The Future of Podcasts Just Got Complicated

Restream, that's the main thing. Okay, there's that. Oh, that was right on time. Perfect. Todd and Rob in the afternoon. Hey, afternoon delight with Todd and Rob. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And here we are, Rob, for another edition of the New Media Show. How are you?

I'm doing great, Todd. It's great to be back on the show on a new streaming platform.

Yep, and, uh, we are, we are on a new streaming platform, and the reason was I couldn't get good video out of, uh, restream.io. I couldn't record locally on StreamYard. It seems like all these platforms have taken away the ability to get a quality video recording. And, uh, so we're on Riverside, and much kind of to my chagrin.

So what more specifically did you see was the challenge with stream, uh, with, uh, Restream?

Everything's great if your bandwidth is just always perfect, because they don't do a local recording. They record everything to the cloud now. So it, you know, when I look at Restream and I look at, um, that's the thing that does—

that's the same thing that StreamYard recently did was pull, pull the, the combined local recording export. Yeah, you know, you can still get the separate tracks, but you can't get the combined, right?

So we'll see how this works. Um, You know, right now it says 8% uploading on my window. Do you have an uploading button in yours?

I do, and it's showing 99%, 97% upload, so it actually is tracking the, the upload.

Yeah, so for me it's not because, you know, I, I had— I'm supposed to have 30 up, but it just isn't tracking. Um, so, you know, I'm watching the the live video output right now, and it's definitely not as good as essentially what, what I would expect. And, um, so what that ends up with being is a real bad video recording. So I need a master video recording that is good. So when I'm traveling— and I guess we'll test this and see how it goes I think if you've got great bandwidth, you're probably okay. Yeah, so to use Restream or, or StreamYard, but you know, I'm, I'm more worried about having a quality video recording because I was looking at this stuff on YouTube and it was just caca. It was bad.

Yeah, and it's good, good timing for us to be talking about the Riverside folks, and I'll just jump to that particular line item in our, our our news is that I guess the Riverside folks, uh, raised another $20 million in a new funding round. Yeah, yeah, $30 million, right?

Correct. Yeah, $30.

Yep. And they already have 165 employees.

Um, where are these— I guess they're spending their money to do this, right? To make sure you get a good, good video recording.

I— that's part of their model, but I guess Well, I guess part, part of their model is to build out other capabilities like they, they also announced multi-track editing tools built into the platform too for both audio and video. So, so I think what we're seeing is kind of a, kind of a move towards these platforms becoming, you know, adding functional features, right, and making them more capable. So content creators don't, don't have to be transferring files around and using other tools and all this stuff to accomplish what they want to do. And the same thing is happening with the Descript platform too, with Squadcast, where they have the integrated tools so you can do everything right there. And actually, they've started, you know, a lot of these platforms are starting to add the ability to publish directly to the video consumption platforms like a YouTube.

Yeah, it's curious to me. Uh, for sure. Um, but you know, I think the thing that, you know, I— ever since they got money, they kind of changed as a, as a company.

So are you talking about Riverside?

Yeah.

And it's going to happen. I mean, what— once you get up to 165 employees, that's, that's a big company, right?

But it's, it amazes me they have that many that much money. And, um, it just goes to show you, I, I think, I think of what we could do if I had $30 extra million at Blueberry.

Yeah, and they raised $35 million in 2022, just a couple years ago.

I know, right before, uh, NAB, right?

And then in 2021, they raised $9.5 million on top of that. So they've Just since 2021, they've raised what, $60, almost $80 million?

So yeah, yeah, so that's amazing. That's a big number, that amount of money for this product. And it just surprises me that, you know, I just— it just to me, it's an extraordinary number. It really, really is. But here we are, we're using, uh, their platform for a reason this morning. Um, well, you know, I'm back in the studio. I don't have to worry about these challenges of getting a quality recording.

Yeah.

Um, you know, and I may have to do some thinking here now again, um, on, you know, how to get a quality recording when I'm remote. Audio is fine, you know, and I, I, and maybe no one gives a shit be honest with you, maybe the audio recording and the video recording is good enough, but I'm kind of a perfectionist a little bit.

Well, and that kind of takes us into the big topic we want to talk about, is, is, are, are we all tired of talking about video?

Yes. Yes.

Well, that's a very simple answer to that question, but, um, there's a lot of continuing ongoing chatter about the implications of a video. And some of the things that we've said on this show, um, have kind of raised people's attention here lately. And James Cridland is getting involved in this conversation as well, and it's an interesting chat.

And in fact, I was wrong last week. Apparently, apparently, yes, you can, uh, God, don't even want to mention these folks anymore.

Well, Todd, you were actually giving them too much credit that they were going to do it the, the logical way. But what they've done here is break the models, is what they've done.

So, oh, they broke it completely.

Yeah.

So if I go in and find my listing that I am doing pass-through on from Blueberry— yeah, my audio listing— and I overwrite my And I put video on top of that, then they never ever served the audio. I knew that part was right. That's why I was saying do two. So I'm still advocating my same solution is that you start a second show on Spotify if you want to do video.

Yeah, but they'll, they'll actually overwrite your RSS feed.

No, but I'm saying start a second show just and don't overwrite your original show. Start a second show.

Yeah, yeah, I don't— yeah, I don't know the actual fine details on that, if, if they associate it with the publisher's name and somehow replace it if it's the same title of the, of the series, uh, or what the details on the—

if I go over there and create a new podcast and call it the New Media Show video version, which I'm not going to do Well, I haven't done it either, so it's, it's just been—

it just feels like it's too much of a mess over there to even mess with right now until they get their model straightened out.

Well, and I think what it ultimately, you know, I think the chickens are going to come home to roost on this at some point.

Well, and, uh, that's another topic I want to talk about too, is there's some folks making some 2025 predictions, so we're kind of in that time period right now too where people are talking about, well, are people going to get tired of a video and some point next year there's going to be a bunch of layoffs because everybody invested a lot in, in video and it didn't work out?

Or, or are they, uh, right, or will, you know, Google being, you know, I, I think maybe there's some semblance of reality there in that we could end up with all of a sudden the major companies saying, ah, we've had enough of this, we're tired, let's move on.

Yeah, this is a time of kind of— I've been saying this for a while, but it's definitely a time of convergence from what people perceive as mainstream media type content. And I think we're, we're kind of blending these things together and it's making us kind of uncomfortable because we're, we're calling out shows that have production teams or bigger studios, more like how mainstream media has produced their content over the years. And that's shifting over to the internet side. And it's kind of like confusing. Well, you know, is it a podcast if it's distributed online, if it has a big team behind it? Versus what we've all known podcasting to be is kind of an independent medium. Anybody can do it. But are we shifting into a time where it's, it's going to be the full spectrum? Mainstream media is going to be focused on it going forward, and the independent creators either get left behind or there's some way for them to continue to compete. And in some ways, there's some evidence that they can continue to compete.

Yeah, you know, and continue to compete and You know, again, I— the medium's healthy, um, you know, a little bit, a little bit slower in the number of, of new folks, um, but yeah, you know, I'm not worried from that perspective, to be, to be honest with you, um, in that regard. So yeah, I'm, I think we're going to be just fine. You know, you look at, you know, look at what we're doing. You know, we're trying to be very diverse, working with new partners. Matter of fact, we announced a new one this morning. And then announced a new product on Monday. You know, we announced our podcast AI tools as a standalone product on Monday. So that, you know, now you don't have to have a hosting account at Blueberry to be able to use it.

Okay.

Yeah, and you're going to see more of that from us too. Um, I won't go into too many details, but, um, from a, from a business standpoint, I can't be a one-trick pony. I have to have more eggs in my basket and more diversified income streams. Um, yeah, I have to protect, uh, the company at all costs. And, um, so, you know, you'll see next year— um, matter of fact, we've already pre-announced one of those products, a new, a new product called Creator Connect. And, um, and you'll notice I said Creator Connect, not Podcaster Connect, but, you know, basically a product that will— it's going to integrate with Blueberry, you know, that's the main thing.

Sure. Yeah. So yeah, I think, Todd, that's smart because I think increasingly, um, people are creating content or thinking themselves as creators that have lots of distribution choices, and podcasts is one of them. It's not probably all of them, it's one of them.

But, you know, it's— it— I saw something, um, and I had quite a dialogue about it on my tech show. Mhm. And matter of fact, I've gotten a huge amount of feedback from it already. Um, I had a— basically, I saw people on TikTok preparing for the TikTok shutdown.

