The Podcast Industry is Shifting Fast | What's Coming in 2025

Hey Rob, welcome to the New Media Show. I'm back here in the Palatial Studios in Southern Michigan.

It's great to be back doing the show just prior to podcast movement again.

Yeah, so you have made the decision to make the trek?

Yeah, I figured I'd pop down there.

Did that coupon code we shared with you save a little money?

Um, well, or did you use a coupon code?

Oh, save me money. Oh good, so you weren't able to use mine but use someone else's. Smart. Hopefully got a bigger discount.

Well, it's hard to know sometimes, so you have to— because it's not like they're, they're upfront about it, right?

Right.

Yeah, so, so anyway, so it'll be interesting down there to see Hopefully, hopefully we won't see a train wreck, but I'm— it's looking a little optimistic. I got into the, to the Swapcard platform today, and there's a lot of good people that are going, it looks like.

So, well, I, you know, there's always a lot of good people there. Just how many, you know, that's the—

yeah, what's the total number? What's, what's, what's the composition of that group too?

Yeah, right. Are we just all talking to ourselves, or there will be some You know, it's, it's, it's socializing time, Todd. Well, that's very expensive socializing.

Well, yeah, it can be. Yeah, exactly. I try and shave as much cost off of it as I can.

Yeah, the Podcast Standards Project is having daily, uh, meetups. There's a whole agenda. I'll put, uh the link to the signup in the, uh, in the show notes so that you can, uh, if you want to sign up and come and hang out, uh, there'll be some open discussions. And so should be good. Have a few refreshments. You know how much a gallon of coffee costs?

Too much.

$150, $155. For a gallon of coffee from the venue.

Wow. So, so where did you get that number from?

Well, you know, I— we paid for a little vending in the PSP room, and I set a, I set a limit on it because I knew it would probably get out of control. Uh, you know, bottle of water, $8. And so it was just, you know, like, so that's how they make their money at these events is the vending. Yeah, not, not at all pretty.

Yeah, it's, uh, unfortunately these hotels may price themselves right out of not being in that business anymore.

Yeah, they're not careful. It's surprising, to be, uh, to be quite frank. Um, I wasn't surprised, but, you know, made me rethink. Would it be better to get, uh, you know, $155 a gallon for coffee? Um, And 2 gallons of coffee doesn't go too far with, you know, 10 people. We can drink 2 gallons that quick.

Yeah. So yeah, it does seem to be gouging.

So yeah, that's—

and I think that there's some, some reasonable thought in this area that a lot of inflation is greed and people gouging. So yeah. And it's, it's because once they feel like that they have an excuse to raise prices, they do.

So, well, uh, you know, uh, you go until the money runs out. That's right.

That's the key capitalist system that we have, right?

Yeah.

The only way to counteract it is to cut back on demand.

Yeah. Now, moving off Podcast Mummy here, because, you know, if you're going to be there, we hope we'll see you. And, uh, stop, stop by and, uh, and say hello, or say the blueberry booth, or wherever you may run into us. The, um, there was an article I sent you, a list of show notes. I don't know if you got that or not.

Yeah, I have it.

Yeah, but I, I got something that I, um, got from Tom Webster and their team a few days ago. That I did not include in that, and it's entitled, um, What Is a Podcast Supposed to Be? And the title of the Sounds Profitable article starts out with, despite what scary headlines may say, video and audio podcasting have a more symbiotic relationship than one might think. And there's a very good chart I don't know if you've seen this or not.

No, I haven't seen the actual chart.

So the question was asked, and this was given to 5,000— let's see here— uh, 5,000 humans familiar with the term podcasting. Um, they were asked, um, when you think of a podcast, do you expect it to be audio or video? 26% said audio only. 38% said usually audio, maybe video. 21% said maybe either. Usually video, maybe audio, 12%. And this is the shocker— video only, 3%. So this is pretty compelling data. I would say that even though video has been dominating the headlines since you know, like the last 2 years. But the American public, as Tom says, expected a podcast at least 64% of the time to be an audio-only or audio-dominant medium. So that is surprising.

I think one can read into that whatever they want to read into it. Yeah, but I think it's because that data is kind of all over the map, really, if you look at it. Yeah, I would tend to agree that the market has not been exposed to this definition of video as a podcast. It's a pretty recent phenomenon in the consciousness of the world out there. So I would tend to agree that people do tend to link them together, but as a solo, you know, do they consider a video by itself a podcast?

Only 3%.

No, right. That doesn't exclude all the other data that's in there that shows that there's a correlation in—

Oh yeah, perception. There's definitely a correlation, but it's good news. It's 64% expected in audio-only or audio-dominated medium.

Okay, but I wouldn't read into it that it says to ignore video.

