Podcasting 2.0 for January 3rd, 2024, episode 205, Podscape. Hello everybody, a brand new year, a brand new board meeting. Have you missed us? We've certainly missed you. It is time for Podcasting 2.0. Everything going on with podcasting, the past, the present, and of course, the future. We are the only boardroom that doesn't give a hoot about year-end predictions. I'm Adam Curry here in the heart of the Texas hill country and in Alabama, the man who will never get bored like the Megacorp.
Say hello to my friend on the other end, the one and only Podsage, Mr. Dave Jones. You're right. I've got to be careful with this. I got to be careful raw-dogging it like this because I slid my drink across the table and it was like, I heard it. I heard it. I heard it in the intro. I heard it. Is it in there? Is it in the real intro? Yeah, I heard it. We'll just leave it. We'll keep it. That's fine. It's no problem. It's all good. I got to get used to this. I got to get used to this.
What you're hearing here is a conversation as my Christmas present to Dave this year, we do exchange gifts, was an official Curry One microphone, which will probably never ever get released. But I have one. But you have one, yes. Curry One. Curry One. Dvorak started this thing with, he's like, oh, we're going to do a microphone company, which he's been talking about for years, by the way. So he finally finds the right cap, the right thing, everything.
So we have demo models in different housing and I'm like, you know, and I keep saying, hey, are you ready to go? And he's like, oh yeah, I'm doing, it's like, he's, it's like his vinegar book. It's never going to get done. It's never going to get, never going to happen. So I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to send Dave one. So at least there's one more Curry One microphone out there in the universe. And I'm glad, I'm glad you like it. My new Curry One of One.
Yes. I should have signed it actually. I'm stupid. I should have put my signature on it. I did notice it's not gold plated. So. No, no, no. That's, that's yours, right? Right. I don't think so. That's only for the Curry Zero. Yes. Curry, Curry One model, serial number 000. You may hear fumbling. Yeah, I hear it. Get used to this. Sorry. I know it's going to drive you crazy. Your ears are like tuned to this. That's okay. That's okay. Let me see. Definitely. Hold on a second.
Let me just move this down a little notch. There we go. Yeah. I'm going to turn off. You're coming in five by five, man. Five by five. I got to turn off the master compeller because it's. It's too much for you. It's too much for your ears. I can't. Maybe, maybe. Where is that at? Where's the master? You go to settings and then output and then right bottom corner processing. Okay. Let's see settings. I love how we always beta test everything on the show. Yeah. That's what master. Oh, there it is.
Master compeller. All right. Now it's off. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got it, baby. You got it. You got it. It's all good. Yeah. I think I'm just a wuss. I think the master compeller, I can't handle the master. It's too much. It's too much for you. You can't handle the master compeller. It's too compelling. Hey, happy new year, brother. Happy new year. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. We've, we've done our gift exchange. We had, what was it? Two, two, two weeks off.
Two full weeks. Yeah. It was like, it was crazy. It was kind of odd. I mean, I'm glad we took those two weeks. I did. I skipped one, no agenda and did the rest from Europe, but it was kind of, and we didn't do curry in the keeper either. It was kind of nice just to take a breather, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think, I don't know. This is an interesting conversation because what do you think about modern audiences, podcast audiences and their resilience to like podcasters taking a break?
I think, I think it's been, I think it's a little more okay than it used to be. I don't know. I mean, I'm, I am honestly, after 17 years, I'm still afraid to really take more than one show. I try to take no more than two, no agendas off in an entire year. Because I know that people's lives are centered around release schedule. This is one, people say, what are your rules for podcasting? Number one, always release on the same day of the week, around the same time that you do every single time.
Make sure you send out a notification, a newsletter or something like that. Because if you're not there, now we do best ofs on no agenda, which are, you know, it's, it's a new show of best of stuff. And so it's always a different compilation. So it was never just dead air or repeat a complete repeat. Which is, we don't do that here because nobody wants to listen to old, let's talk about this. Yeah. Hey, how about that split math? What is a fee? No, we're not going to do that.
No, this is different though, because we have a very small, very dedicated audience. And I think everyone enjoyed taking a break. Although as a few pointed out this morning, the boardroom did not get cleaned in our absence. It is dank and musty. I've opened up a window. There's cobwebs in the corner. I mean, that went real fast. That just made it nasty, man.
You know how in the break room at work, when somebody doesn't clean off the coffee pot on a Friday and by Monday, it's just baked onto the bottom. So before we took our break though, we did have, what are we drinking? This is the last of the LaCroix Pure. The last? What are you going to do after that? I'm just not going to drink anything. No, sure. I'm just going to go dry. Dry January. We had a Boostergram Ball live from Antone's in Austin, Texas. Yes. Which was, I think, super successful.
Incredibly fun. Now it's a weird night to do anything when it comes to live shows for an audience to attend. A Monday night, right near the Christmas holiday. So to keep the room full from 6 .30 to 11 is pretty much impossible. But the live audience was there and they stayed until the bitter end. And what was so nice about this particular show, and I mean, I was tickled because, you know, there was Boostergram Ball on the marquee outside. You know, it was a professional show.
The Phantom Power Music Hour, the Costellos, they were producing it with open mic from Toonster. I mean, who all was there in person? Oh my God. Well, I met Eric PP. Eric PP was there in person. Yeah. He's almost as tall as you are. I think he's taller. I think he's a little bit taller. And he, with Boober, he had put together the Boostergram Ball sign, the neon sign, which would change colors based upon the boost amount, which they gave to me, which I'm about to hang up here in the studio.
Oh, that's so cool. I mean, they did, this thing has its own Wi-Fi access point. The light? Yes. Yes. That's weird. Yeah. So you can log in and you can set it up to a helipad, you know, so that it has the webhooks all built in. I mean, so this, the light, this was all set up through helipads, webhooks. Yeah, exactly. And the whole thing was great. There was, we had a huge screen with the boost board, which I think is, is that a Boobery Cottingen production?
I forget who all has done all this stuff, but it was, it was so beautiful. Once again, the whole crew, everyone's pitching in around the world. We've got Oscar and Nick that are awake in the UK. We've got Dovidas who was doing the live wallet switching on the feed. It also in the UK, we had Boomy and Moritz and the guys were awake in Germany. And boy, was that needed because for whatever happened, we're supposed to start at 630 and at 620, the first band is kind of getting ready.
And we're, you know, we're in the green room backstage area. And I see all these sweaty, worried looks like, oh, well the Albi hub stopped working. Oh no. Yeah. They're on the phone with, I think Boomy and it needed rebooting. I mean, it was, it was a, it was very stressful at that moment. This was the cloud hosted Albi hub? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So whatever, you know, of course, if it's going to break, it's going to break right before the show.
So I literally got on stage just as they got it working again. And we had, I think six bands, which was probably too, too many for the audience there, but people online stayed until the very end combined with the boosts. And I don't know about streaming sass, but combined with the boost and the, the zaps from Noster, people who were watching on Toonster, it was well over 5 million sats. Whoa, that's, what is that? Well, five and a half, $6,000, I think in total is what came in.
And once again, you know, the splits were set up for everybody who was participating and and every single artist, every single one came up to me and said, this makes a difference in my life. What you guys are doing is making a difference. I hate being a glorified t-shirt sales guy. When I'm going on the road, I'm very demoralized. Just knowing that people are out there valuing what we do means so much. And I love that.
And, uh, and I mean, and Suzanne Santo, by the way, who shows up in a full length red dress and then goes on to shred the crap out of her guitar. I mean, she's just shredding. I mean, you have to, you have to see this. You have, it's, there's something about a woman in a full length dress, just bending the strings. And then at the end she picks up her fiddle and starts fiddling. You know, I was like, what? It was great.
And, you know, and she, she made like six or $700 from, from the boosts that were coming in. But besides that, her husband was there and he's seeing all of these, because on the boost board, all the booster grams and the messages, and you could just see him beaming, you know, because the messages were so encouraging and people were saying how much they loved it.
