Todd and Rob in the afternoon. Hey. Afternoon delight. With Todd and Rob. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Here we are. We're back in the studio, back from you being stuck in Florida. I know I got teased because it's like, getting stuck in Florida, and I'm talking to people up in the Northeast and I'm like, oh, you know, it's hard to feel too sorry for me. Yeah. Because it actually warmed up, right, where you were at? Well, no. It actually stayed pretty cold, actually.
It it was in the the forties, down there, and at night, it was getting down into the thirties. So I felt like I I was back at home. You know, I I packed when I went to Podfest, I put in 2 long sleeve shirts and all my summer wear. I put three three pairs of shorts, some pants, and I didn't even look at the weather report down there. And I was like, what the I froze. If you don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about Podfest. Both of us were down in Orlando at the Podfest Expo,
about a week ago. And we froze. Right. Oh my god. It was crazy. But, anyway, you you made it back home after winter again. Yeah. Well, hopefully, spring is right around the corner here, and and and we start thinking more about the the New Year and also, you know, what's in store for the next, you know, I guess, eleven months, I suppose. We're almost through the first month already. Yeah. It's it's it's pretty amazing. I've been, I guess, for a better word. What's the better word? Slammed.
And we're doing a new, video series, and I've done 4 interviews so far this week. I've got 4 next week. So I'm front loading a whole bunch of interviews. I've had a number of folks on, and it's it's, it's fun to talk to people that, have a clue. Yeah. It is. Well, you probably saw that, we're gonna have the the fellow that's in charge of, Adobe podcasts on the on the show, you know, either next week or the week after. So that's that's coming up. So it'll be interesting to
talk to him. Yeah. I'm I'm looking forward to that because I, you know, I I know what they have. I'd like to know what's coming. Alright. Of course. If they're willing to talk about this. You know, sadly, I'm sitting on something I can't talk about that's coming tomorrow or yeah, tomorrow or Friday. From them or from from your platform? From Apple. Or both. Oh, from Apple. Yeah. Apple's got something big there. They're about to announce, but I I'm I'm under NDA.
Well, to not ask any details I don't even don't even ask spot. Don't even ask, Rob. Is it a good thing? Yeah. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's a good thing? Yeah. Okay. It's a good thing. Something that's sorely needed? Or It's a good thing. I'm just leaving it that. Okay. So how will we find out? Apple Apple will announce it. Everyone will get their probably an email. I'm I guess. How are they how are they doing? News or something like that. Yeah. Hear about it, you think?
I I don't know. I again, Apple does not share their PR strategy with me. Yeah. That's true. All I've known is I know when I can talk about what's coming. Well, and I wanna talk about that a little bit, in in relation to 1 specific platform. So definitely stick around for that. Oh. So it's an interesting conversation. Oh, it's that's that's oh, I bet you I know which platform we're talking about. Well, I created an outline, so it's it's in there. You didn't email me the
outline. I didn't see it. Yeah. I did. Oh, did you? Yeah. I sent it to your When did you send it? Three minutes before we started? Or No. No. No. I sent it a probably a couple of hours ago. Oh, I Yeah. I think it I I went to your Blueberry account. Oh, okay. So let me go over to that account. I'm sending in another And then you probably have I mean, I've got, like, 3 email addresses for you. Maybe 3. Yeah. So I so I I I have it open now. But I guess, you know, we can start off with
podcast hall of fame. How'd it go? Ah, I thought it went I thought it went well. I thought it went a lot, smoother and was a better production and just the whole thing just went off smoother this year than than last year. I mean, it's not without still some some rough edges that need to be, you know, filed down a little bit. But each each year, we appear to be making progress on this, and it keeps getting better. And and so I felt bad for Gordon.
He got off it. I think he got off his script a little bit 1 time. I just kinda giggled. He did. Yeah. But overall, I was like, do I go on stage or or not? And we had to back off. And, yeah, That all got fixed in postproduction. So whatever you saw on the, Yeah. On the public video. It went great at the event. It went perfect. It went perfect. It did. And, the stories were good from the inductees. And, you know, there was a high number of folks that participated. Not that many video
acceptances. There was a few. Some because they hadn't, you know, they basically their whole life burned down literally. Yeah. Lance Anderson Yeah. Down in LA lost his studio. Yeah. Right. So So yeah. That's tough stuff. Yeah. It is. But, so what's what is the future of the podcast hall of fame, Rob? Well, I would like to, you know, really focus on building, a a larger kind of organization around it from the standpoint of
getting more people involved in it Mhmm. And getting more people providing input on it, like nominees and also more people that can vote. Because 1 of the the challenges of this is that if I'm going to expand it internationally, which I would like to do, I think we're it's still maybe a a little early to think that that's something that will have a a big impact on even next year's event, but I think that's the direction that things are gonna move towards.
And and to be able to do that, I'm gonna need a much bigger base of people to participate, at various levels around the world too. And to have people from all sorts of different countries involved on, like, maybe the board or at some level of a of a of a committee that can kind of give me and give the whole organization feedback on, you know, who should we be nominating from all
over the world. Because I certainly don't have deep knowledge on the history of podcasting in in Thailand or in in any other country around the world, actually. So
so that's that's a big challenge. But from an organizational, just operational side of it, I think, yeah, I think just getting, more content built around the the hall of fame, on an annual basis kinda, ongoing kind of, kind of function of the of the platform and really to support kind of I think the bigger mission of the Hall of Fame is to is to honor and and showcase, folks that show real leadership in the podcasting space and want to, further its its goals and and really have an inspirational
kind of opportunity for for others to learn from. You know, this probably wouldn't work with the current, you know, alignment with podcasts, but it'd be interesting to see if you could do it international at the podcast show in London. If you could do, you know That's an interesting idea. Do 10 do 10 in America, do 10, international because there surely again, I I again, I don't know the international base. In in UK, there's surely 10. But Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, definitely in
Europe, there's definitely Yeah. So if someone's listening and you are outside The United States and you've been aggravated, where's my button here? Don't eat meat, James Cridland. If you are, outside of The United States, why don't you help us with that list of those international podcasters or groups or again, it's 2 segments. It's podcasters and those that have supported podcasting.
But that doesn't exclude a podcaster. So if a podcaster has done organizational things and been a facilitator in the industry, that's kind of a separate category from being just a straight up podcaster. And if the first the first piece is starting to accumulate the worthy names, and building a list, that's nothing can happen international until we have a list. And, you know We also have people from all those countries, voting. And and there could be a hybrid model
the first year. There could be Yeah. I don't wanna say this in this way, but there could be, let's pick them. You know? Pick pick the first ten, you know, that are most deserving. There might even need to be not even need to be a vote the first year. But again again, I, you know, I don't wanna make make kingmakers here, but something has to kick the kick the can down the road, and then talk about a partner to be able to do a a show outside The United States. Yeah. It's like really, it's like
1 of the challenges. It's like any other election. Right? Yeah. You have to have a large enough pool of people that can have knowledge of the candidates Mhmm. For them to be able to have an influence on on the vote. Because I did have some international nominees in the list of possible, candidates to be induction. Yeah. The problem is very few of them got any votes. So Because nobody knew who they were. Right. Right. Because the the the knowledge about them just wasn't there.
And I don't really know a % that's the reason or if it was more that there were just other people on the list that were definitely stood out, right, as people that really needed to be inducted. And that's that's part of the the struggle of this transition. It's just gonna be and it even be maybe next year that it it does still lean a little bit heavy towards the North America market. Again, it's not gonna all of a sudden, you know, be 11 or 10 or 12, inductees that are from outside of The US.
