Podcasting trends over next few years?

All right, we're back with the New Media Show, um, live again. And I think we're waiting for kind of Todd's distribution points to spin up a little bit, and we'll get the show going here in a second.

Yeah, we're good, Rob.

Okay, let's do it. Todd and Rob in the afternoon. Hey, afternoon delight with Todd and Rob. Oh yeah. All right, Todd, it's great to be back doing the show. It's a little bit later. I think we're going to be doing, uh, this later edition of the New Media Show until the end of the month, and, and then we'll be back to, I think, our normal time.

But, uh, normal scheduled time, August. Yeah, I, I depart here on the, uh, on the 28th, and, uh, I'll be back back, uh, well, you know, in my temporary studio.

Yep. Well, I'm sure it'll be a good, good studio. You've got all, all this really good equipment, so you should be able to get back up pretty quick. It's just, it's not going to be the same as what you had before.

No. And I have a plan, and, uh, you know, hopefully I'll have, uh, everything fully engaged in about a month. But, you know, I'll be able to do shows, no problem, right off the get-go. Yeah, it won't be as fancy as it was before, but it has been for 2 months.

Yeah, and what you're doing right now is a good example of what's possible for all of us now, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's easy to move around for sure.

Yes.

It seems like every time I start my show, my glasses look like they're crooked.

I don't know what that means. Does that mean that, you know, that your face is crooked or the glasses are bent somehow? Did you get knocked around or something?

Yeah, well, you know, these are older glasses, so, um, yeah, probably, probably, uh, probably both of the above.

Yeah. Well, now, I mean, we're kind of in the countdown to Podcast Movement, um, coming here in, uh, kind of middle to towards the latter half of, uh of August. And, and I did book— and I don't know if you saw the email, but I did book Dan Franks to join us, uh, next Wednesday to talk about Podcast Movement and what's going on down there.

Well, we haven't talked to Dan in quite a while.

Yeah, so, so it'd be great to have him back on. But I got a— I got a commitment that he was going to carve out some time for us. Um, so I think that's great. It'd be great to hear more about what he's planning to do at Podcast Movement. And there's also been some, you know, some news that's come out this week as well. And as you could see from the title slide of this, this episode's going to be really kind of trying to drill into kind of both of our views of what we see happening in the podcasting space or the trend lines that are moving us towards kind of certain things over the next, like, maybe a few years or 10 years or something like that. And I think, I think usually, Todd, I think we've had this ability to kind of see the, the big trend lines in the podcast industry and be able to kind of foresee and throw those ideas out. I, I don't think that we've always been 100% accurate on this stuff, but I think a lot of the ones that I've kind of identified here are You know, I think we're seeing stages of those happening right now. So I'm sure most of it won't be a big surprise to everybody. But the big news, I think, this week was an update to Overcast. And I thought we should definitely give some kudos to, to Marcos, who's, who's been kind of a single-handed ship on that, that app on iOS for many, many years and and it's good to see that he, uh, has an update on this 10th anniversary of his app. So I don't know what you think about that, Todd.

Well, you know, he's, you know, and he basically said, please everyone that's a user, uh, give it a few days before he's— before they start putting him on blast, um, on what it looks like. Gives it some time. I think what it's— what it appears to have happened is he's been able to, you know, update the code base. And, um, you know, he's got something now that he can easily develop and add to. You know, when you have tech debt, just like any other platform, uh, even in creating, uh, apps, it definitely— 10 years is a long time to be on the same code base. So, um, definitely, uh, he has a platform now in which to, I would assume, more than likely be able to roll out more features going forward much easier. So, uh, yeah, 10 years. And, uh, well, I haven't seen too much, uh, feedback on, uh, I haven't even looked for feedback on Twitter to see what people are saying, but I'm sure people are. Also, I just, hey, Rob Greenlee, do you want to note So just so everybody knows, um, because of my work schedule, I typically work until about 4:30 in the morning here. And being 8 AM here, um, someone said last week I looked a little haggard. Yeah, I've had about 2 hours of sleep.

Yeah, this has been a crazy time zone schedule for us to be able to do this show.

So yeah, yeah, normally I sleep until noon. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I apologize if I look a little sleepy face on video and a little more crusty on my voice, but I try to wake up like 30 minutes prior to the show start. But, uh, you know, after only being in bed for, you know, really about 2 and a half hours, it, uh, it is what it is. Like, it's like doing the show before when I was in Honolulu and doing the show at 7 AM. Remember those days?

Yeah, I think you had to get up like at 6 AM or something like that to be able to get, get all ready and stuff.

Yeah, but it was easier because I'd slept all night, you know, it wasn't like I was, you know, only been in bed for 2 hours.

Yeah, and back then I was on the West Coast, so it was only 3 hours between us.

Yeah, yeah. But anyway, I just wanted to add that there. But yeah, and you know, I think Overcast, uh, you know, they still have a, you know, probably the highest independent, um, percentages of any app out there. So, uh, you know, congratulations to, uh, to Marco.

Yeah, I think so too. And, and I guess this is the, the document that was shared. I've got it up on the screen here, and it just, it basically announces the 10th anniversary of Overcast 1.0, and he's happy to, to launch a complete rewrite. Um, so it's 10 years in coming, but it looks like what's new is a much faster, more responsive interface, more reliable, and more accessible. So it sounds like he's built in probably the latest libraries that Apple's had in their, their kind of codebase and so in a more modern design, which is basically it's an important thing to do now as well. And improvements throughout, such as undoing large seeks and new playlist priority options and easier navigation. And I guess there's, there's more that's part of that as well. What's not, I'm not quite sure what that means, but most features, overcast is still overcast. So it's not like he's changed any of the core, I think, of it. I think these are just all improvements.

Yeah.

So, and I think that's great. He says, about the business, I'm still one-person operation with no funding or external ownership. Serving only my customers. So, you know, you—

that's saying something.

That is saying something. You know, he's been running this thing for 10 years, and I, I'd say it's probably the second most, uh, maybe oftentimes maybe more respected podcast app than even Apple Podcasts at times in the past, especially.

Yeah, well, if you also consider that he's been able to survive and live you know, a lot of apps can't, you know, they don't make it from a financial standpoint.

Yeah, he's gone through some changes to his app over the years. I think he had some kind of more premium features in the past to unlock, you know, certain functions in the app and things like that, and I think he backed away from that because I think it was a hurdle to adoption of his app. And I think so, he's, he's had to keep himself kind of lean and and, and mean to be able to, you know, keep it all going, I think. Yeah.

So, but that's, you know, um, man, it's good on, good on him for getting that done. And, uh, I don't know if there's any Podcasting 2.0 features in there or not.

Yeah, yeah, he didn't mention any announcement here, um, but I'm sure we'll be hearing more. And as people use it, they'll be able to see those things if they exist. So, and that's another topic that's been coming up, uh, this week that I, I've been kind of involved in some threads on Exxon is, is the value for value, um, kind of controversy right now around whether or not people think it's gonna, it's gonna live or die or how it's going to evolve to to evolve past this whole LB kind of question mark, right?

Right. Yeah. You know, again, value for value goes beyond just the, the crypto piece. And, you know, I think there's a way ahead here. And, uh, you know, it's— and we knew, um, that they were a weak link in, in the chain. And, uh, any podcaster today that is wants to, wants to participate, you can still use good Albi, but there is more hurdles, um, than there were before. So yeah, they're working on a solution, and I feel probably within the next month, the month or so, probably things will be back on track. But it was a big upswing to get podcasters engaged in the very, very beginning. So I guess the main thing to remember is A value for value doesn't just, you know, value for value, a big part of it, especially on the crypto side, was not necessarily the ability to earn a huge number of dollars. It was really about the engagement of the audience members through the podcasting 2.0 apps and being able to instantly boost and send a comment to a show. Now, Today we are live with value for value. So, you know, from that perspective, you know, I'm pretty bullish. People continue to send us streaming sats. So I think that for those that are using it currently, there's not any impact. But overall, over time, there could potentially be I guess for better words, a little slower adoption in the next, you know, the next few months until we get a new system in place, which I think has been pretty much figured out.

