just because, I mean, we're trying to be an industry.

Yeah, I know.

Uh, podcast, right? So trying to, trying to boycott certain entities in the podcast space maybe doesn't reflect well on us on that side.

I'm not boycotting. I'm just choosing where I want my show to be.

No, I get that.

Well, anyway, I'm not sure what's the percent.

I mean, is there any way— I mean, I'm sure there's a way you can look.

Yeah, I can look it up.

Percentage of audiences over there, it's maybe 1.5 or 2 or something like that.

But I will say this, you'll find this interesting. Buzzsprout's podcast isn't on Spotify.

Really?

Mm-hmm.

That's interesting.

It is interesting, isn't it? So, you know, I mean, the command decision to join the club and, uh, and pulled the Podcast Insider from Blueberry. And also, we weren't getting any numbers over there anyway, so it didn't really matter.

Um, but, you know, so, but, but Todd, to kind of back up to this video versus audio discussion a little bit and kind of dive a little deeper into that is I think we are feeling this internal tug of war in the industry, right? It's like, oh, do we really want to go down this path of video and kind of embrace it? Or do we want to push back on it and become or remain what we've thought of ourselves as audio only, pretty much. I mean, and that's a little bit of my takeaway from Tom Webster's presentation too. It's like, you know, He's been pushing this topic of the importance of video and things like that, but I feel like maybe, maybe it's a little bit of an industry thing to do is to kind of follow what the broader needs of the industry are and tell them what they want to hear. Or is it really looking at the trends in the market and reflecting what we need to do going forward and accepting that? Or is it just because we built the infrastructure of this medium so much around audio that, that that's the, the appropriate position to take?

Well, I, I liken it to fly fishing, and I've never fly fished, but I know people that do. Um, you know, if they aren't biting on one lure, you put another lure on and you throw it out there and see if you get a bite. So I— it's, it's a shiny object thing, you know, and something new, it's whatever it is, whatever the hotness is today will be something else tomorrow. Podcasters and me alike have chased those shiny objects in the water and thinking that this brand new thing is going to bring success, when in the end, in the end, it really boils down to really only one thing: sustain superior content. If people get bored—

yeah, I agree. At the end of the day, yeah, it's true. I do think that this conversation isn't quite as, not just you and I, but what's happening in the industry isn't at the level that it needs to be. Because I'm not sure it's a black and white issue, right? It's, it's, for many content creators doing, doing video is, is something that they primarily do, right? And increasingly I'm, I'm hearing on big video podcasters or video YouTubers or whatever are announcing on their shows. I think it's an interesting trend that they, they're about to launch their audio podcast, right? So I'm, I'm hearing these big content creators starting to recognize the fact that they need to have an audio version as well, right? So you have kind of two things going on here. You've got these big video creators realizing that maybe they're missing some audience by not doing an audio version or an audio podcast, right?

That's why our Pod2Vid is betting met and exceeded all KPIs.

Right. So I think there's a shift going that way, but then there's also, you know, audio-first content creators that are, you know, building some success and growing, but they're saying, well, what if I do, let's say, one live show a week, or if I do a bonus video content that's additional to what I'm doing with my podcast, right? That that might be a way to engage community and engage their followers at a deeper level, right? Or to have some audience engagement. So I think that this conversation gets a little too siloed around audio versus video, audio versus video, when it's really what's happening in the market is these things are blending together. And even Tom's research that he shared with us is increasingly people are consuming this content in both mediums, right? So, so if they can watch it, they will watch it. If they only can listen, they'd like to listen. So catering to the needs of the listener is really what this industry needs to be focused on. And I'm not sure that we're having that detailed of a conversation about it yet.

Well, we've trained this audience because they watch on Apple Podcasts, 20% of them, right?

Right. So I know you and I are on board with this. I'm just saying that I mean, because you're, you're taking your company and you're positioning it to be, you know, um, a, a cooperative platform for those that want to create video too, as a way to capture their audio to create an audio podcast. I think that's, that's the right way to think about this.

At the same time, at the same time, you know, part of the argument that I had on, uh, one of the Mastodon chats was it's too expensive. To do a podcast via RSS feed. So, you know, I—

what, a video podcast?

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I basically have, you know, I kind of hinted at it. We're gonna do something, um, where we're going to have, you know, our pro users have been able to do video since really we've been hosting, but really it's still— they have to pay for bandwidth if they go over a certain amount. And, you know, if you have a super successful show, it can get good. But I'm willing to go on some risk at this point based on what I'm paying for bandwidth and knowing that probably the majority of shows are not going to get a huge amount of traffic via RSS, uh, video, via video, via video. And some will. And those that I, you know, there's always some outliers out there that are gonna make me, you know, you know, I'm gonna choke on the bandwidth bill. It's just like my petabyte customer that's moving a petabyte of data into Nigeria. You know, that one, you know, I paid a little premium for that data to go to Nigeria. And a petabyte, now that's some data. When you are getting a per gigabyte bill from your provider, there's a lot of zeros there. So, but that's what the game you play as a host is You pray you don't get a petabyte user, you know, but at the same time, that petabyte user helps you get a lower rate. So it's, it's a, it's a love, it's a love-hate thing. So the, the bandwidth thing, I think at this point was 5 years ago, there's no way I could have financially afforded to do this at risk. And now I, you know, there probably is. Why, why do I want to do it this way? Well, we have to because someone has to stand up and say, hold the line, hold the line. It's like World War II, hold the line. Because if, regardless of not, um, if things continue, uh, podcasting will be on YouTube and will be on Spotify. And hosting companies will go extinct. And then guess what you will have? Dictatorship and monopolies that control your media, control what you say, will ice you out because you said one wrong bad word. And then there will be a lot of people left self-posing and be the last man standing. And it's gonna like— so we have to hold the line at this point. And it's, it's not necessarily for business survival. We're not at that point. But we also have to do a better job of educating content creators. We're here to help you. We want you to succeed. We're providing great tools for you. Go ahead and go over there and just be on a platform and be blind. Um, this is why we need a Got Milk for podcasting to make podcast listeners understand why audio is important.

