Rob Greenlee: What is a Podcast in 2025?

Welcome to the Podcast Super Friends.

5 podcast producers from across North America get together to discuss podcasting.

It is exciting as it sounds. My name is Matt Cundall. I am the host of SoundOff Podcast, and I'm also the owner of the SoundOff Podcast Network. This is the Podcast Super Friends, and these are the friends. We're going to go around clockwise today, and we will start in Dallas with no audio. That, that's a bad start.

We like— that's—

we're off to a bad start. All right, we're gonna skip out on Dallas and we'll go to Louisiana.

Hey, thank you so much. My name is Catherine O'Brien, and I'm here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, coming in Literally hot.

Not quite as hot here in Michigan. John Gay from Jag in Detroit podcast, although, uh, 75, 80, so that'd be warm for us, not for Catherine.

Give Johnny another try. I think your mic went out once before on the show.

Yeah, it, it changed, and I, you know, I have fantastically embarrassed myself in front of our special guests. So if my first time meeting him, so he's probably like, who the hell is this guy? You know, absolutely knows nothing about what he's talking about. So I'm Johnny of johnnypodcast.com.

And the best part is the guest has actually just disappeared. So he's just disappeared from the fray.

Is this our first livestream ever?

Do it live, Matt said.

Yeah, I know. Do it live. We always like to do anyhow. Rob Greenlee is going to join us when he, uh, uh, when he gets a big reveal, it'll be just a big reveal. And to be fair, normally he just loves his studio. He's in his studio normally in Connecticut, but he joins us today from, from Seattle. Where he is there for a couple of weeks and has made a trip. And it's great to have you on the show, Rob.

It's great to be here, Matt. It's, it's always great to speak with you and it's great to meet all of you. Oh, and Katherine, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Actually, John and Johnny. Okay.

Awesome. And my audio works now, Rob. I was just mentioning, I, I, my first time meeting you and I've just completely embarrassed myself as a podcast professional by my audio not working right out of the gate.

Yeah, I have a portable setup myself and it's not always 100% reliable either.

So we wanted to have you on this show today because often we'll go to, you know, whether it's Podcast Movement or I just came back from the podcast show in London, and I feel like there's a lot of things that get said and then we'll sort of kick it around for a while. We really don't know where the whole thing lands. So we thought today we would bring in a pro. And one of the things that has been said, I think, for probably the last year and a half has a lot to do with video. And Rob, we know that you've sort of stepped a little bit more into the video space. You've actually did a little bit of work with StreamYard, which is what we're on right now. But tell me how you've sort of embraced podcasting from the video side.

Well, I've been involved on the video side of podcasting for many, many years. I kind of have a little bit of a different take on it than many people. And that's, That's just because when I started with podcasting, and if you know the history of podcasting, it started with a lot of video. So, you know, the whole video side of podcasting really started up really heavily in 2006 and really grew into the 2010, '11 timeframe. And then, you know, through that whole time, YouTube was growing and developing as well. And a lot of people were bouncing back and forth between creating a, YouTube type of experience or creating an RSS-based video experience. So, you know, that's the history I come from. So when I look at this, I look at through a little bit of a different lens, you know, and a lot of people in the industry see podcasting and they see audio, right?

But you can't see audio.

That's the case with me, right? Yeah, I mean, we have since about probably about 2000, probably '13, 2014, we've really doubled down on audio as a podcast medium. And YouTube has kind of siphoned away all that stuff away. And video really wasn't part of the conversation. So when I look at the media landscape today, I look at it from the lens that YouTube finally woke up and realized what they were already involved in. And this little move that they made by making a video podcast playlist was a pretty minor move for them, but it created shockwaves in the industry because people are like going, well, what's a podcast now? Right? It's like, and that debate is still raging in the industry right now.

But Rob, it's not an RSS feed, so it can't be a podcast.

Right. But from day one, the argument has been, well, what is a podcast? Is it a reference to a type of distribution or is it a reference to a type of content? And that's been the tension in this medium for almost 20 years. I mean, this debate has been going on for a long time. And there was a lot of period of time in the past where people thought, well, podcasting's dead. It's not going anywhere. Nobody's watching podcasts, so who cares, right? So this has been an evolution of a movement over many, many years. And now that we've seen social media take off and we've seen video become so important to the social media platforms, It's only logical to think that in some ways podcasting is being thought of as a social media platform. It's being kind of like, if you look at the research that's coming out right now, it's actually rolling up YouTube into the podcast experience and it's doing this, it's going plays and views, right? Or downloads and views, right? And a lot of the social media platforms have built their scale and their engagement layer on video. And I'm talking about Instagram, I'm talking about TikTok, I'm talking about all these. And that's where the younger generation has migrated to. And the younger generation has always been with YouTube. And we've seen the biggest growth area, or one of the biggest growth areas in podcasting is that younger generation. So it's not surprising to me that we're seeing this collision that's happening between the expectations of the desire for short-form and long-form video. And then the other component of this is what we've seen in the research saying that more and more people are watching video podcasts on their big-screen televisions. Not to mess things up even more, but that's exactly what's happening right now. And podcasting is, I believe, the media now. It's not like this upstart this rebel media that's gonna someday have an impact on the world. No, it's here. And we are disrupting all of the major media, cable networks, even the radio networks are flocking towards podcasting. And because that's where the vast majority of the audiences are today.

