Podcast News Galore! Mics, Stocks, Layoffs and More! #559 | Live New Media Show 10/4/23

Todd and Rob in the afternoon.

Hey, afternoon delight with Todd and Rob. Oh yeah. Hey Rob, here we are. I mean, this one snuck up on me. It literally was like 2 hours ago. I'm like, it's Wednesday.

I know, exactly. Yeah, it's true. Things— the weeks go by so fast, it's, uh, it's kind of hard to, you know, comprehend how fast things go by, right?

And I had a super— you know, I really didn't have any weekend. Saturday was the Podcast Awards ceremony. And, you know, and be honest with you, I kind of like hit the wall. I finished up the award ceremony and I was out of here by about 8 PM and I didn't go to the bar. I didn't go eat. I went home and literally faceplant on a Saturday night. I was in bed by 9 o'clock. I'm like, you know, that's, that's not me. Not at all. And, uh, and then Sunday I was just, I was just kind of like, uh, no energy. So I spent it, you know, what do you do when you, you're moping around? You clean house, you know, do laundry, do that, you clean the bathroom, all those chores, you know.

And it all takes a lot of energy too, doing all that kind of stuff too, right?

You know, and, and I am a little spoiled. I have someone come in once a month and kind of do the do the highlights, right? Gets the crust off and, you know, but I tell you the, uh, and it was even Monday, I was just like, uh, you know what I do when I, when I cannot get motivated is I have a, uh, you know, I have a Bluetooth speaker and I, I'll put on 2 or 3 tracks of AC/DC and kind of, you know, bounce around the office a little bit to get my motivation up. But yeah, that's, that's kind of the way the week's been, you know. So No. And plus, it's just like today I was, you know, I got in the office normal time. I clicked my schedule. I'm like, how is this possible? It was a sea of, you know, green. It was— I was booked right up until literally 10 minutes. You know, start at 9 a.m. and straight through. And I did find a few minutes to get the studio on, but no one wants to hear about that anyway. How you doing?

Doing okay, Todd. I'm, I'm in the middle of kind of revamping my whole studio. So I'm in the middle of kind of, or my office here. So I, I got a new faster kind of PC computer that will crunch through video a lot faster than my, my older computer, which I just bought at Costco. So it wasn't really a super, super duper kind of computer where this new one is.

No, I, I'm just telling you, you're using the wrong flavor of computer to edit video.

So, um, well, I mean, I kept that in mind when I got this new one. So yeah, yeah.

But you know, in, in all honesty, what's kind of funny is I have a— and those of you can age— and the, the machine that I use to process this show's video is the old Mac Pro trash can.

Right.

And I, I, I don't know how long that's been out of manufacture, but I vowed that I would use that machine until it— smoke came out of it, right? Because it costs so much money. But I also know that this little Mac Mini that I have sitting right here beside me probably has the same horsepower in it, right? Can process video faster than that. But I am bound and determined, you know, to get my depreciation. It wasn't, you know, I think I— it's already depreciated 3 years or whatever they do for computers from a business standpoint. But it's still, you know, as much as that thing cost at its time, I, I refuse to buy anything or, you know, I don't— I use this Mac Mini for a purpose and I do other things while the video's being— so I'm spoiled. But anyway, it's like, yeah, I get it. So how long does it take you to crunch an hour show?

Well, I haven't actually got it fully in service yet, so I haven't had a chance to play with it. I'm trying to rejigger to take advantage of two computers now. So, okay. Trying to arrange my monitors and try and get them fixed in position. And I'm getting all my monitors off my desk or my monitors, but my PC is off.

See what happens when you complicate things with video?

Now, you know, it's, that's not really the, the issue somewhat. It's, it's more, you know, it was time for me to kind of move to the next generation processor to get a higher, higher capacity GPU unit in here because, you know, I've got the NVIDIA, you know, GPUs in both machines. It's just that the new one that I have has the latest kind of GPU technology and it has the Core i9 processor. You know, from Intel. So my old one had a Core i7, so, right, it was a little bit older generation. So just trying to get a little bit faster and being able to effectively edit this stuff in real time on my screen, where my old computer was doing okay, but it was still a little slow, right? So, so this new machine should crunch through content. And it's, it's something that all content creators have to think about too, is that after a while, your computers that you're using for this, I mean, even if it's a Mac, you know, I talked to a lot of people and read, watched a lot of videos. And yeah, everybody was saying about the M2 chip on the Apple platform is kind of like ideally built because it has the GPU and the CPU, right?

Right. Chip.

Right. So that makes it really fast to do video. And Apple was able to do it in a pretty low-cost way where on the Windows computers, you kind of have to get a CPU and a GPU that are separate from each other.

Right.

And that can slow the data transfer between the two chips.

But just so you know, but in all reality, the hour and 30-minute video that we do here, right, I capture that at 1080p and nothing higher than that. It's in an MP4 format. It's not MOV. It's not like lossless. I'm not ending up with a 50-gig file for— or 60-gig file for— I'm ending up with a 10 or 12-gig file for 90 minutes, and then after I cut the ends and it takes the machine— even that, that older trashcan Mac Pro takes like 16 minutes. Yeah, so what's 16 minutes for 90 minutes of a show?

Yeah, right.

And if it's 6 minutes, oh, I'm not even done doing— it's fine that it takes 60 minutes because I'm still over here doing show notes and other things. Yeah, so in the scheme of things, I don't need it to be faster.

Right. Um, it's more the speed of how it displays on the screen of being able to edit. Right.

If you're doing heavy editing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. It's not the export necessarily. That's the issue as much though. That's, that's a good factor too, but I can start the export process and walk away and do something else. Right.

But I'm not doing a bunch of editing. I'm You know, I'm not even adding lower— I do that right here. You know, I don't need to do lower thirds or anything. So yeah, I get it.

Yeah. And then the newer technologies that are out right now, even on the Windows platform, um, they all have, uh, SSD drives now, right? Uh, more like I've got a 1 terabyte SSD in this new one and then a 2 terabyte kind of regular hard drive. So total of 3 terabytes in this thing where my The computer I had before was more like, you know, 2 terabytes or 1.5 or something like that. So it's a, it's a big upgrade. And, and unfortunately it does cost, you know, cost more money to get higher-end equipment.

That's right. But you know, that's, that's, but if you're doing audio, you just can buy that Walmart special, baby. It's all you need. It's all you need.

Well, Todd, I've actually even found that, uh, You know, big file audio files can take a little bit of crunching too.

Oh, come on.

Well, to take them from a WAV file into an MP3 file takes a little bit of time.

Okay. So the difference between 15 seconds and 60 seconds. Oh, wow.

You know, it can be a little longer than that. It depends on how, how big the audio file is.

Yeah.

Now you're, you're used to working with a Mac that is pretty fast, right?

So I remember I was a PC guy for many, many, many years, you know, so it's been a long time since you've had, but, But audio hasn't changed. Audio has so little level. Again, all you need is that $399 Walmart special. You don't need the new audio. Seriously.

I don't know that I would recommend that, Todd, that just get the cheapest computer you can get.

Well, you get what you can afford, and most people already have a computer anyway. So, I mean, a lot of this stuff is being done on their mobile, on their iPads too, you know, or whatever. Yeah. So Right.

And that's a good option too. You know, if we're going to talk about this topic, you know, I think increasingly more and more platforms are thinking about mobile for production of audio and production of video too. And it seems to be a pretty— I mean, I've done some video productions on my iPhone as well. Actually, I streamed our live show.

