Spotify or Amazon Buying ACAST? | Live Podcast Industry News

All right, we're, we're back with the New Media Show. Todd, welcome from, uh, wherever you happen to be.

Yeah, I'm in the Philippines and, uh, here we are. And, uh, I'm, uh, I'm glad to be back. And it was, uh, it's been quite the tumultuous couple of weeks.

Lots of stuff going on, lots of changes for you, and lots of things happen in the podcasting space. I know you went to the podcast show, and, and so I would love to hear more about that. Plus also, we have some other drama that happened to you this past week too. You lost your, your studio in Michigan.

So yeah, it just, you know, I guess I'll talk about that first. I arrived back from London on Friday and, uh, had a nice Saturday, Sunday, you know, Memorial Day weekend planned and one day back to work, and then, you know, Wednesday I'm gonna fly out. And, uh, you know, I really took— I took, uh, Saturday off and Sunday, you know, about 10 o'clock at night. I don't know why, maybe it was intuition, who knows. I, uh, I went and grabbed, uh, my laptop and, you know, had YouTube stuff playing. I'm going through my email and I see this termination of lease email.

Well, they didn't give you much notice, did they?

Well, they gave me a month, but the problem is I was leaving on Wednesday and I went into a dire panic. Now, I could have— I'd not been mailed a certified notice of eviction, just an email. And it really wasn't an eviction. It was just a termination of lease. And So I, you know, I went into panic mode, and, uh, by about 1 o'clock in the morning, I had booked a U-Haul truck that I couldn't believe I was going to be able to pick up on Memorial Day, and a storage unit, and had enlisted help. And, uh, by Tuesday afternoon at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, uh, the new media production studios was no more, as empty shell. And, uh, half of it in storage, half of it in my loft in Michigan. So yeah, and literally when I go home, I'm going to come home to just— oh my God, uh, an incredible, incredible mess. Um, it won't be pretty.

So what are you planning on doing? I think you had mentioned that you're going to try and rebuild your studio in your in the place where you live now. So, right.

Yeah. The challenge really is it's a loft. So I'm going to have to figure out a cubby of some sort and maybe build a false wall. And it's, you know, the ceilings are beautiful. It's nice, but it's really not, you know, it's not like a room. And, you know, acoustics, I'm sure, is going to be challenging. Who knows? And then the whole situation with bandwidth is still probably going to be a problem. I think I can survive with the way the bandwidth is right now. So yeah, when I get home, it's going to be a scramble to— but you know, in hindsight, I guess that's the beauty of podcasting, right? I can go audio only for a period of time until I get the studio built and or false wall built or whatever I'm going to do and go from there. So, but it just, you know, the— it was like losing a child almost, or a dog, you know, probably not like losing a child, but it was just— I'm still kind of reeling from it, to be honest with you, because I'd put so much effort into that creative space. But it's ironic, Rob, because Don't, don't build your castle on rented land.

I think I made a comment like that on Twitter. It's like, hmm, what's the analogy that's right here?

Yeah, you know, totally.

I mean, yeah, how long were you in that location?

5 years.

5 years. Okay.

Yeah, 5 years. So you invested a lot. I mean, you know, and I normally when you move, you have enough time to think, right? And how are you going to pack stuff? This was just, who knows? I may have packed up garbage. I have no clue.

You had to throw it together so fast.

I mean, so when I get home, it's like, and I filled a 12 by 20 storage unit, filled it to the rim. And then, you know, I've got monitors, computers, you know, just stuff strewn on the floor. In the loft. And yeah, so it was, you know, it, it just was depressing. But yeah, Wednesday got on an airplane, and, and so I'm gonna be here for a while. Part of it is some business that I'm doing and some other things too.

So yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, I was hoping that we could talk about some of the latest kind of, um news in the podcast space like we always do. But, uh, yeah, you know, a few of them, I mean, because we've been both kind of off for a while, so it's just a matter of kind of, you know, like talking about the, the rumors that are flying around about some big podcast hosts being sold here, uh, has been on everybody's mind here. Everybody's trading messages because they're trying to figure this, this puzzle out.

It's interesting, right? I'd heard a rumor at the podcast show that the reason Libsyn wasn't there was something was potentially in the works. I had heard a rumor. Now, yeah, is it them? Is it, is it, you know, who do you think it is?

Well, I mean, I guess it's an interesting exercise really to think about, you know, who out there in the given situation in the podcasting medium right now, who's kind of like the best bedfellow to, to point to, right? Um, who, who benefits from acquiring a podcast host and who has the money to do it? Um, is really kind of a secondary question to this.

The money is probably the bigger—

yeah, right, right. But it's also kind of, kind of business compatibility. Um, maybe the focus of a particular platform. And, and, uh, well, um, so Anu posted in the comments area that it's, um, that it's Buzzsprout, but Buzzsprout has come out publicly and said it isn't them. So, and I have heard some comments, I don't know if it was just, you know, denial, but I have heard some, um, comments that Lipson isn't it either. Um, so I don't know, you know, if, if, I mean, we'll know when we know. I mean, I think James Kridland posted in the newsletter this morning that, that we should know by next week. So my guess is it's probably ACast is the one that's on the auction block right now.

I think it, yeah, that's my guess. They, they could be. They got the biggest global reach, right?

That, and there's a couple big players in the medium that could benefit from an ACast, and that those two players would be Spotify and, um, I don't think Spotify is going to be buying any more.

Uh, uh, Blueberry is leading Podcasting 2.0. We've got the most implementations of any podcast host. Yeah, yeah, it's not us.

Yeah, so it looks like a new— what wants us to spill the beans on this, but Honestly, Anu, I don't think any of us have the answer to this. It's, it's kind of a, a puzzle, um, that's going on. It's an interesting one because it, it causes all of us to think about, you know, who's the best match for who in the whole industry. So, you know, it got, got me thinking about, well, who's the best match, um, who's the best match for podbean? Who's the best match for even blueberry, for that matter?

Well, you know, the, the people that are calling us, and again, we get inquiries all the time, is late capital investment firms, you know, folks that are rolling up companies to do deals. So, you know, those are the, you know, people that are institutional, you know, they've got big pots of money, then they, you know, they just buy companies. Yeah. You know, who did— Amazon has bought some stuff already. Who did they buy?

Amazon bought— as far as a hosting company, they bought Art19. Yeah, but I wouldn't say that Art19 has a big global presence. No. So they're, they're still a fairly, fairly small hosting platform that Amazon owns, and it's a good platform for their purposes, but maybe it doesn't expand their global reach quite as much as like an Acast might.

I'll still put my money either on Libsyn or Acast.

I mean, my gut tells me it's probably not Libsyn, though Libsyn is positioned to sell. They've been positioned to sell for, for probably a year now at least.

Well, you know, I, I made a, I, I made a comment to a certain individual. Why aren't you guys— well, I asked Rob— why aren't you guys here in London? And it was crickets. So that, to me, was like, hmm, Rob would normally tell me why they're not.

Keep in mind, Todd, that they own a podcast hosting platform in Germany.

Um, well, then, you know, so maybe they are—

that's the question.

Yeah, so maybe they're the ones.

Um, yeah, so I don't know. You know, there's a lot of talk going on in the space right now, and it's hard to know how it's going to play out. It will be a sign going forward.

And I don't even remember where I heard the, the, the potential Libsyn thing. It was just something, you know, maybe I said something to somebody and, um, someone said, oh, they're, they're not here because I, I, I don't know. I didn't— again, it was just kind of this passing thing. It wasn't like it was this, guess what, guess what I heard. It wasn't like one of those, you know. Um, so, but there was a— you know, Libsyn had a team member at, uh, the podcast show, but I— and I'd only seen him once, I think.

