I'm joined by a veteran, a goat possibly of the podcast industry.
It's Todd Cochran.
Todd, hello.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Thanks Sam for having me.
Now, Todd, I read in Pod News Daily that you've been doing podcasting for 19 years.
Well, that's a hell of a time to be doing podcasting.
It's been a fun ride.
October 9th, 2004, I pulled up a chair to a little desk in a hotel room in
Waco, Texas and with a 1495 microphone from Walmart across the street, I
recorded the first episode and I introduced it with ACDC Back in Black,
which you can't do that.
So episode one and two actually went beyond the nether somewhere because I
took them down.
I was afraid I was going to get hit with a copyright violation later on.
But yeah, that was the thing.
You know, it was caught the fever early on.
What a great track to start with.
Those about the podcast, we salute you.
That's right.
So looking back over the 19 years, I mean, I know you said it's a 1499 mic and
it's a, you know, it's a laptop and the internet, but fundamentally has anything
really changed or is it just the same?
Ah, yeah, fundamentally it's changed a lot, you know, because you really had to
be a geek in those early days.
And I was running on a content management system called movable type.
Remember it well.
It didn't switch to, yeah, didn't switch to WordPress until later.
But we really were trying to figure it all out.
The biggest challenge really in those early days was hosting because we all had
to do our own thing.
And by the time or before the first hosting platform came on the market, which
was Libsyn or the first one, I was shuffling between like nine or 10 shared
hosting accounts.
I would move the show like every three days because I'd run out of 500 gigs of
bandwidth, run out of 500 gigs bandwidth, run out.
But what you don't need to think about it, those file sizes at the time were
small because we were only encoding maybe 32 K at the tops in those early days.
But, you know, things changed pretty rapidly, you know, 2005 Apple introduced
podcast iTunes, and then we're off to the races really.
So from that perspective, no, things haven't changed that much, but, you know,
definitely being early was a, it helped, you know, from a sense, but also I did a
tech show as my Genesis show and still do.
Um, there was a lot of tech shows.
So it wasn't like, you know, there was, yeah, the genre of shows was narrow tech
comedy and a few others, but so there was a plethora of tech shows at the, in those
early start dates.
What was your expectation of doing it?
I mean, what, what did you think you were going to get from it?
Hey, I've got a mic.
I'm going to be the next, you know, Howard, you know, what, what was it?
I didn't even know who Howard Stern was then.
It really started years before that.
I did a dial-up bulletin board.
I'd had that for many, many years.
And then when the modern internet came, it rained out of it, clean a closet
versus being dial-up.
And then when that kind of phase of the world changed, I had a blog and I was
literally a pretty bad blogger.
Even to this day, I pay people to write on my website versus, and it's much easier.
So it's okay.
Well, you know, that's true too, to an extent, but I think the ultimately was,
I like to talk and I like to talk about tech.
So for me, it was just, and I had no idea.
I mean, I thought it would be a fun thing to do.
And, and you know, my first really indication that this might be reaching
some people was when I woke up one morning and had an email from my hosting
provider said, Hey, we've shut your account down because you know, you're
out of data.
I'm like, what?
You know, and, and, you know, it's like, what do I do now?
Well, let me go over and buy another GoDaddy account or let me buy another
Dreamhost account or whatever it was.
I was trying to, cause I had to spread the love around, right.
Then associated domains to go with it.
I mean, it was crazy what we had to do in those early days, but, um, then it
really, you know, there was this, this idea that things could, could take off.
And when I went back to Hawaii and told my wife about the show, you know, she
just basically kind of looked at me and she didn't have a clue what I was doing.
But don't say anything.
It's going into the corner to talk to himself again, leave him alone.
And she said, and she said, how much money?
And I kind of sheepishly said how much might, you know, cause I think we're
up to six or seven, you know, shared hosting accounts by that point.
And she kind of eyes got big and she, you know, pointed her finger at me.
She says, you got two years to figure this out.
How to make money.
So I was forced into monetization from like episode six, you know, and found
monetization about 10 months later, but, and was lucky enough to be one of
the first to find that, but, you know, just a series of things happened.