Yeah. I think it's still maybe a little premature for that expectation. Well, you know, I think it's been in what I will say in my regard as far as and this is outside of the podcast awards, but, my phone's ringing again. And in regards to businesses Mhmm. We've had more calls in Jan. 0 than we had in Aug. 0, Sept. 0, Oct. 0, Nov. 0, and Dec. 0. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So, what's the context of the calls, on average? Businesses and different podcasting services. Big
businesses to get started. Work with with Blueberry? Yeah. Well, you know, they're they're shopping. They're talking to one, two, 3, 4 players getting bids. You know, anything from probably minimum 5 shows to like 20. So, you know, it's any it's like, you know, it's like instead of starting with 1 and baby steps, so we're gonna do 5 or we're we're launching 20. So, you know, this is it tells me that there is some money coming back on the business side.
Same thing internationally. I've had some international calls too. It probably goes into the, you know, the topic of things things going global. Yeah. It's it's it's definitely this to me is refreshing, because, you know, come about year, I was like, what is going on? You know, and so these are these are organizations that are not monetarily focused from a monetization standpoint. They're information focused. And here's the here's the real kicker. They want nothing to do with video.
They want audio podcast. Like, I keep asking is video part of your and they can say, not now. It's too much of an undertaking. So from my perspective, you know, for my business, you know, it's very, very simple when there's not a this additional video component. They'll be supported, then you have to have the, you know, the the talk. Or why would they be talking to you about a video conversation? Well, I just ask. I'm just I ask
if they Just curious? Yeah. Well, they you know, everyone now that has a podcast is immediately you know, you support video podcasting. Right? And, well, yes. Of course. So, you know, that's just part of the discussion. But I I said, are you going to do video? And I said, no. Not in the beginning. I do I do think that there's a lot of differing views on on video right now going on in the medium, and there's, and it's, you know, it's always been part of podcasting.
But it's it it's just what I mean, at what level and who needs to do it and all those conversations are increasingly what's coming up. And though I do think, you know, this this global, kind of focus that that we're coming into is is very, very interesting. And I think it's important, I think for the the health of the
podcasting space. And I think in the show today, you're you know, there's gonna be some common themes, right, that keep coming up, over and over ago, at least on this show about what's going on in the market. And and it can be a little confusing,
Todd. I I mean, it's like, you know, 1 side of the industry is saying this, the other side of the industry is saying something else, and we're getting anecdotal evidence from this big player and that big player that is but the I guess podcasting has always been like trying to corral stray cats. You just can't really get your arms around the whole industry to really understand what's going on Well because everything is going on. Well, I'll I'll say this, you know, 1 thing to say about Google,
they they weren't nothing but cunning. They they were more brutal than Spotify was. If you if you look at what they accomplished by killing They could continually they they kill they killed Google Podcast purposely purposely to move the conversation to YouTube. So, you know, it's a brilliant PR move that has paid off. And, but, you know, I I think there's a little I'm seeing a little pullback.
I'm not discounting the importance, but I'm seeing in conversations I'm having a little Little pullback. A little pullback. Yeah. A little pullback. And to be honest with you, especially from those, there's 2 conversations. If you if monetization is a focus, video's on the plate on the on the table. If if video if monetization is not on the table, then it's not it's not a discussion. So
it's kind of funny. I'm like, okay. Good good luck getting qualified over there to earn money and get collect your 50¢.
But, you know, I understand the strategy. I'm not I'm not gonna you know we don't need to hash it out no more although we have gotten some feedback, from the audience saying put talking about video on the show so I I think we you know I think we have to take it as it comes, from that standpoint but I I you know, it's, there was something that was in pod news today about commutes, and maybe commutes are back up a little bit and how people are listening in their car again more. Going back to
the office. Yeah. Going back to the office. Federal workers, you know, good luck with that. Yeah. And but please listen in. You know, you get your podcast updated. But here's the conversation that you'll find very interesting. I was at an event, and a lady asked me, what do you do? And I said, I I work in the podcasting space. I I run a podcast podcast hosting company, a full service podcasting business. Oh, great. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I'm like, oh, good. So she says, I I love a lot
of podcasts. I didn't say listen. I love a lot of podcasts. She said, it's on YouTube. Right? I said, no. I'm a I have a I have a traditional audio podcast. It's on all podcast apps, and and I didn't know what kind of a phone she was holding. And I said, if you have an iPhone, I said, just right on the phone, you can just click on the podcast app and you can you can find my show. She goes, I have an Android. And I'm like, fuck. I'm because I would originally said, well, Google Podcasts
is there for you. So instead, we had to go back to the old conversation of, well, you should grab a podcast app, and I've got a few you recommend. And she goes, well, I'll just she's you're not on YouTube. I'll just catch you on YouTube. So there is where Google has won the argument and is driving the car. So all Android users and all Android app makers need to understand
what they're up against here. And I just thought it was an interesting antidote of the and I then I asked her, I said, so do you watch podcasts, or do you listen to podcasts? And she goes, only watch. I said, you don't listen to them while you're doing dishes? Oh, no. I watch. And I said, do you do you watch any podcast that have a static screen? She goes, that's not a podcast. That's just audio. I thought, uh-huh. So
the argument flip a roo, Todd. The the argument 6 you know, so it was it kinda proved my point to it, and it just made me kinda realize that because app I mean, Google controls the phone. So those of you that are Android, you guys need to double down on your promotion of your apps to to, to Android devices. That's why we've now re that's last year when Google Podcasts went away. That's why we re upped the ante into
subscribe by android subscribe on android.com. We made sure all our apps were up to date and everything was working because now we're watching click throughs again. And that traffic has dramatic I mean, it went like this, Robert. For those of you listening, it went straight up. The traffic to that website peaked out again because Android users were looking for an app, a podcast app, because their app went away.
So brilliant brilliant marketing on Google standpoint, you know, on what they've done and set us back. Yeah. I would agree, Todd. They've been successful over the last year to kinda shift the conversation as, you know, YouTube is the number 1 place to find new podcasts. Right? Mhmm. They've they've been able to successfully shift that conversation. But but at least in 1 listener interaction, they're not watching your static album art. Okay? So Right. So That's true.
You've got a note here. Samsung podcast platform shutdown. That happened a little while ago. It did, but it's more of a kind of like a a theme to some degree, that I I spotted. I know Spreaker has done the same thing. It hasn't been talked about, but they they really pulled back from their listening Really? Too. Yeah. Do they have video? No. Oh. But but think about that from the standpoint of they were acquired by, you know, iHeart Well media. So
so iHeartMedia is a consumption platform. Right. So they don't want you listening on Spreaker. They want you on iHeart. I don't think that they wanted to emphasize the the listening app side of Spreaker as a competitor to iHeart. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So so that the there's oftentimes reasons for all these things that that that happen, but I think that the Samsung one is Money money money money. Well and I think, Todd, you probably agree with me. The approach that Samsung took Oh,
this it was horrible. Was horrible. They had 0.00001 market penetration. So it no loss on anybody's part. Right. It was horrible. And and then the other 1 I wanna talk about, and I know James Cridland, has talked about this 1 repeatedly over the last couple months is TuneIn. Yeah. And I've got a fair amount of history with TuneIn too as far as knowing and trying to get them embracing podcasting for many years now.
But they they basically have let go of all their podcast dedicated staff, and they, basically haven't accepted any new RSS feeds, into their platform, for over a year now. Worked yeah. We're removing them from our distribution. Actually, we're leaving it up with a note that they're not taking any more submissions, and we're leaving in there for those folks that have current listings still on tune in. But the CEO has stated this is, Richard Stern who's never really been a advocate for podcasts.
