And Rob in the afternoon. Afternoon delight. With Todd and Rob. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And here we are, Rob. Yes we are. Right. And it's been a it's been a interesting week. I I've had I I just got out of I I don't think I'm allowed to talk about it yet, but I just got off a call with, someone well known in the podcasting space. And, it centers around privacy and some solutions to make listeners more private. And Well, I think we all know that, Apple's been heading that direction. Well, it's not
an Apple it's not an Apple thing. No. I know. But it there's definitely a concern and a trend line around, user privacy. Right? Yeah. So, you know, this is something else and, I think there's been a number of companies already briefed on it. But I don't think there's any announcement yet. So I I really can't say nothing, but it's pretty exciting to me, from a perspective of, you know, I've always been, you know, really care about the listener's privacy.
And, and and this is this is gonna be pretty monumental, opportunity to to change the narrative a little bit. And I'm, looking over here at the other screens, and I'm making sure I hit pause and stuff. I can hit pause on. Yeah. There we go. So I I'm just, yeah. It's it's it's been good. I'm I'm I'm kinda jazzed. I had my development team in the call, and we did a follow-up call, and and it made us even think about some things we're doing. And
yeah. So privacy in podcasting, you know, if the if the podcasters don't care about it, maybe those of us in this space can, how should we say, make an make a change. Take take their take their data away. Yeah. I think the big, part of the industry that's concerned about it, I would think, is the advertising part. Right? Exactly.
Right. So it it it does seem like, increasingly, the industry is very focused on revenue and advertising, you know, issues in the space, And I think, you know, it gets back to the bigger topics that we're gonna talk about today is that everybody's thinking about the bottom line these days. But when a Right. Yeah. But at the same time, when a when a podcaster is given the opportunity to take this data away from the the marketeers Right. What does that say about what's happening in the market?
Well, I I think most podcasters don't realize on certain platforms that, you know, you are the product. Your listeners are the product. Mhmm. And, you know, if I can have a have a way to, how should we say it, not give those people so much data Mhmm. It wouldn't that be a kind of cool thing? But, Todd, those advertisers aren't gonna like that. So Well, if you if you have a if you have a podcaster that is, not making any money, Not doing no advertising.
Advertising. Right. And you don't want to, you know, they're trying to create content, you know, they're just leave it at that. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else that you wanted to add to that? Is there any other context? No no more context, but I'll just make me just make people think about it a little bit.
Well, I think that there's been an effort or and a desire in the medium for a long time to be a little bit more, I guess, cautious about listener data and listener and conscious of listener privacy. And I know Apple has expressed some interest in that over the years too. And I think that there was some scares about Apple, you know, maybe blocking access to IP addresses through file requests.
So, you know, I don't think they've ever deployed anything like that, but but I think it's an interesting trend line that's been kind of moving and who knows, you know, how far that's gonna go. But I do think that the advertising industry has a lot of power over the medium right now because it's where the revenue is. Right? Yeah. So and this is also a good kind of segue into the main topic of the show that I wanted to talk about, which is, video podcasting.
And I think, James Cridland made a post on his, I think his LinkedIn page, about this this topic as it relates to Spotify's, revenue announcements that that they made that they expect to reach 2,100,000,000 in 2024 in, ad revenue on a global global level. And his contention was this push towards investing in video podcasting was really, he thinks, and I probably I probably agree with it, because this is how YouTube looks at it too. It's a it's an ad revenue play is what it what it really is.
We we we said that when Google pulled the plug on Google Podcasts. We talked about on this show that Google was making no money with Google Podcasts. Right. So This is a way for them to Yeah. To to monetize content, right. Monetize on the back of creators who largely don't get a penny. Right. Yeah. And as I've, you know, I guess they have a they have a pathway and a and a, kind of a user, policy that allows them to monetize content on their platform. Absolutely.
I don't know that, there's revenue share from this, but I I did hear in the news too that Spotify has put out that they're that they're doing big distribution deals for for ad ad revenue shares. Yeah. For a small number of shows. Every content creator, I know we've also talked about on the show, is that that they have built this ability to upload videos and replace the audio, with video that takes the audio out of
the video. And I've also heard we talked about this, and I talked about it on my podcast tip show around, how how the the plays or the views, drop when you do that. Right. Right? So there's some sort of issue with their Or they're nice. Yeah. Or their metrics are perfect. They're just not getting as many views. Well, I think the the They're getting high they're getting higher CPMs on those is what they're doing.
Well, Todd, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion because the person that pointed this out to me, is an ad agency buyer. I mean or yeah. Yeah. He's actually buying ads and then running them on that platform, and he was saying that it seemed like that it was more of a a bug in the metrics. We'll see. Yeah. I mean, it just could be that there's on that platform, there's more people interested in
listening to audio than they are video. So if you convert it in the it kinda depends on what the UI experience do if they're prioritizing video over audio, but the platform, Spotify, is known more as an audio platform. If they're prioritizing video over audio, then that may have an impact. Well, again, as a as a podcaster Mhmm. You have to make some hard decisions here. And you know, do you wanna continue to sell your audience out? Number 1.
Do you want to allow them to monetize on your back and not give you a penny? What why, you know, why yeah. They're giving you distribution. Yeah. They're giving you access to their platform. Is that worth it? Is that enough of a, you know I I again, I don't think most podcasters today, even think about their listeners. I think the majority of them, you know, don't care if they get if they sell out their listeners and let them be remarketed and sold to by by third parties.
You know, that that that, mindset went went away a long time ago where the where podcasters were worried about listener privacy. So Yeah. Yeah. I think it is a shift towards the industry thinking more about what the advertisers want versus what their audience wants. And But it I do But again, Rob I wonder about that. But again, for though we have to we have to make sure we're not segmenting stuff. For 5% Right. Or 6%, they want this advertising. They want deep learning. They want them to
be targeted. They want all this stuff to happen. And then the 90 5%, it's forced upon them. And, you know, that's the price you pay to be on the platform that you're on is they take that data. What, you know, why did that company buy pod sites and Chartable on the same day? They didn't need the tech. They did not need the tech. They needed the data. What do they do with the data? Well That's that's the economy now. It's it's a digital,
information economy. That's how Facebook makes money. That's how all these social platforms make money too is on user data. So what if we take that data away from them? And targeting. Right? So what if we take that data away from them? Well, then likely there's less advertising that's gonna flow into podcasting. Well, less advertising is gonna flow into against shows that don't need advertising against their media. Don't don't wanna
have advertising. Mhmm. You know, need is maybe, I'm not sure the full picture of the description of that. I think it's there's a lot of shows that just it doesn't fit their model to have advertising. Right. And they, you know, and they they don't want the things interrupted per se. Yeah. Whereas shows that are and see, this is this is the this is the dirty little secret. If you are not on pass through Mhmm. There's nothing you can do. And some podcasts on Spotify are not on
pass through That's right. Today. Even today as a lot of people probably don't realize that, but that's how they started in this Yep. Situation with podcasting is caching. Yep. And the industry pushed back on them to get them to sign pass through agreements with the big podcast host. Right. So, you know, that you know, and that also explains why we're seeing pressure around the conversion to streaming too. Yeah. And that basically, you know, minimizes really the the need for RSS in the long run.
I I think I think there's a way ahead to protect at a base level, 95% of the podcasters that are out there, make it harder. I just say it that, will make it harder. But again, YouTube already and Facebook already I mean, YouTube and Spotify already have that data. They already know who your listener is. So Yep. And, you know, there's very few people coming on that platform, and and I I think you have to have an account regardless Yeah. So they know who you are. Yeah.
So I think you can you can be in there as a guest, but I think if you wanna do certain things, they they require you to log in. So they're gonna they're they're gonna know who so there's, you know, there's nothing I can do to prevent them from knowing who's listening within the app because they're clicking.