So they're all promoting now, hey, Donald Trump's getting into office and he threatened to shut them down, that kind of thing.

Well, well, no, he actually has hinted he might save TikTok.

Oh, okay.

But he hasn't really committed. So, you know, I, I think chances are 50-50 whether or not he actually if he actually saves TikTok on January— well, he can't do nothing until the 20th, right? But January 19th is the shutdown day.

Oh, it's already set. Okay.

Yeah.

So, you know, boy, that's awfully coincidental that it's the day before the inauguration, right?

So let's, you know, let's just take a comment out of my playbook. You know what, I've been poo-pooed. And as a matter of fact, Tom, you poo-pooed me recently. You know, I can understand what you said, that, you know, the grass is looking mighty green over on some of these sites. Well, I've always said you build your brand at the risk of someone changing their business model. And lo and behold, it wasn't a business model. It was the political winds that are changing the model, right? And with, with that said, um, if TikTok does get shut down, which I very well think it could be, um, you have got a whole 150 million people that have been on that platform. We're not all of them creating content, but a whole bunch of them are, and monetizing. Guess what? Yeah, they're done, right? Their livelihood, their way to make money is gone. So yeah, you know, I, I'm— I have no illusions. I like TikTok. I like it. But I have no illusions that the Chinese state government is also involved. They have no illusions that they, they, they are. It's just the way they are. They, they are insidious. You know, people may say, Todd, you're crazy, but if you're in China and doing business in China and China state comes in and says, you shall do this and you shall not tell anyone what you're doing and you shall give us this data, that's what happens.

Yeah.

And there's some evidence that that has actually happened. And you know, you— why— what— you wouldn't have the NSA and everyone else saying essentially you don't install TikTok on your phone, but at the same point you've got these competing commercial instruments, YouTube You've got Instagram, Facebook, and everyone else that want Reels to work. So, you know, those companies would love to see TikTok go away.

That's what I was going to say. You know, you have to look at who benefits from that, um, right, as having something to do with maybe pushing for it, right?

So they're pushing for it even though they're, you know, you know, you don't hear too much. Then you got the government saying this is bad and they're spying, and you've got creators in the middle and saying, hey, don't take my livelihood away. And, you know, YouTube and Facebook, they're waving, come over here and we'll give you, you know, some pennies for your creativity. And the advertisers will have to move.

So it's the same thing that happens when a podcast hosting platform shuts down, right? Who benefits? All the other podcast hosting platforms.

That's right. So there is a, you know, there is a cause and effect here.

Yeah.

Um, and you know, I, I don't dare ever fly through Hong Kong. I just don't. I don't ever dare hub through there. As much smack as I've talked about China for so many years, you know, take the risk, right? I'm not taking the risk. And you know, the chance of them rolling me up are slim, but I also had an interesting job before. So, you know, they might want to roll me up. And it goes back again to, all right, where are you building your brand? Now, you know, Doug, we're talking about building on your dot-com. Well, I'm a podcaster and guess what? TikTok goes away, no sweat for me. I'm continuing.

I'm not locked in in any way over there. I'm not investing time over there.

I'm not— I don't have an issue at all. Yeah, last week though, we did get some boost and I missed it. I apologize. And some came in afterwards. Love the idea of split testing. To your point, I think it would require work on both the media host side and the app side to ensure good delivery of all episode artwork created, correlated downloads or plays related to specific artwork. But I like the idea. Oh yeah, so someone is talking about A/B— we talk about A/B testing of media within apps and, uh, album art and all that stuff, episode art. And then, um, 2000 Sats from Silas on Linux. He says, Blue Sky injecting RSS doesn't seem super unlikely to me because it's not really a platform. Every profile count is its own website. It's like everyone already has an RSS feed except that Blue Sky protocol isn't JSON-based. It's unlikely, but they could take in RSS. It doesn't go that much against their model, although I don't think RSS feeds are usually signed. Yeah, most are now. Most of them are HTTPS. Blue Sky feeds are signed. It's standing for authenticated transfer. Oh, plus from testing, we know Blue Sky doesn't de-rank posts with external links in it. That's the reason I think brands and people are going to it. Again, I think it's just a segment of populations going to it. Being able to use the audience you built somewhere else too. Blue Sky isn't against external stuff, which makes sense.

Not yet. Yeah, that's how, that's how Twitter started too. Yeah.

And then 5000 stats from Papa HD. Hi Rob, uh, greetings from Montreal, the frontier between audio and video and podcasting. Is more and more and more blurred here too. So we got some feedback from last week's show, at least even on Boost, you know, and using those new modern podcasts. We are lit and live, by the way. We're streaming the show audio as well as video on all the major platforms. But so, you know, whatever happens to TikTok doesn't— so I'm not saying that, uh, The chances of YouTube's not going to get banned, Facebook's not going to get banned, Spotify is not going to get banned.

Those are all US companies. Why? I mean, I mean, rooted US companies, right?

Yeah.

Right.

Well, Spotify is not. Spotify is, um, that's true. European, European country.

But that's, that's from Sweden. So that's part of the, that's a, that's a NATO ally. So, so yeah, that's not going to happen.

So, you know, and, and so, you know, again, I, you know, I hate to say it this way, don't— and believe me, if TikTok goes away, I'll get some time back, but it still remains the number one place for me to find real news about specific events going on in the world that I don't find anywhere else. I can easily find—

there's a lot of it, Todd. There's a lot of it going on on X too. I mean, There's a lot of that.

But at the same time, I, I can't find reels on X about what's going on in Syria.

You know, you find just regular videos, right? Not, yeah, not real.

Have you seen any mainstream news covering Syria? No, they've been covering this CEO shooter, right? You know, so, um, and all of the UFOs flying over New Jersey, right?

That's the other one, right?

Yeah., or drones, or— it's real easy if you guys in New Jersey want to figure out this drone thing, or it's called a 12-gauge shotgun.

You get arrested for that, Todd.

So I wouldn't be—

I wouldn't be advocating for people to shoot down drones. You get arrested for that.

Something's over my property hovering at a couple hundred feet.

It's illegal to discharge a firearm like that, Todd, if it's over your property.

Doesn't matter. Okay, well, it depends on the state you live.

Well, that's, that's certainly true. Yes.

Yeah, you can't, you can't shoot airplanes down, though, don't get me wrong.

Yeah, well, that's, that's exactly why they're going to come after you. So, yeah, well, you know, if it's dark which all these things are flying around in the dark, right? And they, they look rather suspicious. I thought it was interesting, the, the other rumor that was flying around that I guess there's a, some mothership from Iran that has come off the coast, the eastern coast, and they're, they're launching all these drones into, into the east coast of the US is the new story.

Oh, invasion is what it is, right?

Right.

Yeah, it's Jersey.

You know, it's— there is certainly something up in the sky, right? I mean, I've seen all the videos. I'm sure you have too. They're big. There is something a little bit unusual going on here, but there's also a lot of, you know, freaky stuff going around with drones right now. So it's, it's— I mean, there's big and small, and, and now we're talking about flying cars and, you know, all this kind of stuff. So the technology has reached a point where we can do a lot of interesting stuff, and there may be a lot of interesting stuff that we don't know about too.

It's going to end up being some college students, you know, that's what it's going to be.

It's a, it's a college fraternity prank, right?

You know, so, you know, who knows what it's going to be.

Yeah, but well, Todd, I saw, uh, in, in Pod News that James Kridland broke the the news about, I guess, a new and improved Apple Podcasts on Android.

Did you follow the story? They basically fixed a bug.

Okay. Is that what it was? Okay.

Yeah, it was, it was, you know, and we kind of laughed about it because we knew we had talked about it internally. And actually, we had sent messages over to, to, to the gang over there when they introduced this thing and, they fixed the PWA setting is what they did. Oh, okay. So now you can actually make it a PWA.

But what's interesting is it bypasses the Google Store.

Well, you know, we have a PWA for Blueberry Podcast that you can install. Yeah, so it's not rocket science, but you people aren't used to installing apps that way.

Yeah, it's also the same way that the, the Google Podcasts app worked, right? Yeah, yeah.

So, so, yeah, but you know, it's great.

So if you want to install this on your Android phone, just go to podcast.apple.com in your Chrome Chrome browser, right, on your Android phone, and you should be able to get it, get it set up.

