The Feed. Alphabet. Google's parent company sees podcasts shaping YouTube and we discuss. The Triton Podcast Report, the difference between survey data and server data and why both are important and how you can tell for yourself. How what you say on a podcast can impact your profession when you have a podcast troll. And stats, mean and median numbers. Hello, I'm Elsie Escobar, Director of Community and Content for Libsyn, and this is Episode 286 of Libsyn's The Feed.
the podcast that takes it beyond how to podcast into keeping you podcasting with podcasting tips and all kinds of information for the everyday podcaster and taking you inside Lipsyn. Yes, so if you're starting a podcast or simply looking to find a new home for your podcast, use the code THEFEED, all one word, to get up to two months free.
Now, if you'd like to get featured on the show, please send in your 30-second promo. So what is that? You're promoting your show. You're promoting an episode of your show in 30 seconds, and you send it over. Well, you can make it up to... about a minute, but no longer than that. And just send it over and we'll put it in an episode. So what do you do it? How do you do it? You attach it to an email and send it to the feed.
That's it. You just attach it and you send it over. Now, if you don't have a promo for your show, but you want your voice on the show. Ask us a question or add to the conversation that you hear in an episode, something that comes up while we're discussing, and send us your voice feedback. You can either record a voice memo and email it to thefeedatlipson.com, or you can call us at 412- 573-1934 or use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed.
I'll be keeping an eye out on our email. And if I have any other questions, I will respond to you. But everything else is first come, first serve. So I'll just get it in and adjust it as we see necessary. So the sooner that you get me your stuff, the sooner you'll be in the queue. And now on to our main conversation with Rob Walsh, VP of Podcaster Relations at Lipson, as well as my co-host right after the first promo of the episode. Podcastic Audio.
What's up, Rob? Hey, Elsie, how are you doing today? You guys look lovely today. I am Chris, and I'm from Podtastic Audio, a podcast about podcasting for the indie hobby podcaster. We all want to make a... Great show. We all want great audio, but what does that even mean? Here on Podtastic Audio, I explore these things and more to help you make an amazing show for your audience.
And if you want to know more, come join me at PodtasticAudio.com, and I'll see you there. Hello, Rob. Generic time of the day, Elsie. So, how's it going? Oh, yeah. Everybody's sick in my family. Now I got it. My youngest son had pneumonia. Then my wife got it. I took care of her. My oldest son got it. I had to drive up to Purdue to take care of him. I had to move him out of his dorm room into a hotel room to get him away from his roommates.
And I was in the hotel room with him. And then I came back and then I got pneumonia. So I'm just getting over pneumonia. But I did record an interview Tuesday in the throes of pneumonia. with another podcast. Julie, you were great. And I apologize to your husband for some of the editing that was required in that coughing in that episode. And then on top of all of that, my youngest son now, after getting a pneumonia, now has COVID.
And it's a day away from homecoming because they do homecoming in the winter because they don't have a football team. They have a basketball team. So they have a homecoming dance. And his girlfriend's mother has flown out from Idaho for it. And we don't even know he's going to be able to go. Yeah. It is the chaos of illnesses. I'm so sorry. So how are you doing? I'm actually doing pretty good. Thanks so much. All is well on my side. We're getting fantastic weather.
As of now, right? So I'm really relishing on the weather at the moment, which is very lovely and mild. We even hit 70 yesterday, sunny. So it's lovely. At this moment, things might change, but so I'm very happy with that. And yeah, thankfully we are doing well, knock on wood. Let's start this episode with some news that came out last week. There was a lot of talk I saw in, you know, on social as well as in the trades, if you will.
about the Alphabet earnings call. And people were calling out the significance of podcasts within that call. There was a lot of that stuff. So what I ended up doing is, first of all, I'm not going to sit there and listen to the entire call, but... There are many transcriptions of the call. We should just clarify here for maybe the one or two people don't realize this. Alphabet is Google.
Alphabet is the parent company name now of Google. So just just want to clarify that so we can get into this. No, thank you so much, because I'm still. Yeah, it is because even when I first started to do this, the narrative that you see everybody. online is about YouTube. That's what you're getting. The information people are going like YouTube, blah, blah, blah, blah, YouTube, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And you're not going to find the information about what YouTube said. You're going to find the information in what Alphabet reported on, right? It was their earnings call for Q4. And to clarify again, Alphabet is Google. Which is YouTube. Which is part, yeah, YouTube is part of that whole thing. And I didn't really bring the entire... earnings call because there's a lot of things. We're a podcast about podcasting and I just kind of wanted to focus on when they mentioned podcasts.
And one thing that they definitely mentioned is that podcasts on YouTube are no longer a side project, according to the perception of everything that was going on. And we know because we had a, you know, we had a love event with the YouTube team in Q1 in 2024. And they really doubled down on investing in the entire ecosystem of YouTube and podcasts overall. We were the first one they partnered with. They also partnered with a lot of other.
creators and platforms to get the word out. So this was a piece of content that kind of was the part that sort of shocked me here is that People watched over $400 million worth of podcast content on living room devices per month. Just like, that's wild. So that means like. Their Apple TV, their Roku, they're going through and they're going to the YouTube app and playing podcasts. That's what I take that to mean on their TV, sitting there.
By the way, smart TVs, you don't even need an Apple TV. You don't even need a Roku. You can go right, you know, one of my TVs. When I turn it on, it shows the YouTube app right there at the bottom of the screen, even though I then go over to the Apple TV anyway. Absolutely. My children do this all the time. Every night they watch YouTube on the Apple TV. It's all the time. It is part of their behavior is to watch YouTube on.
