Why Podcast IP Is So Valuable, And How To Make Even More Value With Media Intellectual Property Attorney Alexia Bedat

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that Bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the Binge Factor.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Binge Factor. Today I am bringing you something slightly different. We're not bringing you a podcaster today, but we're bringing you a woman who works with a lot of podcasters and their intellectual property. Today I'm bringing you Alexia Alexia is a legal associate at Claris Law, which is a boutique media entertainment technology and intellectual property firm and a management consultant for Claris ip, a boutique consulting and managed services firm focusing on IP rights and royalties, digital asset management and metadata. She focuses her media and entertainment practice on pre publication and pre broadcast review. So this is reviewing before you air it. Keep that in mind Content fair use review and IP licensing matter negotiation and drafting of development, production and distribution agreements in the film, television and podcast industries. And she generally advises clients on the legal implications of developing technologies including artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality. We didn't get to talk about that today. Maybe another time I'll have her back and we could talk about that fun stuff. Prior to joining Claris Law, Alexia worked as a law clerk at buzzfeed, where she supported the news team. She has also worked with law firms specializing in media law in both London and Paris and earned her law degree from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Alexia continues to TA at the Columbia Journalism School, where she received a degree, and as a member of several media law resource committees. And she is also an AR&VR enthusiast, frequently addressing legal challenges in this area. Tom and I are really big fans of intellectual property, obviously because we designed and developed so many products over the years that that royalty stream supported our ability to start potatoes to start our podcasting business and it is a part of what came out of our initial podcast. So when we did our first podcast, WTFF3D printing, some of the times the intellectual property topics were some of the most popular topic in our show and it shocked us that so many people were interested in that. But I think that's the case here. Too often we're not thinking of intellectual property as and when we're creating our show are creating asset values. And I thought having Alexia on today would be a great way for us to talk about that idea that you're creating something that has a longer term and asset based value for you and your business. So let's talk to Alexia Badat about intellectual property and podcasting. Alexia, I'm so glad you're here talking with me today. We've been trying to schedule this for months here and I'm so glad it's actually happening because there's been lots of really great and interesting news about copyright and podcasts and all of those things. But before we get to that, I gotta ask you the question, are you a podcast listener?

I am. And Tracy, it's so great to be here. Thank you for having me.

And what kind of shows do you like to listen to?

I recently have found Vergecast. So the Verge podcast, very helpful for diving into things that you're hearing about every day but have no idea what it's about. Like NFTs at the start.

Yeah. And everybody wants to know what that's about. Right.

I mean, I know nft, wtf. We've seen them, all those acronyms used many times.

I love that. And you know, so do you listen to podcasts in a particular place?

Commutes, when those things were happening. But otherwise I really like listening to podcasts on a walk.

Mm, me too. I do it when I. When I get my makeup done. And you know, when I do my makeup in the morning or do my hair, I listen to podcasts then and then when I'm walking.

Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah, well, my. Usually it's research in the morning. Like if you had a show, I'd be researching it in the morning to get ready for our talk today. But you know, this is the thing, is that there are so many different reasons people listen to podcasts that I don't think that the podcast hosts themselves really realize the value of what they've created. Can you talk about some of the value that is inherent in creating a podcast?

Sure, great question. There's different ways to look at it. There's value to you and there's value in what you're putting out there. And I think they both ultimately get down to intellectual property and the content that you're creating. There's huge value, starting in the first one in what you're creating, the ip, because you have this asset that you have created that you can put out into the world, you can monetize, you can distribute, and there's huge value in what you're imparting. Podcasts are Often very educational. Like I said, one of my favorite podcasts is a place where I go to get information about things I don't quite understand. And so there's huge value in the content you're putting out there, which ties to responsibly creating that content. Whenever there's great value, there's responsibility, Right?

So we'll talk about that in a second, because that's a whole can of worms. But I don't think people think of what they do because they're just talking. Do I really think of it as intellectual property? Why do we discount that so much?

We tend to think of intellectual property as something that's fixed. You think about it in a book, you think about it in an article. And some people, perhaps because of the transient nature of dialogue, and don't realize that what they're putting together, even if it's audio and it's back and forth, it's fixed, it's there. It's something that can be repurposed, that can be adapted, that can be sold, that a TV show can be based on. Think about it as a pie that has all kinds of slices and that you are in the driver's seat to decide what you do with each slices of that IP piece.