Though I think you're— the problem with that is that you're not being very future-looking with this medium. Um, well, I am being future-seeing just on audio, or— oh no, all the research is showing is that people want to consume both., just at different parts of their life.

Yeah, we have to re-educate. It's like the 55-plus crowd that's underserved right now, and they mostly listen, they don't mostly watch.

Yeah, and it's okay to start playing a, a video, uh, and, and put your phone in your pocket and just listen to the audio too. So there's kind of— I mean, not, not that everybody's gonna do this. Well, I guess it depends on what your preferred consumption platform is. Do they support video? Do they support audio? Do they have both? If they don't have both, if they don't, this is where the Podcasting 2.0 initiative comes into play and is really important as you look to the future, is that the conversations we need to be having with audiences is not around format, right? Right. Or if it's audio or video. It should be the content. It should be about the portability of the content. What's different about podcasts versus mainstream media? We should be drawing contrasts to get people more into podcasting. But the problem is we can't seem to get our hands around really as an industry and embrace specifically what a podcast is, you know, because we're getting pulled all these different directions in perception.

I'm not going to try to define what a podcast is, but I will tell you this.

Well, you're gonna have to do a Got Milk campaign.

Well, it's, it's about this lean-in engagement. It's about companionship. It's, you know, again, that's my entire point, right?

So is what is this medium's message, right, that will drive what? But are we trying to drive—

we just trying to drive more listeners? Absolutely. And we also have— we're trying to— we need to promote, continue to promote the value of audio. And if they want to, we'll have to say, if you want to watch on video, go look on your big screen, right?

But it wouldn't discourage people. See, this is the other part of it too, is, is that as we look at RSS— and one of the reasons that we're here is because we, we walked away from RSS-based video delivery.

Um, we didn't walk away from it.

Uh, yeah, we did.

Yeah, yeah, I'll defend it. We have I'll defend it. We've been supporting it from the get-go. We— and we advertise.

Okay, but supporting is different than promoting it.

Oh, we promote it.

So, okay, we have 3 companies in the podcast space right now that support video. That's it.

Well, good. Makes— it gives me lots of opportunity to get business.

That happened in about, what, 2008, 2009? Yeah. Industry started pulling back from video because they just gave up because, because of YouTube.

Well, they gave up because it was hella expensive. It was, it, you know, and I was, you know, in 2008, there weren't valid reasons. In 2008, I was paying a dime for a gigabit, you know, a dime, 10 cents a gig. And you'd, in this show alone, you know, it would have cost like a dime to deliver this show. To every listener. So of course we— no one could afford it, but it doesn't— bandwidth doesn't cost a dime no more, right?

Totally. And that's, yeah, that's another argument for why, why do we continue to focus on just audio? Let's, let's focus on what the consumers want, which is audio and video. Because I think if we keep doubling down on audio, we're going to miss— no, let's listen. We're gonna miss the arc of the interest of the listener, right? Or the viewer and miss the opportunity and invariably drive people to YouTube and to Spotify to consume the video. Well, and if we don't as an industry kind of say, well, we're gonna take back video via RSS and make it open and make it, not proprietary, not as proprietary, then that gives us an opportunity to hold on to RSS. Because if we just hold on to audio in RSS, I think that the industry's under threat.

It's not in threat from listeners because I'm looking at the monthly stats report and I'm still delivering 300 million plus audio listens a month.

And I'm thinking like over the next 3 to 5 years.

Okay. Well, Again, all the audiences are not going to abandon it. And I don't think, I don't think they're going to abandon audio podcasting for video. People that listen want to listen.

They're abandoning it. I'm saying that the interest of the newer generation is trending, and you're seeing, oh, absolutely, it's trending more towards video, um, until they get a little older. Well, that's what we've always said, is that thank God for podcast listeners as they get older, because then they're their interest in different types of content change too.

Well, at least that's been the— video is not the savior of podcasting. Let's just put it that way. It is a companion content to podcasting. There are bigger, bigger issues at play than just video.

Well, I think it could, could be the savior for RSS because then—

savior for RSS? RSS is not going anywhere, Rob. Come on now, you've drank a little bit too much of the YouTube Kool-Aid.

No, it's not about YouTube, Todd. I'm talking about video as a, as a content medium.

I'm talking about—

well, the problem is then is, okay, so what I'm talking about is, is the audience wanting the content that, that they're increasingly wanting, and that's, that's audio and video. And if we silo RSS into just audio, then We've become just an audio medium, which, which isn't embracing, and it's leaving the door wide open for these other proprietary platforms that take over the other half of the industry, which is video.

Oh, they are already doing that. When you have—

I mean, you just made my—

well, but the thing is, you're, you're going to have a hard time. So I don't know, I don't know what the future is, but I'll say this. Well, it's when you— here's—

oh, here's a test. Podcast 2.0, the alternative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And audio. So you have both available to consumers.

Listen to this, podcasters. I— we can't say who, but I think you actually came to me with this, Rob, right? That a certain advertising firm is telling their podcasters— maybe you weren't the one, but anyway, I thought you were the one that came up told me this. A certain advertising firm that shall remain unnamed is telling their podcasters to no way in beep beep beep to have their video override their audio on Spotify. They say separate. Oh, because guess what?

Guess what?

Yeah, the stats. Well, now this is, this is, this is beautiful. 50% less listens or watches when the video was primary. The audio— let's say the audio version of the show was getting a balance.

No, no, Todd, you're, you're, you're portraying it to fit your position. Oh, absolutely. Not what was going on here. So what's going on is there's a bug in the metric system, or is it tracking?

Is it bugging? So they're getting, so they're getting 50% less views according to the reporting right now than they are on audio.

And it's a buzz. Yeah, but I wouldn't draw any specific conclusions on that because it could be caused for other reasons which haven't been determined. Convenient. Well, no, it's not convenient. It's, it's, well, it could be a technical problem. There could be a UX problem.

Well, then if they're, if they're telling their podcasters, make sure they have two listings. There's, there's obviously this has been going on for a while and there's panic because they're not making as much money.