Rob, if I could jump in. So I love what you just said because I find that my wife and I are watching our YouTube app at night as much as we are watching our YouTube TV app for traditional cable and TV. And I want to go back to something since you've got some such great perspective on the history of this medium. If forever Apple Podcasts was dominating, and for Android users it was Spotify, and then for— and then YouTube said, or YouTube, Google said, well, we've got Google Podcasts, let's make Google Podcasts. Was it kind of just this natural evolution for YouTube to say, hey, Google Podcasts isn't really doing much here. Like, we already have this Titanic app in YouTube. Why don't we just fold it all in there?

Oh yeah, that's exactly— I mean, YouTube has had a podcast team amongst them since I was working at PodcastOne in Los Angeles back in 2014, because their office was like a block and a half down the street from mine. And I would go down there and meet with them because, you know, a lot of the podcasts that we had on PodcastOne were celebrity podcasts and they got huge numbers over on YouTube. And so, you know, YouTube has been in the background of podcasting for a very long time. And so this is not a new thing, but it's a new thing for people to recognize that YouTube recognizes podcasting. So, but it takes us back to the bigger question. Is podcasting a definition of a form of distribution or is it a definition of a type of content? And that's been the tension. And if it's really more about the type of content that it is, then it doesn't matter how it's distributed. Right?

Let's fish where the fish are. That's what, if your audience, if the audience out there is calling, is doing it based on content versus the behind the scenes RSS URL. To me, that would say it's more about the content than it is just distribution.

Yeah, and the audience doesn't really care if it comes in by RSS or it comes in through a direct upload. What they want to get access to is the content and the personalities and the topics. They don't really care. And I do think that there's also another thing going on too where the podcast industry is seeing what YouTube is doing and they are trying to copy it. Just case in point is Spotify. Spotify wants to be YouTube, and that's pretty obvious to me, and it's been going on for a long time. But Spotify has a very spotty history in doing anything new like this. You know, even getting into podcasting was an extremely bumpy process. So they didn't get it right the first time they actually announced it. 2 years later, they got around to doing it, and I could go on for an hour just talking about all of the pain that happened with Spotify entering podcasting with all the hosting platforms, because they completely drove us crazy. Um, and they never got it right, and they continued to bumble along. And then they went out and bought, uh, Anchor, right? And then they came out with free podcast hosting, which is— was a clear disruption move to the hosting infrastructure that the Medium had. And then they kept coming out with this rhetoric around, well, RSS isn't innovating. And so, you know, we don't need RSS anymore because, you know, RSS isn't, isn't doing anything to, to further the medium, but we are because we're Spotify. You know, that was the rhetoric that came out. And so podcasting came out with Podcasting 2.0 and started innovating. And where's Spotify? Spotify didn't embrace any of it. So yeah, so Don't always believe what you see and read.

But isn't that kind of typical? I mean, Spotify, they want to create an enclosed environment just like every other social media platform does.

Yeah, just like YouTube, right?

Yeah. And I always try and remind myself that what they are doing is extremely expensive, you know, like to attract the kind of advertisers to make it so that you can host all these gajillion songs and have all the streaming power. All of these things are incredibly expensive, and eventually the bill does have to get paid. So I mean, I can, I sort of sympathize and I guess I want to bring it back to your earlier point. Spotify has an audience. I mean, they, they, they in the same way that there are people who are loyal to YouTube, there are people who are loyal to Spotify and Spotify is giving them something that they want. And if we're focusing on the content, the type of content being delivered, isn't that we can kind of, can, can we not sort of accept Spotify's foibles in this, in this realm?

Well, I don't think we have a choice. I mean, they're going to enter the medium in the way that they want to, and they're going to make those choices. I mean, I spent 7 years working at Microsoft on the Zune platform, which was the second major platform in the podcasting space. And I can tell you how those big companies think, and it's, they want to build it all. They want to own it all. They want to make all the decisions. They want to be in control. So that's what big platforms do, and YouTube is no exception to that. It's not like, you know, what we've seen with what YouTube has done. And I kind of laugh sometimes because I think we have a higher expectation for Spotify than we have for YouTube. And it's probably not fair to some degree. Many have accepted what YouTube has done and have seen its advantages and have experienced its disadvantages. And Spotify is trying to do the same. The difference is that Spotify came from an audio-first priority, and now they're using video as a disruptor to their, their audio-first approach. And that's, that's what has a lot of people upset. That's a good point.

Rob, I wanted to address kind of the shrinking elephant in the room, and Jack kind of briefly, which is Apple Podcasts.

Oh, Apple. Yeah. So There's them.

So YouTube, based on all of the data we've seen over the last few years, YouTube has made a market jump in discovery and consumption because of their video-first platform. Spotify sees that, like you covered, and says, hey, we want to do that too. We're coming from an audio-first platform, let's try and be like YouTube. We'll have comments, we'll have video. Hypothetically, you are now the president of podcast operations, whatever the title is at Apple. Apple doesn't seem to have really— they seem to— they were happy with the big lion's share of the market that they had up until YouTube stepped in and said, hey, by the way, we're going to take a lot of that away. Spotify has clearly made steps in that direction of YouTube. Let's just say, pretend you're in charge of Apple Podcasts now. What are you doing? Because Apple doesn't seem to be doing anything.

