Video Podcasting: Hype vs. Reality #588

- In the afternoon with Todd and Rob baby. - Welcome to the new Media show, where each Wednesday at 3:00 PM Eastern UTC plus four, Todd Cochrane and Rob Green Lee take there. Over 30 combined years of leadership in the podcasting space to discuss, dissect, and he construct the current podcasting news forecasts, trends, and predictions. Now, here are your hosts, academy of Podcasting, hall of Famers, Todd Cochran, and Rob Greenley.

- Hey, rah. We're gonna have to update that, uh, intro to almost 40 years here in, uh, in a few months. - Yeah, that's true. And I guess it depends on what you wanna include in that, uh, right. As far as doing this kind of stuff. Well, it wasn't called a podcast when I was - Here. Okay. Well, you were a radio dude, so . Well, technically - Yeah, I was, but I also, I spent a lot of time with the online distribution side of, of this since day one, too.

- Just, well, it was, it wasn't a podcast though, so come on now. - No, it wasn't a podcast, but it was the same exact thing that I did when it became one. So, okay. - Well, you can, you can say so many years in radio and so many years in podcasting. And, and by the way, um, - Don't Eat Me, James - Cridland. I don't care what he says the anniversary date is. It is. We, we are fast approaching our 20th year in podcasting. I'm sure you know it. It is some, oh, it's already 20 years.

Well, uh, no, it's, it's not . - Yeah. And, and there's a whole kind of project that's been start, has been worked on for the last few years about Yeah. Uh, really documenting the history of podcasting. I'm gonna be doing an interview for that, um, that, that group here soon. - Yeah. Same with me. - Who wants to really, really document the, the real startup path of this, of this medium. So, - Yeah. And not besides the one person that had coined a word or, you know, so, right.

- Yeah. - You know, I think, I mean, - The messy beginning, it was a messy beginning. Let's, let's just put it to you. - I think we could probably say about now, you know, you know, maybe another month or two. It, it was 20 years, but, eh, I don't know. You know what, again, uh, it's, you know, who cares amongst friends? Yeah. If it's, you know, three, four months difference. Uh, yeah. I, I know, I know what I consider to be the beginning and I guess, uh, I'm gonna stick with that.

So, anyway, here, go - Ahead. I guess it just depends on what you define as what the beginning, um, should be, right? Yeah. I mean, what aspect of the development of this medium, there was also a lot of precursors to this medium, um, that we're doing essentially the same thing. It just wasn't SS based. Yeah. So, you know, is that, you know, transferring a media file from a, a computer to a portable device, is that considered to be what podcasting was back then?

I, you know, I think if you went back to that definition, it opens it up quite a bit. Um, but if you strictly stick to the RSS distribution side Yeah. There was a clear delineation of when that started. - RSS baby. Right. So, so, uh, we're doing this show early 'cause I'm trying to get on the road to Chicago. Hmm. And, uh, when I get in and, uh, and then tomorrow. But really reason, the only reason I'm going into Chicago today is I'm just concerned if these protestors get weird.

At least it gives me, he gives me the - Walking, the roads and the freeways and stuff. - Gives me enough time to get into O'Hare without, you know, stressing it. So, you know, maybe off or n but you, you just never know when they decide they're gonna block the roads. Um, so that's the, that's the plan. And, uh, about five o'clock tomorrow afternoon, I fly to San Francisco. Then at about midnight to tomorrow night, I start the 15 hour, ugh.

Yeah. 15 hour flight to Manila and, uh, get into Manila Saturday morning, which is kind of, 'cause, you know, gain a day and, uh, 6:00 AM Saturday morning, and then I'll have a chance to, I guess for a better words, adjust a little bit and work Monday and Tuesday, and then, uh, podcast Asia on Wednesday. Uh, and I am gonna stay there and work Thursday, Friday, and then, uh, fly home on the weekend. So, and that's the beauty about going to Manila.

It's so cheap. Uh, my entire hotel stay of six days or seven days is like $225 - . What? , that's like what you normally pay for one night. Right. - You know? So, you know, it's not, it's not like, uh, you know, I'm spending 200 a night for a hotel room, . Uh, now of course, um, I'm not staying in Manila the whole time. I'm moving outside of Manila a little bit, so it gets a little cheaper inside Manila and Mac. It's, you know, probably like $70 a night or something like that.

But still, you know, , - I think what probably hit you is the airfare getting out there. - Yeah. The airfare is, uh, uh, about $1,400 round trip. So not, not as bad, you know, and believe it or not, you know, in the end of May, the, the flight prices go dramatically up for Asia because the, you know, they travel on the summer as well. - It's a holiday Yeah. Travel time. Right. - But they're in the middle of El Nino out there right now.

And Central Manila is seeing 40, 40 Celsius, which is over a hundred degrees, um, during the daytime. So, uh, I'm not necessarily looking for that. I'm hoping, you know, the rainy season starts like in July, but I'm not going to, uh, it's probably just gonna be hot, hot, hot, hot. Uh, so yeah. And then home for a week, and then off to London. So, talk about two stark differences of, of climates. So we're, we're ready for the, the podcast show we sent in our booth designed to be printed.

They're saying 15,000 people now. That's what I saw in some, some publicity piece. I think it was James promoted that said it was 15. They're expecting 15,000 - At this, this Asian conference? - No, at the pod fest. Pocho in, uh, - Oh, at the Pocho. Okay. - Yeah. 15,000. - Wow. That's a lot. - Yeah, I, I I heard 5,000. If it's 15,000, - I don't think the venue will hold that

many people actually, . Well, - I'm, it's just, there's just two of us going, if there's 15,000 people, we're gonna be 15 deep. - Um, yeah, because I think when I went, uh, I think they, they were averaging close to 5,000 a day. Um, - Oh, well that's different. - And well, that's how they count over there. So keep that in mind. - Oh, - , - By the day it's the same people coming back, so. - Well, I know, but they counted twice, so. Yeah. - Oh, that's the, that's the tricky thing that they do.

- Mm-Hmm, - . Oh, okay. Well, that's like 15,000. - Yeah. So it sounds like probably twice as big as it really, - But it's really just two days. So they're expecting 7,500 a day. That's, - Well, 'cause they also sell single day tickets. So that's the other difference about this event. It's not like you buy one ticket for the whole thing. It's like, - Yeah, that's, that's good. - You can come in and buy like the first day or whatever.

And that's it. Yeah. So, so when they count, they count each day as kind of its own separate thing, because they do that. - All right. Well, still, even if it is truly 5,000 people per day, that's, that's a great number that's bigger than the show here. No, it's - Right. Right. So that'd be about what, 7,500 per day, which is about, um, 2,500 more than the first year. - Yeah. That, that, that, that's a huge, that's still a huge number.

- No, that's as, that's as big as podcast movement, just the increase. - Oh, it's bigger than podcast movement by several degrees. - Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I guess it depends on which event. I think the main podcast movement is around what, 2,500? Something like that. So - When you were there was the show floor just absolutely wall to wall people? Was it five deep?

- Yeah. And actually, um, I would say most, well, I shouldn't say all, but I'd say probably 75, 80% of all the boost space was taken. Yeah. Even the first year. Yeah. Um, I didn't go last year, um, to see what the sellout is, but, you know, that is the, I think in a lot of ways from what I saw the first year I went, and then what I seen with the pictures, I would say that's the predominant, um, podcast event in the world right now.

I, I think it's clearly surpassed podcast movement as the most Right. Significant podcasting conference. - Yeah. So I, I actually, you know, we're, you're not ashamed to say we, you know, we, we decided a little late to get involved, but we got a great booth space, don't get me wrong. Mm-Hmm. . But the, um, so we actually paid the fee to actually have a session. So I have Oh, you did? So I have a session on Thursday near the end of the day.

Not the best time to have a, a session, but, you know, otherwise we wouldn't have had one whatsoever. So, um, I'm gonna be talking about, uh, uh, I think, what was the title? I share with you the title here in a second. The, the, - Where did they put you for your session on? Was it up, uh, around the perimeter - In that, - That second level or that third level up?

- Yeah, let me look here. Um, - So, because I know that, uh, YouTube had a bunch of sessions that they had in like, um, walk-in like office type meeting rooms and stuff like that. Well, larger, larger meeting rooms. - My, my title of my session is Beyond the Visual Mastering Multimodal Podcasting, and it doesn't say where, uh, three 50 to four 30. So I don't know even know where to find where it's actually at. - Yeah, I saw the Hi, that, that got put up promoting your session.

Oh, oh, no, your session that you're doing at the Asian event Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is about kind of video podcasting. Right. Well, - It's basically, um, why you should consider video. Mm-Hmm. But I'm gonna be, you can imagine I'm gonna, you know, I'm not strained too far from, uh, where I, where I, where my roots are. And, you know, I'm gonna talk about, you know, why, why you should consider, and you know, what you should expect and the realities.