Yep. And you put an icon right on your, right on your phone. Yeah, it'll act just like an app, just like the Google Podcast one did, right? That's right. So, you know, here we are, and, you know, it's, it's a pretty big deal.

Um, the The challenge— well, now, now the next position we should take, Todd, is that Apple should make a native Android app, right? We've been saying that for years. That's the next logical step in this conversation, right?

Yeah. So, you know, a PWA is, uh, yeah, you know, here's the challenge again, and I think Android users may be a little more adept installing a PWA than iOS users. Yeah, right, totally. Yeah. So, you know, we could see a, um, a bump. I'd love to see all of a sudden the Apple Podcasts app reach 3, 5, 6, 7% on Android. Yeah, that would be a beautiful thing.

Yeah, it needs to replace at least the stats for, for Google Podcasts, right? Yeah, that would be great because they were actually starting to grow that before they killed it.

Yeah, exactly.

Actually had good percentages. Success equals death, right? Yes. Yeah, it's kind of—

that's kind of the takeaway from that. And, you know, James did put some installation instructions. Yeah, pretty simple, right? Yeah, very, very simple. And it's basically added to your home screen, right?

Very, very simple. And then choose install.

That's right. Wow. But again, you got to be using the Chrome browser. Yes, you do. Yes, your Android, which you do have options. You don't have to use the Chrome browser in Android, which I do.

That's likely going to be the default browser on Android, I would think.

Wouldn't you? I would think so too. Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be.

No, it doesn't. No, no, you can run probably all of the other browsers— Mozilla, Firefox, all that—

if you choose. I contend still there's a reason why, um, Google does— I mean, excuse me, why Apple has not done a native app. They probably can't get a deal done with Google because they don't want to do it. I think I think those that, uh, are in charge over in the, uh, you know, what do they call the Apple spaceship? Um, you know, I think Tim Cook is, would, is probably saying it'll be a cold day in you-know-what before we build a, a native app for Android.

Yeah, Todd, it's the same thing that's, that's currently going on with email between all those big tech, tech bohemians, you know, even Microsoft and Google and Apple is that their, their email platforms don't work with each other either. So there's always been these kind of like, you know, behind-the-scenes tech wars that have been going on between all these companies. I mean, I used to work for Microsoft, so I saw it firsthand that everybody's trying to undermine everybody else. And it's like, yeah, and it's, it's always bad for the user.

That's the problem. Yeah, they, they want a reason to, you know Give people— if you don't— if you want the Apple Podcast app so bad, buy an iPhone, right?

You know, don't go out and pick sides. You got to pick sides, just like politics now, Todd. Yeah, you got to pick sides.

Yeah, well, we're past the political season.

Let's see, I don't talk about any politics. I don't know that we really are, Todd. I think we still have to get to an inauguration first.

I don't know. Yeah, okay, well, again, who knows?

That's let that go. Let that go.

Okay, you're tired of it, right? You know, and thank God I'm not in— you know, I, I missed the, the, the onslaught of everything that you all had to deal with.

So yeah, um, it's true. Yeah, though I don't think we're really done.

I think there's a lot more to come. Okay, keep, keep going.

I'm not— I I'm not pushing on details. I'm just saying that the, uh, the old saying goes— well, I should probably even say this, but the fat lady hasn't entirely sung yet.

Yeah. And meanwhile, um, I've— it's been very interesting for me. We've hired 3 new employees, and, uh, they're here in the Philippines. And, um, it was a very interesting process, and I, I don't want to go in too much detail, but we used an agency that has facilities where people come in and work and very modern, beautiful. I toured it, met the team. They got a doctor on site and not a doctor, a nurse. Just, I mean, an amazing work facility. And we're one of their few American customers. They mostly have Australian companies they work with., but I was recommended this company from a close friend of mine, uh, Aya, out of, uh, Cleveland or Cincinnati. And, um, the— it's— I'm impressed. There is a little bit— we're trying to— what we're really trying to make sure they understand is our culture and what I'm kind of calling the Blueberry Way, making sure they understand the Blueberry Way. And so just like any new employee, there's a ramp-up period, you know, trying to get people, you know, we make it, we're giving them homework and what to read and listen to and including a bunch of podcasts to listen to and But when they get down and get ready to rock and roll, uh, I'm pretty impressed with the output so far. Very, very, very impressed. Um, not a lot of hand-holding up to this point. So hard-working folks is out there. Yeah, very much so. And they were shocked because we work a 36-hour work week here and, um, We cut everyone loose Friday at noon. Mm-hmm. And right now I've got them all in an office. And then sometime mid-January we'll transition and we just want them to be collaborative in the, in the early months. And sometime in January, maybe early February, we'll let them just work from home. They won't have to come to the office anymore. And, um, the, um, the best thing I can say is they were just blown away that we would say, okay, we're paying you for 40 hours, but you, you know, on Friday, uh, you're done at noon. And that, that concept just— a matter of fact, even the— I had to send a special note to the, to the agency that says, listen, we're, you know, they're not working, but they're getting paid for it. A completely foreign concept. I mean, I mean, like, they had the management companies like trying to wrap— you mean, you mean they don't— you're gonna pay them for 40, but they only have to work 36?

I'm like, yes, that's, that's, you know, Todd, are you crazy?

What's, what's going on here? Yeah. And also, um, the way they term it is you get 45 hours, but they get an hour for lunch. So you still get 40, but yeah, but it's been, it's been interesting. The main thing that I was shocked about was the benefits package and insurance in another country to see those outlays of how much they pay for taxes. And, and because it's, you know, here's a salary, then everything above, there's cost plus a fee to the agency. Um, I mean, you definitely can go cheaper just going a VA route, but you put yourself at risk with the government if they don't pay all those fees themselves, right?

They can, they can come back after you probably for this.

I, you know, and I just don't want to do that. And, uh, yeah, so it's just like hiring any other employee in the United States. There's overhead above salary. Yeah, you pay your portion of Social Security and insurance and, you know, all that stuff goes along with it. Um, so, uh, and they're pretty pleased about our vacation policy around the holidays too, I would imagine. Yeah. So what did you think about our announcements with Adobe?

Um, I, I've yet to see a lot of the details about it, so I don't know if you wanted to Share more, more details about it.

It's, it's more of a collaboration. And we basically, you know, I've, I talked to everybody. I talked to Descript. I talked to all of the major recording platforms and no one wanted to do a deal. No one wanted to do an integration. They all were on their own. And they didn't want to take my money. Now here's the crazy part, Rob. Even Riverside, they didn't want to take my money to do an integration. I was willing to write a check to do an integration.

So when you say integration, what does that kind of look like?

What could it have looked like? What I wanted was, is you have an experience within Blueberry, either an SDK or a direct link to launch into a recording platform.

Oh, Right in the tools.

Okay, right into the tools. And no one wanted to do that. And I was like, here, take my money. And I still don't understand it why. That probably would have been a $100,000 a year deal.

So is there some, some concern, Todd, that they wouldn't be able to give the users the full spectrum of features if they, if they did that kind of a No, I don't know.

So I said, okay, no one wants to do a deal, fine. I'm going to go out and do a collaboration. I got to do step one. Step one is, okay, here, Blueberry Hosting customers, you get a better deal than everyone else. You get a 60-day free trial of their platform. I direct link. They have to be a Blueberry Hosting customer. They have to, they, they can link to the offer through the dashboard. And once they get into Adobe, um, they use Adobe just like they would Adobe Podcast Premium, Adobe Express Premium, just like they would if they had logged in directly at Adobe. Um, there is no integration to bring the media back to us, but it's just basically 60 days, you get to use the product for free. And then we hope that you'll like it and convert. And Adobe is improving the product. I think they're a good bet that their, their online platform is going to increase. And if you're doing audio only, it's fantastic. You can invite someone to do an interview. And so my main goal was to give those brand new podcasters that land into our platform that may be a little lost on what to use to record. Here's, and we're going to put right for brand new customers, they're good for 30 days. They're going to see a message that says, hey, you get a free 60-day trial of Adobe Podcast and Adobe Express Premium. Click here, record your podcast. And then we have some tutorials on how to bring the audio back and then There's no integration where you click from Adobe, so there is no true integration. It's just a collaboration at this point.

So, right, but if I get enough— those podcasters can actually record a guest, a remote guest, into the tool and then take advantage of the Adobe noise reduction optimization tools as well?

Is that how it works? Everything. Yep.

Yep.