Um, I mean, every single person all the way to the end, they're like, I'm not quite sure I understand this because what they had done is they, you know, they had a whole weekend. They had sats by Southwest. And so they were, that's a great name. Yeah. And so they brought in people from the music industry, not the Bitcoiners. They targeted music people specifically. So there are people- Like who? I mean, like what was the target for? There's the Austin Music Collective.
And there's, there's all these, all these different groups because, you know, we're supposed to be the, the, the live music capital of the world world. And so there's a lot of musicians around and- And so by, so by music, you said they brought in music people. You don't mean like music industry people. You mean like music, music- Artists, producers, just people who are in, in music in Austin.
You know, I think there's people who, there's some college courses that teach, you know, different aspects of music. And so they just targeted all those people. They hired a PR firm. So they were coming in and they were learning about this stuff for the first time. And it wasn't a Bitcoin discussion. It was a value for value, you know, interactive learning session about how this, how this stuff actually works.
And a lot of those artists and musicians and people who are interested came to the show. I had tons of, of quote unquote, industry people, bankers, Hollywood people that I know who came just and, you know, they were like, explain this business model to me again. So it sounded like, it sounds like it was a, it was interesting and needed to do it live.
And like, it sounds like, it sounds like you made a connection from people to understand this thing that would have never really been able to have that experience. That's the way I felt at the Bitcoin conference going in, hanging out with Julie and, and the crew there and, you know, across the street from the conference and seeing all the artists. And it made, it made the experience of what the artists are doing and how the, and how the Bitcoin and all that kind of stuff connects to it.
And it made that feel real. Yeah. Whereas before, like in a way that the, just being online, doesn't, I don't know, you know, I don't know how to explain it differently. Yeah. No, I understand exactly what you're saying, because this was the first, the first live one I'd been a part of, cause I've only watched them online until, until now. I remember the, the Bitcoin conference I was doing my stuff here from, from Texas.
And so yes, to get that whole vibe and the artists were continuously calling out people online and, you know, I was reading out booster grams. I made some very fundamental mistakes in my thinking, but that's just, you know, it was, it was all put together within, you know, like five weeks and we were getting ready to go to Italy the next day. And I hadn't considered that during the set changes, there would be basically dead air on the screen.
And so I hadn't really, and there's nothing really you can do about that because they also had to, you know, the, the mixer board had to change and all the, all these things had to happen. So it did, we should have had a place to do stuff, you know, like talk to the artists as they come off stage should have had a little corner to do that. And I just didn't even think about it. So I'll put that on me.
But you know, so the lot, you haven't done something like that in how long ago, a hundred years. I mean, that's like, Oh, I mean that you, that's way back for you to do some sort of live event like that. Yeah. I mean, there were, there were all kinds of things we could have done there, but yeah, but still the live audiences, they, they, they stayed with it. I was calling out Nasser and the 2 .0 apps equally, you know, I'm like, this is a love fest.
We're just, we're just going to all going to be in this together as I see more and more. And I'll get to that in a second with the, with the wallet conversation I want to have that this is all going to fold into one. Particularly now that we have an opportunity to, to redo our wallets and payment systems. And there's been a lot of work that has been going on, particularly in the Steven Bell cinematic universe with the split box, the split box. Yes. The split box.
And, and so we're testing it today as we speak. It's in the feed in the 2.0 feed. So what, what he has done is he's, and, and I don't know if this is a temp solution or something that's permanent. I don't care really. I just see work being done. I'm happy. The idea of the split box is that you have a, so you have your splits in, in your, in your feed, in your value block. And there's a separate tag, which is the, I think it's called split box or something imaginative like that. Right.
And in the split box, it has one singular LN URL wallet address. And that is the wallet address connected to the split box. So when the payment comes in and, and so if the app knows, okay, I'm, I'm hitting the split box. Hold on a second. I think he just tested something here. Uh, when he knows I'm hitting the split box, then the split box takes the payment.
It looks up the splits in the, um, uh, in the feed and then sends the appropriate, you know, retransmits saying that specifically retransmits the payments to all those different wallets in whatever they need to receive it. So if it's a key send, it'll do a key send. If it's LN URL P it'll do that. Uh, and so it's kind of a proxying system. Um, and, and it also takes the, uh, TLV record or payment info and drops it into a split box, uh, uh, storage bin. And, and which I'm already seeing.
And then here I'll send it to you on signal here. Hold on a second. He could take a look. Um, yeah, where I haven't, I haven't sent you a note in a long time. Oh, here you go. Okay. Yeah. So that's the URL. Actually I'll put it in the, I'll put it in the, in the board boardroom as well. So you guys can see it. And this, what I'm seeing the, the, you're saying Jason. Yeah, but it's, but it's the, um, this is the T this is the metadata metadata.
Yeah. The metadata of, of the, of the, of the payment that was sent. Yeah. Okay. So, um, essentially we have stuff working. Um, I mean, I'm seeing stuff coming through both in my, uh, on my own node through key send as well as in my, uh, strike wallet. So what I just sent you there, that, that link that's from my strike wallet. So that's in the description field of the strike wallet. It sends that URL and then that URL, and he has a web hook. So strike strike has a web hook system.
Uh, and I'm not quite sure yet. So I set up an API key and Stephen bell has it now. Um, he can probably enter my wallet. Um, but which is good. Um, and so I, that's about the extent of what I understand of it. I, and I just liked the idea of the split box because it puts it on me. Like, you know, I, I can just say, all right, here's I'm going to, I'll take care of the splits and it's still, the information is still in the feed.
Um, so it can go individually if you're using an older system or a different system or whatever. Uh, this just kind of consolidates it all into one easy way. And at the same time, the way I understand it, it also allows a zap to go into that. So someone can zap the, um, uh, zap the episode and the split box will take care of the splits. Okay. So this, so who is running the split box? Are you running this? Well, the idea is open source. You run it yourself. Um, right.
I believe Stephen is going to offer that as a service for people who just want to use that. And he'll take a, he'll take a small split for the, uh, uh, for the service. Okay. So he's right now, this is him. So I don't have that server yet myself. Okay. So he is doing a, like a store and forward.
Yeah. Yeah. So he, well, you, you're putting in, you're putting in your, um, you're putting in your, you put, you put in your split box address and then the split box, it takes the entire payment, looks up the value, looks up the recipients and then distributes it on the box. Correct. From my own node, I presume. Okay. Or, or from your strike wallet. Yeah. Oh, precise. Whatever it is. Yeah. So you have a split. So you would have a split. Okay. I'm trying, I'm just trying to get my head around.
Well, okay. So, so I would say that this is for a podcaster and the whole idea is to make it easy for, um, just to make it easy for payment. So, um, it's more complicated for the podcaster because you probably have to have an Albi hub and all kinds of stuff, whatever. I don't know how easy or hard that's going to be. That has been the least of our problems.
Getting podcasters set up with, with wallets is something we can deal with, um, having apps so they can just have a simple payment mechanism with, by connecting a simple app like strike, you know, the issue there is all the stuff it doesn't do. So you should be able to even, you could even just send a payment, uh, from your strike wallet to a URL that to a QR code. And that QR code would go to the split box. The split box would send through the splits. That makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out where this is. So does this, it sounds like the split box attaches to a node. Well, it attaches to your strike wallet. Is that, is that what's happening? No, no. The split box is attached to, the way I understand it is I would have a split box and the split box runs on my node, just like I'll be hub or anything else does. Right. So it's taught it's, it's receiving and sending from my node.
So it gets a payment from, uh, someone, someone sends a payment because in my feed, it has a split box tag with an address, Adam at, uh, you know, my node .com. It takes that. And then it looks up the splits and it sends, it sends the appropriate amounts to all those separate addresses, regardless of what they are. Bolt 11, bolt 12, key send, you know, on chain, whatever it needs to be. Right, right, right. Yes. So, uh, I guess here, here, let me, let me try to ask the question a different way.