You know? But Yes. I mean, really, so as we see, I think, the this industry shift towards prioritizing revenue, I think that puts puts the focus on these bigger platforms, shifting to strategies that better support the advertisers. And I think that's kinda what we're seeing happen in the market right now, whether we like it or not. And it doesn't like like you said, Todd, it doesn't cater to the whole market. It just caters to a relatively small percentage of the market that are actually,
running ads in their podcast. Yeah. 1701 stats from Mike Dell. Audio is still special. Video is good for Google and Spotify, not the podcasters. Well, I guess I think people will argue with that. But Well, that is the key takeaway from what we've we've said here at the very beginning of the show is is that the priority around video is really around increased ad revenue, and Spotify has put that in their their quarterly projections
that they're doing for revenue. It's based on Spotify video podcasting is where they see the the growth that says Spotify research says that audio plus video ads work 66% better than just audio ads alone. Mhmm. Depends on how they're delivered too, I think. Of course, if it's jammed on top and you're forced you're forced to see it. Yes. You can totally see why Spotify did this deployment where you have an RSS feed in Spotify that's delivering your audio files, and then you can go in and upload a
video to replace that. And then they split it into audio and video files, and then they're streaming it. Yep. Right? So it's it's no longer pulling off of a pass through situation. So you can see how they're trying to transition this content in back into streaming again. Yeah. We got another boost here. This came in last week, a 1500 stats from RW Nash. He says, you can't beat a bit of Todd and Rob. Then 500 stats from epodcasts. A powerful episode.
Well worth a relisten. Thanks, Jen. The ugly baby discussion and podcasting is what, we get a lot of response to that episode, by the way. Well, that's good. That that's what we try and do here. Yeah. So right. So, you know, going back to what Kridlin says and, I don't have my thing up here so we'll have to Yeah. I can read it to you. He basically says, now I understand what's behind the rush to video and podcasting ad revenue. That's it. Just ad revenue.
Google wants you to do it because they couldn't earn money from Google Podcasts, but they can shove ads in front of your listeners viewers if they use YouTube. And Spotify wants you to do it because they can sell video advertising more effectively and earn more money. Forget what the platform is built on audit on video advertising. Forgot forget what audiences want. This isn't about them. It's it's the $2,100,000,000 they're expected to earn in 2024.
Well, that's Spotify. But Yeah. Spotify. YouTube. But yeah. Right. Yeah. But it's a similar situation. You know, this explains why Spotify is heading in the direction that they're heading is because they see what's going on at YouTube. YouTube's making a lot of money. Yes, indeed. And you, the podcaster, get nothing. You get nothing. You Unless you're a really big showtime. Yeah. Well, again, they'll they'll they'll sign a, you know, a 3 or $4,000,000
deal with you Yeah. Well content. Right. Those are few and far between. Meanwhile, the rest of us are just slaves and we're, you know, providing revenue, you know, they're they're they're earning money on our on the backs of our content and we get 0. They're gonna drive a lot of attention to content. So that's that's the big thing that we're And and it well, it's whose fault is that? Is it you you as as a content creator, you drive where your audience listens to you.
Well, that's that's always been the you know, the the this is kinda sparking a lot of memories for me as we think about the growth of these proprietary platforms is is that that's always been the the value equation. You know, I used to work at Microsoft and all that stuff, and I've I've seen this conversation happen in person at these big companies is that it's it's almost like the value equation for independent podcasters is is the potential of audience. Right? It's the it's the potential
of reach Mhmm. Right, is is what it's trading here. And but the if you already have a big show, then you're attracting audience to their platform. Right? So they're willing to pay you. But if you're just a normal content creator and you're posting your content to Spotify or to YouTube or whatever, you're not really perceived as a driver of new users or a lot of revenue. Right? So they they
don't put an emphasis on you. But if you're a big show, then and you're not on their platform, then there's a there's a value exchange that happens there. So so this conversation that we've had repeatedly over the years is around, you know, maybe the content creators need to band together and, you know, and charge a Oh. You know, access fees. Oh. Well, you know, do we need carriage, carriage agreements with, I you know, I I'm all for it. We've had this conversation in the past. Yes.
We have. And, you know, and we get scoffed. Oh, they'll never happen. Yeah. But, you know. Yeah. It's almost like a union of sorts. Right? So you're banding together to say, well, we're gonna withhold something from the employer or the platform unless we get Withhold a 100,000 active shows from their platform unless unless you write a check. Or you get into some sort of revenue deal opportunity that's that's worth it. Right. Yeah. You know? So they're never gonna do
that. Never. Well, I think we're too far down the path. Well, what we have is too much, you you know, we're we're too many people. And the ABC, CBS, NBC can go over and say, hey, you know, you want me on cable? Pay me. And and that was what their value add is is we got this great content. You want, our 10 or 11 or 15 channels, whatever it is, you're gonna pay us so much per subscriber, and that's why your cable bill's $200. So now, you know, your Spotify subscription is what? 14, $15.
You know, what if there was a deal in there that, and it says, okay, we get a dollar of every year subscriber for, you know, this a mass of of people, you know, per month, you know, that would be unheard of. Mhmm. You know? And I I I honestly don't think that you could ever I mean, it would be a miracle. It would be a miracle to pull something like that off because too many there's too many independents that would not would not would not play along.
Well, it's because they they value the clout and the reach of being on a big platform. Like Yeah. Right? So, you know, if they were to pull back on it, then they wouldn't really they probably wouldn't have any significant distribution. Well, it'd be very simple. How you how you do that is, hey, those of you listening, Spotify, starting next week, this show will not be on Spotify. You will need to catch us x, y, or z. Off our website. And and we train you
for a month. We're leaving Spotify or we're leaving such and such platform, doesn't it? It could be any platform. We're leaving here. We want and you yeah. You're gonna lose some, but those that care, the important ones are gonna move where you tell them to move. You know? Yeah. I mean, if enough people did that to Spotify and it it and even frankly to to YouTube, it it would have a dent on their revenue. No question.
Well, YouTube much harder, because podcaster makes such a, you know, minuscule amount of their content. You know, it it probably wouldn't work. But again, how many shows does it take to make someone sit up and go, hey. We got a problem here. It would take tens of thousands of shows. You know, they they could lose 10,000 shows. No one would even know tomorrow. Yeah. Well, these
these platforms are pretty powerful now. Yeah. And and and if a content creator wants to reach even even a the potential of reaching an audience, they probably have to be on those platforms now. Yeah. So So it's, you know, it's it's in They have to be. You know, the challenge is is people don't have enough patience now. Right. Most people are on a very short timeline for success and, you know, so I I get it. I I do.
I really, really do. But Though, on a more positive note on this front, I I I have seen more and more content going, to private community groups Right. That that are building you know, it's either a paid subscription access model or a or a free computer to be Mastodon or it could be, you know, all sorts of different things. Well, that's schools or Yeah. That's other ones. You know, I it's because of and it's mostly happening from YouTube creators.
Yeah. It's because all of a sudden they, you know, you know, they get demonetized because someone starts a campaign against them and, you know, they start getting, you know, they say something wrong or whatever And it's it's a survival mode at that point. The reason they're moving is they're thinking, oh my god. I'm I am going to, you know, I'm gonna be impaled by this, this this, you know, this moderator. And and you've got individuals now that are and matter of fact, I had a call
earlier this week. Had a call about, a show that is semi successful on YouTube and they're scared to death. Their representative talked to me and they're like, how do we what's, you know, they're we need a backup plan. And, you know, now it's a backup plan. Now it's, you know, they're they haven't been cut yet, but they see the handwriting on the wall.
So, you know, they are now in a position where we have to make a plan today or start planning for this for this potential of when the hammer becomes because I'm on the edge of their community guidelines and content. Yeah. And then, another call I had was with another network, who has contingency already, put, they they have a full their podcast first, but they're putting their content on Rumble as a backup plan. So they have content on Rumble just as just as purely as a contingency.
Yeah. Not necessarily a need right now, but they're thinking, you know, a year ahead, you know, what happens here. And we're starting to get some attention finally. Rob, people I've gotten more calls in probably the last 2 weeks. People that are now finally waking up and then they're saying that video is supported in podcasting. Well, I think more and more people are talking about it. You know, it it came up, it comes up in my conversations all the
time now. Of course, I I make sure I mention it now about Apple, and and who knows, you know, if Apple will, you know, turn on kinda like a UI update that will enable you to discover the video podcast Yeah. Like they used to. Hey, Ted. Oh, Ted knows. I know Ted knows, but he he does a search on the transcript when he doesn't That's right. Right. When he doesn't listen. By by the way, Ted, that code you're looking at Yeah. Interesting.