Yeah. I don't like doing video editing on a mobile. No, no, no, no.

I agree with that. But on the capture side, it actually can do a decent job. So. And that's, that's a good option for some, some people that don't want to invest a bunch of money in something right away.

And I think it's important that we, you know, stick on that topic that this does podcasting, audio podcasting, right, is, is really to the point now where the equipment, again, as simple as your phone your tablet, any low-end computer. Yeah, if you want to have a Mac, that's great, or you want to have a PC, it's great.

They are expensive. Those Macs are expensive.

The cheapest, believe me, for bang for buck, it's about equal. You can— sure, you can buy a cheap Windows machine, absolutely. And you know, that's always an option. So that's why Windows machines still sell, you know, significantly more than— more volume— because most— a lot of people do not have the budget for $1,000 or $700 MacBook. I haven't looked at what the cheapest Mac is these days, but I'll be honest with you, if you're just using a desktop, in my opinion, the, the biggest bang for the buck at Apple right now is the Mac Minis. From just from, uh, just from a, a, it's to me is really, they, and you can get an entry-level Mac Mini now for $600 plus.

So is that running the M2 chip that has the—

that's an M2, yep. But you know, if you go with the— let's see, what would be the cheapest? Probably MacBook Air is probably the cheapest laptop, um, and then you're, you're a thousand bucks.

So, and you tend to be a little bit more limited on that and the, the amount of storage that you have on them.

Now, if you get the Mac Air with the, with the M2, what is the price on that?

That's probably in the third—

no, it's $1,900 is the lowest level MacBook Air 13. No, with an M1. No, M1 is $999. With an M2 is, uh, $1,099 is the price on those right now.

But again, $1,099.

Yeah, $1,099 for the cheapest Mac Air M2. But then if you, if you go up a little higher and you go into, uh, does it say what the RAM is on that and what the, the, yeah, the MacBook Air 2 is, let's see here, you get, uh, 8-core CPU, 2 terabytes of, oh, maximum. I don't know what the minimum is. So what does this actually come with? Let me go and hit the buy button here and see what the minimum specs is. The 8-core is, um, 16-core Neural Engine.

16-core. Okay.

Yeah. It's, it's basically GPU or the CPU, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU.

Got it.

Um, 8 gigs of unified memory, 1080p FaceTime camera, 13.7-inch screen, MagSafe charging ports, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So. Yeah, $1,099 is really that base to get into an M2 portable MacBook Air at 13.6.

Those are pretty small. They have what, what, a 14-inch screen?

13.6. But if you want to go to a 15-inch MacBook Air, then you're $1,399. So obviously you can go into, you can go into Walmart and get a monitor. You get a 15-inch, uh, uh, computer that's got decent— if you're not doing video that will do stuff, $400, you know.

You just get a, get a little $299 companion monitor and you've got a big screen, right? If you want to, right, want to use it that way.

And they're not a screen— believe it or not, screens are even cheaper now too.

Oh yeah, so they're actually really cheap.

You don't need the portability. The Mac Mini— I will probably never buy another iMac. I'll probably never buy, um, I probably never buy it. I will only buy a probably Mac Mini and, for the MacBook. I'll buy MacBook Pro probably for my personal, but as soon as my— I, you know, I've got an iMac sitting in the office, and as soon as it, you know, as soon as it lets the smoke out, uh, again, I'll just replace it with a baseline Mac Mini.

So I had my experience with the MacBook.

Yeah, you're not— you, you didn't get convert— well, you were using a MacBook Air, so I was right.

Yeah. I mean, it was okay, but it, you know, I can, I can, I can just get a lot more done faster just on Windows. Cause I'm so much more familiar. You're used to it.

You haven't, you haven't, you know, you haven't swallowed the blue pill yet.

So no, that's true. I've got 4 Windows computers around here. So why do I need another Mac? Right.

So I have 2 Windows machines left in the inventory. The one that was basically. One of my employees that are no longer with us, his leftover machine and the TriCaster. When the TriCaster goes south, well, we're gonna switch to something else anyway, you know? So it's, we're not replacing that with no expensive gear, but yeah.

Just a side note, the Microsoft stock seems to be doing a lot better than Apple stock too. And I have a bunch of that too.

Oh, good for you. So cash it out and retire, Rob.

Well, I don't know about, That much. I don't have that much stock of Microsoft, but yeah, still have to work at things.

Yeah, I understand. So anyway, we're talking about computers, uh, and I know, you know, got to be a cool kid to have a Mac, but be honest with you, not everyone can afford one.

So, or you just aren't used to using one, is really in my case.

It's like, yeah, yeah, I'm too far down the rabbit hole of in the And here's what's funny is I don't need a MacBook Pro only when I do the show on the road and I do video. The rest of the time I'm just using Chrome. I'm in Google, I'm in Google Apps, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheet. I'm using Microsoft Excel, you know, I'm really not even tapping the machine's full potential. I'm not, you know, you know, a lot of people, I gotta have a MacBook Pro. Why? You just— most people are just running Chrome. You know, get that, you know, you don't need all that horsepower. You're just actually kind of throwing your money away, to be honest with you, if you're, you know, buying a MacBook Pro and you're not doing video editing at all.

So, you know, it's always good to have a fast computer that can work quickly and do things.

But again, if you're— most stuff today, the majority people do not need that heavy lift.

It's all in the cloud. That's right. That's what I mean. More and more, I agree with you. I mean, even, even the, the, the latest and greatest kind of, um, recording platforms, like I've been working a little bit with the Numano folks with— they have this hardware device that works with the cloud, right? So you basically just record and then it uploads via Wi-Fi to the cloud, and the cloud does all the processing of all the videos. So you don't even have to use your computer.

It's all good too. You don't have bandwidth.

Right. Well, well, but is that a big issue now? I'm not—

it is sometimes.

Yeah.

Where? At my house. If I didn't have Starlink, I'd be screwed.

Oh, okay. Okay. Well, certain areas of the country don't have great coverage, right?

And then don't even, you know, even there's, there's, there's places around here that I drive, my cell coverage goes to zero, right? You know, I only have one bar of cell coverage at my house. One bar, that's it. If I hold it by the window, I might get two.

Wow, just scraping by, right?