So, uh, yeah, I think I saw that too. I think, I think it was mainly your representation from the kind of the advertised cast or— yeah, yeah, team that was there.

But, you know, that, you know, that being said, the podcast show for us, um There was just, from a creator standpoint, winner winner chicken dinner. Uh, we, we talked to a lot of creators, a lot. Um, probably so much so that I, I immediately committed for next year and asked.

I mean, I think it's a great show. I think it's a great show. I, I would have loved to have gone to it. Um, yeah, new, uh Posted another comment here, says, um, what, what about Agami buying Podio? Um, I don't know. I think Agami might be interested in like one of the larger hosting platforms if they were going to do something, but I, I don't know. That doesn't feel like a—

yeah, it's not to me. A Podio buy is, you know, kind of a not— almost they're just not big enough, I don't think, for a They're big in the Middle East.

Um, okay, well, Rick, Rick has a comment here too. Says Rick, uh, uh, asks, after the stock debacle of a couple years ago with Lipson, I think someone should, uh, buy Lipson, right?

Um, yeah, I mean, you know, you know, there's some benefit in, you know, like maybe a larger company buying them, but I, you know, I, I had heard that some developers got let go over there. Matter of fact, a lot of developers got left go.

Well, and also, I mean, if you look at over the last couple years, there's been a lot of program managers that have kind of come and gone through that company as well.

So could have, you know, why, why do you all of a sudden start letting go developers? Either there's, one, money issues, which there shouldn't be at Libsyn. Number two, are you trying to make your books look better?

That's— yeah, I mean, I mean, I think a lot of companies are doing that right now, though. They're, they're trimming staff. They're getting lean because I think that there's a possible expectation of an economic— a further economic decline.

Libsyn can't afford to let people go right now with the way their interface, you know, their, their backend is.

Yeah, they never really finished Libsyn 5, and yeah, you know, they haven't really done everything with Libsyn Pro either.

So this is why, you know, be honest with you, they're losing, they're losing business because of that. You know, we, we basically talked to a whole bunch of Libsyn folks at at the podcast show, and, um, they were, you know, basically disgruntled.

So yeah, so it's interesting. I was thinking that maybe more of this would happen before now, you know, that this is a probably a good time for bigger companies to snap up smaller ones because of the value equation might be a little bit more attractive.

It has to be someone with a lot of cash on hand because the investment market right now is not good. You know, I was— I'm surprised there's been any, and maybe that's why there hasn't been an announcement yet. Maybe something is not closing. You know, money's tight with interest rates the way they are. So someone's coming, coming in and buying something.

I mean, I have to say that I did think about, um, um, Apple in this context. I tried to play out some kind of a scenario with them.

Oh, that would be interesting.

They're a— they're really the only major player that doesn't have a hosting platform. So yeah, but I don't know. I mean, I mean, if Apple hasn't built an Android app yet, I don't know that they're going to go there.

So, you know, and I'm not going to say what my discussion was, but I did get a chance to talk to the Apple team at the podcast or several people at the podcast show. They were there. Even though it was a bit incognito per se. They were at the event.

Um, yeah, well, they usually do that. It's just that they, they can't exhibit and do anything like that, which they've never exhibited at a podcasting event in the whole lifespan of their involvement in podcasting.

But I was asking pretty specific questions about I guess I can say this. You know, I was asked very specific questions about what do you want from us? What do you want? Oh, Apple. What? Apple. Yeah. What do you think we should do? And, you know, and I, I went through my, my top, you know, 3, 4 things.

So do you want me to share my thoughts on, on a good combo for Blueberry. Hmm. I would think that you would probably approve of that, of my, my, um, my thinking on it.

Who would— who, who do you think is it?

Can you think of who, who I might be thinking of?

I'm not going to review— I've, you know, I'm not going to say anything on— because you don't know who I'm talking to and what I'm doing.

So, uh, you know, exactly.

Who do you think the combo would be good?

Well, let me just set it up a little bit. Uh, I think that, um, Automattic, the maker of WordPress, recently acquired, um, Pocket Cast.

Right. But okay, so let me, let me put this to bed. Uh, WordPress already has a stake in another podcasting plugin.

Oh, no kidding.

And have had for a long time, a small stake.

Hmm, okay. So is that public information?

I think so, but it's been 3, 4, maybe 5 years.

Yeah, but there isn't really any plugin that has any significance that's—

there's a couple that have a little—

that's really competitive to you though.

I I would imagine we're double market share of any other plugin.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking.

But yeah, WordPress, if you're gonna give me a call, hey, we'll take that. We'll take that conversation.

Well, it would be a, you know, um, Matt, uh, reach out to Todd and see what you can strike, because I think that that's the best, that's the strongest tie-in that you have.

Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you know, it's, it's interesting because since Podcasting 2.0 and everything that we've been doing and beefing up our dashboard, you know, our dashboard spread is getting a little wider. It used to be like 80/20. Now we're probably 70/30, 70% PowerPress users, 30% dashboard users. So, so, you know, that, but again, the Podcasting 2.0 stuff is And podcasting 2.0 stuff, some of that is in Crossroads right now, and a couple of the functions, specifically the streaming stats and some of that stuff. And by the way, we are lit and live video today. Oh, terrific. Yeah, I was having trouble with the audio streamer.

So, okay. It's better to get the video anyway, right?

Yeah.

So, so I had lunch today with Stephen Goldstein. So that was an interesting conversation with him. I'm not gonna disclose anything, but just to say, you know, he's, he's still, you know, working hard in the, in the podcasting space and, and doing events. And I guess he was up doing a panel up at the Radio Days Europe event, or not Europe, but the the Radio Days America event up in Toronto just a day or so ago. And he said that there was only like 100 people there or something like that. So it was a pretty, pretty small event. Yeah. So, which, you know, I've done that event in the past, but he's really bullish about video in the podcasting space too. And he's also bullish about audio too. So, I think it's, it's not one or the other. I think, you know, as he's looking at it too, and he's, he's going down to the Talkers Conference on Friday, which is down at the Hofstra University. And I was down in Long Island, I was thinking about going down to it, but you know, I, I've changed my mind.

You know, the, the video was not even, uh There wasn't much of a whisper about people talking about doing much video in—

at the podcast show?

No, no. And a lot of people are saying exactly what I've been saying, is that very few are finding success. But then again, my session that I did, and I talked again about, um, you know, Apple having video podcasting support, right? That was brought by, you know, 20 jaws dropped open because they didn't realize that.

Yeah, that's a very— it's a very interesting aspect of what's happening on that is, is, you know, when Apple decides to depreciate a feature that's in there, especially around content, it has an impact.

But just remember, Video was supported largely when iTunes was still the primary platform. When Apple Podcasts, the app, came out, video was really never supported much in the Apple Podcasts app. There wasn't a video section.

Yeah, exactly. They used to have a throttle back and forth where you can click see all the podcasts video, see all the podcasts audio. It was at the top of the app interface.

In Apple Podcasts?

Well, that's a good point, Tom. I'm not sure.

I think—

I'm not sure it was ever in the Apple Podcasts app, right?

It was still an iTunes thing, right? Right. And now that we've completely—

it didn't make the jump, right?

Yeah, it didn't make the jump. So, right. And that's one thing I talked to the Apple Podcast folks about that. I said, hey, listen, you know, oh, you did good. Maybe you should, you know, think about having ways to publicly show that you support video so that—

well, that might be good, good kind of public visibility for them to showcase that at this point.