Yeah, just because one implementation of this, um, wasn't done right doesn't destroy the concept of it. I mean, the actual concept of having both there, we've talked about in the podcast medium for a very long time, of having audio and video in an item in an RSS feed, right? And having that as options for the consumer, and that will directly compete against YouTube and these platforms that want to be video only, right? Because we're able to offer audio and video at the same time and to present that. And I know that there's a lot of discussion in the industry, and it happened even at Podcast Movement where all the hosting companies got together and talked about this. Everybody's thinking about how to do something better with video.

Well, um, good luck, and good luck on the bill on that. Uh, Randy says the younger generation are the ones who want to play video on the dashboard of their cars while driving. Hmm, that's probably true. Adam says our bit rates—

at some point, yeah, I mean, at some point that's probably going to happen.

Our bit rates are so low there will be only older listeners in a few years. Our birth— not that bit rate— our birth rates are so low It's true. Uh, Sound Off Media says some things to consider about the lack of content creators at PM24. We have made podcasting easier than ever— free hosting, AI, posting those easily recorded videos on YouTube. But are those folks getting any traction? 99% no. Plus more networks and representative creators, and in the other factors Todd mentioned, why would a creator go? Uh, Beauty Bible says, we are young in contrast to the years we live, and everyone here more than likely are playful and kids with our curiosity and wisdom. Uh, Adam says, I don't podcast for money, I podcast for Jesus. Uh, oh, hey, people are having fun in the chat room today, so, um, keep on trolling, Adam. Go ahead, it's fantastic. You know, I, I—

and again, I think going back Um, I'm all in on RSS.

I mean, you know, it's like that Second Amendment thing. Take, take my, you know, take my RSS out of my dead hands, you know, that, um, you know, but that could end up that instead of dead, it could be bankrupt. That could be the word. And then we're okay, but I'm just, you know, you know, we have to be, we have to be realistic here. We have to you know, protect this space and evangelize, at least on the podcasting side, the values of OpenRSS. And it's often lost on people in a big, big way until— until— Todd, this is the email. Todd, I was deplatformed. And I'm like, sorry. I, I need to get my show up on podcasting. Great, because they figured out that, uh, you know, or an episode gets deplatformed and, you know, we won't talk about the company that, that— I haven't got any this week, so it's, it's, it's rare that I haven't got any deplatformed episodes. But the other thing that's more crazy is why aren't the podcasters that we inform that have been their content's been taken down. We tell them, why don't they squawk? Why aren't they on social media screaming bloody murder and making a story of it?

I don't know. Is everybody scared to do such things?

Well, yeah, people, people are afraid to, you know, think they're—

it's a whole nother kind of subtext to this open medium of podcasting.

Yeah. So, you know, Amazon had a booth about 800 feet long at Podcast Movement, 30 wide. Or was it— was it Amazon, or was it, uh, who had the big booth? Uh, SiriusXM. Oh yeah, Sirius. They came to the show like it was NAB. And, uh, I have no idea how much that thing cost. It was probably half a million. You know, I don't know what the booth cost. It was a lot. And, uh, I don't know what they were doing, to be honest with you. I saw some signs and And they had one thing on their sign that said Indie Podcasters, and I kind of giggled over that one. Um, but they had a massive booth there. And, um, but we know where Amazon was. Amazon was spending money on this $100 million 3-year contract with, uh, Jason and Travis Kelce, who I don't— I don't even know. Didn't even know they had a podcast, to be honest with you. I know who they are, so Yeah, are they celebrities or what are they?

Um, I don't know that much about them either, and I, I think that speaks to the, to the generational differences, Todd, between us and them.

Yeah, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna open up, uh, I'm gonna go to the book of knowledge as I'm stealing that from the, from the, from a certain show, uh, called No Agenda. Who are they? Oh, they are Kelsey Brothers. I may have seen these folks at some point.

Yeah, so the big news was they signed a $100 million deal over 3 years, and it said the deal included rights to create international audio adaptations, which basically means that their podcast is going to be translated into, um, German You know why I don't know this? Brazilian and Mexican language, or Spanish.

Yeah, the key is was up to $100 million. Adam just refreshed us that, so it's up to $100 million. So here's the reason I'm not a football guy. More—

they are— they are— Pod News, it says more than $100 million.

Yeah, well, well, the presser is worth up to $100 million. It's an agreement. Yeah. So it's the PR folks did a good spin on it. So of course, now that I've kind of got some context, uh, Jason Kelce's from the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce from the Kansas City Chiefs. Isn't he the one that is dating, uh, uh, Taylor Swift? Okay, now, okay, so now I'm tuned in. Oh, see, I don't watch football, so I don't either. So, so everyone, everyone's like screaming at the top of their lungs, you don't know who that is?

Um, you know, once I read the name and again, I'm not a Swiftie either.

I'm not a Swiftie. So yeah, so those of you that are like saying, are you stupid? Well, yeah, I don't follow celebrities.

So, um, so I think that they, that the Amazon folks were, were counting on the show being successful because of course, of course, because Taylor Swift and expecting 4.5 times the audience than what you would normally get just because of the relationship.

So again, here you got a celebrity Celebrity already because they are NFL superstars, player, right? And they got that money, not your average Joe podcaster. Joe podcaster, guess what? Zero. Got a big donut hole.

And none of those folks were at Podcast Movement, that's for sure. That is for sure. So we can't do this episode and not talk about kind of the the elephant in the room.

Hang on one second. My show is on track to make $1 billion this year. That's what someone just said in the chat room. It's on track to make $1 billion.

On track this year.

Hey Rob, we're on track this year to make a whole thousand dollars.

Oh yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah. So the the kind of wow moment that I had at Podcast Movement was at the keynote the first day. Yeah, I didn't go to that. Yeah, so the first keynoter, I can't remember the first or the second.

By the way, I've ordered—

The first one was, I know it was Stephen Bartlett, who is the host of a podcast video show on YouTube, very, very popular. Called The Diary of a CEO. And I've watched his show on YouTube quite a few times. He does a terrific production of his video show. And I guess he's doing an audio podcast too, but his presentation to the audience was really indicative of this bigger trend of the professionalization of podcasting.

How many people do we have on staff?

You and I?

65. No, how many people do we have on staff? Oh, zero.

Two. I mean, for just for this show.