And we're gonna, I'm gonna talk about Spotify and what they don't do, how they don't support open RSS on video. I'm gonna talk about YouTube and how they don't support open RSS on video. I'm gonna talk about how they only convert audio to video. I'm that, I'm gonna go talk, I'm just, you know, I'm gonna lay this all out to Demy, uh, you know, to stop some of this hype that's being spread that can't be backed up by actual data.

And, um, you know, we've looked really, really deep, uh, into, uh, you know, about 500 shows deep in, in a lot of categories. And, you know, we come up with this handful of shows that are doing good on YouTube, but everything else is crickets.

And again, it, it's gonna continue to talk about the, the, um, I guess for a better word, um, and I'm gonna do a little bit of this in London too, is I, I think people need to take a little bit of a step back and, and really consider, um, what is possible and what, you know, and, and to have a good plan. If you're gonna do video, then let's, number one, let's do video, right? By having available via open RSS. And number two, let's make sure you do wide distribution.

You don't just do YouTube, you can do Rumble, and you can do Twitter, and you can do Facebook. You know, make sure that you have a broad video action plan. Mm-Hmm. . And that you also plan that if you're going to focus on video, then you better focus on being a YouTuber and not a podcaster.

Um, so I, you know, I'm, I'm just gonna break out realities and I'm gonna lay out, I'm, you know, I've done some heavy research to give some actual numbers that we're actually seeing in the space, um, and to dispel some of this, some of this PR machine. And again, I'm not saying that people aren't being discovered. I'm not saying I ca I I came up with something interesting, Rob, let, let me share this quote with you. And, and it, it's, and I think a lot of people will agree.

I gotta get the presentation opened up. I, I'll tell it a secret slide here. Mm-Hmm. . Um, and I thought it was pretty good. I thought this was a pretty, hang on, let me, let me, let me read what I've said here. I podcasting on YouTube is essentially a channel featuring content styled as a podcast. Podcasting on YouTube is essentially a channel featuring content styled as a podcast. There's not That's pretty true.

You know, we're on, we're on YouTube right now, two dudes and two microphones and, you know, fancy backgrounds. So - Yeah, I I mean, it could be true from a certain perspective. Sure. - Oh, that is not the perspective. That is the, I think this is what's driving the, the numbers. Well, it is, - It is certainly part of that. I agree. It's the, it's the perception that people are having about what the content Right, - Right. What the listeners are perceiving.

- Yeah. Yeah. That's what the research is telling us, right? Right. Is that people are seeing these shows like this one. Right. I is a, is a classic example of a show that looks like a, a podcast and it sounds like a podcast. Um, and it, this show technically is - Right. Right. I had, - There are shows that are not, - I had a major, major meeting with a very, very, very big company this week Mm-Hmm. that basically we're trying to figure this out.

Mm-Hmm. . And when I explain to them, you know, here, because they work in a space that is tied to RSS. - Right. - Everything they do is tied to RSS. And, and I said to them, I'm like, listen, the adoption of video within RSS is relatively small. There's a small number percentage wise of shows that are doing true video, you know? Mm-Hmm. . And, and I said, so you have, there's no reason for you to retool, rework Recode your platform to support video and open RSS.

I said, if you want to, you can, but here is the, here is the field of shows that are actually distributing, and I have the exact number. I'm not you guys, somebody else can go do their own work. I have the exact number of shows that are doing video on RSS, and I said, for this number shows, do you wanna do all this work? And I said, you can't touch YouTube. You can't touch Rumble, you can't touch Twitter, you can't touch Facebook. You have no inroads into those platforms.

So those, those folks that are AKA so-called podcasters, um, you can't help them. Oh. So when you have a major company that is trying to make a determination whether they should retool some of their tools for video, and you tell 'em it's not being driven by open RSS, then they go, ah, aha, - Todd, I just worry that we're, we're spending a lot of time doing this, but, but really what we're doing is we're trying to, um, kind of dispel people from doing something Absolutely.

That maybe they, they feel already compelled to do. Oh, - I, I don't, I just want people to go in with their eyes wide open if - Yeah. I think that's, that, that's reasonable. Um, but clearly the trend lines are pushing this direction. - But if you look at, if you look and I tell, I challenge you, I challenge anyone Mm-Hmm. , go look at the 500 top shows in every category in Apple podcasts. - Yeah. But Todd, it's not about where it is today. It's about where it's going - To.

Yeah. But do you want, I'm not giving up the, the farm for YouTube that doesn't care about, - I don't think you have to do anything. - Oh, - It, it's, - I mean, this is what people are being pushed to. I - Mean, are you gonna change, change what? - No, I'm not - What YouTube does. - No, but I can, I can tell, I can give. So we - Can't change the trajectory - Of, okay, so Yes, yes. We can, we can inform podcasters. Yeah. We don't have to sell out. Do you think podcast?

Do you think YouTube gives a living crap about RSS? No, they don't. They don't. And, you know, yeah. But the, - Okay, but that's not an important discussion. - Okay. Well, guess what then? If you wanna protect podcasters - Mm-Hmm. , - Then you quit telling 'em to start doing YouTube. - I'm not gonna tell anybody to stop doing video, Todd, because I don't, I don't really have that choice.

I mean, people are seeing the trends in the market today, but - The problem is, okay, trend, okay, who's paying for those trends? - Hey, but trends have always, - Who's paying - Driven, driven This, - Who's paying this medium talk? Who's paying for those studies? Who's paying for those reports? You, and you don't, it doesn't break into reality. This is the problem. There's a lot of, lot of bullshit being spread about, oh my God, you video is taking over and you are going, you have to do video

wrong. Because - I don't think anybody said, you have to do video. - I think that's okay. This is the mess - That, that's your, - Oh, you look at all the forms. I I need to do video. I'm being, I, I - Mean, it's, it comes across a little hyperbolic and hype on your side to say that. - No, it's not. It's, it's what I, what I'm telling people is, I'm just going back to the thing is, you have to have a reality check that maybe go ahead, do video. Right. And then don't come back to me crying.

Instead, I spent a bunch of money, I spent a bunch of time on equipment. I spent a bunch of time editing, and I've gotten no traction. Okay. 'cause for about 95% of shows, that's not going to change. They're not going to, there's 110 million, 110 million YouTube channels. Mm-Hmm. . - Yeah. - With 3.9% monetized. - Okay. So I don't know that, that, that, that persuades me in any particular direction. If there's anything, - Everyone, what is the goal? - What is the goal? That's - Exactly right.

That's what I ask podcasters. What is your goal for your show? - Yeah. And that's my, my position on this is that if you want to create content that, um, caters to the full spectrum of people's interest in content consumption, then you, you should consider video as a, as an additional layer to what you're doing with your audio show. I'm not trying to dissuade people from doing an audio program, that's exactly what I want them to do.

But it's, it's more to do with the younger generation is pushing increasingly on, on video. Well, well, and however that gets supported, and we can have a say in this, Todd, to some degree of an influence on how video is embraced in, in the context of the podcast Medium. - Well, we will leave the lights on for you because the trend, the trend is simple. They're going over and do YouTube channels.

They're not doing podcasts. So, great. That's, - That's because the industry has, um, has dissuaded people from doing that. It's not that you don't support video podcasts on your own platform. - Yeah, we do. We've supported, we've supported video podcasts for 15, 16 years. Right, - Right. And the only reason, really, I think it at the end of the day that, that got suppressed was because of YouTube in the early days, plus the cost of bandwidth.

Of course, those were the two factors that drove all the video podcasts into YouTube originally. Right. Many years ago. Uh, but the but two things are different. Uh, the cost of bandwidth is dramatically less now. Uh, the expectation of a new upcoming generation is that they want to increasingly experience video experiences, whether it be short form or long form. We're seeing that in the trend lines. Um, but yet there's still huge adoption for audio too.

So all these things can be moving in a direction that we as an industry need to decide if we're gonna embrace the future, or are we gonna hold back the future? - We don't, we've already embraced video is supported within Yeah, but it's, yeah.

- It's at the level that, that, that probably should, I mean, I, I reached out to Apple and asked them why they have depreciated the exposure of video podcasts in their platform, because they used to have a, a tab at the top of the screen that enabled you to throttle back and forth between seeing - Video. 'cause the majority of content being consumed on the device Right. At the time. - But it's a chicken or the egg thing, right?

It's, it's like once you suppress that, then people aren't gonna find it - About nine outta 10 times. When I - Close it again, then people will find it again, and then it will become popular again. - But about nine outta 10 times when I show the Apple Podcast app, or, or a podcasting 2.0 app that they do video people's mouths drop over, they go, wow. - Well, that's, that's entirely my point, Todd, is because Apple has depreciated that feature that's in the platform.