Yeah, I would think that the only real way that you could, if you're in the US, that you could probably get an Alby account would be if you used a VPN to access it outside of the US, right?

No, all Blueberry customers can still get a GetAlbi account. It's not a problem in the US. In the US, yes, absolutely. Okay. Um, but they have to go, but they have to go to a little different setup than what was initially, um, offered. And it's all about custodial and non-custodial wallets. And I don't want to get too much into the, to the weeds here. But, you know, basically the US government is worried about people moving money around without knowing who it is and being a banking entity. And, uh, one type of wallet that you can basically take care of yourself, uh, you are the, you are the banker as your own individual person, essentially. Probably got that wrong, but Yeah, so, but for now at least, Blueberry customers can still get an Alby account, but they have to go on to their new system, which is, you know, less than perfect.

Yeah, and then one of the limitations has been just the support of being able to fund the initial kind of trough of, you know, Satoshis through the current financial system.

Fountain and Podfans, they all have their own system. And getting— if you're a listener utilizing one of those two platforms, you'll easily be able to fund as a listener the ability to be able to send sats back to a podcaster. But the bigger challenge for podcasters now is you kind of have to pre-fund your wallet to a certain extent to make sure the transactions go through. But again, we don't want to get too complicated. I think there's a way ahead. I think Adam has figured out a way to go, and they're working dutifully. Matter of fact, I got a message from— I asked Adam, you know, where they were at in testing and what was happening, and said, we're working on it. Uh, Mary Oscar is going to post a demo. He's from Mary Oscars, uh, from, uh, from Fountain. He says, with a bit of luck, about to get a lot easier for podcasters, especially listeners. So, uh, you know, it's forced the index to think and to, I guess for better words, adapt. And I think in the end there'll be some, some pains initially, you know, kind of switching around, but I think once we do, I think it'll be a much better Much better solution.

Yeah. Does that mean that we're, we're going to be likely moving away from Satoshis?

No. Nope. Satoshis are still going to be. Okay. Uh, it's just a new way of— we don't have to use GetAlby anymore. That's the key. And it'll be much easier to get dollars to Satoshis and vice versa. There won't be, um, as much difficulty within the making the transactions happening.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

I mean, if they can do that and make it easier for people to sign up and, yeah, get on board and get, you know, a pre-funding of sorts, I guess. I know. Yeah, that's how I got started with it. I got, I got pre-funding from, from PodFans.

Yeah. But my thought was initially that maybe we would, and I still think this is a valuable option, is, you know, the ability to buy tokens, um, with cash and just have a token system. But then there has to be all kinds of— you have to have a clearinghouse and you have to— it's not as clean either. Nothing is easy. So I think this new Satoshi thing is going to work out fine. Okay.

Well, I'm excited to hear what that is. I don't know, we should have Adam on or somebody, or Dave or something.

Yeah, when we get to the point where we're able to adopt something, you know, again, they've just within the last couple of weeks realized the, um, the, the opportunity. Hey, one thing I do want to say is it's kind of ironic, uh, Dave Jackson sent, uh, 2222 stats a couple of weeks ago, and, uh, he said, Todd, you got me excited. I'm sick of the BS as well, but Dave's made a move. Dave Jackson's off to, uh, doing something else, and, uh, he's being pretty mum about it, but I guess we'll find out in about 11 days.

Yeah, and I also heard, uh, via email, uh, today that, uh, Podfest has made some big moves here too, um, in getting additional investment and getting some more leadership on their, on their team that, that's coming from a couple of new guys that have, I guess, some interests in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world that are going to come on board and have more and provide more resources and maybe grow the podcast platform more. So that was publicly announced today. Um, so I'm trying to figure out a little bit more from Chris on that, um, because obviously I'm involved in the Hall of Fame with him. And yeah, so trying to understand what these changes are going to mean for, for his events.

Did they name who the people are?

Yeah, yeah, I don't have it in front of me right, right now, but, but yeah. I mean, I think it's probably, probably makes sense to, for Chris to come on after Dan and then give us kind of an update on what that all means, right? Yeah, so it'd be good to, good to do that as well. But it, it looked like a real positive thing. It looked like Chris Kramitzels was really excited about having some additional support, um, on his team and, and trying to build out a more kind of you know, I think a more organization per se. It's not like he hasn't had an organization behind him, but just a, a deeper bench of sorts, I think, is what he was kind of implying.

Yeah, well, good for him.

Yeah, so I'm, I'm definitely excited about that because, I mean, I'm, I'm heavily involved in the podcast event as well, so, so it's, it's great to see. You know, some positive things like this happen is definitely a good thing. So there was also another topic that came up this week in relation to the Podcast Index. And here, let me pull that up as well here. And, you know, a lot, a lot of people are very, very familiar with this, this tracking chart off of the podcastindex.org website that you can go to and, and see how many total podcasts in the index and, and how many shows, um, you know, over the last 3 days, how many shows over the last 10 days. And I got a, a tweet thread, uh, from Neil, uh, Veglio, uh, who was, was raising a, a good question because it's not really clear. I mean, if we look at this page, it says shows published in the last 3 days. Now that, that I've always meant or understood that to mean episodes, uh, published in the last—

no, it means the number of shows that published a new episode, but it doesn't say that anywhere on here. But it is though. Shows published in the last 3 days.

So, right. That's what raised this question thread about, isn't that new shows rather than episodes though? Because it's not clear on that page. So I sent a text message to the Podcast Index saying, you might wanna put on there just a little bit more clarification that this is shows that have published a new episode because it doesn't say that on there.

And one thing to, and one thing to understand too is the index does not automatically include every new Spotify spam show that basically launches. They have a minimum number of episodes a show over at Spotify has to produce before, and I don't know what its benchmark is, but they, maybe it's 7 or something like that, but they have before they're even able to be listed in the index because it was just throwing the numbers off because, you know, basically, you know, several million dead shows and someone would come in and do a test, test, test. And that was, you know, counted as a new episode. So they've been out of the picture for a long, long time. So, and it would include a brand new show. If there is a brand new show that would be included in those numbers. But because those numbers are updated essentially, I think every 24 hours, you're just pretty much guaranteed that, you know, over time, the trend line is that there's, you know, 326,000 shows currently are publishing a new episode in, you know, in the last 30 days. So I don't think there's much You know, you, you can, you can look at data 25 ways to Sunday. Um, you know, we had a, um, uh, a little hiccup in our directory and where some shows were not getting updated as often as they should have been with us pulling RSS feeds. So, you know, that came to light when we were getting ready to do our, uh, monthly stats report. I said, hey, hey, you know, something's missing here. Because the numbers are down. So we didn't publish that number. A matter of fact, I gotta publish that post tomorrow, um, basically looking at that, um, because we knew our number was wrong and we didn't want to skew, um, our report from month to month. So, um, you know, we, we kind of see a similar number as well because we have a, we have a very full, you know, a directory of shows. So it's, it's, let's just say 300,000, and, uh, you know, give or take some percentage points here amongst friends, and still the numbers are dramatically down, right?

I mean, frankly, even the total podcasts in the index number is, is off by hundreds of thousands.

Um, well, I don't know what their total number is right now in the, um, in the index. There's a spot where we can find that if I can find my link to it.

And well, this is, uh, this is actually pulling live from the site. Um, it's not a screenshot, so—

oh, I know, but I'm talking about— but that isn't the total number of Oh yeah, the index. Yeah. So there has been a cleanup of the index, right?