The book deal with Wiley, you know, then forming a network and then go
daddy coming to me and then go daddy saying, Hey, and really what the
Genesis of blueberry podcasting or raw voices, the parent company blueberry
was from a gal named Chris Ruddinger.
She said, Todd, do you know anyone else would like to do advertising with go
daddy? And I was like, huh?
Yeah, there's a business here.
So I literally on my podcast, I said, you need a lawyer.
I need an MBA.
I need a graphics guy and you need a programmer.
Cause I was none of the above and a phone call on free conference call about
10 days later and, and three of the original five are still with the company.
I formed it over the phone.
We didn't meet each other for six months.
So raw voices literally launch from my, from my audience.
Wow.
And go daddy still your sponsor, aren't they?
Still today.
Yeah.
1698 episodes in and you know, there's, there's breaks, spent an hour on how
that's possible by itself, but the, really the simple part of it is you
gotta have new butts come in the seat or no new ears coming into the show.
In order to maintain that success.
Cause I get my performance is purely based on new customer.
Give everyone who doesn't know what are the shows that you do.
So I do geek new central to tech show twice, like we Monday and Thursday.
I record that in the evening on Wednesdays.
I do the new media show and who made sure.com with Rob Greenlee.
Him and I've been doing that more than 10 years in itself.
And then I, there's three of us that, uh, really, really, really, really
there's three of us that, uh, round Robin on the podcast insider at blueberry.
So, um, usually around a couple of episodes a month of the company
podcasts, but all told, I think I told it up here recently, more than
2300 episodes and plus 2000 plus interviews, some that I have received
and some that I have given, you know, so, cause the, well, the majority of
those interviews were done like the consumer electronic show, CES show.
It's part of adding content to the, to the tech stack for the, for the geek show.
Now you've got blueberry and you've got multiple products, you know, got
WordPress products, you've got other products we're going to talk about shortly.
Is the podcast a loss leader to making people aware of blueberry or is it
fundamentally its own separate entity?
Where does the podcast sit within the business?
Yeah, the two shows that I do for geek new central and the new media show are
not, you know, really designed to drive.
It's not a funnel for, for raw voice or blueberry or blueberry specifically.
Um, but why I do a podcast and I was talking in our Facebook group about it
yesterday was if there's very few podcast hosting owners, founders,
team members that actually do podcasts.
So on my team, I have a lot of team members that do podcasts, burying my CFO
and legal officer, you know, he does a travel show.
Um, one of the guys that's on our board of directors does a indie music show.
And so it's, it's really my philosophy was, and has been, if I'm going to talk
about monetization, I'm going to talk about growing, you know, the, the, the
talk about growing a show.
I'm going to talk about consistency.
If I'm going to talk about all these things are important podcasting, you
better be doing it, your own dog food, as they say, that's right.
You better be doing it.
And if, and if you're not, and you're talking hypothetically, be quiet.
You don't know what you're talking about.
I agree.
Now, one of the things that you have with both geek new central and the new media
show is you've now started to adopt some of these new podcasts, two to O features.
And one of those is lit the live item.
Yep.
Have you found it?
I mean, has it been challenging?
Has it been, oh, yeah.
Okay.
Now we've just got through a few of the, uh, you know, glitches.
It's pretty smooth.
Where are you with it now?
You know, having done live literally for more than 10 years for both geek new
central and the new media show.
And, you know, for us, it was just an extra step to click a button and say,
Hey, we're live and then notify the podcast 2.0 apps at podcast apps.com
that are capable of showing the live audio or video.
And we're both up live on audio.
We're both up on live and video with those apps.
And for me, it's been, it's exciting because, you know, I've always been an
individual that said, I want to control my own destiny.
I want to build my own brand.
I want to build my own.com.
I want, I don't want to rely on YouTube or Facebook live or any of these other
places to build an audience and to keep the audience, you know, basically engage.
I I'm never going to get deep platform, but at the same time, I would much rather
have the audience, if they decide they want to consume live, consume it in an
app where they're having conversations.