He's he's always kinda taken a negative tone around podcasts for many years now, but but he stated that, updating podcasts in TuneIn is mostly only gonna be done through their partner creator, partnerships. That where it feeds money. Well, yeah. I mean, they have a team that goes out and sides signs deals. Right? Yep. And and in this case, 1 of their key providers is iHeart. Oh. So so we may see, you know, any new podcast come in through the iHeart platform.
So when you submit to iHeart, that may help you get into to tune in. But iHeart has been notoriously, horribly slow in taking shows. We see month, two months for shows to get approved on iHeart. It's horrible. That whole ecosystem is kinda broken. And and they're basically you know, the CEO was quoted in saying he complained, saying that there's no revenue to them for adding podcasts in tune in and that they get no or very little listening to podcasts on their platform.
Well, I think there's some maybe some good reason for that. Yeah. I think so too. The the Right. Second class citizen. Well, it is. It's a deemphasized media area on the platform. Yeah. Plus the platform is really, you know, live streaming. Really. Yeah. 96% of the listening is live audio on the platform. Which they can make money on. Right. They can they run advertising. Ads. Right.
Yeah. And and this on demand thing that the, you know, the the cool kids and the and the younger kids wanna do is is not as favorable to their expectation of their user base. So but their app is in cars and stuff like that. So, you know, I don't tend when I use the tune in app, e even in my own vehicle, I tend to listen to streaming music stations, not go find a podcast. If I'm gonna go listen to a podcast in my car, it's
gonna be an Apple podcast. Yeah. So there's probably good good reason for this. So pull pull pull back on distribution points. Yeah. At least, you know, in in in re in reality It's more settling out of the dust. Right? I mean, I think all these folks that saw this shiny light of an opportunity like Samsung to get into podcasting is it's just all kinda settling out as people look at their budgets and they look at their staffing and and see what's bringing
results. You know? And I think that's the era that we're in right now is is, hard work, merit, and results. It's what everybody wants now. And, oftentimes now, it's all about, you know It's everybody on the team is all about bringing in revenue. It's revenue, baby. If you're a company owner, even my company, are we doing this? Does this lead to revenue? Does this help us grow? Right. I have to ask those questions. In this economic
period Environment. Right. You have to be where are the dollars coming from, and then how can I make it better so that we keep the current customers and we attract new ones? And that was the conversation that I had with Microsoft when I was working there too when back when I was the, the podcast business manager, for Xbox back in those days was, you know, if we're gonna invest a bunch of developer resources into this and staff and stuff, there there has to be, you know, some sort
of revenue model that's coming in. So I proposed a bunch of options on that. But, at the end of the day, I think they just assessed that it wasn't, wasn't enough to justify. You know, the I'm gonna lose my train of thought here when it comes to money. Oh, I know what it was. Meanwhile, Spotify just signed a new deal with a music group that is gonna cause Spotify's subscription cost to go up. Uh-huh.
So they made a deal with them because, hey, give us some sugar for playing this so that we can still allow the the artist to starve, but pay us, and yet podcasters get nothing. So, you know, when is this gonna when is when is there gonna be a reversal? When are podcasters gonna start waking up and saying, hey. You're not taking care of me. I'm not gonna take care of you. Will that happen? I doubt it.
Well, Todd, another big uber, kind of large trend that I'm seeing in the industry too is that this relatively small group of really big shows is really having a big impact. Right? Yeah. And they're bringing in a lot of revenue. And so, like, the top maybe the top 2 or 300 shows out there Yeah. Bringing in massive money. Are garnering, you know, half of the overall listening audience. Well, that's the way it's I don't think they're garnering half of listening audience.
They're garnering half of the revenue or 3 quarters. Well, I think Tom Webster's actually posted about this, like, last year saying that that top 50 podcasts are are taking the majority of the audience. And so it does make me wonder as we look at this transition from legacy media over to the Internet creators being the mainstream media now, which I think we can clearly say that the audiences have made their choice, and it's not necessarily to spend a lot of their time on
cable television. Right? So so we're seeing this massive shift. And what was going on in that time frame was more exclusivity. Right? Was always the business model of the media companies. And that's that's an interesting kind of paradigm to maybe what be somewhat is going on here is that we're seeing, a a new type of mainstream media start to form, and it's forming around companies that started originally as podcasts, but are
also branching out into video too. Right? So so are we shifting towards huge audiences going towards this online distribution strategy versus being on cable television as the future? And it raises the question as well. What's the opportunity for those that are not considered to be in the top 500, right, shows? What is the opportunity that's left behind, and how do we make that pool of impact and audience bigger than just the top 2 or 300
shows. Right? Right. How do we keep growing new creators into this medium? Because I would hate for us to fall back into this paradigm of being just like mainstream media again. You know, you know, with the heavy ad loads, those kind of things, those trend lines are also happening too, which is comes out of legacy media. So so I just worry, Todd. What's your thought on that? Do you feel that happening somewhat too?
Well, you know, I I I was trying to bring it up, but access having a having a fit with my browser right now. I wanted to show you something I captured yesterday Let's see if I can get it to this is bizarre. I've never seen this do this on on x before. Look look what's happening with my screen. Reload. Reload. Reload. I Wow. That's weird. Yeah. So who knows? We got something going on with the browser here. Let me shut the browser down and come back to it.
What I think so yesterday, the, the new administration's press secretary, I hope you heard this or not, She basically announced we now have a seat at the table in the Press Room for a she called it new media. Well, the first one that she listed when she mentioned that was podcasts. That's right. And And then blogs, which I was surprised she said that. Our our web traffic yesterday spiked, Rob. We had about 300000 hits on the new media show website yesterday
because people were googling new media. Oh. And they found our site and so we had this hammered. We got hammered for about two hours yesterday. So so if you're a new subscriber because of the press secretary, welcome. Right. Right. Right. So the, so, yeah, she specifically said podcast, but, you know, in their mind, podcasts are these YouTubers, you know, they're not about the audio podcasters. So I'm hoping that some industrious audio only podcasters apply.
It's it's gonna end up being a Dan a Bongino or 1 of those folks is gonna get approved to get a seat at their, you know, at at the press secretary table. No? And, of course, they did preface that with you have to pay your own way. So it's gotta be someone that, you know, is either in DC or, you know, kind of it has has a budget. Yeah. Or has a team member in the area or But they only gave them 1 seat. You know, all the other press has got like 30 or something. That's a pretty small
room for what I get. But you know, you they have like this pool the pool, you know, people that are permanently seats and then they have a pool of people that can come in on a periodic basis. Yeah. And stand around the perimeter. Yeah. Or or be in the back row whatever it may be. But that to me oh, there we go. It's working now. Okay. Let me log in here. It's probably gonna ask me to authenticate. I don't have my phone on me. Yes. Of
course. My phone is on the other side of the room, so I can't log in to x, without getting off the mic here. The so there I guess going back to your thing here, there is and has been a major opportunity for anyone creating original content. YouTubers, podcasters, TikTok, well, we'll see if it survives. There is a huge opportunity because and especially considering the, you know, 400 some thousand active shows or whatever the number is today in Podcast Index, and I haven't looked.
That's a relatively small number as compared to the 35 or 80 or hundred million or million or whatever his channels on YouTube, but only 25 get promoted, or a thousand get promoted. You there's huge opportunity here now. And in my opinion, this this is the time to double down. Double down on audio, not just because I'm pro audio, but it's it's it's time to double down. There's I think there's this huge, huge, huge opportunity here as as people shift.