It's been in the platform since, what, 2000? - Since the beginning, as far as I know, six, - 2007 timeframe. Um, and it's been there forever. And the early days of this medium was probably 30% video and, and 70% audio in the early days of this medium. Now it's probably, I don't know what the percentages are. I haven't seen the numbers of video podcasts. That's RSS distribution.

And then layer on that, on top of that, Todd, is the, the development that we're seeing with the r with the podcasting 2.0 standards, supporting the integration. You know, captivate just announced this past week that they were going to embrace. - So, Rob, did you not know We already did that. - Well, okay. Okay. , I mean, I'm just saying that Captivate announce it, so it's not just a Yeah. - A, - A, um, a myth or a fantasy that this is becoming important to podcasting.

It's actually being deployed in RSS, - But the problem, the, the failure captivate has made, in my opinion, mm-Hmm. , is they have basically licked YouTube's butt instead of offering a video podcast option for their platform. And they've, so they've sold out, - I - Disagree with you on that. They've sold out to YouTube. So challenge it. Right. Challenge laid down. - Yeah. I mean, I agree with you on that.

I think, you know, if we're gonna go down this path, we as an industry need to talk about the video podcast part. And - That needs be and Mark to don't take, don't take it the wrong way, by the way. Okay. , - That needs to be, have that discussion needs to happen with Apple. It needs to happen with Spotify. There's no reason why Spotify couldn't take in video podcasts. - They won't into the platform because they're just - Being becausecause.

They're taking an audio today. Yeah, - Well, they're being butthead. That's why. Well, - Because it hasn't risen to the level in the industry of discussion that that would be something that they would embrace. So, you know, it's the chicken or the egg thing here. Right? If we suppress this, then it's not gonna - Blossom. I'm not suppressing video. I'm supporting open RSS and video full-hearted. I just wanna make That's great. I wanna make sure. So let's - Talk about that.

I mean, how do we make open RSS an embrace of RSS in the ways that people are using video today to make it all work? - Right? It works. The show's been doing it for how many years. - I know, but it needs to work better. I think - I, to what extent you - Agree on that, right? - To what extent? - I just shared it just 10 seconds ago. - It works. - It's Apple Embracing Audio and Video podcast, - But we don't have podcast. Okay. So again, Apple's not gonna do that.

- And it's also Spotify being able to take in video podcasts just like they do audio podcasts today. - But they won't. We dont know that they have a Yeah, we do. They have a financial reason not to do it. - Well, then maybe they should just drop all podcasts. - I think that would be great. - Really, you really honestly believe that. - Yeah. Honestly, I honestly wish Spotify would go away.

- Really? - Yeah. And I know a lot of listeners don't like that, but - Yeah, I don't, I mean, you and I both went through the early days of Spotify coming into this medium, and I don't think you really want that, Todd. - You know, we all, and we all basically got screwed by Spotify. So, you know, there's not a lot of - Well, that's a separate conversation about there's - Not a lot, lot of love loss there. - Yeah. I mean, that's a separate conversation about how they come into the medium.

And it was a train wreck on the way in. So, and a lot of us that were in the hosting businesses felt like we kind of got walked - All over a, Anita says, why is the image of podcast is for old people and YouTube and TikTok for young people. That's not true. Not at all. You look at the, well, - Tiktoks probably not gonna be around - That's right. A whole lot longer. But yeah, TikTok has said, - We'll, see on that, - TikTok has said they're

leaving the US market. So, - And I did see that Tom Webster posted publicly on social that, uh, tiktoks not going away. So I thought that was interesting. - We'll, see, the tiktoks aren't, aren't hounding. They had, there's not been an outcry, but there has been lots of articles about people moving their strategy away from

TikTok and going to other platforms that are US based. So, - So to kind of draft off of what, um, Tom said on that point is that I guess it is possible that a US company could, could, could acquire them. - They said they won't do it. TikTok is our publicly. - Right. I think they would rather just shut the whole platform down than - Is to Yeah, they, yeah. Well, no, not, they're, they're gonna remain open outside the United States. They're not gonna shut the platform down.

It says tiktoks US revenue is a small percentage of their global revenue. So they would just rather pull out of the US market altogether. - I mean, what are the chances that the EU is gonna pull the plug on it after - The US did? I think, I think, uh, as crazy as they are probably pretty high. - That's, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. . So, you know, yeah. I, you know, I think that the geopolitical aspect of that is, is pretty cut and dried right now.

- But I, I think what we have to do, and again, to me, this is the conversations I have with content creators every single day. What do you think about video? Great. Start to, you know, upload on video to your account? What, what do you mean? I mean, I, - I'm not seeing any kind of downside to the industry, um, embracing video. I mean, I think, you know, in the early days, both of us were in this medium win video.

Podcasting was huge. Yeah. So it, I don't know why it can't be, again, I I don't get it. Right. I mean, why are we resisting this? And it's, - I'm not resisting it. - I think it gets back to a lot of the reason that there's resistance to this is that a lot of the podcast companies didn't build support for - Video. Right. Right, right, right, - Right. So if the industry is moving towards video, they, they don't want that because then those customers are gonna go somewhere else.

- Well, it is, you know, it is still pricey to host video no matter what. You, if you have a successful, uh, uh, video, it's, you know, it can be pricey. So, you know, the, the, but we've got a way around - That. If it's a popular, if it's a pop, it's not Oh, yeah. - It's popular. - A huge expense on the, uh, on the hosting side. It's, it's expensive on the distribution side. - It, it could be a penny of view. - Yeah, - It could, it - Could just like with this show, right?

- It could be, yeah, it could be a penny of view. So, you know. Mm-Hmm. it depends on the total number of views. You know, that adds up pretty quick. - It depends on how big the media file is and very, how much is. - Well, it's very, very, very rare do we see video files that are under a gig. 'cause everyone wants to do 4K now, and, you know.

Yeah. You know, or - At least, uh, seven 20, - Uh, you most folks are, - Or 10, 10 80 is - Probably once you, when if you come off YouTube and you're used to uploading 4K and you can't upload to 4K and you gotta go down the 10 80, why? Well, you know, again, the file size and the bandwidth required. - Yeah. I think you have to consider that people are incr, you know, at least on the podcasting side, are watching on their mobile devices.

And you need to be, you know, respectful - Of their, well, that's, but the YouTube throttles it storage, throttles it down. They recode in multiple rates and - Yeah. Yeah. If you're talking about YouTube, I'm, yeah. Yeah. I'm talking about more about the video podcasting side, which is the, the download part. Um, now granted probably for most video podcasts now, they probably are just gonna stream to the device. That's not gonna - Be, that's actually kinda surprising.

About 20% of my audience actually engage a full downloads the whole thing. Full download. Yep. 10%, uh, watch it live. Yeah. But, you know, that takes up, you know, at, at, at a meg a gig four, I think is what this show comes in. Mm-Hmm. , uh, 1.4 gigs. It's, uh, that's, that's a lost storage taking up on a device. That's - A long show too. Yeah, - That's - True. It's an hour, hour, 30 hour, 40 program. - But I, my main point is, is don't get, don't get scope locked.

Don't get scope locked at YouTube is the only solution. That's my main thing. - Well, if you can't handle doing audio and video Yeah. It doesn't make sense to - No. But for those that are to do it, for those that are considering video, and just tell 'em, don't get scope lock. Yeah. You know, don't, don't just, oh, I gotta go over, I have to go over there.

- Well, and we're seeing the growth of these kind of, these, um, recording platforms like Streamy Yard and Riverside and all these that make that process integrated into one experience. - Yeah. Increasingly. Yeah. But Streamy Yard's not hosting media. That's the thing here that's different about Streamy Yard is, you know, they, they, they shove it off and they're done.

You know, they do the stream and they don't have to have, you know, they, they're not responsible for the, for the delivery post delivery. So, you know, from that standpoint, they're sitting in a really good spot because they just provide the tool and they don't have to worry about the hosting bandwidth. - Yeah. And, and that's the same thing with, uh, you know, any of the other kind of live video recording platforms out there too, like a Riverside or whatever.

Those guys are offering a lot of tools to help people streamline the production of a video and audio, uh, program at the same time. Right. So you can do it all just once and then distribute it however you wanna distribute it at that point. But - Anita says, in your opinion, what should you do to make podcasts fun? They're not fun. I find podcasts. I don't care about podcasts being fun. I care about podcasts being educational. Um, so people are happy, well, fun.

So people are happy to say, I wanna be a podcaster. Not only I wanna be a full-time YouTuber. Most people don't wanna be a full-time YouTuber or tick. Matter of fact, 96.4 6, 96 0.1% of YouTubers will never make a penny, never make one dime off of advertising. So they're not gonna be full-time YouTubers no matter what. And yeah. - And if you do have a channel over there, you know, Todd has a service that can help you convert that to an - Podcast.