Again, you ask something and, you know, the development is, you know, a year down the road or whatever.

So yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So many people that didn't know that. I mean, a lot of people don't know that, that, that they support PDFs too, right? Right. Yeah. So I mean, I wouldn't say it's, uh, people are, you know, breaking down the doors to publish PDFs with their podcast, but it's, it's certainly something in the earlier days of this medium. It's something that people did in like a companion information to their episodes.

It was not uncommon. But again, I think a lot of people lose sight that a podcast could be an audiobook with chapters.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. It could be a single episode that would be a documentary video. All of those could be sold on Apple Premium. There could be, you know, if you think about the media types. And again, this is, you know, people have been so focused on just spoken word audio that they forget that this openness of this medium continues to allow you to do other cool things. You look at what Ivo Tara did in those early years with audiobooks, and, you know, that kind of just went went by the side. You know, that work that Eva did was groundbreaking at the time.

And, well, Todd, I think it's a case for looking at the medium as kind of like a more of a bucket term. I think lots of people want to put podcasting into a narrow definition, right? And that's where we're running into friction here is is that podcasting can include a lot of different types of media types. Yeah, um, the distinction that is— that we're drawing on is whether it's RSS or not. And well, you know, and that's, that's the controversy right now, is something that's available in YouTube, a podcast, because it is RSS.

Again, it's— let's quit calling YouTube podcast. What YouTube has created is a bastardized system. YouTube is YouTube. You have a YouTube channel.

Yeah, I don't really disagree with that characterization because, I mean, I use YouTube a lot. We're on YouTube right now, and I've, I've learned how to use it, and I, I have a pretty good understanding of how it works now. Um, and it's, it is really Um, most of what gets published in that platform is not via RSS and only video. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you think about that media or that platform, everything is about video. So why do you think that publishing audio up there is going to work? So it just, oh, it's, it doesn't, it defies, um, logic.

Right.

Yeah, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work. Yeah. If you're just publishing your audio podcast to YouTube, that, you know, that's, you know, you get 10, 15 views, great.

Yeah. So, so I wanted to kind of move on a little bit and talk about the Pod News exclusive that came out, uh, about Spotify's Megaphone is recertifying, Todd, but the rest of Spotify doesn't appear to be in the IAB.

I think Megaphone has to.

I agree with that, and I, I made a public comment saying that that's probably a smart move on their part. I was a little shocked that they made that move, um, or, you know, were contemplating making that move of, of abandoning IAB across all their platforms. I think it was probably a mistake, um, that they did that.

They're a podcast-first platform.

Well, and this is— Megaphone is a professional publishing platform, and most of the shows that go with Megaphone are looking to monetize. So makes sense. You know, Spotify for podcasters, you know, there's a lot of people in there that don't really care about advertising that much.

It was definitely a huge conversation point with podcasters that, you know, who are you with, right? You know, and We get a lot of migrators out of the podcast show, a lot. You know, there's a lot of people that are, you know, looking at these things and making, you know, hosting decisions upon, you know, these, these bigger topics. Right. We're gonna, you know, we basically are going to be doing the v2.2 recertification.

Yeah, that's, that's what Megaphone is working on right now is getting, getting to— I guess that's the latest update, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So any, any— and the requirement the IAB put down to us was that we have to recertify annually. There is not— doesn't matter if there's a version of the new of the spec, right? We come back annually and write that check.

Yeah, Sue Ann writes, YouTube Music, I think, lets you toggle between audio and video preferences. They may do that, but just know that there is no straight audio in YouTube. Everything has been converted into a video. So yeah, it all gets back to how it's presented. And YouTube has also announced that they're going to take— just to let everybody know, I'm not sure how they're going to do this, but they've already announced that they're going to take the audio And they're going to apply AI to create a more kind of motion video type of a concept around that audio.

I hope that's not just forced on everybody.

Well, they also are planning on transcribing and doing different versions of the audio in different languages. Too. So, you know, that may be a good thing, but they're also going to take video and they're going to translate it into all, all the world's languages as well and apply AI to change your mouth movements.

They better not without permission.

Well, yeah, and that also dovetails to what was announced earlier from Riverside, which is this this video dub capability. I'm kind of jumping ahead a little bit, but that is very similar to what YouTube is proposing to do, is to be able to change, you know, take your cloned voice and then have that audio playback in like 150 different languages and to be able to modify the video to make it look like they're actually talking in those languages.

Speaking of a company where people are leaving, you know, because, you know, everyone I'm talking to is looking for new solutions with them. Okay, right. Yeah, that was, that was another conversation, you know.

Yeah, it's a tough one with them. I mean, I've, I know lots of people that, uh, have said, yeah, I'm not going to keep using Riverside because it's, it's not stable or something. I mean, I'm not always sure exactly what the problem is.

It's a variety of reasons, you know. And I hear a lot of people saying that they're doing the Descript Squadcast route, right? Um, so yeah, it's, it's— and of course, you know, there's all kinds of change even with the, with StreamYard. You know, look at there, lots of, lots of changes over there under new, new ownership.

Yeah, that's so— I did, uh, pull up a, a video. Now the Riverside folks put out a demo of this platform, and I do have it where I could play it for us if we want to see it. Todd, I don't know if you want me to play it or not, but if you want to, okay, let me, uh, pull it up here and see if we can, we can see it here. Okay, so we'll get a copyright strike. I hope not. So yeah, I don't think there's any music in this thing.

So maybe you had a slip up in the recording or you have some outdated information that needs to be changed, like a statistic or URL. Well, you can correct it right in the Riverside editor. We are 33 5-star reviews away from 200. Just select a word here in the transcript and click video dub, correct the text, and then click generate. Then VideoDub will actually create new audio in your voice using AI and dub your lips to sync to that audio. We are 29 5-star reviews away from 200. We're confident that VideoDub will give your creation process a massive boost and a new way to integrate AI in your workflow. If you want to be the first to access these features, go to riverside.fm and sign up.

Then what they need to do is they need to now disclose that they have altered that. You have to do that on YouTube too. If you make an altered video, you have to disclose that now. You have to have complete disclosure that you have used AI to regenerate. Yeah. And someone now can take— you know, this is, this is a dangerous territory here. Yeah.

And that's kind of, kind of similar to what what the YouTube folks were talking about in the announcement that I saw was doing similar, not necessarily changing the content like this one is. This one's giving you kind of, it's kind of a similar capability as Descript has to be able to edit video via a transcript, right? So you can get in and change the text in there as long as there's a voice clone in there. Recording of yourself, it could create new audio that syncs up to your video.

Yeah, but again, you physically change the video with AI, you now have to disclose that, that this video has been altered with AI.

So yeah, I wonder if that's somehow being enforced or not, or is it just, you know, people do it just because it's a moral thing to do.

Well, I, I guess I get— I gotta go back and look at my YouTube interface because, you know, they made that requirement. Yeah, some, some time ago.

Right. Or is that, um, more focused on creating entire, you know, video content, right?

Not— well, I think if you edit it, you know, okay, so what do you do if you're taking a politician's words and you redub what the politician has said. I think, you know, anytime you edit something, I think there's huge ramifications there. Okay, it's cool, whatever. But again, disclose, disclose that this video has been edited with artificial intelligence. And a portion of the video clip has been modified to use different words or whatever you're going to have to do.