Yeah, well, Apple is still the This is where it gets a little cloudy. Apple is still really, I think, the kingpin in podcast consumption. They may not have the most users or the most creators in the bigger picture of things, but more people consume podcasts on Apple Podcasts or Apple devices than any other device. So, and I do believe that still exists today. There has been some data that's come out here in the last day or so that has confirmed that, that it's now Apple, YouTube, and Spotify are the 3 ranked players in podcast consumption. The issue gets back to is how do we define what a podcast is? And that will drive what that distribution looks like, right? Because if we gauge this on RSS-based listens within YouTube, then YouTube is a minority player. But if we're basing it on video views in YouTube of what people think is a podcast, then that, that amplifies the number tremendously. And that may be why people think that it's the number one place to find a podcast now, which I don't believe is. It's the number one place for the most consumption of what we consider to be today a podcast. I think Apple is still the biggest. And if you look at the historical numbers, Apple has been 6 times larger than Android in actual episode consumption, right, per user. So Apple device users listen to a whole lot more podcasts than any other platform. And that, I believe, that also includes YouTube as well. But I do think that YouTube is catching up fast. And, and as we see this move towards making more video and people perceiving video as being a part of a podcast, that's going to change. And I also think I've been putting a lot of pressure, and I know many people in the industry have been putting a lot of pressure on Apple to re-embrace their video podcast experience in their ecosystem because they have video podcasts in there today. It's just that you can't find them. So that's, that's a big problem. So if Apple comes out and makes a decision, which they've been encouraged to by myself many times and others, they come out and have a little toggle at the top of the app that says audio or video. That's all they have to do to jump into the video game and You'll see a lot of people put out a video podcast that's hosted on RSS.

But that feels like it's going to be cumbersome and maybe a little bit different than Spotify and YouTube do it, where it will stream to the phone. But for Apple, it's a download. And video— downloading video is very expensive.

Well, I mean, it's not a huge difference between the data are really between video podcasting and HLS streaming, but there's a little bit of a difference. There's more efficiency with streaming than there is with the download. But the whole thing with Apple, that is their competitive move right now. If Apple wants to make a very simple change to their UI to be seen as a player in this new audio-video world that podcasting is, That's a simple move for them because they used to do it 10 years ago, or even a shorter period of time. I think they took it out of the interface, um, probably like 6 or 7 years ago.

Rob, can you, could you detail a little more? You said something earlier about podcasting potentially being a social media. Yeah, could you expand on that a little more?

Yeah, it's increasingly being seen, I think, in the same light as social media. Just with the popularity of social media and how people see YouTube as a social media platform, which in some ways it is, in some ways it's not really. It's not as interactive as a Facebook or, you know, that type of environment, but I do think that it's increasingly these platforms are munging together and being seen in the same light by the users and Oftentimes when I talk about this meme, I talk about it from the perspective of what the consumer sees, not what the industry sees. And there's a big difference between that right now. And I think that's part of the issue that needs to probably change a little bit, is that we need to start thinking like the consumers of our content, not so much because we stand on this principle of that it's gonna be done this way and we want it to be this way and things like that. Yeah, I know I battle this topic with Todd Cochran on my New Media Show a lot. Um, because he, you know, he has this very defined way of looking at what a podcast is. And, and we may be moving into a new era where that isn't so much how the consumer of this sees it. The consumer of this doesn't care about RSS feeds anymore. They basically disappeared from the consumer's mind about anything to do with podcasting.

And coming at it from the other way, Jag and I have talked about this a few years back, is maybe it's not so much that Apple, Spotify, and YouTube have to become more like social media platforms versus social media platforms have to become more welcoming to podcasting as creators. So like my big one is I think X is the best positioned platform to become a really all-encompassing content creator platform. It would be as simple as going to, you know, going to my profile on X and there's a tab that says podcast and I go to that and every podcast RSS feed is integrated directly into my social media feed.

But also keep in mind that all these platforms are moving towards direct upload, right? And X and a lot of these social platforms don't want you linking off of their platform to another platform.

Yeah, the algorithm will penalize you big time for sharing a bunch of leaks instead of uploading it natively.

Yeah, right. And that's the real interesting part about this is that all these platforms are kind of trying to compete with each other for users, right? And keep attention and keep people on their platforms. And X is a classic example of this. They have live streaming and they have video support. And if you wanna get views on X, you have to upload directly to their platform, your video, which disrupts, you know, a centralized approach to distribution. And I think that's one of the biggest issues with this change that's happening is that if we think about how we've historically distributed podcasts, we publish it, we upload it to one place, publish it from one hosting platform, and it goes everywhere, right? But we're increasingly coming into a world where we have to upload to 5 different platforms and create 5 different formats at different lengths and durations and orientations. And it's causing a lot of people to just say, this is too hard, I can't I can't handle it, especially as an individual creator. And that's why we're seeing popular shows get bigger as they build teams that can handle the complexity of the digital media landscape right now. And then you add in monetization on top of that and it becomes, it becomes a media business is what it does. It's not an individual, you know, hobby anymore. This is, this is a challenging medium now to be successful in.

Yeah, I feel that when Spotify and YouTube are making these moves and they're taking away my power with the RSS feed where I have dynamic audio insertion, um, dynamic ad insertion, the ability to, to, to talk about, you know, my, you know, my clients and my business and whatnot, I feel like they're trying to separate me from that and own my content. Yeah, I, I, I have my backup.

No, no, I think they, they totally are. And I think that may be the bigger agenda here for many of the platforms, is they want to own the monetization. You know, you don't have to look very far to see it, um, happening right in front of us. That's what YouTube is doing, and that's the direction Spotify is heading. And, and those are the, you know, two of the three largest platforms out there. You know, the, the question gets back to what you were asking earlier about, well, what's Apple going to do in this realm. Now, well, Apple's unfortunately been a failure in advertising, so they're— I don't think they're ever going to get back into advertising. So they're going to have a hard time, you know, justifying the existence of their platform based on an internal advertising, you know, push that YouTube has and Spotify has. So, you know, that's really our only outlet really, uh, at a— at scale going forward, I think, via RSS centralized host read dynamic ad insertion kind of capabilities. And we may, you know, there's other smaller apps out there, Pocket Cast and all those, and Overcast and those that will be a player in this. And I think they will remain a player in this. I think where the industry is getting squeezed is that there just aren't any or very few new creators. And I think that that's, That's one of the things that the hosting platforms are getting crushed on right now is that there's no new lifeblood. So all of, most of them are living off of longstanding podcast accounts that are able to achieve some level of success. And unfortunately that number is getting smaller. It's not getting larger. So that's the squeeze that's going on.