Yeah, for you and me, we have two, right? Right. Okay, so CEO of a Diary has how many people on staff? 65. So Adam, you do a show with John C. Dvorak. How many people do you have? Well, I know how he's going to say. He's going to say thousands because they do. They have producers. So they're people that contribute to this.

Yeah, but those are listeners, right?

But now they're producers. They're not listeners, they're producers. So be careful, you're going to get upset at them. They're producers. Fair enough, fair enough.

Um, yeah, so, so he's a very, very large content creator, has millions of people watching his show. He does a really interesting job of teasing his content at the beginning. He's very focused on trying to deliver that necessary hook at the very beginning of a video on YouTube that is so mandatory now where you kind of drive the audience to look for questions to be answered by posing questions without answers at the beginning of the show. So he has this kind of video intro for each of his shows and he was very specific about embracing this concept of failure as a stepping stone to success. Now, when I say embracing failure, he has a guy that he hired who's dedicated, whose focus, his job title is Chief Failure Officer.

One of his 65 people on staff.

Right, exactly. His whole job is to look for elements in his production or his publishing or the distribution or monetization that would be considered to be not meeting expectations, right? That are failing in some way or need to be optimized. And he goes through all these processes. And, and I do think that MrBeast does this as well. And that's why these guys are gaining so much success is that they're very analytical about analyzing what they're producing and how they're producing it and what the experience is.

Speaking of which, I sent you a present, Rob. You did? I did. I went on Amazon and I found a CO2 monitor, and I've shipped that to you. I've mounted— I've shipped a CO2 monitor to your house along with a 5— I actually— it's being delivered in a few days— a 500-pound oxygen tank so that when your CO2 levels get just a little bit low, that you can You can feed the room a little, a little oxygen. Now make sure you don't have any open flame or anything like that in your studio or in your house. Um, because we don't want you to go boom. But, um, yes, we're, we're making sure your CO2 levels don't get too— now I live in the country, so I— there's no CO2 out here, right? Because I'm only competing with the cow farting, right?

So, um, all that methane, my God.

But this guy measures CO2 in the room and stops the interview if it gets too low.

Yeah, then he has to ventilate the room to get the, get the CO2 out of there, get more oxygen there, because he gets, uh, better interviews, he says, because the guests that he has in there will perform better if there's a higher level of oxygen in the room. So which, which actually technically actually is probably true.

You know, uh, marijuana at a certain stage in life needs 1,400 cubic meters per something, uh,, you know, of CO2 for them to perform better, you know.

And, uh, and then a certain stage of, uh, growing weeds, like if you're a human, you don't want to be in that room, right?

Yeah. The, the, see it, the, the, the weed loves CO2, but you go in there, it's probably not good for you. Cause I think normally it's not good. 670, whatever the number is. But what was his actual number?

Do you remember? I think he was talking about over 1,000 parts per million. He sees a drop off. How many? Guess, guess, 1,000 parts per million. He sees a drop off in guest performance.

If you have a room that's getting 1,000 parts per million, you've got an issue already.

Well, you do. That's, that's kind of his point, right, is that it needs to get down probably closer to, to 400 or something like that, and he'll get peak performance out of his guests. So which actually is closer to outside environment. So it's in the $300 to $400 range.

But let's, you know, in, in— now, no joking, here's the thing. Where's another sign of things are out of touch? You've got an event where you have whatever the number was of podcasters there that are chasing 1% of money, and you have a keynoter that talks about their 65 people on staff. Yeah, uh-huh.

I can read that's what's going on over at YouTube.

I can, I can relate.

Yeah, 65 people on staff.

Well, and that's part of what we see happening over there is that, um, those are—

yeah, they're big, big companies really are being birthed over there again. You know, in the early days of YouTube, there were big companies things that were focused on YouTube as well. And so now we've, we saw a pullback for a few years and now it's been individual creators that were doing things with YouTube. And what we're seeing as we move away from the era of mainstream media, right? People are increasingly moving over to getting their news and information from digital sources. I think YouTube and those type of platforms are going to continue to accelerate in their growth.

So something near and happening, something near and dear to your heart. You should actually talk to Adam. He's starting, uh, I don't know the details, I just heard a hint of it, uh, he is starting initiative or working with someone to really, uh, local podcasting. And again, I, I just, I know that much, and you'll have to—

he's, you know, a topic, uh, came up at Podcast Movement too. I've been increasingly hearing that as well, um, around, you know, the, the potential of local podcasting now that we've reached a certain, um, penetration of sorts of audience in the, in the market. That was always what held back local podcasting was the, how many people in any given locality would be open to listening to a podcast, right? That was always the gatekeeper. And that's where radio kind of occupied that space is that historically more local people listened to local radio.

Yeah, of course. But they've given it away because they went to full automation and maybe that maybe they have someone on drive time. I'm just being a little snarky today. So I do have to— are you ready for a new microphone? Am I ready for a new microphone? Yep. And I'm expecting to be able to be on the list to get one of these gold. One of these gold Curry One microphones.

The Curry One. Yeah, I had this mic since, uh, 2000.

Well, not, you know, so I'm, I'm gonna put my name on the list for a gold Curry One.

And, uh, uh, oh, so Mr.

Curry is getting his own microphone. Yeah, it's, it's his, uh, exit plan. So we have to help him with his exit plan because Um, we're all getting older, you know. Adam just recently had a birthday and, and, uh, turned the big 6-0. Of course, I beat him to it by a couple of months, but, uh, the Curry won. Well, you know, Rob, you know, in all reality, you can retire anytime you want. You're just, you're just hanging around for the fun of it.

Oh, you think that's what's going on?

Okay. Um, you know, I think that, um, here's what we really, really have to do, and this is just like the crux of everything. We just got to keep creating great content. People need to create great content. It doesn't matter if it's— doesn't matter, they're not going to watch video or audio. If it's great content, they're going to watch or listen.