Well, I think that there's a line there of differentiation. I think that the Descript tool works, and I know that there's other tools that do this as well, but you just, you can remove things from the video, but this ability to add AI-generated content to the video is that maybe where the line—

maybe, maybe we need to approach this in the Podcasting 2.0 stuff so that there's a tag that is set for, um, because there's nothing in podcasting supporting this right now except if you put something in your show notes. Maybe there needs to be a tag added that is, uh, um,, you know, AI modified audio or something. AI, yeah, AI modified audio. So that way those Descript users that are modifying audio with AI can disclose it. I think it's critical that we start doing this because transparency— podcasting has always been about me saying words to an audience. And as soon as I change the words, even if I edit the words in post, but what is the difference then? I could take in an audio clip in post if I record without being live and re-record a segment and replace that. That is pure editing, not done with AI. Mm-hmm. So that's, to me, would be a non— I wouldn't have to disclose that I edited it using my own voice. But if you edit with AI, then I think you have to disclose.

But when you say edit, there's kind of two, two kind of ends to that. There's the editing for removal, and then there's editing for adding. Or anything for changing. Yeah, but changing can be like, you know, like what we do when we edit the audio and we pull out ums and ahs or something like that.

Right. That's fine. But if you change the context of your sentence with AI, again, where does one— does one word qualify? Does two words? Does a sentence? You know what, where? At what level do we need to make that disclosure?

Um, I don't know. So Sue Ann says, I don't think that's the rule's intent. Um, well, it's not clear, right? Right. And, and, uh, Sue Ann also says that I guarantee Descript users are not checking the AI use box, so So I do think we're in this, uh, era where people are, are using these tools but they're really not disclosing it. Because I think that there will be probably— and this gets back to something I heard, um, said, I'm trying to remember where I heard it— but, um, talking about as you look like 5 to 10 years into the future, that the, the content that's created, uh, wholly by humans, right, just like we are right now, um, will be probably behind a subscription or a paywall or premium content, and AI will be generating most of the free content. God help us. And that's how this whole scenario might play out.

And again, I think there's an advantage here. There's a marketing advantage. You market your show as being a true voice, right? You know, you, you, you know, this is a non-AI generated show and there's a difference between an AI generated piece of content and an AI edited. So maybe there needs to be a distinction that a, that an, that an audio file has been used or a video file has been altered with AI tools. Now, again, and I have a friend who paid very, I don't know, the top-end tier of a service that does, you know, converts his voice to French and German. And he sent me over samples of content that was recorded in English and then was recorded in Spanish and recorded in— that content is fantastic. And he's basically going to say, hey, I'm going to set up 6 different channels with my content in these 6 different languages. And I will disclose that the— you know, I don't speak Spanish natively and this has been done by an AI. So I think as long as you disclose, I, I think you're good.

Yeah. And but that is going to draw kind of a line in the sand, right, between those that are using AI and those that are doing it without AI, right? I mean, over time, that's what's— there's going to be a divide that happens because of this.

Yeah.

Um, and it's going to be interesting to see how that— who succeeds more. Is it the AI-generated stuff or is it the human-generated stuff? And that's where the this, the speculation around, you know, human-generated stuff become more premium because you're actually supporting humans to do this, right? And everybody, if you're human, you want to create content and you want— increasingly people want to make money, right? I mean, that's like the second question that people ask us, right, about any kind of content creation, whether it be YouTube or podcasting, is how do I make money from this? But if you're generating it via AI, that, that's not human-generated, so maybe there's less of an expectation of monetization.

There's also copyright considerations.

Well, that's certainly true too.

Sure, you cannot copyright anything, right, that's been generated with AI. I mean, at least—

because who owns the copyright? That's the other question too, right? If AI generates it, does, does the human that type the query or the prompt, get automatic copyright on that content that's created by OpenAI or ChatGPT, or who owns that copyright?

You know, the way the law is written right now in the United States, if you generate your show notes, technically, Uh, you don't own the copyright on your show notes, even unless you edit them, hand edit them yourself, you know. You— okay, and then this is another gray area. To what extent do you have to edit them?

Is it 10%? Is it 15%?

Is it— all right, is it spell checking? Where's that line? Where's the— and there's no there's nothing on the books currently that even defines this. So, yeah. And I feel comfortable taking my audio, my transcript, and subjecting it to AI to create show notes. I feel comfortable doing that because I'm using my context of data to create a summary of my spoken word. I feel pretty good protecting that. Whereas as a company, we're not using AI to generate whole articles. We generate ideas for articles and then manually write the articles from the ideas in order to maintain copyright control.

Well, that and also I think that, AI doesn't generate the proper context sometimes in what it generates, um, that is—

that's true—

that's deeply knowledgeable about, you know, if you're doing it about podcasting, that's deeply knowledgeable about the intricacies of the details of the medium. It's really not that intelligent about it.

Um, I don't know, that could change in the future, but, you know, um, you know, Rick, But you go ahead and read what Rick has to say here.

Yeah, Rick says here, using AI to repair bad audio is one thing, using it to change the context or intent of something is something else entirely. So that gets back to, you know, changing the content, not so much editing it, but in some ways that's changing it too, but I think what you're talking about is creating new content, but using AI that is different than the original. Now, editing it has been happening for a long time, and Descript does a pretty good job of pulling out the ums and the ahs and the repeated words and those kind of things. And but that's not really AI-generated content.

I can hear a Descript-edited podcasts, it's easy.

Uh, you can also see it in the video too because they, you know, your head is like jumping around.

Yeah. So yeah, it's very, very easy to hear a Descript-edited audio file. It's very unnatural. Yeah, right.

Sounds compressed. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a whole nother issue with it too because Descript has the ability of changing the audio too and making it studio quality Right. So it'll, it'll run a filter against your audio as well and make it sound like you're in a, you know, in a professional studio, even though maybe it wasn't recorded there.

Again, I don't, you know, that's all subjective. It is. I'm not, I'm not saying I've got an ear, but it's just like the Dolby product. When Dolby came around and said, oh, let's, let's run your, your audio podcast through this Dolby mix, this Dolby thing. And I sent them samples of stuff that was already mastered on on our end. And then I said, uh, and I couldn't hear the difference. I could not hear the difference in the audio. And again, I'm not an audiophile. I'm not some of those people that, you know, has an $8,000 tube amplifier, uh, you know, in some liquid, uh, bath that is, you know, making sure that there's no hum and distortion and blah blah blah in the audio. And, you know, I'm listening. I have relatively expensive you know, about $300, $350 in-ear earbuds.

So yes, you can hear all those, all those details, um, you would think.

Yeah, yeah, you know, but again, I don't edit, so.

Well, and also most people don't listen in expensive headphones. They, they listen in the Apple, Apple ear ear kind of wired or wireless ear earphones, and those, those are notoriously, you know, not very good audio usually.

It's funny too because people always tell me, oh, you have to edit with speakers. I'm like, I don't edit at all, and the speakers I have are, you know, like $99, uh, I guess they're like Bose, those little Bose speakers that are on the desktop. You know, that's my extent.

Actually, those Those actually sound pretty good. I have a Bose speaker on my desk here that I play audio through it too. It's got a, you know, it's like a $400 or $500 speaker. I mean, it's not cheap.

So, but again, I don't edit, so.

Right. Well, I just like to play all sorts of stuff in there, so I don't have any speakers now.

My speakers are all in a box somewhere in a storage bin. Oh, you know, so I'm listening to computer audio now.