I have a sort of a question in this realm that might be, it might seem a little slightly devil's advocate-y, but we'll see that. Is, you know, one of my, one of my sort of points of acceptance in the podcasting world is that it's, it is a niche product for a niche audience. Yeah, YouTube is, YouTube is not a niche. X is not a niche. All these other places are not niche the way, or Spotify is not a niche the way that podcasting always has been a little bit of a niche. And so this is where I'll share that I get a little bit frustrated with this conversation about the, you know, no RSS feed, no podcast. It's not a podcast because there's all these millions and millions of consumers who are taking on podcasting in places like YouTube. And they have never— they have never been a part of the RSS feed. They have always been a part of the video world, you know, the YouTube-delivered world of podcasting. So it's a little bit hard for me to sometimes to really embrace being super loyal to the RSS feed because it's like, was the, was the RSS feed super loyal to the podcasters who've been doing it for, you know, a long time now?

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good point, Catherine. And, you know, it's, it's almost like, you know, we all have to somewhat accept that change is happening and I don't think that RSS-based distribution is going to go away, and I do think that what's happening in the market is also starting to energize the hosting platforms and the folks that are behind the Podcasting 2.0 initiative to innovate and to make sure that RSS supports video. There's more and more conversations that HLS streaming and the alternative enclosure tag, the Live Lit tag, is will be embraced by more of the apps. The problem is, is that will Apple embrace this? Because Apple is where the scale is that will make this all really compete against the efforts that Spotify and YouTube are partaking in an effort to disrupt what podcasting is or what it has been. And it may force us into accepting the fact that this is going to be a split medium going forward.

Well, I'm glad you mentioned Podcast 2.0. Sorry, Catherine, because, um, Matt is sort of our group expert on that. He is. He's talking about fountain and Satoshis and all these foreign terms to the rest of us, right? You know, and I feel my pushback— and maybe this is, you know, Abe Simpson, old man screaming at cloud, or this is, you know, your music's too loud, get off my lawn— But whereas it's been such an effort to get, you know, mass acceptance of podcasting, and we're finally there where the majority of Americans are listening to podcasting. It seems like when you throw these other variables in, I kind of, my reaction is like, oh, we, we, we just got this. Why are you going to mess it up? I understand what you're saying about like needing to reinvent to stay on top of things. But my, my natural inclination is like, no, we just figured this out. Why are we going to muck it up?

Right. Well, yeah, I think that there is something to that and is going to add a bunch of work to a lot of the app developers that have built apps for education for listeners and then education and all this stuff. And, you know, there's been a desire to do this for many years, but the problem is it has always been the case with podcasting is that podcasting is a group of people that are very passionate about what they're doing. They, they like to do what they're doing, but the truth is, is that it's not a, it's not a big company and it's not organized in that way. And podcasting is really a group of stray cats that like to do their own thing. They like to run off and do this and do that, which has been terrific for podcasting up until now. Um, because it, there was a lot of, you know, new ideas, a lot of energy, people coming up with different ways of doing things. And that's how we all built this medium was based on learning from others. But now we're moving into a different era where you have these big companies that are really investing and have the scale and the reach to start carving away at our little, you know, RSS open distribution domain that we've carved out over the years. And in a lot of ways, we've, I guess frustrated these platforms because they felt like they could have taken us over many years ago, but the open nature of this has really gotten in the way to some degree of their interest in trying to make it a proprietary medium. Hopefully we can hold on, hold on for dear life that we can keep the RSS. I'm a fan of RSS. I built my whole career on what podcasting is, but I'm also a realist too, and I understand how these big companies think because I used to work for one. And this is the, this is the direction things are going, whether or not we like it or not. And also you have to add in this whole layer of AI, how that's going to change things too. I don't think we've seen even the beginning of it yet with Podcasting 2.0.

And I know that Dan Meisner and the team at Bumper were talking about metrics. We can talk about metrics shortly.

Yeah.

But you know, I just, every time we get together to have the discussion about how we, how can we fix this? How can we advance this? How can we make a change? I always sort of think, can we do this without the cooperation of Apple and Spotify who really get 80% of the downloads? Like, is this a silly discussion unless these two big companies are participating?

Right.

Well, that's, that's a tough question, right?

Isn't the big thing with podcasting 2.0, like one of the cornerstones of it, is the direct payment to a creator from the listener within the app?

Apple's not gonna like that. Neither is Spotify.

Yeah, Spotify, like YouTube kind of has it with the, the Super Chats and the thing, and like the premium subscriptions you can do within the channel. That's, that's geared more towards live streaming so that you're getting that real-time interaction with the listener, with the viewer. But yeah, that, that it would seem like it would make more sense for Apple and Spotify to have to adopt that because the user base is already there rather than convince, hey, go download, you know, this third-party backwater app for lack of a better term so that you can directly pay me on there. Like that's a really hard ask to get the majority of people to just move over there.

I'm only using the Fountain app to send you Satoshis, Rob. I'm not listening on there. I will say that I was listening to your show on there when you had the live tag and you were enabling the the live feature. Oh yeah, which is again something that I think would really— I'm not, I'm not gonna say it's gonna put radio out of business, but how handy is it to be able to go live and, hey, we're going to be live on the Fountain app or anywhere that you're using an app that's going to support the live tag? For instance, this show, we should probably do it.