It's, it's going very well. Thank you very much. . I'm not gonna say the numbers, but I was actually kinda shocked. - Really? Yeah. Is that why you built it? Because you didn't see a market for it? . - You never know how many total people are really gonna sign up. - That's, that's, that's a good point. - You can project all you want. And - So are you seeing, uh, is there a pattern around the, the type of shows that are doing that?

- Majority of 'em right now are existing audio podcasters that have audio shows already that basically are reducing the step. So they're posting YouTube first and then bringing it back. That way they don't have to do dual posting. - Oh, okay. So they're creating a, a video version of their show and Yeah. - Well, they have, they were, they were video first to begin with. Right, - Right.

And now they're converting. Yeah. But do you happen to see a pattern around the genres of content or - Everything? - It's everything. Everything. - Okay. Yeah. And again, there's very few people, very few people that are full-time tiktoks. And I think people need to get outta this mindset of being full-time, anything, because the majority of people will never achieve the level of success to be full-time.

You can achieve success in being able to have money for dinner, car payment, maybe a house payment, but very few people will achieve the level of being a full-time content creator. That's, that's all they do. This sh My Geek New Central show, even in its heyday, was not enough to really allow me to be a full-time, a full-time. And, and that show's done very, very well. Mm-Hmm. over the many, many years. Um, yeah. If I live someplace where the cost of living was tiny, maybe. Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. .

Um, but again, 50% of podcasters today don't care about making a penny. So this, we get wrapped around the axle. I'm thinking about cash, and we gotta think, remember that a lot of podcasters don't care about making money. They have different objectives. They have different goals. - Mm-Hmm. - , it's not always about the advertising.

So, you know, what is the goal again, you know, that that's the key here, you know, and that, and that should, you know, be the thing that we always think about is, you know, what, what is the goal? Is it, is it community? Is it education? Is it building authority? Is it building a sales funnel? Is it to grow a business? Is it personal growth? Is it networking? Is it just to have fun?

- Yeah. And I like the kind of approach to this whole topic of, you know, not trying to make a decision for other people about what they wanna do with content, but to make sure that they understand the, all the options. Yeah. Yeah. That's, and the ways to do it, to optimize, if you want to do video, if you wanna to just do audio, there's an optimal way of, or a way that we recommend doing it. Uh, it may not be the way that you do it, but it may be the way that we recommend.

- At the same time, I'm not going to slice my own throat. And I don't - Think anybody's wanting you to do that either. - Okay. Well, you know, you're gonna be a mess. You, you, then we have to make sure that people understand what the value I agree of multimodal content is. - Well, and you know, if you're gonna do it, you know, this is what to expect. I, I think that's all fair. I mean, it, it may not turn out like that for every case, uh, where it's a, you know, it doesn't work out.

Some people it could work out great. Um, and, but it's, you know, I think it's a higher bar of success. There's no question. And it may, may require more investment. - Oh, definitely. More investment, more time. - Right, right. Yeah. Time I get, I think that's the education that we need to provide. Yeah, - Of course. - Right. It's not just flat out saying video's bad, so. Right. - I've never said video's bad. - Okay, good. - I'm just saying, I'm just saying, putting your cart in one horse.

- Right. - It's probably, well, you're - Doing that just by doing audio. You're putting Mm-Hmm. your cart in one horse. So, you know, it's attaching to one horse. - Right. But again, depending on what your focus is, yeah. Some content is better. Some content in podcasting is not this show. Why do we need to do video? We don't. Who who wants to - Look at you? Probably don't need to do it. Right. - Who wants to look at our two mugs? . There's nothing, there's nothing exciting happening here.

- Well, let's be honest, we started doing this because it was possible, not because - We needed to. - Right, - Right, - Right. . Yeah. - You know. Yeah. But, you know, it's, it's, again, it's, it's one to many. The strategy is one to many. And it, and that's why we're on Rumble. That's why we're on Twitter. That's why we're on Facebook. That's why we're on Apple Podcasts, podcasting 2.0, we one, two many.

- Right. And, and I think that all, all these platforms, like you talk about Todd, need to do a better job of integrating and making it easier to get content into those platforms. Um, and that's the opportunity that's out there for the industry. Well, - You know, it's no problem to get content into Twitter. Easy peasy. Same thing, obviously. YouTube live, Facebook Live, LinkedIn live. Those are all easy. Well, Todd, - Did you see that, uh, X Twitter launch, A-O-O-T-T app? Or Smart TVs - Great.

- So you'll be able to watch your favorite video that's distributed on, on Twitter x - On your big screen. But I just wanna make sure that people understand there's no magic that happened. You, you know, um, the, uh, the YouTube event was attended to with about 400 people. That's the only, that was their numbers for their live streaming event. Or only 400 people in podcasting were interested enough to take the time to go watch their why you should be on YouTube.

To me, that was tell very, very, very telling. Very telling. - Well, you, well, YouTube doesn't really have a history of disclosing very much in any of their public sessions. So it's, it's one of those things, you know, it's a, how many times, um, were the YouTube people up on stage at podcast movement and everybody walked outta the room, shaking their head going, well, why did I go to that? 'cause we didn't learn anything about what YouTube is doing.

- Right. You know, and, and ultimately, ultimately, it doesn't matter where, where you create content or how you create content. Right. There's really about seven things. Mm-Hmm. - , - Your site, your dedication, your show name, coming up with something good, your episode titles. Yep. Your summaries, your episode summaries, your superior show content, and your ability to connect with audiences. Doesn't matter what platform you're on. Yeah.

Those seven things, your site, your dedication, your show name, your episode titles, your episode summaries, your superior show content, and your ability to connect to your audience is the key to success. Doesn't matter where you are at. - But I can't remember if we talked about last week's episode, the, the presentation that the chief product officer from YouTube gave in an interview that was on online. But I thought it was interesting. I'd like to quote a little bit of what - You said.

Well, is this the one that 400 people attended? - Is this I don't believe so. This was a, a video. I'm not sure if it was or not, but, um, - Yeah, they had something that they presented to podcasters. But anyway, go ahead. - Joanna, uh, Oli, who is the chief product officer of, of YouTube was, you know, did a video online and she describes the company's vision of podcasting on the platform being an eyes optional experience. So, and that YouTube does not have a plan to publish RSS feeds.

So that would be outbound distribution. - Yeah. They don't like RSS. - Right. Right. And, um, but they do like RSS enough to take it on the inbound side. Yeah. - Of course. They can monetize against it and make money that you get, will get paid zero for. - So given that, uh, I've, I thought it was kind of weird that they would take audio, uh, in when they probably should embrace video too, right? If they're gonna do audio, why aren't they doing video via RSS as well, right. On the inbound side.

So that's, that's the other similar opportunity that I see with Spotify too. - Well, and Spotify can monetize against your content too. - Well sure. But that, that's up to the content creator to come up with that and, and to decide if they wanna participate. But that's an opportunity for both of those platforms to take in more video from the podcasting space as if the podcasting space embraces video podcasts in RSS.

Right. Um, that is another couple layers of justification for people doing video podcasts, in my opinion. - Well, if you, if you, if you think purely on the monetization standpoint, here's some stuff that you can and can't do on YouTube. Right. You, you can't do programmatic, you can't. Right. You can have a sponsor both and on audio and video. Yep. You can have crowdfunding and donations and Patreon. You can't do value for value. - Mm-Hmm. - , you can't do premium content.

You can't do affiliate marketing. Yeah. You might be able to do affiliate marketing in the show show, I guess. Yeah. Okay. And you pr you can probably sell books, - You know. No, no. Al also said that, um, there's some talk inside of U YouTube that they might augment audio only podcasts with AI visuals. Oh, - Great. So they're gonna, they're going to, I hope, I - Hope derivative content on the visual. - I hope, I hope that is, uh, something I can control, - . Good, good luck with that.

I, I don't, I would highly doubt that's the case. - But you can submit your, your content, your audio content to YouTube now. - Right. - There's a lot of, there's a lot of, not with RSS, there's lots of tools out there that will create a, a, a video that will sit on top of your, well, you have to converted 10 before that will - Well, that's exactly - That. There's lots of tools - YouTube is doing. Right. - Well, there's lots of external tools that'll, you know, put images up for you on a Sure.

On a podcast. You just gotta find the time to do it. - Yeah. It's those spaceless videos that you see. Yeah. It's the, - The thing . And there's a lot of those, and I hate those when I go on YouTube and there's some just somebody talking and it's pretty, you can pretty much tell it's a ai You get me outta here. - Yeah. Well, I don't think these would be, these would probably play the actual words from the audio. I don't think it's gonna be - AI audio. Oh yeah. It'll just be - The AI visual.

- They'll, they'll just throw on some image that they think makes sense. But I, again, I hope that I can, - It's gonna pull from a, a vast library of images and videos and pull it together into a compilation experience that is probably relevant to the content. 'cause they're pulling the transcript, right. So they've got all the content Yep. All the topics, all the keywords. And they can just run that transcript through the, this AI engine that will pull images and videos to match that.