And, and they've got a roadmap for that product. They didn't, of course, disclose to me what that roadmap is, but the main— my main goal is within 60 days, a new podcaster is going to figure out, do they want to use Riverside? Do they want to use Descript? Do they want to use Hindenburg? Do they want to use Adobe Audition? So, yeah, but maybe for a good portion of them, that's enough. The Adobe Podcast product will do everything that they want from an audio standpoint, and we will basically have the ability then to, um, for a better word, uh, get them to episode 1. And, you know, I could have built an in-house recording platform, but who wants to spend a year doing that and then maintaining it? I don't want to, I don't want to build, uh, a Restream. I don't want to build a Riverside. I don't want to, right?

There's enough expensive platforms out there.

Yeah, it's an investment in resource, a huge, huge developer, you know. And again, Well, you know, if the product is never going to be as good as a Restream or a StreamYard or a Riverside, it's never going to be as good, right? So the chances are when a podcaster is, um, done with, uh, you know, kind of getting their feet wet, they're going to make a decision to move somewhere else. So, you know, my, my strategy was basically let's You know, let's get them enough time to get started. And, you know, we talked to Adobe about this, was very open, says not everyone's going to convert to a paid customer, but some will. And really, the only skin off Adobe's back is they gave the podcasters an extra 30 days free, because everyone gets at least 30 days free if you go to Adobe Direct.

So yeah, what's interesting about Adobe doing this with you is the fact that Adobe has video tools too. Um, I guess it's, it's just kind of an obvious question. Are they going to get into the video side of doing this too? Because it feels like, I mean, if you're going to do something like what we're doing right here, you might as well have, have the ability to see the other person that you're doing the show with, right? And And it, it feels like that's the long-term direction of where this is going. It's not so much maybe to create videos, but to at least see the other person that you're talking to, uh, as a bare minimum, right?

You know, their, their bread and butter is Adobe software, you know, the whole breadth of, of software.

Yeah, but I don't believe that any of their software does what we're talking about right now. We're No, no, it basically enables a video call to record, right?

But Adobe Podcast does this without video, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So will they make the jump?

I, I don't know. They certainly could afford to invest in it if they wanted to compete, or they would buy somebody.

But yeah, maybe they buy Riverside, you know, who knows, you know.

I think, I think Riverside has been moving closer and closer to a deal with Spotify for, for years.

That's the reason why I think they stopped the integration with us. Because we had, you know, our goal was to get done with Riverside, get done editing and send the video just like people from Descript can do right to Blueberry. You know, there's a one-click submit to Blueberry on Descript. And there isn't on Riverside. We did the work on our side and they didn't do the work on their side. So, and then about that time they got their money and then they announced their Spotify thing. So once again, you know, so I don't know. For me, what I'm really, it should become obvious is I'm filling holes.

If I've got holes at Blueberry of stuff that's through the production process, I'm filling holes. And you're also adding AI capabilities too, which increasingly people are wanting. And it's just, it's so hard to predict, uh, exactly how the AI thing is going to roll into podcasting and really change podcasting. I mean, it's been moving that direction for a while, but I just get a sense that very soon things are going to go— and, and you've been warning about this for a while too. I've been hearing you on your, your, your tech show, your Geek News show, um, for a long time. This, this coming wave of AI, uh, may come in and impact things in a way that, uh, we just can't even comprehend right now.

Well, one thing is for sure, we're tracking what tools people are using at Blueberry, and, um, we predicted before we launched the product that people wouldn't use the pre-production tools as much as they use the post-production, right? So probably on a scale of 4 to 1. In other words, for every 4 uses of— there's people that use it for the full breath, and 1 in 4 basically use it its entire— all, all of the entire tool offering where 3 and 4s don't use pre-production, but they use all the post-production stuff. And that was kind of aligned with what we thought the usage would be in the beginning. Um, and those that are using the pre-production tools almost to a show are interview shows. So they're using the tool to put in the the guest bio, links to guest content, um, their LinkedIn page. And then basically by using the API that we're using and how it's improved here, we're able to basically come up with questions for the guest. Um, and it just helps them a little bit with their, you know, gives them a starting point. It's not by far a complete solution because we only come up with 10 questions. So yeah, did you write—

tell me how the— yeah, did you write any custom prompts that have form fields that can be filled in to help people generate consistent—

the— yes, the prompts have already been pre-written. That's right. Or, yeah, they do. And, you know, and again, from a pre-production standpoint, you need to tell us, okay, give us a description of what this episode is about. What is the goal? You know, and if people actually fill in all that data, then the system uses that data in part of the prompt that we've written.

Um, you know, does it also Does it also analyze the audio you upload to do the same thing?

So once you upload the audio, we create a transcript. Right. And then from the transcript, all our prompts are coming up with a title, coming up with a summary, come up with bullet points. Yep. Help me with the art and the chapter files. The weakest part of the whole system at this point is the episode art generation. Yeah. I've been actually working on that this week, right? Yeah.

Is it, uh, much better?

Oh, go, go, finish. I can get a better output out of, uh, ChatGPT than I can out of our, out of our prompting system. Uh, it's just there's something, um, through the API that they have not— I don't think it's at the same revision level model. So that's why we're just not getting as— and it's expensive. That's the most expensive. The cost of creating 2 images for episode art is the same price of doing everything else we do with the tool. All the other prompts that we do.

So the image generation is expensive. And I've also noticed that because the image generation tends to be error-filled, people, you make multiple requests trying to correct it, which only adds up the costs.

We only let them do 2. So we don't let them do more than 2 on a production. And we limit it per month too on the number of images, just because if I didn't, I would lose money.

That gets back to the quality of the output, right? If the quality output matches what the podcaster is looking for, then there's no need to generate a second one or a third one, right?

Right. So, you know, that's something we have to continue to work on is the, you know, in the episode art, it's important. It is. But, you know, it's better than nothing at this point. And, you know, but again, there's sometimes I go sad. That's that even in our own system. I'm like, well, that was crap. And I go back and run the same crap. Yeah. Yeah. And I run the same prompt on ChatGPT. So again, you know, it'll get better over time, but yeah, I saw that ChatGPT was, was down just last hour. It was down this evening.

Yeah.

Yeah. And they just released Sora, so I'm sure they're just getting hammered.

So I don't know. So I went over and used Grok to create the episode description for this show tonight.

Oh, you did?

That's what you used is Grok? Yeah, ChatGPT wasn't available, so I thought, well, go over and use the X Grok and see what the output comes from that.

It was usable. So yeah, you try Claude. I like Claude better. Claude is better actually in summarizing right now than ChatGPT is.

Hmm, yeah, I haven't tried Claude. Yeah, yeah, I'm not a big fan of the, of the Gemini platform.

I'm just having a hard time. Yeah, I'm not having good— I, I don't use Google's products at all.

Yeah, so as far as AI stuff goes, yeah, and I, I don't know why that is. I mean, have they just done a poor job of kind of marketing that?

I don't know, they're behind. They'll catch up, but they're behind.

That's interesting that they're behind. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know that they were behind. I kept hearing rumors that they were, they were only behind because they haven't had, had the confidence to release their, their multiple ahead generations of their AI or something. But maybe that was a lie.

I don't know. So you, you announced the Podcast Hall of Fame inductees.

Yes, we did. Yes. So there's 11 of them, Todd. So I added one, one more. So we went from 8 last year to 11 this year.

So because of the 3-way tie, right?

Forward, it was a 4-way tie.

Oh my God, that's saying something when 4 of the folks got equal number of votes.

Yeah, I couldn't leave off one of those 4. I just Right, right. Didn't make sense for me to do that. I, I wasn't going to put my thumb on the scale of who I wanted to take that, right, that just be dropped from the 4th spot, right?

Amazing it came that close with 4 of the candidates getting equal votes.

That tells you something. I don't know what it tells me, but it tells me something.

Yeah, I see James was complaining that there's no outside the U.S.

inductees, but yeah, and I I was on the Pod News Weekly podcast earlier today clarifying that situation, and it's definitely more of a challenge organizationally for the Podcast Hall of Fame because, I mean, all the board members except for one are US folks. All the past inductees are US folks, and those are the people that vote. So, right. The challenge that I have is expanding the board from other parts of the world, bring expertise into the kind of organizing and voting community, and expand the number of people that vote prior to every election that has expertise from various parts of the world that can weight that to be weighted to give everybody a fair shot because we're right. I mean, right now it's very weighted towards being somewhat of an awareness and popularity vote to some degree. I mean, though I did in the ballot, I did put a description of this person's contributions and tried to do that. I could probably do a better job of that, but I just don't know that people are going to spend a lot of time reading a multi-paragraph description.