So to change topics again here a little bit, is I saw in, um, that, uh, Sounds Profitable is going to be with Tom Webster, is going to be putting on a new webinar coming up here June 12th. And I thought it was a very interesting webinar because we have talked about this topic on this show a few times, and it's about the advertising load that's in podcasting, and he's going to share, you know, this concept of, um, uh, let's say, how many ads are too many ads in a podcast, or how often do listeners skip ads? So those are the key questions, right? Um, my question is about the difference between programmatic and host read, what those differences are. I don't know if he's going to dive into that distinction, but I think that's, that's an interesting one. But he's going to try and try and cover this topic, and it's— I think that there has been some evidence in the prior research that those that are running a lot of ads in their shows are starting to, you know, trigger listeners to say, you know, maybe we're, you know, maybe a little too much.

I, I, um, on my trip over, my 30 hours, of course I spent quite a bit of it sleeping because I, I was a beat dog after having spent 24, 48 hours moving my studio. But I, I unsubscribed to some podcasts that I'd been testing just because ad load.

I'm just like, oh yeah, load on them, the ad load.

13 minutes. I'm like, are you kidding me? You just quit. And then they go on for 2 minutes. Soulless. So absolutely soulless ads.

Soulless. So were they host reads or were they programmatic kind of radio ads?

Shitty host reads.

They were horrible. Oh, they were bad host reads.

You know, just like, oh, and by the way, and you know, use the promo code, blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, who?

Yeah, it's like, skip, you know. And I'm, I'm looking for my phone to mash the 30-second button, you know, 3, 4 times, because it's not just 1 or 2, it's multiples.

And again, multiple pre-rolls, probably at least 4 to 6, um, mid-rolls. I mean, if you— probably 2 pre-rolls, 4 to 6 mid-rolls, and they throw on the, the end a couple of ads in the post-roll position, which don't really do anything, don't move the needle at all.

And that was a conversation I was having with podcasters too at the event, at Podshow, the podcast show. You know, they, you know, they're like, oh yeah, we're, you know, we're running with such and such company and we've got 6 ads. I'm like, how long is your show? And, uh, you know, and they're like, well, 30 minutes. I'm like, have you talked to your, you know, Right. Have you watched what happens with your listeners anyway? Are they leaving? Well, we don't know. I'm like, well, you should be at Blueberry using our retention data to see how long people are leaving. Oh, you have that?

You know, well, you should be able to see it on your, your Apple chart in your Apple account, um, probably where people are dropping off, right?

And if it's—

well, no one's using Apple according to, uh You know, to all the sources out there, right?

It's all Spotify now, all day. Apple's a dead product, don't you know?

That is the impression that's being given out there, isn't it? It's ridiculous. Well, I think that the, the way to really summarize that situation is that Spotify probably has more users that consume a less amount of podcasts than Apple probably has fewer users, but they consume a whole lot more content.

There's more of a definition. Spotify has listeners that listen to a certain type of content.

Well, that's true too, probably. Yeah. Yeah. But I've gotten definitely the distinct impression that the research that I've seen is always pointing to Spotify having more podcast listeners, like individual users globally, but the typical consumption of individual Spotify users is like a half or a third of the amount of episodes consumed than Apple. So if you're an Apple user, you're probably consuming twice as many episodes of podcasts.

In the data that James presented, um, at the podcast show on Spotify, um, was not surprising to me whatsoever. I, I got to see the data the day before, um, James— I was basically in the lobby hanging out in the hotel, and, you know, James showed me his— it was working on his keynote, and, um, it didn't surprise me. Based upon it, again, it goes back to why does— why is Spotify dominant in this market here and where I'm at right now? It's because they're paying for bandwidth and people can stream music and audio on those without having to pay for data.

Yeah, I think that's a good point right there. Apple's not— I don't, I don't believe Apple's doing that outside of the US or doing it anywhere, actually, anywhere.

And Facebook's doing the same thing. You know, and they'll run a promotion and they'll, you know, for the next 90 days if you sign up for such and such. And people change cell phone numbers here like they change underwear. So it's not— and they just, you know, they pay a buck for a new SIM card and they're on a new carrier because no one's—

no one is tied to a data plan, right, that they pay for every month and it's got like unlimited data or some large amount of data that they can use every month. Yeah, right. It's a different, it's a different model. Until that changes, the consumption patterns are going to be quite different.

And there, you know, there, um, people communicate on Facebook Messenger, and, um, you know, that's their main messaging app. WhatsApp is big here too. Line is big. But it's just a different mentality once you leave the United States or Canada or Um, right, you know, syndicated everywhere. It's not really— it's that difficult. Syndication is— that's the beauty of what's— what we have here. We've got the ability to be syndicated everywhere. Um, yeah, so of course you get a large swath of consumption, and, you know, you're trying again. Every show is different, but this show is not listened to on Spotify. I can tell you that right now. More than 50% of this audience is— and a matter of fact, a lot of people actually come to our show and listen on the web page, which blows me away.

That, or in one of the, the Podcast 2.0 apps like Fountain or some of those, is where we see a lot of connection with this show, is on those alternative Podcasting 2.0 apps. And, uh, Sue Ann here posts a comment, uh, that's one thing that's difficult still, podcast data and stats, especially if you are syndicated everywhere. Um, well, I mean, I think it's, it's not as bad as probably you're maybe saying it is, but I think part of the, the challenge is, is that, um, it's still not a strict standard either, right? I think we're close to it. We're a lot closer than we were when we didn't have the IAB metrics standard. People were all over the map on that one. But yeah, I mean, it's an interesting point though, is that as we look to the future, and especially if you look at, if you increasingly look at YouTube consumption as podcast consumption, then yeah, there's completely different metric that's going on there.

But anyway. One thing I was going to do here and something I should have loaded up, I'm loading my Umbral up. Thank you to a Tailscale to allow me to access this from— Yeah, my Umbral is now sitting in my— Let's look and see what we've got from Boost. Um, well, I'll go through some of these boosts here in a little bit, but nothing on today's show because probably not— most people don't watch us on video on Podcasting 2.0. So, right, I'll get audio stream fixed up next, uh, next show, folks.

Yeah, Todd, keep in mind that in your interface there of StreamYard, you can you can share a screen too if you want.

Yeah, right. So, um, let me see here if I can. Of course, I, I guess I'm okay to move to— well, the problem is I can't change tabs. Maybe I can drag this out. Let me do this. Put you over here. Um, present. How do I present? Share screen. Okay, which screen do I want to show? Okay, I'm having to, uh, you know, give permissions here of, uh— all right, there we go. Turn that on. Yes, use my finger to give the password. No, I don't want to quit and reopen. That would be very bad with Rob right now.

So Tom Webster on this webinar that he's putting on, he's going to— and it's on June 12th— he's going to talk about listeners' perceptions of hearing the same ad multiple times within an episode. That can happen, especially if you have— I think if you're pulling from multiple ad buying platforms in like a waterfall type of situation, I think there is a possibility of duplicate ads, um, that get inserted. Yeah, very bad. So let's say an ad buyer buys an ad with, you know, ad buying platform A and an ad buying platform B targeting the same demographic or the same target type of show. They could funnel the same ad in multiple times into a podcast, and I think that that, may cause, you know, an amplification of negative reactions.

Tom says in the YouTube chat over on my channel, he says, uh, I'm listening to you now on my $8,000 tube amp sitting in a liquid bath. I actually believe that, you know. Tom is the— Tom is, uh, you know, him and a couple of other, uh, podcast aficionados are definitely when we're sitting around, of course, sitting around the bar having, for me, an alcoholic beverage, or for Tom, a non-alcoholic beverage, there is this— they start talking about bands and albums and tracks and concerts. And to me, it goes, shh. You know, definitely not a— but I believe it. But I do. Hey, Tom, maybe you'd be interested. I've got about 5,000 LPs in storage.