What is the backing wallet of this, of the split box? That would be my node. Okay. So, right. It's your node, but it could, but it could be anything. Yes, it can be, it can be, yeah, you can have it, you know, basically it's like, um, uh, what's that thing called that we could never get them to integrate key send, um, LM bits. Yeah. It's like LM bits. LM bits also has a split, but they can only split, um, to virtual wallets. I think, oh no, they can split to anything. It's the same idea.
So you have to have a funding source. I presume that could, but you know, but you don't want to use strike because strike can't do the key sends. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I see. So it's more like an Albie hub type strap on, I guess. I said that purposely. That should be, that should be a, get somebody, somebody, uh, email Boomi and tell him that that should be their, their, their tagline and Albie hub, strap it on. Um, so yeah, we'll see. I mean, there's Eric PP is, is working with Steven Bell.
They're doing, you know, he's doing stuff with the, uh, with helipad. So helipad we'll be able to pick it up. I mean, um, it's very much in development. So I'm just the, I'm just the canary in the coal mine. Um, I'm just here, you know, so I'm seeing splits cause I have in the 2 .0 feed. Let me take a look in the, let me see in the value block. Are we doing this? Are we split boxing right now? No. So right now we, um, let me see in funding.
I have, so right now we have Alex Gates is getting a 1% split to his, his strike wallet. I have a strike wallet with a, with a one, 2% split for some reason. Um, just for giggles. I think it was to make sure that it would come through. I didn't know if 1% would work, um, consistently. Um, the rest are all, um, are all key send addresses and in the feed itself. Let me see. I have, let me see. Split box. Let me check. Yes, there is a podcast colon split box. Invoice equals HTTPS.
The split box.com slash invoice question Mark address is the split box at get Albie .com. So I guess, um, Stephen Bell is running his split box off of the split box at get Albie.com through his Albie hub. I'm just guessing. And then it has a web hook. Okay. So this is a, it's a rogue tag, man. It's a, it's a rogue tag in the feed. Stephen gets, um, so he gets, he gets special dispensation to do that. Oh yeah. Oh, of course. Yeah. He's been, he's got a license. He has a podcast, a 2.0 license.
He has his license to, to, he has a license to kill. Exactly. Yes. Yes. So I'm, I'm excited. Interesting way to do it. Yeah. By the way, I'll take credit for the name. Uh, of course it doesn't have Adam Curry written all over it. I was like the split box. That's what your name's gotta be, man. It's obvious the split box. Um, so we'll see what he does. I mean, it's, uh, it's, it's really interesting.
I mean, it's a rogue, all of a sudden it's a rogue tag that shows up, but it could really be something good for an intermediate step or maybe a permanent solution. I don't know. I like the idea going back to booster grand ball that in essence, you now integrate podcasting 2.0 RSS feeds with zaps so someone can send a zap to the split box, a tag in your feed, which you can publish, you know, uh, on Nostra, I guess, uh, with your, with your episode.
And then the split box will take that zap and we'll split it up appropriately, no matter what backend wallets or whatever is happening at the backend, because splits never really happened in the Nostra world. Let's see. Uh, I'm, uh, paging back up. Okay. Split. So the, this tag is what, how, I guess what I don't understand is how is it getting the splits is, I guess it's looking up the feed. It's looking up the feed. Exactly. But then, but how does it know what the feed is? I have no idea.
It's the initial payment. That's what I, that's, that's confusing to me. Um, cause it's this tag. Well, I would think, well, that payment URL or the payment address, the single, the split box payment address is unique. So it would be, you know, two point, uh, podcasting 2.0 at my node.com or get albie.com, whatever. And that would be unique to me. That's my receiving address. So somewhere in the split box, you're putting in where your feed URL is, I guess.
I, yeah, I guess there's probably a.com file somewhere. Okay. I gotta figure it. I gotta figure out how this, it gets sent in the TLV, right? Yeah. I see Eric. He gets in the TLV, but it's, but if there's no TLV though, because if you're getting a bolt 11 address, there wouldn't be a TLV, right? Uh, that's the part that I'm confused about.
Unless there's enough in there, unless, unless the invoice is generating is for is, are you having to generate an invoice per episode for the split kit for the split box? You're asking me things. I have no answers to Dave. I really don't know. I I'm, I'm just excited that people are excited just excited. I'm just excited that people are excited about doing something. That's a, isn't that good enough?
It's fair. I've, I've been, I mean, full disclosure, I've been up to my eyeballs in Godcaster so hard for the last few weeks that I'm so, I feel out of the loop and this, this will fold into the next thing I want to discuss. Um, as I was a little dismayed at listening to the power episodes this week, uh, where, um, they're very, very downbeat on podcasting 2.0 and there's no leadership and, you know, how come we aren't running a fund, uh, to, to, to, to raise money. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Yeah. The Sam wants us to run a, uh, an angel fund and invest in apps. Ooh. Yeah. I'm like, no, no, let's just go back to the Genesis. Let's go back five years in time. We set up podcast index for exactly this kind of experimentation that is taking place. Um, and the main reason was we didn't want anybody to control podcasting, certainly not Apple. So we wanted to have a definitive open database with an open API that anybody can access and it's value for value.
If people want to support it, it will remain to exist. And if not, then it'll go away. And so that part of the experiment has been great. In addition, as that time was the, the era of D platforming people and D banking them, we added in the lightning network as a payment mechanism. And with that value for value was kind of thrown into the Bitcoin world. And I'm delighted to see how people use that phrase over and over again for all different types of things.
So value for value is becoming an understood concept. Now, on top of that, lots of people came in with all kinds of tags they wanted, and some of them have been extremely successful. I'd say the number one is transcripts seeing as Apple has adopted that, and maybe there will be more or maybe not, but what has, what is happening and you know, the best way to predict the future is to create it. And so I don't think we did any predictions.
We have just been creating the future all the time is that, is that there are now podcast apps that there's not a generic podcasting 2.0 universe. And I don't think it'll ever really happen. Well, eventually enough apps will have enough features, but it takes a long time. These things take years and years and years and years. We saw that years, we saw that the first time around, it just takes a long time.
But now we have very apps that are using 2.0 features, the podcast namespace features, such as Fountain. Fountain is clearly a niche app that is serving a, an expand, slowly expanding universe of people who want to use the Lightning Network, Bitcoin, Noster, et cetera. It's a, it's a specific app and it's doing its job just fine. And you know, I've actually, I've put my feet back into Noster world. I've found the Primal app, which is kind of the first app that I found usable for Noster.
It's a very small universe of people, but I do get good help if I'm looking for it there and I get reasonable traction and, but by the same token, people can pile on and yell at you and it's, it can be very mean to you. I'm looking at you, DeLorean. Yeah. Yeah. She said I was a shill. She's a shill for WaveLake. Shut up. A WaveLake shill? Yeah. Yeah. Just, yeah. Well, there you go.
There's WaveLake, which uses 2.0 features and they have chosen to be very closed and specific to the artists that are on their platform. That's, that's their business, you know? And I think it's a mistake because I think they should have all of the 2 .0 music in there, but I'm not a jihadist about it. At the same time, True Fans has clearly, clearly planted a flag and saying, we're here. I mean, the name says it, True Fans.
You're a True Fan. You can come in, you can support your favorite podcast. You can support your favorite artist. You can, you know, buy concert tickets. You can, you know, buy things that you can't listen, that is not value for value. That's, that's great. I think it's really good that, that we have apps that are doing, this is always from day one. I've always said, what, what can we do that's not the same inbox type app? And there it is.
You know, the differentiators are clear, clearly delineated right now. By the same token, we have eaten the dog food and we've created Godcaster. And Godcaster is not an app. It's a, it's a player, but it is a very specific player for two, two main customers. One is radio stations, specifically faith-based radio stations who are looking for a way to transition to digital and for churches who are content factories looking for a way to broadcast out.