I think there's a mindset change that's happening as well. There's been a walkaway of some content online. There's definitely been a walkaway from mainstream media. There's been a walkaway from news content on YouTube that was got decimated after the election. I think there's a huge opportunity. At the same time, I think YouTube will be spending big, big money. I don't know if I said this on the last show or not, but I think YouTube is going to dump a pile of
cash and try to make some kingmakers. They're gonna try to be a kingmaker. I I don't know if that answers your question, Rob, but I I I still think there is a Well, I just think that there's 2 there's 2 ends of the spectrum now. And 1 is these really, really big carriers, right, that that have shifted from network television over to online, and they a lot of them took their
audiences with them to the online realm. And and now I'm having to downvote stuff because now the the Alago is feeding me a whole bunch of stuff that I've run away from. It's feeding me mainstream media clips. On what platform? On YouTube. On YouTube. It's for it's it's shoving the shit that I was watching before that I was paying
for. It's now shoving that stuff into my Alago feed because I listen to a podcast or I listen to a YouTube channel with this associated type of content that I wanted to hear from a human being and not a talking head. And they said, because, oh, you're listening to talking head, and you must wanna listen to this this 3 digit or 4 digit or whatever the letter channel numbers are now for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News. I'll so it was shoving about the cable channel. Yeah. It was shoving that stuff
well, mainstream media. Shoving that stuff into my YouTube feed, and I'm like, no. I don't want it. Get it out of my feed. I don't want I run away from this. Don't force it on me. And so for me, I actually the other night, it got so bad. I was just like, do I have to reset my account? Can't get away from it. It was it was shoving this type of because I wasn't my subscriptions were caught up, and my home page was just 1 thing after the Fox, NBC, ABC, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
And I'm like, kill me. I don't wanna watch these people. Though I think that this shift away from, cable cable networks, cable television Is this gonna drive these bigger media companies to put a lot more energy into making and distributing, longer form content on the online platforms? Well, that's what that's it's already being proved by what they were trying to shovel at me. There was stuff that was thirty minutes long. These weren't shorts.
These were It's con content I I think it's still yet to come. But Oh, re new content. That is that was previously done primarily for cable. Cable subscribers, they're gonna push over into YouTube. I think that's coming. I'm not sure it's fully Where where they gonna make their money? You know, they don't be ad ad revenue. It's gonna be embedded ads. It's not gonna make like everybody else. But it's not gonna make up for the carriage fees. No.
It's not. It's not. They're not they're not gonna get the same money. That's why they have to trim their staffs. They're gonna have to be more like a a scrappy online Internet. How many did CNN fire here recently? They fired a bunch. Right? I heard something about that. Yeah. And and some of the anchors are leaving, and and so Well, some of the some of the anchors were the reason for their rating decline. Right. But these bigger networks do have some advantages making Oh, yeah. Of course.
Because they've they've been around a long time. They have a lot of brand awareness. They got they still have some budget. Right. So if they take an Internet primary strategy, they could probably continue to do well, but they will not continue to do well unless they adopt what the audience is is expecting. True. And also The truth. The monetization approaches that that the successful folks are utilizing. So like I said, great time to have a podcast.
And, consequently, their staff levels are gonna have to be dramatically reduced. They're gonna have to be more flexible in how they produce their shows to keep the cost down. So, Rob, you might have a job as a grip at, 1 of these companies that's downsizing. Oh, yeah. Would it be a grip? You you you move from podcast, go into mainstream media and teach them the new media way. Right. Right. You can be a associate producer. Oh, no. I don't know that they it's gonna be a big shift for them. I
think they get it. Yeah. But I also think that, it's gonna be a this is gonna be a lot smaller. Here's who here's what's funny. Networks. Here's what's funny is be the reason that they get it is video to video. Right? They're they're they're going video is what they've been doing for a while. Video to video, put it on YouTube, put it on the airways. It's video is video. Why can't radio figure it out that audio is audio? Well,
yeah. How come they haven't figured out? How come the mainstream media has figured out, oh, we need to be over here on on this platform. How come radio It's an interesting question, Todd. I think it is around format. And to some degree, I think the the video folks have the same challenge. Right? They have more more frequent
ad breaks and things like that. But I'm not sure, you know, given what's going on with the monetization stuff, and I wanna talk about something else that come up here that's gonna confirm what we've been talking about for a couple years now. But, is this monetization approach is is, is a big flex point too. I mean, the revenue that these companies are gonna generate is gonna be dramatically less than what they're used to. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And and there's a couple things here.
I I should probably They're they're not gonna be able to roll a truck. Right. Because next? Yeah. Go ahead and throw it in there because this is where it really where's where the money really hits the road. Well, yeah, there's a research, I guess, intelligence report that came out from S and P Global Market Intelligence suggests that The US podcast industry won't top 2,000,000,000 in revenue until 2032. I wouldn't here's what I know why.
I'll tell you why. Well, if you keep running ads in smaller numbers of shows and bigger shows, you're not gonna grow. If you don't look down you don't look down to the Right. To the hundred thousand other shows that are available. Plus this content moderation, brands brands suitability stuff has limited the acceptability of other shows too. It's been a a blow. Here's what I was told.
I was talking with someone that is very much I mean, they're they're I'll say top 3 in, someone in a company that's in the top 3 of advertising and podcast, and it wasn't Libsyn. Okay? We just leave them out. It wasn't them. It was someone that was not exhibiting at podcast. I'll just leave it that way. And we got into this conversation about exactly what you're talking about. And you know what they said? It's a ruse. No one cares about brand suitability. They just have to say it.
Yeah. They don't care. They want in these shows no matter what. They don't care if the person is talking about the daily download while he's creating a podcast on the toilet. All they really care about is being in these shows. Yeah. Because, I mean, a lot of the brands have been in these shows for a very long time before that whole thing came up. But this whole brand safety thing is a ruse. Yeah. It's a ruse. Yeah. I think it's false. I think I've used that word 2 or 3 times tonight.
Yeah. I think it's the whole concept of it is kind of dismantling. But media buyers are lazy, and they're gonna buy what's easy. And they only have to do a few percentage points better than their predecessor did to get promoted. So I've always you and I have talked about this forever. How And ad loads has a factor in this too. How does You have a small number of shows that you're stuffing all this advertising into.
It's it's gonna create an atmosphere where the brands are gonna say, well, I'm not getting the ROI that I want off of this stuff. Why is that? I'm gonna pull it out and put it somewhere else. I had a radio person said, we're gonna run twelve, thirteen, 14 spots an hour. 15 spots an hour in our content. And it was like doing is killing me. And I'm just like, okay. Good luck with that. Yeah. And this is this is the result. It is is a a peaking of the podcast ever In a race to the bottom.
A race to the bottom. As CPMs fall too because of all these headwinds. Mhmm. And and as the the buyers are looking at this going well, it's also a metrics issue too. It as as you as a big podcaster run a lot of ads, then the the brands are starting to realize that, you know, if I'm in in a sequence, I'm in the sixth ad in this show, right, that may be too much too much ad load before and my message is gonna get lost. And I'm gonna pull back on that. I'll I'll I'll reveal a secret here.
And I didn't I I got turned on to this by I don't know if I should say who it is. No. I'll say who it is. Rocky and I were having a conversation in the hallway at, Podfest. I haven't talked about Podfest that much yet. And we're talking about okay, James. And everyone else, listen up. If you listen to podcasting 2 o, you know what I'm already gonna say.
So Rocky and I are having a conversation in the hallway, and we're talking about she's she showed me her phone, and she's using a modern podcast app that is playing chapters, showing chapter images. She said, have you ever seen this? Oh, man. We've seen that so many times over the years. It's no. She she's she's looking at this, and I'm like, oh, that that's that's a chapter file. And every time it gets to a new mark, the an a new image comes up.
Wow. She said, we could get attribution for advertising with this. Well, that's true. And I was like, So Todd comes home, and I do a couple experiments. Now people are gonna fucking hate me here. So Todd just did an experiment. He put a chapter file at the beginning of his GoDaddy ad, a chapter file at the middle of his GoDaddy ad, and a chapter file at the end of his GoDaddy ad.
