The Feed! discusses podcasts as television. Have podcasts actually beaten Joe Rogan? Spotify's new podcast chart. Why I am obsessed with the Sofa app. IB Upfront News and podcast advertising growth year over year and so much more. Hello, I am Elsie Escobar, Director of Community and Content for Libsyn, and this is episode 292 of The Feed, the official Libsyn podcast, the podcast that takes it beyond how-to podcasts.
into keeping you podcasting with podcasting tips and information for the everyday podcaster and taking you inside Libsyn. Did you know? that you can be featured on this show. Uh-huh. All you have to do is to send in your 30 to 60-ish second promo to thefeedatlipsyn.com. Yes. So simple, right? Now, if you don't have a promo, but you want your voice on the show, ask us a question or add to the conversation that you hear on an episode. I know you have thought.
Send us voice feedback and you can even call us. 412 573-1934 or Speak, pipe! over at speakpipe.com slash the feed. It is first come first serve for most of the audio features. So the sooner you get all of that to me, the sooner that I'll get you in the queue and we can add you to our episode. And now, on to our main conversation with Rob Waltz. VP of Podcaster Relations at Libsyn, as well as my co-host right after the first promo of the episode, Spiritual Spotlight.
Hey folks, Steve Lewis, Spiritual Spotlight Podcast. Listen, you know about the Spiritual Spotlight Podcast? Well, here it is. It's a show where I encourage you in five minutes or less with Bible verses, my personal writings, and more to give you a spiritual boost for You know, with everything going on in this crazy world, short messages. can encourage and bring home your day the spiritual spotlight podcast and Wednesdays.
week so be sure to subscribe and share with your Remember, spiritual spotlight. All around the world. God bless. Don't forget to subscribe. Hello, Rob. Good generic time of the day, Elsie. How are you doing? Just great. I had just landed yesterday. I had a whole day of travel because even though it takes a very short amount of time to get to where I need to go. I was taken to completely different areas and had long layovers. All of the things. I have a direct flight. That was nice. Lucky you.
I was home Wednesday night by 9 p.m. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, no. I mean, it was a good day. It took the whole day. The nice thing about Nashville, for sure, is there's a lot of direct flights all around with Southwest, so it makes it nice. It's always a bonus. And I think that it's one of those things where nobody comes to my closest. airport is Asheville and so that's not necessarily a place where you come do your layovers and on your connecting flights like That's not where you go.
People just go there to just stop. Well, Nashville is now the official cosplay city for Yellowstone. Oh my gosh. Every flight I fly into Nashville or out of, there's people in their Yellowstone cosplay outfits as near as I can tell. Oh, good lord. The only people that wear cowboy hats and... Big old cowboy belt buckles and boots are people that don't live here. Hey, listen, you're making the money on the tourism. Yes. That and Bachelorette.
And Bachelorette. We have those too. Yes, yes. We have them all. It's every time we go downtown. It's crazy. All like a slew of women all dressed the same. In like their matching outfits and their crowns and the things on the front. What is that called? Like those sashes? Mm-hmm. All the time. With those little carts, you know, that you like pedal on a bicycle.
And you go down the street, but everybody's looking at each other and drinking. You know what those are, right? They had one in Pittsburgh just the other day. I saw one. Do you guys have that in Nashville? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got a lot of things there. It's like Nashville, the Broadway is like the strip in Vegas without gambling.
It's been a while. Why did we go to Nashville? Oh, I know. We're going to talk about that later as we go through the show. That's right. It was during a cross-country trip. But alas, we will get back to that conversation as we... move through the episode. But let's go ahead and start. With a little article that just came out on Vanity Fair, Rob. And you put this in here just to get my blood pressure going, right? Yes, I did. Absolutely. Because the narrative of this, I was just...
What? But the fact that it's on Vanity Fair, Rob, and Vanity Fair is... It just has a lot of really... A lot of think pieces. Longer form writing. It's a different vibe than... A lot of the other publications out there, especially within the entertainment industry, it's not like The Hollywood Reporter, which is a little bit more of a PR.
marketing type of a thing this is a little more on the magazine side sort of like the new york magazine situation i mean it's a well-written article it has a point of view in it it is you know, short form prose, if you will. So there is a lot of creativity within the writing. So the writing, I liked it. I like the writing. But goodness gracious. Okay, so this is how the article begins. Quote.
Earlier this month, the New York Times hired a full-time director of photography, primarily for podcasts. It might sound like a surprising move for a podcast unless you've clocked what's been happening at the Ezra Klein show. Klein, once a disembodied voice, is now a bonafide millennial on-screen hottie staring right into the camera and engaging a new kind of audience. The message is clear, and in this case,
The medium really is the message. Podcasts aren't just going visual. They're becoming television. And YouTube is the network where it is all happening. End quote. This is another article where it's like Google or YouTube, I should say, is where number one in podcasting. And it's not the case, folks. It's just not the case.
I know they had some other stuff in here. If you want to read some of the others and we could just... Yeah, yeah. And then there's another portion here where this is, again, another piece of quote that really called my attention as well. Quote, Gordon, now something of a podcast slash TV slash YouTube hybrid producer, suspects that as more people watch on their TVs, podcast videos will only become more polished, more sophisticated, more...
Dot, dot, dot. Television. This marks a shift from podcasting's original DNA, a scrappy, lo-fi format, free of lighting, rigs, and glam squads, end quote. Yeah. So let me comment on this one really quickly just because I do feel that one of the things that everybody that's talking about this are missing. is that all of the scrappy lo-fi format free of lighting, rigs, and glam squads of it all is still going to keep going. Like, that's not going to ever stop. People will continue to do that.
In fact, it's going to be the same as it's always been. I think people miss that the fundamental power of this medium behind the microphone that we're recording with in this lo-fi fashion. is the most sustainable freeing medium that there is because of the fact that you can create super high quality content with none of the other stuff.