And the players that we're creating are specific podcast players. It's for a specific audience. And it does very specific things for that audience, which already understands donations or version of the V4V model. And they understand podcasts. They understand video. I'm surprised how many churches and pastors and radio people have video. Have you noticed this? I have noticed it.
And it's some, every time we roll one of these Godcaster players out to a new, you know, customer, it's a learning experience. Uh, and we, we, I, I learned, you never realize how much you don't know until you put software that you built in someone else's hands and watch what they do with it. It's beautiful to watch, isn't it? Cause, cause what you get asked questions that you've never thought of before.
You're like, Hey, can I do so-and -so or what, where is, where is X, Y, or Z feature or where, or how, what does this thing mean? You're like, Whoa, I hadn't thought about that. I had never thought about it. Don't really know. Yes, exactly. Especially when it comes to user interface and interact and the way people interact with a, with, with an app or a product, you, you don't like we're doing probably one of the most difficult user interface, uh, jobs that you can imagine.
We're, we're creating a JavaScript, HTML based, based audio video player that gets, that gets pasted into another person's website.
And that is so difficult because you have to guardrail against every leaky piece of CSS in every, like it's, it's a constant, um, it's a constant battle to keep that website's styles and, and defaults from coming through to your, to your section of the page that you've, that you're essentially living on rented land or vice versa, having our, having our players screw up their page, which has also happened. And you know, that that's, it's probably.
And so when you, when you finally roll this thing out, um, it's, you're like, Oh man, what? And you have to like rapidly sometime. There's been a couple of instances where we've had to rapidly re-engineer, uh, like the entire style system in the player in order, like within like 48 hours to get this thing from, to keep from breaking something.
And this is like, this is why people, uh, the web is great in some, in many ways, the open web is great in many ways, but this is why also why people don't like UI for the web is because it has these problems. Um, it's a, it's the wild west. I mean, you know, we, we've seen websites where people, um, have styled, they've just put a CSS tag in, they've put a CSS rule in to put a background transition on every link, every anchor tag, link tags. I've seen blink tags on some of these websites.
Yes. And you're like, you're like every, they just put in a, for the anchor tag and then some crazy style. And you're like, why would you ever do that? Why are you not using class names? Why are you not using anything other than just doing it raw like that?
And so it's, I think, I mean, the reason I'm talking about all that is because the, the idea that like what, what true, what true fans is doing, what fountains doing, um, you're getting really, you know, we're all getting specialized like what you're saying. We're, we're, we're trying to make podcasting serve a very specific sections of, of listenership. And then, you know, depending on where, where that niche resides, you're going to have a different set of hurdles and priorities to overcome.
I, that's, that's why I really don't balk too much at like, uh, Oscar and then, you know, in Wavelake using Noster because that's where their niche is. Yes. Yes. So many of their customers are right there. It doesn't make like, it makes perfect sense for them to do that. It, you know, we, we may have technological issues with it and see shortcomings in the protocol, but it doesn't matter because that's where they live and that's where their customers live.
So they have to do those sort of things. It's the same way with true fans and Sam, um, saying, you know, Hey, I've got to take, I've got to be able to take Fiat. I've got to be able to do like Apple pay top up because he's, but he's like, my audience just simply does not understand SATS and I'm, I'm trying to get it there, but I can't like beat my head against, against the wall the whole time. So I've learned a lot on, on the non-technical side.
Although first of all, it's just been a pleasure to be working with you once again, I'm doing, um, I'm building something. We've done this many times over 15 years and I love it so much. It's fun. It's like old, it's like old comfortable shoes. That's right. Hey, we're getting the band back together. It's like, yep, string up.
Okay. Um, so if people want to see, so my, the long-term vision here, and we have a, we have a third partner, Gordon, the long-term vision here is I, I believe is what hellofred.fm is doing. I've always said the, the gaping hole in podcasting, and I've proven this just by mentioning this once on no agenda, I had to put together a primer as to how you get your local podcast started hyperlocalpodcast.com.
Um, the gaping hole is what that radio has left, uh, that, that all media has left is local and specifically hyperlocal. So I happen to have a hyperlocal location, which is where I live in Fredericksburg, Texas with 11 and a half or 12,000 people. Um, but we have a lot of things going on because 2 million people a year visit Fredericksburg. So we have tons of stuff happening here.
Um, we have, you know, the same issues you have in any, in any small town or County or Berg, we've got city council issues. We've got school board issues. We've got, you know, just issues, um, and then tourist issues. And there's no, and we have one local newspaper that publishes once a week. We happen to have 30 churches here. So hellofred.fm, hellofred, Fred for Fredericksburg, um, uses, it's just a simple HTML, uh, page that I've just rammed the Godcaster into.
And you'll see that I have a 24, seven stream running. And the whole idea of the stream is it's playing music in this place, in this case, uh, contemporary Christian music, and it's promoing things happening in town. It's using content from the church that I, that Tina and I go to, which is bridge church.
It has a short devotional that has promotions about things going on at the church, but we also put in stuff about, um, and I'm expanding it, obviously, um, about what's happening at city council. And then we promo podcasts that are made locally or that are pertinent to, um, to something that's happening with hellofred.fm, the station. So you have this live stream and this live stream is outpacing some radio stations. I mean, it's amazing.
And I should mention on the back end of Godcaster, we have extensive, um, statistics. So we know everything that's happening. We know a lot that's going on. And so you can literally see someone listening to the live stream. I know when the promo hit, and then I can see them going to Curry and the Keeper and starting to listen. I mean, this, this is mind blowing stuff. So, you know, my next mission is to start getting more local con.
I want young people involved creating local podcasts about what, let them go out into town and figure it out. I'm too old for this stuff, but I'll certainly, I'll certainly mentor them. And so this is now becoming, it's, it really is extremely successful. We have hundreds of people a day checking in on the live stream and you're seeing them moving over and listening to the different podcasts. And what I have learned is that people of all ages don't really care that much about an app per se.
They're like, oh, I just go to this hellofred.fm. They don't even know what a webpage is. I'm telling you, they don't know what a webpage is. I've said, I've said to grown people my age and younger, I go to hellofred.fm, they open up DuckDuckGo or they hit Safari. And for some reason, the address bar is no longer an address bar. It's just a search bar. It's usually at the bottom and they type in hellofred.dot.fm. This is the level of sophistication we're talking about.
So, and then they'll just, they'll just click it. They don't know. They have no idea what, what is happening. And then when I show them the universal app, which I'm starting to like as a, as a marketing term, instead of progressive web app, when I say use, you know, use the universal app and they click on the little mobile icon and they learn how to install it on their home screen. That's their thing. They're, they use it. They're not going back.
And as we've progressed and we've been talking to radio stations, we know that TuneIn has given up on podcasts. TuneIn is a failed company. And the only business TuneIn still has is charging 65 bucks a month for your listing. I know because I have hellofred.fm listed in TuneIn and I did that only so that people could get it on Sonos because guess what? You can't just add a stream on Sonos. Oh no, those guys have locked their shit down. So it's very hard.
So it's $65 a month to be listed in TuneIn? Yep. 65 bucks a month. Yeah. Now, now a lot of that's if you're new and you want to come in. And by the way, I got listed within 24 hours. I mean, it's the company has a processes that still work, but no podcast is going to pay for a listing. So they don't care about you. No. And they've grandfathered in a lot.
I'm sure that, you know, most of the big stations don't pay for it, but if you want to be on there now, you have to pay to get listed, but it's basically a failed system because everyone takes their phone into the car. Car companies have all but given up on in-car entertainment because you're bringing your, your iPhone, your Android using Android auto or CarPlay.
And so coincidentally, and this is the part I really like, you can subscribe to your Godcaster in this case, hellofred.fm with one click in any modern podcast app. And now all of a sudden you've got my live streaming radio station through CarPlay on fountain or on a podcast guru or podcast addict. I mean, this stuff really works. This is the stuff that we've built for. And yeah.