Matt, you and I both know radio put itself out of business.

Well, I'm sure we could talk for an hour on that topic. Yeah. Yeah.

So slightly related, Rob, I can never get these guys to get excited about this topic, but— and maybe it's because I just— I happen to follow a lot of people who are podcasters on Substack. And to the point that we were just making is Substack seems to be a little bit of an all-encompassing thing. It's a way to get paid. So you have memberships, people who want to support your show, they can sign up at different tier levels. You get a website basically that you know, hosts where you're showing, you can do live streams, you can do video, you can do a podcast, you can do an email newsletter, and it's all wrapped into one. And, and you have a way to get paid as, as a creator. And it seems like, you know, I think like I'm looking at Substack and I'm like, they're doing what most podcasters would love to be a part of, that they've, they've provided everything in a very creative way. Now, they had a focus on writers and journalists and what have you, but that's not a bad bet. I don't think that's a— that's— those are people who are trying to churn out words and content like that. Do you have any thoughts about, uh, yeah, that kind of model?

Yeah, I think Catherine, you, you really put your finger on what, what the future, uh, looks like to some degree, um, is these proprietary platforms that are being built. And I can name a couple of them here that are being built to cater to direct, uh, content creator relationships with their their communities, right? And it's like a— the UScreen TV platform is a good example. It's a whole platform built around video creation, publishing directly to the platform, connecting to audiences, having a monetized relationship with them. There's another site that's really interesting that you should all go take a look at, and it's called What'snot, that is actually enabling e-commerce merged with live streaming in a podcast type format. There's all sorts of creative things going on in there around auctions and people, you know, selling things through a store and then doing giveaways and all these kinds of interesting ways to create engagement. And I think that's, that's another layer to this that even, even the Podcast 2.0 project doesn't even address. Is this convergence of e-commerce media. Lots of creators wanna make money by creating content now. And so that's like, that's like the first question that they ask now is it, can I make money from a podcast? And the, the answer to that question is difficult currently, but it's an easy answer to give to a new Whatnot user that wants to create a show on that platform and sell products or sell tennis shoes or sell clothing or do all sorts of stuff. And then, create creative content in the middle of that, right?

I just pulled up the whatnot.com website and blew my mind just taking a look at it for 10 seconds. Whatnot.com, just the way it sounds. W-H-A-T-N-O-T.

I mean, that's the path that we're seeing this, you know, there's all these divergences that are going on and part of it is in response to people seeing a lot of advertising in podcasts.

Yeah.

And one of the reasons podcasting exists today is because of commercial radio being over-commercialized. And if I think back to the very early days, I had a broadcast radio show that I put out as a podcast in 2004, and I took a lot of flack from the podcast community because I had ads in my show. I was a sellout of sorts, right? That was the ideology back then, and that's why this podcast medium existed was a reaction to, to the control and over-commercialization of radio. And so we may be seeing that happen a little bit now again.

Would one of the alternatives to that be a Patreon, where the kind of the big selling point on that is the ad-free experience and you're really getting to directly support your favorite—

yeah, it's the freemium model, right? Yeah. And And Patreon is another example of all this, and they've built quite a support infrastructure, and Apple started to play the premium game as well, and Spotify plays that game, and a lot of the podcast hosts have been playing that game, but it's always been a very jumbled mess. I mean, it's not really, Apple, I don't think is making much money from it, But you look at like a Ustream or a UScreen TV or a Whatnot, and people are making money. So it's, it's, you know, how do you argue it when people are wanting to make an income from what they're doing with creating content? It takes a lot of work now.

Yeah, and I think it's kind of a— it's very white-pilling for me because I would rather there be 15 different options for me to be able to go monetize and create a private audience, rather than you can only go to Spotify and you have to go there if you want to make money. That's the only way to do it. And then that way Spotify becomes sort of the umbrella for anyone who wants to be a content creator, versus you can still just do it on your own. It can be on Ustream, it can be on Patreon, it can be on Substack. But you— I think the ultimate thing that it comes down to is what we've sort of been dancing over this whole time is the content you're making has to be good enough for people to pay for. Yeah, that's really what it all comes down to. And I think we're working under the assumption that, you know, X person that we're talking about has content that's good enough to be paid for.

Well, and it's content that's good enough to find a decent-sized audience. That, that's the real— I mean, the, the, the whole thing is kind of like secondary on the monetization part, and But the problem is a lot of new creators want the monetization to happen from day one.

Even before every client, all four of us talk to the moment we have our first meeting with them.

Rob? Yeah. Are we making money on this show, Matt?

Matt is. He is. Matt, I haven't gotten my check in the mail yet.

Where's my Satoshi? I just gave, I just gave two weeks notice at my job. This podcast has got us, right?

Right. Yeah. That's exactly what's going on.

Not to pivot too hard, Rob, but so one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show is geared towards the smaller creator, people who are starting their podcast a couple years into their journey, not necessarily the established, they've been there, they're making money.

Yeah.

But the addition now of video can be really daunting to new creators. I thought I was starting a podcast. All I thought is I had a mic. Now I got to be dressed up. I got to be on camera. I got to have the right lighting. And they see the really top 1% podcasts that have this incredible video production. But since you're so, you're such a proponent of video, which I'm happy to, to learn, what do you recommend to these new creators, if anything, when they're starting out? Do they start audio only and then branch into video, or is it sort of just a, you know, a comforting reminder of, hey, you don't have to have these $10,000 cameras to have a video podcast?