And the amount of money and investment and cash that you need to make things work for you in the way that you want it to is in comparison to all of this other stuff. It's so accessible to a lot of people. The barrier to entry into podcasting from the audio side is nil. It's less than one trip to the grocery store.
And if you're buying eggs, less than half a trip to the grocery store. It is a really, really low barrier to entry, and there's more time to consume audio than there is any other form of medium. So it's not going away in the article. While, yes, a small, I will say, niche or segment of podcasts become video, and the video becomes more popular than their audio, but that's a tiny fraction of podcasters. where the video is more than the audio.
Even Joe Rogan gets more on the audio than he does on the video. And that's saying a lot. Mm-hmm. You know, because, and I guess there's an element where I wish... I really wish that there was more transparency in some way where we could actually look at those numbers. I believe I have seen some of LinkedIn people post some of these things. And to be able to really look.
at a podcast that is in quote famous right something that like the joe rogan experience or any of these other ones that do tend to have a really strong visual brand and or youtube followers and channel things to be able to look at the video side versus the audio side of it all so that you can look at what those numbers are and see for yourself.
And I do feel that the level of sustainability for being able to create an audio only podcast and your ability as a thought leader, as an expert in your space, as somebody who really wants to do something wonderful and I'll create community or entertain folks or have it be your hobby.
is a lot more sustainable than if you put the video component. Even just the editing of it all. Even with all of the AI. Because it is. It has made... AI has actually made... production easier for a lot of folks, but without that AI, meaning if you were to manually do this on your own because you are not willing to be paying for another subscription, to do these things for you because there are no AI, high quality editing platforms out there that you can use for free as far as I know.
that you can use for free at a affordable level, especially if you decide you want to do a daily podcast or you want to do a two to three hour podcast. Doing it yourself on your computer and editing your audio is probably the easiest way to go. And then Adobe Podcast Enhanced Speech version 2 really cleans up. the audio so it does a really good job if you don't overuse it yeah and that is a pay for but it's not expensive So the last quote that I have for this article here is this one. Quote.
The life cycle has completed itself. Video killed the radio star. The radio star became a podcaster. The podcaster launched a YouTube channel and YouTube became television. Now, streaming platforms have become cable bundles again. Everything has changed. Yet everything's the same. As David puts it, quote, I call it the show business now. Two separate words. It's about... shows. End quote. That's like the last part of this article. Yeah, I mean...
As we've said before on the show, there's a certain small percentage that do very well in video. But for most podcasters, If you can pick up 1-2% over on YouTube, you're doing well. And don't get into video just because you think it's going to grow your show. Get into video because there's a video element. There's something that really makes sense from a visual perspective. Right. I have two things to say about this one, and one of them is that I don't disagree that it's about shows.
I don't disagree with that part, meaning your work is your show and you get a chance to expand. what I call your ecosystem, however you want to do that. Whether it is by, you know, there's a lot of us that center the spoken word and audio production. And great, that could be your core work. And then you can create all kinds of other things from that core work, which could be short form video. It could be newsletters. It could be blog posts. It could be.
other expressions of video within YouTube, that's fine. I think that's really empowering. It does give you a lot more reach and it can get you, you know, folks, expand your audience because people are seeing more of your work. So sure, go for it. Yes, it is about shows. It's about you being able to expand this stuff. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do all of those things.
I'm not okay with that specific part. Eventually, there'll be articles that'll come out talking and saying what we've been saying for the last couple years. We're just ahead of the curve. And speaking of that... I think that's a segue for our next segment. Yeah, that is true because part of the same... Oh, by the way, you guys can find all the links in the show notes here. You're welcome to check it all out.
For sure, they're all of the stuff you can read it yourself and you can go ahead and move from that. But now we have Ashley Carmen's Bloomberg newsletter, Soundbite, which recently came out while we were not recording. And this is what it says, right? This is a quote directly from the newsletter here. Over the past year, I've noticed a growing trend in which reporters position one show or another as presenting a formidable challenge to Rogan's dominance. They cite the podcast charts as evidence.
Looking at times when a show momentarily supersedes his program, likely an off-published day on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, but soon thereafter, yet again, Rogan reclaims his position. The reality is that he continues to be the biggest podcaster by orders of magnitude and right now it doesn't seem like anyone is legitimately challenging him. I need to check my bank account to see if I got my... credit for using our words here.
Come on now. Mind you. I mean, this is exactly what we've been saying for a year. I mean, we were literally saying he's an order of magnitude above everybody else. No one else is close. It's just... It's just a daily thing, but if you look at it per user, per unique audience, Rogan is so much higher than everyone else. It's not even close. You know what was it? Midas touch went way above.
Kelsey's wife was ahead. There's so many different examples where they've tried, people try to say Rogan's lost it, you know, and there was a lot. I think they had that one in there and then they had. I think that was the last one that I saw that was some sort of religious show. Probably Mel Robbins. Actually, no, it wasn't Mel Robbins. It was another...
Because I saw a report. I cannot remember. Oh, there was a Bible. It was a Bible in a year. It was Bible in a year. Yeah, it was something like that. Yeah, it was something very much like Christian-centric. And I was like, what? But by the way, though, did I not have a little bit of a rant? I can't remember what episode that was. I had a rant where I said, please stop doing that, people. Because what it does is those headlines are so-and-so surpass Joe Rogan. So-and-so has beat.
Joe Rogan. And it's the framing of all of these things. I literally said that in one of the past episodes. I think it was this year where it was part of the thing. And so now Ashley has said exactly that. And she called it out and said it in a much nicer way than, I mean, a much clearer way where she just said, I've noticed a growing trend. in which reporters position one show or another as presenting a formidable challenge to Rogan's dominance. That is beautifully written.
Not exactly what I said in about, you know, five minutes worth of a rant. And she said that in like a second. I think my phrasing on it is, clueless reporters that know nothing about the space try to report on the space. Well, actually, you know what it is? I don't think it's clueless reporters. I think it is the PR agencies pitching them. Right, so it's a reporter that has a... You know, you just said the same thing I said. Just nicer. Yeah. Okay.
