Spotify's 7 Million Podcasts Problem Nobody Sees Coming

Everybody, welcome to the New Media Show. And here we are. I had to do the quick clap in case something disconnected. But, uh, Rob, how are you?

Doing great, Todd. It's great to be doing the show again. So got lots of interesting stuff to talk about.

Yeah, 7 million—

like, the podcasting space is in a blender.

Uh-huh. 7 million, 7 million shows. Uh-huh. Yeah, Spotify, 7 million.

Well, that, that's what happens when most of your new podcast creators through the— your, your, um, podcasting platform, uh, never turn on RSS.

Yeah, and then that's all they're just on Spotify. That's it.

Yeah, it's, it's a great way to get a bunch of exclusive content, especially a lot of—

so many of them are just tests, tests, tests, tests, right? You know, publish a real number, like how many of those 7 million have published a new episode. And then, you know, you know, it got so bad that the Podcast Index stopped, um, allowing new shows to be listed on, on their platform because it just— it was, it was bad, bad, bad, you know, from Spotify. Yeah, from Spotify specifically, because the Um, making sure my— yeah, because the shows were just, again, uh, you know, like test shows and there was nothing to them. So they set a minimum number.

Yeah, no, there's no real commitment there.

Oh, and we offered us with it, right? When we offered a free, no credit card— free, no credit card required free trial, we got 800 in a month. And, but guess what? We got the same number of actual conversions. And meanwhile, we're left with 800 shows and, you know, about an eighth of them were scammers and dealing with people that were uploading radio shows and publishing episodes and applying for programmatic. And, you know, it's just like, yeah, you know, um, It was bad. So, you know, much as we'd love to offer a free, non-credit card required trial, it's just not possible. But they don't care. They just let them go.

And free is a great way to get higher numbers.

Sure.

Look good to investors.

Yeah.

It doesn't really translate into very much around, you know, alignment or commitment to the platform or being a solid content creator that can contribute content to the platform.

It's— yeah, no, anyway, so yeah, it's, it's just, you know, lots and lots of dead shows. And, you know, but at the same time, there was an article that came out that talked about active shows and the number of new shows coming online. Which is way down this year compared to others. So I guess it is what it is.

But yeah, I think a lot of people are realizing that it's a real commitment to make a podcast, and then you equate that to expectations around Everybody wants to make money from everything that they're doing with creating content these days.

Right.

They may not be able to make money, but everybody wants to, and everybody is searching around to find whatever, you know, side hustle they can do to make an extra buck on the side. And a lot of people thought that that was possible through podcasting. And it is possible, but it's not a quick buck situation. Everybody's looking for a quick buck these days.

So, you know, it's just a number to report to stockholders. It doesn't mean anything. And, and, you know, Spotify is by default turn off RSS feeds. So people get over there and they think they're podcasting. And it's just like YouTubers. I ask them, where is your— I can't find you on Apple Podcasts. And you know, it's funny is we get tickets all the time. For some reason, people think we're Spotify support, even though they they Google podcast support, and of course Blueberry ranks real high on that ranking, and they come over and they send us a ticket saying, hey, how come I'm not on Apple Podcasts? And we go to look and they're not even hosting with us, they're hosted over at Spotify, and they can't even get an answer over there. So they don't need a lot of—

yeah, I hear it too, there's a lot of confusion around, you know, uh, people will think that like Blueberry is a listening platform, right?

Well, they don't so much consider it anymore. You know, it used to be.

Oh no, I'm just saying, but I hear people think that the, like Lipson and Buzzsprout and all that stuff are actual listening platforms. So it is a little more confusing than that because, you know, like Podbean does have a strong kind of listening platform and there's some players that, that's what makes this whole ecosystem so complicated for people to really understand about how it all works because everybody's doing something different and it always always works different. And, and people that publish to Spotify don't even realize oftentimes that they need an RSS feed to be in Apple, right? So this lack of knowledge is permeating this space.

And of course, uh, Spotify didn't integrate with Apple to do auto submission after all those years of paying people in India or wherever it was to submit shows. They have an automated way of doing it, and they haven't done that because we don't want They don't want people to be— they don't want people to be on Apple, right? Yeah. So yeah, it just, you know, it's a very, very poor, very, very poor mindset. So it is, it is.

Yeah, but that's, that's Spotify. Spotify's always had kind of a, a, um, break it and then maybe fix it later type of an approach to the market.

And, and they're not—

if you look at Oh, go ahead. If you look at the Podcast Index, they, they have 4.6 million shows in there, and Spotify showing 7 million, and the Apple Podcast is showing 2.8 million. So Apple's doing a good job of kind of curating their catalog, um, much better than anybody else in the industry, that's for sure.