And he put a unique image that last that just basically showed up for a second because I followed with another chapter file. And then I went into my log files, and I looked for that image to have been loaded. So you didn't actually display it. So anyway Oh, it display. It just it it blinked, you know, however long it took however long it took to switch. Right. You know? And I it probably was up there for five seconds or whatever.
Clink. Clink. Clink. So I guess I go to my I go to my I go to oh, people whose heads are swimming right now. I guarantee you if you're they're listening. And I went to my log files on Geek News Central. I went to my raw log files because this the image was on my website, and I looked at the stats and just the regular web stats, nothing fancy. How many times did that image loaded? And it showed me a number. Mhmm. And I I looked at the beginning number, the middle number, and the end number.
And I'm like, oh, I know this many people listen to my ad. Now here's the problem. I had the IP data because it came into my show, so I could back that out. So there are concerns here, but there's nothing to stop a podcaster today. Any podcaster that's running, advertising for them to put their own markers in and be able to get a rough measurement of how many people listen to their ad in a podcasting 2 o app that supports chapter files. I got my attribution without any help from
anybody else. I didn't need Blueberry to do it. Todd did it on his show. So the privacy folks right now are going, oh my god. Oh oh, they're freaking. I I guarantee you some people are going some people are saying some people are right now picking up their phone, Yeah. But it's not supported by very many apps. Pocket cast, some of the and a lot of the podcasting 2 o. It's not supported by Apple. It's not supported by Spotify. So the data that we'll be able to get
if someone chooses is is Pretty incomplete. Pretty incomplete, but it gives an indication. So if I know as an example sample. It's a sample. If I know that Pocket Cast on my podcast has a 5% listener audience, and for that episode, Pocket Cast was a hundred listens, and I got 50 fires from Pocket Cast. I know that 50% of the people that listen to my show on Pocket Cast through my just basic podcast analytics, listen to my ad. So on the on the image that you fired, did you
just fire a 1 pixel image? Or did you fire a I fired a I fired an image. Graphic? My a graphic. Just a graphic. I just did a regular graphic. Little, you know, little square graphic. But you don't have to. No. No. You could throw up just a Could have been. A pair of pixel if you want. Could have been. Yeah. Could have been. So we have oh, man. People are hating me right now. I guarantee it. We have client side data, and you don't need your podcast host at all to give you this information.
If you run your own website and you have your own dot com and you have your own log files, and if you name that file so unique that there's no way else it can be loaded. Right. It's only pointing to a to a source on your own personal brand website. That's right. Yep. So it was me that they were talking about on Podcasting 2 o. I did it from my show where Blueberry is not doing any of this yet. So how did you actually get that count?
Was it through, like, a Google Analytics? I just went to Google Analytics. Okay. Yeah. And I looked for that image load specifically. It is in the log files too, so I kinda did a cross reference in the log files. Mhmm. But because Google Analytics, you had you gotta really kinda dig and know where to go look for that. So but I looked in my I just looked in my, log files. That's right. I pulled it out because it's really isn't a yeah. Yeah. I yeah. Pulled it from the log log files
where I did the primary account. I just did search. It's just an image, Yeah. Image link. Is what Yeah. Is all it is. So and invariably. Now if we wanna implement this front as a standard, then we gotta put the privacy piece in, you know, if if a host is gonna do this, they're gonna need to, you know and we're already g p r GDPR ready. So I would be able to count those those impressions and then, anonymize the data, and we can keep it private.
Right. But Yeah. Because that could be associated with an IP address. Absolutely. Oh, it is. You can see the IP plainest day for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So if, you know, if if a host is gonna do this, they're gonna have to reassure privacy stuff and all that. But then, it may stifle adoption of chapter files because people will say, well, now you've got a way to find information out about this audience. Then they'll block it. Or they won't allow that data to come back through.
So maybe I've opened Achilles' heel here, but, it's so simple. I mean, I I just kinda had this moment, like, yeah. This will work. Now there is some additional testing I have to do. Are the apps loading the image when the app is not visible? Mhmm. Are those images still being loaded behind the scene? Are they still firing? I and I everything I can tell, yes. Right. So, yeah, it was me. But I was fault, Todd. Well, it was it was Rocky's fault because Rocky, you know, kinda like, wow.
I give you the wrong way. Yeah. Rock Rocky is like, wow. We we we could fire a a pixel. Right. Yeah. We could. So client side data is possible in podcasting apps if they implement the chapter files. Be responsible, folks. But also do think that there is some, data metrics envy between, between what we're seeing in YouTube and podcasting. This is equalizer. Right. It is. This is Rob, this is a solution for all our
wants and needs on client side data. This is this is today the solution that works right now. Right. Right. But you gotta have a chapter file. Now what's gonna happen next? Is someone gonna say, okay. See, this is another thing too. It's almost not able to be detected by if you're careful, let's say you name the chapter file x y z, in the middle of it x y z b, you know, you use naming.
There's no bot that they might be able to learn where to jump, but you could be very stealthy in in how you do that placement so that you can load a regular image. And it doesn't have to be a pixel. And you can it it could look like it was 1 of the original 30 chapters because my chapter files have 25 and and by the way, I have removed it.
It's off my chapter files right now because I wasn't gonna announce it, but I thought I might as well because we're talking about this enviable data that people want. Either way, I would keep whatever you link to in there, whatever image that you link to to to fire this off to get it counted probably needs to be pretty lightweight on data load. Right? But the apps are loading images that are big. Are they? Yeah. So Is there a limit to that for
No. Kind of efficiency or No. It's I've got 30 chapters in my show on a regular basis. I don't put to be honest with you, I don't usually have time to go through my entire chapter file and populate it with with images. It's a pretty labor The the the chapter files are created with titles and time hacks, but Right. You have to go in and but, you know, if that's another thing too. You could just load the chapter files at
the locations that you want. Now this gets totally screwed up if you run programmatic. If you're running programmatic, it's a fixed ad in the content. You run programmatic, then the the chapter file will be offset. It won't work. So if this is being dynamically built, the chapter file is set to a fixed timeline, and there's no offsets currently being added to chapter files to account for programmatic advertising. Unless you know that the first minute is going to be ads.
Right. And then it can just adjust everything. You can you could trick it. Yeah. But, again, this is this is a it's an interesting and I I I think there was quite a bit of consultation when Dave and Adam were talking about it on the show last week. So Interesting. But, you know, there was a conversation with Brian Barletta at Podfest too. I had a conversation with him. I don't think Brian fully understands Podcasting 2 o. None of the stuff in Podcasting 2 o requires the API.
The majority of everything's in the feed. It just requires adoption. It doesn't require any fancy back end interface. It doesn't require some central authority to fire some. The only thing that, podcasting 2 o needs on the hosting side is for us to be able to send a ping that says, it's called pod ping. We say that there's a new episode available on this show and it updates the index. And that's on the hosting side. That's not
done. Now the apps can watch for the pod ping if they want to, to be able to update. But everything else is, at least I'm thinking, is static. Everything is static in the feed. So Well, there is an update to the publishing interface that needs to happen with the hosts for some of the Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All features. Oh, yeah. We had to add all the features. And this and the same thing with the app developers. The app developers have
to decide which features they're gonna add. Now probably, I just caused Marco over at Overcast to never allow chapter files. I'm sure that he will never put chapter files in based upon what I just said. Right. He's got a, you know, he has a very exclusive way of making money on that app. So but this is a way any podcaster that controls their RSS feed and controls their own.com to get attribution data for the ads they're running at a smaller level on a limited
number of apps. If you have no one using Pocket Cast or Fountain or any of the other apps that support chapters, yeah, you're gonna get nothing. So, Todd, I I noticed, something that's happening over in The UK. It looks like the Ricky Geretio, which is a name that hasn't been mentioned in podcast Wow. Now for a few years, it is now back high in The UK podcast charts again for some reason. Is he And he's not creating new content either. Oh, who's who's pumping his show?