I love that. So, as the audience pretty much knows that, I have a background with where we've made a lot of money and residuals off of our products, so off of our intellectual property over the years. But, you know, when we approached podcasting from the beginning, we reduced it to the written word anyway. So we would take them and go from video to audio to blog, and so it ended up copyrighted in the blog. You know, you'd see that, of course, you'd be very inherent that, you know, it would be very obvious that that is a copyrighted item. So our dialogue was always copyrighted. But are we inherently protected? Just by talking on our show, Copyright.

Talks about this thing, which is being fixed in a tangible medium of expression. And what that legal lingo really means is, in basic terms is as soon as you create something that's fixed, it's protected by copyright. So our conversation right now as it's recorded, is fixed. It's a piece of ip. When you are recording your podcast, as soon as it's fixed, as soon as even before you've written a script, it's a piece of IP that's protected by copyright. That's a different question from the kind of protections you get if you register, which we can get to. But absolutely, from the moment you record your Podcast, you are sitting on very valuable ip.

Wonderful. See, guys out there, it's easy. You're creating ip, you're just talking, you're interviewing, you're doing all those things. Now, you talked about responsibility, so let's get a little bit into that. So we're also speaking, and we have a responsibility when we're speaking, but what legal responsibilities do we have?

Your legal responsibilities really depend on the content of your podcast. So are you giving advice? Are you giving health advice? Are you giving medical advice? Then you have a certain responsibility to your audience to let them know that you're not a doctor or that you are a doctor or. Or not to take the advice on your podcast as a given and to consult your doctor if you have specific questions. So there's all kinds of disclaimers that come up when you're talking about health and wellness, more advice podcasts. A different category is are you doing more reporting type investigative journalism, type narrative podcasting there, where you're telling a story, where you've done investigations, where you're talking about real people, what are you saying about those real individuals? Is your content true and accurate? Are you potentially defaming someone? Are you revealing a private fact about someone? Have you interviewed a source that you promised to keep confidential or not identify, and are you identifying them? So it really depends on the content, and that'll help inform your understanding of your responsibilities.

Because a lot of us aren't there are not journalistically trained, so we don't have a sense of that. So do you have resources and other things that people might be able to use, podcast hosts might be able to use to help find some out some of these details, some of these things that would be important for them, maybe some blogs that you've written.

We've written some things on our website, but I would point really as an excellent resource for those who are reporting and have podcasts that dive into journalism, is the Reporters Committee. The Reporters Committee, if you look online, they have fantastic resources about all kinds of issues that come up in your reporting, interviewing sources, defamation privilege, how to report on official proceedings, court documents. What happens if you go to interview someone at a protest? What happens if you are filming an arrest? So if you are reporting in that space, it's a very useful resource.

So we've seen a lot of, I'm going to say quite a few controversial podcasters get into some trouble lately. We've seen this happen over whether or not they were defaming someone, whether or not they were accurately reporting something, or they were just Straight out reporting what was known to be a lie. And so we've seen people like Joe Rogan and other people get in trouble lately. We have responsibilities in a way, as influencers, and that's what this is looking at. So whether you're not doing journalistic things, you still have a responsibility to report the truth. If you're referring to something, is that correct?

Absolutely. You want to be able to stand by your reporting. You want to have taken steps to verify the allegations or the facts that you're including in your podcast. Nobody's expecting you to be a New York Times level quality fact checker or the New Yorker fact checker. But you want to be able, if ever asked, to point to. Here are the steps I took in good faith and to the best of my abilities as an independent writer, to research and verify the information that I'm putting out there into the world.

Wonderful. You know, I think that that's always a good thing. I always keep the track of the people that I interview as well. So I know where they came from, what their website is. And I have a certain minimum criteria that, where I won't allow someone if they don't have, I'm going to call it traction in the digital community. So they don't have a website, they don't have social profiles, because then that's just too risky for me, for sure.

And you want to think also not only keeping track of the people you interviewed, but can they point you to other people who could support their version of the story, their account? Can they point you to other people who can corroborate, who can add additional color? You can also keep a note of anything that they told you that might point you in a different direction. And you might want to go down that road and should go down that road depending on the subject matter of what you're reporting.

Interesting. Now we have some responsibilities also if we're, you know, promoting products or talking about them. And you know, what are some of those things that podcasters should do to ensure that they're doing the right things by any kind of promotions or advertisements that they're doing.