Well, to be honest with you, you know, even though we don't have a director anymore, we still have the full catalog of shows, and we're still pulling in And the amount of shows on a monthly basis that gets a red flag in our system that basically said either the RSS feed is dead or the media went offline, one or the other or both, is astronomical numbers. And we kill those, but yet a lot of the platforms don't clean up. And Podcast Index included, I don't think they've been doing any cleanup per se of dead, dead, you know, dead, dead shows. And what I consider a dead show is no media, no RSS feed. That's a dead, dead show. And we give them enough time to come back in case there's, you know, some technical issue that's going on. And very rarely do they ever come back.

Though there are shows, I think, out there that, um, that have kind of like either an active RSS feed but no episodes. Yeah. Or yeah, episodes that are available off the server but no RSS feeds.

They didn't, they didn't clean up. Yeah, they didn't get cleaned up.

Right.

Yeah.

So it has to be one or the other gets excluded from the directory. And who Based on your own directory, Todd, which of these three has the closest to what you find as far as active, you know, live RSS feeds? Is it Apple or is it Podcasts?

Probably Apple.

Apple's closest?

Yeah, probably closest. But again, there's a lot of dead over there too. So You know, they—

because of what you define as dead.

Well, again, it all depends if the RSS feed is up. You know, I don't know what their criteria for killing the show over there is, and I— and the delisting. Um, I know that what our internal criteria is.

So that, that piece of information would be good for Apple to disclose to the industry.

They can't because it's a stockholder thing again.

Well, no, no, what the criteria is for being included in the catalog or not. That should be disclosed to the industry so we know what to expect.

We had an interesting one the other day. We had a very rare, your show's been rejected from Apple Podcasts. And I was like, what is this? And I thought it was something, you know, I said, do we have someone that's doing something really naughty or is it, you know, obvious you know, what was the reason? And in the email it said was audio quality. And so I popped into the system and I started listening to the audio and the audio didn't sound bad. Wasn't the best. I was pretty surprised. So I don't know if they have an automated system over there that's looking at the audio. Maybe, you know, Ted, if you're listening, I think the tech support team worked with the podcaster and maybe got it resolved, but maybe it was some— maybe there was some media— because I just listened to the latest episode, I didn't listen to stuff that was down the stack. Maybe there was some malformed audio or something causing a problem. But yeah, it's the first— I think that's the first time I've ever seen that. It wasn't in— it was basically kind of a— it was a suspension, like a suspension email. And, um, so that again, that's the first time I've ever seen that come back from Apple from a show.

So based on its format or based—

just said audio. It was basically the audio quality. That was audio quality. Yeah, I'd have to pull up the email. I've got it saved because it was so unusual. Um, but, but one thing's for sure, uh, some things that will never be are actually going to happen again. I will never, I will never go back to Podcast Movement. I'll never go back to Podcast Movement, Adam.

Now that's what he specifically told me, Adam, yeah, uh, going back.

And he's, you see, he has got, uh, so it's, it's, I think what has happened is, uh, Rocky Thomas was on a Podcasting 2.0 show on the Boardroom. And I'm actually in between episodes. I listened to the current episode, but I need to go back and listen to Rocky's episode because I was trying to get the insider scoop on what he had to say about coming in speaking. But he'll be speaking on Podcasting 2.0 in a prime afternoon spot, not one directly after lunch, at least I don't— I think he said 1:30, which is probably— oh, Okay, um, you know, you never know where— and they're gonna— he, um, they're gonna be on the SoundStack stage.

So I remember just a short few years ago that, uh, Dave Jones and he had a session, and it was—

was it a podcast?

A dozen people?

Yeah, yeah, it was only a dozen showed up.

Yeah, it was only like a dozen people that actually showed up for that, but it was right after—

immediately after lunch, and it was kind of a weird time to have a session. And but, you know, here's the key, um, Adam, you got to promote it. Um, you got to promote your session and, and, and talk about it. We'll talk about it and make sure that it's promoted. But, um, the only way you're going to get, um, guarantee a good, you know, good number of people is to, is to promote it because, um, these podcasters don't know you, I, or Rob from a hole in the ground at this point. So, um, you know, yeah, you need to promote it. And I hopefully SoundStack will promote the heck out of it too, and we get a, get a full house in and educate, uh, educate creators. So he's going to fly up from Fredericksburg and, um, speak and then fly home. So I can't even buy him a beer. Not going to be in town long enough to do that.

So, so he's— that's right, he's out by Austin, isn't he?

Uh, well, Hill Country, wherever that is. That's like 3, 2, 3 hours. I don't know, someone from Texas can tell us in chat. Uh, 2 or 3 hours from— maybe it's 2, but wherever Hill Country is. Fredericksburg is where he's living these days. Yeah, so he's got a dentist friend that has a snazzy new airplane, and they're gonna fly up. And, um, you know, much better than driving, that's for damn sure. Coming from Austin to, uh, Dallas up I-40, that just sucks. That drive just sucks. There's always wrecks, there's always traffic jams. Yeah, so good choice to fly. Um, yeah, yeah, very, very, very, very, very smart. But I was kind of, uh, surprised on YouTube saying they're gonna crack down on the slop. But the question is, well, they said they were, and then I saw some post-commentary where they say, well, this is just the start.