Yeah, it's a complicated question to answer. I mean, I think it depends on where you're at, what your kind of content you're trying to create. What you're trying to do, what your motivations are, what your mission is. You know, it's a very complicated question to answer very simply because you can start as audio only. And I'm in favor of that. I think if you want to create a show, it's going to be a lot easier for you to get off the ground as an audio program. And then as you kind of grow that show, maybe grow and develop into creating like maybe shorts. It's a great way and use your, your smartphone and, and just record additional content to what you do with the show. Maybe it's tangential to it, but you try and offer value on these other platforms to get attention to you really more importantly as you as a host, because I think the personal branding part is really more important than the show right now. So getting your name out there, getting your expertise out there, getting your face out there in any method that you can right now, or what you can afford, or what you have the skills to do, is it's just a matter of getting started. So, and that's a hard conversation because everybody wants to be Joe Rogan in the first month, and, and it's— and if you don't hit that, if that's what your expectations are, then you're going to quit.

We were talking about this in our meeting last week, our private meeting with the 5 of us, was even everyone compares everybody to Rogan. Rogan doesn't have the most complicated video setup. It's, it's at the end of the night, Rogan is a talking head podcast. You're looking at Joe talk, you're looking at the guest talk, and that's a really simple formula to be able to follow. It doesn't have to be this incredible, you know, video production. It doesn't have to be a film that we're watching every single week.

This is now two pieces of great advice that we've had in the last week. The first, Matt, you might want to clip that bit from Rob about your personal branding being more important than the show at some points, because having that presence on social media, driving that traffic and making people aware of, if not your show, your personal brand. I absolutely love that. That's the gold from this, from this episode. The second piece, I got to pump Johnny's tires for a second, was the analogy that Johnny made in our offline meeting last week. That both Matt and I quoted online today, and I'm sure Catherine either has or will at some point. Johnny, you want to share your analogy with Rob?

You guys are really gassing me up to the great Rob Greenlee here. This goes well. Basically, you know, just off the cuff, I said that video and audio podcast is like having shoes and socks. Your shoes are your audio, your video are your socks. You can leave the house without your socks, but you're not going outside with just socks and no shoes. So at the end of the day, you know, video can be this big driver to audience growth, but if you don't have a really, really high-quality audio production driving your podcast forward, you're going nowhere. Your show's dead in the water. No shoes always come first.

You know, those little socks are going to get wet. Yeah. Um, yeah, I agree with that. I, I think that that's, that's a good good analogy here, but it, you know, it's still a complex situation for new creators. I, I mean, I'm in the middle of trying to plan a, a, a new show myself. Um, what that'll be, well, it's— I've had this kind of this passion for a while between this aspect of the human interface against the AI, and so The show that I'm pushing towards is going to be spoken human. And so it brings together this layer of the role of humans with AI and the role of humans in an AI world. And so those are the topics of the future that will impact all of us in a significant degree. I mean, I started a radio show back in 1999 called Web Talk Radio. And that was at the point when the internet was at its kind of nascent stage of growth and development, and it was challenging a lot of people to understand what the implications of the internet was. And so in a lot of ways, I see a lot of similarity to what's happening with our world around AI and AGI and ASI. And so it's going to change things in ways that we can hardly imagine right now. So there's— and the same thing was happening back in the early days of the internet, or on that show. On that show back then, I talked about wireless internet and, you know, mobile devices with internet access, and had guests on talking about that and what the implications of that and the cultural impacts of it too. So that's, that's, that's what I'm increasingly thinking. I'm thinking about shutting down all the other things that I'm doing just to do that.

I'm thinking about the frustration of podcasters, like longtime podcasters, and why they would be frustrated. And I think the two things that come back to is it's hard, harder to make video. It's extra steps. There's things to do. There's more. We have to move more data. We're all podcast producers ourselves. And so, you know, when somebody comes to us, you know, we have to add a little bit to the bill. We have to add some time. We've got to add some cameras. We've got to add some editing time. It's changed what we've done. And then there's the other side of it, and that's the data. How are we ever going to aggregate and count all this so that you can come up with a number that— and when we say number, you know, traditionally it's been the download. And you can please comment, by the way, on where you think the download is at these days. But a number that is going to facilitate a transaction between a buyer and a seller of advertising. What's that going to be? How are we going to do that? I got, I got these plays on Spotify. I've got these streams and plays, and I got these listens over here, and Apple's got listens. There's also some consumption up here, and there's a bunch of downloads.

Yeah.

And these downloads are different.

What are we gonna do? It's a mess. I agree. I talked to the folks from the, um, the, the IAB here recently. I was on a, on a group call with with their leader of the IAB Media Lab, who is kind of in charge of the metrics for podcasting, and have raised this topic with her. I said, I think it may be time for you guys to start looking at media as a holistic metric, not so much breaking up different metric standards for radio, online radio, for, and television, and, and, and podcasting, and all separate metrics. I think what we have to do is we have to pull it together and come up with one metric that applies to all these platforms, whether it be Spotify or YouTube, because we don't even know what YouTube is counting based on. So those views, just like what Spotify was doing with the plays. It's like what they did was rename starts to plays, and I think we all know what starts are. There's somebody clicking a button, right? And that's what we moved away from with the IAB metric standard on podcasting, is that you have to play, you know, a minute of the content before it's counted. You can't just click on the button 10 times and have it counted as 10 plays. So, you know, that's what I fear. I don't know that those, that YouTube and Spotify are that dumb with their counting and their metrics, but I do know that this, we've been through with the IAB a little bit as well. My numbers are better if they're smaller type of approach to this. And I do think that, you know, that doesn't play into the hands of a media world that wants to make money.

Everybody loves a bigger number, right?