And that's, that's been, that's been part of the difficult thing to get just radio stations to understand is the, the transition to digital is really a transition to podcasting. Um, but especially now, especially now that we have the, the 2.0 live item tag really gets rid of any, there's, there's really no podcasting is radio for all intents and purposes, or it can be.
And so if you're, you know, if you're on, if you're, you have a church or a radio station or whatever, and you click to follow the player in a, you know, it just, it asks you what podcast app you're going to use, you know, what are you going to use to, uh, uh, uh, true fans, fountain, customatic, podcast addict, what you just get, you know, podverse, it gives you a list of apps that we know support those critical features and even ones that don't, uh, like apple podcasts or whatever.
But we try to push those down to the bottom because they don't have a live item support, but 2.0 podcasting 2.0 really, it enables the full digital transition from, from broadcast to podcasting because podcasting really, the thing that was the thing that I think the reason that many, uh, radio stations don't think about podcasting as, as the next logical step in the transition is because it's not, it has always been synonymous with on demand.
Yes. And, and that seems like it's just not, it doesn't mentally jive for most, you know, radio people because they're like, you know, my program grid is, is always going, it's live. It's not a, I mean, sure we can provide these things on demand, but there's always going to be some component, which is the live component that is just not, that's not podcasting, but we'll, we'll guess what it is now because to, because of the 2.0 tag and, and yeah, and that, that makes it a full experience.
And with the live tag. So what I've done is I just set up a live 365 station and I'm playing licensed music. I pay for that, you know, live 365 gives you a, when you use it for licensed music, you pay your ASCAP, BMI, your PRI, your Buma Stemra does it for all over the world. Basically it pays and which is limiting and can get expensive. But what's interesting is that people are giving up on K-Love, the number one Christian music station, which has broadcast stations all over the country.
These guys, I mean, they do like $400 million a year in donations. This is a huge station. People are giving that up and they're saying to me, I like Hello Fred better because it has the music I like and it has stuff from my town. I'm hearing about what's going on in Fredericksburg and it has stuff from my pastor or, you know, or from people I know who, and I can go and listen to the podcast later if I want to. And it's all in one place. It's like such a no brainer. So what are we doing?
A very highly specialized podcast app. And this has always been that for quite a while, this has been my view. And this is why I said, make the Rachel Maddow app. I mean, you could make it for this a hundred different types of niches and audience demographics I can think of. But I really like the local one because that's where the most opportunity is. And we're not pitching for any support. You know, I think we're a long way off from even needing to do that.
But I'm quite certain that my local community here will support if I ask them to support Hello Fred. They will support it because they know it's for their local area. Now, it's not, it's never going to be Joe Rogan money. You can only have so many Joe Rogans, which by the way, is something we need to talk about because we're seeing saturation now. We're seeing complete saturation of this format.
Is if there is a, if there's a thing that I think maybe we missed in the whole idea, because the whole idea of podcasting 2.0 from the very beginning was to get was that app developers share in the revenue stream, right? And if they're, because the money in podcasting, even though we knew it wasn't, you know, honestly, $2 billion. I mean, that was always kind of ridiculous, but we thought it was big.
I'm of the opinion now that it was that most of that is a smoke screen, that there's much, you know, what we saw happen two years ago with sort of the collapse of much of, of the podcasting world as far as big money and that kind of thing goes. Much of that collapse, I think it was just, was just reality reasserting itself. And so if that's the case, see, because we, you know, at least me, I'm just, let me just speak from my own mindset real quick.
I mean, my own mindset was that, okay, here's all this money that's going to, that's going to, to podcasters and the app developers are not getting any part of that. But there's, I guess the reality is they were, there was nothing really there for them to get. But let me try to, let me try to say this a different way. This might work better.
It seems like the reality is that the pod, the podcast apps and their revenue is probably more indicative of the reality of the financial side of podcasting than, than what is reported as the big deals and, and the $2 billion and all these things. Like that was never, that was never real. You know what I mean? Cause the numbers are so smokescreened. We still don't know what, where this money is or where it's going. And I mean, nobody can give you a real answer to any of this stuff. Right.
And so if that's the case, the mistake, at least on my part, was thinking that there was a lot of money for app developers to have. Right. And outside, and now that doesn't mean that, let me see how to say this. Okay. So that means that in order for the app developers to get this, to get the cut of the revenue, what's had to happen is that the revenue has to be created, not just, not just adopted, not just co co-opt like, um, because it wasn't there to begin with.
So what has to happen is there has to develop a value for value ecosystem in order for the revenue to even exist, to then be split to the app developers. Yes. And that's what Hyperlocal does. Hyperlocal creates a podcasting revenue source into the system. Because the app being used is valuable to that ecosystem. Yes. And that's what has happened with Fountain and with TrueFans.
And, uh, and honestly with Castamatic, with Podverse, they, now, now they're going about, they're not like, they're getting some percentage of the split from the Lightning ecosystem, but they're also getting, um, a large surge in interest of just people paying for the app, you know, supporting monthly, that kind of thing. And that's also valid.
And so because it's a, it's a reflection, even though it's not a percentage of, of donations or something like that, it is a, is a reflection of how much people value that app in their own life and to their own experience. Correct. So if that's, you know, this all just tells me that, that the hype, the Hyperlocal part is, is sort of critical to podcasting, uh, even having a valid revenue to begin with.
And, and what happened is not, um, abnormal or is not unexpected is, you know, when you have charts, when you have, you know, awards, all the things that replicate the old system, which is very typical, is very typical. That's a new technology is created. And we try to shoehorn the old way of thinking into it.
Um, that results in only a few apps being number one, whatever that for good or for bad, a few, um, podcasters getting all the money or a lot of money or seeming not necessarily ad based money because the Spotify and Amazon Wondery deals, all this stuff that's wasn't necessarily based upon. It was based upon a forward-looking projection of what they thought they can do in advertising revenue. I think it's well-established now that that failed, um, with Spotify.
Um, um, so, you know, there's only, there's always going to be a Beyonce and a Taylor Swift, um, and all the rest will needs. It's the same with artists. Artists have Hyperlocal communities of interest and of love, love of the artists, love of their music. And those people will support. And they've only been asked to buy t -shirts, you know? So if all you have is a t -shirt, then that's all people are going to buy. But when you now have a way to say, send me value, they do it. They do it.
It's amazing. So it's, it's this Hyperlocal thinking where the future lies and it's the future of everything. You're always going to have one Netflix. You will have a Netflix. All the other stuff is going to be very, very difficult unless it's very specific and very small and very focused. And you can have a lot of success and a lot of happiness doing that. I gotta tell you, I haven't been this happy in a long time, Dave Jones. Amen, brother.
So did you see this Michael Magnano thing, the post on X about how they were getting anchor feeds into Apple? And no, I don't know what that's about. Okay, good. I think Nathan pointed it out and then James carried it this morning, I believe. Oh, I missed that. This is, this is sort of, this is, it goes along with this discussion. He starts off this post by saying, here's the secret, here's the secret hack, you know, you know, Magnano, he's, he's the founder of Anchor.
He said, here's the secret hack that enabled us to distribute millions of podcasts to Apple without writing a single line of code during the early days of Anchor and before we sold Spotify. So, you know, the, the question is always how, how were they getting all these shows automated into Apple podcasts? Yeah. Because there's no API for that. Right. Were they, were they using some sort of corporate account where it was? Oh yeah, I remember this.
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Cause they were just pumping millions of podcasts into Apple podcasts, just out of the blue. And so jump into the, jump into the punch line. He says, with only a few months of runway left before we were out of business, we had an idea. What if we used humans to distribute the podcast by hand instead of building technology? And so we tried it. We hired college students to stay by their computers and to wait the moment a user wanted to distribute a podcast.
Once that happened, they manually created an RSS feed and hand submitted them to Apple podcasts and other platforms through their podcast connect portal. It was a perfect use case for the quote, do things that don't scale mantra. No bigger company would ever think to do something so absurd. And it was a completely dumb, non-innovative solutions. So most startups wouldn't do it, but it worked at its peak. We had hundreds of people submitting podcasts on any given day.