Okay, I think You should back up and give it some context there, Todd. What are you talking about?

AI slop.

Where?

On YouTube. I said YouTube.

Okay.

Yeah.

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

Okay, sorry. Yeah, so they are planning to crack down on AI slop and repetitive content. You know how much slop there is out there now? How much AI-generated content on YouTube? And they're not going to allow it to be monetized.

Did YouTube actually use that language?

Or I'm reading your show notes, so I'm going to—

No, I know, but I mean, I just, I just wonder if people actually use that, um, from, from YouTube, or is it, it's being painted in that way? That's where this article came from, was TechCrunch.

So yeah, they said there's crackdown on mass-produced and repetitive video as concern over AI slop grows. So yeah, that was the title of their article. So yeah, so that's good news.

Yeah, so I don't believe that YouTube actually used that language. No, is what I'm saying.

Yeah, but you know, it's, I, it's almost hard to avoid it now. Um, and yeah, there's so much that's, you know, history, you know, it's all these history type things and And unfortunately, stuff that I like to listen to real people talk about, you know, certain topics, it's that same voice that you hear across multiple channels. And so yeah, and then not monetize— if they demonetize it at a great level, that's going to just shut down incentive to do this because they want real voices.

Well, yeah. And I think it specifically says content that's repetitive in a podcast-style upload is what it is. It says that the concerns about AI impact on quality content originality and audience trust. It's a potential bellwether for future platform policies affecting podcast distribution. Now, if we're talking about YouTube here, that would apply generally across all video content, not just what's being termed podcasts. On YouTube. So I think we're a little bit confusing the issue here. I think to some degree, I'm not sure that TechCrunch really did a good job on this, but I'm not sure that what they're referring to specifically would be what I would consider to be podcasts. I would consider them just videos on YouTube that are being mass-produced. They're being done via creating a transcript and then adding that transcript to, let's say, a clone voice and then creating a video from it. I wouldn't necessarily lump it in as a podcast per se.

I don't think they said specifically it's about podcasts, but it definitely basically brought up two points: repetitive content AI, and you've got people that are blatantly ripping off content as well and then reproducing and calling it its own. So, you know, there's a lot of that that's, that's on there. Um, but I think the best part of it is, is, um, is the ability to get rid of these AI synthetic hosts and to demonetize and get rid of the content. Because I think what they're worried about is just being overrun, overrun. And they're already being overrun. They should have acted some time ago, but this is going to be some automated process. But I sure would love for YouTube to put some sort of flag. Basically, we'd be able to say, yes, this is AI-generated content, and flag videos as a user that it was AI, but that's somewhere we can just say report, um, to help them. You know, I, I, I, I'm of the opinion that if you're going to create content, you, you need to create content as a creator, um, and that work should be rewarded. I can build a script, you know, my Myth series I have AI help me with ideation, and then I write a rough script, and then I have it help me clean up my script that I'm doing for the podcast News and Myth Show that I'm putting out. And, but I don't, I don't use the AI to write the original script. So, and what I do is I do talking points. I walk through my 8, 9, 10 talking points, and then I get some help, but, and then I have to edit it again. So it's a couple-hour process to do a 5-minute show. And again, it's, I think as long as a human is involved and the human is narrating, But at what point does it get so good that they can't detect it?

Well, I think that's what's coming here, and I'm actually looking deeper at the article itself, and the article doesn't actually use the term podcast.

Oh no, it was never mentioning podcasts at all. It has nothing to do with podcasts. It's purely AI-generated content on YouTube and radio. Yeah. So, but if you're creating that type of AI-generated content and calling it a podcast, then you're probably going to be demonetized.

Yeah, I think the term that was used in this summary was podcast-style uploads, which I'm not sure what that is.

That's interesting. Yeah, so, but it's any content, it's not podcast content, right?

It's just any, any AI-generated video that just doesn't come across very authentic and real, which there is quite a bit. I mean, I see it on YouTube all the time. And you do have to wonder, really, how good the content is that comes out of that. And I think it's also a reflection on, to some degree, how good the content is that's coming out of AI, too. Because there is a direct correlation between the content that comes out in these AI video pieces that is generated based on AI. If all of the script and the narration is AI created, then it's really the fault of the AI. It's not really a human problem. It's just that the AI is not very good yet.

Yeah.

So yeah. Yeah, it's a complicated topic here. And this is something that we're going to have to wrestle with increasingly, especially as the AI actually starts to get better. I know that we saw the launch of Grok 4 here this past week. I don't know if you've had a chance to play around with it. I haven't.

No, but I heard it's pretty good.

Yeah. So it's interesting, you know, things are progressing on this front, and I keep hearing about ChatGPT-5. Yeah, it's coming around the corner.