The big screen. Yeah, Porter, same way. In terms of the monetization and revenue situation that's happening within YouTube, their model in YouTube is built on watch time. It's sort of what we talked about last time with Instagram when you asked me the question about having a longer, wouldn't it, it would be better if it was like a three minute video versus a shorter video. And YouTube model is really based on watch time.
So the longer people engage, the more ad revenue and premium subscriptions they can generate. And according to what I can understand within that, podcasts fuel that. Which is why YouTube is making this a priority because podcasts are what, Rob? They're very long. They are long. Well... Most podcasts are long. Most podcasts. Yeah. But in terms of like, if I'm. Versus YouTube content, for sure. Yeah, exactly. So for YouTube content, usually I actually was just.
looking for a tutorial. I can't remember for exactly what I was looking for a tutorial about. And I went in there and it said, tutorial, step by step, complete tutorial from, you know, A to Z. And the tutorial was 17 minutes long from A to Z. That is the standalone type of video, I'm assuming, generally speaking, very, very generally speaking.
7 to 10 minutes and or on the long side of a video, standalone video, it's like 20 to 30 minutes on the really long side. But as we all know, podcasts tend to be... 45 minute plus. So they are much longer. And my questions are around whether or not the length of these podcasts, these longer. forum podcasts, if they're actually revenue streams for creators, or is it really serving more YouTube's bottom line, what YouTube wants you to do?
I mean, with a partner program, you have to really work hard to be able to even start monetizing for it. It might take you a year plus to be able to do that. And that takes a lot of work. So my question is, is, you know, are indie podcasters? Can they really tap into it in a meaningful way? Most indie podcasters are not going to make anything or get hardly any audience at YouTube. That's just the reality.
the majority of indie podcasters are going to get 1-2% of their audience over at YouTube. There are some that will do well, but the vast majority, it is more about... Just people finding your podcast there and then consuming it in the audio. Because most people aren't going to create great video that's going to resonate in the YouTube environment. It takes a lot of time.
and money and effort to create that video to really take it off, to create that studio that Joe Rogan has or that Timcast has or PBD has. That's just not how most podcasts are. Most podcasts, if they add cameras, are lucky that they're adding a three-camera shot. I believe looking at a lot of the shows, again, we've had shows that upload their content and go over to YouTube and make it available there. If you can get to 2% of your consumption.
On YouTube, you're doing good. If you get to 5%, you knocked it out of the park. There's going to be very few people that it goes above that number. Less than 1%. Just from what I've seen. If your podcast isn't video first... It's not likely to really take off there. And on top of that, if you're going to go video first, you better be prepared to fail because you are competing against a lot more people when you go on video.
And then if you do succeed on YouTube and it becomes your primary place, I'd say this to anyone that's on YouTube, that that's where all their audience is. You better start diversing your audience and getting a podcast audience. Anybody whose primary audience is YouTube. And you don't have the audio stripped out and available as a podcast is making a huge mistake because I've seen multiple, not one, not two or three, but multiple, many.
Shows get deplatformed for saying the wrong thing when they didn't even know it was the wrong thing. So you have that fear because YouTube's a closed ecosystem. It's not like podcasting where it's a more open ecosystem. I think that there are some strategies that are very strong for that. But again, it is people who have been doing it for a while and they have a little bit of a...
They have a workflow in how they work around it, right? So if you're intentionally going to do that or you have developed a way for you to be present in all of these different ways, you can do it. You can do it strategically. And you also have to know whenever, you know, when I presented all the data last year about the YouTube situation, what I gathered from all of that is us cross posting to the YouTube channel for us, for this show, for the feed.
It's about discoverability. It's about being able to have somebody go in Google and search for the feed and have this podcast come up and being able to be found easier within the. a search in search results, right? But if you really are looking at it for audience growth, like overall ecosystem wise, you have to be very thoughtful about it. If you're thinking about it from a monetization only side, meaning.
There's something that you really want to get out of it. Let's say you want people to subscribe to your premium YouTube content, let's say. Then that's a different type of strategy. You have to be very intentional about doing that stuff. I actually watch the majority of this show versus listening. I almost never listen to it, although I am subscribed. I am following the show in my podcast app.
And it is sort of like my little guilty pleasure that I consume because it's anyway, whatever. It's my guilty pleasure. It's called So Bad, It's Good with Ryan Bailey. And what he does is. He records himself doing his shows, just records his video, his face. It is not necessarily highly edited. It is also not. in quote, pretty. It's just like his face. And he's using StreamYard because I recognize the UI. So I'm assuming this is his workflow. I have not talked to the guy.
He sits in front of this computer of his computer. He turns on StreamYard. He records himself talking and he just goes for it. Sometimes there is a little blip here and there where it's not completely clean. meaning in terms of editing, it's not fully edited together. And then his team and or he... puts together a much longer episode that goes out on the feed. So sometimes he has commentary that's about 45 minutes to an hour of just him. And then he has a conversation with like a guest.
or he goes into a breakdown of a TV show. And then in the audio, he puts together both parts. So there's like a supersized episode that sometimes it's over two hours long. That goes out onto the audio feed. But on the video side, he'll have like his own personal commentary, which is around like an hour. And then he will record again his breakdown of like the latest episode of whatever.
that he's talking about, and then he'll release that as an episode on YouTube. And so he has two separate videos, whereas in the audio, he has one giant thing, right? On the... YouTube side of things, I believe it just has that he's monetizing it via just the YouTube ads that come up when you're watching a longer version of something.
And then in the video part, he has also a bunch of ads in it that are mindfully inserted into his show. You could hear it that he's got transition music into the... into the audio ads and it sounds a lot cleaner. There's a lot more editing involved in that. So there are two separate strategies going on in that. And I think that he's doing a pretty decent job. Now, the majority of the community building and or conversation is happening on YouTube. So the comment section.
in his videos is sort of where there is that communal feedback loop for the creation part of it. I can see how it's working for him. I see that it's something that he's good at. And there's not very many people that are as good at being in front of the camera and doing. what he does. Like, it takes a lot to do that. I'm always like, wow, man, he just can't do that thing. But that's one way to do it. But I think, but mind you, he does this for a living.