Uh-huh. No context there. By the way, you you're not watching the video. It gave you a thumbs up. So Do you wanna share more context for that? No. No. No context at all. I have too much fun, you know, that, you know, this is one of those that's Yeah. Yahoo. That's why that's why people are sometimes scared to tell us things too because we'll go on here and talk about it. Well, yeah, if they give us permission to talk about it.
Yeah. And if we talk about it in a way that doesn't get anybody in trouble. Right? Yeah. We don't want anybody in trouble. No one's getting in trouble on any of this. No. Thousand sats thousand sats from Mike. He says, I've removed my shows from Spotify. Well, I removed my personal show as well, Mike. So I never uploaded my This show is still video shows to Spotify. This this show is still on there because Rob, he he hasn't given me permission to remove it yet. The,
it's only the audio version. Right. Right. Right. Right. Only the just yeah. But neither of these platforms support, video delivery No. RSF. No. Which is funny to to think about the content. It is hilarious. Yeah. So that would be the easiest way for them to get the content in there. So yeah. And it's interesting. So if Apple makes this change in their UI, that that may bring visibility,
back to video podcasts again. Yeah. Quit making video a bastard child of of, you know again, make it a first class citizen again. Yeah. I think that would be good, you know, but, you know, I you else, you know, we we jokingly we're, you know, we're on here talking about this, but, you know, the reality is and I'm not I'm talking just kind of what I speculate. This is my hypothesis is that, there are shared resources over there and they
have a lot on their plate. And that machine moves slow and it's goes through a lot of corporate bureaucracy. And, you know, I don't know how they vote on features and what they're doing and all that, but I have a feeling it's very, very complicated. It takes a very long time. And, what I wish for today, it maybe we'll see it in 2 years. You you you never know. So, you know, there's nothing's gonna happen right
away. And from that instance and we have to continue to forging ahead and making our own destiny happen here on our own and with new podcasting apps from podcastapps.com to, you know, start start pushing the boundary here. You know, just like today, we I did a demo. There's a new tag in podcasting 2 code Tudo called the the content tag. So, we're gonna beta that next week and launch that in our dashboard, and then it'll come to PowerPress in a probably a couple more weeks.
So, you know, we'll be able to support alternate enclosures and the, multiple alternate enclosures. I'd hit the bullet on that and Multiple like like, like 3 enclosures? Alternate enclosures. 33 total enclosures. It can basically, you It can be unlimited? It can be at one normal enclosure and up to 5 alternate enclosures. Oh. And then there's a new tag that's called content link. And we were we're using the hack to get the YouTube playlist in
with that. And so now there's a new thing called content link, and we will have that will be the place where you put the link to your YouTube video or your Twitch or your Rumble or whatever you wanna put where your alternate location for your media is. And I don't wanna get hung up on YouTube because people are doing stuff on Vimeo as well. So lots of places wherever that media lives, you can you can link that And excuse me.
And then I do think that there's gonna be new some new podcast hosting platforms that are gonna I'm hearing rumbles about it already that are video podcast first platforms that are coming. Well, you know, what what is that gonna cost? You know, good luck with that. Well, from what I hear from a lot of the big, CDNs, bandwidth is pretty darn cheap now. So It's I mean Okay. It's cheap. It sound like it you it used to be back in the the early days of
video podcast. So in the early days, this show to be delivered would cost a dime. You know, that's what it would cost to deliver this show 10 years ago without revealing what my what I'm paying for bandwidth now. It's a fraction of that. Right? It's a fraction of that, but it's still not cheap at volume. What's cheap, Todd? Again, I don't wanna reveal what I'm paying per gigabit. But Yeah. Let let's just say a penny. Most CDNs most people in the podcasting space can get down to a penny a gig.
Okay. So let's just say a penny. And and some folks beyond that, you typically need to have scale. Right? A a a demand that that You have to have a certain volume, you know, and you could get a fraction of a penny. You gotta have a certain amount of volume and so forth. And you have to sign a contract. You have to guarantee that you're gonna move that much bandwidth every month for for 24 months or whatever the contract is. We just came out of our contract period and I I believe.
And so essentially, if you think about this show, if it was a penny a gig, this show would cost a penny a gig to deliver. So a 100 views on this is a dollar. A 1,000 views on this is $10. So it's still not cheap as compared to audio and then Cheap compared to, like, say, Spotify or YouTube's platform. Right? Well, it well, YouTube yeah. Exactly. Because YouTube and Spotify is free. So but if you Yeah. But why are they free, Todd? So I I think we have to back up Right. Why are
they free? Because they're advertising the hell out of that content. Right. Plus plus both of those platforms have the scale. Right. The scale. That gets their per gigabyte transfer rate. YouTube was YouTube and Google YouTube and Google was brilliant. They bought fiber. So in some instances, they're have to pay anything. They have to pay nothing. They well, they go to the pop and whatever the exchange is. They may pay a little bit, but they pay a fraction.
Yeah. You know, their decimal point is probably over several decimal points in the scheme of things. Right. I mean, there's costs. Oh, yeah. There's cost. Never a 100% free, but if they have their own fiber infrastructure But if they're running Google has. If they're running an ad every 10 minutes Right. You know, they're make they're making they're making a boat load of money versus the cost of the delivery. You know, it's like free cash. They're probably 99%.
No. They got overhead and servers and people. So if they're making let's just say they're making 50% of the revenue comes in, goes into their pot of gold, and the other 50% is, you know, covers, salary servers, infrastructure, data centers, you know, whatever, you know, what because there is gonna be a cost just like and that's what people don't realize too in the podcast hosting business.
Just because bandwidth is cheap, the infrastructure that has to support getting it there, employee salaries, benefits, health care, the server cost, you know, all that stuff goes to against, you know, in the end, you know, what is it what is the overhead for me to deliver 1 gig of data? You know, people Well, there's there's actually server resources. It depends on how you're hosting it. Some Yeah. Some companies will have their own servers that are co located that manages multiple Yeah.
Multiple locations. And then there's other companies that will use like a like a, Amazon Cloud or I think majority of us are on cloud, you know. Yeah. And so you have to pay for server Yeah. Reasons. You pay one way or the other. Right. Right. And bandwidth. So Where Google, they they paid to build a data center, you know. So they they forked out, you know, whatever, 2, 300,000,000 to do a data center. So they have
costs just like we have costs. You know, we're renting stuff in the cloud that they built and they make a profit on that. So, you know, when people say, oh, bandwidth is cheap. I I wrote a post on Facebook that, they got a lot of got a lot of it got a big reaction and it basically, it was involved the StreamYard increase in price, which we probably should talk about. And I basically said and let me find this. And I'll just read what I said. So Blueberry has not raised its prices
ever. Now get that. We we've been hosting podcasts hosting since 2008, but we've been doing other stuff since 2006, 2005. Blueberries not raised its prices ever. Why? We're in a highly competitive environment. While in this while all industries have increased prices, all, ours have stayed the same for 20 years. Actually, 18. Sadly, with 25 companies competing for podcasters, that's
life. Now, StreamYard's increases monthly pricing by 80%, which will automatically apply to existing subscribers next month. The prices move from $25 to 44.99. They may discover that the world has changed with free open stuff offerings like OBS and other platforms available to creators. They're less expensive too. Well, some stuff is free. Yeah. You know, when I make my transition, we're gonna use Restream. You know, I well, I'll be able to host the show where
I'm at on Restream. We won't have to use StreamYard. I'm not renewing my annual subscription with StreamYard, personally. I'm not gonna pay $500 for something that I can have over on Restream and get 90% of the tools I need there. So and people say, oh, you you know, you should be able to raise prices. Well, walk in my shoe a day and say, okay. We're gonna raise our prices by even 10%. But, you know, so when people say, but yet my health care went up 30
I'm not bitching. I'm just saying. My health care last year went up 13%. Mhmm. And that's cumulative year after year after year after year after year. And, I can't be alone in this where finances where you see the the cost is going up, and we're not and maybe someday we'll have to raise prices. Maybe.