You do?

The old records? Yeah, from my DJ days back in the '80s.

DJ days? Wow, we should talk about that, Todd. I didn't know you had DJ days.

Yeah, well, you know, not a DJ. Well, yeah, I was DJing at a club in Womp. Oh, you were? Oh yeah, when you actually had to hump your, your, uh, your albums in, in the milk crates, you know. So yeah, well, that's not unusual, I don't think. Well, now they just bring their computer with a hard drive.

Well, yeah, that's true, that's true, once everything got digitized. But yeah, I've got a bunch of records here too, you know.

I, I almost bought myself a one of those Pioneer DJ mixing, uh, uh, you know, they're very, very expensive. They're a couple thousand dollars. I almost bought one a couple years ago, but then I slapped myself because I was like, dude, you don't even have time to do any of this other stuff. Why would you? Why would you? Why would you? It's just gonna sit there and collect dust.

Yeah, I saw that there's a a webinar being put on. It's in the PodNews newsletter as an event that's coming up on June 13th at about, I think, I believe it's like 10 AM Eastern time on Thursday, June 13th, is Create an AI-Narrated Podcast for Your Newsroom. So what What this is being applied to is, you know, if you have a news, like a newspaper or you have a TV station or something like that, you can use AI to generate all your, all your podcasts.

I know a podcaster that's generating an AI podcast with AI, right? It's all self-generated using his cloned voice.

And it's— yeah, I think we're gonna— yeah, probably.

I mean, does it sound okay?

Yeah, I don't know. I guess it depends on how good his or her voice is to begin with.

Yeah, also, right?

And how—

so, Rob, what's the quality, right? I, I didn't mention it, but, uh, celebrated the big 6-0.

Oh, well, congratulations!

You've, uh, crossed Rubicon. You know, it's all downhill from here, right? You know, 50 was— 40 I spent in the hospital when I broke my back. 50 was okay. Uh, 60 was a, uh, this realization that there's more miles behind me than in front of me, right? Uh, yeah, I think that's probably a pretty good way of looking at it, right? Because I don't think I'm going to make it to 120. You know, at 50, there's the chance you can make it to 100, right?

So you're like, yeah, you're probably not going to double that number.

Um, no. And you know, my, my grandparents lived to be 98, 99 respectively, and my mom's side, late '90s, you know. But you know, they had a little different lifestyle, the Depression era, you know. So it was meat and potatoes and not too much like libations, you know. So, you know, in less stress, you know, down on the farm.

Right, right. Well, if they're outside exercising a lot, that was a healthy lifestyle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the reason I was back in Seattle was helping my dad. My dad's 89, and so he was moving out of his house into a senior living facility, and so he had a lot of stuff in his house. So it, it's— I'm going to go out there again at the end of the month.

So my mom's in her early 80s and she's, you know, still spunky. And, you know, uh, in fact, she, she helped, she helped me move, you know. It's just packing stuff up, carrying boxes. That's awesome. You know, that's awesome. Yeah. And, you know, and be honest with you, you sit in a recliner, you're gonna die, you know. So you have to be busy and, you know, in doing something. And, you know, we have a big thing against us here because we're both sitting in front of our computers a lot, you know. So, uh, yeah, one of the first orders will be is when I get back, I will be bringing, you know, very difficulty bringing my standing desk back to the house because I use my standing desk quite a bit. Yeah, this is going to be a monumental change for me. I just, uh, I think so too.

Dreading it. You're gonna have to be, be more like me.

Well, you know, I ran this, you know, I ran the show out of a 10 by 10 bedroom for years, so yeah, it's not like, yeah, it's not like you've never done it before, right? Yeah. So it's, you know, the only difference is I don't have a room.

Oh, right, right. Yeah, it's open, so you're gonna have probably some echo problems, do you think?

Yeah, probably, you know. But you know, one thing I considered too was But the problem is, before COVID I could have found a studio apartment in my town for $600, $700 a month. Yeah. But now, post-COVID, you can't find a rental in my town. It's, you know, you're on a waiting list and the cost is extraordinarily high, even for a little, you know, the little town I was, that I'm in. But again, you know, if I'm going to do more of this, more traveling, yeah, maybe then this is a godsend in disguise. I don't know, you know. But one thing's for sure, uh, I have significant— I'll have a significant amount of much more money in my business account every month.

Yeah, because I can be paying for that office space, right?

Well, there's— it's now no rent, no insurance, no electricity, no gas bill. I'm already paying that at the at my loft, so that was a fixed cost anyway. So yeah, it's awesome. I don't know what they're going to do. It's kind of a weird situation because it was my own fault because I was on month to month, and but that room, that, that space had been empty for several years before I moved into it, and there's no one next to me. There's a weed shop was to the left of me and me and then a whole big massive space that's empty next to me. And I'm just— maybe their communication has been weird too because, um, I said, okay, I'm out. The keys have been turned over. I've turned off electricity. I've disconnected gas. My insurance on the space has been terminated. Um, You know, here's the information if you want to get the gas and electricity turned on for that space again. So either they want to expand their weed shop into my location, which they're going to have fun doing because it used to be a dentist's office. So, um, it's, it's, it's, uh, wired for water, air, and gas. So they're gonna have to rip— essentially have to rip the whole space down to even use it. So yeah, yeah, yeah, very— and it'll be a change for you. Yeah, but it could have been— this could have been the play too. Um, they said, okay, your lease is terminated, you've been month to month. It's maybe expecting me to panic and come back and say, okay, how can we fix this? And then say, well, we're going to raise your rent. 50% and you can stay. So maybe they were using— they could have came to me and said, hey, we, we want to raise your rent. We know you're on a month-to-month. Uh, they could have been upfront with that.

And yeah, because why would they give up a paying tenant unless they got a better deal from, let's say, the weed shop expanding into your space?

Right? And I don't think they're doing that much business to expand. They're going to have a hell of a time with that space.

That's a very unique space.

Yeah, it's long and thin, right? It's— yeah, right. So yeah, who knows? And I heard a rumor maybe a restaurant was going next door, and that has been dispelled. And again, maybe this was just a weird way for them trying to extort more rent. But I had no— I had no— it was Memorial Day weekend, no way to communicate with them.

Wow. Yeah, it's crazy. So, so I got another topic here if you want to talk about it. It's, um, this whole topic around co-listening. Um, I know this topic has been bubbling around for the last couple years around some research coming out saying that increasing increasingly people are consuming podcasts via connected TVs and doing it with multiple people at a time. So, and I guess that makes sense, you know, as we think about people watching television, how they've always done it in the past, right? Where they sit around the living room and they watch TV together. Well, you know, increasingly that appears to be what's happening increasingly with the video content, right? So there was some research that came out, but also kind of to dovetail with this, it says while most podcasts are consumed via mobile phone, right, 69%, the Edison Share of Ear report reported that 11% of podcast time is spent on smart speakers. And that's surprising. And 6% via connected TVs, both in-room devices. 17% of podcast time spent occurred in the car while others could be listening along as well.

So, you know, multiple people sit in a car.

Oh, I see. Right, right. It's a co-listening thing. So a podcast is playing and multiple people can hear it. And that also is kind of taking us down this path. Well, maybe the consumption, I think the assumption has been that podcast consumption has been like a play-to-one-person type of a medium, right? In the headphones or whatever. But maybe increasingly we're seeing groups of people consuming the same content. So, you know, it could be one other person, it could be two people or three people or something like that. Consuming it.