Same place they're having conversations in or podcast or, you know, regular
consumption of podcasts.
So I'd rather have them to have it there than have it on YouTube or have it on
Facebook. Now, granted, the audience is definitely split on where they largely
watch now.
They watch those three places.
They watch on YouTube live, they watch on Facebook live, and they watch within
the podcast apps and, you know, pushing folks to those other apps over time.
It's just, you know, it's just an education thing.
So I think it's fantastic.
It's in really it does give an a person the ability to not be reliant on a
logarithm.
And that's what you are when you're chasing YouTube numbers or you're chasing
Facebook. It's it's it's the logo that you're battling against.
Why do that?
Why just continue build your brand on your dot com and and and use these
features to build a native audience.
It's all about education on the content creator standpoint, too.
So if you've started one place and you try to shift people to the other, it's
going to take some work.
But I think the live inlet is fantastic.
And again, there is some uptake and, you know, we're we're working to make it
easier for podcasters in all regards.
I mean, it is we are in the super, super early days of all of this technology.
You know, as Adam and Dave like to call it running the system, it's a very
interesting thing to do, because I think we are literally sticky tape and
plaster in some cases trying to do this.
But what what is interesting is you as a blueberry as a company have embraced
all of this technology.
I saw a stat about the number of sats that have been paid out to your creators
now. Can you remind me what that was?
And what are you seeing in terms of, you know, from the support of YouTube
and, you know, from the support calls and sort of feedback generally on how
this is being adopted?
Well, it's to me, has blown away because we do a three percent fee.
So I basically went in and looked at our Satoshi account.
And for those that don't know, Valu for Value is one of the methods is
time, talent or treasure.
Treasure could be fiat funds or could be Satoshi's via booster, you know,
streaming by the minute crypto.
And I went in our Albie account or blueberry Albie account and I was like,
whoa, I looked at the number.
That's kind of surprise.
So I just did a quick math thing, right?
He just, you know, I did the inverse and said, how, you know, what did the other
97 percent, you know, how much of that other 97 percent amount to actually 100
percent because the fees on top and just a little over 10 grand and in real
dollars.
And well, you know, I guess I have to go back and look at when we enabled value
for value for five months, maybe.
So not a huge amount, but I was actually actually kind of surprised.
And so, I mean, something new I'm doing now is like, OK, you know, where are
those stats going, you know, going back and through and looking at stuff that are
coming from and a lot of it streaming stats, people that are streaming, you
know, 100 stats a minute or a thousand stats a minute or they're doing boost
and, you know, a hundred thousand Satoshi boost.
And it's it was it's interesting to see that now again, it was just again over a
number of months.
And so I was really pretty surprised and I hadn't been in there and looked for
for two because the first time I looked, I said something like I think the first
time I looked at it was like maybe they were like eight hundred dollars or
something like that or nine hundred or something.
And then, you know, months later, I go back in and I'm like, wow.
And I think there was a second part of your question, maybe I missed.
What is the support like?
So, oh, the support.
I mean, are people coming to you?
I don't understand what you're talking about, Todd.
Or is it like, oh, this is really cool.
I get it. It's pretty quick.
And, you know, some of the questions you're getting are now more advanced
questions. I don't know.
Where is the feedback?
Well, so far we did we did YouTube shorts, not shorts, but as short of YouTube
videos as we could on explaining every single feature.
And this is the thing we've had to really do is educate the podcaster that this is
a feature. We get all the geek tech.
We don't want to get their eyes glazed over and try to break this down at the
most simple level and said, listen, I got to do is go in here.
You enable this.
You set up you either use your fountain account, your get out your Albie, get Albie
account, or you can use your own note if you're so inclined.
We don't recommend that.
And we'll automatically link it up, fill the boxes, you set up the splits and the
support on it has been virtually nil.
Wow. OK.
Now, I reason I reason the reason I think it is at this point is we've we've got a
lot of businesses come in from other companies that have.
So it's a lot of people that want to be involved.
They've done a little bit of self, you know, self study.
They know what the features are and they've come in and adopted.