Hey, I did want to make a mention, um, talk about the Podcast Awards for a second. I do want to mention who— because there was a couple of things here that didn't, you know, um, our influencer category this year really was pretty impressive. Um, and I want to talk about that one, folks in there. Yeah, I want to talk about the podcasters who voted for podcasters, right? So the listeners' influencers are voted— are handwritten in by listeners. This is— they actually have to handwrite in the entries. And, um, so this year, the Podcaster Influencer of the Year: Adam Curry, Dave Jones, Podcasting 2.0, Alex Sanfilippo from Pod Pros, Dave Jackson from School of Podcasting, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience, and Kayl, Lori, and B. Rivera from Baby Mamas No Drama. Now, what was interesting was I've had a heck of a time over the years— well, over the years, the second year— going through, because a podcaster indicates their podcaster when they're nominating or voting. And I have then from that I pulled this data out the side. I took— I had ChatGPT code interpreter, uh, build the list this year. Wow. From the voting, I said, uh, look for similar names, similar show names, group them top to bottom, and then I had to spill it out. It gave me a number, and then I went into the doc and ran my own. I backed up, you know, especially the 1, 2, 3 was easy. 4 and 5 were, and 6 and 7 were closer. So I had to go in, but it came out correct. So I actually used ChatGPT to, to actually rack and stack the Podcast Influencer of the Year and be able to understand the nuances of people's write-ins. It was incredible. Um, our 2023 Listener Influencer of the Year is a completely different list, as you expect. Christine Schaefer and M. Schulterman from That's Why We Drink, Derek Hartley and Romaine Patterson from Derek and Romaine, uh, podcast. Calorie V Rivera again for Baby Mamas No Dramas. Kelly Jennings for Unspeakable True Crime Podcast. And Woody Overton of Real Life Real Crime. I'm gonna tell you, Woody Overton has built an empire of listeners. That is a big— well, all these shows that are in any of these categories have big listener numbers. But it was amazing though, in the end voting, where we had 22,500 people voting, sometimes the voting came down to a handful of votes. But, uh, Real Life Real Crime took the People's Choice Award. '80s TV Ladies, which I was— had never heard of up until this, won Best Female Hosted. Best Male was Real Life Real Crime. Best Black hosted was We Used to Talk About This at Work. Best Asian hosted podcast was Stories with Sapphire. Best podcast host in Spanish was Draga Mala. And Apple squeaked out above Spotify in the best podcast listening platform. So, and that's twice, but they were really, really close together. Uh, again, that's mostly listeners voting. So that gives you an indication.

Um, Todd, there was a post that Elsie Escobar, um, posted online, I think just a couple of days ago about her predictions for 2022. And one of them, and it plays into what you were just talking about, is, is that, uh, she felt that, uh, looking to the future, what we were going to see is the innovators in podcasting were going to start to emerge from people we've never heard of before, ones that are just out there, their heads down, cranking, cranking a, you know, a good quality show. I know a handful of them too that most people haven't ever heard of before, but they've built successful brands to their communities and they've built large audiences. Yeah, they're just not, you know, out there doing presentations or speeches or actively involved in the community. They're not mentioned in PodNews, or they're not, you know, out there going to podcast conferences or anything like that oftentimes. Yeah. And but they're just doing their thing. They're building audiences, they're building revenue, they're being very successful. But most people don't know about them.

Never heard of them. Right. Half these shows I'd never heard of before.

Right. And, and so what's interesting about that is, is that, you know, I think that there's a lot of innovation going on and a lot of people that are really focused and doubling down on just the core of what they're doing and they're not really participating in the podcast community per se. I would—

it takes time away from their, their work. I would tell, I would tell people listening to this show You would be well time spent to subscribe to every one of these shows that are in the People's Choice category and learn from them, and then take the 10 in your topic category and subscribe to them. Because if you think about this, we had 8.3 million listeners nominate, and it was purely a nomination— how total nominations Rack 'Em Stack 1 to 10. That's how you made the list. 8.3 million people voted for the 300 shows— actually 290 because 10 of them are platforms. 290 shows made the top 10 of these lists. And you will not hear— and we were up, we only had 5.7-some million the year before. 8. 3 this year, just over 8.3, barely, that voted this year for nomination period. You should listen to every one of these shows in this category and see what they're doing and how did they make, make the list to begin with, right? Now, there— now here's the thing, there are some shows that were heavy. Okay, so let's take a show that has high numbers. Obviously, Baby Mamas No Dramas, big show, big, big, massive show.

On your awards for years, actually.

I think this is second year.

Second year. Yeah.

Okay. So, but they may have got high nomination votes, but then when we did the weighting and basically the way we do it is we go through and we know who everyone voted for. Right, so I can, I can make the weighting so that the person that got the lowest number of votes will never have— there'll never be a— there'll never be enough listeners to make them win outright there in the voting pool. I guess that's the best way to say it. Or the top, the top show will never have enough listeners to— so it's weighted so that we give everyone a fair shake. At the end, big shows or small shows. And this may not be the best way to do it, but what it does is Baby Mama's No Drama did not win Best Female. They probably have the largest audience in that stack, I would suspect, but they didn't win. Why? Because again, we made other factors. There's, there's other factors there to But again, it doesn't discount that they're on the list. That's why I tell everyone that gets on the list, that's a huge accomplishment to be in the top 10. Yeah. And some of these folks that won, won by just 1 or 2 or 3 votes. It was tight in the end, you know. So there's again, there's not much— there has to be a winner, at least one. And everyone else, they're not losers by any means.

But I never have ties, Todd.

We've never had a tie. And what we— I do have written a policy on what happens if we do have a tie. We go back and look at the original nomination votes and see how many of the people— tiebreaker? Well, no, we go back and look and see what percentage of their audiences verified their email during the nomination process.

Got it. So what does that cause to happen?

That's like, that's if there's a tie, but we've never had a tie. We've never had to go back.

Okay, so what the outcome of that is determines who actually wins.

Will win if there's a tie. Yeah. And again, um, and as I talked about in a previous episode, I'd taken all these voter data and I went back and we did analysis this year without paying the firm $5,000 to do that and look for fraud and to see for voting trends, which is not illegal. It's not illegal for, a show to say, hey, um, why don't we tell our audiences to vote for these 3 shows? It's not— if they combine forces, it's not illegal for them to do that, but we could see that in the data if they did. Um, but I, I'm just— I'm really— I think you're right though, going back to the point you made. There's shows here, and there's some that I know You know, Stories of Sapphire. I'm familiar with her show. Um, you know, Dad's Drinking Bourbon, familiar with that show, but I've never listened to it. You know, there's other— and their host— and there's people on this list that I know, but most of these people we've never heard from.

Bedtime Stories.

Obviously, they're listeners. They're listeners, but they don't— like you said, they don't go to podcast events. Bedtime Stories for Insomniacs, Inside the FBI. These— I've never heard of this show, never. And I, and I had a hard time saying it. It's spelled These F-U-C-K-E-N Feelings Podcast. These— I said fucking instead of what he's really trying to say there. These Fucking Feelings Podcast. Never heard of this show. And watch the— and again, you don't see the the acceptance speech from the podcaster, and I'm like, who would have known? And by the way, I had the stats written down, so I tell you how it broke out for— and again, we, we don't have diversity quotas. Women shows won, uh, all women shows won 15 categories. Uh, men won 14 categories, and there was what I would consider a mixed show one. So it was either— interesting. So yeah, it was, you know, the ladies edged out the men, I think, by one, my final tally.

Well, and that's what the population, um, is too. There's more, slightly more women than men.

But if you think about, you know, and again, we, we don't put thumb on scales here, we don't have a quota. And if you look at the breakdown now, as far as the podcast influencers, it was definitely heavy male. 1, 2, 3, 4 men to a female couple. Or not couple, excuse me, a female host and co-host. Whereas the listener influencer of the years were 1, 2, 3 women and 2 men-led shows. So it, you know, the ladies won when the listeners were saying, hey, this is who we think are the influencers of the year. Whereas the podcasters were definitely heavy dominated by men. So it just, to me, it's, it's always fascinating to dig into this stuff.

Well, it's great that you're doing this, Todd, because it's exposing these shows that are obviously innovating and doing terrific stuff with their communities and, and growing their shows, and, and that most people in industry haven't heard about.

And that's That's, that's good news.

And the sports show, what the, what the overall news about the industry is, a feeling of pulling back. Well, maybe we need to be focused on, uh, success and who's finding that in this difficult market.