Okay. No, but seriously, it's like, here's the pitch. These people are, look at this, look at this, here's the screenshots. This is where they're risen. This is how they're moving forward. And... That's it. As long as they can get that headline in there, even the article itself. doesn't usually reflect fully in what the headline is. And right now, there is a certain segment out there that wants Rogan to fail, because they don't like Rogan anymore.
Oh, yeah. Because they feel he left them, abandoned them, are mad at him. And, you know, that's a shame because Rogan really... Anyway, if you've listened to him over the years, you know where his positions have been.
There's a lot of politics playing into it at this point, let's put it that way. But he is still by an order of magnitude higher than everyone else. And I just want to say this on Rogan. We had this conversation, we were just in Pittsburgh, and some people were talking, like, what does it take to be the next Rogan? Rogan wanted Tupac.
He wanted to do this. You know, a lot of these big ones that came along, people like, well, look, Michelle Obama's already fouling. I don't think she's fouling. It's just, does she really, really want a podcast like Joe Rogan did? I mean, he really went into this, and it took time for him to get up there. I mean, when he first came over to us, he wasn't even in the top 20 in Lipson.
And it took time for him to get up and get above Mark Maron and get above Adam Kroll and get above Tim Ferriss. But he did it steadily. He built a community of... comedians that he worked with and brought in, and he was consistent, and he's a really smart guy. People don't give him credit for how smart he is. but how much he wants to do it. And there is another podcaster that I see that's coming up that has this attitude, that has the love of the podcast.
and it's really helped his show grow, and it's helped him grow. And this came more so when we were in negotiations with signing him, doing MG. He said something in the negotiations. that I've never heard anybody else say. And we were working with him, and he was doing, I think he was doing three episodes a week, and he's like, would you mind if I did a fourth episode each week? Basically asking us for permission to do more content.
Most of the time when we're in these negotiations where shows, let's say it's doing a show every week and we go into these MGs and they start seeing this. They're usually like, oh, you know, 48 episodes. You know, we're going to take four weeks off during a year. We're at 48. And halfway through the negotiations, they go, well, would you mind if we cut that down to 42 episodes a year?
They're always trying to cut back the amount of content they have to do to get the MG. He wanted to increase it. The only one. in any of these negotiations ever to ask to increase the amount of content they were creating. And that's Nick Vile from Vile Files. He has the love of the medium. And it shows. And it shows in the results and his audience growth. It shows in just the quality of his content. And that...
is something like Rogan, right? Rogan, that's how he got where he got. He has a love of the medium, and that's how you get up there, right? Wanting to do more content, not wanting to do less content, not wanting to cut corners, but wanting to actually just keep doing it. Tim Pool is another one right now that's coming up that has that attitude that I see. And there are others, but...
Having that attitude, people ask, what does it take to really be successful? It's wanting to be, not wanting to be successful, but wanting to create content, wanting to do it. It's not, oh, it's time to make the donuts, right? If you're in the time to make the donuts mode, You're not going to grow your audience. You're not going to become this next big show. You're going to become a hawk tour that's going to spike and fall, right?
So that's my little rant there. Yep. I think that we have, I just want to tell you guys all about, I have a new obsession of another podcast that I'm going to mention. The show is called Snarkbait. It's not going to be the cup of tea for the majority of this audience, just as an FYI, folks. First of all, it is two women talking. And one of the women has a very much what most folks that would listen to her... immediately complain about her voice because it's very very valley girl type of voice
For sure. And it is grating for a lot of people. She gets a lot of hate for her voice, but that's just the way her voice is. In fact, I had to sort of... She grew on me because she is very... She's just so witty. She's so witty and very smart and self-deprecating that I kind of fell in love with her. But anyway, it's snacky, right? It's content that you put in the background. Just in-depth gossip, essentially.
And they just covered Joe Rogan. And I was coming into this, usually they cover things that I know nothing about, right? And so I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued by all the gossip about all of these people that I mostly don't know anything about. And I know something about them because of Snarkbait. And it is a completely different audience than most of the podcasting audience whatsoever. And they covered him. And I thought, hmm.
I wonder what's going to happen because I also know the point of view. There's people, people really love Rogan. Or people really hate Rogan. And they can give you a list of why he sucks. And he's the most horrible human. And they can give you a list of why he's amazing. And he's the best podcaster ever. The way that they did the content for this episode, I almost like stood up and clapped. Because I was like... Because not only did they do their research, but they were fair.
They really presented both sides in a really fair manner because they weren't into the Joe Rogan. They're not fan people and they're not like super haters. They just presented the facts. And I thought, wow, that's probably... And I think that they did it so well because they're not in podcasting. They don't need to be kissing up to anybody. And when I heard that episode, I thought, well, very interesting. Very interesting. Good job, podcasters.
very impressed by their coverage and They might have missed stuff and they if they called out all of the things all the things Very fair. So if you... If you want to listen to a show, that's a good episode to kind of like listen to. And I'm sure, I promise, Rob, that if anybody reads, I mean, listens to that, they will learn one thing they didn't know about Joe Rogan. Anyway, moving on to from that same newsletter, kind of moving away from the just talking about the reporters.
This is what Ashley also said there. Quote, speaking of charts, Spotify launched a new one called Trending Podcast. which is determined by a combination of growth indicating factors, according to Spotify. The top podcast chart now is determined by daily unique audience. which is different than how it previously operated. It used to take follower count growth into account as well as recent unique listeners. End quote. And I actually put the direct source of where Ashley got that.
which is from the Spotify newsroom. And they edited just the top part of that whole article. That whole article, I believe, was published way, like years ago. But they had a little update right at the top that says, quote, Updated April 17, 2025.