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say, is that it looks like that there has been significant cleanup that's happened. And it was my understanding that the cleanup really only happened if the RSS feed link was not operational anymore.

Well, there's— it's just like us. We have criteria. You know, the RSS feed is down, you know, we give it so much time to come back up and then same thing goes with media. The media is gone, uh, we give it so much time before we, we take the— and we run a script basically every month that, that does that automatically. I'll see if I can, while we're talking here, I have an XML link that basically, well, it has all the numbers and basically has a whole list of stuff. So, but again, 4.2 million in the, in the total index. And, you know, Apple doesn't say there's 4.2 million. So this includes a lot of sources, includes music feeds, includes stuff from— so there's, there's just a wide variety of, of feeds there.

Yeah, and Apple doesn't maintain any kind of a current, like, daily count website on how many podcasts in there. They only do it via, you know, like a press release or something like that. Right, right. And it's very rarely updated. I think the last number I saw was like 2.5 million. Yeah. So they're actually doing a, a deeper kind of filter against, against the content out there. I'm not exactly sure what their filter criteria is, but I also know that not everybody submits their podcast to Apple either. That's true. I mean, that may become a shock to some people to, to realize that that's the case, but that's been the case for many years. Um, that because Apple has created kind of a hurdle, a, a bigger hurdle to get your podcast into their catalog than, like, let's say Spotify has, um, that, that has been a little bit of a barrier to people submitting their shows over there. And sometimes people just want to be in Spotify, but the problem with only wanting to be in Spotify is that there's like 100 other apps that they're missing out on, right?

Well, and there's also a challenge too, um, Spotify, you know, there's— we, we're seeing this from time to time, um, and there's no— and I don't— we have anything conclusive. I think we talked about it before, but Spotify may be turning off RSS feeds too. Well, they're doing— well, they did one thing that's interesting. They, they had the Apple block tag, uh, you're basically saying, hey, don't list me on Apple, turned on on some of their feeds. Um, and then some of their feeds weren't even turned on. Uh, you know, we've had people come over to even at Blueberry and say, hey, our podcast is not in your directory. And we said, well, You know, you don't have an RSS feed. Um, do you go turn it on? And maybe that's just content creators accidentally turning it off and not knowing the ramifications of that as well. Hey, by the way, uh, Dave made a comment to the 29th in the chat here. He said the 29th. So no hints on what you're going to be up to, my friend?

I mean, I, I don't know for sure because Dave, Dave's been pretty tight-lipped about this, but the coincidence with Podfest and him is, it is, is not— I don't know if that's a coincidence or not.

So is he doing something with Podfest?

I don't know. I have no idea. I'm just thinking there's a coincidental timing here.

Um, well, there was a, you know, there's this— and he said something to the effect it's more along his wanting to do education. Right.

So, okay. Um, we're just guessing right now, Dave.

Dave's been pretty tight-lipped. We're speculating, and it's probably, um, you know, maybe there's going to be a, you know, a big announcement by some company or something.

So anyway, congratulations. Yeah, and it's kind of interesting too that we, we should mention this as well, is that, uh, just the last couple days there's been a lot of staff changes over at, uh, Lipson.

Um, the two founders, they've been, uh, exit— they've had a lot of people exit.

Yeah. So, well, both, both Dave and Trevor, the two founders of AdvertiseCast, um, that then got changed into Lipson Ads, um, they've, they've both left the company now.

Yeah. I saw that announcement in Pod News.

Yep. And now Dave's left, and so I don't know if there's a changeover, people changing roles at the company.

Rob Wall is going to be the last man standing over there.

Well, Rob and Elsie, right? Those are the, those are the two Hall of Famers that are still there, right? So, so we shall see, you know, what's going to happen over there, but Changes are definitely afoot.

Dave says, any news on that service you are talking about that helps with ads from radio Todd was talking about? Had a call with them this afternoon, in fact. So, yeah, soon. Soon we'll have— working out the particulars of the deal. For what it's worth, The site's public, so I could probably share the site, but I'm going to try to maintain some exclusivity as much as I can until we get the deal done. Um, some— someone can find it. Um, Tom Webster knows the— knows the site. He was the one that introduced me to you know, the owner. So it's not like the site is private, but it's had limited rollout, and there's probably only about 400 podcasters currently using the platform, none from Blueberry as of yet.

And it looks like, uh, our arena posted a good question here. What does value for value mean to you? Well, just to summarize it, it's basically just an exchange of value kind of platform that enables, um, all the parties involved in a, a podcast to, you know, share and receive, um, some level of compensation for their time and efforts, right?

It, it's— there's a website called valueforvalue.info that you can go over and look at, and the model, at least the Podcasting 2.0 model, There is a philosophy that is basically, I'm just going to read from the website. Excuse me. My 2 hours of sleep is creeping into my voice here. It's a monetization model, a content format, and a way of life. It's about freedom and openness, connection and free speech, sound money and censorship. Resistant. So it's, it's, um, as far as a monetization model, it's, um, and the, the, the website here says, let's get one thing out of the way. Monetizing non-scarce information is difficult. The default monetization model at the online world is advertising, a model that relies heavily on surveillance and gamable analytics. Next section about his content format. There isn't one content format when it comes to Value for Value. When it comes to podcasting, including your listeners into the feedback and content creation loop is tried and tested. And by saying the way of life, Value for Value is more than, again, a monetization scheme. It's a lifestyle. It's a mindset of abundance and fairness, a new way of looking at value, value in general, but digital value in particular. So Again, valueforvalue.info really kind of lays out the mindset of what value for value is. But for me, what it really means is if we provide you valuable information, our insights of what we, you know, on this show here, you know, Rob has tried to keep it a little more structured here recent, but if we're providing value to you, we would love value back in one of three ways. Your time, your talent, or your treasure. So the treasure being a donation to the show, whether it be a PayPal donation or whether it be a send us a check or live streaming sats back to the show with Boost. As an example, we did get a Boost here just a few moments ago. Came from Matt. He says, thanks guys, hope you're enjoying the summer. $51.50, that's what he just sent us in just way of instant feedback, uh, to the podcast. Now the time and talent is you can help us with research, you can help us with social promotion, um, whatever you want to donate to the show in your time and talent is really what it boils back to. Some people don't have time. Some people are more followers than wanting to help. So the value can come back to the show in a cash donation. So, you know, that's kind of where I lay in this show. And again, it's not any— and I know some people in the value for value world are going to cringe when they say donation. But you are, you're providing a donation back to the show for the whatever value we're providing. And I think because of the way we do this show, it's kind of unique. It's our perspectives. It's not necessarily a tech show like I do twice weekly where that information is freely available from multiple sources. I do some commentary on that. So is that Is that show, um, follow along and not having enough scarce information to make it more valuable? Probably. Um, but again, if, if you provide insight on your content, uh, and again, it's, it is truly a— you have to have a real dedicated, uh, thought process if you're going to implement this because you have to ask people to give you money. Um, Matt says, uh, Matt Madero says, did you catch my video about V4V? That would be a good thing to link, Matt, in the, in the chat here.

Yeah, I was gonna put it in there too and see if I could post it.

I have it here. Yeah, so let's see if it'll get everybody. But again, I always tell people this is just one of many opportunities you would have as a content creator to, to earn money. You know, you maybe you want to turn on programmatic. Maybe you want to have an advertiser. Maybe you want to create premium content. Maybe you want to create content that is released early that doesn't have any advertising in that people pay for that without advertising. There's, there's lots of ways to monetize, and the best part of this is you choose what you want to do. Uh, right. Rob and I have, you know, gotten some nice donations over the years, um, but it's not a basis of the podcast.