Yeah, it should be here sometime this late summer or something. Yeah, speculation. It could drop at any time.

Yeah, so we could see a big jump in the quality of this stuff.

I never thought I would pay $200 a month for a single tool. You know, it's pretty amazing. I, you know, there's, um, there are some things I've been working on that we're going to announce mid-August or so, and I had to do some deep research to, um, determine, okay, is, uh, is this an— is this the right move? And then from an announcement standpoint and how do I frame the messaging of what we're going to announce. And it's been very, very helpful because it's, you know, if you announce something, you know, people can take things one or two ways and take it positive or negative. And so, you know, you want to make people understand, you know, here's the reason.

And the sentiment analysis.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and it's been helpful for me because it took, gave me some ideas on which I probably would not have got it myself right off the bat. I may have got there after, you know, a week or two, but, and maybe after 4 or 5 people looked at it, but, you know, basically I've got a good pathway for, for, you know, the, the messaging that we're going to use. So I think that just like anything else, the, the, the key to these tools is you don't let them do the work, but let them help you. And that advanced reasoning tool, it sat there and cranked for like 45 minutes on my I fed it spreadsheets and I fed it a bunch of stuff and risk analysis and all kinds of different things and use personal, you know, what I think and, you know, and it's like having a data analysis and an advisor. And that's the way I'm kind of using that advanced tool is using it kind of as an advisor. And I'm not letting him make a decision for me, for God's sake, but at least I can be advised and potentially, you know, do something the way that probably is the way for success. So it's just like we're getting ready to launch Guest Match Pro, probably not Monday because we found some stuff today that needs to be fixed in our beta testing, but I'm hoping sometime next week. And, um, there, you know, there's a whole bunch of— we've got copy done, but there was a whole bunch of things that needed, uh, there's any— you have a question mark next to a prompt, and I'm like, oh God, I don't want to write these, you know, because— so I just did screenshots of all those pages that had those question marks where you hover and you have a little pop-up, and I, I had ChatGPT create those those hover pop-ups in about 20 minutes. I took about another hour to edit them. I was like, okay, yes, you know, save me a massive amount of time.

So yeah, I think it's really easy to ask these large language models to, to do things that we humans think is important to get an answer to, uh, and then when it actually outputs the answer to you, you— it gives you so much that it makes it difficult to figure out, well, what's, what's really usable out of this.

It's all about the prompting, you know. You have to really, you know, answer these 3 questions, you know.

The answers it gives you, I kind of I kind of wonder somewhat if it just doesn't have the—

It's still a language model. It's not AGI yet, so.

It just doesn't have the human intuition aspects of it that makes the output usable.

The danger is thinking it does and then using those outputs and, you know, You have to be very, very careful. I think goes back to what the Google lady said a couple of years ago, that there's going to be, you know, the super creative people that are doing great prompts, and then there's going to be the quality assurance folks and those that have had knowledge and experience, and then everything else in the middle is the thunking is what's going to be affected the most. And I, I kind of see that already, is that the inputs are super important, and then the analysis of the outputs and making sure that what it's giving you is correct and actually doing the math, going back and make sure you've done the math on a spreadsheet and not, you know, let it create a, create, uh, you know, pie charts and stuff for you without making sure it got the formulas right.

Yeah, I had to create some spreadsheets, uh, here recently, and I It told me that it gave me all these, a list of 50 different detailed items and different columns and stuff like that. And I exported the spreadsheet and I pulled it into Excel and all of the columns and all the rows were filled with generic information. So, you know, I just think that we're still at a stage where this stuff just, isn't as good as it's being spun up to be. And I do wonder if we're still a ways out from this stuff really being usable at a level, or is the really good AI being reserved for those that are paying the big high prices?

So by the way, I gotta ask you something. Because I've been looking through my email and I can't find it. Did you send me an email, something to do with the Podcast Hall of Fame a couple weeks ago?

I don't think so. Here, I'm probably soon gonna do it, but okay.

Because I thought I saw an email come in and I said, oh, I have to look at that later, and maybe it was for some other awards. I think you and I were both interviewed by Carmen. Uh, did you get interviewed by Carmen talking about the Hall of Fame and Yeah, yeah, I did too. He come in, wanted— well, he wanted to talk to me about the Podcast Awards, so yeah, that's probably what it was. Maybe that was the kicker, but seems like it was before that, so I'm glad I didn't miss something. Um, yeah, I saw this, uh, it was in Pod News. Indie film follows Ronald Young Jr.'s hunt for breakout podcast with cameos From Adam Curry, Ira Glass, Kara Swisher, and Marc Maron, mainstreaming podcast culture on screen. So this is some sort of, uh, it's going to be premiered at the Oak—

it's a documentary called Age of Audio.

Yeah, and it's going to be premiered at the Oak Cliff Film Festival, wherever that is. So I subscribe to their YouTube channel, so I look forward to watching what they've done.