So I thought it was interesting. I wonder if that's driven from the way people watch YouTube together.

Well, and yeah, and I guess it depends on how you define what a podcast is, really.

It takes us back to that. Again, for me, uh, podcasting— my aircon just dripped on me. Um, it's just like feeling water on my forehead. What the hell? Um, no, no birds can pee on me because there's a roof above me. Um, Thank goodness for small favors, Todd. Yes, thank goodness. Uh, you could have got a splat, right? Um, I don't know, podcast listening to me is just still this personal thing. Yeah, yeah. Uh, Eric says, what about a mobile podcast video production vehicle? I've— that's more than one people have suggested that.

Yeah, I think you've done that for a while. I think you did that in Hawaii, didn't you?

Yeah, I had a mobile podcast when I was still in the Navy. I was traveling with a, with a rig, you know. You know what I— what did I travel with this time? I traveled with a boom arm, uh, an SMB7, a RODECaster Duo, and my laptop.

And, um, Yeah, so, you know, here we go.

That would work, right? Yeah, it's working, right? Yeah. So, you know, you know, double fingers to my previous landlord, you know.

So this same research that I was quoting, the Edison Share of Ear, said that, um, says, um, among consumption of podcasts, uh, with And in this case with children, it says that 36% say they have listened to a podcast with their child.

So that's another example of co-listening going on.

My kids were force-fed podcasts for years. Right, right. They didn't have a choice, right? Even though they probably objected because I want to play my—

I controlled the Bluetooth until they got their own smartphones and could listen to something else.

Yeah. Yeah, so it says 12% say they frequently listen to podcasts with their children. I guess it depends on the age, right? I would think it doesn't really talk about the age of these children, but I would imagine that parents want to, want to hear what the kids are consuming, right?

So if I was, you know, my rule My rule was, give me your phone, and they had to give me your phone on a moment's notice. I could just, give me your phone, and they couldn't touch anything except unlock it, and then I, I would be able to go through. So I could, so that's how I did audits to make sure, you know, the boys weren't, uh, you know, I'm sure, you know, boys being boys, they were probably covering their tracks immediately if they were going to a porn site. But the, you know, I was making sure that you know, chats and apps and who they're talking to, and, you know, do a little bit of self-auditing on that on a regular basis. But, um, I— so I, I, I, you know, I don't know how many parents actually take their kids' phones away from them on demand. Yeah, yeah, I don't know either. Yeah, I was, I was big on that.

Hey, Rob, you remember ICQ? I do, yeah. It used to be part of, uh, part of America Online, I believe.

2233255 was my ICQ number. I don't know why I remember that.

Um, I think they, they just shut it down.

Yeah, they just pulled the plug.

I didn't know it was still even in operation. I mean, that platform has been around a long time. That's amazing. Yeah, you know, it's like Skype too. I mean, I think both those platforms were back in that era. Um, but well, Skype's still up. Yeah, Skype's— yeah, I mean, actually, I think Microsoft built in, um, ChatGPT into it.

It's called—

yeah, it's called Copilot now. Yeah, right, into it. So you can do an AI query and generate images and and results in Skype. Yeah, I thought that was a little bit of an odd combo, but I do know that Microsoft wanted to add all the AI to all their software, and it's like, okay, you know, we'll see how that plays out.

But well, I, um, don't want to keep re-harping on this, but if you're a listener of the show this show or even my tech show. Give me some suggestions. What should I do? What, what should we do that would be cool and unique? If you think about an open floor plan and, uh, how to implement a new studio. By the way, um, Rob, you know, Rick says I still pay for a Skype number. I do too. I've got two because of GNC Pod 1, GNC Pod 2. But, you know, when I travel overseas, I use Google Voice to make any calls back to the States, and then I buy an eSIM for my phone for data to try to keep the calls down. And then I call forward my digital line to my Google Voice number. So, yeah, that's what it makes sense. Yeah, to try to keep— instead of having to pay $100 a month on an international plan. But if you're on T-Mobile, T-Mobile is the best phone to travel with internationally.

Yeah, we do nothing. Yeah, I mean, for years we use Skype to do this show. Um, it's only been recently that we've moved to other platforms like Zoom and, and now StreamYard.

Yeah.

Um, so it's, you know, for us You know, Skype was the amazing tool of its time, you know.

Yeah, maybe, maybe StreamYard's gonna have more of a presence in my future. You know, the TriCaster is in a box, but I can't do the Podcast Awards with the StreamYard. It's just— there's no way I can sequence that with StreamYard. Really? Why, why do you think that's— I, you know, I have all the acceptance videos to play. I just do that. Is it smooth? Can I do that without—

yeah, I don't know. Well, I mean, I mean, if you saw what I did with the video I played just now, but yeah, but you, you know, to, to—

you have to go to share and then, you know, just— is it, is it clean? Is the switch between—

I, I don't know, we'll figure it out. Well, don't you do like a little voiceover between videos too?

Well, in all honesty, I pre-record the awards. Oh yeah, right.

So in that instance, I could piece it up. Oh, so you're just playing back a full-length video is what you're doing.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because it's just too hard. There's too many moving pieces. I usually can record it in one take. Um, right, but I just would not want to risk that because I'm pushing, switching levers and playing videos.

Yeah, and I'm going to be getting back to working on the Podcast Hall of Fame here before too much longer. That's coming up. Oh yeah, again here in 6 months, so the time ticker is counting down on that.

Um, so Yeah, how many? How many we—

how many we gonna do?

Probably the same as we did last time.

Be nice if we could add a couple more. Well, I would like that. It's going to make the event longer, but that's probably okay.

I mean, I'm okay with making it instead of 8, maybe 10 or something, and then just tighten up the, you know, speech time. Most folks don't use all their time anyway.

That's true, that's true. So, so we shall see. And it's going to be interesting to see what happens at Podcast Movement, um, coming up here in August, what kind of turnout they're going to get in Washington, DC.

It's going to be— I'm going to tell you, Podcast Movement needs to up their game. Yep. I will say one thing about the podcast show. There's no incentive for people to stop at the booth.

They haven't got that down yet. The venue is to stop at the booth like a, like a contest, kind of like what podcast does, right?

Right. There's, you know, and people were, um, it's a great venue the way it's outlined, but there is a, yeah, We go— when we go back next year, we will incentivize people to come to the booth.

I'll just put it that way. So Rick Savoia has a good comment here too. It's, it's, it's probably something for you to consider, Todd, is, is combining OBS with StreamYard. Oh, really? Because OBS is free software that can be installed on your computer and you can play all those videos right through OBS. And it's just connects directly to StreamYard. Oh, interesting. Yep. So StreamYard just, just becomes equivalent to like a Wowza or a Restream or something like that, of sorts. But it has that kind of audience engagement layer too. But, but, but the OBS can be the engine that actually plays the videos.

That's interesting.

And also the stills, potentially.—

that's even a better deal because it's free. They could make this product a lot better by adding some of that function, be able to play videos and be able to have a true switching function. You know, you have some control there, but it's not—

yeah, I have to upload it to the brand area of the interface, so it's like pre-loaded, and then I just go in and I click play, play, play, play, play. It's kind of how it would work. Now granted, there could be a little bit of a delay in its starting from the point that you click it, or if you're using OBS, it's probably because it's more local in the client, there'll probably be a quicker response.