I and I don't have it in the the playbook yet, but So would you say that, besides employment, like taxes and things like that and and expectations around salary, are there other aspects of the podcast hosting business that you think, have been impacted by inflation? Oh, everything. Everything? Yeah. Our prices have went up for everything. So the bandwidth costs have gone up? Bandwidth cost is the only thing that hasn't went up. But AWS cost, services cost, tools cost.
Sure. Yeah. I just got an an announcement from Jira. They're raising our prices. We're getting like a 20% whack on, the tools that we use. So all those prices are going up, you know, and yet here we are sitting at 12, 20, 40, and $80 a month for hosting plans. And I guarantee you if I raise the price to 20 raise the price, let's say, 25% Mhmm. Or 20%. Oh, I think That'd be a lot. People would people would howl, but yet they're paying 49.95, they're paying $300 for editors, da da da da da da.
So I think there has to be a reality check at some point. And, you know, how can you compete with free? That's the problem too. You've gotta come you get Spotify out here offering it for free. Mhmm. But, again, you have to continue to add value and try to, you know, attract your customers and and make sure but again, I have to watch the the bottom line. We're doing fine.
But I'm just looking at the overall spear of things and, you know, a little bit information has come to light between you and I that we know that there's some struggles out there with some hosting companies. And I guess we can't go into details. I don't know what you wanna say, but not not everything is well in the space.
No. I I agree with that, Todd. I don't think that, you know, I think we saw what what's been happening to Lipson, and I think we're there's another major host brand that's going through a massive company restructuring and letting people go. It's not a public thing, and I'm not gonna be the one that makes it public, but it's, it's impacting, you know, people that are have been working in the podcast industry for a long time. And I, I think it has something to do with AI and automation.
And, and I think increasingly, I think a lot of tech companies are gonna be under pressure to cut back on staff and and automate more processes. And if you think about it, I mean, on the marketing side, there's two trends that are going on. There there's a lot of automation coming to online marketing, plus there's also, you know, some trends around, not needing as much staff for events because there's not that many events happening anymore.
And then a lot of outsourcing that is happening to vendors out there that could maybe do those same processes, that would be available in an internal staff at much lower cost because there aren't, employment taxes. Right. Those are the other key cost metrics and, you know, and create a company that's maybe has just a couple of people in it, and it just operates
on its own. Right? Right. So so you don't have to face as much tax burden and and things like that around employment tax and things like that because because the government makes it rough on companies to have employees. It's So it's unbelievable the, you know, Barry, my CFO and legal, he, you know, it's amazing. I look, you know, he basically puts in his hours just like I do and and I see what he's doing in task and states. Some states make it just absolutely horrendous to do business in.
The amount of paperwork, you know, we've got a number of employees spread across multiple states. And it's worse just having one employee in one state because you're doing this it would be the same amount of work paperwork wise as, like, having a 100. Yep. The the administrative burden is unbelievable. And then not to mention the federal governments, you know, they make it mandatory we have to fill out these, census surveys. You have to fill them out. It's mandatory for companies.
You you can get a fine if you don't. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. Plus there's there's legal risks that go along with being an employer too that, a lot of times people don't think about too. You know, when an employee leaves or you have to let somebody go or you have to, you know, make changes, there there can be legal things that can come up that backfire on you. Or if you, if you have to fire people, you're you're susceptible to higher rates of,
you know, for unemployment insurance Yep. And things like that. So there's always these penalties for employers to handle staff. So, you know, sometimes the the easiest thing to do is just not have as much staff. And if a computer or a Android type of or a robot can automate things, that could be what we see
happen in the future. And it does make you wonder, And I did hear from a fellow here recently on on my trip, to Arizona here recently that that was working as a contractor for the federal government, and and his whole job is to put together programs to identify certain people in our economy, for government hiring,
for roles in the government. And he says that there's a mandatory hiring activity that could be up to, I I think, an additional 4 to 5000000 federal government employees over the next 3 years. Oh, to to what? Tax collectors? No. Just just various areas of expertise. I think the federal government right now, and I'm speaking about the United States here, currently employs about 4,000,000 people right now. I think they're the largest employer in the country. I think that's a small number.
There's that seems low. But But if you include the military yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this fellow was telling me that there's a mandate that he's been given because of his contract with the federal government is to is to work on hiring, up to 3,000,000 more federal government employees. 2.87000000 is the number as of Okay. 2.95000000 as of 2023. Oh, okay. As the current employee Current current number. Yeah. I don't think there's any other major corporation that employs more people than that. No.
You know, it's funny. I got a call a month ago, and it was one of my federal connections that I had before. Mhmm. And they were recruiting and, for specific job position, and, that offer was pretty pretty lucrative. Mhmm. Obviously, I I couldn't take it.
Yeah. That's what that's what this guy was telling me too, is that the federal government pays really well and Depends if you're what GS level you are or if you get into the SES, you know, if you're gonna get into the senior executive service level. Sure. They do cap caps, you know, and then and those cap those those pay tables are public. So you can look them up with a, you know, GS 12, 13, 14 make, which is, you know, considers government, great benefits and, you know,
decent pay. But, you know, did you So it does speak to an agenda that the that, the federal government's gonna continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger is what I'm, I guess, my key They don't have to worry, Rob, about, you know, the the they're they're not efficient with their money because, you know, that's that's the problem. At taking our money. No. That's right. Yeah. But, you know, with everything going on, you know, we'll see if there's a room in the budget
for another 2,000,000 federal employees. I and I think the main thing here is and and I just want people to be aware of that are podcasters out there. There's an extreme while your prices at the grocery stores have been going up Right. And your gas has gone up and everything else that we see that doesn't get counted in the CBT, inflation rate, your companies you're working with costs are going up too. Because we did massive pay raises in order to try to keep people up with the economy.
And when you throw on a percentage increase that could be double digits, a year after year, that's cumulative. You know, it basically is you take a $100 and you get someone a 10% pay raise that's now at a 110. And given even let's say you're doing it again, like, now you're up to 1 you know, now you go to a a $100 and, $21, you know, the it it's it's stackable. Right? And It's more taxes that the Right. Company has to share. And and at the same time, the you know, with
health care costs. So be happy that the hosting companies haven't raised their rates in 20 years. But, Todd, I do think that at some point, they probably are. I think it will become a point where they'll have to. Yeah. The the question is, who is going to squeak first? Because no one wants to squeak first. And the reason why we've been able to not raise prices is because because of economy of scale Right. We're able to lower oh, as we grew, our bandwidth cost went down, which is a
big number every year. So, you know, it kinda helped this in that regard. But now when you bottom out, when you have basically maximized where you're at on a fraction basis from bandwidth standpoint, there's no more there's no more there's no more leather left to to to split the delta and everything then is, you know, can you make more added value and so forth. But, again, I think that what we're gonna see and, you know, people are you can tell by how many people are being laid off.
Restructuring, like you said. You know, restructuring for a reason. It could be a lot of different reasons Yeah. That the company restructures in but most of it is usually based on financial considerations Right. Of some sort. Right? Yep. And then also strategy. And not to mention, you know, like, a year ago, we went through a flow a full I mean, full blown IRS, audit. And we came out on the other side of it, with no issues. I think we had one thing we got flagged on, and it was minor.
But to go through a full blown audit that took months and then not have to write the government a check and not be It's a waste of your time. It was massive. You know, paperwork polls, receipts. You know, what was this charge? I mean, right down into my GoDaddy bill, you know, looking at GoDaddy and saying, oh, do you you know, why did you have a $3,000 in domain registrations? Let me see that list of domain names and, you know, and you have to justify everything.
So Well, from what I remember, they they hired, what, 87,000 new, IRS agents. Well, that was before the hiring. We got whacked. I think it was just our time in the barrel. So, you know, I think what happens then is and again, I don't think you're you're you get away from anything at all at any point, but we came out good on the audit. That's good. So maybe we'll get a few years before we get audited again. Maybe if they can come back at any time and, you know, ask to see something.