Exactly. But the goals of the IAB and the goals of podcasting over the last 10 years have been whoever has the lowest number must have the best numbers.

Did you hear what radio did?

What they did?

It used to be 5 minutes. If you, you know, if you, if you claimed you listened to 5 minutes of a show, they would credit 15 in the ratings book. And they've changed that. So now you only have to listen to 3 minutes of the show.

Of course, right? Well, the numbers go up.

That's right.

So if you want to grow your revenue, you got to lower the threshold for entry of what a, what a play or a listener view is, right?

Matt, can I give you an anecdote that'll make your blood boil when it comes to views on YouTube and selling that to advertisers?

Oh gosh.

So, uh, I recently saw an inside of a YouTube studio where I don't know how this worked. Apparently a guest on a podcast— this person does not own the channel. They were able to put money into promoting their episode on YouTube and drove those numbers through the roof. I'm talking like hundreds of thousands of views over a 90-day span. It led to one comment on the channel, on the video itself. And I was able to see the internal metrics of the viewership. It was no longer than 9-second increase of view. So like 39 seconds of the view of the video was being viewed across these like 200,000 supposed views. Now you take that number, all I have to do as the person selling ads on my show is to screenshot that and say, hey, look, my video really took off and I got 300,000 views on this podcast video. Okay, but why does it have 3 comments? And that doesn't count in any sense of, in any sense of the word of a view. But that can still be sold to an advertiser fraudulently.

It's fraud.

It's fraud.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that there's been a desire to move the industry towards what they consider is counting engagement. Right. And I know that the YouTube platform has been really pushing because I've been, I've been playing around with it a lot. Pushing this concept of play duration. You know, how long is a person watching that video? And what's the percentage of click off the thumbnail? And what's the conversion? And what's the fall-off of audience numbers in the timeline of the playback? And that's their primary metric now, is the clicks on the thumbnail and what the play duration is. And they will drive attention to that video more if it has a higher percentage of audience retention after the click. And so that, but the problem with that is, and the other end of the spectrum here, is that that's also gonna be a metric that drives the numbers down. It's not gonna drive the numbers up. And so increasingly the content's gonna be evaluated based on its engagement and how long it keeps people consuming it. Sure, that's what the advertisers are going to wind up wanting to buy is shows that have longer engagement where they can get their ads to play in front of the audience. Yeah, so yeah, yes, I wonder if we can take it. Oh, sorry, hey, a landline.

What's a landline?

I was gonna say, Johnny, for your benefit, that's a phone that used to be plugged into the wall.

Know that that's Descript calling Matt wanting this answer.

Rob has his finger on the pulse of all things tech for the next 20 years, but he still has a landline.

You're—

you've got like 1950 to 2050 covered.

It's true, that was my landline.

Oh wait, it was Matt's? I thought it was Rob's.

Oh, okay.

Oh yeah, I'm—

oh, in Canada it's—

that's different in Canada. Yeah, it's different in Canada.

At my dad's place and he still has a land line. Yeah. Wow.

So Rob, I'm hoping we can take just a, a, a little tangent, but hopefully a helpful tangent. Uh, you and I first met because I had the honor of being a panelist on a panel that you moderated at Podcast Movement about local podcasting. And I know you had a lot of passion about local podcasting, and I'm wondering if you could just share a couple of thoughts that you have. What is, all of the things we've been talking about, the video, the podcasting 2.0, all of these new changes to the industry, what does— is there an impact for local? Is local still a viable niche for podcasting? What are your thoughts there?

It's a complicated question and a complicated answer to give on it because I think when I was putting those panels on, I think I had a certain perspective on it that was based on the information I had at the time. And, and I think the information that I have now, uh, is that I've been hearing more people talking about the opportunity of local podcasting. Um, you know, Stephen Goldstein, who lives in Connecticut, uh, right down the street from me, I have lunch with him on a regular basis, and, and we talk. He's a big fan of local too, and he thinks that there's a big, big future with local podcasts too. But when you actually look at the, the track record, um, and companies that are actually doing it today, um, it's, it's a difficult slog. I mean, it's not an easy endeavor. You know, there's CityCast, which I know that Steve has contact with, um, David Plouffe over there. And I, I've known David for many years, back when he worked for Slate And, and I know he's been building his, uh, network of shows across the country into medium-sized markets. So he doesn't build it in the really big markets, he builds in kind of like the, the lower part of the top, top 40 markets in the country, like in the, you know, the 40th to like the 30th or something like that. Um, because it's not a viable thing to do in a large market, but it is He's playing around with it in the, the medium-tier markets. And Steve, and I kind of wonder about this too, is increasingly talking about even smaller markets that don't have any current media right now. They may have like maybe a local newspaper that comes out once a week or something like that. I mean, I see it in my own, own community in Connecticut, and there's very little media that's around. And there's always a couple of podcasts that are in that market, um, trying to, trying to make it, but I don't see them doing a lot of local marketing or local promotions. I can't imagine they're picking up much audience. So I think it's a difficult thing when everybody's really focused on national attention, um, to get especially the younger generation to pay attention to local, anything local. And that's not sure that it reaches their attention. I don't know. Yeah. It's tough. I don't know, any other thoughts on that from anybody else?

Well, I think CityCast did, by the way, drop one into Los Angeles, but I think—

Oh, did they? Oh, I didn't hear that.

I think— And I think I only know that because Andrea Silenzi, I think, is working there.

Oh.

And she was at Panoply with a podcast at one point.

Oh, is that a play to get her? Go after the big radio companies now? Is that what he's trying to do?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I worry that the push into video is really gonna sort of disrupt the local side of trying to accomplish that audio part of like, hey, if we get a live tag and then we can get a location tag put into for Podcasting 2.0, and if we can get a few of these other things, radio might not need a transmitter in 10 years.