So no, but I'm saying that there's an expectation here with actual usage. So what percentage, if any, of the podcasts you consume are on video? And what percentage? So 0 to 24. 47%, 25 to 49, 22%, 50 to 74, 17%, 75 to 100, 14%. So about half were video. So if the majority of consumers expect a podcast to be audio-forward, we expect the usage to mirror that, but it didn't play out that way. Completely in this data. So perceptions are definitely changing and things have shifted. Now, this was done sometime in 2024, not in 2025.

So is this in the Sounds Profitable website or something?

Yeah, it's a Sounds Profitable. Yeah, I didn't have it in the show notes.

Yeah.

But yeah, it was a— it was an email that came out about 9 hours ago. Um, okay, from, uh, from Tom and the team. So, uh, yeah, so I thought it was interesting in itself. And of course, you and I have been in, uh, some WhatsApp groups where there's been some lively discussion. And, um, I will say that It's a little pessimistic, don't you think?

Well, the state of podcasting and the state of the medium right now is— it is very cloudy is the term that I would use to describe it around where it's going, what the future is. You know, this play between audio and video and people are, you know, This is an example of an era that we're going through of change. And I think if you think back to the early years of podcasting, the contrast was between radio and podcasting. So podcasting at that time was audio and video in the early years. So in some ways, we're kind of going back to the origins of podcasting. While at the same time, podcasting is becoming a very highly commercialized, highly professionalized medium as a replacement.

Oh, Rob just froze. Oh, wonder if he's gonna disappear here. Wow, Hammy, he— oh, you froze for a second, Rob.

Fees and, and ways to generate revenue have come into podcasting.

So yeah, you froze for a second. I don't know what happened.

Okay. And so a lot of that commercialism— because you and I both know, and this was in the discussion in this group, that a lot of people just don't understand the early years of podcasting was anti-commercial, anti a person selling out to advertisers. I did a commercial radio show that had ads in it, and I got flack. And I know you did too, because you had a sponsor. So that's the contrast of the past, as opposed to what we see in the future. And what we see now is that we're becoming more like mainstream media, right? Look at programmatic advertising. That looks an awful lot like broadcast radio monetization. So if you think about it, a lot of people don't like to think about it in that context. They like to think of it as something different and unique and all that stuff. But, you know, set ad breaks in your content. It's exactly what commercial radio does. So, you know, and then having an automated It's just adding a layer of technology on top of something that was done by an in-studio producer, right? That was managing a board and transitioning between ads on their board. I used to do it with my radio show, so I know exactly how it works. And so it's just a matter of— yeah, so I think what's happening in the medium right now is we're in this transition phase. In what's happening in industry that kind of has its roots in the past. Back when podcasting started, it was a revolution really against the commercialization of broadcast. And for a few years, it was an anti-commercial medium. I'm talking about podcasting. And so now we've kind of moved into a new phase where we've added more commercial elements. There's a lot more focus on monetization and people making money with their podcasts and programmatic advertising, which mirrors exactly what broadcast radio has been done on the air for years, and ad loads are going up. And so you can see a direct correlation. In the early years, podcasting was a lot about video too.

So we've become what we were trying to avoid.

Exactly. And things go in full cycle. And I think Rocky Thomas made a comment in this thread as well that kind of put a little ribbon and bow on this, that she's been through. She's seen this cycle happen before with streaming radio and, and other types of media that has tried to transition audiences into a new delivery method. And so that's kind of what's happened here. We've transitioned our audience into a new delivery method for content and And that's why we've seen a lot of the big studios and commercial radio companies transition into doing more podcasting is because they saw it as the future of their distribution. And that's really what we're talking about here. So if that's, you know, if we're okay with that, my question is, well, what's the next revolution that we're going to create? Um, as a blowback to over-commercialization again. What's next?

Hmm, that's a good question. I don't know.

Yeah, or it may be too soon, or we may be seeing it already start.

All right, let's get into the, uh, the stack of stuff here that I have. Oh God, I'm going to edit the shit out of this thing. There's a, uh, Podcast study says that more listeners— most listeners make room for just 3 podcasts a week, a ruthless attention ceiling every creator now competes with. Now, but that to me is, is a little surprising in, in regards to— that goes against everything we've heard for many, many years. And that was done— I don't know, someone did this study and said they only listen to 3 shows. Um, most listeners, I guess average listeners maybe, but it seems a little low to me.

Well, I think that there's been a lot of research over the years that says that a typical podcast consumer has, has had like 6 or maybe 7 subscriptions. Yeah, in their podcast app, right? So That's been the longstanding metric that I've seen in the Edison research and things like that. But that doesn't speak to how much they're actually listening to. So maybe they're only listening to half of those that they have in their subscription list.

Yeah.