That's a very important thing to think about for people who maybe don't have enough listeners yet to be looking at advertising, but they're maybe looking at small sponsorship where they refer to a product at the beginning of their post of their episode, or maybe they've even made an episode in collaboration with either a company or an organization. And those are all things that are great to do. The really important thing in Those cases is you want to disclose to your audience that you have that relationship with an organization, with a company. You want to tell them at the beginning. This episode is brought to you in collaboration with Organization X, whose mission we're really excited about, because why you want to make it clear to your audience so they understand and they can then listen to your podcast and take away what to them makes sense in light of the fact that even if their reporting is independent, it's in collaboration with another entity other than just you.

I want to give you an example because I know you all have heard this before. So Tom and I did a podcast on our WTFF show, which is Fused Filament Fabrication 3D Printing. And we did a collaboration of 25 episodes with Hewlett Packard. Of the things that we pre agreed to these things with Hewlett Packard. So they were obviously paying us to produce a 25 episode series of that 12 interviews were going to happen of various people that they were giving us access to that no one had ever interviewed before. So we got this agreement that we were going to get access to people no one had heard for from before. So that would be kind of an insider track. So that was the appeal of it. And in return, though, the intellectual property, the copyright for all those shows was actually ours. So anytime they wanted to have audiograms or produce a little video clip or any of those things, they had to get our permission. And the reality was we were going to produce them for them to use anyway. So it was just easy enough. They told us which clips they wanted and we'd make it for them. So in our case that was a simpler thing, but we had set in advance that we weren't going to edit. We would only edit out something that was inaccurate or, you know, not in keeping with the legal agreements that they have. You know, if someone mentioned a client that they weren't allowed to mention, that that would be the only editing we would do. So we did something that we'd never done before, which was allow them to review the recordings, but we would allow them to review the final only to make those minor changes. That was it. And we only had one change, one single change in all 25 episodes. I thought they were going to be a lot more difficult and they weren't. It was a fabulous partnership because they were clear about. They wanted us to be authentic. They wanted us to give the most value to the audience and they wanted us to do it in a way that was true to the show before, but they wanted to get the value of being associated with us. And it worked out really well for everyone. But that's a good example of trying to keep it at that higher level, but also remembering that you have some intellectual property there, you got to keep your rights to that.

And it's a very good example of having the discussions beforehand. It sounds like you were really clear on the you're going to be able to review these segments, but only for factual accuracy. You're going to be able to review, but you should give us feedback within X number of days. If we don't hear back from you in X number of days, we'll consider it approved. So anything you can do to make your relationship with any partner or brand or entity that's working with you clear is very important. Another thing that's important to think about is what are you agreeing to in terms of the promotion for them? So if they say we'll give you X amount of dollars for promotion in your podcast, what does that mean? Is it promotion in every episode of your podcast? Is it promotion in one episode of your podcast? And so having a really clear agreement, even if it's just email exchanges where the expectations are clear, that'll save you potentially a lot of hassle down the road.

Yeah, no, this is so true. And we were really clear. It took us almost four months just to get the setup of what we were going to do and how it was going to work. So there was a lot of pre worked than the actual work. A lot more. So that makes a lot of sense to be clearer. I appreciate that. What other things might podcasters do to both protect their intellectual property rights for long term ideas, things that they didn't even imagine, like Hollywood might want to pick up your show. Is there anything that they need to do to protect themselves from the beginning?

Great question. You want to think about what Hollywood, and I'm using Hollywood to mean a large studio, a producer, a network, a platform. What are they going to look for when they approach you and look at your podcast? They want a really clean, neat piece of intellectual property where they can get it all from one person. So what that means for you is you want to control all of your iPad, step one. And how do you achieve that? Part of that is having agreements with everybody you work with. People might not realize all of the people who are working on your podcast, the editors, the producers, the person who designed your art cover, the person who composed the music for the intro for your outro, unless you have an agreement with those people. If they're not your employees, they own their contributions to your podcast. And they could technically, down the line, when you decide to sell your podcast, come back and say, one second, I don't want you to do that, or I get a piece of that financial pie. So how do you avoid that? You avoid that by having agreements with them that contain the magic words that are work for hire.