Yeah, well, that's true. That's, that's the bottom line, really, at the end of the day. And And increasingly, I think that's what's happening, is that the bar has been raised, Todd, whether we like it or not. I mean, there's a lot of tension out there right now between, let me say, authentic, real, kind of, you know, rough grassroots content versus this very polished stuff. And I heard, this was a few months ago, that even MrBeast, you know, who's notorious for creating highly produced type of video, talking about this, saying, you know, he's just gone too far down the rabbit hole of overproduction. And so maybe there's a balance coming between stuff like we do here, Todd. It's very authentic. It's very organic. It's very real. It's not polished and with lots of transitions and explosions happening behind us and stuff like that, which is what you're seeing on the video side increasingly, as people are, you know, being very provocative. They're being— they're very focused on controversial topics, maybe being a little negative, maybe, well, you know, constantly talking about things that are going on that are going to end the world and things like that.

I will tell you this though too, um, I think that the, the failure rate of content creators— in other words, those are doing podcasts, YouTube, whatever they're doing— um, I think the pressure is heavier on the YouTube side because once they get a little bit of garner of success, then they're married. Okay, so if you're a farmer and you're a dairy farmer, those cows are going to be milked twice or three times a day. They have to be. Those cows got to be milked. You don't have a vacation, you don't have someone to step in, your vacation to Hawaii is being canceled because you got to milk those cows. YouTube is about feeding the logo, and content creators over there have to feed the beast. And the beast is the YouTube beast. And if they don't feed the YouTube beast, they're not recommended, they fall out of favor, they lose their audience, they lose their income. Whereas in podcasting, there's none of that. You— yes, you should publish to a schedule, but your audience is not going to give— if you've been published long enough, your audience is not going to give up on you if you take a week or 10 days off. They're still going to be there. You can feed them a supplementary content. It doesn't have to be brand new polished content. So I think the machine is the machine of YouTube is going to cause people have heart attacks, lose hair like I've lost mine, which come from advertisers, believe it or not, um, and raising 3 girls, uh, and, and then, um, I, I think that really is going to be the, the Achilles heel here. You're not gonna— who is— do you know of anyone besides some super duper top books that have lasted 20 years? Or 18 or 17 years over on, on the belly of the beast over on YouTube. How many shows have lasted that long? So I, I think the ability for audio creators to have longer sustainability because of less production, less pressure to create content, needs to be something we have to talk about. I, I remember my good friend Andy McCaskey, and you know him, Rob Yeah, he was doing Slashdot Review News, a daily show, 20 minutes. He lasted, I think, 3 and a half years because the pressure was so great to produce a show every day. He burned himself out. That candle got snuffed, and he's never come back. And he had a great show, making big money in the early days of podcasting. Big money. Big, big big money. And, and, you know, in comparison, but he couldn't sustain it, so he, he pulled the plug. So I think the pressure to do great, if you're going to feed that beast over there, um, I think there's an incredible amount of pressure to stay relevant and keep producing. I, I, I don't know if that's sustainable for a long, long time. If I was relying on— if I had to feed the logo over there, I had to quit. I had to quit. Too much pressure.

And that's what you hear from— I think that's going to come to podcasting too. I think that there's a lot of people in the podcast industry that will tell you that they're, they're envious of the, the recommendation engine that YouTube has.

Um, so there is some—

well, they're recommending Go ahead. Yeah, this gets back to a little bit like we've talked about in prior episodes around metrics too. Advertisers are wanting more listener player metrics, right? And this is going to play into this model that they're going to look at YouTube and they're going to say, wow, look at all the data that we get out of YouTube. Why doesn't podcasting have that level of data? Well, deadlock. And that's that's what the industry is gonna be. I think these bigger platforms are gonna feel pressure to do that, especially ones that are focused on advertising. Now granted, you know, if you look at Apple, Apple is not focused on advertising, so I don't think Apple really cares that much to have an algo that, that is really positioned to share that level of data.

Right. So by the way, do you know how many people Rogan has on staff? I didn't know this, but, uh, our, our beloved podfather does because he's been on the show. Um, do you know how many, uh, staff people Rogan has? Take a guess, give me a number.

I've always heard that it was maybe about, uh, 3 or 4 people.

2.

2. Okay, 2. I thought that— I mean, he must have a liaison with, um, Spotify. Well, I'm sure that's probably one of the two, but if you have two of them and his producer, I, I think, has, has been his companion for years. It's the same thing with Marc Maron. I think Marc has been a two-person team for all these years.

Can you imagine paying the salary of 65 people? I know what it costs to pay Sal. Holy shit. I know what the stat— I know what it— okay, so let's talk about that for a second. So think about the pressure that guy's under. If you got 65 people on staff, let's just say a medium income— I mean low, let's go $40 grand a month and just do that number. And you know, not all those folks are making $40 grand. He's got people on his staff that are probably making $100,000. That his bill, his, his set, his, his— good Lord, I don't, I don't have 65 people on my team at Blueberry. You know, we hover between 15 and 18. So, and I know what that cost us annually. You know, that's a big number. Yeah. Especially when you have developers that are, you know, you know, developers are not cheap.

Yeah. And given that, uh, that we saw Stephen Bartlett As a keynote at Podcast Movement is maybe a sign that those big YouTuber creators are increasingly looking to podcasts for them to capture that market too. Cuz he did say up on stage that he felt that currently today podcasting feels small to him.

Oh, I would, if you have, I'm sure. It depends on his audience size, you know. Would you call Rogan's audience small?

You know, so no, but Joe Rogan is doing something very similar to what Stephen Bartlett is doing.

Well, he wasn't up until recently because he wasn't allowed.

Well, he is right now. Yeah. Because of the—

and I do think that this is indicative of the trends that we're seeing in, in the next 10 years. There can only be 4 or 5 Joe Rogans in the podcasting space. There can't be. There will not be more than that. Well, it depends on what scale you're talking. Rogan. Rogan. Well, we'll have smaller creators, but Rogan's been king for how long? 5, 6 years?

7? Yeah, but he's not going to remain the largest forever, right? He's gonna get older and he's gonna get replaced By somebody like a Stephen Bartlett. Well, maybe, you know, who knows, right? Who knows?

That's the bigger trend. And you know, if I was, if I was Joe Rogan, I'd be putting every penny I could away. And then when I got tired of doing it, I would say, okay, we're done.

Thank you very much.