And, you know, the sports show has been dominated by football shows for years. Well, this year was football, but not U.S. football. It's called a show called Halftime Show from 95, I think, FM. I don't know if they're in Europe or where they are, but this It's all about what we call soccer, you know, and to me, I'd never heard of this show. Everyone else on this list, I almost knew. Fantasy Football Today, All the Smoke, Morning Combat, Packers Fan Podcast, and this halftime show, you know, and again, this shows if this— it's really, to me, it's— it— I always scratch my head about the whole thing on how it ends up falling out. Um, but, uh, yeah, so anyway, it was— I'm glad it's done. Now the trophy stuff starts.

But I guess I was thinking about next year, right?

Yeah, well, but you know, the challenge— days before you could do that, we've had trouble filling the Spanish category this year. Um, yeah, so this year I only had 1, 2, 3, 6 shows If you just registered a Spanish show, you, you made the final, final cut. Well, so, you know, this one category we got to work on, um, probably more outreach.

Yeah, because, Todd, I mean, you've been saying for years that there's— I mean, this isn't necessarily a Spanish language thing that I'm about to say, but it is talking about other languages, right? Yeah. And other, um, podcasters around the world. But you've always said that, you know, Brazil is doing amazing down there in South America. There's huge shows down there and nobody in the industry ever hears about it. So it's, it's, it's just another example of, you know, I think as an industry we tend to be a little myopic, um, about, um, who's, who's doing what and where and who's finding success and who isn't. And, and I know James Cridland does a terrific job of exposing things on a global scale. Um, but obviously what this topic is that we're talking about is that there's success that's slipping through the cracks, right? Absolutely. Not getting the attention maybe that they deserve to be given and a terrific example for others to say, well, you know, maybe podcasting is a great way to go. And maybe the example that these shows are setting is something that you know, is something maybe we should all be taking a double take at.

And I will say that about— I should look, but I think 90% of the winners have their own website.

So makes sense.

Makes sense. But yeah, I'll let you all dig through it and tear my— you know, have fun sending. You know, I did it first year. So far, no hate email.

I—

there's usually one or two That's pretty awesome.

So you've, you've dialed this in, right?

You know, because there has been years before where there's been, you know, you faced a lot of quite a beating, you know. So, and knock on wood here, and I'm sure something will come through. But, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a curious time in podcasting, to be honest with you. I really haven't come up from air since last Thursday. So what is happening in the podcasting space? There's something that I need to pay attention— I think I read PodNews and that's about all I do. It's— I don't have time really to look at too much more.

Yeah, I mean, that's where a lot of it comes out of. It comes out of the Sounds Profitable stuff. It also comes out of, um, just, uh, what the discussions are in Facebook and Twitter and those platforms too. But, um, yeah, I think that the thing that came out here most recently is the I guess Canada's decided to pull in podcasts into regulating media up in that country.

And if you make more than $10 million a year, I think, right? I wouldn't get too excited about this.

No, I mean, it's really written— the law is really written for online streaming services. Now, granted, certainly, you know, like Spotify could qualify for this and increasingly we've seen the platforms kind of shift more to this streaming ideology behind them, but it just depends on whether or not the government's going to view those, if they're going to draw a distinction between downloads and streaming or not. I don't know that they're going to, but it's an interesting thing. It was just really kind of a sign of the Others are saying that it's a sign of censorship and things like that and control of media that's coming down in Canada. But I don't know that that's 100% clear kind of yet. Um, but you know, as long as the government is getting involved in media and trying to license media providers and have some new laws and rules around the content that's in those, there's some areas of concern there. Well, is there any thoughts that you have on all this, Todd?

It's just not as big a deal. Everyone thinks it's a big deal. Is that to my, you know, people have been messaging me on Twitter and, or excuse me, on X and Facebook and, and, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm, I'm not going to read. Blueberry doesn't have to do nothing. No, I don't think so. And I think that you have to, you know, if you're doing more than $10 million worth of revenue in the country.

So, you know, that's in Canadian currency, right? Right. It's like $7.3 million in US dollars.

So if you're doing more than $7.3 million, then get your lawyer on the phone and, and, you know, see if you need to register or hire legal counsel up there and see what you need to do and But I think most podcasters are independent content creators. I would do nothing at this point. I wouldn't give them information until they really asked me to and made it more clear.

Right.

You know, check with your local regulators. I'm not a lawyer.

This is, this is so indicative of government too, because they, they put these laws out there that are kind of like, um, they think they're capturing everything, but they're actually not because they don't understand what they're doing typically. So, so this is, you know, just another example. I mean, I think we've seen similar things happen with the FCC and things like that with, um, trying to regulate media to some degree, and they've just completely missed the boat when it comes to, you know, online media, uh, on how to define it and how to talk about it. And maybe that's a good thing, Todd. Yeah, they misunderstand all this.

So it is what it is. Yeah. By the way, I don't know if you're ready to announce yet, but I hear you're going to have a Podcast 2.0 fully capable show here soon.

Yeah, I'm going to be doing a live show for kind of— it's under my own name and my own brand, but on the StreamYard channels. I'll be doing a, doing a kind of a call-in live show guest type of program starting—

call-in live show?

Wow. Well, not call-in live, but it's more like comments and stuff that comes through the StreamYard platform, right? So when you do a live show on StreamYard, I can, I can pull in comments from Facebook and LinkedIn, right, right, and, and YouTube into the show.

I see that in— wait, I see that in Restream as well, but I, I only pay attention to right where most channel information comes from anyway.

Right. So that's, that's something I'm going to be working on. Uh, it's a weekly program, so it'll be something that will happen on a weekly basis.

But the most important thing, it'll be lit in live, right?

Yeah, I'm planning on, you know, I'm, I'm working with the Blueberry platform to get this all posted.

Welcome, welcome to the dark side.

Welcome to the— what is the deal with the dark side thing?

I don't know.

It's, you know, I'm just—

light side, whatever it is. I I don't know. You've been, you've been with all those other platforms. So find time, you finally come over and use some great tools.

Well, I've always had the WordPress plugin, the PodPress plugin on my blog. I just haven't really taken advantage of it too much yet. So, but that's, that's kind of a separate project off my own blog.

Well, now you're going to figure out how easy it is to publish a show from your own WordPress website.

Well, eventually, that's not the first project. The first project is to get this new show done that's going to be live on all the live platforms as well as an audio and video podcast.

So it'll be RSS for video, RSS for audio.

Nice. So that's the idea. So anyway, it feels like a throwback to an earlier era, Todd.

And you can edit. Now stop. Now, don't. No, it's no throwback. You're in a— you're in a— you're in modern times.

I know I'm in modern times, but I feel like I'm, I'm doing something retro to the past somehow. I don't know why. I mean, that's what this show— this show's been doing this for, yeah, forever, 10, 12 years now. So yeah, it— but it— I think in some people's minds, podcasting is just audio, right?

Of course, you know. So then no one that listened to this show knows— everyone that listened to this show knows it's both. And actually, right now we're just a live stream on YouTube and on and on Instagram and on LinkedIn.

And yeah, so it's not a podcast right now, is it, Todd?

No, you're saying, and we're streaming to your YouTube and, you know, wherever else.

Yeah. So that's the, that's the example I'm trying to set with this new show is the, is how to take advantage of the latest technology. And, and I obviously thought that Blueberry was a good place to go to take advantage of the Podcasting 2.0 stuff. So And I wanted to have that as part of this experience.