But it also says weekly, which is a vector in here too. What if you said monthly? What would that number be? Would that be the 6 and 7?

Right. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, again, and it goes into this— how do you, you know, how do you stay in these, you know, the, the top 3 rotation of a listener? And really, in the end, it hasn't been about staying in the rotation of the, of the top 3. It's been about just building an audience that's dedicated to you. You know, um, there's probably in my hard rotation 5 or 6 right now, and then I catch can as catch can.

But well, it also is unclear in one aspect of it is that it uses the word 3 podcasts a week. Is that implying that it listens to 3 different podcasts or that it listens to 3 episodes a week.

I think it applies that it's only 3 shows that they listen to.

Okay, but that, that doesn't really help us because maybe they're— maybe those 2 of the 3 shows are doing 2 episodes a week. Does that mean that they're consuming every episode on a weekly basis of 3 different shows?

Well, it was an eye-catching headline, so—

well, it was, right? And it's—

yeah.

This is where research and studies kind of fall apart, is that they're not clear because the questions they ask probably— yep— didn't cause the questioner to—

I agree—

get clear.

Also, and this kind of surprises me, says podcast ad spend is 28— up 28% year over year. Magellan AI shows continued advertising demand. Ad load rose. 8.13% from 8% quarter 1. Okay, if this is the true— if this is true, I don't think it's true, then why is Gimlet getting rid of 100 people, right? Yeah, of course.

There's always been this onslaught of positive news about the advertising market, right?

Yeah.

You know, I don't hear any bad news ever get announced publicly.

28% year over year. Expansion. But this is Magellan. This is the marketing arm of, uh, of, uh, the company that should be not named.

Who's—

well, isn't, isn't that, um— oh my God, I'm having a brain fart here or something. SoundStack or not SoundStack, uh, SoundCloud. Isn't that SoundCloud's, uh marketing arm?

Uh, I don't think so. I think it's a data— data—

oh, maybe not.

Yeah, you know, it's analytics.

Yeah, Magellan AI. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So apparently they're analyzing ad load, but the question is, how deep do they really, really, really go?

28%.

Yeah, that's— that's— if that's the case, everyone should be rolling in money. There should not be a problem with the with the podcast economy from an advertising standpoint, right?

I've heard— I mean, the most optimistic projection that I've seen is 12% growth. So I—

this year, that's what they're projecting for— oh, for advertising?

Yeah, yeah, that's what they're talking about here. So yeah. Of course, 28% would be a significant up from what many others have projected is the growth.

iHeart says that the podcasts now make up 14.3% of their revenue. iHeart Podcasts plus 28% to $134 million. It's amazing how those numbers are very close.

Um, and now fortunately, I would think that the iHeart folks would have to tell the truth here because they have, uh, fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders.

Yeah, potential. Radio is down 7%, but podcasts are surging, a clear signal that legacy audio growth engine is on demand. Now, I think it's true on the radio piece being down the type of numbers that they're down, and that doesn't surprise me at all.

Yeah, it's not falling off a cliff, but it's definitely declining every year.

But at the same time, less important, right? Those of you that live outside the United States and Canada, Spotify is raising your, uh, your cost of your, your subscription. So, um, you know, gonna cost you more. And they're trying to push this all, all audio bundle, pushing creators to expect Churn blips and renewed bundling promos. So Spotify's hiking premium pricing in most countries. I refuse to give them any money.

I wonder if that premium pricing is ad-free. Is that what—

oh, that's, that's a good question.

I think it still includes some ads, and, and they're probably speaking more about the music side here. Yeah, because that's the largest part of their business. So yeah, I thought that this story was interesting. The— but the next one down, the DSTV cancels— oh yeah, filtered TV podcast. Now that's a term for you right there. Yeah, podcast.

Apparently these folks, uh, said it was too risky. And, you know, what did they expect signing some podcast that it would be risky? You know, putting podcasts to linear TV is risky.

Well, isn't that the whole point of signing a podcast is that it's a little bit more content risk?

Well, you know, I guess they need some oversight and compliance. You know, they probably said the F-word too many times, you know, or some, you know, or something to that effect. Yeah, but you know, I'm just like, yeah, it's risky.

Podcasts are risky.

Yeah, yeah. So because the content is so, so, so bold out there. Yeah, right. Some of the stuff that I've seen on TV, you know, makes me think it had to be pretty extreme, right, considering some of the stuff that's out there today that is— I mean, like, wow. I mean, like, really, wow. Yeah, you know, probably shouldn't. I think there used to be rules about that type of content being on past 9 PM at night or something like that, you know, but teenagers don't go to sleep anymore, so I guess those rules don't apply.

So my question for these folks is that, um, what were the ratings on the unfiltered TV podcast versus the filtered TV podcast?