- But I think if you, if you're going and want to succeed with video, doesn't matter if you make it available via podcast open RSS or wherever else you put it, rumble or, or any other platform Mm-Hmm. Then you, you are going to have to develop a video strategy. - Right. Um, no argument there. I agree with that. - You know, so you're gonna have to have, you're gonna have to market down two different lanes. Yep. - And that's not necessarily easy to do. No, - I think it's, it's not easy to do.

- And that's part of the reason that I think we do see this kind of, this splitting between people tend to be lean one way or the other. Right. I - Mean, they have ever since the beginning. - Right. So people either lean a little heavier towards the audio on the promotion side and other people lean a little bit more on the video side, on the promotion side, because it's difficult to do both. But - I will tell you this, I have my phone loaded up. - Mm-Hmm. , - Uh, I've got about 10 hours.

'cause I'm gonna try to sleep for five - . Okay. - I've got about 10 hours of content loaded and ready to rock and roll as soon as the, for your, - Yeah. For your flight. - For my flight. And, and there's no way I can watch 10 hours. There's no way I can - Fall - Asleep in 10 hours of YouTube videos and I probably fall asleep during some of the podcast content too. Done that before and went back and had to have listened to an episode again.

So again, it's, you know, - The, my time, I'll say Todd, in the last couple of flights that I've been on, on, uh, Alaska Airlines, I've, I am able to connect to wifi on the whole trip. Yeah. And prior to, to more, more recently it was blocked to, to play videos. Um, but now I can watch all videos from all sites, even YouTube right in the middle of, of the flight. - That must be an Alaskan Airlines thing, because vid, you can't get video on United.

- Well, it's, it's done through a partnership that Alaska Airlines has with, um, T-Mobile, where, you know, if you're a T-Mobile, - Their driver, their tech, their tech must be updated enough to get high enough bandwidth to allow people to do that on the plane. So they either have a starlink dish or something on there or - Something. Yeah. I think that, I think Elon mentioned that they were gonna be doing deals with the airlines, um, soon with starlink.

- Well, I know you, they - Could get them faster bandwidth. - I know United does not support video, so, - Well that's, that's been my past experience too. But I've been able to do something different than that over the last few trips. - But again, I think if, if we look at this holistically - Yeah. - And take out the whole YouTube equation whatsoever, I'm tired, sick, and tired talking about them. Um, it doesn't matter what you're doing in podcasting or on YouTube.

It doesn't matter what is the goal of your show. - Yeah. - Start with that and then build from there and figure out what strategy works best for you. And you can, and this is because, you know, you can do video on that on open RSS and there's more apps are starting to support it. And just like Captivate, and we've done the alternate enclosure support, you can put a link to your YouTube, uh, episode, uh, in, in your podcast episode posts, you know.

Mm-Hmm. . But again, though that is only largely supported in podcasting 2.0 apps, so if you want the experience - Yeah. You're not gonna get an Apple. You're - Not gonna get an Apple No. - In Spotify or any of those platforms yet. - So then, so then you need to market your show and where it's available and how it can be consumed. Mm-Hmm. and be able to tell people exactly which app to support them being able to watch you if that's your choice.

- Um, yeah. And then also there needs to be platforms that will support, uh, hosting through HLS streams too. So, you know, so you can put a link to an HLS stream into that alternate enclosure tag. - Yeah. Again, all they're doing there is grabbing the embed. There's no magic happening even. Yeah. Right. You know, they're just grabbing the embed and putting it on the page.

Yep. You, you can put your own embed by the way, on your own page and just cut and paste that, you know, that is, uh, something that is possible to do already. - Mm-Hmm. . - Yeah. Or in one, one post in your ess feed, you have a link to a video file and a link to an audio file. Right. - Well, you have a, a link to a alt, you have a link to a alternate enclosure. - Right. Yeah. - But again, if you want maximum reach, you don't, you separate those if you want to have two listings.

- Yeah. If you want to have like a, like, like this show has, right. If you were to do a search in Apple, if you're primarily, um, listening to the audio podcast of this, just do a search in Apple and there's a video edition version of the show. - But there's really only two reasons why I started doing video on Geekness Central before we started doing it on this show, which was then the Saturday Morning Tech show.

The reason I added video was I was recording at eight o'clock Hawaiian standard time doing a solo show. No co-host. And be honest with you, it got kind of boring by myself. - Yeah. That's, you want somebody to join you. - That's the only reason . Yeah. You know, that's the only reason. But now we've got all, we've got all this new stuff that's coming down the pipe with podcasting 2.0 and that interactivity can stay in the - Mm-Hmm.

, - Uh, Rick says, I look at your two mugs almost every week, even though I am just hear, just hear it. Because somehow it's more personal. - Yeah. - And you can see my face get red when I get pissed off at Rob. Right. Hey, by the way, you're, you've fed misinformation on the last show - I did - 2,112 SATs from Dave Jones. Bitcoin is not illegal or banned in India. That is fake news.

- Hmm. - Uh, 770 SATs from Steve Wilkinson YouTube and thumbnails my standing from YouTube experts as that highly successful channels spend as much time on thumbnails and tiles as producing the content. They're crucial question is this, if posting there without putting time into them is worth it. Now that's the challenge is, you know, do do you have the time to spend that time Again, if you're gonna have a YouTube strategy, you're gonna have to spend the hour creating the album art.

- Mm-Hmm. , - I hear, you know what, you know what I hear from successful YouTubers? They spend all week shooting video and then they spend three days editing, or two days editing, two full days editing. Mm-Hmm. to me, that's not life. I mean, that to that is misery and feeding the, the algo. Thank God there's no algo here on in podcasting. The logo is post once a week, get your episode out on the sa, you know, there's not too much stress in getting one episode a week out.

You know, that's, that's the logarithm on podcasting. And don't post and don't post five episodes a week because no one has time to listen to all five episodes. I don't listen to any daily show. One of the, one of the shows I like to listen to the most. I usually get about three quarters of the way through before the next one pops, and then I go listen to the new one. I don't get all the way to the end often or not so, but I definitely have a lot more time to listen than I do to watch.

And I don't wanna watch podcast content at home. I can consume that when I have other hours of content consumption. Mm-Hmm. just my 2 cents. Uh, 2,804 SATs from, uh, D Web SATs back is a great idea. Could see combining this with video, podcasting being a platform that YouTubers would be attracted to, especially, it takes power back from a single platform.

Uh, and you know, again, one of my favorite YouTubers don't know what he did, but he got demonetized last week and he was complaining about it on a show. And I'm thinking, I watched his last episode. How come he got demonetized? So, yeah. The thing is, here's my main thing, and, and, and Mike said it on the last show too, Mike had put a comment in, I don't trust Google. I really don't. Why did they get rid? I dunno. We - Can trust any of the big tech companies now. - I I don't trust them. Right.

You know, and that, that's why I go back to always saying, no matter what you're doing, have your own site, have your own.com, because I, I just don't trust them. Yeah. Um, yeah. And, you know, it's, and again, who's paying for this pr this New York Times piece? That's, I I, I'll be honest with you, I didn't weigh in, but I watched comments on, uh, a lot of different, uh, podcast channels and Facebook and so forth. Everyone was like, no, this is BS beep beep, beep, beep.

I'm the New York Times article about how quote unquote, you know, YouTube is a place for podcasting. No one was, no one was buying it. Nobody. So, - Yeah, I think it's, yeah. - Who's paying for that? - I'm not sure anybody's paying for it. Um, - You don't think there's hit ops going on? - Well, no, I, I suppose there could be some support from, from Google to, to pay for articles or something like that, that is pushing

an agenda. I mean, it's - Wasn't, wasn't the, wasn't the New York Times, weren't they the ones that were complaining that their investment wasn't really paying off? Or was that NPR someone was complaining? - Yeah. Yeah, it was, um, yeah, it was the New York Times. - Oh, kettle. Yeah. Interesting. - Well, it doesn't change, change the facts. Right. Um, you know, I think that really got back to the brand safety and suitability questions.

Right. Well, and I've seen other articles that are coming out and saying that too, that the brand safety platforms are, um, are now costing revenue on the part of journalistic properties. Increasingly, well, - Another, another win for open podcasting. - Well, I don't know that those two are directly connected, but I suppose you could Sure. - Well, you know, if it, you, okay, you're gonna give you the monetized or you're not. Yeah. But again, there's more to podcasting than advertising. Mm-Hmm.

- . - So Rick - Says, yeah, I see - Some. Rick says, what do you wanna bet Google paid for it? I would have no doubt. - I mean, a lot of the articles that you see in the mainstream magazines now are pay for play articles. I mean, I, I've seen reports that are saying that even to get mentioned in an article now are quoted in an article now, uh, these agencies are charging for that now. - Well, I, there's so many. I get probably 10 a week. Hey Todd, we'd like to cover your company over here.