Go retire. Exactly. But you know, guys like him though, it will get bored and he won't retire. So, you know, it's like me, what if I retired? What am I going to do? Go play shuffleboard?

No. Well, yeah, I think, I think to some degree the same thing has happened to Mark Maron too. I mean, Mark's not in the conversation as much anymore around the big podcasters and stuff.

I'm not sure. How old is Rogan? I don't know.

Let me use the— I think he's in his, in his, in his probably his mid, mid-50s, probably. But, um, but yeah, I mean, I'm not hearing much about 57 anymore.

57.

Most people don't know who he is, right? And increasingly, you know, I know that Adam Carolla is still, still out there doing a show and is popular, but he's not as big as a Joe Rogan or, or probably even a Stephen Bartlett now, because Stephen is internationally. Mark Maron, 60 years old.

He's 60. Okay. Yeah. So at 60, we get put to pasture.

Is that what happens? No, I would— well, I hope not, but, but that's— but, but I mean, eventually, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's just the natural tendency.

Or we die. You know, that's how it works.

Yep.

Google doesn't know how old I am, which is funny.

I'm not important enough. Yeah, I saw this article with the title, it says, Podcasts used to be ad-light oasis. Yeah, whatever.

Not anymore. Not anymore.

We are here. Some hosts, right, right. Some hosts and executives worry Ad creep will hurt the medium for both listeners and marketers, says this article in the Wall Street Journal. Oxford Road's Dan Grainger, who has been a guest on this show, uh, is quoted as saying, this is not going in a direction that's going to end well for any of us.

So that gets back to the ad loads. Well, and you know, you know, it's— you're talking to one of the main You know, main, main movers of advertising, and it's his own fault. He's allowed it to happen instead of, you know, cry me a river of tears.

I don't care. Well, this is, I mean, you have to think of it from his perspective.

He's an ad buyer. Yeah. Right. So he's, he's the one that's been buying deep. So cry me a river of tears. Shouldn't have been loading the content so much. Should have been going deeper.

No, I'm not sure that you're seeing it how I'm seeing it. Is it, this is the position that you would take to try and get better ad rates?

Well, it's a race to the bottom anyway.

So it's a way to say, you know, all those publishers out there, you're, you know, you're getting into the danger zone. And if you're going to talk to us, we're going to, dicker you down on CPMs because you're, you're overloading your content. It's, it's— with that, that's the message that comes out of this.

Here's what I learned in 2005. They could have hired— they could have hired me, did a little consulting thing. In 2005, my hour and 10 minute podcast could do one ad spot at the beginning to my beloved sponsor GoDaddy. And a second spot midway through, which at the time was Citrix GoToMeeting. We did very well. Audience didn't complain. Audience numbers continued to grow. It was good. But boy, as soon as I added that third spot— and this is when audiences actually provided feedback and didn't actually click off and go somewhere else— they howled bloody murder. And I learned that my show could do 2. 2 was the limit. And if I did 3, the audience started to leave. The problem is these podcasters, the audiences don't care enough anymore to provide feedback. So guess what they do? They just leave. They've got the first minute of, of the, of the show listened to, so they get, they get the ad count, but the listener has left. And guess what? They don't— they're not engaging in the ads. So, you know, it's just like a certain political show that I tried to listen to— tried— and it was like on my 7th or 8th ad, I said, I'm done. I didn't even hit 30 seconds. I just, I just bounced. Whereas I was talking to someone the other day, so we just fast forward through ads, we just click, click, click, click, click, click. Oh yeah, I just click, click, click, click. And I'm in the car, that 30-second advance button's fantastic. So we quit— we keep missing though, you know, the, the real thing here. We can do— we've talked about it a lot of times in the show. Ads are not everything. There's other ways to get support for your show.

Time, talent, or treasure. And Todd, yeah, I wanted to share the screen with you really quick too.

Um, let me get you ready here.

So we've got, um, oh yes, I talked to a fellow at Podcast Movement who was there. I believe he's an attorney, but, um, what's, what's going on here is that this is an article that was written by David Oxenford, um, who does a blog called Broadcast Law Blog, and he comments in here. So this was just published just a day or so ago. It says, this week I spent some time at Podcast Movement's annual convention, this year held in D.C. While the convention is always a good time to catch up with industry friends and spot new trends, AI was of course a topic that was discussed on several panels and it was virtually, you know, it's in every media conference these days. And it also is a reminder of what's going on at the FCC around other regulations. And I guess what's recently happened is that the FTC has put out a notice about, um, as the title of this article says, podcasters and broadcasters disclose sponsors. Oh, and you know, just between—

interesting topic, right? Just between you and me, go ahead.

Right. Well, yeah, I just wanted to set it up here a little bit more just to say that podcast industry has always had its best performance around sponsorship and endorsement and when it's been able to blend content with the ad, right? So this is, you know, where the audience kind of transitions between content into ads very, very smoothly without any kind of disruption. Now, I know when we launched, you know, dynamic ad insertion, you can still do that to some degree, but then we started to move towards kind of more hard breaks.

Kind of scenarios. Yeah, bring your, bring your face back to forefront, Rob.

Go ahead. Okay, uh, okay. And so, so this is what, what is kind of interesting about this. The, the FCC is finally starting to, you know, crack down.

There's been rules for this forever, so they're now just going to start cracking down?

Well, I think there's some new ones. I think that there was a new law passed, um, here recently.

It's not laws, it's a regulation so they can enforce.

Yeah, it's a—

yeah, it's a regulation. Yeah, that's right. Here's, here's the thing. It's, um, where they really need to go after people is in some of these Facebook groups where the same person is in this thing hot and heavy and promoting the same thing again and again, and they have no financial— they're not They're not, you know, and it tell me, tells me you're getting paid to shill. You're not disclosing it. I don't know how you ever catch those people, right? Yeah, because boy, there are a number of them in a variety of podcasting groups that I know, I know for sure are getting paid to shill. They're too, they're too, they're too, um What's the word I want to use? They're too persistent, you know. I think that's the word. And I've actually called a few people out over the years, and some of those folks have quietly disappeared.