I don't know. I'm not sure why it's all of a sudden becoming popular again. And he's not doing new episodes? As far as I know. I wonder what, outfit in Bangladesh someone paid to, cause his numbers to go up. Yeah. I think it's a good question for for Ricky, to to answer. I don't know if he's done something that's got him attention over there and people are, like, finding it. 1 thing that's fun about going to events is we all kinda chitchat with each other.
Yeah. And, the amount of fraud that is being attempted by podcasters is on the rise again. On the part of the podcaster? Oh, yeah. Primarily? Yeah. They're paying they're paying people to Oh, for downloads and stuff. Yeah. And part of part of our IAB recertification, we added a whole bunch of they call it monitoring. Mhmm. And we added some new tools because we've had fraud prevention tools for a long time, but we added some new things and make it easier for me to see activities.
There's a lot of there's a lot I don't care if you're trying to pump your numbers and you don't have any advertising running, but I'm gonna tell you if your show is running programmatic advertising at Blueberry and you're doing something that comes across my radar, you're gone. You're not getting paid.
So I also heard, a comment from Westwood One, podcast network of sorts, this statement from some, I guess, a PDF or document that they put out too that makes a statement that ads that have emotion or are otherwise interesting can, work better. Right? More than 6 times better than boring ads. Oh, boring ads come from advertising folks that made you read strict copy. Right. Yes. I'm not surprised. Of the creative host read. Yeah. Call me call me surprise. Yeah. Right.
There's no surprise. No surprise. And Spotify has now launched its own plaque award. Of course. If you're familiar with the YouTube platform, they they have different levels of, like achievements of sorts. It's the it's the gamification of the platform that if you hit a hundred thousand subscribers, they will send you this silver plaque that says, you know, that that all these YouTubers put behind them on their Wow. Bookshelf.
And I did hear that the ones that they gave out, like, a year ago are, like, half the size now. So they've they've downsized, which is very, I guess, consistent with what we've seen with YouTube and Google over the years is that everything gradually gets smaller from the from the the share of the commission to the share the size of the awards. I was I was looking for my 1000000 mile plaque plaque from United. Yeah. It's about that big. Okay. About the size of a deck of cards.
Well, I mean, if you think about it from an efficiency, cost efficiency standpoint, Todd, it's probably a little less shipping to ship it to. YouTube YouTube requires you to buy your plaque. You don't get it for free. Oh, I thought they I thought they sent it out for your group. I don't I think you have to pay for those. I saw the price on the, like yeah. There's a store somewhere that it's someone can find the link, but you you can't you you I know what the pricing
is pretty high. You could afford to send those out for free. Talk to me. I think I think they pay I think people have to pay for them. It's a profit center for them. That's Yeah. Well, you know. So so Spotify has 1 now. It's a plaque award, similar to YouTube, but if you look at their numbers, just like their monetization program. Right, Todd? There it's this astronomical thing that you have to hit in order to Right. Qualify for 1 of these things.
Right? Yep. The the gold 1 for podcasters is those that have had 500000000 streams. Doesn't say downloads. It says a hundred 500000000 streams. How many how many people were awarded that? It's probably like Did they did they say how many of the numbers were? 10 people, I think. Yeah. I didn't see it. I mean, it's like Rogan and Okay. And then what's the next what's the next level? Silver is the next 1. 2 hundred and 50 million streams. I'm on and then the bronze is a hundred million.
So, Rob, I wonder what it would cost. Oh, this is so right. How when what's a qualification for a stream? How many minutes does it have to play? Whatever their counting methodology is, which I don't know what that is. Now a good a good experiment, I'm not saying that you should do this at all. And if you're not running any advertising, this is, you know, I'm sure there is a firm in Bangladesh that you could pay to get your hundred million streams
on Spotify. They'll probably spread that out across a couple thousand devices. You could probably do it over a two or three month period to build you know, you don't wanna look like you're getting it all at once. You know? Start it out slow. Start, you know, start building up, you know, and build your traffic and get to that hundred million mark and don't shut it off right away because your traffic will dive unless you see something going on and then pay
for the traffic to kinda go down. I bet you for six to nine months of work, and probably a couple thousand dollars, you can probably get 1 of those 1 of those plans. Right. Well, what's what's ironic about is that they're specifically referring to podcasters. I know. And and podcast most of the big podcasts coming into Spotify or on a on a download basis, not a stream. Right. But they don't count downloads. They count streams. So but if it's not streamed, then how
can they count it as a stream? I'm I'm a little confused on this, but because maybe they're talking about video too. I don't know. I wouldn't imagine that the videos are streamed, technically. I've got a I've got a story to relay, but I'm waiting for Spotify to re reply to my email on how was this found out. I have something that very peculiar situation has happened on some recent takedowns of content. Interesting. Yeah. I'm on past
I'll just leave it at that. And then Sirius XM, I guess, pulled the Alex Cooper show, Call Her Daddy. Oh. Pulled pulled the video version Oh. From Spotify. Pulled the video version, not the audio version? Yes. And Alex, the host of Call Her Daddy, said in an Instagram post that, you can watch for free on YouTube. But you can listen on Spotify? I guess you can only listen on Spotify now. So here's another big creator that has pulled their video from Spotify.
SiriusXM. I wonder if it wasn't performing as well. Something's going on there. Also, also, why would they be pointing to consumption on YouTube? Well, maybe the video maybe they were let's just let's just let's just use a hypothesis here. If you are SiriusXM and, you have a I'm sure there's a partnership agreement with Call Her Daddy and Spotify, and, I'm sure they're they're part of their, you know, revenue stream.
And if caller daddy was getting half a million views, I'm just using a number, half a million views per episode on audio and getting paid for half a million views of audio, on a rev share basis, and we put up the video and the video went to a hundred thousand and you only get paid for a hundred thousand, I would contend there might be a reason you would remove video from Spotify. And when I gather the the the revenue that comes out of YouTube generally is better than
what is coming out of Spotify. But if you were making x y let's say, on your audio podcast, you were making 10000 an episode. Mhmm. And you dropped the video in, and your revenue went down to a thousand. Right. On the audio side too. Well, because the audio doesn't play because you've overwritten your video. You put the video, and the video is playing. So you're only gonna get paid on the video plays no more. Yep. I think I think Spotify has made a little bit of a mess for themselves
or or or their in their platform. Oh. So not sure that this is working out the way they had hoped. But Rob? Yeah. TikTok. TikTok. We'll see how long it takes before they have to change. Are you talking about the TikTok app, Todd? Or Spotify. I'm talking about Spotify on I remember we talked about TikTok, and I I I told you that it wasn't gonna go away. Yeah. And you said it's gone. Well, for twenty four hours, it was gone. Okay. So we it's it's not it's not a it's
not a done deal. They're on the clock. Yeah. But I I just it's too big to fail at this point. I just don't someone's gonna they still have. Here's the here's the thing and that that I find really fascinating and most people don't understand. And I was trying to be doesn't want it. Well, I was trying to figure out how because Trump said, well, if we get 50% of it, The United States wins. And I'm like, how's how's that work? How how does want the federal government o
owning a big platform like that. Well, okay. But if the federal government is the 1 that controls the on and off switch, let's say OpenAI, which or no. Not Anthropic is the 1 that's actually latest talking about buying TikTok. So if Anthropic buys TikTok and the United States government gets a piece to guarantee this switch doesn't get turned off, That's is there is that coercion, or is that just utilization of the law? Yeah. So I'm thinking how
how is work. How does this work? Someone's gotta explain this to me how The US is gonna get a piece of this. But, again, it's true. If they don't if The US doesn't approve the deal, it doesn't happen and it gets turned off. Pretty pretty, pretty impressive bargaining chip. Yeah. So what'd you, what'd you think of this this, new China AI platform that you're not? If you're using the app and you're putting anything in there that is of your business, of your life, of anything, you are an idiot.