Yeah, that would be curious to know, wouldn't it? It'd be a good— that'd be the good stat. Uh, that'd be the good, good stat to have. I had an interesting, um, I was, uh, we announced the slate on the Podcast Awards a couple weeks ago, and, um, of course I'm, I'm talking to all the creators via email and I'm saying, hey, make sure your listings are right and make sure your links to your home pages are good and you know, just, just double-check your listings. And one of the, one of the creators came back and said, well, we don't have a home page. And I'm like, really? Yeah, we haven't had time. And well, obviously they are doing good enough, they made the slate without a home page. And then another, uh, podcaster said, well, our, our home page is behind a paywall. And I'm like, so you have a public podcast It's available publicly, but your homepage is behind a paywall. And I said, isn't that impacting your search results and discovery? And so it's real curious on some of the setups that people have. And of course, a few folks were upset that we wouldn't link to their YouTube channel. I said, there's no way for anyone to subscribe to your show via RSS. Via YouTube. So, um, right, um, yeah, so that was, you know, probably went over like a fart in church, but yeah, it's my, it's my rules.

Audio Boom, that's mostly the case now for any, any kind of, um, video out there, really. I mean, until podcasting decides to get get video back into RSS more. Ted, this concept of subscribing to a, to a video is kind of out the window.

Yeah, yeah. And it still amazes me with the number of people when I say, oh, you have a video podcast on Apple Podcasts, they're like, what? Yeah, you know, it's— there it is, almost always a what, you know. They just, yeah, they don't know. So that, that That story continues. Um, top, top 10 UK podcasts reach 2.3 million Americans weekly. Well, I would think so. This— we were both English-speaking, speaking countries, so I would assume there's a lot of, uh, a lot of crossover there.

So, Todd, have you felt this too, that, uh, there's something about content that's created over in the UK that sparks interest here more over the last, maybe the last couple of years or the last year. I don't know if it's because of the fascination with the podcast show or people. I don't know. It just feels like that the UK content is somehow maybe maybe seen as a little more appealing.

Well, I— professionally, I have subscribed to none of it, so I'm not one to be able to speak to it.

Yeah, I'm not talking about us personally. Yeah, second.

But I wonder, in general, the question is, what are the categories that public radio had for many years as quality? Yeah, but the question is, what is the— so what, what are the, uh, throws again? Yeah, I can hear you though. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. So the question is, what categories— I could hear you the whole time, Rob— what categories were, uh, are affected here? That's the, you know, that's the question I have is, okay, top 10, but what are the categories of those podcasts? Yeah, but AudioBoom video revenue doubled, 60% of creators now do video, 13% of biz from video. So that's interesting. Yeah, they're going to change their company name to VideoBoom from AudioBoom.

Yeah, that's an interesting question.

And where, and where is that revenue coming from? Is this stuff that they're, they're monetizing in YouTube, or, you know, where, where is that actually happening at?

It's probably likely mostly YouTube. Yeah, probably starting to phase in a little bit on the Spotify side. It's my, my estimate. Um, you know, who knows, maybe audio boom becomes, you know, a podcast boom. Oh yeah, well, um, as podcast increasingly takes the label of audio and video.

So I don't know, you know, the conversations that I've been having with, um, creators of, of late has been, um, they're very reserved in wanting to do audio— I mean, video. Um, and see that Yeah, it's, um, it's this ongoing— they're like, ah, you know, do I have to? It's that kind of a, you know, uh, do I have to? And then, you know, oh, the work and the money. Oh, you know, and you know, that's the— that's the kind of—

probably complicated because maybe, maybe if you filtered that against people that have been doing audio podcasts for many years and are contemplating it, and then those that are just getting started.

Oh, well, maybe, but these are mostly people are just getting started.

Are they? Okay.

Yeah, that I've been talking to. So, um, you know, I just, I always tell them, hey, audio first is safe, you know, just get your voice heard, let your, you know, build your, your vocalization skills, you know. So But did I tell you that they're put— they put the fiber in? Oh, I didn't.

The fiber's actually been installed in front of my house, but it's not to your, your—

well, it's— they're, they're blowing it in, so probably it'll be several months before it's actually hooked up.

But yeah, because they have to trench it to your place.

Oh, it's— well, they have to— they've— it's, it's at least now Well, I would say 60 feet to 80 feet maybe from my house. It's, you know, there's fiber in the dirt. Let's just put it that way.

Okay. And it's coming down the driveway.

Well, it's down the road, you know.

And, oh, you mean down the road in front of your place?

That's right. Yeah.

But not actually connecting.

No, they're not doing any. They're just bringing the main lines in. Oh yeah, so yeah, and, uh, Frontier has a heck of a thing. I, I think once we get on that, 7 gig is the plan I'm going to sign up for.