Yeah, it's, it's basically a, a donation model, you know, a donation model that can be utilized. It doesn't transfer typically large amounts of money. It's usually small, small transactions. The numbers can look kind of large, but that doesn't translate into a lot of, you know, dollars. Right. But one of the things that I've always kind of really, really liked about it is kind of this, this ability for a show and the consumption platform or the listening platform as well as the audience to exchange Satoshis with each other, which is a form of a digital cryptocurrency of sorts. It's a derivative of Bitcoin, but to be able to have that exchange, right? And these streaming Satoshis is a very interesting model that is based on how long you listen, right? You're gonna contribute so many Satoshis per minute of how much you actually consume the content, which is a way of providing kind of like a stream of value based on what you have received from that show. If you listen to half the show, then you only contribute the equivalent of how many minutes the half of the show was.

But there's something that's really key here about the value-for-value model in streaming Sats and donating Sats via Boost. Mm-hmm. Everyone wins in my, basically my value chain. Let's just use that word. It's probably not the value blocks. I can set up splits. And if you're using Fountain, they, they take a fee. So they win every time you do a boost.

So they get a cut too.

They get a cut. Get a cut. So I, I have set up splits where in this show Rob gets 50%, I get 50%. It's automatically split to our wallets. And then, um, I can set up splits to third parties as well. Some people have 10, 15 splits in their value block to be able to send donations to other people. At Blueberry, um, We charge a 3% fee. So how we basically, um, are part of the value chain, um, you know, especially because PowerPress today is, um, about maybe one-fifth of the customers that use Blueberry are actually hosting with us. The others are hosting with Libsyn, Podbean, Captivate, whoever. And we earn $0 from them, yet they get to use. So, but by them enabling value for value, we're able to earn just a little bit, um, from, uh, those that are using, uh, the plugin without having, uh, paid us a dime. So, you know, some people may argue I shouldn't take a fee anyway, but we believe in this basically everyone winning. You look at Marco on, uh, Overcast, um, how has he survived? And you have to look at his model on his app, recurring subscriptions. You know, you, you don't get the app one and done. If you'd have been one and done, he would have died. If the app would have died 7 years ago. So we have to be able to feed the entire ecosystem folks that are using the OP3 stat system. You know, they have a wallet. You can send them value by putting them on a split and a bunch of services. So yeah. And the index also gets a split as well. And they use every Satoshi that comes in to provide basically open channels. And that is a technical term. You have to put, let's say, 250,000 sats on a channel or a million sats on the channel to be able to ensure that the transactions— you basically got to have enough money in the bank, essentially, to make sure the transaction comes through, is able to transfer, um, uh, from one wallet to the next. If you don't have enough on-chain, basically channels, a transaction could actually fail. So this is where it makes it difficult for the non-geeks to really, with this new thing that Alby's doing, to be able to participate because they have to basically put some sats on a chain to be able to ensure that there's going to be a transaction, you know, transaction is going to make it through. But again, this value for value goes way beyond sats. But one beauty of it is everyone in the pipeline wins.

Yeah, Todd, that video that was mentioned by Matt Madero, I've got on the screen here. Yeah, I've got it. Get real screen. It's a pretty long video. So I did post a link to it in the YouTube stream chat off of, off of my channel. But I think we can play it for a, for a minute or two and you can get an idea of what Matt's talking about. He's— it's basically a conversation that he's having about podcast folks in the industry, you know, keep getting value for value wrong. So this is the I don't know if you can hear it or not.

I can't, but go ahead, Rob. Just let it play. I make sure the stream can hear it.

I don't— I'm not sure it is able to.

Yeah, it's—

I don't think it's going on. Yeah, I don't think it's going on.

Anyway, just, you know, I'll, I'll include that. Grab it here. I'll grab that link and, uh, I'll include it in the show notes today so that people can— okay, and, uh, can listen to it. Yeah. But, you know, it is a different type of mindset. I think that's the thing here. And it's, you know, and I think one thing that I've acknowledged is you're not going to get, you're not going to go to dinner when someone's sending you 50 sats a minute. That's not dinner money. That is, I'm listening. I'm here. I'm appreciating what you're doing. Um, I'm staying for the entire 90 minutes because I can see 90 minutes worth of, you know, 50 sats coming in every, every 90, every 60 seconds. But the boosts are also part of the engagement factor where, um, they don't have to do an email. They don't have— they stay right in the Fountain app or one of the other apps, one of the other new podcasting apps at podcastapps.com, and just They just like send a text message, but you send some sats with it. And if you love something, you can send 100,000 sats. If you're pissed off at somebody, you can send them 5, um, with a message. And that's the beauty of it. You put the value that you desire upon the— and what I would recommend if you're a podcaster out there, and I'll just do a pitch for Adam and Dave, They run the index purely on money that comes in in dollars. So they pay the server bills, everything on the cash donations, the on-chain fiat funds. Well, I shouldn't say on-chain fiat funds— PayPal donations, checks that go in. So I personally have a recurring monthly donation that goes in underneath my company name, which is New Media Productions.. And then, uh, Blueberry does a monthly donation. The folks at, uh, at rss.com usually do a monthly donation. Same thing with the folks at Buzzsprout. Um, so those cash donations that come in, along with people that are doing monthly, is what is running the index. And they don't take any money out. That all goes in the bank account. Here's the more surprising thing. They have the expenses of the servers that they're able to write off, but at the end of the year, Dave and Adam, believe it or not, are taking a big hit for the podcasting industry. They pay taxes on that money, and they, they again, they take it out of Hyde. It's, it's, if you know, if they've made, uh, let's say, let's just say $20,000 in donations for one year and they only had $11,000 in, um, expenses or whatever their expense— I think their expenses are now running about $700 or $800 a month to run the whole index, um, which, you know, it's true server cost. Then whatever profit remains, um, in whatever tax bracket they're in from their regular J-O-Bs— of course Dave has a regular job Adam does the, you know, his podcast and the No Agenda show. So whatever bracket they're in, they have to write a check at the end of the year. So they're working, not getting paid, and paying taxes. I don't think most people know that. So whatever the profit was for Podcast Index, Adam and Dave split that and both wrote tax checks, Dunkle Sugar. So in honesty, you know, uh, you know, they didn't set up a nonprofit or any of that stuff. So they really, I think at this time, besides maybe being an LLC, and again, quote me on how their financial structure is, uh, they're taking it out of hide. You know, they're paying, they're paying. And imagine you going to your spouse and saying, okay, honey, I need to add an extra $2,000 to the tax bill for this thing I'm working on every week that we have very few tax deductions on. Yeah. So, and I hope they're able to take tax deductions wherever they can.

I would imagine they're able to take the expenses of the— oh yeah, the organization as a tax deduction.

Sure. But, you know, if they're not doing travel or if they're not, you know, there's a whole bunch of things that you can write off. Meals, if you're doing it, you know, if you have a meeting, official meeting involves a meal, or, you know, those, those are true tax deductions underneath tax law. But I imagine that they, because they're being very conservative and trying to make sure this thing has enough legs in it to, I think they're up to about 3 years, 2 to 3 years of being able to run if no one gave another dime today. So Marco was, uh, doing a $500 donation for a long time as well, and he wasn't, he hadn't even adopted any 2.0 tags yet. So that tells you the type of support that people have for this.

And, um, if, if Marco— if this puts Marco in a better position to be able to adapt and move to that, we'll see, right?