This is his job job. I mean, I listen to multiple podcasts that have video available. I never watch the video. Like the All In podcast, I've never once watched a video episode. They're all up there. Joe Rogan, it's almost. Never do I watch the video. There's a couple times I have, but overall, 99% of the episodes I've listened to or consumed were via audio. And multiple other podcasts, same thing that I listen to.
because I just don't have the time for video. And if I'm going to do video, I'm watching Bill Maher on HBO, or I'm watching Chris Cuomo on News Nation, or I'm watching sports. So that's when I'm watching video, it's usually... Something that has its live television or in the case of Bill Maher on HBO or John Oliver on HBO. I'm watching that video podcast. It just, if the audio is available, I'm listening to it.
That's the only time I have is to listen. I'm trying to figure out like what the difference is for me for that, because there are some shows that I listen to and I have always, always listened to. that have added now a video component, and I don't watch it. But this one that I told you about, the So Bad It's Good with Ryan Bailey, I am following his audio. And I very rarely will listen. I just, there's something about me putting on his podcast. It's usually my habit in the evening where I will.
Look for his latest episode. Know that it's been released. Sometimes I'm alerted to when I look at my, because I'm in my, I'm in Overcast multiple times a day. So I know that he just released an episode. And when I see that it just released an episode, I go, oh, I'm going to watch that later. Is there anything at all unique to his video presentation of this show? No.
There is nothing. The only thing that's actually different about the YouTube, it's that it's less clean, meaning there's a lot more stumbling. There's a lot more like sometimes like not bloopers, but. Weird edits in there. It's not perfectly edited. But the audio is perfectly edited. It's clean. It's awesome.
I kind of want like the not sanitized version of it. And I think that that maybe it is. I'm like, I don't want to hear this beautiful transitions between this and that. I don't want to hear these ad reads coming in so clean. I'd rather. just watch it on YouTube, which is so weird. But again, that's just that behavior that I have for that show. And so all that to say, as we wrap this up, I do think that there are...
The audiences that are coming in are changing. And you have to watch how your audience is consuming your content. And that is the trend that you have to be much more aware of. And I know Rob has spoken about this before, that you don't pit yourself up for somebody else, like you're not looking to compete with others.
You're looking to compete with yourself to be you, the best you that you can be. And part of that is you watching how people consume your content. And if that's a YouTube play, then awesome. go forth. If it's an audio only play, great. Go do that. So it is really just up to you because if you stop producing content,
because you're overwhelmed, which is what I hear a lot of the time, you're the one that's going to stop, right? We want you to keep podcasting. That's really why we even have this show. And I'll add this, if you're only doing YouTube content. You need to strip that audio out and get it available as an audio podcast. And I had a call this week with with a YouTuber that was saying he was a podcaster, didn't have audio and was realizing that, hey.
I really do need to get this podcast out everywhere. So we went over how to do that and how easy it is to just strip that audio out. And, you know, the advice was keep the video just up on YouTube, but everywhere else be audio. You know what? We're going to talk about that later, by the way. But, you know, there's another thing I'm just going to say this now and maybe you can start to kind of notice this trend. But as of the past, I don't know, month or so.
I have started to hear a change in language in conversation. So when somebody's talking about a podcast and saying like, oh, I filmed a podcast yesterday. I went to film a podcast. Or in conversation going like, when I watched the podcast, I saw this, right? So that's a change that I'm hearing. Again, nobody's selling anything. It's just as people are talking about.
Their own personal consumption with somebody else about a podcast or they got information from a podcast or they were on a podcast, they say, I filmed a podcast yesterday. I watched a podcast yesterday, which is interesting and noted. in terms of language changes that I've been seeing. I think this all transitions us into the next segment here. That's right. So the Triton podcast report came out.
And because of it, we had the following email that came in about it. Would you like to read this email? Yeah, yeah. Hi, Rob. I'm puzzled. When you go through the lips and stats, you always say Apple is the big dog in aggregator apps or something similar. Please, could you explain the recent headline? Quote, there are more listeners than ever to podcasts in the U.S., according to new data. The Triton Digital 2024 U.S. podcast report also suggests.
that YouTube continues to be the most quote preferred end quote platform for 33.1% of all podcast listeners, while Apple Podcasts has slumped to a new low. preferred by just 12.2%. End quote. Why should I focus my efforts on Apple Podcast if it only counts for 12.2% of listens? I know I'm getting confused, but would love some clarity, please. Many thanks.
And this is from Kevin. Hi, Kevin. While that headline does point out what is in the Triton Report, I want to look rather on what has not been reported, and that is page 11 of the Triton Report. Downloads by player slash app RSS downloads. This is what matters for 99 plus percent of podcasters, as I kind of mentioned earlier.