To improve clarity and help drive discovery, we're making some updates to the podcast charts experience on Spotify. We're introducing a new chart trending podcast to spotlight content on the rise that will be determined by a combination of growth indicating factors. Daily unique audience will now determine top podcasts, end quote. Spotify now has this top podcast chart.
which also should be known as the Joe Rogan chart. Oh, my God. And if you go into that, Joe is going to be at the top. So it's a little bit less dynamic and a little bit more static. of a chart that's that yeah the top podcast the trending chart is a new one which is the next one trending chart is kind of more how their chart used to be that's how Apple's chart is
Apple chart is more of a combination of factors, but a lot of it is about how many new followers you get in a weekly period with a weighted average for the last 24, 48, 72 hours. So that top trending chart. And this should be known now as a new show is beating Joe Rogan chart. Oh. Yes, that's what that's going to be. That's what that one's going to be used by. People, every time they're ahead of Joe, they're going to take a screenshot of that because right now Joe's like third in that chart.
And then there's finally, there's the top episode chart. And that's also known as the Joe Rogan chart. And Joe has three of the top six episodes in that chart, by the way.
He's got the number one, number two, and number six place episodes because he only released at least three episodes this week, I guess, is the reason why. But the point is, Joe is an order of magnitude above everyone else, and you can see that by the top podcast chart, you can see that by the top episode chart for sure, really stands out. The one in the middle is the one that people will be using to create. More screenshots and more.
hey, we're ahead of, we're beating Rogan, and Rogan's no longer number one. Well, that's not true. Go to the top podcast chart, go to the top episode chart. where you really want to see who is the biggest chose. Those are the ones in those two charts. that stand out. Or you can go to Apple's chart. You go to Apple's top chart. And I've always said Apple's top episode chart is really a good one because that's based on, they even factor in how much consumption there is.
So Apple's top episode chart is a really good indicator of top shows. We'll have links to all of those charts. in the show notes so if you want to go and see how different shows are and oh remember Midas Touch which was the new one that had not Joe Rogan off and so many people in the press jump behind that yeah in the top podcast chart they're 74 Okay. And I just like the fact that you frame that as also known as the new show is beating Joe Rogan.
That's pretty funny, Rob. That's pretty funny. Because it's true. And again, I think that the interesting thing about all this is, listen, if your show ever beats Joe Rogan... Yeah, you need to take a screenshot on that chart because people will cover it and you will get eyes on it and people will know your name. So yeah, use it. But that doesn't mean that you're actually beating Joe Rogan, right? It literally is. It is all, how do you say it? Makeup. It's makeup. It's cosmetic.
Something to sell what you're selling it's PR If I had a new show that was ahead of Rogan, I'd take a screenshot, I'd go to Walgreens, I'd get it printed on nice glossy 8.5x11, put it in a frame and hang it on the wall behind me so you could see it in video. Yeah! Of course you want to do that, but I'm never, never upset at podcasters that do this and go out and promote. I'm only ever upset at the reporters that don't do the research to realize what they're talking about isn't actually right.
that they're not bigger than Joe Rogan. They just happened on that particular day to have more new followers than Joe had. Because they're a new show, especially on the Apple side, there's an acceleration factor that goes in there for new shows. and it's easy for a new show. to be in the top charts and Apple designed it that way and I'm glad to see Spotify used to have it that way and now they're doing the trending chart that way.
But it's important because that chart becomes dynamic and it exposes people to podcasts they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. So it's good for the listener and it's good for the new podcaster. Totally. Absolutely. I think that it is a great opportunity for a lot of people who are moving around, right? But I think if you just continually think... That you're just going to beat Rogan. That's not something that I would aim for. Because it's really. I mean.
I don't know. I mean, he's got since, what is it? 2008? End of 2009. Okay, so end of 2009. That is a long time, folks. A long time. Especially for back catalog. So if somebody just finds Joe Grogan today and they decide they're going to binge his show for an entire year, they can do that. They can't do that with your show. If they decide somebody's going to download your entire back catalog, It's not gonna take them through a whole year. It's probably going to be.
A couple weeks, maybe. If they do decide to go thing after thing after thing. So he's got about 2,500 episodes times two hours. That's going to be roughly 5,000. Hours of content divided by 24. 208 days of Rogan playing non-stop. Look at that. That's astounding. We can't compete. All right, so switching the conversation now. Honestly, Rob, I'm obsessed with this app. This is my new favorite app, okay? I have spoken about this before.
It is called Sofa. It is Sofa. And the app's reason for existing is simply to organize your downtime. It's very broad. That means you can... Plan the content that you're going to be watching in all of the streaming platforms. You can plan the content you're going to be reading, any books that you want to read. Wait a second. This is project management. software for watching content. Yes, this is project management content, yes, for your hobbies.
Okay? Just for whenever you're chilling. Not work-related. This has zero to do with any of that stuff. It's where you put your stuff. Like if you want to, you know, watch YouTube videos and you kind of want to make sure that you keep them there and you have something to do and or log. So you could do two things. You could either plan. to consume content or log what you have watched.
So if someone is doing a Netflix and chill with a new person and they pull out the Sofa app, should you be concerned or impressed? I don't know. I actually would be, I would actually, my heart would actually start beating faster if that happened. Randy, are you listening? i know right but anyway the way that i'm using this app is by logging so i'm not a planner I'm a logger because I love to remember what I have watched and when I was watching it because I remember, oh yeah, that's when I...
binge listened or read that one book or watch this new series or I got really obsessed with XYZ. I liked that reference point. So I log my stuff. So Sofa has added the ability to have your podcast in there too. It's actually a really nicely designed podcast app within the app. So it's not only podcast. But it's in there. They have all of the things.
that an almost super sophisticated podcast consumer would want. They have a lovely player. You can speed things up, make things slow down. You can see chapter mark. You can, what are other things that it has in there that I was like, oh, you can import your OPML files. You can export the OPML files. You can see the show notes. Super easy to see their show now.