Yeah, we sort of mentioned that briefly. The magic words work for hire. I love that. I'm so glad you said that. And I really want to highlight that there are a lot of production companies that don't have those magic words built in. So sometimes it's not even clear on Fiverr if you got your cover art from there, that it wasn't work for hire. You have to make that clear, especially if you're going to use intro music, the music, the COVID art, and any graphics that you might use, infographics or other things that you might use as a part of your blog posts or other things. Those are the big areas that we see most people go wrong. So.

So that covers the people that are working on the podcast with you, the people that are contributing the content or the art or the music. Another thing to think about is what are you putting in your podcast? What third party content are you including in your audio? Are you using third party audio from interviews? Are you using music? Are you using somebody who's reading out a poem? All of that content belongs to someone else. Somebody else controls that ip. And so to include that in your podcast, you've got a couple of options. You can reach out to someone and license it, or you can fair use it, which we can talk about a bit more. But that's another thing to think about. Is all of the third party material in my podcast there for a good reason? Do I have a good legal basis for it? So that when I hand over season one to someone who's either interested in distributing it or adapting it, they know. And I can say, I have all rights to hand this to you. I have all rights to sell this to you.

So, you know, here's an interesting thing that had come across my desk. I actually had an author who wanted to come on my show and then couldn't check the box to say that they gave us permission to utilize any pieces or any little parts of it. If they talked about their book, she came to me and said, I actually don't have the right to my book. And I thought you got paid to write this book. You wrote it, it was yours. And somehow in your contract with the publishing company, you lost the rights to really promote your book, because now you can't use any excerpts from it. I was like, wow, that just was alarming to me. And so I started to ask around to Juliet Clark, who's got the podcast Promote, profit, Publish. And she said, actually, this is really common in the publishing world, that you don't end up with the rights, the audio rights to your own book. So that means that you can't you say an excerpt from your own book.

And we're seeing that in the podcast space, too, and was a huge point of contention that people really started talking about last summer. And people are still actively discussing now what to do for in. How do we in the podcast space give creators more control over the content that they're creating? How do we get to a position where hosts actually own the IP of the shows they're hosting? Because otherwise, back to your example, you could invite a host from a show onto feed your brand and ask them to play a clip of the podcast, and turns out the host is not the right person to give you that permission. It's the company. How have we got in there? What can we do about it? And what are the next steps are really questions that are hugely important in the space at the moment.

Yeah, definitely. You know, let's talk a little bit about fair use that you mentioned, because that's been in the news, because there's been a bit of Supreme Court case on fair use, Google, which kind of, you know, surprised some people. I don't think it surprised people in the legal industry, but, you know, surprised some people on the outside. But fair use, what does that really mean?

That is a question that lawyers and judges are still trying to answer. But I will tell you what the official party line is on what it means. Fair use is essentially a concept that recognizes that, yes, we have copyright, but we have to balance that against the First Amendment and the right to use and put information out there. And fair use is essentially what allows you to use somebody else's content in a new way without paying them for it, because the law and our society considers it a fair use. And what it really comes down to is, are you using content in a way that transforms the original content, that repurposes it, that gives it new meaning that's different from the original. So as an example, because this is an amorphous concept that's best understood with examples, let's say there's a news clip that is on tv, that is on CNN one night, you have a podcast episode that's talking about what happened in the news that's talking about the way that the news has been covering this specific event. And you play a short clip from cnn and then you play a short clip from abc, and then you play a short clip from Fox News, and you're talking about the different ways that all of these news platforms reported the news. That's a very good example of transformative use, because the people who are listening to your podcast are not listening to those snippets to get the news. They're listening to those snippets to better understand the point you're making about how these different news outlets covered a certain point. That's a good example of fair use.

Yeah. And if you had only used one, it wouldn't be as transformative as it is. Once you use all the multiples, you.

Could just use one. It's a strong fair use in that case, because it's comparative. But you could absolutely just use one clip from one source and it be transformative. You could be having a podcast which reviews and comments on movies, and you have a movie clip and you're talking about all the different acting techniques and impressive moments in the film, and you play little snippets here and there. Depending on how you do it, that can be a fair use. But again, it's a very amorphous concept. And so it's definitely something to talk through people around you who know to get counsel on, because it's an unfortunately amorphous concept. It's quite sad because fair use is supposed to help creators, and creators should be able to use fair use as a concept easily. And we're really not there. And in that way, it's really not serving the purpose it's meant to.