I watched the trailer.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

And it's, it's like, you know, there's been like 3 or 4 documentaries like this made over the years. Very similar, Todd.

Yeah. And I was— it was kind of curious because, uh, they highlighted the Ambies Awards. And, um, you know, speaking of which, I've not even heard anything from the Ambies. Are they— is the podcast— that organization still working?

Yeah, okay.

It's been very quiet. Well, yeah, very, or it's very quiet.

Or they're talking to a different community than—

Definitely, definitely not participating in touch. Definitely not, not me, that's for sure. Um, what's this thing that you've got here talking about? Podcasts are making us miserable.

There's— I think you jumped to the— would you jump to the bottom or something? Or here, let me—

no, I switched, I switched pages because we're working off two pages today, right?

Yeah.

So yeah, um, the piece critiques the pervasive nature of podcasts in modern life, arguing that endless podcast consumption feeds anxiety only if you're listening at 1.5, 2, or 2.5 speeds. Should it feed anxiety, loneliness, and performative culture of always optimizing? It questions the mental health effects of podcasting as a medium of relentless content churn. Yeah, well, we're dealing with that every day.

Let's continue. Yeah, I think it's just part of the— what, what the media culture now, right? Is a lot of anxiety, this loneliness, this performative culture, right? As we all become kind of creators. And I think that's really the most interesting thing about what's going on right now is this perception that everyone now is a creator, right? And that And that it's all funneling into, and I hear Gary Vaynerchuk saying this a lot here recently, and then I'm hearing other people say this too, it's an interest-based kind of economy now. It's not social media or those terms, social media, podcasting, all this stuff are kind of legacy terms to really describe what's really going on is that people, everyone is now at some level a creator, right? And that it's all, people are being inundated with media now. So people are gravitated towards things that they have an interest in, right? Which I guess has always been there when you think about it, but that's what's driving, you know, like this social e-commerce stuff that's going on. People, you know, people are coming together around these communities of sorts that is based on their interests, which has kind of always been fundamental to podcasting, really. It's just now it's kind of going into so many different types of media, so many different ways of doing video now or doing audio on all these different platforms, whether it's a private community or, you know, on a public channel like YouTube or any of these platforms, that it's kind of evolving into, you know, each one of us has our interests. It's like you and I, Todd, have interest in podcasting, right? So we gravitate towards trying to follow news and information about podcasting. So it's our interest and that's what drives what people do. And it's hard to think about people that are kind of cross-pollinating themselves across a lot of different, um, interest areas.

So, so Rob, uh, I have breaking news though.

You do?

I have a news flash. Yeah, flash. Hell has frozen over.

Yes, it has.

Did you see my Facebook post?

Oh yes, about your— you're going to get, uh, fiber to your house.

Yeah, it has. Yeah, so I— my mom sent me a picture of orange spray marks on the yard. And the reason I knew what that was is about a month ago, I was driving about 5 miles from my house and I— there was— they were doing something alongside the road. And Chris, it's a country road, so I stopped and said, what are you guys doing? They said, we're putting in fiber for Frontier. And of course, I'm not a big fan of Frontier, but I said, holy shit, are you, you know, really? And I said, uh, what, what does it take to bribe you guys to come down Brocklebank Road? And the guy just kind of looked at me kind of funny, right? And, um, so my neighbors are a little upset because they, they basically, and it must be because of house density They basically came up a main paved road and then the road that is just north of me, they came up that road, across us, and then turned right and went back down. So they basically made a, a box around. So basically the fiber is going to go right by my property. And so I don't know how long But hell has frozen.

So how are they going to get it from the street to your house?

I don't care. I'll dig, I'll dig the trench myself.

Oh, you will? Have you actually reached out to them to find out?

No, no. But then, you know, that's, you know, I'm sure they're going to be putting flyers in the, in the mail and stuff when they're ready. But I, yeah, I will definitely, uh, you know, and I, I told my mom, if they, if they come by the house before, uh, before I'm back, I said make sure we get a case beer in the back of their truck, you know. So, uh, you know, I'm gonna make sure that the fiber's in well around my house.

So, so how far is it from the street to your house?

Um, 100 feet.

Oh, that's not bad.

Yeah, yeah. And I, like I said, it shouldn't be too expensive.

It was like a quarter mile.

No, no. I would go rent the trencher machine myself anyway. I wouldn't care, you know. So, uh, and one of my neighbors messaged in the, in the Facebook chat and she said, I hope they come down my way, but they had turned the corner and she's just two houses up the street. So, um, but there's not a lot of density, uh, further down. So I— that's the only reason I think that they came my way is because the opposite road that, um, if I look west in the section of road that's a mile that they didn't go along the main road, there's not very many houses there, but there's a whole bunch of houses on these, basically these three segments. So that's the only reason I think that we've got it. So maybe some of this rural internet money is finally going to be used to actually bring rural internet to the rural community.

So, okay, yeah, that'd be novel, wouldn't it?