Within months, we became the biggest podcasting platform in the world by a lot. And not too long after we were acquired by Spotify. So this, this is what I mean by the numbers are, have always been just all over podcasting. They've always been phony. It's all phony. It's like the old days of hits. We got a million hits this week. Podcasting was never as big as it looked. It was never as flush with money as it looked. All of that was, was just not true.
And the, the, we, I mean, we knew that intuitively from just the index stats. I mean, the index, the index of stats have reflected that since day one, you know, there's four and, you know, four to 5 million podcasts yet somehow only 150,000 of them update every 30 days. Yeah, exactly. And so if that's the case, what it, what it tells me is that podcasting is actually still building itself.
There was a, there was a period of time where Anchor and a couple of other companies came in and artificially inflated podcasting to something that was just completely untrue and ridiculous. And I don't think we've gotten out of that mindset. We know it intellectually, but the sort of emotional momentum of what we thought podcasting was four years ago, I don't think it's burned off yet. We, we, we have to, we have to keep, we have to keep reminding ourselves of what reality is.
And reality is there's only about 150,000 podcasts that update every 30 days. That is reality. And that is completely inconsistent with $2 billion. Yes. Well, I, I did stumble across something that I wanted to share. We stumbled across this yesterday in no agenda. And I'm so back up a little bit, this whole, you've got to have video, you've got to have video, you've got to have video, you've got to video.
The reason why, and that really, and that is synonymous with YouTube, YouTube, YouTube is because people are on YouTube and people use YouTube and they listen to stuff on YouTube. I mean, I, I listen, I'll start a something on YouTube and I'll be doing the dishes and I'm just listening to it. And it's just a place where you can put your stuff and people come across it. Algos kick in at a certain amount. And so all the upside is there. The downside is you don't control it.
You don't control, you just don't, you've lost control. You don't control your audience. You don't own your audience. You have nothing except you have better first person data and you have a promise of maybe making some money. So that's fine. I can tell you right now in 2025, YouTube is going to go all out on what they call podcasting. And what they call podcasting is the Joe Rogan format.
And I'm sure that a lot, and you know, if I had a nickel for every single time, someone says, well, my kids where I see the young people and they think that's podcasting. Yeah, they do. They do. But they'll also call this a podcast. You know, they're not stupid. They're not idiots, you know, but they think a podcast is two people talking with headphones on and microphones in a studio where you can smoke. That's, that's what a podcast.
Now, so YouTube is about to drop millions and millions and millions of dollars on this. And so gird your loins at the same time. Wow. What an opportunity to build something else while everyone is looking at that for a moment, because the mega deals are coming and I'm going to prove it to you. This is Chris Cuomo. And Chris Cuomo used to be primetime anchor on CNN. And then somewhere in, in or right after the COVID period, co-locally known as the COVID period.
It came out that he and his brother, his brother, his older brother was governor of New York. And you know, he was helping him out. And you know, it's all these not done if you're someone in the news business, and you have him backdoor conversations with politicians, whatever, long story short, he gets kicked off of CNN. And then he winds up eventually on NewsNation, another cable station, but he's really gotten into podcasting. And he does his, he's been doing his podcast for a while.
And he's a very irritating man to me. But his most recent podcast, he, he did a, he did a prediction. And I was wondering why he did the prediction and I'll play these clips and we'll talk about it. Oh, I hope 2025 is everything you wanted it to be. You see, this is why I don't like this guy. That's him. Yeah, that's him. That's, that's bear bear with me. Bear with me. Oh, I hope 2025 is everything you wanted it to be. How do we know we just started? I'm Chris Cuomo.
Welcome to the Chris Cuomo project. I'm going to do something that I don't really ever do make predictions. And I'm bringing in for the help with this segment, the one and only the inimitable, the new daddy, Mr. Greg Ott, not real name. This is his, his version of Jamie. He has his producer, Jamie. His name is Greg. My producer. Okay. I've got a prediction. Number one, the pod scape is going to change.
Now I love the word pod scape, by the way, something about calling it the pod scape would just tickle me. And the people who were at the top last year will not be at the top all of this year. So this is pertinent to the podcast. This is a podcast you're presumably watching. Here's what has happened. Okay. Now money rushed into the pod space and tons of big and bad deal. The pod space is being inconsistent. He went from pods, but pod scape is still my favorite.
Okay. But now it's not about man, but money rushed in. What's that? The manosphere. That's he dropped. They dropped that. Oh yeah. Manosphere. Sure. Okay. Now money rushed into the pod space and tons of big and bad deals were made in the last five years. That money has dried up. There's an, there's an aphorism in investing. You never want to be first dollar in first dollar and got killed. People were given a lot of money for their podcasts and people have gone broke.
Okay. Stop, stop, stop that thing. I need some context here. Is he, how long has he been podcasting? Oh, for, for years. Okay. So this is not something new for him. No, no, no. He's been in the game because I've never heard of Chris Cuomo podcast. It's the, it's the Chris Cuomo project. Was he podcasting as part of CNN or was he podcasting on his own in addition to his CNN? The minute he got canned, he started a podcast and then, and he kept that going.
And now he's, he keeps doing the podcast while he also has his news nation program. So he's, he's, for all intents and purposes, a podcaster. You can subscribe to him in a podcast app. And of course you can also get them on YouTube and we'll get to that in a moment. First dollar and got killed. People were given a lot of money for their podcasts and people have gone broke. This is, I don't know what he's talking about here. Nobody went broke, but okay.
I mean, maybe that one, what was that one company? Oh yeah. One. Yeah. Yeah. The, what was that? Whatever. Yeah. The one, yeah. The one that Theo Vaughn was part of. Yeah. That one. Kind of like what happened when Sirius thought that having Howard Stern would make them like a household thing hasn't happened. Just made him really rich. But it's not like Sirius is everywhere now, right? They're just mainly in like rental cars. Second dollar in with the pod scape.
With this election, people now know that you can get banged for your buck and you can get reach and resonance. And I'm telling you on the right and on the anti-institutional side, you're going to do a lot better than Joe Rogan and his merry band of, you know, cut rate comedians. Okay. So he's very underhanded. I really don't know what he's trying to say. It'll become clear. Listen to the prediction he makes in this next bit.
And I'm not saying that those guys will disappear, but you're going to see better, bigger talent come in. Like what? A guy like a Bill Burr. Now this is very important. Bill Burr is a comedian like Rogan, but Bill Burr has a podcast, but Bill Burr is a, he's, I'd say he's more of a leftist thinking type person. And yeah, he's, you know, he's all in on COVID vax and, you know, the antithesis really of Rogan, even though he'll be on Rogan show, but they get into big arguments.
So he's more leftist. Is going to get enticed into that space. A guy like Louis CK. Louis CK is another fine example, much more left leaning than right leaning. Burr has a podcast. Jim Gaffigan would be in that. Jim Gaffigan. Exactly. Exactly. Saying, ramping it up, that there's going to be money that puts it into a sphere where he's sitting with major people as opposed to it just being an end. That's what I'm saying.
Instead of it just being like an end to what Bill Burr does, it's going to be his thing. Okay. Stephen A. Smith. Stephen A. Smith is a black guy. ESPN. I would say he could go either way, but I would say also he could go much more left than right. This is very, this is, and there's a reason for this. Is going to explode on the landscape of conversation. Is going to explode. How does Chris Cuomo know this? It's going to explode. I was very curious now. Okay. And again, no disrespect to Rogan.
You must give him his props for building a platform. Good for him. But now you're going to have better talent in that space. Okay. Okay. So I'm listening to this and now I'm realizing because this, I catch this on YouTube. Um, because someone sent it to me and I see in the background is a YouTube award, like some platinum award. You know, they give you awards when you have X number of viewers. Yeah. A hundred thousand followers. Or more. This is, this is, well, this one has diamonds on it.