You know, I had issues before where people came to me and asked me, can I use this? Do I think it? Do I? Is it fair use? And, you know, I said, look, if you're nervous about this, if you're worried because whoever you're sharing it from is litigious, you know, then let's do it differently. And so what I typically recommend they then do is paraphrase what was said rather than playing a clip and then link to a clip, which you can do more easily on your. In the blog, refer people to the blog to get to the video clip and that video clip, because it came out of the original video or it is a part of the original video, you're referring to the original source, and that kind of eliminates that. If you're worried about it, is that a good way to go it is.

A good way to go because you're not actually including the content in your program. If you are including it, you always want to include just no more than you really need to make your point. And part of it goes to what you're saying when you feel uncomfortable about it. Part of fair use, I often say a good rule of thumb is put yourself in the shoes of the person whose content you want to use. If somebody was going to use your content in that way, how would you feel? If you feel, you know what, fair game, it's for educational purposes, they're commenting on it. I really feel like this is the kind of thing this person should not have to pay me for. That's probably a good indication that you're on the right track though. Again, it's very difficult to know.

Wonderful. Well, you know, thank you so much for kind of defining that for us. I think it really helps in sort of thinking about what kind of show you're creating and when this is a commentary and opinion and you start to understand then how you can use other things as jumping off points. That's a very fair use kind of example. But you know, sometimes we want to create something that's so original, like it might be a totally scripted show, it might be a completely different style of something that we're creating. And we have long term plans for that, like maybe Hollywood plans. How do we navigate that, how do we negotiate that model? And what do you recommend in that that we preserve right now so that we can have the options later?

The key word that comes to mind there is derivatives. A derivative is. Exactly. That is something that derives from, from your show. And so one thing you really want to look at as a creator, any deal you're entering into, whether you're creating the podcast on your own, whether you have a co host, whether you're ultimately delivering your content to a platform at any point, if you are giving over your IP and specifically your right to derivatives or your right to participate in derivatives, that should be a really big red flag to you if you're thinking long term.

I'm going to say my world of product development, that we had done 250 products for mass market retail over a decade, is that if we had not had derivatives in our contract, someone could merely change the color of the design that we did and it would be a new SKU and a new product and we wouldn't get paid for it. So I can tell you right now that even in that example, derivatives are so clearly important. So I'm so Glad you mentioned that. Because it's a hard concept to like, how do I define. Define that. What would become a derivative? Like, it's really hard to define. But think of spinoff shows, right?

They work a hundred percent. And it is a hard concept to define. And that's why you should never shy away from asking someone when they give you a contract, well, what does this mean? Am I able to go on and write a book? Am I able to go and license this format? Can I make a TV show based on it? Am I allowed to do merch? And if you're working with somebody who's honest on the other side, they should be willing to engage in this discussion with you. And if they're not and you don't have someone looking at that agreement for you at that point, you should really go and think about that. You should always have somebody look at your agreements. If you're not.

Yeah, let's be clear. You should definitely have a lawyer involved.

I didn't want to suggest that you should. If you're working with a nice person, all is good, because who knows?

No, I'm going to step and said, from my experience, you should have an attorney look at this.

And you don't know what you're going to want to do with your podcast. You might want to do merchandise. We've seen a lot of podcasts out there where merchandise are a great form of revenue. For a lot of people that are putting their podcasts on Patreon, Merch is a great way to supplement and to attract people to pay that little extra subscription because they're getting that benefit, they're getting merch at a cheaper discount. If you ever sign something that took away that right that you can't control and you can't make merchandise, that's a whole revenue stream that's lost.

Well, it's just like the woman who had the book who couldn't do her own audible because she had lost the rights to that. Well, you know, again, just to tie back with what Alexia said earlier, is that you better make sure you own your cover art, you own your work for hire. That's a work for hire. Because if you're going to make merch later, you've got to have the rights to that or you're going to owe somebody something on those. So all tied together there. I love that you're looking at this from the beginning and saying, remember, we're working really hard to create value here, and there's a value chain in that proposition that might have an upside value in the future. We don't even know what that's going to be yet. So let's make sure we're doing everything we can to preserve that in the beginning. But are there things that we can also do to make us more attractive for that in the future? So make us more attractive to a Hollywood deal. Is there something that we can do ahead of time in our show?