So I think that from that perspective, we're probably dealing with the three
percent that didn't need an explanation on how to use this, that has adopted it.
Now, to get the other 97 percent of the base to understand the value and what this
can mean again, and we're probably on a two year climb here to to really educate
and and talk about these new these new features.
And I want to talk about them as features because the otherwise the non nerds that
are going to try to adopt this are going to their eyes are going to glaze over and
say, forget it. And it's not worth my time.
And also, you got to understand, too, people are always shaming.
Sometimes they're chasing the shiny little object.
So YouTube is kind of doing their thing now and everyone's, oh, we get all excited
about YouTube and that'll die down and people will.
And again, it's about trying to get people educated on why they should use these
features and why we want wider adoption across apps to be able to support it so
that we have more control of our listeners so that, you know, I don't believe
and not in a single instance that YouTube is a friend of podcasting.
They see this as an opportunity.
They see this as an opportunity to keep people in their platform and not let them
leave. And I think content creators that are worried about their brands need to
understand this in a big way.
Now, maybe they can build a big audience over there and monetize.
Great. If they can, congratulations.
But the majority will never monetize.
And do you want YouTube in control of your audience?
So, again, let's stay on the pure podcasting side for a little bit.
I think there's huge opportunity here with these new features to really do cool
things with the audience.
You were the first one who called them features, if I remember rightly.
And, you know, everyone had been calling them tags or namespace extensions.
I think it was you in one of your shows that said, well, let's just call them
features. And I thought, good on you, Todd.
That just makes it really customer friendly.
Now, with your adoption of all of these new features, do you think you've created
a competitive advantage?
Do you see other people leaving other hosts?
I mean, I don't know if your data tells you that, but do you see that?
Well, you know, let's be honest, we're not the only ones that have done some
significant adoption.
RSS.com, Buzzsprout, RSS Blue and a few others have done significant adoption of
podcasting 2.0 tags.
So I'm not getting customers from there.
They're not they're not moving from there, but they are moving from other hosts
that have been slow on the uptake and slow on the adoption and people that are
impatient and have been asking.
Those are types of folks.
And I'm sure those other companies are gaining customers, too.
And I know specifically ones usually that are coming because they tell me they're
coming. And, you know, we've got some of their waiting for us to do some additional
stuff before they move.
So I think that now the majority of the gain in business has been really from
hosts that haven't adopted.
And we've talked to those hosts and said, hey, how come you're not playing here?
But I guess at this point, it's their loss or gain.
It's not hundreds, you know, but if I can move, you know, twenty, twenty five a
month off another service, you know, those those are those are great adopt because
people don't move when they get out of hosting service.
They rarely move.
The percentages are very, very low.
Now, a feature or a function of Blueberry was a new thing you launched called
Podcast Mirror. Tell me more about Podcast Mirror.
Yeah, Podcast Mirror has actually been a service we've had for maybe.
2016, 17, we launched Podcast Mirror, and really what Podcast Mirror was was
number one, it was a feed burner replacement, this feed burner wasn't
staying current. It was also designed for people that were on a dollar ninety
nine hosting account that, you know, basically, you know, got grew a little
bit and got overwhelmed.
So what we do is the podcast does exactly as it says it mirrors the feed that you
create on whatever service, whether it be a competitor, whether it be on your own
website, whether it be or on SoundCloud, wherever it may be, it copies that mirror
and makes an exact mirror of it and then through some little things that we do to
help people. Basically, that becomes the point that Apple podcasts and Spotify
and everyone else, they pull from that URL and it basically designed that
service to be a rocket ship and to basically really like load quickly.
There's a lot of high volume podcasts that are using Podcast Mirror for years
and we made it available for free.
Well, like anything else, you know, we started looking at the cost of what this
was costing us every month.
And it's free for our well, it's it's been, again, a free for everyone, but we
made a change just a couple of weeks ago, put a sixty dollar a year annual fee on
it, and then we added a number of podcasting two point no features.
So what's kind of cool about this is you may not want to move to Blueberry.
You may want to stay at that non participating podcast, two point no host.
But guess what?