Mm-Hmm, and great. What, what's the cost? Oh, there's no cost. Cost. That's - A thousand dollars. Right. - There's no cost. But yet we have this other deal to go along with this. Oh yeah. You know, 4,000, 5,000. So, and I don't pay for it. I don't pay to play. I don't, - Well, increasingly that's what's happening in all content. Now it's pay to pay to play. You know it's even happening at podcasting. There's hosts out there that are out there doing prison.

I mean, I've seen it myself at podcasting conferences. There are guys that will get up and say, you know, I'm charging all my guests, you know, a thousand dollars to appear on my show. You - Know, the thing I've been running into in interviews is I get the interview and then afterwards, Hey, we'd like to have a meeting with you, . Uh, well, yeah, what's the meeting for? Oh, we'd like to show you something. We're doing Uhhuh .

So you come in on the backside, you know, the interview is free, and, uh, you're trying to upsell me on the backside, and I always say no to those every time. - Yeah. And I've definitely seen an uptick in, um, just, um, open, I mean, just random pitches from companies via LinkedIn, probably more than I've ever seen before. It just, there's just a lot of companies that are desperate for business now. - Well, I don't do, - They're probably gonna get more.

So as the economy - Deteriorates, I shouldn't say I don't do pay to play. I did pay to play at London, you know. Well, of course. - So, I mean, I mean, that's not to say that these events, um, or these media properties don't need support. I think increasingly the advertising business isn't paying all the bills. - Right. So - That's what's driving people to doing these type of other revenue models.

- And one thing I will be very clear about when I'm in London and doing my presentation, I will say straight up upfront that, you know, I, I'm not gonna hide that the, the, the session's been sponsored. You know, I'm not, I'm not gonna hide that to the audience. I'm gonna be very, very upfront about that. But I'm also gonna do what I normally do. I'm gonna educate, I'm not gonna pitch. So, - Yeah, it's a fine line to walk, Todd.

I think if you're paying for a session, I think you are given a certain amount of license to pitch. - Yeah. But this is, and I think this is a certain vertical where it's well known that those are sponsored sessions. So it's, yeah. You know, I think it's all in one track. All the companies that take per spot are in the same room or whatever, I'm assuming. - So Yeah. As long as you're upfront about it Yeah.

You're, you know, you're there to talk about a particular platform or a particular, um, tool. Mm-Hmm. Right. To, to do things. Yeah. I did the same thing at the NABI did a workshop on Streamy Yard at the NAB show. Um, so, and actually did demos of the platform, um, upon a big screen and things like that. So, but it was very upfront that it was so, yeah. So, and I think we're gonna see more content like that happen at conferences too.

'cause the organizers have to, you know, bring in revenue Right. However they can. Yeah. I did see in the news here that, uh, it, it said some research came out from Nielsen and the Edison research folks, um, saying that, uh, um, that, that, uh, Americans are spending three times longer with radio than podcasts still. So the people are still listening to radio Todd. It says, however, for younger listeners, 18 to 34 time spent with podcasts and radio are nearly equal.

So it's like 37 to 45, so, right. So, you know, it's interesting, you know, things on the radio side don't move very fast, um, towards this migration over to podcasting, but it's, it's clearly moving that direction. Right. And is there anything else? Let's see. We're, is it three o'clock already? Yeah. - Yeah. - And it says only 12% of people in India are actually listening to podcasts.

The, uh, NPAC research, and it says, uh, 78% of existing podcast consumers in India only discovered podcasts less than a year ago. - Hmm. - So, this is also kind of a clue to what's happening outside of the - Us. But here's, that doesn't, that doesn't vote that, where does that number come from? Because that doesn't, that doesn't even make sense with Geo Sabin in, in Ghana having such huge impact and podcasts listening on those apps being as high as it is.

- Yeah. But is it in proportion to the massive population of the country? Is the That's the question. I mean, that's the world's largest country now, right? Yeah. It's like one, 1.4 billion people or something like that. I mean, 12% of 1.4 billion people is a lot of people . It's almost like the old population of the us. Right. So it's, um, but it is a little shocking.

And it, even if it's remotely true, that 78% just discovered podcasts in the last year may explain why we're seeing more perception in the industry that the growth in podcasting is really outside of the us. - Oh, we see, yeah. We see some countries racking up increases every month of 25 and 30% growth every month. - It's almost like we've matured here in North America, - But the numbers are small, you know? Oh, yeah. You know, when you, well, you know, it's like 12%, right?

Yeah. You know, and if you see, if you can see that type of increase month to month on small numbers, how long does it sustain that before the percentages start to squeak down? - So, yeah. And what's the market opportunity for podcasts in a country like India that has such a, well, - How many people in India speak English? Because the majority of the content is English. Uh, that's being in, you know, there's certain amount, I'm sure, of Indian content, but, and there's so many dialects there.

You know, we don't have a problem here. United States, everyone, majority of people in the United States can speak English, - Right. - Or Spanish. And, you know, what is, what is the population? You know what, let me look at this. What percentage acts of book of knowledge here of people in India speak English? Let's look 30%. So if the majority of the content going into the country is English, at the moment, - That's about 400 million.

- And it's probably, it's the, the, the survey said how much? 12%, right? Is that what they said? So 12%, uh, - Yeah. 12 plus 13. - Yeah. 12, 13% of 30%. That's 50% in penetration of content. Indi, I think, I think it's pretty awesome. I think the Indian numbers are fantastic. Now, when we start having native languages, native, native, uh, Hindi or whatever it may be being created in, uh, you know, maybe there's an opportunity there.

Maybe that's the conversion from English to Hindi or to whatever it is you want. You want to get more exposure, but then again, you gotta have content that the, that they wanna listen to. Yeah. Don't care about American politics. You know, do you have, what, what is content that they want to listen to? You know, again, it's, it can be varied way. It'd be interest to seeing where that breaks down in by category of content. - Yeah. - You know, what, what are, what are those folks listen to?

- I'm sure they have different interests than was typical in the us, but, um, - That's probably something that much different. That's probably something we could pull and, you know, some of the data would be micro data, but, you know, maybe we could get a little bit of an idea. - Mm-Hmm. , - Good night. Anita. 3:00 AM Yes. Time to kiss my pillow. 99.

- . Yeah. And from what I've heard, um, from folks that are building platforms in, in India, this kind of distinction between audio and video is not, I mean, it's all expected. - Oh, people that they should be doing both. - Well, it's just people love, love video as much as they, they love audio.

It's just, it's more of, you know, and I think that's the bigger takeaway, even from here, if we were to compare the percentage of content that's consumed in video versus the amount of content that's consumed in audio, which would win. - Oh, for sure. Video. - Right? So that is a trend line that's driving. What we're seeing happen in podcasting right now is, - Uh, again, because - People are increasingly expecting this medium to be available as video as well.

So - I, I think you have a lot fewer people doing podcasting if they are expected to do video or, or are made to think that they have to have video. Yeah. I think that completely shrinks the cr creator pool. - I don't, well, I guess it's up to the creator to decide if it's worth their effort to put into video if they have passion for, for video, or do they have passion for audio and video, or do they just have passion for just doing audio?

I think it's up to each creator to decide the path that they wanna go down. - I, - I can't say one way or the other if they're going to be successful. - I, I just, you know, my main goal is, you know, I want people, everybody's listening to this show. They, they know that the risk already of adding video, so we don't have to beiger this much further than we already have, or belabor this, or whatever the right word is. I'm making up English words here. - Well, belabor - Be labor.

Yeah. Beleaguer, belabor . - You can play with the words - Stuff. Just like people complaining how they say mata, I say made or Right. Right. Somebody says, I don't say mea or, right. - Well, it's meta actually, isn't it? - Ah, Mata. I don't care. You complain. - Giving up , it's whatever it is. - That's right. - Yeah. - Mita. Oh, God. - Right. - Me. Hit me in the ha hit me in the head with a hammer. - Uh, so when, when was the birth date of, um, blueberry?

Because I noticed that, uh, a c was celebrating their 10th birthday during - This past week. It, the, the idea probably the first meeting would've happened, uh, mid July, 2005, - 2000. Okay. - Because GoDaddy started advertising on the show, and the seed in my brain was dropped when the GoDaddy rep said, Hey, do you know the people that wanna advertise on podcasts? And of course, I knew I could get the tech podcast stuff going quick, but I got to thinking, you know, there's a bigger idea here.

So some episode in July, if someone wants to go back and listen to my archive and keep essential and go back and listen. But I basically did the call out on the show. Say, Hey, I'm looking for a lawyer, looking for MBA programmer and a graphics guy. You know, if you're one of those, one of those categories, uh, we're gonna have a have a phone call here in 10 days or so.