I had gotten an interesting email from LinkedIn because we— let me see if I can find it. It's not in— I've got way too many emails going here. See if I can find it. Basically, it was like, oh, we, we see that you publish some live stuff on LinkedIn and that it on— you can, you can raise— it was all this thing. It was like, you know, like addressing me like I was— it was obviously a generated email that, you know, look, made it look like it was coming from somebody important. But I'm just like, okay, um, thank you for your, uh, for your, uh, you know, for your, for your noticing. Yeah, it was kind of funny, but I can't find it now. It's buried. I might have deleted it.

So I was trying to look at some of the other more recent news, and I, I came across this with this article. I mean, if you're subscribing to Pod News, you're probably seeing this stuff too, but, um, you know, AI is still infiltrating, right? Um, and getting integrated into more platforms. And so we're seeing this movement with the ReSound, uh, folks. They added 5 new AI-powered editing features. So I do think when, when Descript actually did the acquisition of Squadcast and then the growth of Descript, they— I think they kind of triggered something. And I think we're going to see a lot more AI integration into platforms.

Absolutely. Forward. You know, what's funny is I, I went to that event in Phoenix and I had a call today with somebody.

And, um, from that event that you made?

From that event, yeah. Right. And, uh, very influential, high-profile AI person. And, you know, I just, you know, he offered a free 30-minute consult, and I walked him through what our plans were and what we were doing, and he's shaking his head yes all the time, and da da da da da da, and And then I said, you know, I said, you know, we're looking at some other stuff. And I said, you know, I'm looking for the next big idea. And we had a little conversation. Yeah.

And, you know, I found something. Yeah, there's, there's stuff coming.

I know. Well, no, no, no. I, I, I, I came up with an idea. Oh, a new idea. A new, new, new idea. That no one else is doing. And, uh, it was, it was worth the, the full 30 minutes of that phone call because there was— it's always interesting to get different perspectives outside of your— so, you know, somebody that knows nothing about podcasting, right? And they said, well, how about this? And I'm— I can't take credit for it. And, um, I was like, oh, and, you know, we have a channel in our Slack group that It's called Idea Farm. And I'm typing away after the call and I'm like, what do you guys think of this? And it's like everyone was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. It's like 100 stars, you know, within a, you know. So there is lots of cool things that can be done if we think, if we sit and think about it long enough and, you know, change our perspective. Yeah. Of the, of the potential. The potentials that are out there, things that we could never do. This is, you know, basically, you know, there's some things you just can't— there's not enough hours in a day. You can't— sure, you can hire people, maybe hire 50 people. And then if you have enough manpower, you can throw at it. But some stuff is just, you know, you don't need manpower anymore. You just have an AI do it.

And Yeah, yeah, that's, that's really true. And I think that there's a lot of good ideas. I know I'm, I'm working with a partner that's out on the West Coast, uh, Robert Scoble, and we're, you know, he's got a database of 3,800 AI startups. That's crazy. Um, and so you start looking at, you know, all, all the new ideas that are starting to bubble, um, around AI right now in startups and integrations and plat— and new platforms that are being formed that are going to take take advantage of new smaller language models or trying to integrate more with media too. So we're starting to see that happen increasingly as well. And so it's going to be interesting to see what's going to happen over the next 6 months to a year, especially as ChatGPT gets this new upgrade that it has and how people are going to be using that probably quite a bit differently than they have been. And then you start looking at Bard with Google and Bing, that they're already integrating in with search results, which is also creating a whole other dynamic to AI search results too. I think—

yeah, go ahead. And I think we have to be careful. You know, I read this thing from ReSound about mix and master, detect filler sounds, trim audio, detect long silences.

It's a lot like Descript.

It is. But, you know, At some— you have to be careful on these tools too. Yeah, if you're going to have one of these tools do this automatically, you have to listen to the whole episode again. You have to listen to every second of that episode because I continue to hear stuff coming from other platforms that sounds horrible, sounds artificial. Sounds overprocessed. It's, uh, yeah.

So I think you can go too far, especially on the detecting and deleting long silences. I think you have to be careful with that. Um, if you set that number too low, it'll, it'll delete too much. Uh, so it needs to be, I think most of them default to anything over 3 seconds. Um, but that may, you know, that can take out some emotional pauses that can happen, right? Content too, right? So, you know, radio broadcasters have been using this technique for a long time where they'll, they'll say something and then they'll, they'll hold, they'll think about it for a second, they go, yeah, and, you know, and then they continue, right? And that could be done on purpose to create a situation, a relationship with the listener that causes the listener to think about something and then and give them time to think before you move on.

Because I often say, what do you guys think?

Right. It gives people time to process.

Right. And I usually follow that with, well, let me know what you think. Send me, you know, I follow that up with, here's how to reach me. You know, it, I, yeah, it's just, I don't want us to become over-dependent on any of this stuff.

And then also the other tool that I've been playing around with too is to detect the filler words. Oftentimes you can select what filler words you want to remove, right? So I think the default for Descript is like, I think they have like 47 filler words, which is a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. So like, just, just when I said, um, right, that could be immediately pulled out of the content, right? And it also creates a situation because it also edits video the same way, simultaneously, and it can cause these kind of like jerky motions in the video. So if you're going to edit video like that and audio simultaneously, you kind of have to be a little bit more still, which maybe not create the best kind of engaging viewing experience for your video too.

Well, if you watch the Podcast Awards closely, there is one jerk because I couldn't get my hand on the button fast enough and I— oh, I finger flubbed.

And yeah, was that a pre-recorded program that you did or was it live? Always pre-recorded. Always pre-recorded.

Okay. Yeah, because if you do it live, you're, you know, you don't have these options, you know, because, you know, that there was a beep, it would, you know, would have required the beep word because I mash the wrong button and change all the screen up and would have revealed, uh, someone I shouldn't have revealed early. And because you got to click carefully between screens because you go from nominee to winner, and if you click the button accidentally and hit the wrong thing, yeah, you just screw the whole— I did that. I used to do it live until I goofed up one year, right? So yeah, that's why I was so tired Saturday because I come in early on Saturday I have all the prep done, and then I sit down fresh Saturday morning and pre-record for Saturday night. So interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

So there was one place where I had to cut 7 seconds.

But that's all the editing that you did.

That's it. Just 7 seconds. 7 seconds and 70 minutes. That's all I had to chop. Well, that's not bad.

Not bad. It's all that, uh, training you've done from—

well, you know, it's life stuff. It probably could be better if I had a, you know, a teleprompter here. I probably could have done a lot better on the intro because I missed a couple of things, you know. So, and Adam Curry did a 3-minute spot for me on Podcasting 2.0. We did that in the— during the episode. By the way, he, um, he was out at, uh— and actually, I would have— Spark. It's— I'd have been at Spark, but conflicted. She'd asked me to come out, but he was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award at Spark Media Conference. So, and they also gave out a number of awards for other Christian podcasts.

So, um, but, and I saw that Dave Jackson was there, and yeah, it sounds like they all had a great time.

Uh, that's a great fun event. Everyone's super nice and super helpful, and, um, and Yeah, it is. It's just, you know, it's again, it's a segment of podcasting that have a part of that group have started to feel unwelcome at some events. So, you know, they have a place to go where, you know, they're not going to, you know, have to filter, I guess for better words, anything they say.