Yeah, we'll see. So, you know, a lot of this work is, um, in expanding the ecosystem and taking control back, um, is being done for pure love of podcasting. And there's a lot of people involved in making this expand. You look at, um, uh, PodFans and Sam Setti. Sethi. And, you know, he's got a business he's trying to build. And I think, you know, recently some posts I've seen, he's, you know, I think he's got concerns of, you know, can he, can he make this a go of it and will it pay the bills? Yeah. He's in startup mode. So, um, there's a lot of people. Now we're not saying that as a, as a listener, as a podcaster, that you need to, you know, make sure our businesses survive. No. But I think if you look at all the apps involved, this is why we're asking people to use new podcasting apps. These folks have skin in the game that are going to potentially, and probably leads into the next topic that you and I want to talk about, Rob, is where do we go as a podcasting community? Where do we go from here? What's going to happen over the next couple of years? Are we going to crawl in a hole and allow the narrative that is being promulgated throughout the industry? You know, are podcasters going to be on Spotify and YouTube and that's it? Um, and have these gatekeepers and we, you know, the Every listener of this show can be an evangelist in helping educate podcasters the importance of Open RSS. If we don't evangelize as a community, this precious thing we have could go to the folks that are not giving podcasters a damn penny.

Well, I do think— I agree with you, Todd. I do think that there is a danger that this tension that's been building over the last few years between open and closed is a real thing. You know, it's definitely been growing and building. I think we all know who the players are on all these sides. Um, but there's definitely an interest, um, a commercial interest for closed. For closed, right. The, the commercial interest for open is, is not as strong. Um, so it shouldn't be, but that's, that's what it is.

Podcasters really understood the ramifications at stake, right? They would not tell their listeners to listen on Spotify. They would not. But Spotify is a popular platform used by a lot of people. Um, but you, you, you basically, by, by promoting Spotify, um, and YouTube, you've sold your audience. Uh, to, to those marketeers, right? They're being remarketed to across Google, across Spotify, and you get zero of that. You get zero, zero. You look at artists, they've just invoked some new clause at Spotify. They've raised the rates for the service and they're paying creator, uh, music artists less. Yeah. So, you know, I, I laughed a few years ago. There was somebody that was— I think we even had him on the show— that was convinced that Spotify was going to be the savior and was going to be paying podcasters.

Well, the only way that's going to happen is if all the podcasters band together and, um, it never happened, right?

But, but we as podcasters, because that's who's listening to this show, you know, we need to look at what's happening with the— they're talking about revenue already going down on podcasters that are advertising over there because of this new rule and the heavier ad counts and stuff like that. So when, when Todd gets on a bandwagon of talking about OpenRSS It's pretty special what we have. We can't, we can't forget it, right? Let's go into our list of where we think the future is.

Yeah, yeah, I was hoping that we could kind of run through some, some pretty high-level concepts that we can all think about as we think about, you know, kind of the, the key tenets of change or improvement or, you know, some level of kind of adaptation that could be happening in the podcasting space over the next, you know, up to 10 years is the thinking here. And I think we are, like I mentioned earlier, I think we are seeing some of these evolutionary trends already start to show, you know, show themselves. And so some of this discussion, and this has always been the case on this show where we talk about more of an evolution than a revolution, uh, that this medium has going through for the last 20 years. And Todd and I are both coming up on 20 years in this podcast medium, um, right? Um, I'm in, um, September, and Todd's also— what was it—

in September as well.

Yeah, October 9th. Yep. Yeah. So, you know, these changes have been kind of growing, but some of them are new, like the technological advancements around AI and things like that that we're seeing having increasing impacts on the podcasting space, I believe are going to keep accelerating. I don't know that there's gonna be a big pullback on AI utilization in podcasting. I think it's only going to accelerate. And I think where we're—

Right.

Where we're going to see it is get into more aspects, whether it's— I think we're already seeing the very beginning of it with transcripts and cloned voices and being able to create derivative content from the podcasts that we have now that are human-created. What we're seeing is this growing utilization of cloning of voices and being able to create content that way as well. And then the use of AI for analytics, which I don't know that we've seen a lot of that quite yet, but I do think that that's probably coming. I don't know what you think about analytics, Todd, around using AI to analyze data.

You know, I've, I've got a list Yeah, roadmap doc, but it's doing AI with stats. Um, some of the stuff in stats is just pure math, you know, it's not— it's just counts, right? And, and presenting data different ways. But when you get into trying to analyze, you know, everyone would— you would wish that your, your show numbers were pretty steady, you know, that from one show would have 1,010 listens, the next show would have 1,050, and the next show would have 1,200. Well, that's not that simple. It just, it bounces like an accordion. So, um, trying to come up with scenarios to be able to pull certain data together and do analysis on it is not Well, if I know what the questions I want answered, right? It's easier to do AI stuff. And it's like the Podcast Awards that are going on right now. Last year, I normally pay about $5,000 to have the Podcast Awards basically audited. And I asked 7 questions. Those from that audit. And I was able to use ChatGPT last year and get those 7 questions and more answered from the database table from the Podcast Awards voting. And I was able to back that up by going in, you know, doing the, doing the math, because again, it's just math problems. And, and validate that I didn't need to pay this data analysis company anymore, $5,000 to do to do analysis. So I think as we know what questions podcasters want answered from their stats, we can then start using AI to see if we can extract that information in a quick and easy way. You know, as things— one thing that we're working on is we're going to release next Monday our AI highlight clip creator. It's basically kind of a poor man's headliner. Um, and it's still not perfect, but it's about an 80% solution. I'm pretty happy where it's at compared to where it was 3 months ago. Um, we didn't release it because it just, you know, the results weren't as good as I wanted to be. Um, but now we're at a point now, and we're going to put disclaimers on that tool that, okay, you know, we're kind of at an 80% solution here, but what it's going to end up being is And what our goal at Blueberry was for any of this stuff we're building, um, I want podcasters to be able to quit paying for third-party services. Now, that's going to piss a bunch of people off, but I don't want you to have to pay for an AI service. I don't want you to have to pay for X, Y, and Z that you're paying now. You pay your Blueberry hosting bill, maybe a few add-on costs based upon whatever we're going to add, and we want to save you money. So, you know, my end goal is to make it cheaper for podcasters to do the things they're doing today in podcasting. You look at the, the new app that was just released by Adobe, the Adobe Podcast. Beautiful tool if you're paying for Adobe, right? Um, same thing with Descript. Beautiful tool if you're paying for Descript, right? AI stuff is going to just flourish.

Yeah, the AI enhancement of analytics really kind of requires deeper data, right? And that is really where the rubber hits the road on this topic. You know, it's a— it needs a deep kind of spectrum of data, right, which isn't always available to straight RSS-based data capture.

Oh, there, there's a huge amount of data there.

Yeah, but there's, you know, if you look at, kind of contrast that with, let's say, the amount of data that Apple gets or Spotify gets, you know, they're not going to share that with you. Well, I realize that, but they're going to be able to tap into probably doing more AI analytics, um, based on listener behavior, engagement preferences, a lot of the same things that we're seeing happen on like a YouTube platform, um, where they can get really deep into this. And it is possible to use AI to optimize titles and descriptions and artwork and things like that, using AI to optimize that kind of stuff.

So I think you can do that with a normal podcast today. It has, you know, but I mean, someone else like podcasters going back and changing titles on shows very often.

Yeah, I think it's a common thing on the YouTube side of things for people to change artwork and especially the episode artwork and then also titles and descriptions to be able to go in and try different scenarios, right? Not just stick with one, but I guess, you know, it's just a different publishing kind of environment. Yeah. But AI is going to be able to offer suggestions on those areas increasingly, um, and, and, and rank those options for, for those publishers.

So I think over time, again, it's we have to determine what questions we want answered. And once we get in on the analytic side, you know, what is a question we can answer through just not doing a math problem, right? Uh, you know, we, we're talking about a new a new feature that we're going to be introducing in a couple of weeks at Blueberry within our stats system. Right. And, you know, my— the question always comes back to me from the devs is, okay, this is cool, but you know how much this is going to cost us in compute power, right? Right. That's always the question. Yeah. Because now we're going to have to do these extra calculations to provide this data. So for me, you know, that ends up being a, you know, it's, it's real, real money, you know, when you're, you know, in real server resources. So every little new feature, every new little thing that we add, that's another query the database has to use and another query that can go sideways too if something, you know, if we don't catch something. So, um, And I don't think a lot of people think— and this is not AI compute, this is just pure, you know, my Amazon bill, right?