We made it now so that you can do live, you can do value for value, you can set
the medium tag to the type of content it is.
So if someone's on SoundCloud and has a music show and they want to participate in
this new thing that's going on with music, they can do that or they can set the
medium to podcast.
There's the funding tag credits.
We even support O.P.
Three.
So it really is.
And it's all channel level.
And again, now we're getting technical.
It's all channel level.
Yeah, it's all channel level features, top level features, because I really to
implement something in an episode level would require a monumental amount of work.
Because again, all we're doing is we're taking the feed that was originally
created.
We're making a copy of it, hosting it on podcast mirror with an address at podcast
mirror that loads lightning fast, takes a load off your Web server.
If you're again, you're on a dollar ninety nine or maybe you're over at some place
that charges you for too much traffic, which happens a lot as well.
Now that we can now we just inject at the channel level those podcasting two point
two point features and and what it really does is it makes a show immediately able
to participate in this new medium again with a limited number of features live
value for value medium funding credits and O.P.
Three.
And of course, good if they don't have a good we'll put a good in there does pod
ping and does all those things that you would expect from from a host that was
engaging and operating.
So we've started to see some trickle from some people who weren't suspecting that
would come over and use it.
So it's kind of fun to see that too.
Would that user eventually go, I don't want to use podcast mirror.
I'm actually just going to come across.
Is that is that your bridging technology, do you think?
They can't bridge because we don't host the media.
It's still hosted.
It's your host.
No, but eventually they say that I don't want to use podcast mirror.
I don't want to stay at X host.
I'm going to start and move my whole hosting to Blubrink.
Is that why?
Well, that would that could in and they could actually keep the podcast mirror
feed that they had in transition.
Got you.
Yeah.
And again, the feeds that are served by Blubrink.com are running the same exact
technology.
Matter of fact, it has the item level stuff support too.
So you probably wouldn't want to use.
Matter of fact, we tell our Blubrink customers, you know, I think we've only got
like five Blubrink customers that are actually using podcast mirror.
They don't need it.
But they just happen to use it because they, they, if they decide someday, they
want to leave blueberry, they could just go to another competitor and then change
the source URL and podcast mirror would pick that up.
Right.
So, so that, you know, can work the other way, you know, they can move away from us
as well.
So, so, so looking further down the field, I mean, you and I both very heavily
involved in talking about some of the new features.
We weren't going to any of those particularly, but one of the things that
as a host, I've always wanted, and somebody who does a lot of live and a lot of
video would blueberry provide a client end service where I could come to blueberry
and create a live server, an HLS server and pay you extra money on top of my
blueberry account.
Is that any in the planning around that?
Maybe it's on my list, but I don't have it in the stack yet.
And the other one, yeah.
So, okay, cool.
I mean, cause that would be, it just seems like it's such a natural fit for a host
just to add that extra live, uh, URL service.
Now, if some, if someone wants to do audio streaming, I've got a couple of audio
streamers set up with time slots available.
If they come over and they're a blueberry host, they say, Hey, I need an audio
stream it from Thursday night from a Thursday morning from nine to 11.
And if I have the slot, I'll give them the slot and they can use the stream
server for audio right now.
But I'm just giving slots on something that we pay for.
We don't have, that's not something we built.
It's, you know, it's just a service.
It's a good testing ground for you to see what the usage might be in anything else.
Now you do video, you do a lot of video.
And, um, again, you know, you've talked about your thoughts around YouTube, which,
you know, don't worry, they mirror mine in many ways, but, but you've given me
your thoughts around that.
But as blueberry, would you ever provide, um, the alternate enclosure ability for
me as a client of blueberry to host video?
I've spoken to a few other hosts and that seems to be like, Oh my God, that's
no, no, no, no, no.
That's well, we've always, we've hosted video from day one.
Yeah.
So our, our approach though is, is a little bit different in the way that
a little bit different, and this is really ground in, you know, going way back.
The argument was made many, many years ago for one feed, one show.
So in other words, there's a feed for the audio.
There's a feed for the video.
The challenge I have is basically I have a hundred thousand plus shows that
easy to use power press or use blueberry directly or are hosted WordPress site.