So probably, uh, I, I think there is a history document of when we actually formed a corporation, but I'm going to assume some, maybe in August of 2005 is when we actually 2005 Yeah. Filed things. - Got it. Yeah. Okay. So 19 years. - Yep. - And I think, uh, uh, Lipson was just, you know, a little bit earlier, - They Oh, they were earlier than Well, they made it. Yeah. They - Were like mid, I think, was it toward the end of 2004? - Oh, well, I was paying for hosting, man. It had to be.

- Yeah. It had to be toward the end of 2004, - End of 2004, early 2005, because I, you know, I was, I was under a lot of pressure by Mm-Hmm. Shoko because it was like five or 600 bucks a month as I was spending for hosting. - It was expensive to host your own show back then. Yeah. I mean, I, I had to buy my own co-located servers and - Everything. Yeah. And I was, and I was, I was doing a dance.

I was doing a, basically, I had basically had a whole bunch of domains that were tied to shared hosting accounts, and I had fake emails, and so I had like three Dream host accounts and three blue host accounts, and - Yeah. Didn't you bounce around a different, uh, every, - Every two host every three days, because - You'd burn - 'em out every three days? I was, I was running a script and updated the, uh, RSS speed with the new, with the new media URL.

- Yeah. 'cause you burned up all Yeah. All your bandwidth. - Yeah. Hundred, your plan 500 gigs every three days. And it, it was, yeah. It was just like, and it was, you, you, I, you know, I would pray it would last three days because then we'd get, right. 'cause if you burned it out, then you'd come under scrutiny. So you wanted to, you wanted to switch before you used all the bandwidth. So you'd get it down to like 20 gigs and make, make the script run.

So I go to bed at night and like, oh yeah, there's, there's, there's 50 gigs on there that'll last eight hours , and wake up in the morning and have the dreaded note from the hosting provider that you've run out of bandwidth. And you're like, um, man. And they're gonna look at the account. See what I, and I was uploading to eight different locations.

- Yeah. I was just curious if, how long you ran your show with your website and your media files being hosted on the same No, - I couldn't do it from the beginning. - You couldn't do it from the beginning. - Couldn't do it from, yeah. Well, maybe two episodes, because that's how I got . Um, the website, you - Did it for a couple of years. I did it for a couple years, and then I had to get two, two servers.

- So about April, no, March of oh five, I was using a shared hosting account with GoDaddy, and it was just getting hammered. Mm-Hmm. . And I called him and said, Hey, I, I, I need a bigger box. And gulp, you know, here was the price. I, I wasn't smart enough to run my own machine. So they had these virtual instances and they were horrible. I mean, they were absolute rotten, horrible. Um, and I was, I was cussing God on my show.

I'm cussing GoDaddy out because my shit, my, my website's like up maybe, maybe 75% of the time. The rest of the time it's, it's, you know, it's laying over dead petting like a dog. And, uh, and I'm just, it's trying - To deliver all the MP three files. - Oh, no, there was no mp threes just the web traffic, you know. - Oh, it was just the web traffic itself. - Yeah. Because the web traffic went from like 300 hits a week to like, you know, it exploded.

And it's, you know, it's fallen over when people are hitting the site. And I bitching the bottom on my show, and then I called him again. I said, this ain't working. Well, you gotta go to a dedicated server. So I moved to the lowest instance of dedicated server I had, and it spent like 15 or $1,600 or some crazy amount of money. And I didn't know how to run the box. I really didn't. And I think I, well, I hired somebody, some dude outta Ukraine to manage my server.

'cause I, I hadn't nearly a clue. I didn't even know how to set it up. And he set the, he set the server up and got the website up, got up. So it'd run, and this is before Angela was involved, because Angela kind of took some of that over. After he came on board, he helped me. And then, uh, and then we are good.

So when GoDaddy called me in June, I said, Hey, by the way, you need to go look at these episodes and make sure you still wanna sponsor my show, because I had not nearly a good thing to say. And she came back, oh, yeah, we still want to, you're all resolved now. You're good. Right? You're happy with us. I'm like, yeah. It wasn't happy with the cost. - Right. - And, uh, but never, I didn't host any of the media on any of those boxes because it just couldn't, and what I was Yeah.

- It would saturate the Yeah. The internet connection. - And, and what I was doing was, is I had, when I uploaded the first episode to the site that was in the, in the ability had left, I had the FTP running upload into seven other sites. So the media was being uploaded eight times. - Oh. - And it would sit over there, you know, and I might get four days out of one , you know, if I was lucky. Uh, Dreamhouse was probably the service that I used the most.

I I at least had three or four accounts over there. - Mm-Hmm. . - Um, and they were all five. Everyone was giving you 500 gigs of traffic. That was the - Yep. That was the cap. Right. - You know, and you couldn't, you couldn't get any more than that. So, and when Lipson came on board, I was like, oh my God. You know, thank you, Jesus. It is like, you know, I only gotta pay this much for this.

And it is like, I moved everything immediately to Libson hosting, but I still had everything on movable type. And, uh, so when Blueberry started, we didn't have hosting. We were just doing stats and advertising deals. And the hosting came later. I think the hosting came oh six or oh seven - Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I didn't move to Lipson at all. I had my own infrastructure. Yeah. So I didn't need Lipson. So, yeah. - And, you know, so, but yeah. Coming home, and that was why I got the mm-Hmm.

, I got the point in the finger because it was like, you know, she was like, you're spending how much a month? 'cause I'd been in Waco and I said, kind of like, you know, fibbed a little bit about the amount, but you know, she saw the credit card bills and, you know, doesn't take too long to look at, uh, a hundred, a hundred, 180, 60. And it's pretty easy to do the math, right? Yeah. - It's up. Yeah. Oh, it, it was not difficult to spend four or $500 a month server.

- Oh, no. It was, I think as high as I own, server was maybe 800. If after you added everything up, the dedicated server was still 130, 140 bucks a month. Just that alone. Mm-Hmm. . So, and it wasn't gonna talking about co-location, this was just, you know, some - Box. Yeah. And then I started wor working with you with your tech podcast network, because I had my own streaming servers. Yeah. Were dedicated streaming servers. And we were streaming your Yeah. Your shows on your network, right?

- Yeah. We were doing a 24 7 live stream. So, you know, we were doing all kinds of stuff in those early days. It was fun. , but, right, - Right. Yeah. Todd, did you see, see this in the, in, uh, in pod news too? I was talking about branded podcasts and how branded podcasts, uh, can be used for on hold audio for phone systems. Did you see this , uh, how audio turns waiting time into brand building opportunities.

- Great. Um, beauty Bubble says FAQ, according to the Free Press Journal, India will have 95 million podcasts monthly active users. So if you think about, what was the population? 12. Yeah, that's about right. But 12%, uh, 1.4 billion or whatever the population is. Mm-Hmm. makes sense. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. So big market. - Um, so Yeah. Yeah. You know, it'll be interesting. Yeah.

- So, you know, when people were hear about talking about video podcasting today, you know, can you even, you know, we were encoding audio at 16 kilobits, you know, because keeping the audio, you know. Okay. Well that sound good in 24, you know, 16 K mono. Yeah. We, yeah. We can squeeze a little more out. - Yeah. When I started working on that, um, back in 2005, streaming to mobile devices back for the company I worked for in Seattle. Um, we were streaming at, uh, I think it was seven,

eight k to mobile phones. . - You know, it's, it's funny too is because when I go and I have a list, I can open up a document in our system at Blueberry that shows me the bandwidth usage of all our customers. Mm-Hmm. . And, you know, and I don't even really get too excited till a customer hits petabyte when they hit a petabyte. Oh, okay. You know, that's a number, you know, you know, and they're moving, they're moving a thousand, you know, not a thousand, like 600 terabytes or something.

Like, ah, okay. You know, you, you don't even get really, it's now it's, and definitely those, you know, that's bandwidth that, that don't care what you say. Um, and I would imagine most podcast hosts today are sub penny per gig. Mm-Hmm. on bandwidth. You know, and that's another thing too, Robin, the new podcast host did not have to pay that. You know, it took us 10 years to get the sub penny. Yeah. You know, and people, their new entrances who had this - Pass a lot of traffic.

- You Yeah. And, and you get these new people. And matter of fact, what's weird is my bandwidth bill stayed about the same for the last 10 years. Mm-Hmm. , even though we've increased the bandwidth, this 'cause, I mean, now we get it cheaper, but in the now someone that's entering the space, they, oh yeah, we'll give you a, you know, a penny a gig, or half a penny a gig or something like that for Mm-Hmm. for bandwidth costs. They don't even have to fight for it.

They don't even have to move much traffic. And, uh, you know. - Yeah. - So, and we haven't raised prices. - I know that, I think we talked about that on a prior episode, how the whole podcast industry hasn't been following the inflation trends. - It's because my bandwidth bill's the same as it was 10 years ago. And, and be, - So your costs really haven't gone up - That much. You guys go up in labor and, you know, my health insurance goes up 13% and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. All that stuff goes up.