All it takes is one thing to get flagged. You you outside of their parameters of some cost. And that's even on my personal side, and we're talking about expense. I don't because of my I have a separate company that I operate under personally, and my workman's comp insurance went up $400. And I was like, I was paying like $1,000. Now I'm paying $1400 a year. I'm paying workman's comp because I sit behind a computer and, you know, no physical labor, but yet my workers' comp went up. And I'm just a
sole proprietor business. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm people would probably think I'm complaining here. I'm sorry. But There's lots to complain about. But this is the you know, I think this is in in so everyone's affected. And maybe that's why Spotify is under so much pressure to raise, get more revenue. You know, they are They are a public company. Yeah. You know, both both Google and Spotify are public companies. They're under
scrutiny. And if the if the earnings call doesn't go good, well, you know, a stock goes kaput. Yep. You know, you you look at your Libsyn stock when it got delisted, you know. Mhmm. It's, you know, worth the you might as well have it printed in and use it as toilet paper because that's what it's worth right now. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, of course, that happened a long time ago. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know. I did notice, Todd, too, that, the IAB podcast measurement guidelines compliance continues to roll out across companies and Yeah. We're in the middle of ours. Buzzsprout was the was the most recent one that, went to v 2.2, I guess. And I guess Megaphone achieved 2.2 in late July, and I guess Captivate and AudioMeans. I'm not familiar with AudioMeans. I don't know either. Familiar with them either. Never heard of them.
I wonder if there's somebody outside of the US because I I've never heard of them before. Is is it Audio Means? Yeah. M e a n s? And, Audio Means, m e a n s. Yeah. So they are a French looks like French. S la solution taut on on port. Yeah. So, yeah, they are definitely a, yeah. They're French company. Yeah. I think, many years ago, we talked about on this show that there was the growing development of a different podcast metric standard in France. Wow. Must be that didn't go anywhere. Yeah.
Yeah. I was surprised at the time, because I knew that the IAB had offices all around the world. And and I thought, well, why isn't the IAB guidelines being supported in France? But I guess there there's a separate organization in France that wanted to develop their own separate podcast metrics because IAB hadn't established themselves as deeply in that market. So obviously, that's changed. We've, ours, there's a new provision in the, certification that talks about,
an exact word. It's basically In the national side? No. It's basically one of the new certification requirements that makes you, show to the auditors how you are detecting events. I guess how you use that word. So, you know, we've had a pretty complex system in place for a long time. We know how When you say events, are you talking about our our requests on the server? We're talking about it's not labeled as fraud, but you might as well or let's say, like, the Apple
Podcast event or the Apple Watch event. How you how you detect something that's outside the spear of the, you know, the normal. And, you know, and we've never we've had that for years, but we've never really documented it. We know what it does. And, so ours is taking a little longer because we had to go back through and document exactly how this thing works. And, hopefully, we'll be go actually finish we'll start the actual physical audit sometime in October.
That's the goal, and maybe it will be done by the end of October, but Ron, do you have I saw some recent, interest in discussion around the the IP 6, standard being increasingly supported in the medium. Do you have any thoughts about that, Tom? We we, you know, based upon what we see and what we get, and and how we have things configured, everything comes back to us right now at I p v 4. We could turn it on, but we're seeing all the requests come
through. We're we've, you know And you're just not seeing any IPV, 4 or 6 requests coming through to It again, it's how we're configured with CloudFront. Okay. Yeah. So we have the capability of of, what's the best word to use, measuring IPv6 and have stuff in place so that, when it comes through, we'll be able to handle it. To capture it? Yeah. Well, capture is
that's the easy part. Being able to apply, really, there's not much of a standard for it right now, but, you know, there's been a discussion on what, quote, unquote, we all should be doing, and we're we're conforming to that. So my understanding is that it's just an extension of the number sequence of the IPs. Right? Well, no. IP the IP v the IP v 6 is a completely and I and I I see, how many octals are IPv6 octals? Let me Google this. Yeah. It's an expansion of the numbers.
The amount of numbers I think it's, right. Yeah. And if you think about it It's like a whole another set of 3 digits, isn't it? Yeah. So I p v six are written as 8 groups of 4 hexadecimal digits. Right. Where I p v 4 is, is 4 groups of 3 hexadec well, not it's not even hexadecimals, decimal numbers. So if it's like 192 dot 168 dot 00 0 dot 00 1. Right. Right. So, you know, but they don't put 3 zeros. They do it. It could be 19 it could be 123-456-789-123.
You know, basically, it's that's the setup. And Yeah. I always thought that the reason that they needed to do that was because of, what the Internet of things Yeah. Where more and more devices in the world We're out of IP v 4 addresses is what it is. Right. Right. So as we add more devices that connect to the Internet, we need more, IP numbers And there's to be able to
to use. And and the way it was originally designed, I p v six was really originally designed was that you would get an I p v six number for almost life. Well, it doesn't happen that way. Not the way things have been designed is the I p v six actually changes the essentially, the last 8 digits, or or hexadecimals. The a last 8 hexadecimal donations changes on a fairly consistent basis. So, you know, if you think about, That could be a privacy configuration
too. Right? Yeah. Because because then it can't be identified to one particular So the rule Why? Basically is with, you know, you match an IP with a user agent and then there's rules around that. But Mhmm. What's really happened with IPV 6 is you have to figure out, okay, where do I call that a unique? If that unique is going to let's say someone's got a mobile phone and the IPV 6 address updates every 15 minutes. Well, that's very you can't use the whole number anymore.
You can't use all the octavals as, so you have to back up. Yeah. Do some of them probably some of the numbers in the sequence probably stay the same. Yeah. Yeah. It's only like the last 4 that probably Last 8. Cons last 8 that constantly changes. Yeah. Okay. So you wanna measure it based on the earlier numbers, but that could be fewer characters than what what the IPV 4 stuff was. Right? Well, it it what it really is is I think the accuracy it depends.
It there's there's a lot of things here that are, you know, it it can affect. We'll see if it if it causes a decrease in in, in downloads or not. I I don't think so at this point. I think, there's enough of a handle on it now to kind of understand what's going on, especially if you combine that data with, let's say, as an example, someone has gotten 50%. They're streaming the episode. They've got 50% of the way through the episode. They've chunked out 50%.
And they come back an hour or 2 later and start, and there's another IPV 6 in there. If you can marry, do a little Match those up somehow. It's it's a little more tricky because the IP would usually respond. Right? But now, the IPV 6, you know, it's pretty now some stuff that depends on the depends on the country, depends on the implementation, but unfortunately, mobile device and mobile device carriers seem to be pretty, pretty savvy in the ability to change those numbers on a regular basis.
So also yeah. So how does this affect, corporate network connectivity to to content too? Right. Oh, it's everywhere. Corporate and then networks embracing this IPV system. Not not a lot or not. Not a lot? Yeah. Okay. Because most corporates and, you know, most servers, they're still IP v four addresses out there. They're just not as many. And and, you know, who owns most of the IP v four addresses? Well, the Internet service providers.
Right. So a lot in mostly Internet service providers, at least here in the United States, have not yet rolled out I v p six. Now I'm seeing it on Starlink. Yeah. I'll I'll like an Xfinity or some of those platforms. Yeah. So if I do, what is my IP here on my connection today? Let's see what it says. But I would imagine that the the wireless carriers, like AT and T and T Mobile and stuff like that, they probably play with
dynamic IPs, don't they? Well, you know, my IPV 4 on Starlink right now, my my IPV 4 address on Starlink changes about every 2 to 3 days. It doesn't stay very up. So right now, I'm not being detected as having an IPV 6 here at the house. I'm only being only seeing IPV 4. So Todd, as far as your your kind of impression of this, I mean, how does this issue with IPV 4 versus IPV 6 affect podcasting, do you think? Well, if you're not ready to measure IPV 6 You could miss tracking
Well certain certain requests? Again, it depends on your CDN Right. And how this data comes back through. So and I I don't know this the specifics about how CloudFront does it. If they obfuscate it or sign it an IP to I again, I'm not sure exactly how they do it, but you have the option of turning on IPv6 at your, you're not missing anything, but there's somehow you still get the data. It's not like anything's being missed. So is there a higher cost to support the IPv6? No.