You know, us regular folks that get 2% of views or less on YouTube. And when you look at that data, what Triton Report had should sound very familiar to what you've heard here. What Triton said per RSS downloads was, number one, Apple Podcasts at 49.1%. Number two, Spotify at 15.6%. Number three, and I want to add an asterisk, is iHeartRadio at 6.5%. I add the asterisk because guess who owns Triton? And number four is Overcast. So their numbers...
other than the over-indexing of iHeartRadio, is close to what we see and report here. And per the iHeartRadio numbers, it should be expected to be higher for this report as they are likely getting a lot of data from iHeartRadio-hosted shows. which will get more promotion in the iHeartRadio app. As an FYI, for December, we had iHeartRadio at fifth place with 1.1% of downloads, and there was only five that were above 1%. So, again, still significant on iHeartRadio.
just not 6.5% that Triton's reporting. But in any case, per the numbers from the headline you sent, that was not, not, not measured data. That was survey data. from people that, again, likely are considering Mr. Beast a podcast. But either way... Unless you are the less than 1% of podcasters that have a major following on YouTube, what really matters is the RSS downloads report Triton gave and what we give here every other episode. I do want to say thanks to Triton for including the breakout.
of the RSS downloads. In short, for 99% of podcasters, Apple Podcasts is likely going to be your number one source for your audience, followed by Spotify, then Overcast, with iHeartRadio being in the top five as well. And then you added here, Elsie, you have a little tutorial to help people figure out where data is coming from. Yes, I did. Because, you know, people tend to do what Kevin.
mentioned, right? They see that headline and they immediately come to a conclusion. And I think we're in a place now where it is really up to us to really understand what things are, right? Because these reports... The positioning of a report depends on what the goal is for the report being created in the first place sort of thing. And it could be for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes reports are created purely for marketing purposes. A lot of times reports are...
created to really see how an industry is doing, right? There's reports that are also put out there because there's a certain, they wanna validate some things or they want to go deeper into something else. And this is all around. I'm not just talking about podcasting here, but I do have a little tutorial that is based on what a server side data is, meaning that they own the data. There's things that are happening, like stuff that is real.
versus survey, which is a little bit more anecdotal type of data and how you can tell them apart. I have three steps for you all to do. So the next time that you see a headline, just a headline. tap through to the actual report itself, right? So again, real behavior, things that like your download, the stuff that Rob is talking about at the end of our...
almost every podcast that we have, podcast episode here, is server-side data. It's the real stuff that's happening. And then there's the self-reported answers. Those are survey data. These are... what you have to look for. So in step one, look for keywords. There are certain words and phrases that can immediately tell you what kind of data you're dealing with. So if it's server side data, the actual behavior, it'll say things like downloads.
streams, or impressions, or clicks, or listening time, or device tracking. Automated measurement. Those are keywords to look for, right? And phrases that say that are things like measure downloads from January to December 2024, which you could hear from Rob at the end of our... of the data section, he'll say things like this, tracking actual listening behavior across platforms. That's another thing. Now, survey data is self-reported. These are keywords, survey, responses.
sample size opinions awareness perception attitudes example phrases for something like that would be 8,000 US adults were surveyed about their podcast habits or respondents answered questions about their listening preferences. So you immediately know by doing that what data you're getting. So if you do see things like measure, track, downloads, or clicks, it's likely server-side. If you see survey responses or self-reported, it's likely survey data.
And the second thing is to identify how the data was collected. How do they get this data? If it's server-side data, how it's collected, generally it's directly from servers, owned platforms. apps, or tracking tools that log that user activity. An example is data collected from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other hosting platforms measuring downloads. Something like that, right? If somebody had all of that information.
Type of data, server data, is, this is how it's collected, from people answering questions via online surveys, phone interviews, or in-person questionnaires. An example is... Survey participants were asked how often they listen to podcasts, right? So... If the data comes from survey questionnaire interview, it's server data. If it comes from a platform, tracking system, or server logs, it's server-side data. Now, what this data cannot do, this is step three.
The type of data, server-side data, what it can tell you is how many times something happened. They'll tell you how many downloads, how many plays, how many clicks. What it can't tell you. is why people did the thing. Why they pressed the play button. Opinions about what, of why people did that or the preferences. The survey data.
How many people say they behave? What it can tell you is how people say they behave, what they think and why they make choices. But what it can't tell you is what they did in real life, right? In terms of the Triton U.S. podcast report data, they actually did both. They did server-side data and survey data and compiled both of those in the report. And each page has the source at the bottom. So you can see, oh, this is server data, server-side data. Oh, this is...
survey data. Is that what I said? Server side data and survey data. It tells it at the bottom. So I hope that clarifies it for y'all a little bit better. So next time, don't freak out. Do those steps. I got a cheat code on this. So Elsie just explained basically long form, let's say calculus. I'm going to bring this down to a little simpler formula. If it says Apple podcast is number one.
it was measured data. If it says YouTube was number one, it was survey data. Yeah. I haven't actually seen any server-side data that talks about YouTube because I think... You can't get to server-side data. The only... server data would have to come from, which is why we reported it, or at least I brought it to the table reporting about the YouTube side of it, where they actually said 400 million, whatever.
streams was it 400 million dollars worth of worth of yeah of watching podcasts because they have that information but then what they didn't tell you was how many different episodes that was and how many different shows and how many total episodes and how much time was consumed they just said right they didn't say all of that stuff for sure yeah they did not do that but that's where they got that information from and by the way
Which what I didn't add to what I reported at the beginning from Alphabet was the survey data, right? They did quote survey results and or studies from Edison Research. And so they use that data from the survey part to build the narrative, to build the story of the server data that they had there. And that's how you use both sides. You've got both because then you see what people are saying and believing and feeling and you have the information of the...
actual things that they're doing. So now we have some Libsyn news. We signed Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery. If you're not familiar with Roger Avery, Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery worked together too. create a little movie you may have heard called Pulp Fiction. And they have a podcast called The Video Archive, and we signed them to an exclusive. We put out our PR on this last week. This is one I personally helped recruit. I did recruit over.
I worked with Roger's daughter, Agala, for over a year to get that show over to Libsyn to work with us on advertising. So very happy to announce they are now exclusive with us for the advertising. There was actually one point where I was driving my son and his roommate back from college and I had to have a call with Gala. And we were talking about just the podcast and stuff. I'm on the call and his roommate and him are sitting there.