I actually did because— You did? Okay. Yeah, because there was some people I was not aware of.

Yeah, well, that's the challenge, right? Is that if most of the people are US-based and US-knowledge people that are doing the voting, those people are gonna gravitate to people that they have heard of before or have some knowledge of, right, to vote for. So if we're gonna expand this internationally, I've gotta have a voting base that has some less, not so much less, but just more complete coverage of podcasters outside of the US. I'm not exactly sure how to come up with a formula that makes it entirely fair, because it may not be fair for some period of time, unfortunately. But I can also keep building it out, right? And to add people from various parts of the world that can get in there and vote. And the other challenge that I have is actually getting everybody that's supposed to vote to actually vote. Right, so that's the, that's the next level tier. So there's a lot of stuff to work on, and Todd, you can fully appreciate it. I mean, you're, you're trying to hold, uh, big awards yourself, and voting is a challenge.

There's no question, right? Yeah. Um, I'm glad I don't— I'm glad I've simplified the podcast awards to the way I have, to be honest with you. Yeah, because, um, yeah, I'm just— it's, it's a— but it's what's amazing to me. Um, I never review or reveal the vote totals. Um, but the, the delta between— on many categories, between the winner and—

is always single digits.

Hmm, that's interesting. Yeah, it's always very, very close because what we've done is we make sure, you know, sure, some shows are going to get, you know, 100,000 nominations, right? Well, when I allow 20,000 people to come back in and do the second round of voting, if I was to just, I would, if I did not weigh and I put a, put a thumb on the voting scale. So basically what, what we do is we know who every person has originally nominated. We can see. And then what we do is we make sure that the voting pool is even, aka the show that got 100,000 votes doesn't have a disproportionate number of people in the final round to vote. Otherwise it would make no sense whatsoever to have a second round. Right. So in the end, the voting pool, matter of fact, 75% of it probably doesn't even have, there might, there might not be someone they even nominated or maybe just one. So, you know, we try to make sure that the final voting pool is even from a weighting standpoint. And it's a pain in the ass to sort that out. Um, but I have a third party do it and they have some sort of machine learning they've done to be able to sort. Because the people that nominate are the ones that end up doing the final vote. So we have 20,500 people that participate and we allow 500 of the participating podcasts to vote too. And believe it or not, most of the participating podcasts don't vote. That's the funny thing. We have, we invite 500 of them to vote. I get like maybe 20% come in and do the final vote. But I have a minimum number. This is another thing I do. I want to have at least 18,000 people that have voted for at least 3 shows. So usually in that 1 month of voting period, if I look like I'm behind, I add another 5,000 voters to the pool to get— so you can hit your number, right? Hit my number. Um, and then so in the end, it, uh, it basically all evens out, and that's why the vote deltas are so narrow. And I— so I always tell people, making the slate is the important thing, right? Yeah. If you make the slate, then your value of being in the slate is— that's the value. Winning is great, but the value is being in the slate for the following year and on the website with the link to their— but that's a whole nother story about people knowing.

Well, and you're different too because you're You're doing kind of a public vote, which is different.

Yeah, public. Yeah, but this is, this is all I'm doing, right? With how many people now?

30-some or whatever the number is? Well, I think with the new inductees, I, I believe it's 51 people now going forward, so it's a good, good number of folks. Yeah. And I just got, got word on my master of ceremonies, so I'm, I'm I'm going to be announcing that here in the next couple of days here. So big name or— no, I mean, I mean, he's got a very popular podcast, um, so it's just, you know, he lives in the Florida market area, so he was close. Okay. And I, I've known him for a long time, so I've been a guest on his show before and, and that, that kind of stuff. So I'm I'm, I'm very familiar with him, and he's a, he's a terrific guy, you know. He's a former CEO of companies and stuff, so he's, he's very, very good. But it's just, um, yeah, yeah, I wanted— yeah, I know last year we, we had Dr. Drew. I kind of set high expectations with who we had last year, um, that would probably be, be hard to, to match again. But right, it's just a matter of, um, finding somebody with integrity in there and really cares about being a podcaster and really understands the the grind of it to get up there and kind of be the master of ceremonies for it.

So I'm really happy about that. Actually, it's a lot cheaper than Dr. Drew.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's definitely another bonus, right? Yeah. So yeah, so the event is actually January 17th at, at Podfest Expo. So if you're not familiar with it, um, actually, if you want to read more about the Hall of Fame, just go to podcasthall.com. And that website has all of the inductees' pictures and description of their background. And that's on the Hall of Fame News kind of navigational link on the upper right-hand corner of the website. But if you scroll down, you can see last year's ceremony. And then if you want to get tickets, if you want to attend in person, there's actually a sign-up page that's in the tab ceremony to actually get a, get a ticket to be there in person if you want to. But the whole event is going to be recorded, and then it's going to be put out on, on YouTube and some of the other social platforms on, on January 20th is the plan for that. So no live, just recorded. We're not going to attempt live this year, so that, that is a, it is a risk that, um, the event podcast wasn't willing to take. And I, I don't have a problem with that. I think, um, it, yeah, it actually will probably produce a better product. It'll probably have, have a secondary time to promote it and things like that. So I'm, I'm I'm hopeful that that'll work out good. And so yeah, if you want to sign up and be there in person, we would love to have you. Um, and if you happen to be going to Podfest, it's— the ticket price is $49.

So just to let everybody know. So, so, you know, the— I'm looking at this list, um, of all the inductees. Inductees. You know, the one I was The one I did not know was George, George Harab. But he also was known for another show than what you have in the bio.

It was, um, a science show. Yeah, yeah, I'm just drawing a blank on it what it is right now.

Yeah, but he won, uh, his category in the Podcast Awards for many years. He basically— I think he is part of our Well, basically, when shows win a category 5 times, they're no longer eligible to win it.

Oh, really? Wow. Yeah, he seems like a, like a really great guy.

So it'd be—

oh, he's— I mean, yeah, he's going to be there in person. So actually, actually, 10 out of the 11 folks that are going to be inducted will be there in person, is the current, um, path that I've been told.

So it's, uh and you look at Lance Anderson that's on that list, you know, oh my God, absolute pioneer in the space. And most people say, who's Lance Anderson? Again, these are some folks that have been around a while.

Chris Christensen, again, another blue and yellow.

Total pioneer, right? Yeah, absolutely. Of course, Jessica as well. You know, the She Podcast, right? Yeah. And, you know, it's this whole list. Now, I was not familiar with, uh, is it Twila? How do you pronounce her name? Twilia. Yeah. Yeah. I was not familiar with her at all. And, uh, but after reading her, her bio, um, yeah, I mean, again, Dave Mansudo and most things, well, Who, who, who is Dave Bonsito? Well, to be honest with you, podcasting probably would not have gained the speed it had had not him and a few other folks over. And he was one of the founders of Libsyn.

Yeah, co-founder. Well, he was really the, uh, the ringleader of the group, actually, you know, which is right. Yeah, exactly. There's a whole story behind that, and hopefully I can get Dave to share some of that on stage.

So yeah, so, you know, he is, uh, um, and I ran into Dave at Podcast Movement. Um, he was, uh, at the event, and, uh, we got caught up, and he's got big hair these days.

Um, no, actually, he got his haircut. Really? If you go to the, the Hall of Fame website page and go to the inductees page, I, I've uploaded a new picture of him and he's all clean-cut now.

What? Well, he wasn't clean-cut when I saw him. I know he wasn't. Yeah, he was looking pretty hippie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had that, that conversation with him because he did a call with me and it was like, okay, this is your public picture, but yet I did a call with you and you look like this. Uh, it's kind of not going to make sense to people. You're going to walk in the room and you're going to say, who is this guy?

Right. Oh, so his, his, his headshot he sent you is, is, is— looks neat and trim, but is he still looking pretty bushy?

No, not at all. No, his hair's short and he's cut his beard off. He doesn't have it at all. So yeah, it's just like his, his, his profile picture on the website. He had a mountain man—

I know he did—

beard, you know. Yeah, uh, you know, and like a, like a stitched hat, that kind of stuff, right? And if you look in Maria Thomas, uh, she's a trailblazer, a real trailblazer in this medium.

Yeah, you know, and then, uh, of course Chris from Podcast, Chris Kremos, and you know, of course Tim Street.