I'm, I'm jazzed, you know, even if it takes another 6 months, it's, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's pretty awesome.

So, so, Todd, I think we saw kind of— I don't know if this is a novel moment or, or not— with, um, Fox News, I guess, has launched its first podcast licensing deal Yeah, did you see this?

So it's for the conservative-leaning show Ruthless.

Ruthless.

I had no idea. I've never heard of that show.

Yeah, I hadn't either, but, but it's interesting that they maybe did a license deal.

But are they a YouTube channel on their channel? Yeah, are they a YouTube channel? Or because they have that Fox Nation thing, so I wonder if it's going to be in Fox Nation and not on Fox.

Yeah, they don't specify.

They don't specify who it is. Of course, CNN has been doing some revamping of their podcast too. I heard a little whimsical about that. Um, hmm.

Well, so we might see more of these, or some of these successful video podcasts make it to cable, which I don't know if that's the right path for them to go, but I'm not sure that the scale is there, but—

Well, who wants to sign us for some network? You know, well, you know. Right. Yeah. What do we have to put together? The Podcast News Network, PNN, or something like that?

Right. Yes. So I guess, you know, it's part of a bigger trend, you know, around, you know, social media. Our interest media is what it's been called now, and, and these video platforms are becoming—

I've never heard that word, interest media. Who you hanging out with? Interest media, huh? That's what— is that, is that what the next— this— the younger generation is called? It's interest media? Or is that some executive come up with a new slang word?

Well, I think the person that's, that's pushing that out there now is Gary Vaynerchuk.

Oh, okay. So Gary Vee is so over the top half the times. I, I haven't listened to any of his stuff in 5 years, you know, so he seems like he's always yelling, you know.

So, well, I mean, he's a very bombastic personality, but he does have a history of being right. Yeah, he does, about these social platforms and the direction of where things are going. And he's also really, really hot on this on this kind of social e-commerce kind of stuff, like the Whatnot platform and things like that. He's selling things. It's this whole thing around everybody has to have a business now. Everybody has to start a company.

You have to have a side hustle.

Yeah. So that's the culture that this you know, this up-and-coming generation has is that they're being put in a box, right? That they can't afford things, so that they have to make their whole life about scrambling to make money in any way they can.

So, well, a certain part of the population doesn't want to work.

Well, yeah, or they just don't want to work at certain things, right? Yeah, yeah.

So I don't know, I'm, I'm pretty, uh, pleased so far. My son has been interning with us, and, uh, so, you know, I've tried to keep my nose out of everything that's going on because I don't want to influence things. But I asked the dev team last night, how's he doing? You know, is, you know, I know my kid's smart, but, you know, you just want to kind of know, you know, tell, you know, tell me the truth, you know. And, uh, yeah, he's holding his own, so I'm pretty proud of him. So maybe there's a future Cochran destined for, uh, the Raw Voice. That'd be kind of interesting.

Well, there's got to be someone that eventually replaces you.

Yeah, someone does at some point. Yeah, someone has to come in.

We have to think about that at some point. Is it, you know, who's gonna— who's, who's gonna take over the mantle of doing the New Media Show? I guess nobody.

Probably. He, uh, he did send me a note. He said Damn, you know a lot.

It's just been around a long time.

Yeah, that's, that's exactly it, you know. And just hang out, hang out there, youngster, and just absorb the knowledge, you know.

Yeah, right. Well, Todd, I don't know if you've noticed the world that we're in now is, um, there's this— seems— I don't know if you get this impression too in your own kind of mobile phone, of, uh, just— there's always just a constant, um, bombardment of what I can call kind of like scams, right? There's always somebody after you for almost something.

I almost got caught by one last week. Yeah, I'm a big Tumi fan, and I can never have afforded their suitcases because they're $1,000. Who's gonna pay $1,000 for a suitcase? I can't afford that. And they had, I got this, saw this thing on Facebook and said Facebook, some, I mean, Tumi something year sale, you know, as much as 80% off. I'm like, holy shit. So I clicked on the ad and I'm like, wow, I can get a Tumi suitcase for $210. And I was all in. I had like 3 suitcases ordered and I got all the way through and got to the point where I was to click my credit card and I was clicking and said, "It's only letting me pay with PayPal. Why is that? I don't wanna use PayPal, that's my business account. I gotta use my personal account." And I said, "That's not gonna work." And I'm looking at the site and I was not on toomey.com. And it looked like toomey.

Yeah, and I guess it's happening around social media accounts getting hijacked. Around fake podcasts and stuff like that. You know, there's a scam trend where creators' social media accounts are hijacked to promote fake podcasts and scam products, right? Kind of like what you were just talking about. So it's, victims include high-profile creators like Magic Singh, I guess is what is one of them who was featured in this article. The issue points to a broader concern around platform security, reputation protection, and monetization pressures that the creators face today. So I think there's just a— it's just a constant war out there, and it's all— everybody's trying to scam everybody or sell expensive mastermind programs. And there's so many kind of people out there that think, well, it's so easy to get rich quick and to just sell an ebook and you're going to make $10,000 a month or launch a podcast and you're going to make all this money and all this stuff.