Some people will say that certain types of podcasts are more attractive to Hollywood than others. For example, the more narrative forms are perhaps more attractive and easier to adapt into a TV show, a series or a feature doc than daily news show is podcasts that have very strong characters and very strong plots where you can imagine these characters and these plots coming to life, chances are somebody else too. And some business affairs. Exactly. Also can imagine your characters and this plot coming to life. So very rich characters, very interesting plot lines. Those are all things that are attractive and good candidates for adaptations. Another thing you could think about as well is as you're building your team around you to create a podcast, maybe bring someone who has script writing or screenplay writing experience. We've seen this actually with Campside Media who formed last year, and the team is really interesting. It's made up of three veteran journalists and one person with a lot of background experience in screenwriting and screenplays and who comes with that. And so that's interesting because you're sort of building in your day to day the pipeline that could lend itself to being adapted for Hollywood. So how you're making up your team, the kind of people that you're bringing on, having people that have different experiences and that come from different spaces in the media industry could also help you put together content that doesn't just serve audio. Even though the primary purpose and goal should always be that you're making something for the ear. But what can you do with a long term view to position that content as attractive for adaptations?

From a business podcast standpoint, I think there's a lot of value too that people don't even realize at the beginning until they get a hundred shows in and you realize, wow, I have a lot of things. So there might be things that you are going to do is like you might put out a book from that you might eventually put out frequently asked questions on your website. There might be a whole bunch of residual value things that you even sell to your clients in the future. So then from a business standpoint, not just a Hollywood standpoint, there is a whole lot of information here that you created and you can do that with a more purposeful plan from the beginning.

And the big one that we maybe save the best for last is your RSS feed. Tell us about that the RSS feed. I mean, really, if there are two words that you want to focus on when you're starting your podcast or developing it with a long term view, are those two words RSS feed? Because it really is the direct line of communication from you to, to your audience as you develop your podcast, as you drop episodes into your RSS feed and people follow it or subscribe to it, those listeners, unless they unsubscribe, are there. Now what does that mean? That means that when you have a new show, you can drop it into that feed and it will automatically go to this established, loyal audience. If Hollywood approaches you and they're interested in an adaptation, they, they're going to be able to promote, assuming you've agreed to this, but you probably will, they're going to be able to promote the TV show that's based on your podcast into your podcast RSS feed. And that is basically a beautiful form of IP wrapped in a bow of market testing that you're handing over to whoever you're collaborating with. So to the extent you can, holding on to ownership and control of your RSS feed is absolutely key because that.

Is the most direct route to the listener completely.

Especially nowadays we're hearing a lot of talk about creator economies and the importance of a link and relationship directly from creators to their audiences. And if RSS feeds weren't already important, they're only going to become more important. Aha.

All of you out there listening, this brings me to the last thing that I really want to mention. Alexia. Are you aware of some of the contractual issues that happen from hosts podcast hosting services, the places where you usually are creating the RSS feed? There are quite a few out there that are. I'm putting in air quotes for those of you who are listening free. And when they're free, they actually have the rights to put ads on your show. They actually have the rights, if you've recorded it using their system, to actually never give you the audio back. And so are you aware of that? And I mean, what's your recommendation for that? Is that worth it?

It depends really what your goal is, right? I mean, what's going to be worth it to one person might not. If the platform is offering really good production services, and what you need at this point in your podcasting career is production support, it might be worth it. If they're offering really good marketing support, it might be in the short term. But if you're signing up for a platform that doesn't have great terms, make sure that you have an easy exit from it. Read the fine print. So I wouldn't want to sit here and tell you, listen, it's not worth it, because I don't know what might be worth it to you now. But what you do know is that if at some point it's not worth it to you anymore, you need to be able to get out. And so read the fine print. What does it say when you terminate? What do they hold on to when you leave? Do they have to scrub any data? Is there anything about their ability to keep using references to your shows in their library and their archives? What can they continue to do? So those are really important things. And if they're holding on to things once you leave, then it might not be worth it. To your point, Tracy. So it really depends on the fine print there. But you should be reading that because if you're signing up with a platform, the whole benefit of that is that they're not holding onto your ip, right? Because otherwise you would go to one of the bigger names, they would fund you, you would have a much easier production time and you would get out there. But with that would come a loss of your ip. So it's a trade off. So if you are going to a platform that you're using really more as a hosting platform, then they really shouldn't be getting anything from you in terms of your ip, that's for sure. Now, question mark. What kind of rights they have to use your name to say that you're on their service, but your IP should absolutely remain yours if you're just using the hosting platform, if you have long.