And I haven't even loaded or even No way. First, number 1, I think they're lying. I think they're lying on how they built their model. I think they're lying. There's already evidence coming up that they ripped off OpenAI data by doing API calls to their to their bot. There's all kinds of things. China, I don't trust any oh my god. Can now if you download you download the model and put it on a computer On your local machine. On your local machine Yeah. Right. Then
okay. Do what you wanna do. But if you're using their app to send queries to, not a chance. I already put out company etiquette. I told my company this is banned. This is b a n n e d, banned from company use, subject to administrative issues if you use if you're found using this app. Yeah. Because it's in their terms of service. We will collect and build our model based upon what you submit to it, and these people are just willy nilly using it. I'm like, do people not understand?
I was talking about this with someone earlier today, and we're both shaking our heads. Hey, Todd. I was, I didn't tell anybody, but I was down in in New Jersey a month or so ago flying my drone around. Were you? Well, I've always said okay. Because supposedly that's what was going on. Okay. Now let me let me just let's back up. You're you're a guy, you know, you're talking to a guy that had a security clearance for thirty plus years. Yeah. There's always a smidgen of the truth. Oh,
yeah. Of course not. You never get the whole story. Right. There's a very smidgen of a cover story enough enough to take the eye off the ball. Right. I have no security clearance. I've not been read in. I know nothing. No one has called me. I know nothing. I'm just telling you, you've gotten a smidgen. You notice how everyone's all happy? Oh, it was 1 damn day. It was great. Was fine. Uh-huh. If that was the case, then the government really had no reason to not tell us that. Right?
I have my suspicions, but all I can say is it definitely first of all, I do believe it was government. I do believe it was our government, but what are they looking for and what were they testing? They don't say this is FAA has given them permit. Everyone has by the way, here's the stupid thing. Rob This whole thing is psyop.
Rob, you the FAA has given you permission to fly your drone within allowed flight areas with you can fly up to 400 feet as long as you don't get 5 miles within an airport, and there's all there's rules. You can fly your drone. The FAA has given you, Rob, permission to fly your drone and me permission. And there's lots of people that violate the 5 miles of airports and all this stuff all the time, and they go into no fly zones. But the question really is, what did they give permission to?
Right. No answer on that. No one why don't report well, what was who what agency was given a permission? Was it Department of Energy? Was it the DOD? FAA. I if I was a betting man, it was DOE. Department of Energy, not Department of Education. Department of Energy. I would I would I thought I've also I'd put a hundred dollar bill down on that. I've also seen here recently just an explosion of new videos on YouTube talking about, all these various devices that are free energy generators.
Have you I've seen it. But, you know, I I'm sorry. I have better video optics on you know, come on. Get a get a camera with a lens. No. No. I'm I'm not actually I know. I know. Actual inventors that have a a machine right there that's generating electricity out of with no fuel. Rob, guess what? Please, if someone comes to you to invest, you know Yeah. You may not live long as Michael
Well, I I you know, who knows? You know, I I I at this point, I can just hit fun watching the watching the conspiracy theories. Right. Well, I mean, I can see it right on the screen. It's like Well, again, there's a lot of AI right now. So how do you know what you're watching is not some fake video someone's put together? Actually, 1 I saw that talked about how AI had, designed and helped build a a rocket engine, a
small rocket engine. Mhmm. Actually, did all all all the designing, and they utilized a, a 3 d printer to actually print the engine out. I I I heard from a And it fired up the first time. I'm hurt you know, if if you have the budget, Rob, and I'll let you you know, you're you're the guy with all the money. What? That $200 level of chat GPT, I'm almost actually Well, they're losing money on that, I heard.
Well, I heard the $200 level, there's been some stuff I've seen on on Twitter where people have demoed that version because it's giving you access to stuff that no one else has access to right now. It's pretty wow. Pretty wow. And, you know, it's not like I got $200 lying around, but it's almost tempting to do the upgrade to see to try it.
Yeah. Anybody who wants to donate to the show, you know, if you wanna make a donation to the new media show, the PayPal link's right at on the website newmediashow.com. You wanna grant us, some some extra some extra cash to play around with, I'd use my portion to test that $200 version of ChetGPT. That'd be awesome. Well, Todd, here in the last couple minutes, let's, let's do a recap on Podfest a little bit. Yeah. Great. About that and what you saw there.
And I I think they have such a huge opportunity to really grow that show. I think they're doing sessions right, timing right. It is a % a creator show for sure. For sure. I did notice that the podcast movement folks announced a a a deep creator track sponsorship, with YouTube. I don't know if you saw that or not. Wow. So in Evolutions Mhmm.
They're gonna have a complete separate track at Podcast Movement, that's sponsored by YouTube, and it and it looks like a lot of the content that's going into that track is coming out of YouTube, kinda like what we saw. Actually, my first year that I went over to the podcast show, this was a couple years ago now. YouTube was 1 of the big name sponsors of the podcast show too. I think it's a similar type of thing that they're doing at, podcast movement.
The other thing I wanted to ask about too, and you can respond to that YouTube thing if you want. And then what I saw at Podfest around the Blackmagic booth, I thought it was an interesting thing too. But, yeah, if you wanna talk about the the YouTube thing. You know, I just you know, new me podcast move needs money. So, of course, if someone comes in, someone's sponsor track, business move, you know, comes in with a hundred thousand dollars or whatever it costs to do the track Yeah. Why not?
If I was if I was running the show and YouTube came to me and said, hey. Here's you know, what is it gonna cost us to do a track? I'd write that proposal up in about fifteen seconds and take their money too. You you have to. It's it's it's it is what but is that going to hurt them down the road? I'm just saying right today, Podfest is is the show for creators. Podcast Movement is the show for business. Right. Deal making and advertising and all of the Yep. The more revenue oriented activities
Yep. In the space. So with that known, I have a serious decision to make on whether we go to both shows every year. Is there ROI? Is there enough enough ROI out of the winter show to keep the I will go to the summer show always. Yeah, we have to we gotta wait unless it really goes like to commercial. Yeah. But you know who we didn't see at Podfest? We didn't see Podbean. Podbean was not there. Buzzsprout, us, and Libsyn. Matter of fact, Libsyn and us were right next to each other. Yeah.
And my session was well attended. There was probably sixty, seventy in the room. I had good compliments for the session. How many people we have for the new media show? Twenty, twenty five? Yeah. Probably. That was a room that was kinda hard to find. Yeah. And and I was Really hard to find. That the door, was jamming too. There were people that were trying to get in. They couldn't get in. Get the door open. So So, you know, I I but I have no complaints on podcast.
There there is I don't know what it's gonna take, but he should be able to triple or quadruple the attendance at that show on just creators. There's, you know, there's a huge opportunity there. Did you ever hear a a a final number on the attendance? I did get a little bit of a clue. What did you think? Well, I heard it from 1 of the team members, that told me it was around 1200. Yeah. I would I would say that's accurate. Around 1200.