Same thing. So So so why wouldn't everybody just turn it on? Because of these exact issues. You know, everyone's kinda stuck on I people love ipv4. They don't necessarily like ipv6. Outside the United States, that's a different situation. You know? Yeah. Because they're Maybe growing faster. Maybe a newcomer this in a new platform trying to get a a bank of I p v fours can't, and they're forced to be on IPV 6. But they still have to transfer transverse an
IPV 4 world. That's the funny part about this. So it's backwards compatible, but it's not Yeah. And that's the reason why it's not this big panic in podcasting right now. Yeah. So probably probably the accuracy, you know, because it gets funneled through something. Again, I I know and and everything I've said here is Todd's interpretation of a lot of stuff, but I don't fully understand what the devs do. So don't quote me on anything. Yeah. No. It's the
same with me too. Right? Yeah. Because I do remember conversations on the IPV 6 topic. Podcast industry where there was a lot of worry and concern. There's been discussion at IAB about it. So I would imagine that's true. Yeah. Because I think this new 2.2 embraces it more, doesn't it? I have to go look at the spec. To be honest with you, I didn't even read it after it was out. I'll let the dev team take and make sure we're compliant.
Yeah. Right. Well, I also wanted to mention too that mister Adam Curry, my father of podcasting, is gonna be with us, next Wednesday. Yeah. What are we gonna talk about with Adam? I think there's lots of stuff to talk about with Adam. I think there is. Where we are in the industry right now, you know, his his views on video, his views on the podcasting 2.0, direction and just the yeah. I think just the overall kind of feeling that he has about what's
going on in the podcast space. I know he's he's fairly anti, proprietary platform, so it's gonna be an interesting discussion on that topic. By the way, Rob, happy 20 years in podcasting. Oh, well, thank you, Todd. I think you're a couple weeks. Aren't you about to flip over to that too? A couple weeks. You know, it's kind of funny. I went to the way back machine and I should show this. That's the best place to look for it. Right? Yeah. And because and it's real funny.
It it actually, I got a little bit of a giggle out of it. The closest date I had okay. Let let me just bring this up. See if I can find it. Geek news central.com. Go here. I go gotta go back to 2004. I gotta go to October. There they took a snapshot of my site on October 14th. And let's see here. Okay. Bring it up. I'm waiting for it to sit here. It's spinning or doing whatever it's doing. Alright. So now, boy, this this would be a blast from the past. Let's see if I can get on the screen here.
So there's the old site. Remember that one? Yep. Okay. So if we go down here to October 9th I'm gonna go to site. This was on movable type at the time and movable type didn't put in a they basically had a running flow. So October 9th had many post. So October 9th, there was here it is. Geek News podcast number 1. I hope you all like the first feedback on it. And then I started reading up on stuff here, and, I said email to rescue bandwidth use for podcasters. I know we'll be okay on our
bandwidth for our podcast. At least, I think we will. If it gets real ugly, we'll distribute it via Gmail. So I was saying we'll send the podcast via email. With a huge amount of storage you offer, it could work out very well. Scoble always has the best connections. This is what he had to say about it. So there was a link to Scoble and Bandwidth. And then, I'm asking for feedback, and they said, oh, your the base was too high.
And I talked about, Adobe edition 1.5 dollar microphone, which was probably part of the and I thought I spent $15 at Walmart. It was 8. And then I said, podcast total downloads to date. This is comical. I decided to check and see how much bandwidth we burned the 1st 2 days of the initial podcast. I had to do the math 3 times, but I figured I made a mistake. Here are the totals. My log show a little over 6 gigs. Wow. 6 gigs of MP 3 downloads with the podcast being a little over 12 megs.
That makes total downloads nearly 500 for the first show. Somehow, I can't believe it. The logs are then. The math don't lie. I received 50 emails from listeners. So it's kinda funny, you know, that was such an early time, about it. And then little did I know that, to be frank, shit would hit the fan because I started running on a band with the 2nd show. One word of warning, for those who are going to do a podcast, make sure you have plenty of bandwidth. We'll be reducing the bit rate on all
future shows. We went on over 10 gigs of traffic for our first podcast. I've estimated total amount of traffic. I received a 100 gigs for this month, but this was the planning of doing 10 to 12 podcasts. I think with reducing the bit rate, we can keep in the allotted amount. I guess I need to figure out how to do bit torrents. If we're doing podcasts, are you seeding bit torrents? I'd like to talk to you about how we're doing that and helping your bandwidth issues.
I think we also set up a separate XML file specifically for podcast subscriptions. I think some of the downloads came from individual RS aggregators that pull the enclosures by default. Nice. So, you know, that tells you my knowledge level, you know, on October 12th in the second episode. So, you know, yeah. And I and then here's the famous I'm changing to this XML, keatoncentral.comforward /podcast.xmo. I had that x I had that feed address for 19 years before I changed it, here recently.
Because I was off the original index dot XML, but oh, my theme music, I removed that episode earlier because the AC DC back in black was not the appropriate, music to play for the intro of the podcast. So there's the Wayback Machine and my proof. Yeah. And here's here's mine. On 15th September of 2004 is when I I started, adding enclosures to my RSS feed. I had a brand new brand new website back then. Wow. Look at that design, Rob. Yeah. Well, it's it's, if I open it up further, you can
I know, but Yeah? See more of it. But but, yeah. I had a whole you know, I had a community. It had a store in it. It had a forum. It had all sorts of capabilities built into it. Yeah. It was built actually with a company that I I worked with back then called InfoCreek, and they were a development company out of Ukraine. Wow. So I had a Ukrainian guy helping me with, matter of fact, I still have him on my email. Every once in a while, there's something I need help with. His name is Vasili.
And, It's the same guy. It's the same guy that I Oh. Worked with to build, this this website. Yeah. Vasili is still around, Rob. Yes. I know he is. Yeah. So last time I had him help me a couple of yeah. I had him help me a couple of years ago with something with the Yep. With the website. Something to do with so yeah. Some I guess that's how I got to know Vasili was through you. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I asked him how he was doing with the war going on, and I
think he left Ukraine. I don't think he's in Ukraine right now. Yeah. I would think I would think he probably left. Right? Yeah. Yeah. He's in Bulgaria or something like that. Go ahead. Yeah. James James Cridland made the connection on this post, and he posted it in the newsletter, but saying that I was I was podcasting before there was actually a Before the word. Approved, name actually was issued. Because I think it was issued the same day. Did you call the podcast in the post?
No. I didn't. I called it RSS feed with a p three closure. Okay. Because, I mean, back in those days, that's I mean, that's all I did was, you know, I had this blog RSS feed, and I told the developers to just add an enclosure tag in there. And and then then I was able to upload, the MP 3 file in there. Yeah. And it was still kind of a manual process back then. You know, it wasn't like the the there was an RSS enclosure, you know, script or whatever in the background.
I had to go into the, the the RSS feed, manually and add that. So it was really kind of not fully deployed. I think the InfoCreek folks didn't really, help me out with that too much. Hey. I wanna talk a little bit about, I went to this AI event last week. Yeah. And, by the way, welcome to level 2. And, you got 2 years before, chaos is upon us. 2 years. Although, I think some companies are already firing people in lieu of AI. I think it's already starting. But, I It's not as widespread as it will
be in 2 years. I wrote a post. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and it was I had a 3 hour car ride back from, from Cleveland. And, I wrote this post called, creator first path advocacy innovation and integrity. And it really was this reflection about how we founded Blueberry, where where we're a creative first company, and we built by podcasters essentially. And also covered a little bit of, discussion about ethical AI practices
and things that we do. So, I really took you know, and and this is like the third thing I've written recently. I did a couple of my own personal website, because I was a little stronger language and probably wasn't appropriate for the corporate blog. And, we, last Tuesday yesterday? Yesterday or Monday, we had 5 members of the team came in and we recorded a a 20 year in podcasting,
event. We really talk about the beginning and things that we learned and and, you know, and I keep going back to one thing, and it it came up again in this, in this discussion we had. We did a 59 minute round table discussion about Blueberry and podcasting and what we believe in and all this stuff. And, we forget we get tied up in the advertising and the tech and the features and all these things, but yet, we forget about the listeners.
Yeah. And, we we as content creators, we would not be here without the listeners. And, you know, even on this show, we talk about the industry and everything else and I think we under appreciate the people listen to the show. So I just personally wanna say for those of you that listen, and those who you hang out with us live and everything else, you know, thanks for doing that.