And afterwards, like, you know who someone that knows Quentin Tarantino? And they were like, really? They were so impressed. Yes. Yes. So they were. You're the cool dad. Yes. So anyway. Link in the show notes to read the full PR. But it's nice to add more celebrities like Quentin to the Lipset family, along with Roseanne Barr and Mike Rowe. And I also just signed Katie Sackhoff. More to come on that one shortly.
So that is another cool one. So all of the sci-fi fans know who that is. Yay, that's amazing. Going back to your roots, Rob. Oh, gee. That is not. I was on a call with Katie and her husband, and I showed up with my Dadalorian T-shirt on. Oh, my God. And she goes, very cool shirt. That is nice. She appreciated the shirt. My wife thought I was being corny for wearing it.
I love her so much. Okay. So now we have a little bit of commentary. Should we play the audio, Rob? The audio is not very good. I literally recorded this off the TV. This is a perfect example of fair use. John, make it as good as you can. Let's play it. Because this is one that literally, I was watching Chris Bomo's show and he started talking on this little small...
mini rant. Well, anyway, let's play the clip and then I'll talk a little bit more on this. I have an observation. I have a question. Observation. Cash Patel, Bobby, Tulsi, what are they all getting raped over the coals for? What they did officially, what they did in a lawsuit, what they said in an appointed office? No. Podcasts. Otherwise, it's a podcast available. But here, but not all podcasts are alike.
There is and we were talking in the break about the day I realized that we had made a mistake in the media looking at social media as a reflection of reality. And. There are podcasts that cater to the fringe, especially on the right, which is why the censorship stuff bothers me. I'm anti-censorship. I believe in all ideas, no matter how ugly. But don't complain when you're the top of the list of every social media platform. I don't know that you're hurting the right there. But...
These fringe podcasts, the guys with the ski hats and the big microphone and the cans on their head, like they don't have enough technology to have a mic on like I do. You go on there, you say stupid bleep because it's provocative, but you can't back it up. And that's what they're all paying for.
So, again, I was watching Chris Cuomo in the show. He had that small little one-minute rant observation about podcasting. He mentioned that, you know, some of the Trump nominees are getting, quote, raked over the coals, unquote. for what they said on podcast. And you also notice there was a little call out there towards Tim Pool from the Timcast, which I thought was odd or telling. But...
Out of this, I think one takeaway for podcasters and guests on podcasts is that what you say matters. People are paying more, much more attention now to podcasts. Sadly, sometimes it is just the clips people see or hear, but saying something on a podcast is now something that can come back to haunt you if you're a politician or looking for a political appointment.
or in business world, or anything really anywhere. But I know on one hand, people realize podcasts are important to get elected. And on the other hand, if you're saying something stupid, that can haunt you. So don't say something stupid, right? We really are replacing mainstream media when you think about it, right? Because that is what people used to say about mainstream media. It helps you get elected, but it can also sink your candidacy.
I think the opportunity to, quote, mess up, unquote, goes up exponentially the longer the interview goes on as well. The more relaxed the guest feels, the longer it goes, the more likely they open up about something. Maybe they should not have. And this is not all just about politics. It's also about the business world. CEOs and other executives regularly are going on podcasts.
And I would imagine a good PR firm or multiple good PR firms are going to have podcast training along with media training. I worked briefly for a PR company that did media training back in 2007, and they would put... the CEOs and execs in front of the camera and the lights and hit them with softball, then fastball questions, you know, hit them back and forth, try to get them off balance. Now, are they going to get a couple of couches and some mic stands?
have them talk for an hour or two about topics and throw in some, you know, non-politically safe things and see how they react. I'll see. It might be. Maybe we should start that podcast training course for CEOs. We could charge them $2,500 an hour for in-depth indoctrination on how to perform for long-form interviews.
Or am I making too much out of this one minute clip on Cuomo? And really, it was just Chris feeling down that he's never been invited as a guest on the Tim cast. That said, Tim's team said. They would love to have you on, Chris. So message sent. Chris, balls in your court. Yeah, I think that this is the vibe, Rob. I've been very staunch about this. for a long time, really calling attention to this. And yes, podcasts and live streams and everything that has to do with being on social because...
This can all build on itself. The sleuths that are out there are going to be taking things that you are putting out anywhere that you said, that you did, pictures. like moments, like seconds captured, and build a story based around that. And it can sway people's opinion about a lot. In politics, they have what's called opposition research. And opposition research absolutely, positively will include podcast interviews going forward.
Oh, absolutely. For for podcasts, no doubt. But also every other piece of media. Right. And I think I mentioned this. I don't know if I. mentioned it on the actual show because we had a conversation after we stopped recording. I can't remember if I actually talked about this. But I'm sure now a lot more people as of this moment are aware of the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni situation that is happening in all areas.
pop culture and or now it has really expanded into a lot more. And part of what that is has been really set in the thing that I'm the reason that I'm so fascinated by this. is because what you just were talking about in terms of doing research for oppositional research, there are PR firms that do this. There's a term for it where they start to create.
a narrative around the reputation of somebody else and start to push things out into social, right? Where reputations can start to be questioned. And that is what... Blake Lively had alleged that the Justin Baldoni side of the team was putting out there. Now there is an entire fight. around this reputational management, if you will, that is being done in public by using the judicial system to get a communications and stories out into.
the mainstream, and they're weaponizing the judiciary system to do this and sway public opinion one way and the other. And it is astounding to be able to see that because it's using... text messages. It's using past interviews. It's using audio from the set. It's using the only thing I haven't quite at this point seen. Actually, you know what? Podcast interviews because Justin Baldoni has a podcast.