But I guess there was a, a, um, Federal Trade Commission final rule tool that came out this past week on this topic, and that's what this is here.

So you can find it if you do. And there's a lot of, you know, where this probably originates— there's a lot of people that are shilling product on TikTok and a variety of different places and not disclosing. They're getting a paid endorsement, paid, you know, brand. They basically are getting a Brand Lift deal of some sort and paid us. I've been offered a lot of those deals where, hey, we want you to talk about our product and we'll write you a $1,000 check. And I'm like, okay, for the record, I disclose. Well, we, we don't want you to do that, we just want you to talk about our product. I'm like, I don't do it. But there's, you know, where there's one of me that says no, there's 1,000 people that say yes, you know. They've been surviving off a cup of coffee, donation, and someone comes in, and because you got 5,000 people watching your TikTok videos, they say, hey, talk about or wear our clothes. Or, you know, my daughter, um, has two— my two grandchildren are, um, big time in, uh, basically getting clothes from manufacturers. And on her Instagram post, every Instagram post where she shows the kids, she discloses that are in there. And she says she gets probably 75% less deals because she discloses on Instagram. So people are being marketed to left and right, and they, they don't even know that they're being marketed to.

Yeah. And yeah, I shared another kind of view of the actual FTC kind of ruling on this that has the whole summary and all that stuff. And what's interesting is the headline on this really encapsulates kind of a multidimensional kind of view on this. And it's Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials. Oh, that's, yeah. There are elements of this that fall into, you know, like fake Amazon reviews. Yeah. Fake Amazon product reviews. And there's whole companies out there. I've been approached by a couple of them. I like going, you know, to work for them to say, you know, all you have to do is go in and give a positive review of this product and this product and this one will pay you so much a month., you know, or a week or something like that to go in and post fake reviews of products. And I just won't do it. And it's just a matter of this is what it's going after. Is it, you know, that's why it's so difficult to trust reviews on product websites. And it's the same kind of the same concept with podcasts too, or, you know, product review videos, that kind of stuff is that you have to be transparent about this stuff. And I think they are going to start cracking down on this stuff.

It's, it's not, it's not as bad as it used to be, but I used to get literally— by UPS would drop 4 or 5 things off every day, and I ended up with one room that just had boxes of product. And, um, and I would— on my tech show, I— or on my tech— on Geekness Central, I would do product reviews, but I actually did a real product review. And my rule was I have to have it. I'll use it for— if the product was substantial enough, I'll use it for a week. He, he, uh, you know, I'm sure all these airlines he flies on is glowing. You know, you watch one guy, he's, you know, give an airline review, and the next day this other guy, then it's like, where were you guys on two different flights? And, you know, oh yeah, he's flying around the world. Yeah, did you, you know You know, so, um, it's good that they have to reveal and disclose. Um, yeah, but it does— until, until the FCC— until an FCC guy goes after someone, and they're gonna have to go after someone big to make an impression, you know. But small people are just going to continue to fly under the radar.

I'm afraid that's what's going to happen. Of it. Yeah, it's this blending of content with ads or sponsorship or whatever is the— and to some degree that, that's increasingly happening even at Podcast Movement. I don't know if you notice that or not, but in which regard? Well, so having whole sessions that are, that are populated by people from one one company. Yeah.

So, which I thought in the past was not what podcast movement allowed to happen. You know, you and I have been pretty hardcore over, over the years. Whenever, you know, whenever I go and do a session, I talk about competitors, I talk about, you know, I, I don't, I don't show You're there to— the idea was to go to educate. And if it's— if I go to a session, it used to be I'd be able to go to a session, if it was a shill session, I could report that and that person would get banned.

So yeah, I mean, I remember that there were, there were sessions that were done like 5 or 6 years ago. Yeah, at Podcast Movement that turned into shill sessions. And there was, you know, those people were banned from coming to Podcast Movement again. So, but that, that certainly, that's not the, the ethic anymore.

So Chris, if you've been listening, uh, we are looking forward to Podfest in January. Uh, we're looking forward to come and, uh, to be there. And you have a, you have a golden opportunity, my friend, here to continue the narrative that Podfest is a creator conference, and there's not going to be any private Spotify room, there's not going to be a private Libsyn room, and there's not going to be a private, you know, whatever else has a room worth a— with a, you know, with a gatekeeper with a— the rope yarn, and if you're not on a list, you can't get into it. Um, you know, so we will be happy to come down there and and, uh, and be, be, uh, be with you at that show. So there's a, there's a huge opportunity here for something or someone to up their game in an incredibly big way.

Well, it's got to be affordable. It's got to be, yeah, you know, easy to get to. It's got to have more of a community focus, not so much business, business focus. And, and really focus on trying to help creators be successful. And I think, and that's at a grassroots level, um, not at the 65-person team level as much, right? It's okay to address that market if you can, but I think Chris does a good job of having that as kind of like its own separate kind of track that appeals to just those people.

But even the people in the, in the pro track or whatever it is, they still Because I've spoken to that group before. The majority of them are hard-working, independent content creators.

They're normal, they're growing their show, normal content creators, right? And then, you know, I'm, I'm starting to work on the Hall of Fame, which is coming back. Um, so, so it's, it's shaping up to be more of an independent organization to some degree, but also with very close ties to Podfest. So, so it's going to be, uh, yeah, that's about all I can say about it right, right now.

But there's changes going on there too. Oh, okay. Yeah, interesting. So, you know, if, uh, if Deanne and Jared, you guys are still here, if you've even listened to this, uh, Creator event Please, let's think about making it creator-friendly. We go back to Dallas, let's, let's have some potential to— well, in Chicago too, Chicago's again— Chicago, I expect Chicago to be an industry event. Yeah, but what's the distinction anymore? I don't see— well, that's, that's the problem. There is no distinction. As a matter of fact, someone in my Facebook comment got them mixed up. They thought the summer event was the industry event and LA was the creator event. I said, no, it's the opposite.

So yeah. Yeah, I think it's the same event that just happens every 6 months.