And so it actually keeps track of the things that you're listening to. And obviously, like I mentioned before, Rob, everything is logged. So you can actually put it in your logbook and then you can reference back, oh yeah, I listened to this podcast on this day.
Because after you finish listening to it, it automatically kind of logs it. You can have per episode settings. You can have it download or not download. There's a lot of really lovely things that he's thought about. I can't say that it's... The perfect podcast consumption app for me. But I do use it to log. So I still consume in Overcast.
And then at the end of the day, I go into Sofa and I log the podcast episodes that I have listened to that day. And the other thing that it has is it has the ability to see staff. So you can see the stats of all the things you've consumed and you have done in a beautiful little chart.
at the top by the way all of this is like premium but not that it's very expensive so I'm now a premium user because I'm obsessed with this app and you can make it look however you want I'm also putting in things that are lovely that I love like Flowers. that are outside that I'm like oh look look at this tree I want to put all of the things that make me happy I also have a list for yellow things that I love yellow. And so I have a bunch of the list of yellow things in there.
Again, this is a way to organize the things that don't matter to most people other than you as your downtown. Anyway, I'm just giving you that. It is a lovely experience, you guys. Check out the Sofa podcast player within Sofa. Tell me what you think. And oh, Rob, get this. This is like for the Statsaholics people. You can export all your stats for the whole thing. You could literally just tap a button and have an Excel spreadsheet of everything you have consumed.
Isn't that amazing? Like what? It's all organized. Anyway, there's very few people who would get like their heart beating faster than me, maybe. And I don't know if you care about this stuff, but I think it's amazing because. Come on now, the organization of this app, one of my favorites that I have ever seen. I, kudos to the developer. Clap, clap, clap. And you have a link in the show notes to see the podcast player. Anyway, that is my new obsession. It's my new boyfriend.
Castro, sorry. Oh, yeah. So now Sofa is what I open every day. It's my happy place at night to just kind of look at the thing. And you can write notes. Oh, my God, Rob. Oh, so, okay, sorry. One more thing. You can write notes. ON THE STUFF! So, now, whenever I listen to an episode that I'm like, wow, that was a really great episode, XYZ. You know, they covered this and that. That's one of my favorites. Because of this, I can write notes on the episode.
It's amazing. Or TV shows. If I watch a TV show or an episode that I thought was really amazing or these are my favorite movies and this is why I love the movie, I can really quickly put a little like sticky note on it and say like, I really love this because of the da da da da.
Because you forget stuff like that. Or I forget, like, what was your favorite episode of whatever season? Oh, this is a... And I can now open up my Sofa app, and I have it in there, categorize, and I can say, this episode. Start with this episode. This episode's amazing. So good. Anyway. Moving on! This is an email that came in to us, Rob. This is from Robert. Actually, this was a post on Facebook. A Facebook DM. Are there any tips for posting a podcast on archive.org? The URL was pretty ugly.
Alright, so I would say in that case, don't worry so much about what the naked link looks like. Just make sure to embed the URL in some text. But if you need to share naked links, then maybe use a link shortener service like bit.ly. Or others, there's many other URL shorteners out there.
And they're free. So I'm assuming that you're doing archive.org because you want something that's free. And yeah, then just find a link shortener or again, wherever you share it, share it someplace where you can embed a link in text. I'd say, click here. So that would be my recommendation there. All right. I don't know enough about that. I have to go look into archive.org and see what's going on with that. But anyway, you have some news here.
IAB fronts are moving back to the fall where they really belong. You know, it's best to have those in the fall because that's right when the yearly buys start. So before, for podcasts, they have had these upfronts in. May or April or May or that time frame, which was really far away from when the yearly buys and planning goes on. So it's September, October.
is where those yearly buy campaigns coming in. So having it move back to in the fall and September where it had been originally, I think is a much better place for the upfront. It just makes more sense with the ad agencies and how they're doing their buys and their planning and everything else. It gets them excited right while they're in the midst of doing that.
Before, they got excited, and then there was boom, summer doldrums, and then they came into the yearly planning, and they'd forgotten almost everything that they'd gotten excited about before the summer. So kudos to IB to move that back where it belongs. Hopefully they will leave it there. But yes, that to me is good news. Right on. And you have some news. Yeah, some Apple. Most people got this email, but just in case.
Dear Podcast Creator, on May 10th, starting at 6 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, Apple Podcast Connect will be unavailable for up to two hours. Access to Apple Podcast Connect and analytics will not be available during this time. Best regards, Apple podcast team. This also got this message from the iTunes, you know, and the iBooks team and other teams. So this is the whole Apple online ecosystem is going down. They must be doing some updates or something. Maybe they're releasing something, whatever.
They're doing, but this happens from time to time. So again, May 10th, 6 a.m. for a couple hours Pacific time, which would be 9 a.m. Eastern time. If you go in and you need to look at your stats, you're just going to have to chill. for a couple hours before you can see your stats. I'll find something else to do in that window. Thank you, Apple, for giving us the heads up. Add it to your schedule, you guys. Yeah. May 10th.
So we got this email, Rob. The headline was, the feed used to be emailed to me and has stopped, wondering what went wrong. And then the body of the email said, that's it. Should I apply again? So is the newsletter paused? What's going on? It is. It is paused right now because I, all right. So listen, folks, full disclosure here. We got a new boss. The marketing team got a new boss. And we actually didn't have a new boss for a while. And then now we have a new boss.
Chris has come on to the team and he is my new boss. And therefore, we kind of had to reassess lots of different things. And so I paused the feed newsletter so that we could spend time doing a little bit more strategic goal setting and prioritization. And we're in the process of doing that. All right, folks? So it is on pause. And it was unfortunate that it was right at the point where I had revamped the whole thing and I had a whole strategy going.
And it wasn't the best time to just keep on moving forward with things that might have not have been in alignment with the team goals. And so I've put a pause on this. It will be coming back. I can't give you an exact date, but it should be sooner than later. So you do not have to re-sign up or anything like that. And you're welcome to sign up. It's on our show notes. You are welcome to sign up for the feed newsletter. It will be coming back again. It is on pause.