Anything and everything is being used and the people are running with it. So anything that you put on social media and or any kind of digital media can be grabbed and used against you. And I know that I think Emily Baker, massive creator, podcaster, YouTube live streamer, all the things. She says that if you don't want your text message.
and or anything really out there to be used by the opposition in a deposition of some kind or anything in the court, don't write it because it's going to be used. And you have to assume the days of saying something on a podcast and it disappearing in the ether are completely over. Oh my God, yeah. Completely over. Especially with the capacity for people to process.
digital so fast, meaning we put an episode out. It used to be a challenge to get the transcript of a podcast episode, right? It kind of, not a challenge, but it took time. Now it's like so fast to be able to get to the information. When was this mentioned during the podcast and not have to listen to the entire thing? And then there's other people who are just running along with this kind of stuff and coming up with their.
stories and pushing that it's just astounding out there so yeah oh my god now i'll say this speaking of going on podcast oh yeah and saying more than you might normally saturday night live ran with this idea and had a funny skit called Medcast, where they set up doctor's appointments to be like a podcast guest appearance. So that's the whole premise of it.
Link in the show notes. It is actually really funny. Kudos to SNL. We can't play it on the podcast because putting it on here for entertainment value would not be fair use, but it does fit. So we'll have the link in the show notes. And if you haven't seen the Medcast skit. Kudos, SNL. You nailed it. It was so good. So smart. Absolutely. Totally, totally. But then we have other news, Rob. Oh, my God. What is this? So press secretary.
Levitt, the new press secretary for the White House, said, quote, whether you are a TikTok content creator, a blogger or podcaster, if you are producing legitimate news content, no matter the medium. you will be allowed to apply for press credentials to this White House, unquote. And you go to whitehouse.gov slash new media. When they announced that, within 24 hours, 7,400 people had applied.
according to Bloomberg. So yes, I went to old media to get the number of how many people applied for the new media. Thought that was ironic. But any case, yes, whitehouse.gov slash new media. If you're in a Washington, D.C. area. If you'd like to be a guest, a studio guest, and you're going to be in the D.C. area in the coming months, please go to whitehouse.gov slash new media. It sounds like you'd hear it for the game show.
But yes, that is a possibility for you to be in the White House and sit in the briefing room and get some press credentials. So if anyone does this, please let us know. I'd love to hear your experience. I love that they're opening it up like this to more than just the traditional media and opening it up now to the new media. So that's a good thing. The more access podcasters get to press credentials, it's always been a good thing.
I'm curious how all of that is going to be played out. And I'm also, I mean, really, truly, I'm also very curious as to if there is going to be and if it's going to be everybody, meaning. That not everybody is in like anybody that applies. But if there is. There's favorites. I already saw Daily Wires in there. I mean, there's definitely going to be a right bias. Just calling it out.
It's going to be favorites. It's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Is Daily Wire going to get a preferential treatment over David Pakman? Yes. But was it the other way in the last White House? Yes. So it's always going to be favorites. It's not unique, but it should be and always has been that way. But in this case, they're opening it up to media. They're doing a bigger push for new media.
Which is, again, I think that's a good thing because once they do this, it's going to be hard to turn that off no matter who the next administration is. That is true. But definitely, if you're right-leaning, you're going to have a higher chance to get a seat in that room than if you're left-leaning. I don't think that's shocking to say that. What? Please, no hate mail. What? All right. So here's a little email that we got.
Hey, Elsie and Rob. Once upon a time, I had the pleasure of knowing you when I was one of the manic mommies. I recently returned to podcasting this time with my husband in support of the bicycle shop we own. I have been diving into some of the content about podcasting for the first time in ages. Listening to the feed for the first time just now, your most recent episode, I was struck with a serious...
case of nostalgia, hearing your voices and just wanted to say hello. Thanks for continuing to carry on. I am more than impressed by your commitment. Rob, I still have the episode of Podcast 411 with Erin and I on my computer. Magically, it makes it through every upgrade. Hope you're doing well. Keep it up. And that's from Kristen Brandt. Yay. Thank you, Kristen. Love to hear that. Love to hear back from OG podcasters.
I know, especially OG podcasters coming back and doing something so different. You know, I love podcasting evolution and congratulations on all of that stuff. And yeah. Yay. That's so awesome. All right. So next up. We have an email from an NR. Would you like to read this? Sure. This is a tough one. Yeah. Hello. I would like to know your thoughts, opinions, even if possible legal action should be taken when a former follower slash listener of my podcast decides to troll me.
It is in reference to politics, of course. And as you know, my podcast has nothing to do with politics. Apparently, one of my admins profile picture had the flag of a certain country and my listener found it offensive. I had no idea my now former admin had the profile picture. We made an amicable decision Dupart's ways, but now the troll continues to harass me.
I guess the bottom line question is how to deal with trolls who were formerly listeners and indeed a previous guest. Thank you. First off, if it's a country's flag that also flies in the United Nations, it shouldn't offend anybody. But that's neither here nor there. I won't get into that. Normally, my advice is don't feed the trolls. But you sound like you are well beyond that at this point.
And given you actually know who the troll is as a former guest, I would suggest setting up a live audio call, not video, but audio with said troll and ask them what their end goal is. What do they hope to achieve with their actions? And be conciliatory where you can, in tone. Being live with a troll is like hitting a vampire with daylight. They don't like live.
It hurts their trolliness. Very few trolls, there are some, but very few trolls will say to you live what they'll type and post. That said, there are some that will do that. If that doesn't work and they continue, then yeah, you can seek out a lawyer and look at getting some legal action put in place to get a restraining order against them if there's threats.
or any intimidation going on with that. But I always try to clear up conflict directly with someone when you can do it and talking with them. And I hope this person is not completely insane. and you can reason with them. I wish you the best with that. It really sounds like a not a fun situation. I mean, what are your thoughts? I mean, this is a tough one. It is a tough one. I would say like one of the key things that at least that I have seen from, you know, watching.