I mean, that's what's killing me the most is, you know, pay raises and employee pay raises is, is what it is. But healthcare costs good lord. - Oh, yeah. - You know, - And they're not covering as much either. . - Well, you know, we, we try to, that's, we're covering everything we covered before, but it's getting much harder. - Yeah. - Because it's, it's insane. I mean, yeah. And it's, it's compounding 7%, 8%, 12%, 7% you do that year after year after year.

And you look at the cost of healthcare and you're like, can we survive another 10 years of just healthcare cost increase? So at some point, something will have to give and we'll, and someone's gonna have to raise prices. Um, it just, it's just the way it is. But I laugh because people were bitching 10 years ago, about 20 bucks, and yet they're paying their booking agent for a thousand dollars, you know, a month. And I'm just like, we're the, we're the best deal in town.

- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if the cost of podcasting hasn't gone up in the face of, well, - Well, the cost of hosting and the cost of bandwidth has went down, but everything else has skyrocketed. Every other tangible cost has went through the roof. - Yeah. I think, - And just like - I keep increasingly hearing that the inflation is really impacting Yeah. Things like insurance, um, yeah. Food costs. And those are, those are the - Kind of things. So when it, when the, that really, it's impacting.

So when inflation is high, you know, I had to dig deep two years in a row to, to, and we're coming up on pay raises again in June, and I'm gonna have to decide, okay, how much pool of money do I have per pay raises in order to try to keep our employees ahead of inflation? - Mm-Hmm. , - You know, if you look at the rate of inflation, if I have to give an average, let's say a seven or 8% pay raise at just a minimum, and developers cost a lot more than that.

- Oh, yeah. - Um, you know, just to stay up with the rate of inflation. Yeah. It's, - That's, that's the cost right there. Yeah. That's the big increase. Right. - And you get bigger, you need more people, you know, so, you know, it's just a, it's just the way we do business. It's, you know. Yeah. And we, and we've made a rate, we've made a point of not hiring overseas help. So, you know, I'm paying American wages on every employee of the team.

Mm-Hmm. . So where some of my competitors have a majority of their staff outside the United States and cheaper and cheaper markets, I don't think lives, I think lives in mostly US based, but I can't say the same for everyone else. - Yeah. They bought a European company. So that - Make so doesn't doesn't necessarily mean that's cheaper. You know, European, the wages in Europe are pretty high too. So, but I'm talking about people that are using developers in India and other locations.

I have teams offshore. - How did you see this, that, uh, twit, um, with Ale Laport isn't going to be using a studio in - Nope. They're - Petaluma anymore. - Nope. They're pulling the plug. Yes. You know, that first building he built was pretty impressive. Then they moved to another place. - Yeah. I've been to that building. Bef - You've been to the second one? You went to the first one. - No, no. I, yeah, I just went to the first one. Right. I can go - To the second.

So my question is, why did he not, you know, my rent here, I, I've got a pretty good lease. I know what my increase percentages are gonna be annually. 'cause it's tied very, very tight to the, to the lease. Well, you know, he paid all that money. Why didn't he buy land and have a building built and instead of renting? Or did they, - I think he gotta think about where Leo came from. Yeah. Uh, his roots were in kind of old, old media to some degree.

So he thought about the stuff, you know, he, he, he was really one of the early video podcasters. Right, right, right. That really kind of plowed the ground. I think a lot of the things that you, you did or have - Done. Yeah. It was because of Leo came - From things that you saw Leo doing Yeah. On the video side. - Right, right. Uh, right there, right there. Right. Yeah. That was Leo's, he, he called it, I called this a Skype of source. He called his, uh, no, I called mine Ohana Source.

He called his Skype Asosa. - Right. - So, yeah. Yeah. That, that, that was purely stolen from Leo. Absolutely. - . Yeah. And I was always a little bit concerned about Leo because his network was so dependent on Leo. Right. It's like Leo was like on all the shows and did all of this stuff. Yeah. That's, I know he's gone through a lot of staff and things like that. - Well, you know, - Over - The years, Le le Leo has, you know, he let Tom Merri go, well, why?

You know, that was, that was a rising star. You know, and Tom's very successful on his own at this point. So there's a lot of, you know, I, I can't question the man's business dealings. I can't see his books, but, you know, I don't think I'd have fired Tom Merrick. - Yeah. - Or let Tom Merrick go or whatever that arrangement was. - That was a long time ago. - A long time ago. But he's done that two or three, three times. He's had some rising - Well, it's just that the whole network was,

is really built on Leo's brand. Right. And, - And Leo has been, and Leo's been thinking about retiring for a long time. - I know. And it's like, he can't, I mean, is his company gonna live on, - I I, I think he's, you know, I think this is, he's not doing the radio show no more. I know the person that spilled a lot of his slots. So - This is the path, I think to his, his retirement. I think it's gonna Yeah. Mostly shut down. I - Think.

I would think so too. So if you're part of the TWIT Nation, come on over. Like Eaton Central. Right, - Right. - Or the tech ranch with, uh, Marlo Anderson. I - Don't know. I suppose that they can keep it alive as a kind of a virtual production type of a - Thing. Why not? - I mean, just like we do here. So keep your costs down, be more efficient, you know, let your employees work from home, you know, which is what he's doing. - My rent here for the studio

that I'm in is a thousand dollars a month. So - Still a thousand dollars a - Month. It's a thousand dollars a month. That's not including electricity, which is about 180. - Yeah. - Gas in the winter is about 60. Insurance is 140 a month. - Mm-Hmm. , - Um, internet 240 a month, you know, so it's not, you know, you're a couple thousand dollars into this every month. So will I be here forever? I don't know what I'm gonna do with all my stuff if I'm not, I'm gonna be honest with you.

- I mean, what's interesting about it to some degree is that Leo was very early to the in studio productions. Yeah. Type of, uh, video podcasting kind of stuff. And it's in interesting, it feels like the industry is moving back towards doing more in, in studio, multi-camera shoots, increasingly with the shows that are seen as podcasts, the big popular ones on platforms like a YouTube or what, whatever.

Um, but for, you know, for him to kind of go the opposite direction is kind of an interesting kind of contrast. - But, you know, in all honesty, uh, the front half of the building is my office. I work, and that's where I come Monday through Friday. Right. The demo room doesn't get near as much or the green screen room. Both of those get very little activity. And then I have the editing room. I could probably, if, if, if, if I wanted to squeeze this, um, I could probably do this in a 20 by 20.

Um, I'm in a 13 by, I think it's 13 feet wide. No, it's more than that. About a thousand square feet. 1100 square feet is what I meant. I could probably do this in 500 square feet. - So would there be any particular situation where you would consider just moving all the stuff you do, um, home or back to your reside? - Well, it's a still bandwidth challenge there, even with starlink, so, oh, it - Is?

- Okay. And, you know, I've got a loft, so, you know, probably, you know, you know, what does the future hold? Yeah. Maybe I, I buy a house and then have two bedrooms of it. Be one, one studio, one work, you know, maybe that's what I do. Buy a three bedroom house or something like that. - Mm-Hmm. - Or, you know, who knows? You know, I don't know. We'll see.

You know, the, I have a new owner of this building, so, you know, but the lease I have is being honored and if he comes over to me and says, Hey, hey, I heard a rumor that a restaurant's going next door, so that could cause noise levels to go up in here. Mm-Hmm. potentially. So we will see if, you know, so far it's very quiet here, but again, if a noise goes up, then I probably, I can't do the show 'cause there's too much background noise coming through the wall.

Time will tell. Yeah. Alright, Rob, we're at the bottom of the hour and I've gotta get on the road. - Alright. Alright, Todd, - What do you guys want us to talk about? Tired of? Two. I'm kind of tired of you two. - Brand safety and suitability. - Oh God. Kill me. - , - Uh, no show next week. Yeah. So, uh, you have one week break from us Geek News, I mean, [email protected]. At Geek [email protected] on Mastodon at Geek News on X or Twitter.

Um, Rob - On x, Twitter at Rob greenley, uh, rob greenley.com. Myself, uh, you can send me an email, uh, rob [email protected] if you wanna reach out to me for anything. And, uh, I, I do my live podcast tips with Rob Greenley every Thursday night at 7:00 PM Eastern, uh, 4:00 PM Pacific. So come over and join me on YouTube or LinkedIn or Twitter x or whatever. And it's also an audio and video podcast too.

- There you go. And go over to media show.com and uh, go over there and, uh, follow or subscribe. Rick says, my studio serves as a green screen studio, set office and edit room. I think a lot of podcasters doing video operate the same way. And that's why I did in Hawaii, Rick, it was, I was in a single room, 10 by 10 spare bedroom, uh, that my son now occupies. So, uh, yeah, I I could go back to that too if I had to. For sure. Okay, everyone, thank you so much.

Thank you for being here. Uh, we'll see you in two weeks, everyone. Take care. We'll see you next time. Bye.