And now I'm thinking, wait a minute. Cuomo's been read in on this. Why is he bringing up all of these leftist type comedians? And at this point, Dvorak said to me, this is exactly what they said about Rush Limbaugh. If people don't know who Rush Limbaugh was, Rush Limbaugh passed away. He was the conservative voice of AM talk radio throughout America. And the Democrats in America, the left, left, politically left-minded groups always said, we need our Rush Limbaugh. We need our Rush Limbaugh.
And so what I believe has happened and Cuomo is read in is, and Google is run by Democrats. This is, they, they cried the first time Trump got elected. This run by Democrats, there is a deal they're going to get. They're going to get not just one, not two, but maybe five Joe Rogans for the left. And money is going to flow. It's just a piggyback on that. This came out recently that more people are watching podcasts now on YouTube, and you've been doing this. This podcast dropped first on YouTube.
So now they're shilling for YouTube. And then this is a YouTube shill. Yes, yes. This is how I knew it was true. From the beginning, we're like. That was such an inorganic transition. It went straight into YouTube and YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. Hey, let's put myself online. People want to see me and hear me. So it's like, you know, one product to one. But it's the confluence is interesting to me of like, this thing you used to listen to.
Well, it's quite easy to get a setup, you know, in your house like this and broadcast. Yes. In a very DIY way. And people are now, especially a lot of the YouTube stats are, more people are watching things on their televisions and thus. I don't know if that's true, but okay. You've been told by YouTube to say that. You sit down and watch a show. It's kind of replacing talk shows. We talked about this before, but like, yeah, this is a. Prediction one A is you will see mergers in stream platforms.
Can you say Spotify strategy? This is YouTube is doing the exact same thing. They're going to buy up. You could buy rumble. Rumble is a public company. Their stock is pretty low. You could tender. You could buy rumble. You could buy, I don't know, bit shoot or whatever else. They're going to buy up just like they bought up anchor and other hosting companies at Spotify. It's the same dumb. I might add strategy. I went to YouTube early because I believe video kills the radio star.
What can I say about that? Whatever people want to see more than they want to listen. I'm not telling you not to listen. Look, it's not my thing. I do an audio book every now and then. I'd rather read, but I want to see why? Because I'm a visual learner and you take so much more in from people when you're actually seeing them. Oh, yeah, that makes a big difference. But that's that's beside the point. This at this point, it's a commercial for the award he has behind him. He's read in.
He's going to be a part of it. Obviously, reading them texts, you get the least context, the least feel hearing their voice. You get more, but seeing them and hearing them. So to me, it's a no brainer. But what you will see prediction one A is consolidation in platforms, because the problem right now is there are too many different places that you have to go and you need to monetize and they are going to start buying each other up. Now, Chris Cuomo is what we in America call shwarmy.
He's a shwarmy guy. I guarantee you he has been read in. They're going to find a Rogan for the left and it's probably going to be the Stephen A. Was it a Smith, the ESPN guy? A Smith. Yeah, he's popular. Yeah. And they're going to shell out millions and millions of dollars. We'll have the big Rogan type deals. It'll all be YouTube. And it'll be great. And they'll call it podcasting. By the way, they'll call it podcasting. That never works. No, it never works.
Because the thing whenever you say, hey, we're going to go get our version of this. It doesn't matter what sphere it's in. OK, so do you remember? Air America, baby. Air America is the example. Do you remember the brief period of time that Rush Limbaugh was on the NFL? Sunday morning show. Yeah, I remember the Rush Limbaugh television show. Yeah. Also didn't work. This is what this is what happens because you have a. Like this is what always says, let's say it's Stephen A. Smith.
Yeah, you you bring you bring this you bring this person in. And they are now in a they're now in a. A milieu that they're not where they're that they're not comfortable with. Like you've taken Stephen A. Smith out of ESPN, out of predominantly a sports mindset where he can sort of safely venture off into political commentary, but using sports as this launchpad. And now you take you take him out of there and you stick him purely in a political realm. Yeah, it fails immediately.
It just will ultimately it will totally fail. That's what happened to Rush Limbaugh. They stuck him in an entirely sports context and he said things in that context that he was comfortable saying on his own show. But didn't work within that immediately got him canceled within three weeks. So my point being, this is going to happen. The money that is in political parties and political groups and and power based power bases is enormous.
It'll be real money and Google's going to spend it and you and it will all be called podcasting. And I think we should be very happy. They're all going to do that because meanwhile, we can build all of our little apps and do all our things and make make specific if you want to local, but hyperlocal, either geographic or of interest. And it's going to be very successful because the format is saturated. No one's looking for this anymore.
Brogan, Theo Vaughn, Lex Friedman, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Dan Bongino. So now they're just going to add a whole bunch of those who talk from a different political perspective. It's going to be boring. The guests will burn out. You'll have overexposure. It's not a good idea for them, but they're going to do it anyway. And the person with headphones interviews another person with headphones. That format is just it's just there's too much of it. Yep, exactly. I mean, there's just so many.
There's so many. We could sit here and we could spend 15 minutes and probably come up with 150 of these. Well, true crime. True crime is the winner. Yeah, it's not video. It's audio. It works. People love it. No agenda is not going to do video. We're not going to do it. We're not going to do it. But Adam, how are people going to learn from you? How will these learners? These visual learners won't get enough from us. So that is that's what's going to happen in 2025.
I had a interesting sort of like during our off our two weeks of not doing of not doing the show like during the holidays. Yeah, I had a I mean, I mostly was podcast free during that time. Oh, wow. And I mean, I listen I listen to a few things, you know, I listen to I listen to no agenda and I listen to maybe one other show. And but most most of the time I was podcast free, a lot of it had to do with just fact that I was just so busy.
But I found I found, as I have in the past, that there are many shows. Where there's a schedule. And the schedule dictates I'm going to do this show every X number of days, weeks, whatever. And a lot of times there's just not that much to talk about. You know, the some sometimes there's shows that are focused around like political news or a specific company like Apple News or something like that. And those tend to be a little more resilient to this problem.
But some shows, it's just like, you know, there's just not a whole lot to talk about. But you're going to do a show, but you're going to do a show anyway, because you're you have to. And a lot of times you just like it burns out the listener to that's the way it feels like with guests, with these with these interview shows. A lot of times these guests are just not interesting. The topic's not interesting, but it's like, hey, it's a it's a Tuesday. So we got to release a show.
And it's like, man, I just really I am not going to sit through an hour and a half of listening to this person that you just like ran trying to do a book deal or whatever. I don't know that you're right, that format. And honestly, a lot of a lot of the non news based formats are are pretty they're just not long term compelling. No, you get burned out as a listener. Like, it's like you start skipping episodes because you're like, and you're like, I'm just I can't handle this today.
It's already that way with just one with Rogan. It's like, I don't know about that person. I'm not going to listen to this episode. Yeah, I skip I skip there's there's shows that I skip 10 episodes to listen to one, you know, exactly. But my but my podcast app still auto downloads. So they get their money. Yeah, yeah. Add money's rolling. Very good. Dave, let's thank some people before I need to get you out of here because you're still still not in the summer months.
And I'm going to look at the live boost that came in while we're talking. 555 from Salty Crayon, who says, hey, second exit strategy headphones, curry cans one. Yeah, all right. We can't even get the curry mic one up and rolling. I've got one. That's right. There are two in the wild, two in the wild. 2222 Road Ducks from Anonymous and Anonymous on Podver says cool animated background in the live stream artwork. Yes, we've had that for a while.
Cole McCormick just boosted in with the Satchel Richards 1111. I'm burned out with listening to Rogan, he says. I personally want more interviews on my podcast, but I want the guests to be interesting and not boring. Solo episodes are still interesting. Yes, well, of course, it's always the content. 777 from Sam Sethi says strapping in to test the split box paid in dollars from true fans, but sent over lightning and sats and still supporting splits. Beautiful. Strap it on.