I get emails all the time from Facebook, uh, you know, people trying to get into my, my account. Um, and then, uh, well, and this is, you know, this thing I was talking about a minute ago, um, that's like the third thing in recent months that I've seen on Facebook that was advertised on Facebook that was scam. Um, another thing a few months ago was I have a Ford Edge and I've got the nice, I bought the aftermarket, I don't know if it's the weather shield or whatever they are, mats for it. Because you live in Michigan, you know how it is there where you live too, you just get in your vehicle and the floor gets jacked up. So I wanted those bucket types that seal and I found some other company was selling something really, really cool. And I got to the point and I'm like, $99 for what they're trying to sell me? I said, something doesn't add up. Even Chinese stuff is— this should be more than that. And, uh, so I, I had looked at it and I went and did Google it and said, is this site a scam? And yep, it sure was. And, uh, again, using PayPal as a mechanism to get to extract money. And, and I think people have to be real careful with their accounts now and have two-factor authentication. It drives me crazy having two-factor authentication on on ads. Um, but you have to at this point.

Yeah, I guess this, um, this Magic guy that I mentioned to, um, was, I guess, a, a victim of a scammer who had been posing as a booking agent for a famous American podcast. Oh, and, and was trying to charge him money to be a guest on this guy's podcast.

I get requests all the time from people, do you know this podcaster, can you connect me with them? I get that request a lot. Um, I agreed to be on a, um, business AI summit. Um, they asked me, come on, it's next week, and The approach was very good, the, the interview, and they, you know, they pre-qualified me and, you know, what are you going to show? And so it felt, it felt, and it is legitimate, but their marketing tactics that I've seen that they've used as part of their, you know, upsell, um, it bothers me a little bit, um, you know, so everything is leading to some sort of sort of upsell. And, um, so I guess that's the way things are now. Um, so yeah, I think I'm going to be just a little more cognizant of who I'm agreeing to speak for or speak with.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of danger areas here that people don't immediately think of because a lot of these things that are being perpetrated now are things that just didn't happen in the past. People didn't try and scam on every little type of business opportunity and deal and even employment type stuff too, right? Work stuff can be scams too. And a lot of big employers will— I've been hearing more about this here lately that Some employers will just run fake employment ads just to make it look like that they're a growing business. It's just another PR effort on the part— the roles that they advertise never get filled and they just keep running them over and over again and it generates all this interest and people think that they're a growing company, that they're looking for So they're getting thousands of people applying for jobs, but the company never hires anybody. So you kind of have different levels of scams that are going on out there. And you have to— to me, it just comes across as our society and our business culture has become desperate, right? And people are willing to throw ethics out the window.

Well, that's what happened in China. Um, you know, they— it— that's— they had a transition at some point. I think, yeah, you can go and look at history, but the business ethics really went completely sideways. And that's where IP of the United States companies started being stolen, just outright stolen. And it continues today. You know, people get mad when I say these kinds of things, but I've seen, you know, having gone to events like CES and so forth. And, you know, I told people to have new gear there, put it— have a, have a, you know, a drape or something that you can put over your booth when, you know, when these 4 or 5 individuals come in with a camera, notebook, and tape measure. And don't let them touch your device. Um, if they're going to copy it sooner or later, just don't give them 6 months head start, especially if you're in prototype mode.

Yeah, and I've been increasingly, um, this is another use for AI that I found that can be pretty effective, is that if you get a pitch or you get some sort of a solicitation or you get some sort of an offer that looks interesting, um, then just take that, what, whatever it is, and run it through the latest AI platform and just ask it, is this, does this look legitimate? Does it look like it's real? And just do a layer of vetting like this, because oftentimes the, the AI models will have seen patterns out there that can give you a clue that this may not be legitimate.

The amount of email, I'm just— that just scares me to death. I just, you know, I talk about it almost every week with the team. Um, we had a support ticket come in and, uh, Dave asked me, hey, are we expecting a DocuSign from some name? I'm like, no, we're not. And for God's sake, don't click on that link.

Yeah.

Um, you know, so it's—

so I always, always look at the source of the email that you're getting. It's— so if it's claiming to be from a, you know, a legitimate company, yeah, that's not always the case now.

They're spoofing that stuff left and right. It's Yeah, you just got to be careful, you know. That's— and it's what it is, is they catch you at a—

it's called a phishing attack.

Yeah, and they catch you at a weak moment. You click on something and you're done, you know. Your, your, your accounts are compromised, right? Some sort of tracking software being put on. People don't believe it, but, um, on all my Macs I run antivirus and malware, and they, they Everyone says, why? Well, the amount of stuff that it catches, especially websites. So don't go to this website, it'll pause from loading a website. So yeah, I think it's because we're, you know, we're going to get tricked at some point into clicking on something.