Being able to have receipts for everything is important. So starting to log the trolling. Screenshots, email captures, what happened when. As much metadata as you can have around it is actually one of the things that I have seen. By the way, I'm not a lawyer. I'm just letting you know what I have gleaned. as I have watched and or seen a lot of this stuff. And I was personally advised.
when I had a situation that wasn't online specifically, as in like public, social type stuff, but there was some digital conversations. with a law enforcement professional who told me that the logging of information and the having that information is very important for you to have. So in that respect, I would say. screen like again screenshots all of those things time stamps when what happened how it happened all of that stuff and just write it all down i would actually even think about
consuming some content from Gordon Firemark. He does a lot of really wonderful lawyer-y type things all over the internet. He's got really wonderful content. for you to consume some of those things. Or Emily Baker also, although she doesn't do specific advice in there. One thing that I really love about Emily Baker too is that when she goes through a lot of the suits or filings and things like that.
She gives a lot of insight into when a case is strong and when a case is not strong. And you're able to see what's the... information that you actually have to have in order for you to move forward legally. And with this whole, and I'm going to go back to it because it's so prevalent right now and so many people are talking about it.
But with the Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively situation, the way that it's being talked about in the legal side of things, you're able to see because she claimed harassment from Justin Baldoni. And part of the claim of harassment from him and what she filed initially, which was not a lawsuit, she showed some receipts around that.
Right. Where there were some text messages, there were some things that happened. But the issue with that is the fact that his team came back with the full context of the conversations, which. sort of disputed the initial narrative. So I'm only telling you this because if you see the whole thing, like what could the story that you tell, if it goes against the story that they will tell?
Because that's really what law ends up being. It's how you frame the data and the facts to tell a story. Now, I don't know how close you are to this person or meaning. how much access they actually have to you. But having a conversation is possibly a good thing. And then there's also the no contact of it all. It just depends on how much it's going to hurt your brand. Now, there is also a question of...
How to pull the episode right from your podcast library. Rob, can you give her best practices of how to pull that off? The best way to pull the episode is going in your Lipson account and. edit the episode, and then save as draft. That will unpublish it. The direct URL will no longer work. It will be removed from your RSS feed, but all the data and the file will remain in your account. So you've got that.
for posterity reasons and if you ever decide to want to use it again. But the easiest and best way is just to save as draft that unpublishes immediately. That's the best thing. And then give it a few weeks and it'll... clear out of all the caches everywhere. But the direct URL will stop working immediately. Yeah, and...
And as a note, too, just to clarify in case anybody ever asked this question, because it does come up a lot of the time. If somebody has downloaded the episode to their device, there's no way you can get that. Right. So if for whatever reason.
whatever reason, right? Like, let's say you tell, let's pretend you're telling this person, I'm taking it down or I'm, you know, you come to a agreement or something where all of our things are going to be taken down. I'm going to scrub it all the way down. the person's like well i can still listen well it's probably on their device right there's people who have you can have it on a device you can't you we can't remove it from yeah half the memory on my iphone is podcast episode.
Yeah, it's like, yeah, if it's there, it's there. You can't do anything. And if somebody has downloaded it, obviously, to their device, it's the same thing we were just talking about even right now with the other podcasts, right? the Cuomo conversation there, there might be some of those podcasts that were pulled. There might be episodes that no longer are on the feed. But if somebody has a copy of that podcast episode, somebody has a copy.
That's the nature of digital information and digital archiving. But you can definitely take it out that way. It's just that, again, the cached information sometimes takes a little bit to disappear. Best thing I can say is good luck. I hope the person, you can reason with them. But if not, Gordon Firemark's a good suggestion. I have links in the show notes for you, by the way, guys. All right.
Well, you know, since people are not sending in promos, I just decided I'd launch a new podcast so that we have a promo to play. Folks, don't make me launch more podcasts. This next longer promo, hey folks, deal with it. You could have had a shorter promo here, your shorter promo here, instead of for my show. But anyway, this one is for my show, a new show called JFK Files.
I'm a huge fan of JFK and a history buff. So now with the files about to be finally fully opened, I thought I would do a quick podcast covering it. And well, here's the promo. On November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated. Two days later, the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down while in police custody by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. And for the past 60-plus years,
Many have speculated the assassin did not work alone. There were congressional hearings, FBI and CIA investigations, and all of that led to documents that were sometimes released after being heavily redacted or never released at all. Information kept from the American people. These are the JFK files. In President Trump's first term, he said he would release all of these files. But then he changed course, claiming, quote, the potential harm to U.S. national security.
law enforcement, or foreign affairs is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure." At the beginning of President Trump's second term, he signed an executive order to release all of the JFK files. This podcast will go over what is in these soon-to-be-release files,
Will these files just confirm the original story, a lone gunman? Or will it completely change the way you look at some three-letter agencies, a past president, the mob, a foreign government, or some combination thereof? How would releasing these files five years ago cause harm to U.S. national security? But today, it would not. We will include your feedback and thoughts on what is found in these soon-to-be-release files.
I am Rob from Podcast 411, and I want you to send your feedback to podcast411 at gmail.com or give us a call 206-666-4357. That's 206-MOM-HELP. and link in the show notes, or you can just search JFK Files. It's the first thing that shows up. I even used Grok to create the artwork for that episode. Nice. Yeah. You fancy pants. Yeah. I thought the artwork for it came out pretty good. I gave it a few tries and that one came out. I was like, that's hitting the...
what I'm looking for. And I was like, yeah, pretty good. Grok would not create a square artwork. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get it convinced to do a square, so I had to crop it a little bit. But anyway. Now, stats time. Median and mean. Okay, this is to see how your show measures up, or your client shows measures up to median mean numbers overall. And these are based on...