But I think if we really really dig deep, we we need to think more about the listeners and that's why I'm kind of, you know, again, I don't know why maybe it's because of this 20 year thing I've been I I don't know if I wanna call it deep reflection,
but Yeah. I I think that someone's gotta tell these stories and someone's gotta share the legacy of podcasting so that if we can influence this group and they can influence their friends and their circles, you know, we can be pretty powerful in talking about, you know, don't don't forget about your audience. And I think the average podcaster that's doing a show, that's probably all they're focused on,
is their audience. Maybe, maybe we get a little disconnected because we're just, you know, we we think we're talking to podcasters all the time. So Yeah. You know. Right. Right. There's a lot of people that, you know, would listen to this show and maybe not really fully comprehend what we're we're actually talking about. Yeah. Or take offense to stuff.
Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, that too. And but also just the you know, this show is, you know, like this conversation that we had about the IPV 4 and IPV 6 stuff can kinda, like, go right over the top of a lot of people's heads. And it is a very technical conversation, but it's important to the industry. But it's yeah. I mean, I hear what you're saying, Todd. It it's the same time, and I think I could reword this a little
bit. But this show, I think, if you listen to this comment here, because it comes from, you know, way we work at the company, doing this show, doing the other show we do at Blueberry. I said this as a podcaster, and I could say this, you know, Rob, if I don't if I'm not representing you correctly, please tell me. As a podcaster, we've been passionate about pod protecting the rights of podcasters.
From the very beginning, we could say that even this show, Replace New Blueberry, has been an advocate for podcaster rights, whether that's ensuring they retain ownership of their content or making sure they're getting a fair deal when it comes to monetization. We don't sell podcasters' data with third parties. We're fully transparent how we operate it. And and I think that's how you and I do this show too is being as
transparent as we can. Sometimes we can't talk about stuff, that, you know, that we've been entrusted with, but I think I I hope people trust us here. Yeah. I do too. Definitely. I try and engender that in all the content that I do. I'm not really focused on advertising and I'm not trying to cater to advertisers. Yeah. So it's it's more about the content creator. Right? Yeah. That's that's the focus of this show is really
the content creator side of things. And and speaking, Todd, about the the thing that you mentioned about sharing legacy and also sharing, extensive experience in this medium, you know, the the podcast hall of fame is going through creating a new board of directors, and trying to create an organization around that event, and and it's tie in with the Podfest, new organization in that,
that organization too. And I hope that Podfest becomes a much more significant, player in the podcasting space because it is focused on the creator side, where we've seen podcast movement move a little bit more towards the the advertising and business side of podcasting, where Podfest is really focused
on that. And the hall of fame is a is a reflection of legacy and and a a reflection of legacy and and a a platform at which, stories can be told around how people built, their careers in podcasting and what the what what the the fundamentals are and what the ethics are and what the experience has been, and that's kinda what goes on on stage at that event. Yeah. And experience has been, and that's kinda what goes on on stage at that event. Yeah. And that's what I try and engender in that
that that event. But trying to create a, you know, a more, I guess a more open kind of podcast community around the hall of fame and be open to suggestions and open to potential nominees and things like that is something that I'm, I'm prioritizing. And I know James Kerlin ran a little piece in the newsletter about the date for this, ceremony that's coming up in January, and, that that is true. That that's what we're we're targeting right now as part of Podfest
coming up. So I hope that you'll you'll support the the event. If a request comes through to get more involved in the the podcast hall of fame somehow and and contribute to it or share on social media about it. I think it really helps the the medium move forward in a positive light, having a little bit of a historical perspective, but, you know, really trying to celebrate people that have really brought good good values to podcasting.
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I'm excited, in that regard as well. Matter of fact, we just got communications from Podfest on our booth selection. We had sent our our bids in. So, our bids went this afternoon, I guess, for our booth location and, yeah, we look forward to be in. Rob, by the way, I don't know if you saw the email, but it looks like we are approved to do the new media show at podcast movement. So Oh, no. It I mean, podcast. Excuse
me. Podcast. Podcast. Right. And I believe it's, I think the date that they set for that, I think, is the either 16th or 17th. I it's it's Thursday. Whatever day that is. I think it's Thursday. I think that's the first day of the event. I think that's 16th. 4 PM, I believe, is the is the date. Alright. And I've got approved for a session as well. I'm gonna be, talking about AI,
at the event. You know, one thing about this AI event that I went to, and you have a room full of executives from, you know, I was looking at badges. You know, car rental companies, you know, big big big big fortune 500 companies are at this event. And, you know, I'm kind of like, I'm wearing a blueberry shirt. You gotta wear the colors. I gotta wear my wear my patch, my blueberry patch on my polo shirt. And and that way, some you know, it was a good advertising course. We had some good
conversations. But the common phrase in presentations was encompassing 2 words. I've never heard so many high end professionals say holy shit in my whole life. They were had these HS moments. You know, they were like, look at this HS. Look at this HS. You know, look what's changed HS. And, you know, have you had your h s moment? Not right.
And one thing that I had been working on, and I probably won't talk too much about it, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about podcast stats and what we can use AI to help get more Analyze it. More data. Right? And I've been working on this for a while, and it's taken me a certain amount of time just to, you know, kind of think about scenarios, and we got input from other people. But when the new model came out, I had about a 5 page document.
Well, first of all, I had about a 5 10 page document just chicken scratch that I got organized into headings and, you know, benefits and minuses, you know, all these things. And, you know, what's why shouldn't we do this, you know, and, you know, all these kind of a, you know, project paper. And I dumped it into the new model, and I said, okay. Here's kinda what I wanna do. Mhmm. Here's the 23 or some items I have in my list.
Prior to prioritize them in strength of idea, available technology, and I they they just I wrote this, like, 2 paragraph, because you only get we're getting only 30 of these things a a week with this new model. And I guess it it takes a whole bottle of water to cool it, you know, you from every query you do, a bottle of water or 2 to to cool the chips. And I hit enter and this thing sit there and it went through its thinking, analyzing,
you know, and it took it. I'm, like, kinda waiting, like, 25, 30 seconds and all of a sudden, it just starts spitting stuff out. Right. I shared it with one of my team members and I said you got to look at this. I said there's stuff in here I have never heard of before. Right. And him and I were open up a little chat window and him and I were having our h s moment at that moment because he's like, I've never heard of that.
And we googled it or like h s and googled something else in h s and it it so what it really did and it didn't tell us how to do it, but it linked to resources and potential ways to get the answers of what we're trying to do. Not all of it's AI, so much machine learning. So this reasoning capability, when used correctly, is is pretty impressive. And it you know, there's gonna be a whole new skill level to learn how to ask the questions.
I did a couple of stupid things and wasted some searches on, but, it's it's pretty amazing. It really, really is. I know someone that recently took some code they were working on in a certain language and they converted it to JavaScript on the fly and to make a few, you know, error. He had to be a coder know what's going on, but he had made a few changes. So while we're still using the stupidest AI we ever will, and I know some of you, Adam is not a believer in the AI piece too
much. He, you know, he's got mixed reactions on it as well. I I just look at the efficiencies I've gained from it. And, you know, again, you gotta QA this thing. Make sure it's not telling you to do something dumb. But, yeah, I was I came home with a head full of stuff. I'm still deciphering. I've got, you know, 5 pages of notes that are, like one liners, and now I'm going back and through and looking at all the presentations and pulling stuff out.
But So what would you say is the is the big the largest kind of revolutionary thing that you saw at the event? Nothing real revolutionary this time per se because the tools are just getting better. It's an incremental thing. Incremental thing. But the biggest the the most impactful session I went to was a guy talking about the future of, search. And Is there a future for for for google.com?