Right. It's going to, you know, it's going to be hard to decipher what's real and what's not real. I mean, what's real for, for you to, you know, give credibility to and what to ignore. It's going to be harder and harder to tell. Yeah, for sure, especially with AI.

So protect your assets, ladies and gentlemen. Two-factor authentication, even though it's annoying. I got— it's gotten to the point now, like Every service that has, um, I know it's tokens, RSA tokens, that type of stuff. Yeah, I got 3 apps now that are running token because every company uses a little bit different token. And, uh, I have to— I got 3 different authenticator apps now. Um, and you know, you always worry about, okay, I'm going to change phones and is this stuff going to transfer and which I'm not at this time, but that's the thing that always worries me when I move to a new phone. But what is everybody hearing out there? You know, what's going on? It's summer, it's a little quiet, um, you know, minimal news going on in the space. What is, what is everyone else in podcast land hearing these days? We'd love to, love to hear from you.

Is there any buzz that you're hearing about Podcast Movement or any kind of exciting stuff going on with that?

I, I have— the Podcast Standards Project, uh, reached out to Dan for a meeting room, and, uh, Dan made one available. So we're actually going to have a meeting room at, um, Podcast Movement. I offered up to, you know, bring in some catering, water, coffee, or whatever that could be in the room. And of course, you know, anytime you talk catering at an event like that, it's, you know, that's $1,000 no matter what you do. And the— I was looking at the maps of meeting rooms and there's a lot of openings, uh, for meeting rooms. So there's— it doesn't appear to me that they've sold out their meeting rooms for this event. Libsyn, Triton, SoundStack— not SoundStack, Sounds Profitable— um, have a segment of them. See if I can— in my Slack channel, I can't show a screenshot of it, but See here, event planning. It looks like they have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 meeting rooms left, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 sold. So they got more than half of their meeting rooms sold. So And I am appreciative, Dan, they gave the PSP a good rate. So I think the companies are splitting the cost for the meeting room. So we'll have a place to bring people in if they want to talk. Maybe only chairs in there, depending on how much a cup of coffee costs.

So Todd, I had ChatGPT-4, oh, make a make an image for tonight's episode.

Oh yeah.

And I pulled the image into Paint, which is part of Windows.

Yeah.

And to try and resize it.

There's a word I haven't heard in a while.

Well, and they've added Copilot to Paint. So there's a lot of advanced capability in just the basic image editor that they had on Windows for many years. So there's ability for AI can generate images inside of that. Application now. So they've even, even Notepad has AI capabilities now.

So that's funny.

Yeah, well, it is. But what I wanted to mention was, is I pulled the thumbnail that I generated from ChatGPT into Paint on Windows, and it flagged the image. It said saved with content credentials. Oh. Content credentials metadata discloses that the work was created with generative AI. Oh. So it actually is embedding in the metadata of the image. So when you upload it to YouTube, it's actually sharing that potentially with the publishing platform. So it's another form of labeling that we're starting to see. These bigger media or these bigger companies, bigger tech companies start to, to enable that in, in the metadata.

That's one thing that Sora will not do, and that's Sora, um, the ChatGPT version of the image creator. They will not create a 1920 by 1080 image. It's some weird— it won't do a true 16 by 9 so that you can just resize it up. You have to do something nagging with it, and it annoys me today.

That's what I had to do with this one out of ChatGPT was I had to resize it to the— was it the 1920 by 1080 size?

Yeah, and I think it does that on purpose, to be honest with you. It doesn't create a perfect 16 by 9 image, so I don't know why they do that. But anyway, we're top of the hour here. Um, yeah, we got through it. Uh, I have a little editing to do on today's show, so if you've—

yeah, yeah, we had a rough start.

It sucks, but it's okay. I'll get it chopped up and everyone that's listening to this later will just hear— I have heard that, you know, where I chopped it. So hopefully I can make it so it doesn't sound too bad. Um, yeah, because I got a master— I got a master recording here. So, um, I think that's it. Uh, Todd at blueberry.com, at Geek News on X, at Geek News, at geeknews.chat on Mastodon.

Yeah, I'm on X as well, at Rob Greenlee, on YouTube at Rob Greenlee, at all the social, uh, or interest media platforms now, um, LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, all of the all the go-to platforms now, so you can find me there, or at, uh, robgreenlee.com too.

So everyone, thanks for being here. We'll be back again, 8 PM Eastern Time, uh, is our kickoff time. And, uh, believe it or not, Rob, I've been up for like 17 hours, so I'm, I'm going to bed immediately after this. Yeah, work straight through, uh, today. So lifestyle, yeah, it is, um, but You know, that's the price you pay for, in, in my opinion, living where I am currently living right now and still working. So yeah, that's true. Yeah. All right everyone, thanks. We'll see you back here next Wednesday. Take care. Bye-bye.

All right, bye.