Yeah, well, and I, I always thought that TuneIn was going to be the, the platform for this because of their emphasis on finding content in a zip code or an area code. Um, and they're still out there, but they've completely dismantled their podcast efforts. So I don't know how that's— I think they still claim that they're a podcast -consuming platform, but I can tell you there's no significant infrastructure going on over there. It's just a bunch of talk and not a lot of action.

Matt, I don't see LA on CityCast. I'm on their website. I see that they're bringing Twin Cities, which I guess is Minnesota.

Yeah, Seattle.

You, Rob, Seattle's got one coming out. And then Austin, Boise, Chicago, D.C., Denver, Houston, Vegas, Madison, Nashville, Philly, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Salt Lake.

Well, then we'll be editing my part out of the show.

Fix it in post. No, leave it in there, Matt.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I think it's an interesting trend line there. I mean, I think there's only a handful of companies that are trying to play in that space right now.

And I would think that it would be more geared towards individual creators rather than larger companies because, like you said, behind any kind of content creation, it's passion that's driving it. So there's got to be plenty of people with passion enough their local communities combined with a passion for podcasting that they would be able to build something significant around this rather than relying on a larger company to do it themselves.

It's just that there's no real solid examples that I can point to that— oh, you're not able to, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That I can point to. I know that, um, was it, uh, Seth from, um, you know, tried to build one for, for a while.

Seth Ressler.

He's done a lot in the community.

Seth Ressler tried to do one in Michigan.

And then the man who got me into podcasting, Seth Ressler.

Yeah, I think it would take a lot of— it would take a pretty significant financial backing because if I were just approaching it myself, starting one tomorrow, it would be geolocated ads placed on smart TVs, placed on social media advertising within DAI buys within podcasting on other, other news podcasts with, you know, geolocated tags for that area. That would take some serious financial investment, which makes more sense to what you were saying, that larger companies would be more, uh, successful in trying to do this.

Yeah. And Matt, like, like you said, is, is radio going to push hard into this as a way to survive?

Uh, probably not. It— you'd have to— you have to invest to get into this and the profit margin is low. And so I think a lot of big radio companies, a lot of radio stations are owned by bigger companies who look at the ROI on that and go, I don't think so.

Yeah, it's not worth.

Yeah, I will say like things like the Eric Zane Show. So Eric Zane was on Free Beer and Hot Wings, which was a syndicated show, and then he left. He started his own thing. But, you know, he had a head start. He could get some clients. He was had a personality and I think he was working out of Grand Rapids, Michigan and could really, could create a local show. But it's based on personality, not really the town, if that makes sense, even though most of it is very local show.

Rob, you're going to have to tell Todd how many Michigan references we got in today.

Yeah. Yeah. He hasn't been there that long, but, but his family has a, has a big presence. Wilmington, Michigan.

So yeah, um, Rob, I think that's— we've done our hour, and, and I just want to thank you. Does anybody have any questions or any final thoughts?

No, Rob, thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it.

Our first Podcasting Hall of Famer, if I'm not mistaken.

That's correct, it is. Wow. Well, that's— that event's coming back up, um, again in January of 2026. Again, I'm, I'm getting that off the ground as we speak, so How long do you think it will be before a non-American is inducted?

Hmm, that's about himself.

That's a tough question to answer right now because, you know, you know, the, the people that are inducted are voted in. Yeah. So the problem with, uh, international is that, uh, there's not a lot of international knowledge of the podcast medium. Yeah. So, you know, I know James Cridland has done an amazing job of opening that door over the last few years of giving us all a glimpse into what's happening around the world with podcasting, because prior to that we have no visibility, which, which also makes it difficult to induct anybody from outside the US because Most of the inductees are US-based. Most of the judges are US-based currently until I can get a voting board that's big enough that incorporates hundreds of people from all over the world. They probably will never vote anybody in. So that's the goal that I have right now is to get more voters in there that can vote, that have local knowledge of podcasters that were influential in those international markets.

Nice. Matt, get your, get your headshot ready. And those for your consideration ad campaign.

I can see it now.

Canada. Well, Canada should be in there, right? I agree with you. Yeah.

I mean, given the amount of stuff that the CBC produces and other great things like this is a good time to plug Canada Land. And some, some other great stuff that Canada has produced.

Yeah, I agree. And there's been a lot of great stuff out of Australia and the UK too for years.

Yeah. Rob, thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Don't hang up because this is StreamYard and nobody's allowed to leave until everybody's—

everybody's completely unloaded. Yep.

Yeah. Okay, so we'll go around the horn and say goodbye.

Johnny. There's a great podcast about music that comes out. It's called Past Tense, a top 10 time machine podcast. You can check it out at time machine pod.com, hosted by our very own David Yazd.

Yeah. And we'll mention that, that David is away. He's had a passing in the family and we missed him today.

Thank you for getting that reference in there, Johnny. It really would not have been a podcast super friends without about hearing about past tense. Thanks everybody. My name is Catherine O'Brien. It's been such a pleasure to talk to everybody. And thank you again, Rob, for being here with the Podcast Super Friends.

Well, thank you, Carolyn. I appreciate it. It was great to be here. Yeah.

And thanks, Rob. I'm John Gay from Jag in Detroit Podcast in Detroit. You can find me online at jagindetroit.com.

And I'm Matt Kundel from the SoundOff Media Company in Canada. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Thanks for listening to the podcast Super Friends.

For a transcript of the show or to connect with the Super Friends, go to the show notes of this episode or go to soundoff.network.