Well, I've got 60 days to get something done once I get back, and to be honest with you, I'll be pretty laser focused on that anyway, so Right. Okay. But my back still hurts from, uh, you know how many— Rob, you should have seen the amount of wiring that came out. I, I, you know, I had built the first stage of it, then I added more stuff and had like 5 layers. I do not ever— I don't ever need to buy a LAN cable, a video cable, You're all stocked up. Oh, I, I, matter of fact, at some point there's going to have to be a garage sale, right, or something put on Marketplace because holy— I, I probably took 150 pounds of cables out of that building because I had the security system.

Well, I don't think a lot of people realize what you built there, but it was basically had 3 studio bays right next to each other.

Yeah, even though the different purpose in mind for each one of them and monitors, I've got 5, 5 big screen TV monitors. I've got computer monitors, probably a dozen. Yeah, you know, 5, 6 Mac Minis.

It's just, it's ridiculous. So also, most people don't know what a TriCaster is either. Um, so, you know, what do you think you're going to do with that studio in a box? Actually, don't you have 2 of them?

So you have the full-size one with the big keyboard and then you've got that portable one, right? Technically, I have 3 because I only knew of 2. So, well, I have the portable one and that one's pretty much at this point. Yeah. You know, maybe. But when I upgraded to the TC-1 from the 865, they basically let me keep the 865. So, but it no longer got any support or updates, so it stuck at a version. Um, so, so I have the 865. Matter of fact, anybody wants a TriCaster 865, um, let me know. I'll make you a deal.

Still operational, still great box. Um, 865 is the number. Let's see. Yeah, find one here that I can, I can bring up on the screen. Okay, here it is. 865. Yeah, let's see if I can pull it up and people can see what we're talking about here. It's actually available, looks like, on eBay.

You can get it there. Let's see. Yeah, and I have the, I have the, the computer and the, um, control panel.

Our control— the control board.

Okay, so here it is. Here. Yeah, yeah, that's about right.

About 5 grand to get her done. Yeah, yeah. So you can kind of see it's like a studio in a box, basically. It has this, this output that displays into a monitor, right?

Yeah. And you can put 8 cameras on it. Yeah. Right. And it supports NDI too.

So it has NDI support.

So it has this really cool keyboard too. It's, oh yeah, that, that, see, that's switching keyboard. Yeah. That, and that, that which makes it easy to do a full production. See, right. Cause you just, you just hand, you know, you just hammer play, you know, you can crop the video links and everything.

It's a great box. So yeah, but yeah, it's like a Stream Deck of sorts if you want to draw, draw an analogy to what you're seeing here on the screen.

It's got a, it's got a big 4-bay hard drive system in it. See, it's a monster box. It's like a 4U box that comes with it.

The unit that I have right now is a TC1.

Yeah, it doesn't, no, it doesn't show the actual CPU unit though in this picture. No. Right, yeah. If you click above that $1,899, I think it shows an 865 server. So click up where it says NewTek TriCaster TCX 865. 865. Yeah, look up straight up on that eBay listing. People viewed this item, also viewed. Oh man, and see the $3,999 one? There it is, that one. This one, it's essentially the same box.

860, 865. Okay, well, that's what the actual box looks like that runs—

I think it runs Windows, doesn't it? Yeah, it runs Windows. Yeah, yeah. I think that one's stuck on Windows 7. The TC1 that I'm on is on, I think, Windows 10. Oh, okay.

So, so, you know, in the day that was $35,000. Yeah, it looks like that they're selling for about $3,900 now.

Yeah, which, you know, that it's still probably pretty, pretty great deal. So could you possibly use that with your new studio? I've got, I've got a TC-1, so the 865 was never deployed in the new studio.

It was in a box the entire time.

So, okay, so like the studio in a box, you know, that small one, but the one I have Yeah, the one I've been running all these years is called a TC-1. So yeah, that's a big one. Well, it's a 2U.

It's a much smaller computer.

Oh, it's a smaller computer. Yeah, but it's— and it's got a smaller control board.

So, and it's NDI capable too. Yeah, we've been totally geeked out, geeking out on studio software tonight.

And you know what, here's Uh, yeah, with free OBS and StreamYard, you can probably do everything that that thing does. That's why I said when the TC1 died, I would never— I was never going to buy another TriCaster.

I was going to go to some other solution. So, you know, chances are you're probably going to want to sell them all and just kind of move towards more, more of a software solution.

Yeah, we'll see. I don't know, you know, again for me, muscle memory has been fun because it's just, it's, you have to, you got to teach an old dog new tricks.

So does those, those TriCasters, do they, um, support Windows updates or is it basically locked? Yeah, it's a locked operating system. Windows 10 or something like that?

Is that what they're pretty much locked at? Yeah, when they deliver it, they deliver an operating system that does not get upgraded. It's just kind of like getting a Mac, but you don't get Windows updates. It's a fixed set of hardware. Right. Okay.

Well, we made it to the end. We did, just in the nick of time.

90 minutes. That's always our goal. Hey, Rob, I hit the audio record a little late here, so please send me both the audio and video for these, and we'll get these up. All right, well, back in the saddle here. We'll be back, uh, normal scheduled time, I guess. I'm good.

Are you good for next week? Yeah, I think we're good for this, this same time. I'm going to be gone the, the entire last week of June.

I'll be back. That actually works because I'm, uh, going to be moving, uh, yeah, that actually works good because I'm going to be, uh I've got to go to Cebu, uh, that week as well for business. So, um, yeah, so the last week of June, no show on the 26th works out perfect for me.

Okay, fantastic, Todd.

All right, everyone, thanks. Well, good luck there. Yeah, yeah, todd@blueberry.com, @geeknews on Twitter. Send your donations too. We can, you know, this was not an inexpensive, uh, Of course I'm talking about saving money, but yeah, send your donations.

It's help the Todd Studio Recovery Fund. Yeah, and to see all of our old episodes, uh, just go to newmediashow.com. It's a great place to get caught up on the— how many years now, Todd?

12, 13 years we've been doing this? I think longer. It's longer than that.

Yeah, I had the number, but it's Yeah, it's been a while. And I can be found on, um, on X as well, @RobGreenlee. And if you want to send me an email, rob.greenlee@gmail.com. It's a great place to find me, but I'm on all the social platforms. And I'm, I'm still doing my podcast tips, uh, show every Thursday night at, uh, 7 PM Eastern, um, 4, 4 PM Pacific, I guess.

So tomorrow night So that'd be interesting. And I'll be back, I'll be back with my— back in the saddle with Geek News Central. I sent a, uh, I did a moping, sad, uh, I got screwed, uh, episode on, uh, for my Monday show because I just didn't have the energy to do a— to do the regular show.

Plus it was my birthday, so.

Yes, that's true, you did have your birthday.

Yeah, so me anyway.

I hope you had fun. So yeah, yeah, a little bit of a hangover, not bad.

Yeah, if you wanted to check out— yeah, I know we mentioned the, the Hall of Fame, but if you wanted to go check out the Hall of Fame, what we were talking about, this is the website address that you can see all the past inductees and, and what's going on with that.

So that's the address, podcasthof.com. So, and Podcast Awards nominations open in 25 days.

July 1st. Oh, that's coming up quick.

And then the actual, uh, awards are given in September on, on September 30th, right? Yeah, that's why the clock will be ticking when I get home.

So yeah. All right everyone, thank you. All right, thank you everybody. Good night. Thank you for all the comments. It was great to have, uh, this live and be able to pull up the comments on the screen and It's always fun to do that. So, so we'll be back next, uh, Wednesday at 8 PM Eastern, uh, 5 PM Pacific. So come back and check us out again. But in the meantime, this is an audio and video podcast, so you can get it in Apple. You can get both the video and audio.

Take your pick. All right, good night everybody. Thank you so much.

Bye.