So, yeah. Yeah. So I did see the, the disclosure that, uh, Lipson's Advertisecast put out, um, unveiling September 2023 podcast ad rates. I thought it was interesting. It appears, uh, to have gone up, uh, 3.8% month on month. So I don't— that doesn't speak to the amount of deals coming through. All it said was that the average CPM model or the average CPM dollars are Went up a little bit.

But there was another layoff. Someone laid off, uh, 13% or something like that last week, wasn't there? Gordon Maxwell or somebody like that, I think. Wasn't— was it his group or—

uh, I'm drawing a blank on it right this minute.

Yeah, but there was a— there was another layoff, so yeah.

Oh, it was, uh, Malcolm Gladwell's.

It was— oh, I had it backwards.

Malcolm Gladwell.

Pushkins. Oh, so they laid off people.

Yeah, I think they let off like 12% of their staff.

Hey, Rob, uh, business is good everywhere. And, you know, and here's, you know, I, I won't say— I've had a couple of calls this week. Um, did have a call with, uh, I can't— I guess I can't say. I would just say this: I have a feeling, and I said last week who I was going to have a call with this week. I did have a great call with SoundStack— um, not SoundStack, I mean Sounds Profitable. Um, and I had a great discussion with, uh, Tom and Brian. I shared with them what I'd shared on the last show. Um, You know, and basically that's the first they'd heard of it. So I had a good conversation with them. And then I had— oh, that, that group, that group which I have heard nothing from, that they went silent.

Interestingly, after you said something.

Yeah, well, they went silent before the last show, so it wasn't because of the show they went silent, but they've been quiet since prior to the last show. Oh, but every indication Um, is that— and, and I, I actually was scolded on another show for, you know, saying, oh, I can't talk about this. Um, and what I couldn't talk about last week was nothing to do with advertising. It was about features of something. So the, um, it's quarter four did not come in like a lion. Quarter 4 appears to come in like a lamb. Mm-hmm. So everyone had high hopes for Quarter 4, and from everyone I've talked to, Quarter 4 has been just as, just as flat as the previous 2 quarters. So now everyone's hoping for a strong Q1, right?

Right.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think there's— I think there's gonna be more blood. I think there's gonna be more. I don't think we're, we're done here, right?

I think there's a lot of talk that there— we're gonna fall into another recession.

Yeah, I, I don't—

I don't know about here between now and the first quarter.

I think that— I think the average consumer already is strapped. Oh yeah, you know, with everything that's happened. And, you know, don't, don't wreck your car, ladies and gentlemen. Do not wreck your vehicle, right? Because if you have to go get a new car right now, you're gonna be paying 6% on that car loan, right? So don't wreck your car.

That's, that's holding back the whole economy, uh, all these loan rates, um, that are so high and are not acquiring things.

Well, you know, but people like my parents, they bought homes when they're paying 12 or 13% for on their home loans. So, you know, they Prices of the homes were a lot lower. Well, that's absolutely true, you know, as a percentage of the income, you know, but they were also, they weren't making as much money. So if they were, you know, if they had to buy an $80,000 home 40 years ago, you know, they were making the equivalent of less money too. So it was still a big number.

Yeah, but we've, we've overinflated or lowered the value of the dollar so much since in that time.

But yeah, I did also notice— strong outside the United States. You get great exchange rates for most countries you go to right now.

Yeah. I also noticed that the Lipson AdvertiseCast folks, that there's a little additional little comment about them that it says that the company, um, highlighted their brand safety tools from ComScore. So I thought that was a little bit of a tidbit. I didn't realize that I didn't know that Comscore was actually into brand safety and podcasting.

Did you? I may have known that. I may have, I may have heard that.

So that's a, that's a very competitive market right now. You got, uh, you got Sounder, you got Barometer, you got Comscore. I think you've got— I think there's a couple other companies that are into the brand safety and suitability evaluation, um, processes these days.

You want to talk following like a rock? Check this chart out. Oh, PodcastOne, $1.77, baby. That's a cliff right there. That is a cliff. Let's look at the 5— look at, look at— that's the 5-day. Well, they haven't even been on 1 month. Look at that collapse. Oh my goodness, $1.77. Now the question is, now here, here, here it is, and we're not— I don't This to me looks— might be an opportunity at some point. So the question is, how low will it go? How low will it go?

Was this indicative of the overall stock market? Is it that we're going to go this direction?

I don't know. But, you know, again, you know, I've told before that I played the pump and dump thing that was happening at Libsyn when their previous CEO, you know, and I made a lot— I made quite a bit of money doing that. You know, Brad's no longer the CEO of Lipson, so I know, but again, no, no, we're talking about the guy way before. I know, Chris, Chris, right? So when— and again, I'm not accusing any of the current company people doing— well, it's not even listed, it's not even pink sheets right now. But here's $1.78, I'm thinking, hmm, you know, they, they're doing— that company, you know, if they've got some talent over there And, uh, when should we buy this? That's the question. $1.70. I might, you know, I might buy $1,000 worth if, uh, it gets low enough. The question is, Rob, where should— where should we— where should— where should the line be? And we are not stock analysts. We know nothing, right? And what I'm saying here isn't qualifying for crap. If you buy it, you're going to lose money. I'm just telling you.

Right. I think it's, I think it depends on what you think the market's going to do on the advertising market.

I think it's going to go down, so that means it's going to go down more. But the thing is, this was probably already overpriced because they were flying on 8. It's almost down, you know, it's, yeah, some, maybe a buck, if it gets a buck 25, maybe I'll jump in and buy a little bit, but then I could lose my shirt, right?

But if it's only— PodcastOne is, and its value is very dependent on the advertising market.

Yeah.

Completely independent. That is almost like a gauge for what's going on in the advertising.

But it's getting low enough here that it would almost be safe to, you know, throw it— you know, you may not get much return. You only buy $1,000 worth. You know, what if it goes to $3 and you double your money? That's it. But, you know, it might be— it might be worth it. It gets $1.25, I might jump in there and get my Edward Jones accountant do a buy on 1,000 shares or something.

So would you feel better if PodcastOne was IAB certified?

Well, if I own the stock, I want them to triple, quadruple, five-duple count. Right.

But if they're not certified, they're free to have higher numbers, right? Yeah, I'm just joking. So, so anyway, it's, it's an interesting kind of category there.

Yeah. But it is interesting that it's $1.70, $1.78. Yeah, that, that's huge. You know, there's—

and it was announced that the Podcast One's going to translate its podcasts into Spanish.

Oh, well, that might help a couple of pennies.

I put it up to $1.80 or something, right?

But, you know, it's, it's, you know, buying this just, you know, to be just buying it yesterday. And you've already lost, you know, oh, this, this is, this is horrible. You know, since Monday it's, it's down, you know, 20 cents for a stock that's $1.78 right now. That, that's huge. You know, it's a huge drop.

So, yeah, so, oh, oh, go ahead and finish your thought.

So what, what do you all think? When do we, when, when should we all grab a little.

I'll spend $10 on it, Todd.

Okay, come on. You know, speaking of the guy that owns Tesla and Microsoft stock, you know, you might be able to risk a little more. Again, it's all it is, is it's like if you gamble in Las Vegas, if you step up to the crap table, if you're playing— Crap table? If you step up to the crap table, you could have $70 or $80 on the table. Every roll. So, you know, this, this is, this is, this is a 10-roll, and, you know, and your chances of hitting a crap in 10 rolls is pretty high, but you might hit your number. You might.