My God, you know. Yeah, um, really early video podcaster. Oh, unbelievable.

You know. Yep. And of course Tom Webster's in that list too. So yeah, um, it's a great lineup. Fantastic. Oh, I agree.

At least in my opinion. I agree with you. I think it's, it's, it's, it's as good as I, I could have hoped for. You know what, what was also interesting about it, Todd, is there's a lot of big names that I had on my list, right? People that are very well known, large, huge shows, celebrities. Yeah, huge shows, but these are the folks that got the votes.

So we should also recognize, you know, how are we going to handle in the years forward people that decline to be inducted?

Because we've had a couple of those.

We've had 3. And how do we do— how do we— because people are gonna say, how come he isn't? Or how come she isn't?

How do we— and I don't want to embarrass them either. I don't want to embarrass them either. Or, I mean, I don't know that they would be embarrassed, actually. I just, I just don't want to mention them because, you know, people will get a, get a negative impression about it.

I'm not sure that's fair. And, you know, and, and they declined for just personal reasons. Personal reasons. So Yeah, so anyway, great, great list. Um, but Rob, what, what, uh, what is the, uh, what's your prediction for 2025? Oh well, a comment that came in from YouTube said, David says, I was thinking of swapping to Riverside once my current StreamYard plan ends. Should I worry about the potential deal with Spotify? You know, I think 'cause you never know. And luckily there's alternatives. Riverside isn't the only game in town. So, you know, if you want to have a quality recording and you're not using— like when I'm in the studio in Michigan, I will not use Riverside because I've got the TriCaster and I get a master recording that's, you know, really a master, you know, 40-gig master video file. Um, I think you just have to pick one that you like. And the reason we've switched to this is because I wasn't— I'm perfectly happy with Restream, but I just can't get a good local recording.

There's no opportunity to. Well, well, to give a little bit of background about what's going on with StreamYard with that, I mean, they did have an audio outage this past week, um, where they had a half of a day where audio just wasn't getting captured in the platform. So they fixed that. So it's all corrected now. But they did announce they were pulling back the consolidated or combined local recordings export, right? So currently, in order to get local recordings out, you have to download the separate tracks, right? And still— in video form, and then you have to merge them together. Now, they, they have said that they're going to bring it back, but they're going to have to re-engineer it, right, so it's much more efficient. Now, my experience with it was that it could take— so let's say you did an hour and a half, um, uh, recording. So you did a live stream and it went for an hour and a half. It could take close to 2 hours to export it. Wow. So which is, you know, that's even after it was uploaded, processed. Um, server wasn't downloading. I don't know what the technical reason was, but it took forever to get that file out of there. And that was one of the reasons when we were using StreamYard for this show that it, it took me so long to get you the file, is because it had to do it like overnight. Um, because I wasn't going to sit there in front of my computer for 2 hours waiting for it. So, so, so hopefully they'll get that fixed. And it looks like what Riverside is doing here is they're really optimized for uploading while we're doing the show. Yeah. So I'm at 99% here, where with StreamYard you could look after you're done the show and it would be like at 20% or something like that, even on the upload side. So everything was just a lot slower, right? So they, they pulled the plug on it, and so now they're, they're re-architecting it, and hopefully they'll be able to roll it back again.

But, um, so Rob, I'm suspecting, because there's no local recording, I think— don't think that's going on here. Oh, oh, you don't think it is? I don't. I'll find out when I'm done. But they have an editor that combines your and I recording, so maybe it's gonna be the same thing that StreamYard's doing, but it's working.

So I'll see how the process goes. Okay, so it's capturing separate files, but it doesn't create necessarily a combined file until you do that in the editing tools?

Is that what you're saying? I don't know. We'll find out. I, I don't know at this point, so we'll, we'll see. Because some, uh, someone said that, uh, Facebook was being funky, so that's exactly why I want, um, two masters. Um, even if I have to use their editor, it'll be better than— because the key is getting the quality output.

So yeah, I did a show earlier, uh, earlier today on Squadcast. So it wasn't my show, it was someone else's show. I was being a guest on, and, and it seemed to— it seemed to work pretty good.

So I just— they have— is it uploading at the same time that you were recording?

Same deal. I didn't actually— actually, no, actually it's the tool that, uh, the Pod News Weekly, uh, Sam uses. So I was on that show today. Um, so yeah, so there's lots of choices out there, and, and I, I've heard of a couple other companies that are in the wings out there that are maybe coming, um, that could give people more choices in this area, be it it, it just does seem like a, a hot area. It's continuing to be a hot area. But, but Todd, if you wanted to move into talking, talking a little bit more about the, the predictions for 2025, or we can hold off on that and do a whole show just on that, uh, if you want to.

Well, maybe we could talk about other people's predictions.

Yes. Okay. Which is what's in the notes, right?

So, and by the way, my, my comment about Dave Weiner last week got some Yeah, it did.

I'm just glad I didn't say it right. I mean, it's— I don't disagree with what you said, Todd. I just, you know, I've had so many run-ins with Dave Weiner myself, I don't want to start a new one.

Now Dave didn't—

hasn't said nothing to me. Well, he probably didn't see it, so it would be my guess, you know. But you know, I am—

because he's over on Blue Sky. Yeah, Mike, exactly. So my, my, uh, my opinion still stands. Yeah, because he, he was— he made some ridiculous statement this week about it's insidious what Podcasting 2.0 is doing.

Oh yeah, yeah, he's not going to endorse it ever unless they change the name. That's—

I think that's what he said, right? I'm like It's still open, Dave. It's, it's all being run by guys that are like hardcore open.

Well, he probably thinks it conflicts with the, the nameology of the, of the podcast RSS 2.0, uh, spec, right?

So what do we want— what does he want us to call it? Advancing Podcast 3.0, Todd?

Oh my God.

Or 2.91. Maybe because he's pissed off because he's the RSS 2.0, right? Exactly. Yeah. And he doesn't like podcast, so we had to call it Podcasting 3.0.

3.0. And he'll probably approve it if, if he's able to create a new namespace. Yeah, which, which they, they did, but he wants to be the one to, to do it.

So today is the day, Rob. Um, as of Well, your time, in about, uh, 3 or 4 hours, the chartable redirect goes away.

I thought it was the aliens were gonna land.

So, well, you know, we, we basically, um, put out an— as long as people have updated PowerPress, right, and all of our dashboard customers, the redirect from Blueberry are all gone. I was curious who I got an email from. I got an email from I won't say who, but a very, very prominent company in the podcasting space. And they said, hey, are you guys going to programmatically remove Chartables redirect? We said, yes, we are. You know, and we did that on Monday.

Isn't there some risk in doing that, that you're going to get a huge amount of re-downloads? I don't think so.

Okay. So that. We're not changing the source media file.

We'll see.

Yeah, yeah.

So we'll see.

The GUID's not changing, so— No, the GUID's not changing. We're just pulling the redirect out of the— And if the apps don't— if the apps aren't equipped, depends on what triggers the apps. It's up to the apps to behave. Yeah. So, uh, but yeah, there's potentially 31,000 Or how many, I don't know how many we had total.

Yeah, I think there were 31,000 that were, that were utilizing it, right?

Yeah.

It's a big chunk.

It's a big chunk. You know, and it just shows you, and this is something, this is one of the reasons why for years we did not really endorse some redirects. As a matter of fact, in our system, when you add a redirect, we, we add, we give this big warning. Right. There's some risk there. That basically says we are not responsible if this redirect provider goes down.

Right. Or they have a router outage or something.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, we've had failover plans since 2006. So we, because we've been running redirects since 2006. So we know the ripple effect of what happens when a redirect server goes down. You know, so we have a backup to a backup. You know, we've went to the second tier before where the main redirect server went down, and we have a 7 seconds is our transfer time. Yeah. So if that redirect server goes down, yeah, within 7 seconds, the other redirect server picks up.

And it's really, really mostly concerning around latency, right? So once you stack all these up into latency, then that can trigger—

well, well, it's not necessarily a latency issue. It's if, if I can't serve that redirect and send that request on, right, then within some period of time, right, then, then it fails, right? Well, when the server fails and we're watching that server every 5 seconds, we're making sure it's working. Mm-hmm. If it hits 5 seconds and says it's not here anymore, right, 2 seconds later the other machine takes over. Hmm.

Okay.

So there's a fall.

Yeah, there's a, there's a ranking fall, fall, right?