Just letting you know, so no, there's nothing you need to do. And I did respond to this guy. But that's nice. And in case you guys have been wondering, it has been on pause. So I'm just trying to... figure things out again. And now we have a little bit of an audio feedback of the show. So I have a question for you. I want to get started podcasting again, which for me was pretty much a hobby from years ago. And my technical ability is I use Cast West.
to create my original podcast. And is there anything that you can recommend I can use now to record a podcast? That would be as easy as podcast. Thanks a lot, and just for a little bit of trivia, the first podcast I ever listened to was Father Roderick on the Catholic Inside. Anyways, thanks for your help, and I look forward to hearing the next episode of the feed. Bye-bye. Oh, did I say my name? It's John. Sorry. Take care. Bye. Okay. Thank you for sending that in.
If you're just looking for something to record audio interviews with, conversations, and if you're hosted on Libsyn and on... The $20 or higher level, you can use Libsyn Connect for that recording. It works well, really well. Gives the best audio quality of any of the options out there, that's for sure. But outside of Lipson, you can also use Riverside or Squadcast or Zencaster. So there are other options out there for doing the recording part of it.
Maybe one of those will work for you, but there are a lot of different solutions. And again, it depends on where you're currently hosting or planning to host. But welcome back. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously, he had been around in the early days if he was using Cast Blaster, and Father Roderick was one of the first ones he listened to. So yeah, I would say he was an earlier podcaster. Yeah, absolutely. It was like...
And Casbat Blaster is a blast from the past already. I haven't heard that name in such a long time. So yeah, things have changed a little bit. I would say like the biggest change is the fact that there are a lot more visual editors out there. And if you want to keep it simple, yeah, Libsyn Connects is available for you to record. You can actually record yourself, too. People, you could do that, right, Rob? Oh, yeah, I've done that.
Yeah, you could just record yourself. It is like a web interface and you could just record yourself if it's just you or you can have a remote call and that's fine too. It's very simple. It just gives you the recordings and then you go about your business editing it yourself, right? In the way that you would normally with high quality audio files. And the other ones that Rob mentioned, one of the ones that I personally like right now is Riverside.
And I think that the Riverside platform just gives you a little bit more options if you want to optimize other things like It gives you transcription right away when you finish recording. It already has a transcription for you. It actually creates show notes for you, which is whack-a-doodle, and it does offer you... It does a surprisingly good job where I'm like, oh my god, this is wacky. And it also allows you to edit. So you can actually visually edit your shows in Riverside.
and it'll be done. So those are some things for you to think about, for sure. But if you want to keep it simple, Libsyn Connect is probably one of the easiest ways, and use Audacity, and you just pay $20 a month. And boom, there you have it. So you have some stuff here from the IAB, Rob? Yeah, so they released the report, the Internet Advertising Revenue Report, full year 2024 results. And the following mention, they have a... This is all of advertising. This isn't a podcast report.
Later in the year, they'll have the report, usually it's in July, that is focused on podcasting. But for now, we get one page. And since it's one page and it's just a blurb, we're just going to read verbatim that one page. And this is to start with the title of that one page is, quote, Podcast advertising revenue surged in 2024 with stronger year-over-year growth compared to last year. That's the title of the page. I think it was like page 19 or something.
And then here is the text from that page. Podcast advertising revenues surged in 2024 with year-over-year growth of 26.4%, a significant acceleration from 5.5% in 2023. This rebound is driven by continued expansion of podcast networks, deeper brand integrations, and advancements in audience targeting. Growth is also driven by podcasts. Serving an important platform for political advertisers to engage with voters ahead of the election. Overall, digital audio has seen a decline in Europe growth.
from 20.9% in 2022 to 18.9%. in 2023 and 8.5% in 2024 as brands continue to invest in contextual advertising and direct response podcast campaigns. Podcasting remains a valuable channel for audience engagement and brand storytelling in the evolving digital landscape. So what they're trying to say there in short is Digital audio is one thing that started to decline, but podcasting, the podcast part of digital audio, saw an increase.
And what's even more impressive on the podcast revenue for 2024 is how it compares to the estimates from the IAB back from just July in 2024. So in July 2024, they had estimated at that time... the 2024 revenue to be $2.16 billion. Which the actual is much better. And again, that was the estimate in 2024. And they also estimated 2025 podcast ad revenue to be just $2.378 billion.
And the 2024 actual ad revenue exceeded both the estimates for 2024 and 2025, coming in at $2.43 billion. So what we saw in 2024... we're almost to the 2026 levels of what they were estimating. So podcasting really, it was a significant growth last year. compared to even where we thought it was going to be in July. And it was a significant increase where the experts, and they are, the IAB people are, were estimating it was going to be just mid last year. So that is really good news.
Kudos to all the different podcast ad sales teams out there for really working with the ad buyers and getting, carving out more and more revenue. 2.43 billion while really good for podcasting, is still a small, small percentage of the overall revenue spent on advertising. And we've got a lot more we can carve out and grow podcasting revenue. We had this presentation in Pittsburgh, and I mentioned that in 2020, podcast ad revenue was $833 billion.
roughly. And now it's 2.43 billion. But from 2020 to now, the number of active podcasts has not increased. So while the revenue went up to 3x, The number of podcasters that are active, have 10 episodes or more, released something in the last 90 days, has not changed. It's 365,000 the beginning of April. I haven't checked the beginning of May yet. At the end of 2020, it was 373,000. So literally the number of active podcasters has remained flat.
for those years, but the revenue has gone up 3x, which means on average, because I can do this really quick in my head, if the bottom number, whichever it is, is 1, and you divide that 3, By one, it's three. So the average revenue went up by 3, and I didn't use my calculator to work that out. So there we go. Kudos to the space and kudos for those that stuck with podcasting for the last few years. If you were monetizing, you should have seen on average a good increase in your revenue.