Well, Todd, we're at the number 2 on my list so far, just to let you know. And, and this particular one we talked about in, I, I believe it was last week's episode about ease of content creation. You know, the— these are trends, uh, as we look to the future that's driving, hopefully driving podcaster growth? Because one of the big questions was, is as we look to the next couple of years, are we gonna see a growth and expansion of new content creators in podcasting? Now granted, the definition of what a podcast is has been in flux to some degree in what people think out there, but access and ease of content creation is the big factor here of, you know, enabling people to create shows and to create content online. The tools and the equipment and the software platforms are getting better and better and easier to use. Everybody's striving for that increasingly. And then the growing popularity of Multiformat content too is another thing. Whether or not we like that or not, that is happening in the content creation landscape right now where people are creating audio, video, and live content. You know, the argument is, you know, what's growing, what isn't growing, what's the optimized kind of formula? Is it audio only? Is it video and audio? Or is it live plus video and audio, which is You're doing live, you're probably doing audio and video. But that's the crucial question right now, is the growing expansion of what people are seeing as the, as multi-format content, whether it's short, long form. There's all sorts of options now about creating content. It's not like the old days where it was just like, you know, mostly audio or just video. Now it's short-form content, long-form content, audiobooks, packaging audio and video in all sorts of different ways too. So I think those are significant trend lines too as we look to the future. And this next one, number 4, is growth trends. The increasing number of podcasts. So we're currently at over 4 million podcasts. Now, a lot of those shows are archive shows, but, um, some are like 90% of them or something like that, right? Right. And some, some folks are projecting, whether or not this comes true or not, uh, that, that we may double the number of shows over the next decade. The question is, are we going to double the amount of active shows? Are we going to double just the amount of total shows. Are we going to go to 8 million because we've gone through so many shows that have converted into being archive shows? Yes, um, you're right, that's going to continue to happen, though I think we have seen a pullback to some degree on that total number, that 4.2 million podcasts. I, I think just like a year ago it was like 4.5 or 4.6 or something like that.

So we had a lot of that was deduplication in the And the Spotify purge.

Right, right. But, you know, I think to be optimistic about the future, you know, are there some trends here that are going to help the expansion of podcasting? You know, I would love to see this medium continue to grow. I think that, like we've talked about in last week's episode, I think that there is an upper limit to the listening side of how many people, you know, will adopt this medium. Now, how many content creators get involved in this medium is still a fairly small number if you compare it to other mediums, right?

If you compare it to everything else. Everything else, right. This is, you know, and what it is, let's just be frank, there's a lot of distractions out there. And some people pick a platform and that's where they go. They go Instagram, they go TikTok, they go YouTube, they go— wherever they may go. And, and being on one platform and being successful on one platform, um, takes a serious focus, especially if you're an independent content creator. So this is where I go back and talking to podcasters. I'm like, okay, you started podcasting for a reason. And yeah, you know, the medium is unique in that if you consume podcasts like majority people do via listening on your, on your, with your mobile device and earbuds. Um, this is the most intimate medium there is, and it's a lean-in medium, and people lose sight of that a little bit. They get wrapped around the hype. Um, even in our newsletter, which I think went out this afternoon, um, I just said, okay, if you've been thinking about video and it's stuff we've been talking about on the show, is, you know, please understand what you're getting into and do your research and don't fall for the— basically, don't be that big 18-inch bass that's seeing that shiny lure that is going through the water and say, oh, what's over there, mom? And go grab the lure and then end up on someone's dinner plate, right? Um, because this medium still is super viable. And some people are gonna say, oh, you gotta— yeah, yeah, you can do shorts, you can repurpose content. You've been able to repurpose content and podcasting since the beginning, right? You've been able to do shorts in podcasting since the beginning. It's nothing new. Here. Um, you know, people have been doing, uh, technically been doing shorts and podcasting probably longer than shorts been on YouTube. So, you know, that's because how did we promote our podcast? By a snippet, you know, a little audio snippet. So I, I think that, um, there's a method to the madness. Um, and if you're, if you're going to do video, then just be prepared I, I think what's— be honest, what's going to happen, and I, I don't want to make a prediction that is going to make people freak out, I think we'll have a much higher failure rate of shows that do video, um, because it is not as easy as everyone thinks. What constitutes failure in your Most people's failure is growth. Most folk, people quit because they're not gaining it, what they consider a significant audience. But I go back to the, the idea that if you have 1,000 people listening to your show, do a Google search for an image that looks like 1,000 people and, and print that out and put that in front of your computer. Um, 1,000 people is a lot of people. 100 people is a lot of people. 5,000 people is an incredible number of people. You get into the, the atmosphere of 50,000 plus, that's a stadium, um, of people that you're reaching. Um, again, it's just like anything else. A lot of people are, have challenges building a show on podcasting. I think they're going to have the same challenges on YouTube. So just because you're adding video does not mean your show is going to succeed. You have to have sustained superior content.

Right. Number 5 on my list is global expansion. And I do wonder if a lot of this growth that is being forecasted is really linked up to global expansion. Oh, I'm sure of podcasting more so than expansion of podcasting in North America. So as you look at even localization as a derivative topic of global expansion, is that really gets around local languages, local culture, AI-based localization efforts of the content. Now, you know, even YouTube has announced some support of taking English and translating into all the languages of the world. And making all the content that's in English available in local languages all around the world. So you can kind of see an indication of that, but it's not so much a podcast kind of solution here. But I do think that there's going to be opportunities for podcasters to actually take advantage of that ability as well. I think as you look to the next couple of years with AI translation and things, and then just overall market growth in, in the emerging markets around the world. Hopefully we'll see expansion and growth, but I think North America has kind of reached us and is rapidly reaching a saturation point. You know, just like cell phones have reached saturation point. So are we really adding a lot of new users? When we're over, what, 70% right now, 80%? Um, what is the upside to new, new users?

It's new listeners slowing. Yeah.

Or new podcasts. Oh no, new, new consumers of podcasts.

Well, Rob, come on now.

There is an upper limit there.

No, I don't think so, because here's the thing.

We have— I mean, it's a declining population.

So, but you have new people that are being born every day.

I know, but it's a declining number.

Yeah, but still, I think overall, over time, the number will continue to increase just because of—

yeah, but it's going to be slower, probably.

Well, you're never going to probably ever hit 100%, right?

But that's my point, is that, but again, there is an upper limit.

Not everyone watches YouTube. Not everyone listens, has a TikTok account. So again, what is that? In fact, the United States, you may not have a TikTok account at the end of the year. So again, it— I, I think from a creation standpoint, creators are being, being born every second.

Yeah, I'm not talking about creators, I'm talking about consumers of this content.

Um, I think it's gonna— it'll still continue to grow. May not be. It's, it's had a slow growth the entire time. It's never been an upward trajectory.

No, it's been between what, 2 and 5, 3% or maybe 4. I think it got up to 5%, uh, a couple years. Um, so, you know, it's been slow. And then I think also outside of the United States, outside of North America, the access to the data and smartphone data plans has been expensive and hard to get. Yeah. Yep. So if those other parts of the world can open up on access to data and data speed and cost scenarios for data, I think that'll help grow podcasting as well.

During my week when I went over to Thailand, the I bought an eSIM. The data over there was incredible. I mean, is it fast? Oh, it's really fast. Yeah, it's like 300 megs up, down.

Uh, did you get a lot of data though?

I mean, like in a data plan or something? I got like 100 gigs for, uh, 7 days or something. It was crazy. So in some countries you know, in Europe, I think as well, their mobile data plans makes American data plans look like trash. And then again, there's other parts of the world that's not, you know, developed nations.