Wow.

So, uh, yeah, that, that, that should not cause us to stutter anymore when Starlink antennas are— you would hope— are choking. Yeah, you would hope, you know.

So is that kind of a bi-directional thing, or—

yeah, 7 up, 7 down.

Wow. Oh wow. I'm not even getting that much here.

No, I probably won't sign up for a 7 gig plan. 500. They've got a 5 gig plan, but it's, you know, it's all relative. You still are limited, you know. You have to have the equipment here to be able to support that speed, that type of speed. Yeah. And luckily I do, uh, because I came from the, you know, the studio where we had gig So everything's been wired here for high speed. It's just I don't have it.

But 7, 7 gigs?

Yeah, they offer 7 gigs, $159.

Does that require entirely different hardware?

Yeah, it does. 5 gig does too. So, um, and a, a year commitment. So the equipment's worth about $500 that they're bringing in.

So, so what's the capacity of, uh, of Wi-Fi?

Oh yeah, yeah, if you're connecting via Wi-Fi, then you're just going to be on Starlink speeds. It's— there's— unless you're on Wi-Fi 7, you know, Wi-Fi 7 is not that quick, and most stuff is Wi-Fi 6 now.

So I was just curious because I think If I access my, um, Wi-Fi connection to my house here, um, because I get about half, half a gig is my plan currently right now, but I bet you only get about down.

I bet you only get about, uh, Wi-Fi 6 is— can theoretically reach up to 9.6 gigs, but you know, you got to have the right equipment. Wi-Fi 7 is 46 gigs, but again, you got to have the right equipment. Um, Wi-Fi 5 is 3.5, and that's a lot of stuff still right now. There's still, you know, Internet of Things devices that are still connected over Wi-Fi 4 too.

So, okay, I just— I'm doing a speed test on my Wi-Fi here on my phone, which is over Wi-Fi. And it looks like, um, download speed 237 megs.

Yeah, that's what I would expect.

Yeah, but it's interesting it doesn't test for upload speed.

So that's going to be, you know, if it did, if it lives true to the word and it, you know, it works. Um, but again, I don't know how long it's going to take them to get things terminated and them start offering the service. It could be another year, who knows.

Yeah, because I mean, I mean, what would you possibly even be able to use 7 gigs for? That would—

oh, if you had server, you could run servers, literally.

Yeah, you could.

Yeah, right. Yeah, you could.

I had much slower servers back in the early days.

Oh yeah, can you imagine having a 7 gig connection in a You know, that's— and of course I'm sure that there is an express— that's probably expressly forbidden with your service contract, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

But, um, yeah, I think I'll be happy with 1 gig, to be frank, you know.

Well, for most applications, most purposes, that's plenty.

That's plenty.

Even, even my mobile phone speed of 266 megs down is I mean, and we're only pushing 7 megs right now.

That's the speed I push on the outbound. Yeah, so, you know, 7 megs, 7 gigs, that— there's a big difference there. I can run 25 or 100 streams at once, but again, right, you're not— but I'm not, right, right.

Yeah, yeah. So there must be a good reason to offer that kind of bandwidth.

It's just a bigger number looks better.

Well, yeah, it's probably a— from a marketing perspective, it looks better. But do most people even know what the difference is?

Well, it's probably designed if you have 20 kids, right?

Or if you have a large family, lots of devices connecting.

Yeah. And in, in this, you know, here it's just me. You know, next door at my sister's, you know, she's got a lot of kids connecting to, you know, they're even more constrained. So sometimes they connect to my connection to be able to— so it gets— kids can play games and stuff. So, um, yeah, so I have to change my password every once in a while to boot them all off for a little bit. And yeah, so The—

yeah, about Podcast Movement. I'm sorry, did you want to talk more about what's coming up with Podcast Movement?

Uh, one of the articles that's out is, um, Nielsen is launching Podcast Fusion. It's a planning and measurement step change for agencies to include NPR and Ocean Media. So you're back. Yeah, you froze for a second again there. So, uh, I don't know what this really means. It says with Edison data into NMI. That's not even a term I even know. So Nielsen— Nielsen's another product to extract money out of people. Um, and yeah, are they even relevant anymore, Nielsen?

Well, they've been servicing the radio industry for years. Um, I know that they've wanted to transition more into the digital side, but that's what their, their research has always been based on, trying to analyze advertising effectiveness and market, market ratings and things like that, is what they've mostly done over the years.

Did you, um, before you froze a second ago, did you have anything more that you had heard on heard about Podcast Movement? Any rumors, any things that we should be looking out for?