Bravo, bravo. All right. You found here that somebody else was doing a mean and median numbers of it all here, and you've got the number. Yeah, so, well, you know, we normally do ours, so Omni just released their similar report. This is for 2024. which was a yearly report for shows hosted on Omni and where episodes were live for 30 days. And since, well, our report is broken this month.
And I can't do numbers yet. Oh, no. And might not be doing our median and mean report for some time because there's no ETA on when it's going to be fixed. And that also means I also lost our user agent report.
Oh no! Oh my god Rob! So right now just to let you know the next episode probably won't have our median mean or user agent reports because we've those reports that get pulled are broken and we have other things that are higher priority than me reporting here on the show so sorry but anyway I figured this might be a really, really good time to go over the Omni numbers instead.
So the median number for Omni comes in at 85 downloads. That's a little lower than where we typically come in. They come in at 778. For the top 20%, that's still a little lower. The top 10% is right about where we typically are, $23.99. The top 5% they had at 70.91. That's a little higher. The top 2%, 21,401. A little bit higher where we are typically. And then the top 1%, 39,094. Again, a little bit above where we are on that group.
Just comparison there, again, just to show you that we're not that far, you know, each of us, they're not that far off, nothing's really crazy. No, that it's not like something wackadoodle where it's that the median is like a thousand downloads per episode per month, right? It never is that. It's always smaller than you think it's going to be. Their median was 85. Our median's roughly around 130, 120.
130 recently. And again, median means half the episodes released are less than that, and half their episodes released are more than that. The Omni also broke down where they had the most downloads by category. news was 25.4% of their downloads. And that's mostly because they have really quartered the news networks out there for their service. Comedy is next at 13.3%, sports at 12.6%. Sports is high also because the people they're getting news from, they're also getting sports from.
Society and culture at 12.4. Business at 3.4. Health and fitness at 3.2. True crime at 2.7. History at 2.5. percent of their downloads, TV and film at 2.3, and politics at 2 percent. Again, that's the percentage of downloads for shows hosted on Omni in 2024. As you know, on our side, Number one is faith, is religion and spirituality coming in at like 15% roughly of our downloads. And that's our number one category.
others spread out. I'll have to, maybe I can do that for a report on the next episode, break down where we saw the different categories and go over. Yeah, that would be, I think that that would be interesting to a lot of people. I'm going to be needing something. Right. Send us feedback. Say, yes, Rob, we want that data. Okay. So there we go. And this leads us into Elsie, something that...
I think if there was ever a podcast launched for you and your family, it was the one that was launched yesterday on May 1st. We're recording May 2nd. Yesterday on May 1st. I'm going to step back and let you go all nerdy on this one for the phone. Oh my God, you guys. All right. So back in the day, if you are back in the day, 20, what was it? 2018. We took a cross country trip. with the fam.
To go visit my parents in California. And we mapped out the entire cross-country trip based around... EV charging stations? Oh my god, no. No EV charging stations. No, I was like... Not that. It was a huge van that we were in. Mapped it out based on Whole Foods across the country. We stayed at hotels that were within walking distance and or like a five minute drive from Whole Foods.
And it's what we did. The family has an affinity to Whole Foods because they're all the same. They have the foods that we need. And my husband really just loves Whole Foods, as do I. But he has a very strong affinity for Whole Foods. And so we took pictures at every new Whole Foods. We discovered all the new, all that to say.
Whole Foods has launched a podcast that's hosted on Libsyn, and I am losing my mind. It is called Beyond the Board, as in M-B-O-A-R-D. But as you know... board has different meanings and the artwork of it is green and it has a board like a chopping board right But... The whole point is that they are going to be interviewing possibly some board type people, right? Board members maybe, or at least leadership people, founders, and things like that.
talking about their businesses that are obviously talking about some of the brands that are within Whole Foods. And it's going to be awesome. It's really great to kind of get that behind the scenes of some of these brands that... hope food sells and I think it's going to be beyond that so I'm really curious how they play it I listened to the last episode there and they were talking about a hot sauce
And you know what's really intriguing? I think that this is genius marketing for them because already I want to go buy this. hot sauce because because they broke it down and they even ate like i don't know if there's a video component to this but i thought it was really cool because they ate it they ate food And you can hear them eating, not in a really horrible way where they're like doing mouth noises on the microphone, but it was...
There's an element of they're doing this thing, right? So I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. Check it out for sure. In lieu of you checking it out, this is a wonderful way for us to kind of get them listening here. We actually have a promo for the show. Here is a promo for Beyond the Board. Welcome to Beyond the Board, where we break bread with some of the most interesting industry leaders. I'm Jason Bickel of Whole Foods Market, and I'm honored to be here.
to host in-depth conversations with some of the most innovative and impactful leaders in the food industry. Today, we're talking with Brooklyn Heltz Beckham, founder of Cloud 23, makers of two premium organic hot sauces, a hot habanero and sweet jalapeno. He's a world traveler, skilled storyteller, content creator, and talented cook with a true love for good food.
Awesome. Well, kudos to Whole Foods. Congrats on launching and wish you great success. It's a very well-produced, well-built episode so far. That was the first one. And I hope the team continues this podcast. I don't know if they're going to do it weekly or monthly. I can't remember. I was talking with them and getting them set up. Hopefully there's a lot more episodes to come in the future.
Yeah, and they're short too. They're the 20-minute type. So it's an easy listen. I listened this morning because I wanted to make sure that I knew what I was talking about. All right. As far as news goes, I think that's it. I think we're good. No more stats again. Our stats are broken. I will have some more. Hopefully, I'll try to break down the categories and go over that on the next episode.
And then, you know, we talked about where we've been. We've mentioned briefly we were in Pitt. We had Lipson had an all. I really think this is our first all-hands meeting. where we brought everybody in from the company all around. We have people in 24-something different states, so it was nice to get everybody there in one place. A couple days of meetings. I got home from the meeting, though. They fed us really well.