So it's probably no worse than what your expectation of a return on investment on this is. Is it a 1,000 multiple or is it 100%?

No, we'll be lucky if this gets back to 3 or 4 in a couple of years.

Right. You know, I think that's more, yeah, more reasonable expectation.

You might be lucky to get to 3 or 4 in a couple of years. So you might double, triple your money. So is it worth— if, if, if you have— if you put $1,000 into it, or you buy 1,000 shares, let's say $1,800 worth of shares, and you double your money in a couple of years, that, that's not bad for a little small roll of the dice. Yeah. You know, but again, it might go to 23 cents. Right. And get delisted and become worth toilet paper.

So. Right. Todd, did you hear that YouTube Music is adding auto downloads for podcasts?

I thought they already had auto downloads for music.

I think it's also for video too. Oh, okay. But it's not like See, I think their definition of what auto download is is different than all of our perceptions of it. It's not like downloading really to your device necessarily. It's, it's being encrypted and stored, um, for— I think it is encrypted. I think it would be— wow. Well, I, I would think it would be protected, right? It's not like the old days when you would download an episode of a podcast and it was visible you could transfer it to a new device or whatever. I believe that this would be an encrypted storage thing for offline playback, I guess. All right. So, and, and what else, what else has come out as of late?

So given, given the thought that I know you want to switch topics, maybe I made you uncomfortable here on the Oh, it's fine. If, if I think there's gonna be more blood in the water, I think there's gonna be more blood in the water for advertising.

Yeah, I do think so too. You know, I don't think we're out of this mess with the economy. I don't think by any means. Not at all, right? So it's just being able, you know, all of us to ride through it.

And if, if the Fed stops raising interest rates, if they— if they stop? I, I, I don't know. Everyone, you know, it's going to be— I think it's going to be a couple of years before they go the other way.

Yeah, I think the current things that I've been hearing is that we probably won't see interest rates drop dramatically until probably towards the end of 2024.

So closer to the election, right? Of course. Got to, got to lower the interest rates to the election. Got to, you know, got to right, help with the, the bad poll numbers.

Yeah, so it's gotta, gotta be a strong economy for those Democrats to get reelected.

Um, I, I think the way things are going, everyone's going to be fired if it doesn't melt down in the process.

So yeah, it's going to be a very, um, bumpy ride.

This might be the, uh, stay healthy, nice way of saying it. Don't— stay healthy, don't watch no mainstream media.

Oh, just to clarify something that I said earlier Pushkin Industries is going to lay off 17 employees. Oh, okay. Which represents approximately 30% of their workforce. Wow. So when I said the 12-13%, that was executive changes at the New York Times— or no, wait, the New York Times reported that WNYC—

oh, that's right.

Yeah, is, is cutting 12% or roughly 40 people from there.

Okay. Now, I heard on another podcast that some podcasts over there have like 20 people on staff. I, I heard that. I heard that. Is this— we're talking about WYNC, right? Is that who we're talking about? Aren't they— aren't they public radio?

They are public radio.

Yeah, correct. I'm repeating something I heard somewhere else, so this doesn't originate with me. Why do they have such high numbers of employees for a public— aren't most radio stations today in big markets 20, 25 people?

Well, there's two parts to WNYC. There's the broadcast part and then there's the podcast part, right? So they've usually operated kind of parallel but separate operations.

Because when I went into public radio in Honolulu, there was maybe 10 people there, right? It was not a big operation. They were— in fact, their broadcast area was like 3 studios in a basement. Yeah. And the upstairs was no bigger. It was like 3 or 4 offices. And that was the public radio for all of Honolulu. Now, New York's a different market. Yeah, but why do you need these? You know, it sounds to me— and again, don't they get their funding from grants and, and donations? And I just don't understand why these numbers— fundraising— I don't know why these numbers are so big. How?

Because of pullback on, on sponsorships.

Well, I sponsorships. It's not underwriting, sponsorship.

Well, underwriting and sponsorships, probably they kind of ride along too.

But how can a podcast have 20 people on it? That, that to me just blows me away.

Yeah, I guess it depends on the budget of the podcast, how big it is. So everyone—

popular, right? So Some of you that are out there that has successful shows, how many people do you guys have in your team? You know, Rob and I are a team of two, and, and, and guess what we get paid in? We get paid in donations and Satoshis. Now let me look here, what, what has come in today from a Satoshi standpoint? 1,701 sats from Mike Dell. Darkside boost for Rob. Uh, what else?

Yeah.

Oh, that's, that's, that's all boosts we've got today. So we got 50 cents so far. Rob splits our quarter each today.

We can each get a bubble gum.

You can't get a bubble gum for a quarter. You might get one of those one small pieces of—

that was a big round one.

Oh, maybe, maybe you can.

We are getting Jawbreaker.

We are getting some, uh, Podfans payments that are coming in, you know, at 17, 25, 40. You know, we are getting some Podfans. You know, by the way, when I stream on podcast apps, I stream at 100 satoshis a minute. So you folks are out there, don't, you know, don't be cheap. Don't be cheap Charlie. And let's see today, do we have any live boosts coming in? That's our live, live streaming Yeah, so we've got some people that are streaming it to 10 sats a minute. Uh, what else?

Yeah, about— well, that's incentive for us to just keep going, Tom. So let's do a 3-hour podcast.

Yeah, so that, you know, it at 10 sats a minute, uh, 100 sats every 10 minutes, every 100 minutes 1,000. Yeah, we make a quarter in 1,000 minutes.

I really like that model. It's like it pays off to go along.

You just keep talking and talking for 24 hours, we have enough for a hamburger, right? It's the thought that counts, doggone it.

Yeah. Well, you never know. Someday that may be, you know, a significant revenue source. I mean, you think about what could happen to Bitcoin.

On a per-share basis? Overall, we've— at Blueberry, we've had shows earn $10,000 in sats since we started doing this. So that's, you know, that's a grand total for all shows that have implemented. And I don't— I'll have to go back and look how many shows have implemented. So some shows get bigger numbers than others. Obviously, my show's gotten a few big boosts over time, so I've added to that total. But what's a big boost? A big boost is, you know, $25, you know, 10,000 sats or or 100,000 sats. That's, that's, you know, that's a big boost, right? Um, so, but again, $10,000 across all Blueberry shows ain't— you know, that's not, that's not small potatoes. But again, it was 100 shows or 200 shows, what was that number? Um, but yeah, I don't know either. But I, I just, uh, you know, I giggle a little bit here. It's, you know, But, uh, anyway, I lost the train of thought here.

Go ahead. Yeah, I also noticed that there was announced a new, uh, Shure SM7DB XLR vocal microphone that was announced. I don't know if you saw this or not.

No, I didn't.

But it has a built-in preamp, uh, inside, inside the microphone.

Um, is it XLR or USB?

It looks like XLR is the one that has this capability right now. I think that's the one that probably needs it the most. Yeah, yeah. It's the XLR version. And it looks like it gives a built-in dB boost of, looks like 28 dB.

Oh, so it's got a lifter right in it.

That's nice.

Yep.

Yep. So, but if you get a Cloudlifter, that gives you a +60 dB., which is basically double the amount of preamp.

So do you use a Cloudlifter with your, uh, on your SM7 there? On— yeah, you do. So, but on my, my, uh, microphone here, you know, my, my preamp is $800.