All episodes released on Libsyn and Libsyn Pro in the month of December with downloads measured. Again, this is measured until the end of January. On average, each file was about 45 days old. This is, again, for all shows hosted on Libsyn and Libsyn Pro. The median number for December was 129, which was up a bit from the 122 in November.
The adjusted mean slash average, where I throw out the top half percent and any files with three or less downloads, the adjusted mean for December was 1190, up a little from November when it was 1168. 5.8% of all downloads for episodes released in December were in the 5K range or greater for downloads. This was up a smidge from November's 5.7. And then here are some...
numbers to measure against. And to put things in perspective, if your episodes are getting 129 downloads after 30 days, you're better than half the shows. If you're getting 500 downloads, you're better than 71.4% of the shows or you're in the top. 28.6%. If you are getting 1,000, you are better than 80% of shows. More than 2,700, you're better than 90%. More than 5,800, you're better than 95%.
If you're getting more than 15,000, you're better than 98% of shows. And if you're more than 29,000, you are in the top 1% of shows. December's numbers were, for the most part, either up a little. or the same compared to November's numbers. So there you go. There's your median and mean for this month. And as we talked about earlier in the episode, that is measured data. So where have we been? I've been... interviewed but they're not live, so I don't have anything to report there.
How about you, Elsie? Have you been anywhere? Me too. Me too. I have as well. So we'll keep it like, I wonder if they'll all drop at once. Be like, we're in, we've covered 10 podcast episodes. But yeah, I have been places. I just I haven't been able to talk about them yet. I'm sure they'll be out soon. But where are we going?
NRB, National Religious Broadcasters, in Dallas in February. I'm going to be doing two training sessions at NRB. One, how to create the assets for a podcast. I'm going to go over what's needed, artwork, media files. metadata title description all that kind of stuff what you need to really get together for launching a podcast and how to create those and then the second one is how to set up and distribute
set assets into a podcast. So first is about creating what you need for a podcast. And the second is how do you distribute it and where to distribute it to? That's going to be the two training sessions I'm doing there at NRB. Thanks for those folks for asking me to do that training session. That'll be fun. Well, fun.
It's probably a relative term because my sessions, when they're technical, are not the most exciting. But they're good. Yeah, they're good. They're just 12-hour energy drinks are advised. All right. Podcast Movement Evolutions in Chicago in March. We got a whole bunch of sessions. And you want to go through who's doing what here?
Yeah, let's go ahead and get to it. So for Podcast Movement Evolutions, we have Matthew Passi, Studio on a Budget, in the Create track. We have you, Rob, on how to tell if your podcast stats are BS, TBD, new titles. somewhere coming up there, but it's Rob Session. Anthony Civelli and Steven Pickens, they have two sessions. So hostredads.work. Authenticity is the new ROI in the profit track. Then YouTube ads and beyond. That is the rise of video podcast dollars.
Then Brooke Collins and Karen White are going to be doing audience targeting campaigns, podcasts versus streaming in the industry and brand track. Then we have our own Brian Coddington doing video podcasting on a budget, quality content without breaking the bank. Then we have Steven Pearlstein unlocking YouTube analytics for podcast success. And finally, Bob Kane is also moderating a panel whose title is TBD.
You know, here's an interesting one. The podcasting stats are BS. I recently busted a show that had fraudulent downloads. And, you know, that happens. We edit, audit and find them and I kick them out. But this one, the person they hired, the marketing person is name. It's the first name podcast promoter at gmail.com gave me a rant on an email last night saying, what do you mean? My down my in really broken English. My downloads are bots.
We have been doing this and no one's ever called us out on this before. I'm like, oh. Well, thank you. I'm the first one to bust you. That makes my day. Yeah, so I'm going to go over in that session how are some of these things, what flags I look for to see if numbers are legit and how you can do it. But this show wasn't.
It wasn't a question if the numbers were bogus. It was 100% bogus. But I just love that the person that they put me in contact with, their person who's probably from Malaysia or somewhere like that, and they were... ranting on me and i'm like well let's just have a call and talk about this oh my gosh well i know well all right after that we're going to be at nab las vegas in april and i'm when i say
Right after podcast movement, I mean like two days later. Yeah. I'm going to go from Chicago. I'm going to fly from Chicago home to Tennessee, spend a day home and then jump back on the plane and then fly to Las Vegas. And so that is.
tight turnaround I gotta actually I gotta book all that that we're gonna be at NAB and then we're gonna have someone at the podcast show in London in May so that's how things look for the beginning of this year please folks If you're not going to any events and you host on Lipson and not your cards at any of these shows, please send me an email, rob.lipson.com, and then switching gears from where we are going, well, to where you are going.
And if you are looking for a job in podcasting, make sure you go to podcastingjobs.com. As of the beginning of February, we had three openings listed there, all remote. First one is director creator partnerships. The second one is Director of Podcast Strategy and Operations, and a newly added one, Podcast Ad Operations Coordinator.
So all three jobs remote, go to podcastingjobs.com to learn more about these openings and potentially others and to apply there. If you're looking to start a podcast or switch up your podcast home, you can use... the code THEFEED for a free month plus with us. And finally, don't forget to send in your feedback for anything we did or did not mention on this episode. You can record that feedback and email to us thefeedatlipson.com.
or you can call us 412-573-1934, or you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed. And of course, if you are a JFK conspiracy theorist and would like to contribute... to the JFK files, give me a call 206-MOM-HELP. 206-MOM-HELP. All right. All right. Well, thank you all for, you know, listening to the show. And we will chat with you in a couple weeks. Ciao. Bye.