And I got home and my wife said to me, she goes, when was the last time you did one of those five-day water fasts? I don't think I'd do that. I go, okay, point taken. So I haven't really eaten since I left pit. Oh, Rob. Yes, so I've got a little bit to lose before. Oh my god. So, yeah. That was my wife's subtle way of saying, hey, chubby. Oh, my God. Oh, Rob. Oh, Rob. But a lot. No, we had a great time. It was really nice. And Pittsburgh really shown, I have to say. Listen.
We all know those of us that live in Pittsburgh or have lived in Pittsburgh in the past understand what the situation is in Pittsburgh, which is really not necessarily the sunniest day, the sunniest. sunshiny with lots of beautiful skies type of place. It's generally gray. It's kind of hard sometimes to deal with. But when the sunshine comes out, it's one of the most beautiful cities I feel in the United States. It's astounding. And thankfully, Pittsburgh.
really delivered, except for the mini tiny hurricane that came through and totally devastated a lot of different people, which, random, 20 minutes, it took things up, which is really not great. Awesome. Stay tuned for, I guess, I don't know, some of us are going to be posting pictures. I think I'm going to do like a dump, a photo dump. We had a surprise guest that came in and did a live talk to the team to give us a rah-rah.
That is true. It was Roseanne Barr, so that was really exciting. Roseanne come in and talk to us. By the way, it was via remote, you guys. She didn't show up. She did a live Zoom. She did a live video call in with us, which was really cool. All right. So that's where we've been. Where are we going? Are you going to the podcast show in London? I'm not. We've got a few different people that will be there. I think Rick.
and I think Anthony and Chris are going to be at the podcast show in London. I don't know if anyone else is from the teams going, but I know those three are going. And that's in mid-May. And then Podcast Movement in August in Dallas. We'll have a lot of people there. That's the next one. And there's a couple other shows that we may be going to once we get those booked and talk about. We'll talk about those. We can talk about them once they are booked.
But I don't want to talk about it yet. Sweet. Yeah. And then I, oh, where have we been? I forgot to mention this part before I go to where are we going? Because this is going to be the LSU is going to pitch things now. But I'm doing an experiment, Rob. I haven't told you about this. But I'm running an experiment and I'm using Instagram channel. which is essentially kind of like a group chat. It's like a group chat. So in Instagram, there's obviously private messages, but you can set up channels.
where the group chat can be either just you talking or you can turn on comments and so people can actually comment on the thing that you posted. So it's not everybody talking. It's like if I post something, people can... you know, give me thumbs up or happy faces or hearts or thumbs down, whatever. And then I have turned on comments on so people can actually comment on what I put out, right? And I can put polls on there and things like that.
So I do have an Instagram channel that I'm playing with there. And I have named it. The Slight Spiral Dispatch SSD for short Okay. I thought that was kind of very nerdy. Very nerdy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what this is, is it's a channel for podcasting people who care too much. spiral occasionally and still manage to get things that matter, to make things that matter. And so it's really for independent creators, for mic holders.
you know, all of us that are doing all the things, wearing all the hats and somehow still showing up. And so what I'm doing is I'm dropping news, gear recommendations, soft rants, podcasting industry insights, and of course, random brilliance. the kind of stuff that just has to be shared because it just won't leave my head. So, and again, by the way, this is not polished. This is not like the Ashley Carmen soundbite newsletter. That's not what this is. It is also not corporate or industry.
It's not curated for the algorithm. It really is. slightly unhinged thoughts that come into my head whenever I'm looking through stuff. It's really SSD and we're building it in real time. So join the Instagram channel. I have about 55 people in there right now and it's just fun. So if you want to stay up to date with like podcasting news and slightly off the cuff. That are still super clean. Because I'm that kind of a person. And my rants are not rowdy. They're soft. They're soft rants.
Come join! It's free! And it's kind of been funny fun. I really like it. And outside of that, where are we going? This is the last week for you to apply to be part of my mentorship experience. I'm really excited by this round, so please do that. Literally click through and apply if you want to work with me at the middle of the year, especially if you're in a position of... You've been podcasting for a long time. You really don't know what you want to do next.
You're possibly even considering pod fading or you don't know how to pivot your show or you want to start a business or close your business or focus on something else. to come and hang. come and hang with the eLeague and apply. But you must apply to do that, and that would be amazing. May 9th is the last, the final application deadline, and the program runs from May 12th through June 15th. Okay, that is it for me.
All right. Feed audience members, by the way, you get 40%. Oh, that's right. Oh, my God. I'm not even pitching myself either. Yes. That's right. You got to talk about the feed 40 and you get 40% off. Yes, the feed 40. So the feed audience gets 40% off, you guys. And again, if you put your application in there.
Down at the bottom, there's a place where you put the coupon code and you say the Feed 40. You get 40% off the price. Nobody can buy this without getting a link to the payment page. I don't send that out until you're accepted. So just remember, the Feed 40 altogether gets you 40% off. But make sure that you write it at the bottom so that way when I send you the payment page, I will also send you the code and I will know that you heard it on the feed. The feed 40, 40% off.
And then speaking of codes, we have one for Libsyn. If you're looking to start a podcast or switch up your podcasting home, you can use the code THEFEED for a free month plus with us. So THEFEED1SLUG. no spaces, the feed, and that'll get you a month plus free hosting with us as you switch over or start up. 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 it to us, thefeed.lipson.com, or you can call us, 412-573-1934. Or finally, you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed. Yep, absolutely. I am so excited. So we'll talk with you in a couple of weeks. Do send your feedback. You can hear what we do here and we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to hear from you.
Happy Mother's Day, because we won't have another episode after. Oh, how about that? Oh, my God. That is fast. Okay. Yes, happy Mother's Day, and thank you so much, everybody. Ciao.