Kind of, kind of. And, and we, then we go to that machine and we don't automatically go back to machine 1. Our own, our phones start ringing and text messages and, you know, so you get that at 2 o'clock in the morning., and so that machine takes over. Then I've got one left in another data center that's sitting there just idling. So if machine number 2 falls over, I've never had to go to machine number 3, thank God, but I pay for that stupid thing every month just in case, just in case. And they're all in, they're all in different data centers because there are data center outages. So, you know, I don't put two in the same data center. That would be stupid because they immediately fail one, fail two, fail three. Yeah. So if we figure if we get to three data center failures in completely different regions, there's something bigger happening and we won't be so much put to blame. There's some other big internet thing going on. So we see it all the time. We see all we see who— because if we're first, um, we see all the time other sites go down. People just don't know it. Yeah, so we have big, big warning. But anyway, uh, everyone that hasn't updated their chartable redirect, they're going to be dead.

Well, Todd, I think we're, we're running out of time to spend too much time on predictions.

So there was a few things that were mentioned that you had here in the—

yeah, um, of course. Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of centered a little bit about, um, yeah, what's happening with video, right? And yeah, and how that plays out. He even involves Brian Barletta from Sounds Profitable. Yeah, Tom Webster has been commenting about this.

And so, so the Brian comment is interesting. What— so go in, we have time to talk about what Brian said.

Okay, so the context of this is that, um, you know, kind of, kind of in the big picture, there's some talk around, um, summer of 2025, uh, are we going to see companies that went all in on video, yeah, start laying people off because it didn't convert, right? Or it didn't generate enough revenue to justify the investment. And there was comments back and forth between, you know, with James Cridland being on the Media Roundtable episode talking about what's happening with the video stuff and Spotify and stuff. It's the same thing that we talked about last week, that, that, um the just the weird stuff that's going on with video and how it's changing the medium. But Brian basically has written an article around kind of similar topics here, but saying that he says, and he points out firstly, if you upload video to Spotify, then essentially you're replacing the audio totally. So And that's what we talked about last week to some degree, and that's what, Todd, you've said that— yeah, today— yeah, you weren't fully grasping the scope of this. And it, and it, um, and it basically replaces the RSS feed. Now I guess that there is some, some questions about some of the details around this that are yet to be clarified, and, and Brian doesn't really clarify some of the loose ends here. Of exactly how that is triggered, right? What you have to do to actually trigger that. The impression I got was, is that when you create an account, somehow there's a linkage made between you as a podcaster and existing feeds that you have in the Spotify infrastructure. Yep. And it links them together somehow. And I don't know how you avoid that is my bigger question. Oh, I see. Um, yeah, so, and with But what Brian's concern was is that this is, if this happens, so you basically upload a video to Spotify and you have a pass-through relationship through your podcast host into Spotify, that video episode will replace your RSS audio file with the audio that comes out of the video, right? And if that happens, it kills any kind of programmatic advertising you have built into your RSS-based audio file. And, and, you know, all that goes away, right? So you basically have lost your ability to monetize your audio podcast in Spotify, and then it all lives in the Spotify world, which is what Spotify has always wanted to do anyway, was to cache and rehost every media file that's uploaded to them, just like YouTube has done. And what's interesting is what you, you know, everybody just accepts that that's what YouTube does. But people have this expectation around Spotify because of a historical orientation there of expectation that were set by you and I, Todd, pushing back on Spotify saying you're not going to have our content unless it's pass-through, right? So there's a lesson to be learned here, right? And if we fall over too easily, then guess what? They get what they want and we've lost control of our ability to monetize our show.

Through a central host, right? And I had a little bit of a discussion with James, um, on Mastodon. Yeah, and I saw that, and my essence was, listen, people are using pre-rolls on Blueberry. Yeah, for many different things— announcing events, announcing a special guest, and that's just content. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it basically saying, hey, if you're, if you're listening down, if you're listening to episode 25, by the way, episode number 1, I've got X guests right now.

Make sure you're subscribed or whatever, or having t-shirt sales or whatever it may be. Or I have a live event in LA on the 16th of—

and we have a huge number of shows that are using that feature alone. And they're not doing any advertising. They're doing their own advertising for their own show. Yeah. So essentially my point was everyone on Spotify will never hear those pre-rolls if you go and do this video thing. So that's why I still say have two listings. It's worked for this show. We've had two listings from the beginning. We have a new media show audio, new media show video. Right. And we get— I think this split is 80/20 or something like that. 80, 80% audio, 20% video. And why? Because this is the way we've done it for 15 years or however long we've been doing this show. Yeah. So, yeah. So when they say, oh, you're gonna—

you're going to diminish your audience, no, you're not. Well, you may actually, based on I had Glenn Rubenstein on my, on my podcast Tip Show many months ago, and we talked about this because he was working with clients that were doing exactly what we're talking about right now. They were uploading a video and didn't, didn't realize that it was replacing their RSS feed audio and, and their overall numbers. And we talked about on the show, their overall numbers dropped. Right, right. They lost money. Right. So their, their audio, which got converted from the video file to replace the RSS-based audio, had lower numbers than the RSS-based audio that was going into the platform through the podcast.

And another thing Spotify has done in the past, sometimes they pick winners and losers.

They have different agreements. They can put the thumb on the scale.

Is that what you're saying? Well, no, they have different agreements with different vendors. So some people, they will I'm not saying they do, but my prediction is, is that some people probably get their programmatic and audio still the way it is and the audio doesn't step on it. I would bet you there's a class of shows that are not impacted by this, but I think they would have to have a special agreement with Spotify.

Yeah, I think that the thing that we talked about last week was, so let's say you're able to successfully preserve your RSS-based episodes in Spotify, and then you want to upload a video file to that. Is there a way that you can do that where Spotify won't realize that that audio from the video you just uploaded shouldn't go over and replace your RSS-based audio feed? And that's the question that I don't have an answer to. Is there a way of doing that, or is the only outcome here is that you create 2 separate audio versions in Spotify, one that's not linked up with the RSS feed, one that's linked up with the video file. And I think James even said that actually technically what's happening is that the audio is just playing, um, yeah, yeah, without the video is what they're doing. It's not like they're extracting a difference. It's the same video file that's playing. It's just being played in an audio experience. Without the video. I know that's a little, a little confusing to say, but I can visualize how that would work.

Yeah. Love Dave Jackson. He says Spotify laid off 17% of his workforce in 2023 while reportedly paying artists or the labels just $0.003 per stream, so 3/10 of a penny per stream, in 2024. The company hit record profits while its CEO's net worth jumped to $7 billion. Don't you think it's time to put a wrap on corporate greed and exploitation? And he goes on to say, from a musician friend of mine, remember this as we sit and wait and see how many crumbs we'll make when we power Spotify's new video program. Please, sir, can I have some more, please?

You can't spend exposure at the grocery store. Well, that's always been the currency that these platforms have traded on, is your value for giving us your content for free is we give you, uh, the opportunity to reach people, right?

Um, get audience, and everybody's clamored to get that, right? Yeah. So what was this thread that John McDermott, he was responding to some stuff that we talked about here, huh?

Yeah, well, I mean, he, he listens to the Media Roundtable, he listens to, to, um, James Cridland and his Pod Weekly, and he, he just caught up with the last two episodes of our show, and, and he's, he's being a little snarky about kind of the, the whole situation around video, right, and where that's going. And, and, and I think it's, you know, it's— he's sparked some interesting conversations about this, um, that are, you know, bringing to the fore— I think at times he's not fully understanding what's entirely going on sometimes in our discussions, and that's okay.

I mean, I think he's got some fun perspectives, right? Todd Cochran on the New Media Show had a lot to say about video, and all I can say is preach. Todd is right. Listen to the episode below and know what— Todd is right. Todd is right. Todd is right. Thanks, John.

I think you're perfectly right too. Yeah, I think I wrote a comment on Facebook saying, well, John, why don't you tell me exactly what Todd was right about? So, you know, um, yeah, so we had some fun with that.

But it does, you know, and we're in the closing moments here, it does boil back to we have to remember, do what you want to do, ladies and gentlemen. Audio still, in my opinion, is, you know, we're here to stay, right? And, you know, I, I know we've lost some people because we're talking so much about video, um, but, you know, not so much today. But yeah, yeah, we— the real commentary has to be had.

It does. And it's just too juicy to, to pass up.

I mean, I just can't. And Rob, you know, it hasn't helped that you've, you know, you've dove in for a penny. You're in for a penny and for a pound here, you know, for—

I gotta play both sides of the issue. Yeah, yeah, that's the element.