Um, I mean, I think all the activity around the Podcast Standards Project that's going on down there probably, probably should have a mention. And, and it looks like Mr. Adam Curry is going to be there doing, doing a presentation, which I think we've talked about that on the show before. But, but I've gotten into the app and I've got my arrangements. Actually, I fly in on the 17th and leave on the 21st, so I'm, I'm there for the duration.

Ah, so I get in on Sunday as well.

You do?

Okay. So, and I, I leave on, uh, the 22nd because the show doesn't end. Yeah, so it's smarter getting out there, not having to pay for another hotel day.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, I did a personal— I'm renting a car personally, not charging against the company. Because I want to go bourbon hunting a little bit. So, uh, Sunday when I get in, I'm going to, uh, hit a few. If there's anybody in Dallas that can give me some recommendations on— I have a list already, but if you have recommendations on where to go, uh, striking bourbon, let me know. I have, I have room in my suitcase to bring 4 bottles back, so Okay, so that's kind of my thing now is when I'm in a different place— I, like, I was in Chicago the other day coming back. I would— I had a few hours before I got on the train, so I found a couple of, uh, selections that I can't get in Michigan. And, uh, but I tell you, um, the, um It's completely not related and probably shouldn't talk about it, but Amtrak has gotten real strict there. They now are checking bag weights, bag sizes. My bag was over by an inch, so they charged me $20. And, um, it's just— it cracks me up, uh, you know, all these years running loose and now they're— now they're going to be, uh, um, try— try to, uh, be more strict on their weights. So yeah, but anyway, it's still a good ride coming back. It's amazing how many people, uh, are actually traveling on Amtrak. I would have never had any idea it was— they would have full trains like they do. But it's cheaper than parking in Chicago, that's for sure.

Yeah, well, I've heard a lot of people talk about the location of the Gaylord being kind of a long ways from Dallas. It's like a 40-minute drive.

It's close to the airport.

Um, well, it is close to the airport, that is.

Yeah, yeah. But it's kind of in a— well, it's to the northwest of the airport by a few, few miles. So this— it's really in the no man's land.

So yeah, it's out towards the there's some lake there or something like that that it's on.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's no— you're a captive audience there, 100%.

Yeah, I know that the, the closest alternative hotel that I, I found was like a mile away.

And what was the price on that?

Um, most of the hotels in the proximity around it, um, are around $100, $125 a day.

That's, that's considerably cheaper.

They all range from like 1 mile to 2 miles away from the hotel, from the Gaylord, right? Um, so, you know, you could save, you know, a significant amount of money. I think, oh yeah, the typical, I guess, block rate for podcast movement is around $250 a night.

I think we paid more than that.

Well, from what I've gathered in the, in the, this discussion group that we're both a member of, uh, is that a couple months ago people, people, many people paid like over $300. Oh, um, for, for a ticket. And then here more recently the, the price dropped.

Oh, that's interesting. Let me go to my email and let me look.

So there were people that had registered at some period in the time, you know, in the past. Yeah, that, that canceled their reservations and then rebooked and they got like a $100 discount.

So, okay, my rate is $254.

Yeah, that's, that's the current rate, and we booked that on June 23rd.

Okay, so that's the current rate then.

Yeah, so I'm not sure what was going on with that, but yeah, I've heard that there can be pretty severe penalties for the podcast movement event if they don't sell out their, their block.

Right. And there's still rooms available in the block?

Uh, I have not got the impression that there are not. So, so I, I think currently there still is. Oh, but I'm not for sure. I didn't actually— I went a different route on that.

So, ah, okay. Use points, or did you, you room in with somebody? Yeah, okay, that's, that's smart. Yeah, $254 a night and you're just going up there to crash. If someone's got a room with a dual bed, you know, why not?

I mean, I mean, because if you split it, then it's only like $125.

Yeah, yeah, then it's, it's more reasonable. Easy. That's an easier pill to swallow for sure.

It is.

Yeah, especially if you get along with the person.

Yeah, that is at all the alternative hotels around it, um, as well. So that's about the best that you're gonna— yeah, yeah.

The only difference is, is you're gonna, you know, you pay the, the on-premises prices for food and everything.

Yeah, or, or, or try just not to eat very much.

Well, yeah, and do, do, uh, Do Uber, Uber Eats, or, you know, do a fast.

Oh, do a fast 3 days, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's— I, I have to eat at least once a day, so yeah, I mean, that's, that, that's what I typically do.

But you could, I mean, if you're really busy at an event, I mean, a lot of people don't think that they can, right? Yeah, it's a mental block, but you actually can. Well, I've gone 7 days without eating, so, and I was perfectly fine.

Yeah, it's the first 2 or 3 days it's hard to get over, but for me now, I'm— I just, you know, it's— I just— I stepped on the scale the other day and I was at 179, so I'm 179, 180 right now, and, uh, trying to get to 177, and that will be 30 pounds, but Um, that's good. Yeah, a pound or so a week.