Strap it on. 100 sats from Lyceum. Dave, what are you drinking? Do you have micro breweries in your area? For sure. Yes. He says, I'm a tea amateur lover of things in French language. Adam, you're a radio amateur, right? It is called Radio Amateur in Swedish. All the best. Martin Lindeskog, Tea Party Media Podcast. All right. Blueberry. Whoa, blueberry boosting in big 33,420 sats. He says fast approaching January 12th. What's happening?
The satellite skirmish Polar Embrace live after no agenda on January 12th. We have both returning and familiar faces joining this edition. What am I most excited for? We have new boost alerts featuring the artwork from the young Bolets. I've never put children into a value split, but I'm thrilled to do it now. Nothing like child labor. Check it out at LiveIsLit.com. All right. Glad you like the sign. He says, just need to get it to flash on a pod ping update. Oh, there you go.
EricPP333 with a test. He did something with a test. I don't know if anything came through. Well, test received. Let me see. Then we have, oh, I hit the delimiter. Wait, I just started a new one come in. EricPP with 3333. And, uh, that must be another test. He's testing something. They're testing. What are they building in there? And they're testing on something. You're up. Me too, Alex. I've actually turned off auto. I had a problem with my Castamatic. The new update on test flight.
It started freaking out and like, um, locking my phone up and stuff. I haven't talked to Franco about it, but it was, man, it was really causing a lot of problems. Oh, I hate it when that happens. Yeah, I did a fresh install and went back to the app store, uh, release. And when I did that, it came back. Like it's sort of like, like reset itself. And so I had a lot of, uh, my son, a lot of my settings, like my auto download was kind of turned off app wide. And I kind of, I was like, I don't know.
I kind of enjoy this. I never have it on. I never have it on the only, I mean, I use podcast guru mainly. So when we got on the plane to fly to Italy, I just, you know, downloaded the podcast and wanted to listen to it on the plane. Worked great. I never, I always just hit it and go. I never have stuff auto download ever. Yeah. I think I'm going to live the non -auto downloading lifestyle. Works fine for me. Uh, we got, uh, I talked to Tom Rossi this morning about some stuff.
He was helping him pull some stats and stuff from the index. And speaking of, uh, Tom Rossi, Buzzsprout just sent us a thousand dollars. Thank you. Buzzsprout. Thank you. Thank you for keeping us rolling. Nice. Paying the bills. Thank you guys. And let's see, we got, we also have, Oh, who is this? Chow Chow taxing $20. He says, thank you from Playdeo cast. Playdeo cast. Playdeo. I don't know this. I don't know this platform or app or whatever it is. I'm looking up Playdeo cast.
P L a P L a Y D O cast. C A S T. Playdeo cast. Castamatic going to settings service and rebuild library. Ooh, I wish I'd have known that. Okay. Thank you, Dreb. Thank you, Dreb. I'll do that next time. Uh, let's see. Sean McCune. He's a new monthly subscriber at $20 a month. Thank you, Sean. Appreciate you, brother. I love the crumple effects today, Dave. They're extra special. Extended. This is extended edition. So we got booster grams. All right. Uh, these, these, these go way back.
Yes. To December 13th. Whoa. Yeah. Cause we, cause of the week. We took some time off. Uh, Columbus or Libre 22, 22 road ducks. Fro see that was through the podcast index. He says great meeting. As always. I'm glad things seem to be settling down. We've got the best devs in the universe. There's nothing they can't accomplish. This boost boost boost. So true. Uh, we have through fountain. This is, this is my favorite guy. It's user three, six, two, one, nine, seven, seven. So that guy.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I love that guy. 19,000 sats from user three, two, six, 19, seven. Thank you. He says, uh, Merry Christmas boardroom. Thank you very much. Well, Merry Christmas to you. Boost pod two. This is going to be Russell. Uh, from down under he's the 33, 33 through fountain. He says decentralization thrives on diversity and innovation. No idea is better than another until it's proven supporting new ideas and multiple systems ensures we grow stronger together.
Instead of dismissing, let's build, collaborate and foster a culture where creativity leads the way rocket. Yep. I agree. So Brown of London, 1948, he says, I'm still here. We know. And we love you for being there. We love you. Uh, see us on Linux. He's a central to Richard's one, one, one, one. He's through fountain. He says, uh, rename podcasting 2.0 to podcasting plus plus. Okay. It's the object oriented version. Podcasting, sharp, sharp, Stephen B that's brother. There you go.
Through the curio caster. It's 2020, 2024 sets. I like it. I get that one. He says, happy new year's December 31st, 2024. The first booster gram using the split box was sent from curio Kester to podcasting to marking his territory. Very nice. Nice. Nicely done. Uh, Nicholas B 58, 10,000 sets through fountain. Thank you. This episode made me so bullish for the future of podcasting 2.0. Thank you guys for your work. Also, I'm planning to do my first live podcast.
What should I know before doing it? Cheers from Switzerland. As the professional in the room, what should he know? Remember to set your live item properly and send it out. And also hit record. Yeah. And hit record. Yes. That's always a good hit record. There you go. There's your advice. Uh, let's see. Am I in the right? I got to make sure. Yes. Yes. Delimiter, comic strip blogger, 15,510 sets through fountain.
He says, howdy, Dave and Adam. Today, I'd like to recommend a podcast called Satoshi's plebs. They can be found also at URL Satoshi's dash plebs.com. This podcast covers Bitcoin topics like Bitcoin investment timing. They address the common concern. Am I too late to invest in Bitcoin? Dollar cost averaging a strategy for mitigating market volatility and making consistent investments over time. And it also covers Bitcoin's future outlook. Yo, CSB. Yo, CSB. Thank you so much.
That was a straight CSB read. He's very professional. Very extremely. Monthlies. We got Randall Black, $5. Thank you, Randall. Podpage, that's Brendan and the girls and boys at Podpage, $25. Martin Graham, $1. That's Martin. Let's see. Kevin Bay, $5. Cameron Rose, $25. Thank you, Cameron. Chad Pharoah, Chad F, $20.22. Brother Dreb Scott, $15. Thank you, Dreb. Chris Bernardik, $5. Michael Kimmerer, $5.33. Jordan Dunville, $10. Cohen Glotzbach, $5. Christopher Reimer, $10. James Sullivan, $10.
Charles Currant, $5. Jorge Hernandez, $5. Michael Goggins, Michael Goggin, $5. Satan's Lawyer, $5. Pedro Goncalves, $5. Osteen Barra, $5. Timothy Voice, $10. Michael Hall, $5.50. Gene Liverman, $5. New Media Productions. That's Rob and Todd, $30. And Jeremy Gerds, $5. Beautiful. Thank you all so much for sending us value back for the work that we do, not just in the boardroom, but really to keep the engine room running on Podcast Index and all things associated with it.
We're highly appreciative of that. Go to podcastindex.org down below. You'll see a red Donate button. You can click that to send your fiat fund coupons through PayPal. Or, of course, we accept any boost or boostagram by boostinging the Podcasting 2.0 podcast. Yee-haw. Osteen Barra has got a show right after this one. Yes. Yeah, somehow his stuff always pops up in the Podcasting 2.0 boardroom. So you can just stay in the boardroom and all of his tracks and everything shows up there.
So it's beautiful. Tell me how bad it was during the show. How bad was the bumping? Oh, maybe three times. Not bad at all. Okay, I was riding the mute button. No, it sounds good. And I'm very happy to have you on a Curry 1. Curry 1. I love it. I love it. I'm going to dip it in gold. Curry 1. It's hot. Yeah, it's hot, baby. It's hot. All right, boardroom. Thank you very much for joining us today. We will be back next week on Friday with another board meeting of Podcasting 2.0.
Dave, have yourself a great weekend, brother. You too, man. See everybody. You have been listening to Podcasting 2.0. Visit podcastindex.org for more information. Go podcasting. Cool. I hope 2025 is everything you wanted it to be.