I don't know. Well, the I guess the best way to say it is they're obscuring chat gpt perplexing everyone is is is obscuring when people come to your site from those platforms. There's no user agent. You can't tell it came from ChatGPT. They used to have it. Turn it on, turn it off, turned it on, turned it off. So you don't know what traffic's coming to your website from a large language model. So there's things you have to do now to get
inference. You have to you have to go a little bit now on intuition. If something happens, did my traffic change to my top 25 pages? Did, you know, you have to look at the timeline. Did the release of this new, you know, are you seeing changes in traffic? So that's not an exact science. SEO still exists. You still have to do SEO for the time being, but,
scary times ahead. And the the main point that everyone kind of agrees on and I've got a comment here, and this is the only one I'm gonna share because this is an expensive event to go to. And, you have to pay for the pay for the knowledge. And this really is kinda probably true in any marketing. You have to have a religion on what people love you for. And you have to know that your brand is the only thing that's gonna count going forward. Your brand is the only thing that's gonna
count? Right. Because Or is it your your your personal brand or a company brand? Personal brand, company brand. The same thing. The same thing. Because the individual content that you are putting out today Mhmm. Is not gonna be found. That is gonna go by the wayside. So you have to build your brand and have the the basis so ingrained in people knowing what you do, what you're about. You have to have religion
on what people love you for. So you need to know the personas of those that are consuming your content and make sure you are a 100% focused on building that audience of customers or listeners or whatever it may be. Mhmm. Because that's gonna carry you through this transition, that we're we're facing here And Yes. And so how can you kind of capture control of that from the standpoint of being able to
to create that outcome for yourself? Is there pathways that you see to to train the AI to be more aware of your brand? Or how does that happen? That that's, I think, still hocus pocus at this point. My I and I asked a very, probably, top of the field type of guy. You know, one of these guys said if I actually got in a room with him for half hour, it probably cost me $10,000, that kind of a consultant type. He agreed with me that going wide is gonna be very important.
When you say going wide in the context of the company You can't just you can't you podcasters are gonna be set up because we're wide already. We're distributed multiple places. But for you to be picked up as authority, you need to be being talked about on sites of authority. Oh, god. And getting because it's it's it's going out and scanning all of the content that's available. Ranking sites based upon the authority of the
site, how good the data is. So if you start putting a bunch of s h I t on your website, a bunch of AI generated s h I t, the large language model will probably bring you down if they think that you're creating crap. So the quality of the content, the focus of the content is gonna be super super critical going forward. So some of it's kinda what you do in SEO now, but you you need this this brand is about the only thing you're gonna have to stand on.
They they termed it the 5th industrial revolution. Mhmm. And, you know, what are 5th, Todd. Where was the where was the second, 3rd, and 4th? You know? And I think what was the industrial age? A second industrial or third or something? But, anyway, they can consider this the 5th, and if someone donates to my Geek News Center show, I'll share.
My fact, if you donate to this show, if you go to a little PayPal link on new mediashow.com, I will give you access via a link to the video where it talks about an hour of this SEO AI convergence. Mhmm. But I'm not giving that up for free. So if you make a donation to this show or you make a donation to Geekness Center, I'll share the link, but you have to swear you don't share it with nobody. I I'm being stingy on this one. Sorry.
Todd, I yeah. I wanted to share with you, I just did a query on chat gpt4 o. Yeah. For what are the top 10 podcasts about pod casting. Wow. Did we make the list? We're the the number 1. Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if you did that search, would it come up Okay. So send send me in, okay. What was the exact words that you used? Top 10 podcasts about podcasting. Did you use the preview or did you use the mini? Which one did you use? I used the the 4, Omni one. Not the new one.
Oh, you use the okay. There's the 4 o preview and mini. Yeah. Yeah. I use the the 4 o. Oh, use I use the o o one. Okay. So let me ask the o one. What Okay. I'll do the same thing with o o one. And this is really a waste of, CPU topics here. What is what? What what was the Top 10 podcasts about podcasting. What is the top Yeah. I'm So the problem is the the problem is, Rob, is it has a memory, and I would not be surprised if it comes up, what is the top 10 podcasts about podcasting?
Boom. Thinking. Okay. I'm gonna Determining. Identifying. Guiding, learning, and engagement. Oh, this is interesting. So number 1, audacity podcast. 2, school of podcasting. 3 is the feed. 4 is podcast round table. 5 is podcast. 6 is podcast engineering, so 7 is she podcast, 8 better podcasting, 9 podcast talent coach, and 10 podcasting step by step. So we didn't make that list on the new model. Okay. I just did a search for the same query, top 10 podcasts about podcasting Yeah. Question mark.
And it in the chat gpt01 dash preview Yeah. And it came back as as my knowledge cut off was October of 2023. Yep. That's that's what it And it said the top top 10 podcasts dedicated to the art and business of podcasting. Number 1 was Audacity to podcast Same response. Lewis. With Lewis. Number 2, School Podcasting with Dave Jackson. Number 3 was The Feed from Lipson. The Podcaster's Roundtable, which I know Ray doesn't do regular episodes of that show, so I'm not sure.
And then number 5 is the new media show. Oh, see. New media show did not make my list. So it doesn't give you the same answer every time. Yeah. I guess not. So interesting. Well, though I think you typed a slightly different query than I said. I said, what is the top 10 podcasts about podcasting? Yeah. I didn't add the what is part. Oh. I just typed in top 10 podcasts about podcasting, question mark. Oh. Gosh. You're costing me, search queries here. I am. You got plenty of them, Todd. Okay.
It'd be interesting to do that in, like, rock and Gemini just to see what they came back with. But but I think what what this is an example of is that as you think about your brand and your company Yep. People will do search queries Absolutely. They Just like this. Might do in Google. Right? And and AI is going to rank these things based you know, I don't know what the criteria that it's using to come up with this. So it's funny. My results were not the same as yours.
School Podcasting, The Feed, Audacity, Pod News, She Podcasts, Podcrap, Buzzcast, Podcasting Business, School Better Podcasting, Podcast Spotifycation. So we again, we didn't get the same results. So very curious. Yeah. It says at the bottom, it says note rankings are subject and based on popularity, content quality, and industry impact as of 2023.
Mine says these podcasts provide a wealth information that can help you navigate the podcasting landscape, whether you're just starting out or looking to elevate your existing shows. So you starting out or looking to elevate your existing shows. So you definitely were not getting the same answer. So it's not like a search engine per se. Well, all search engines don't give you the same
results anyway. So Yeah. Yeah. I think that there is probably differences in each query and it's probably biased based on its knowledge about the person doing the query. Yeah. I'm sure. Because I've been putting stuff in here. I turned memory off a lot. So I don't always have memory turned on. Yeah. So that's that's where we're getting into this element of training. Yeah. So I've I feel for or I have felt for a while that, it actually learns because it'd be crazy if it didn't. Right?
Yeah. You know Well, just recently someone was asked how was your first day at school? It asked somebody and he says it was my first day at school. How did the model know? And, you know, so anyway. Alright. We're long. Okay. I'm [email protected]. You can find me on x@geeknews. Of course, I'm on mastodon@geeknews@geeknewsdot chat. Rob? Yeah. I'm on x as well at at Rob Greenlee, 2 e's on the end, as well as on YouTube, at Rob Greenlee, and on all of the social platforms, Linkedin,
Rob Greenlee as well. And so I'm I'm pretty easy to find. Just do a search in in Google or actually chat GPT, and you can find me that way too. Or you can send me an email, [email protected]. It'd be great to hear from you. Alright, Rob. So I am good for next week with Adam, but the following week of October 2nd, I am not. We're having our Okay. Team get together down in Palm Beach, Florida. And, so the A fancy place to have your
team retreat. Yeah. One of our team members has a place down there and has a relationship with, so, yeah. We families and friends deal down there. So, it's still expensive. Not that cheap. Oh, yeah. Of course. Of course. But, yeah. We're gonna go down and figure out how we're gonna conquer the world for the next year or or maybe how to survive the next year. Maybe that's the better way to say it. Right. Yeah.
That's Well But Who knows what the next 6 months And then and then when we come back on, Wednesday, October 9th, that's my 20 year in podcasting And, I will actually be doing this show and in keeping you central that night. So 2 shows in a row because I wanna do a 20 year show on the night of the of the anniversary. So and for those of you that's been in chat, thank you for being here. Pretty quiet today. Lots of you watching on YouTube but, not too much commentary today, which I guess
that's okay. And let me check the, the helipad here. Not no new sats coming in. So, was anybody streaming, watching us live? Let's look at that. No. So don't forget about those new podcasting apps at podcastapps.com. Rob, I'll see you back here a week from today with, the pod father, mister Adam Curry. So, it should be a fun show. It should be. Yes. Alright, everyone. Take care. We'll see you next time. Alright. Bye bye. Bye.