Yeah. So is there anything else that you've heard, Todd, at all? I haven't heard a lot of—

haven't heard nothing—

rumors about the event.

I haven't even looked at who the keynote speakers are, to be honest with you. I haven't paid much— I'll probably do that on the airplane.

So it looks like, um, Justin Jackson's going to be doing a video podcast and RSS plus HLS streaming session.

On the 18th, that's going to be at the Podcast Standards Project, uh, room, I think.

Uh, it's in— well, it's in Dallas 3 classroom at the Gaylord. Yeah, it's kind of a community meetup is what—

yeah, that's in the PSP meeting area.

Yeah, it doesn't say anything about PSP here, but I'm assuming it is.

Yeah, there are— yeah. They've got something scheduled each day, uh, for that room.

So, uh, got it.

They have some, some discussions.

So it's Dave Jackson's doing another presentation. So, so many ways to monetize, which one is best for you is the topic of his talk. And I mean, it's, it's a clue to some degree what, what the thinking in the industry is just by looking at the headlines of the sessions.

Yeah.

The titles of the session. So there's one with Brian Berletta and Sean Howard from Flightpath, which is an ad buying platform. Winning the video-first podcast future insights for creators, tech teams, and revenue generators. So, and the subtitle is, the video boom in podcasting is no longer on the horizon, it's here. Okay, that's it. 9 AM on, uh, on Tuesday the 19th.

Well, he's got a good time slot.

Yeah, well, hopefully people are awake by then.

Well, the keynote's at 8 or something like that, so You would hope. As much money as people are spending to go to this event, I would think that they would be, uh, attending most of the sessions. You would, you would think.

But so the actual ticket, ticket that I got was about $300. Yeah, so, so it's not their top-end ticket, right? Right, their, their pro ticket.

So what is it? I don't even know what the pro even gets you on that event.

I think it's over $1,000.

Yeah, probably get you fed and everything else.

Probably. It looks like Adam Curry's on stage with Rocky Thomas at 9:45 AM.

On what day?

On the 19th, which is Um, that's Tuesday.

Tuesday. So I think my, my dealio is on Wednesday. I think Wednesday morning. I was asked to be on a panel too, and I, I don't know what time it is. I gotta— I'm not listed. It must be some unofficial panel, but Tracy sent me a message. I gotta go look it up.

And there's another panel title here, Holy Shift: Audio Alone Won't Pay the Bills.

No, that's not true.

That one's, um, the panel is, uh, Heather Osgood, Steve Razzies, who used to work for Paramount Advertising.

Advertising, yeah.

So yeah, so even the podcast advertising platforms are definitely pushing, pushing video, right?

Yeah. Well, we, we will see.

But, but the question is back to, I mean, it's going to be host reads into, let's say, a YouTube show.

You have to.

So yeah, yeah, that's the only alternative that you have.

Yeah. Yeah, it's— which, you know, for many of those businesses, that's, that's their bread and butter. So yeah.

And then another one that's called Powering the Future of Multi-Channel Podcast Networks.

So I thought podcast networks are already multi-channel.

Yeah. So that's just a sampling of some of the sessions. It does show kind of a a focus and a direction.

You get any idea by looking at the app? Of course, I think you can. I don't know if you can message attendees or look at the attendee list. I don't know if you can or not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can.

Yeah, so you could probably get a rough idea how many, how many attendees there are by looking at that, but I don't think it gives you an actual total number.

Yeah, I count. Yeah, I don't think so either.

And of course, a lot of people don't add the app to heck, not even when the show's going.

So yeah, so I've got the app open right now and people are starting to message each other in here. But, and then, uh, Mattia from Triton Digital has a session he's doing on that same day at 10:30 AM called Why Programmatic Audio Wins When Budgets Get Tight.

Boy, it's all about monetization, huh?

So is that like a pro low CPM?

Well, there's some, some stuff going on in programmatic, and I, I'm not too at liberty to say, but I will say that there are upward movements in CPMs in programmatic.

What is driving that? Is that dollars that are shifting out of host reads?

I don't know where it's coming from, but I know that there is a— well, all I know is that there are some price minimums that we're starting to get guarantees on for inventory because it was always like this. And always moves by the hour. But anytime you can get a price guarantee on a, uh, a min, you know, and that, you know, that's always awesome that you know it won't go under. It can go up, but it can't go under a certain amount. Um, that to me is, is a is exciting in that regard. But we still have— I'm still getting queries from companies that talk to me in Europe that want to have a chunk of our programmatic. And I'm pretty happy with SoundStack. They've done a great job. So I don't really need to, you know, do any additional engineering.