So, you know, yeah, but that one covers probably multiple microphones.

It does, it does. Yeah. And it's, it's adjustable. I have controls on it. It's a— and it's a— it's a tube. It's— what is the, um, the model I got here? Let me— it is a Solo 810, or is it 610 or 810? I think it's a Solo 610. I've had it for years, you know, when I was— I probably had it— I've had that for, oh my God, how long? Since I started podcasting almost. I first built my studio. Yeah, let's see what it priced at today.

So this new, um, SM7B or DB is gonna cost $499. It's actually $100 more than the, the original version. How much is it now? $499. It's a— it's about $100 more. Oh, and the, the original one like this one is doesn't have a preamp in it. Um, so yeah, so you're going to pay one way or the other, um, to get that preamp. Actually, if you get the model that doesn't have the preamp in it, I don't know if they're going to continue selling the old model, but you— I think the Cloudlifter is about $150.

Yeah, and they didn't have Cloudlifters when I bought this piece of gear right here. Universal Audio Solo 610, one channel tube desktop microphone preamp. Yeah, yeah, I think I paid $850 or something for it way back in the day.

Yeah, so this one, um, it, it looks like the new microphone, uh, will have the Shure name branding on it.

So who— and who's— whose Cloudlifter does it have in it? Does it say?

It's, it's just a built-in preamp.

It's not a branded preamp. Well, you know what they found is that a lot of people are not running— like, even this mic going into my Mackie mixer, there's still not enough juice. The amps— it takes a lot of power to drive this thing. It does. It does. So that's actually interesting that they have that in a— because I might sell my other SMB7 then and buy this new version. So I like the idea of having the preamp in it because that's the one I travel with, the one that I got that you and I— I don't, I don't remember if we horse traded or what we did.

Yeah, well, you You bought me an NV7 and I gave you my SM7B, right?

Or SM7B. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, I used to own 3 of those things, but I'm only down to 1 now.

Yeah.

So, but I, but I do have the, the NV7 though, right? Which I don't use that much, but I'm, I'm probably going to figure out a way to maybe—

it's probably a good part of good Well, you know, the challenge, you know, what I really need is I've got the original RODECaster and I do too.

And that's what I'm using here too.

And I, I've, you know, I, that RODECaster Duo, the smaller one would fit really nice on this desk. It would, it would give me back 4 inches of this desk, you know, and I have every inch of this thing filled, you know. In fact, I had a monitor go bad here and I had a monitor in the, on the rack that hadn't been turned on in 5 years and It was about this much bigger. It barely fit in here and I prayed and turned it on. It actually worked. So I didn't have to go buy another monitor. But yeah, maybe I'll make the— maybe I'll make the jump to that RODECaster Duo. It just— it takes up less room when you travel. So speaking of travel, I am going to the other side of the world in late November. For a little while. So, uh, yeah, you told me that. So we'll be— I'll be doing the show. We're gonna be shifting the show's hours, uh, because I'm gonna be 13 hours offset from you.

I think—

weren't we gonna do it later? Yeah, later in the evening your time. Yeah, right. Because I think— I think 6 my time will be 7 your time, so we'll We'll have to— we'll figure it out.

6 AM my time. Yeah, I know. I was trying to get you not to have to get up like you used to have to do on the show in Hawaii.

But the weird thing is I'm working, so I'm going to be working from 3 o'clock in the aft— 3 o'clock in the aft— 3 or 4 in the afternoon to 9 or 10 o'clock at night. So it's going to be kind of weird. So yeah, bizarre hours, but for a couple of weeks., right around Thanksgiving.

So, all right, we're coming into the holidays.

Yeah, I think we're, uh, we're just dragging this thing out. Do we get anything else to go through?

Um, I can't think of anything that's jumping out at me right now.

Yeah, it's been a little—

news has been semi-slow. We can, we can let everybody kind of find another thing to do.

Well, that's the way to keep them listening. It's time to move on, boys. Yeah, yeah.

You know, when you—

I think most of them are gone by now. I think so. I think, I think I, I know Dave Jones said he left after we started rambling the last show, and I don't remember what point we started rambling.

So maybe it was about the AI point, um, probably into the show.

We kind of lost everybody. Yeah, and we jumped around a lot on the last show. At least we didn't do that this show. Okay everyone, uh, yes, we will be back here next week for another— oh no, wait, wait a minute, am I going to be here next week? Because I'm going— what day do I leave? I think we're so good. Let me look, let me look, let me look. Today is October 4th. Yes, I don't leave until October 12th to go see my daughter, and I'll be back in time to do next week's show. So yep, so we're good for next week, and, um And then beyond that, then we'll— yeah, we're all, we're all good until the middle of November. So no changes until then. Otherwise, thanks everyone for being here. I'm Todd at blueberry.com, at Geek News on X, at Geek News, at geeknews.chat on Mastodon.

Yes, I'm on X, Twitter as well, uh, at Rob Greenlee and robgreenlee.com. And I am kind of posting articles to that blog, trying to keep them updated, and I've updated that website. So trying to do that. And then I'm sure you'll hear from me as, as I roll out this new show coming up next week for on the StreamYard channels. And then I'm going to put it out as an audio video podcast. So you'll be able to capture all that. But if you want to send me an email, you can send it to Rob robgreenlee@gmail.com.

I'd love to hear from you. I am looking for a new theme for both New Media Show and geeknewcentral.com for WordPress. So if you have a favorite—

aren't you guys rolling out some new themes on your back end?

Well, Geek News Central is its own deal.

I—

that's on my own branding deal, right? Yeah, it's my, my— on my own infrastructure. So, um, I'm looking for, you know, I could roll out the new Blueberry theme, it's no big deal, but I, you know, what's your favorite blogging, podcasting WordPress theme that you're using right now, uh, let me know. It's time for, uh, time for a fresh refresh. And, uh, so I'm just, you know, looking for a new template.

Do we want to do a, do a refresh on the, on, on the COVID art for the show too? We could try it. If, if you, you know, one of our viewers of this wants to take a stab at it, we'd love to see your ideas. Absolutely. Cover art for the show. And, and Todd, I don't— you've been generating episode-level art through AI tools, and I, I think we're going to be able to do that more, probably more effectively in the new ChatGPT tool potentially, right? That's, that's coming up with the integration of DALL-E.

So yeah, because what happens is we get analysis of this show and suggest to me, and it's always like, show Google and Apple, or, you know, try— it tells me like things that the image generators are not good at. So I have to use my own imagination to determine what we should do for cover art. Now, I'm dragging the show out here now, but if you look at last week, what I did was I showed, uh, and what it was supposed to be was, uh, it's a pile of cell phones and, uh, people throwing their cell phones away because I couldn't figure out how to show the Google exit strategy. So I said, show me a pile of Android phones and people in protest around a pile of phones, and that's kind of what it gave me. And then The other one, the image was who is on the secret podcast group. So the other image was is about these people sitting around a table, you know, the secret podcast committee. So, right. If you have ideas and if you're on Midjourney and you figure something out that looks good for our episodes, feel free to send it over. I'm not hesitant to change stuff out. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, everyone, for being here. We definitely appreciate it. We'll see you next Wednesday. Same As they would say in Batman, same bat channel, the same, same channel.

And we're always here, aren't we, Todd?

That's right. All right, everybody, thanks. Take care. We'll see you next time.

Bye-bye.