There's still issues.

Yeah.

Like in Africa, I think it's, it's definitely a challenge.

Yeah. Just because it's a big continent, you know, and, you know, Maybe Elon's going to solve it with Starlink. I don't know. But, you know, it's a, it's a huge, huge deployment challenge.

Yeah, I think he did get a patent, I think, for some technology that would enable kind of more small device usage.

He's launching satellites now that are cell capable. So That'll be, you know, I think all of them are trying to do that. So, but does that fix worldwide data problems? No, not at all. Yeah. But because the carrier has to be engaged, you still have to have a data plan with a carrier and blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. We'll see how that develops. And also number 6 is the influence of AI, AGI, which we haven't even evolved into that phase yet. Of artificial general intelligence, which is really high-level intelligence of the AI beyond where we are today. ChatGPT is not AGI. No, no, it's not reached that level at all. I think we have quite a ways to go to get to AGI. Now granted, they may be working on projects that are not publicly released yet that may be approaching AGI, but Those aren't public projects.

They're, they're saying 2 to 5 years, so it's not that far away.

No, it's not. And then the, the next part of this is AI agents, which are being able to— each one of us having our own artificial intelligent agent that will kind of manage our lives. I don't know how that's going to affect podcasting per se, but You know, help a podcaster, um, yeah, manage their show, um, manage how it's produced, um, how it's put together, how it's— how the data is gathered that could be used in the program. I guess at the end of the day, you know, there's already stuff by the AI, or is it voiced by the human, is the question, right?

There's already platforms out there that are designed to help you with your social promotion. And those platforms are going to adopt stuff where you probably won't even have to write your copy anymore. It's just going to, it's going to suggest copy, you approve it, and it'll go. That's just going to, you know, that's going to make it. But the problem with that is also going to be with any of this AI-generated stuff is we're just going to have such, the noise floor is going to go up so much more. Uh, there's going to be so much more content. Whether it be promotional. Yeah, it's just, it's, you know, it's, it's going to go off the charts. I think where do we as consumers of that drivel of data, where do we say I've had enough and, and regress back to the basics? Because I think this, there's just this onslaught of content coming that people are not gonna know who generated it and if it can be trustworthy.

And it does raise this question, is there gonna be a hierarchy of the value of content? Is the content that's produced by humans gonna be perceived as higher value than content that's generated based on AI technology?

Well, I would hope human, you know, In—

well, it'd be valuable, but I think it depends, you know, once you get up to artificial general intelligence and beyond, you know.

Oh, that— the whole, the whole world changes then.

The quality of the information that's made available through this, through AGI, may be far beyond any human's ability to.

But the danger is, is a shit-in, shit-out feedback loop. So, you know, because the challenge is, is if you've got all this content that's being indexed now and make up these models and it's all of a sudden producing a whole bunch of content and then the model goes back and regurgitates that for the next model, um, you, it could absolutely unravel itself. So we have to be careful. We don't want to be mindless bots out here. Right, exactly. It goes back to my favorite saying, you know, use of AI is not a substitute for common sense.

Right. Well, and then personalized listening experiences, automated editing and production. Now granted, I think we're kind of moving into that era right now of the— yeah, it is— of the— now automated editing and production is— I'm not sure that auto Automation is definitely in play yet on that, but, but I think some of the automated stuff is pretty bad right now. Well, automated or more just AI, AI-based editing. I don't know that it's automated per se. I mean, I guess it depends on what your definition of what automation is. Mine, mine would be is that it basically gets utilized as part of like a publishing process and, and humans don't oversee it at all. So, God forbid. Yeah, well, that's, that's probably where it's going ultimately. And then AI-driven audience engagement. Now, this would— this could possibly be, you know, engagement with audience and comments, um, making, you know, those kind of live experiences could be done with AI bots, um, that could represent the thoughts of the host? I don't know.

I mean, how far is this going to go, right? Yeah, hopefully not that far. But someone will experiment with it.

Oh yeah. Well, in content curation and discovery, you know, the listening platforms are going to utilize this.

You know who's going to experiment with it first, right, Rob? The porn industry will be first to adopt most of this stuff.

Well, it always is the first, right?

Yeah, they're the early adopters. And, you know, so, yeah, and, and, and also the marketeers, you know, the internet marketeers and selling you a $99 course that's going to change your life, you know. So they will take advantage of all— they already are. They're already, you know, already producing huge amounts of trash, right?

And what are the ethical considerations here of of utilizing AI and AGI in, in podcasting. I, I don't know that the industry has a good handle on what its standards—

and I, I think, I think content's gonna need to— I think there's, you know, and I've said this on a prior show, I think we're going to have to start marking content if you've used AI to replace words, uh, or editing. Maybe not even AI, if you've used an editing package to replace words that you did not speak, I think that needs to be flagged. I got a lot of pushback on that. So, oh, well, I shouldn't have to flag that. Well, if you said X and then you change it to Z, should you have not said this has been edited with an artificial voice?

I think you should. Yeah, but if you actually typed it into a transcript, then you are creating that content, right?

I think you still have to disclose that.

Well, that's the big question, is if the host actually typed that new word into, let's say, a transcript, and that added that word in audio to the the actual audio experience. Is that still a word that I came up with? I, I didn't voice it, but I came up with it.

See, I think you have to disclose it, you know. Maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

I don't know that anybody's wrong on this. More to do with what is the, the listener going to accept, um, and is there going to be a certain amount of acceptable kind of deception that's going to happen in this area.

Well, you know, you just— someone can take, you know, 10 hours of us speaking and they could recreate the show today on some of the platforms, right?

And I do, um, also think that AI could be used to really create an improved discovery experience, better search, better recommendations like that, and the platforms already think it's already happening. Yeah, podcasting has been pretty bad when it comes to—

you look at our show notes, you know, our show notes are remarkably better than they were. Yeah, right. Yeah. So, but again, I think there has to be some disclosure here, you know, when, when stuff is being edited. And if you're replacing stuff that you did not originally speak and you use some artificial voice to add a word, And I think that, I think you have to disclose that.

Yeah, I think, you know, and it gets back to what I just said. I think that if you came up, so let's say you used AI to come up with your, your script for your show and you basically inputted that AI-generated script into a clothing. I know people are already doing that. Right, and put that into a cloning process, right, that will use my voice to voice that. I didn't come up with those words, those were generated by AI.

I think I could be seen as a deception. I know of 3 shows already that's doing exactly that.

Really? Already? Yeah. So they're actually prompting OpenAI or—

They are using AI to write a script. They go in and edit the script and then they apply it to whatever that— there's a service that does voice cloning and it records a podcast for them.

I know I listen to it.

Like ElevenLabs or what, one of those type of platforms?

Right.

They're using ElevenLabs. And they're not disclosing.

Yeah, and a lot of those voice clones, they sound pretty good.

And the question really is, is technically you cannot have copyright on AI-generated— if you tell it, okay, let's create a story on the history of blah, blah, blah. And AI comes up with a script, and that technically cannot be copyrighted. How much you have to change of that script to be able to call it your own, the jury's still out on that. But technically, and I think you have to change a lot of it in order to obtain copyright. That's why for me, if I'm doing any type of show prep or anything like that, I come up with talking points. I don't come up with any script that I would ever read.

Yeah. It's kind of like an outline of sorts, right? It's a topic outline that you use as a reference to keep you on track on something.

Yeah. And I know people that are worried. I know people created, they have an AI podcast that does AI news. And basically they use AI to scan like, you know, 10 news stories and then puts that out in the author's voice as if he had recorded it. Right. So automated. They don't even, I just push a button. And the whole process is done through scripting and the episode goes out and the podcaster's sleeping. Yeah. And said, nope. So this is where we have to be careful of junk and we have to be careful of disclosure. I think a show like that has to have full disclosure. It's being completely automated. And maybe I'll give a little ground if you've just edited the script and changed a few words. Maybe we don't need to market that. But if you are creating wholehearted content with AI, I think that has to be— well, YouTube requires it. It has to be 100% disclosed.