Yeah, so we may see, because I'm hearing just from talk as I talk to people myself, is that some of the kind of medium-sized, larger shows, people are noticing a higher percentage of programmatic ads versus maybe a more balanced approach for host reads and programmatic, right? There tends to be this movement towards If there's inventory or slots that need to get filled, they're not getting filled by prerecorded host reads. They're getting filled by programmatic increasingly, which means lower CPMs, which means lower CPMs. But it also means that maybe there's fewer host read buys going through the system.

But Rob, didn't, didn't someone say that sales are up 28%?

But it didn't specify what type of advertising.

That's right. Yeah.

So if they're selling, maybe there's a shift that's going on in, you know, away from higher CPM ad buys into lower CPM ad buys. If they can buy inventory into a large group of shows or, you know, a targeted group of shows that's programmatic. And also Spreaker has made an announcement that they're going to do AI-generated host reads into programmatic.

God.

So take the host's voice and clone it into an ad.

Yeah, I'm sure that's going to be effective.

Well, I guess we're going to find out. Um, and then another panel session in here is how YouTubers thrive in the podcasting space. So they are drawing a distinction between the two, which It's not like, uh, really, YouTube is a, is a podcast, really. Yeah, it looks like we froze again.

Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, I don't know what's going on. Yeah, I could hear you the entire time even though you're— okay, your face froze. Um, right, yeah, I'm gonna have to do some resetting of my internet connections here. Something's weird. I don't know, don't know why it's been freezing. I spent all day on Zoom and it never locks, and I get you on and it's right.

So there's, there's two other titles of sessions that are interesting too. One is called Pro-Level Podcasting, um, How to Uplevel Your Video Production Without Breaking the Bank. One session that's put on by— I guess there's two Matthew Passys in here, so he's putting— there's two speakers and they're both Matthew Passy, so, um, so I don't know if one's AI or, or not.

So one of my recent trends is, and, uh, you know, we get, uh, sales inquiries all the time, and, uh, company decides, oh yeah, we're gonna we're gonna go with you for your— for pro hosting, and, uh, you know, we're gonna bring over 3, 4 shows and blah blah blah. And, you know, and then all of a sudden I get dropped a, uh, a service agreement, and the service agreement has, you know, 8 pages of legalese. And I'm like, you're on a $100 a month hosting account and you're dropping me an 8-page legal document with, um, and I'm like, no, I'm sorry, you are Enterprise. They go, what is the difference between Enterprise and Pro? I said, there's nothing different. It's the, it's the, the lawyer hours that I am going to get billed by going over your service agreement, right? And it's amazing how many companies have to have a You know, have to have this, uh, have these separate documents. And they said, well, you have to appreciate— I'm like, well, you have to appreciate that I'm paying for lawyer reviews. And if you're on an enterprise plan, you're— I include 3 hours of, you know, of cost of legal. And boy, they get mad. They get really mad. So you mean if I can just come in and put my credit card down, it's only $100 a month? Yep. And you're going to charge me this amount because I have to— you have to do a legal review? Yep. So it's more and more of that. So where I now— or I'm just, you know, telling the sales team, make sure you tell them if they have an external agreement that they're going to need and just can't sign up for our terms of service, they're going to be enterprise. And And then I, I slap a price on there that is equivalent of an enterprise account, right? So big companies have a hard time doing anything without all kinds of, you know, paperwork, red tape. Yeah, I want to see your certificate insurance. Why, right? Well, I, you know, we're not on your premises. We're not, we're not working in your building.

Was it called your SSO?

Oh, just, it's, yeah, that's funny. All right, we're already at the time here, even though this show is going to be shorter because we've had all kinds of weird freezing problems today. Makes my editing a night for hell here, which sucks, but it's okay. Um, Rob, I guess there's nothing live happening for us next week, so we'll be off again. Yeah, next week, and then we'll come back and give everyone a report after, after the event.

Yeah, okay, sounds good.

So, uh, anyway, uh, I'm Todd at blueberry.com, at Geek News on X, at Geek News, at geeknews.chat on Mastodon.

I'm— can be found at robgreenlee.com, uh, rob.greenlee@gmail.com, and, um, I'm on all the social platforms. I'm easy to find on, on YouTube too. I'm doing a bunch of stuff over there.

So, so thanks for being with us today. And if you're watching live, we, uh, sorry about the froze screens. Yeah, Starlink's not, uh— maybe they introduced a new algorithm. So maybe it's great for staying connected, but it's switching the satellites too often or something. I don't know. Um, but I've been on Zoom all day and not had a problem. Of course, we start the show and you're glitching issues. So, all right everyone, thanks. We'll see you next, uh, 2 weeks from now. Everyone take care. Yep. Bye.