Yeah. Yeah. Thousand to 1200. I that's pretty close because I did a head count in 1 of the keynotes figuring that it would be 60% filled, maybe 70% filled on a keynote, and that's about the number I came up with. Yeah. And and, frankly, that that's after Chris and team did a, you know, a whole, like, a year long, you know, pod tour all over the country. Right? Trying to get people. And and I think the takeaway from that would be is that all those people thought of those
events as kinda like stand alone events. Yeah. Me neither. Weren't really gonna get people to go to Orlando. But I just wonder if the timing of that event as well as that it's always in Florida. Maybe holds that event back a little bit. That's my I wish they would move to another location, do another location. Like on more central to The US somewhere like in Denver. Oh, they could do Boston, Denver. It has to be a major hub. Yeah. So maybe even New York.
Yeah. Or Dallas or some place like that too. But Chris has great ties to the the businesses there, so it's not moving anytime soon. Well, being so community focused, definitely, He pulls a fair amount of people from Florida into that event. Yeah. So And there was we're always asking people where people were from, and there was a bigger diversity of people from out of state this year than
previous. And some people were able to come because of the situation in LA, but, I think that, yeah, he he's done a good job there on that event. You know, we will go back next year. No no problem. I you know, when I come home and have this many follow ups, we could there's something in the app that we could see how how many total scans there were.
Mhmm. And we had one twelfth of the total badge scans at our booth of all the badge scans that happened because some reason in the app, it shows you how many badges got scanned. Oh. And, so we did about a hundred badge scans, which for me is that that's a good number. And the right mix of new people, at the most number of people that we're looking to migrate to. Yeah. Specific hosts? Yeah. From 1 specific company for 1 specific reason, and I'm not gonna reveal that because
then they'll fix their issue. But Yeah. Yeah. So if they move, that's 1 thing. Talking and moving are 2 different things. Well, and it was certainly in a much nicer hotel for sure. Much nicer. Food was fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I I and I took I went out with my grand my daughter and my grandkids and, we're able to we went to where they they joust. It's the medieval times. So the kids had grandkids had a great time. That was the only time I left the hotel, the rest of the time I stayed in.
Yeah. I didn't actually go anywhere either. The menu was getting thin at the end of the event, but, you know. Yeah. And, I guess it's gonna be back there again Yeah. Next year. Yep. So we know what we're getting into with that. So Our 2 partners had great Apple Podcast was there. No. Excuse me. Adobe Podcast was there. Mhmm. And, they had great time. Code ADX is another 1 of our partner. He bought a booth right last minute. He's thrilled with the results.
There wasn't that many vendors, maybe thirty, twenty five, 30, something like that. Dan and Jay Lewis is thrilled with his results. Pod Engagement, Jay over there at Coleman Insights, they were thrilled with their results. So I think the vendors were pretty happy. And did you walk by and take a look at the Blackmagic I did. Booth? Yeah. Really that their their offering there was out of alignment for that community. Yeah. They they were definitely, more NAB ish on
I told them that. I mean, it's not like they don't have a product line that came to that market. They they do, but they chose the The pro. Or actually the the high end market. Yeah. I was actually their extreme ATEM Yeah. That they had on display there, and that's that's way beyond the price range for podcasters at that event. Well, maybe, you know, they'll figure the crowd out and adjust the following year, but I went over and talked to them, and I'm like, oh, yeah. I've got 1 of those got 1 of
those. I said, you know, I paid some of your guys' salaries on, you know, converters I bought years ago. But Well, and all their all their video cameras on tripods that that that were there Yeah. Were all 6 k cameras. I know. Yeah. So, yeah, it was like each I think each 1 of them was at least $5,000. Yeah. They could have they could have came with some some prosumer stuff. Yeah. I mean, I told them to put on display. They've got the ATEM Mini and the
ATEM Pro. Yeah. Let's have those. Those are in a price range that this community can afford. Yep. And and have some I wonder why they didn't know the audience. Maybe Who knows? I told them if they wanted to do that, they probably should go to either podcast movement or go to, Even outside the price range for podcast movement. Yeah. I mean, it it's really pushing the envelope on that. Yeah. Yeah. But at least those bigger media companies are there. Right? Yep.
So that would be the only other place and then the NAB and Yeah. Well, they go to any they have a massive massive massive massive booth. They they take a whole corner of Central Hall. So And Shurer was there as well. Yeah. They were talking about their Their new mic. Their new mic that connects to each other. They were right next to us. They were busy the entire time. They had people at the booth the entire time. Yeah. I think Shure has done very well in the industry over the last
few years. Yeah. Yeah. So And so was Road, but Road wasn't there. No. They weren't. So there was a few missing vendors that have been there in the past. So I think that event definitely needs to get bigger. I mean, Chris has had close to 3000 people at that event in the past, so I'm not quite sure what's going on. And it's gonna be interesting to see what the turnout is in Chicago for podcast movement if we can continue to see a decline in attendance. Yeah. I'm I'm not attending the
event in Chicago. I have other team members going. Yeah. So I was I had Dave Clements, one of my support team members at Podcast Movement, and I told him get his passport. I'm gonna take him to London. He did a fabulous job. Man's a born salesman. He's I said, I put you in sales instead of support. But he said, please don't. But yeah. I mean, Todd, I'm I'm sure you're feeling this too that there's a big fall off or so much fewer Fewer what? Really? Have you you blipped there
for a second. Fewer what? Fewer podcast conferences. Oh, yeah. Now it's it's The mini ones are the mini ones are gone. Yeah. And, it'll be interesting to see what happens with the podcast show too, coming up. That's coming up in the spring, and I'm assuming that that you're not planning on going to NAB this year either? No. No. We we opted we're done with NAB Yeah. Until they figure out if they ever wanna support podcasting as a Or get back to it. Yeah. They could
get back to it again. Maybe now that the, you know, the president mentioned president secretary mentioned podcast, maybe. Maybe now as a podcast company, you could be a member of the NAB because currently, you can't. What would be what would be fun is, looking at sales numbers on Friday to see if, if there was a bump because of the mentioned podcast on Oh, right. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Think we made it. Made it ninety minutes, Tom. Yeah. We're we're we're a bit over. I just got a text. I got food
waiting for me. Alright. I'm [email protected] at [email protected] on mastodon at geek news on x. Rob? I'm on x as well at rob greenley and on YouTube, at rob green Rob Greenley over there too. Rob greenley dot com. And if you wanna send me an email, you can send it to just [email protected]. That'll come to me. We'd love to hear from you and give us any kind of little tip on anything that we can talk about on the show. So that would
be great. And just as a oh, by the way, Blueberry is in the process of dismantling our YouTube channel and rebuilding it. So there there is going to be a series of podcast insider special edition episodes that are gonna be put out. And so if you aren't already following our YouTube channel, there'll be anything we're releasing is also gonna be released as a podcast. So never fear. It'll be on our podcast insider show as well, but you catch the full video interview
on our YouTube channel. So So is this show gonna move over there? Not to the Blueberry channel. Why would I Oh, okay. I don't think that would be appropriate unless you want me to move it over there. I'm I'm not advocating 1 way or the other. I'm just saying just curious. Or we could build our another channel for this this, show too. So Yeah. We could do that. Alright, everyone. Okay. Thank you so much for being here, and, we'll see you next week at the same crazy time.
And we may have a guest next week. Oh, that would be fun. We've had it. If Adobe Podcast can make it next week, that would be good. Yep. Alright. Alright. Stay safe and, thanks and, send us your tips and secrets. That's right. Yeah. We want to know. Top tips. And don't forget, we have a PayPal thing. And Rob and I could, use a little spare beer money. So I don't drink beer anymore, but that's okay. Wine or find something else. Juice or whatever.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Alright, everyone. Thanks. We'll see you next time. Bye bye. Okay. Bye.