Yeah. Now, so, which, you know, for me at this point, that's going to become challenging. So I'll have to make a decision in Chicago. Do we, do we just go one time a year? And then come to the event and, you know, work out of our, our backpack, you know, right? You know, have meetings like, you know, at tables and stuff instead of, you know, maybe have a, an, you know, afternoon beer event at a bar nearby or something.

It's, you know, that we can always, always have a, uh, was it a, a brain date and a meetup?

Yeah, the Braindate stuff was interesting, and I know one individual that had a Braindate almost every hour. He didn't buy a booth, he just, you know, arranged a bunch of Braindates and promoted the living crap out of them and did very, very well with the Braindates. So, um, you know, the thing about that is you, you open up a— you open a can of worms then. So what happens when all of a sudden your Braindate space is fuller than your exhibit space, right?

Well, yeah, I think— yeah, that's true. I mean, I think that the maximum capacity of a Brain Date is probably like maybe 6 or 7 people.

But if you did one every hour or every couple hours or 3 a day, yeah, I mean, you can just make a, you know, a new podcast creator, you know, startup kind of Brain Date. And then of course you got to attract people to Brain Date too. So, but I don't think they do Brain Date at, uh, I don't remember them doing it in LA.

Maybe they did and maybe I missed it. Oh, the Evolutions? Yeah, event. Yeah, I don't know what that, that name Evolutions means anymore.

Do you? I don't know.

I— there's no—

it doesn't have any significant meaning. And there was no distinction. It felt like— a matter of fact, it felt— again, it just felt— and that's— I wasn't the only one. People said it just felt different. Um, the thing I like about Podfest is, man, people are excited to be there. They are gung-ho. There's energy in the air. Um, people seeking information. You know, so it's, it's the 90% that was not at Podcast Movement, that is for sure. Because the 10% that was at Podcast Movement will not go to Podcast.

A few will, a few. And some of the people that go to Podcast won't go to Podcast Movement either. That's true. Yeah, the other interesting thing that we saw at Podcast Movement on the floor was the size of the Daily Wire booth.

Well, the Daily Wire booth had no Daily Wire people. It had security at the Daily Wire. Yeah, there was no staff. There was like maybe someone there to hand out papers or something and popcorn. And what was the other thing they were serving?

I think it was mainly popcorn, like merch.

Should have been, should have been tequila shots, to be honest with you. I could have used one, uh, Thursday.

Yeah, but they did have staff there. I talked to the guy there. They did have staff there. It's just that the staff wasn't manning the booth.

Oh, it was the security detail.

So the staff was in a private meeting room?

Well, they were off at meetings and doing— well, what was ironic is Daily Wire is on the floor. After what happened a couple years ago. So, you know, it is telling, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. Well, I think the most shocking thing was the fact that they had a security detail, right?

Well, you know, adding the actual booth with, you know, Daily Wire shirts and stuff, right? Yeah, you know, considering historical stuff and what's going on in the country, probably was— probably, probably they planned for the worst and hope for the best.

Man, there is a story to be told about them, right?

Those have been here long enough, I've heard it all. Yeah, that's true, you know. So I'm not complaining, you know. Shows come and go. There are ebb and tides to shows. Well, you know, NAB ebbs and flows, uh, different shows had ebbs and flows, and you know As long as the flow doesn't continue to go south and comes back north and grows, then it's okay. But we cannot live on our laurels anymore and guarantee that there will be— you know, dollars are important these days, very important. Yeah, why did I double down? Why did I double down for a podcast, the podcast show in London? Why did I spend more money? This is the— this is the thing that needs to be really go, hmm, why did I spend more money for the podcast show than I'll probably spend for 2 shows at Podcast Movement last year? Why did I— why did I dig deep?

There's a reason.

That's a, that's a newer, more potential market. It is a market. I got more potential business. More. I came home with this much, a bucketful of follow-up that's still churning business. I'm still generating business from that show. I'm still signing clients and networks and and I'm still doing business. And how many months ago was that? That was in May, I think. Yeah. So we'll see how long I work— takes me to get through. Well, again, the proof will be in the— it's my job once I get home to convert business. It's not any show's job to do. That's my job. But if the people aren't there to talk about then a top 2, then again, we're just there waving the flag saying, hey, we're in business, thank you for— thank you for business. Give them their— your pin and everything else that goes along with that. So yeah, all right, well, we've— yeah, we went long. I thought this show might be 3 hours today. It's not going to go 3 hours. Yeah, we're gonna go almost 2. Did we, did we entertain everyone? Did we keep you leaned in for the whole hour and 49 minutes so far? You guys are still— a number of people are still hanging on YouTube, so that's good.

We got a few people on, uh, I mean, we're not both stand-up comedians, so I don't know that we've kept everybody enthralled.

Oh, I think we've kept him entertained. You have to keep them entertained. Okay, so this is how you do it, podcast fans. Got milk? Got podcast? You need to start promoting the values of podcasting whichever way you can. I did task my PR agency with work on trying to come up with something. We'll see. And whatever we come up with, we will give to the world to play around with. Will it take off? Who knows? But I did spend budget, say, go come up with something, and we'll see what we come up with. Podcast. The what? Got Podcast. Now we'll see. We don't want to be total nerds and copy that way, but if you have ideas, if you have ideas on a Got Milk campaign for podcasting, uh, drop me a line if you're willing to donate on Mastodon. And, uh, you'll find me back here next week in the same chair. Rob? All right. Uh, Rob, you want to do your sign-off?

Maybe you missed my—

oh yeah, yeah, you cut out on—

oh, I did? Okay, go ahead. So yeah, I can be found on X as well at Rob Greenlee. And, uh, if you want to go to robgreenlee.com, you can see all my podcasts and video shows that I'm, I'm doing. Um, I do a live show on Thursday nights at 7 PM Eastern called Podcast Tips, and been doing— I think I'm on episode 38 of that series, Todd. And so that's the best way to reach out to me. If you want to send me an email, if you have comments or questions or something like that that would contribute to the show, uh, send it to Rob greenlee@gmail.com.

All right, everybody, thanks for being here. We'll be back at the same time next week. Those who've been with us live and lit, thank you so much. Thanks for the streaming stats. For those of you that were streaming on a modern podcast app at podcastsapps.com, and, uh, really, we want to hear what you think.

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