Term value that you're trying to build here or long term business goal has always been, in my opinion to say let's not do that. That sets you up for just it not having the value that you expect at the end of the day. And you don't have that direct conduit always at your access in terms of your RSS feed. So I agree, I agree with you. I thank you so much for like bringing all of these kind of definitions and viewpoints to everything.

I love this. Thank you.

Good. Is there any other pieces of advice you like to give podcasters out there? Things that you know, even just from a listener experience, there's any pieces of.

Advice for them other than the ones we mentioned?

Yeah, yeah. Just. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

The biggest piece of advice would be not to underestimate really the value of what you're sitting on. Podcasts are so interesting in this space right now. There's so many different directions you can take it. There are audiobooks that are being made based on podcasts. There are TV shows that are being made based on podcasts. There are events. We're not thinking a lot about events because of the pandemic, but before the pandemic, podcasts were a really nice thing to tie into live events. And so never underestimate and never let anyone tell you that you're not sitting on something that's valuable and really think about every time, if ever you're giving a piece away of your intellectual property, think about why you're doing it. Is it helping you in the long run? And is it worth it to you? And are you giving it away to someone that you're going to be happy to work with? Because sometimes you do have to give away your ip. But if you are, make sure that you're getting into bed with a good partner and that you are making a deal that serves you as well. Because there's nothing wrong with making a deal where everybody gets a good bargain. But you really want to make sure and know the value of what you have and make a deal that serves you in the long run.

Thank you, Alexia. I'm so glad you shared that. And you know, creating value here as podcasters is what we're all about and trying to increase that value and figure out ways to grow. But sometimes it's just perspective. Like you pointed out today is you are creating more value than you think you're creating intellectual property. So thank you again for being on the show, Alexia. We will make sure that everyone can find you at the blog post for this episode@thebingefactor.com thank you so much, Tracy. Well, I hope that was eye opening for you and starting to think about this long term residual value. One of the things that Alexia was making me think about as I wanted to close this up for you and tie this around is that, you know, when she mentioned that value of your RSS feed, you know, that's another thing that you're not really thinking about. Not only is that RSS feed itself and the content that's within it valuable, but the connection point, that point that it creates to all those subscribers that it's the conduit to do it is valuable as well. So giving up your show and shutting down your hosting and giving up that RSS feed prematurely is not a great idea. It's Being pennywise and pound foolish. Right. So there's places where you can move your hosting where it's free. I'm always hesitant about those. But there are certainly places that allow archive feeds where you can keep it archived until you want to use it. It gives you an ability to have lower monthly rate and things like that because you're not actively posting into it. We have that here at Poditize. And I think it's a really good idea to keep your podcast RSS feed active, if not just for your website, but for continuity from all the different link backs and the other things you've done out there in the marketplace. So finding a way to make that and continue to keep that residual value for you, that's like keeping, you know, an email list. Even though you're not emailing today, you have that email list and that's a valuable asset to your business. So shutting down that asset is not a great idea. And so I'm so glad she said that, that, that was really important there. The other thing that I want to stress is too often, and I think it's happened maybe three or four times out of the hundreds and hundreds of clients that we've served, has someone question us about whether or not we were doing work for hire, which we are. We put that in every contract. It's in our terms and conditions like this is a big importance because Tom and I know what it's like to be the designer and to make sure that we're transferring the assets that we create are the intellectual property back to our clients. So it's always in our contracts. So we were sensitive to that when we built this business. And so. But so few people ask that question, is there a work for hire clause? Am I, what I'm doing with you, having you create my cover art, is that a work for hire and do I own it? At the end of the day, we don't ask photographers enough for the same thing. So being really careful and thinking these things through, remembering that you're creating this long term asset value and you're putting this much effort into it, asking these questions up front are a great idea. And I'm so glad that Alexia came on the show today and gave us that perspective. As always, you're going to be able to find all the links to all of our guests, but especially being linking to Alexia Badot and the Claris law firm, we want to make sure that you have all of that. So go to the bingefactor.com blog post for this episode and you'll be able to find that there as well as links, the things she talked about like the reporters committee and some of those other things. We'll have links for those as well. So thanks everyone for, you know, listening to this different type of episode. Let me know if there are other topics like this, like intellectual property that you'd like me to talk about here, like me to bring forward for you and I'm happy to do that. As always. You can reach me on social media at the Binge factor and@thebingefactor.com so thanks again everyone. I'll be back next time with another episode of the Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.

SA.