I believe even, even a YouTube platform has a flag and a requirement that you have to identify. Yeah, certain content that's created. We don't have that podcasting yet, right? So then You know, as we look to the future, Todd, about utilizing social platforms, social media platforms as a primary kind of promotion platform, it's not so much a question about AI, even though AI could be used to generate posts into social, right?

We're already creating clips with AI. We're already creating highlight reels with AI. That's, that's what Blueberry's doing right now.

I just wonder what the future of like Facebook and, and the social platforms are. Um, I just get the feeling like people are kind of pulling back from those things. Well, increasingly, I just wonder if the trust will come back again somehow.

The problem with Facebook, and has been for a long time, is it feeds you what it knows is going to drive your dopamine hit. It's, it's not feeding. I, if I want to go look for you and what you've said recently, I have to look up your profile. I have to look at my mom's profile. I have to look up my aunts and uncles and kids. I don't see anything my kids post. I have to go find it. I have to go look at their profile. So Facebook has completely abandoned its original tenet. So now it's just You know, but yet here we, we're streaming live on Facebook today, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's still a lot of people over there, but I do know a lot of people have been pulling back from it. I know I don't use it as much as I used to many years ago.

I'm definitely not in the podcasting groups like I used to be because no one is willing to do any homework on their own. No one is willing to you know, every little stupid question is being asked. People want to be hand-fed stuff now. So it's, it's great for the trolls that are there promoting their services. And, you know, you know, who's— which podcast host should I use? Well, you look at the same people promoting again and again and again. Well, there's their paid promoters making sure that they're promoting the service. I I don't even hardly participate anymore in those, those, uh, those commentaries because it's just a pile-on of the same thing again and again and again and again and again and again and again. It becomes a little, a little redundant, and people don't take time to do their own research.

Yeah. And then the other big trend line that we're seeing too is, um, increasing importance of listener engagement. And so when I say that, I'm talking more about community building, right? Discord, Reddit, these, these, these community tools that are out there that people are trying to aggregate and consolidate their audiences around to create deeper connections and deeper relationships. And ultimately, even premium type of communities as well as another layer to this too is more paid participation platforms. Um, and it does seem like that there is an interest in podcasters and creators out there that are wanting to shift away from the advertising model and move towards more direct funding type of models, uh, with their, with their communities, that they can drive maybe content to that community that they don't have to be as concerned about, about community guidelines and, and being demonetized if they talk about certain topics on those, um, on those public platforms. Where if they create content on a, you know, on a private community group, they, they can typically share what they want.

Um, we're already way past time today, Rob, so maybe we're gonna have to save some of this list. But going back to something just triggered me, did you see the testimony that Ben Shapiro made in Congress over the, um, brand safety stuff?

I did. Um, I've been keeping a close eye on the brand safety topic for brand suitability.

If you guys may not like Ben Shapiro's politics, but, um, I would recommend every podcaster listen to his testimony and understand how screwed GARM is. Um, and really how, in my opinion, how evil that system is. Again, you have individual gatekeepers that are making determinations of what is safe and what isn't safe. And the biases, just because people are human, that has been built into GARM. I think, I think every podcaster needs to at least listen to Ben's testimony and dissect it. Think about it. Think about what he has said. And of course, he has a conservative view.

But it's much bigger than one. Oh yeah. It's going to impact everyone.

So it was a pretty powerful dialogue and just convinced me that we will never adopt GARM at Blueberry. No, there's no way. I won't do it. Right.

Yeah, I wrote an article off my, off my robgreenlee.com blog. This is probably almost 6 months ago now on this very topic, and I go into great detail and link to Garmin and link to other external resources that you can go and read yourself, um, to actually see what's involved in all this. And, um, and it's, it's been something that I've, I've had an interested in for, for a while now. And it's, and it's, it's an unfortunate development in the podcasting space. I mean, it's been happening in, you know, YouTube and, and Facebook and, and other platforms for, for a few years now.

Um, it really— and be honest with you, um, this is where these closed systems are picking winners and losers.

And where there are certain topics that if they identify your podcast that has said certain keywords or keyword phrases in your content, they will, they will basically exclude you from any advertising campaigns.

And not just advertising, Rob Greenlee, being surfaced, the content being buried. Well, it's not just about monetization.

It's about a whole nother level, right?

Yeah. Well, it is the main part of it right now because they are, they're doing this on platforms that are advertiser supported. They don't want to present this type of content for those that are not paying. They have to keep the ad dollars rolling in. So they bury this content.

So they highlight the content that that adheres to the content guidelines that are specified for it. Actually, if you wanted to see a testimonial on this from a very big podcaster, actually just do a search in YouTube for Conan O'Brien and brand safety, those keywords, and you'll come up with an episode that Conan O'Brien did in video. It's like maybe a 20, 30-minute conversation where they actually talk in great detail about brand safety and suitability. And it's an interesting conversation coming from a very controversial comedian about his concerns about how that brand safety platform is impacting his comedy.

Now, it's— you have gatekeepers that are picking winners or losers from an algorithm that has human biases in it. And, you know, some individual in an office is deciding which content you as a consumer should be allowed access to. Right. So OpenRSS, there are no such restrictions.

Well, we hope that stays that way, right?

Right. So the question is, is Spotify using Garmin and bearing content on Spotify?

We don't know.

Is Apple doing it too?

We know YouTube is. We don't know if Apple's doing it either.

But it doesn't matter if Apple does because you, you don't go looking on Apple. People don't discover shows by searching on Apple.

Yeah, well, that, that situation probably needs to be improved. I think people, they need to be better at searching, right?

Well, like, you can find any show on Apple, you're just not going to find specific episodic data, right?

Because they're, as far as we know, they're not indexing that stuff.

So, well, they're indexing and they're just not searchable, I'm sure.

Well, Todd, you're, you're right. We didn't make it through my whole list of the, uh, top, top trends that are moving through podcasts. I think we made it up, um, almost through 8.

I think that's your list. I— some of these, I'd be like, are these really trends? Uh, I don't know, but we can come back to them next show.

Okay. Yeah, well, next show is going to be mostly, um, Dan Franks from—

let's see if Dan sticks with us for 90 minutes. I, I doubt he's here for 90 minutes.

Okay. All right. Well, I think we talked about a lot of the important topics around what— how the industry is evolving and, and the direction that it's moving in. Many topics here. There's certainly more to explore.

There's no question. Yeah, that is for sure. So I hope everyone enjoyed this marathon show today.

It's not unusual for us to go 40.

Yeah. Yeah. Not, not, it's being more the norm recently. So I'm going to go crawl back into bed here in a minute. So, all right. All right. Everyone, you can reach me, geeknews@gmail.com, @geeknews on X. I'm at @geeknews, @geeknews.chat on Mastodon. And of course Geek News Central. And of course, if you're not subscribed to the show, please do so. Follow or subscribe, I guess that's the proper way to say it now, right?

There's, there's blueberry.com if you want to check that out. Yeah, definitely do so. And my website is here as well, and my YouTube channel. And if you want to go to newmediashow.com, you can catch all of our archive episodes as well. And if you want to, wanted to reach out to me, I'm, I'm on email, uh, rob.greenlee@gmail.com, and I'm on X as well, @RobGreenlee. And so, Todd, it's great.

So we'll be back next week. Yep, same time. And then, uh, following that, back in August, we'll be back to our afternoon shows again. So I'll be back in a time where, uh, it's not 2 o'clock in the morning here when I'm trying to do a show with you, right? Sounds good. All right, all right, everybody, thanks so much. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.