So I'm the protagonist of sorts.

So I had a coffee and I got halfway through my Coke here on the show.

Oh my gosh, so you're operating on caffeine here, huh? I'm operating on 3 hours of sleep. Um, yesterday I had to get up a little early to get some stuff done with my visa and some other stuff going on, so I had very, a very— I had a 20-hour day yesterday, and, uh, then I only slept for 3 hours.

So, so yeah, one last little comment about what John posted as part of this thread that you're referring to here is that he, he said that you were right and James agreed with you too, and I have a hard time disagreeing with you. It's not like I disagreed with you on this, this particular point, but it was more about, you know, how we're seeing these, these big budget productions, right, that are going on on YouTube. You know, they have like 25, 50, 60 people working on it, and they so happen to have an audio version in Apple Podcasts, and all of a sudden they're a podcast, right? Um, and it's— that's been going on with mainstream media for decade now, right? Um, where, you know, they have the big studios and producers and executive producers and, and cameramen and all sorts of stuff, right, that, that run those. And I think the, the thing that's happened here, and, is that those folks are not in the mainstream media studios as much, and they're doing it more from their homes or from a office building somewhere.

Studio? Yeah, from an office building. Um, you know, studio. Yeah. What's funny though, I remember in the early days of doing video, I used to take a picture of my studio and people like, oh my God, mission control. You got all those monitors. You got that switcher. You, you're running a professional studio, right? And I'm thinking, yeah, I'm a one-man show, right? I'm one, one man pushing the button. Watching chat, making sure the camera's focused. Oh, I'm doing it all. And so you see some of these guys on YouTube that are doing like I do. I have this great setup, I got a great background, and, you know, and I assume they're sitting there pushing a button. No. Yeah, no. When I saw their backend operation, said, that looks like Fox, looks like Fox News. Yeah, it looks like the You know, what you see in a big truck at the Super Bowl, you know.

Well, I mean, I mean, some of them are like that. There's other ones that are, you know, that are using like maybe, maybe 4 or 5 different cameras and they're, they're switching between them and right.

They have a green room and they have someone there doing makeup and, you know, there's no makeup happening in my place.

Well, I mean, I mean, Todd, I think, you know, just, just like that new RODECaster Video that you have is capable of, I guess, up to 4 cameras, right? And you can switch them right there. So, you know, that, that's like a $1,200 box, and anybody can get access to that kind of video switching tool that you can do. You can really do productions just like you see with those really big shows.

You don't have to have 50 people working on it. And if I was, I would probably, knowing what I've learned about that box, I'd probably not have bought it.

Well, because it's only— the reason I don't want to buy it is because it's only 1080.

Oh, I ain't worried about that. Everything goes out for podcasting when me goes out at 720.

I know, but that's going to be changing. So you look out a couple years and everything's going to be at minimum 4K. I mean, even, even the cameras now that you can get, these portable cameras like the—

are actually heading towards 8K now. They do not want to see you and I in 4K, Rob.

I'm looking at you in 720p and you don't want to look at it any higher resolution, right?

Is that what you're saying? What's going to happen is all of these wrinkles that are—

well, Todd, okay, okay, now we're going down the rabbit hole here. Um, The— all these platforms have, um, you know, appearance filters in them.

You know that, right? Oh my God. Well, we're not—

okay, I'm gonna be— I'm, I'm going— well, that's the inverse of what you're talking about here, is right?

Is it? Okay, so, so you're gonna apply some filter and make yourself look 20 years younger than when—

of course, that's what everybody's gonna do.

What do you mean?

Shit, you're old. My God, you look— everybody's doing it. They've been doing on their iPhones for, for a decade now.

Come on, that's, that's catfishing. We're not doing catfishing here. That's why we all have—

we don't have faces for video. Todd, don't you want to be, be, be relevant in your 70s and 80s? Be able to do, uh, podcasting when you're in your 70s or 80s?

And I will look 70 years old, and I'm not pretty like Anna. Yeah, okay, I'm not, I'm not a You know, I don't have hair anymore. I do, but I, I trim it so that I don't look, you know, I have bald strip going down the middle and tried to do the, the old man flip over. Nope. You know, and I'm not putting grease in my hair and coloring my hair, doing any of that. I'm not getting Botox, you know. No. Why?

That money is better spent on beer. You're not going to get a, uh, a, a rug on top? Oh my God, no, no thank you.

No thanks, huh?

Okay.

All right, we are long. Um, I'm gonna go back to bed for a couple of hours, so this show's gonna be a little later.

So when are you back in, in Michigan again?

January 7th. January 7th. Okay, so I fly back the 7th. I'm actually back in the studio on the 8th, so we won't have a show that week. Okay.

Oh, uh, we are booked for doing a live New Media Show. I won't— it won't be live streamed unless we try and do it, Todd, but, um, but it will be recorded, um, at Podcast Fest.

So on the— what time slot did we get?

Last day, last hour? No, actually, actually it's Thursday the 16th.

Oh, at, uh, 3:30 PM. Are we going to get a room? Are we going to be on a stage somewhere? I'm not sure yet on that one. Okay. All right, so let's look at the calendar here.

I'm good for show next week. And then let's, let's do our, our full predictions.

Next week, next episode, right? Okay. And then no show on Christmas, obviously. And right, we should be okay to do a show on— no, the next show then is, is the first. So next week will be our last show for a couple of weeks unless we do something early, but I'm on vacation entire week of 23rd.

All right, let's, let's just shoot for the first then, or, or the second.

Yeah, it is. It's first time going to be hungover, so maybe I don't drink, Todd, so I don't have that issue. If you want to do— actually, for me, uh, the second, actually, if you want to do a show on the afternoon of New Year's Day, I can probably do that because it's actually going to be the second for for me.

So I'll be recovered.

We shall see. Yes. All right, everyone. Thanks for being here. All right. I'm Todd at blueberry.com, @geeknews on X, @geeknews at geeknews.chat on Mastodon.

Of course, @NMSpodcast for the show. Rob? I'm on X as well, @RobGreenlee, like I've been there since 2007. And I'm also on YouTube at Rob Greenlee, on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm all on all of the, the normal regular social media platforms. So just put it that way. And I also have a website, um, robgreenlee.com. And I do a show usually on Thursday nights called Podcast Tips. And so I've been talking about some deep diving topics on that show here lately. And, and so if you want to send us an email, you can certainly do that. Send to robgreenlee@gmail.com, and that's with two Es on the end. We'd love to hear from you and, and share any little tips that you have about what you're hearing in the, in the podcasting space, and maybe we'll talk about it on the show.

And we did not get any boost today, so I guess you'll be boosting when you listen.

So we do appreciate those of you that are using a new modern podcast app. Just, just to let everybody know, if you have an Alby wallet, you're going to need to, to get in and do something with that. Um, yes, convert. I know I still need to do it too, to transfer it out.

I'm running my own node, for my— but for Blueberry, we moved it into their hub. Um, so 11,000 satoshis a month. So that's the only drawback, which is not that much money, but with crypto at $108,000 now— I was $108,000 today. Wow. Yeah, well, it wasn't— no, it was—

it went to $107,000. It's $100,800 was last— oh, okay.

Yeah, I didn't see it go up that high yet. Yeah, so anyway, great time to cash out crypto, but is it going to go to $200?

Maybe not. Yeah, I mean, well, I don't really see that there's much of an upper limit to where this can go.

So no, when the halving happens every 4 years, it can go even more nuts.

So I did a whole Yeah, I did a whole episode with, um, on my, my Trust Factor show with Gary Leland here, here a few weeks ago, talking about— Gary's pretty happy right now talking about Bitcoin.

Yeah, because he puts on a, a Bitcoin conference in the, in the spring or summer time frame. I think what's— to be honest with you, um, When my mom's happy with Bitcoin price, that's saying something, you know. Um, some people have done very, very well, especially when you bought in at like $13,000 or $20,000 or lower. Or lower. Yeah, yeah. All right everyone, thanks for being here.

We'll, we'll see you next week.

Everyone take care. Okay, bye. All right, now what happens? All right, Rob Greenlee successfully uploaded. Yeah, I am at 99%. That's a little pop-up. Yeah, um, it tells me— oh, now it says view, oh, view recordings.

So what is this?

Does it give you the option to Download it right away, or, or does it have to process? Upload, edit. Um, okay, let me