And some of them don't even host with us using power press.
And all this time we've made it ability for them to have an audio feed, video
feed, or whatever, how many ever feeds they want where they can create as many
as they want to create per single show.
But we've never crossed streams within the same episode.
So, you know, I know James and some other folks are not happy that we haven't
adopted alternate enclosures.
There is a potential that we've been thinking about for a while that we're
going to make some suggestions to podcasting 2.0 that why not, why not
just let us point to another feed and get this remote item?
Why can't there be a remote item for the video component of a podcast that
would fix our issue?
Because if I go into a, if I tell a podcaster today, all right, I'm going to
ask her today, all right, we're enabling alternate enclosures.
So if you've got a video feed in an audio feed right now, if you have an audio
feed, now you're going to have to put an alternate closure of your video.
And if you have a video feed, now you're going to have to switch that and put an
alternate enclosure to an audio file.
It just gets really messy for our standpoint.
So we just think it might be just easier to allow remote item point to another
version of the show instead of having an alternate enclosure.
Like podcast mirror where you're not hosting the content, but you're providing
the, the wraparound metadata.
Could you not with the alternate enclosure have the URL of the video
point to the Vimeo or YouTube or somewhere else?
So you're not actually hosting it.
You're actually just providing a box, which the link to it.
It's a box, right?
It's just a, just as you don't have when you have the funding tag, right.
In your RSS and you have a domain.
It's a URL to buy me a coffee or a URL to get you're not actually hosting the
funding part, you know, no, no, no.
But I think the challenge that is, is in post that's okay.
When you are creating an episode, you definitely could link to that live that
you created somewhere, the link to it.
And I, I think, you know, we've always suggested that anyway, if people that
don't want to actually host video, they just want to have an embed to put it in
their show notes, so there could be in the feed, but I think we'd have to figure
out where that belongs.
Um, I mean, again, maybe that's another remote item idea.
So I think there's, there's opportunity there because not everyone is, you know,
some people are going to want to be on, you know, maybe they're on, uh, what's
the gaming site, uh, it doesn't matter.
Wherever they're at Twitch, maybe they want to point towards a Twitter.
Stream that they've done, you know?
So I think that's all, that's all viable type of ideas that should probably be
considered, um, cause that way you don't need the alternate close because the
alternate enclosure really demands a physical link to a media file.
You know, again, that goes back to, you know, the, the serving of that media in
the app, because most podcasts apps.
I don't know if it'd be a terms of services violation for them to try to
pull in that embed from Vimeo or from Twitch and play it within the app.
I think there would be challenges there.
So I just wish that more of the apps would support video too.
I would, yeah, I think that's important at this point that every app that's in
the podcasting 2.0 new or podcast apps.com support, uh, video playback.
Yeah, I agree.
And then putting my app hat on, you'll be pleased to know in a couple of weeks
time that will be available from, from pop fans.
I can't talk for anyone else.
Cause it's really all it is is we're just serving you an MP4 usually, you
know, it's usually you just, you know, you just doing the playback and
you're pulling from us.
Yeah.
So,
yeah, um, absolutely.
And, uh, we have tested your show and it works, um, with the separate
video feed, I think it was just trying to find a, I suppose a cleaner solution
that said, you know, click a button, it switches to video click a button
and it goes back to audio.
That was what
here's, here's what we've learned is here's what I've learned.
70% of my audience on my tech show.
Listen, 30% watch on Robin eyes, new media show.
It's like an 80 20 split 80% listen, 20% watch.
Um, I think most listeners, I want to have them the cleanest solution possible.
I want them to say, I love this audio show click, follower subscribe.
Bam.
That's what I get.
There's no monkeying around.
I know what I'm going to have.
So I try to, and I look at this and try to play devil's advocate.
At the same time, I understand where you want one listing that
clicks between audio and videos.
But maybe streaming.
Yeah.
If I make any difference, right?
Same value.
Right.
But again, I have two feeds with value for value set up in both.
So it doesn't matter which one you hit, but maybe that remote item type
of linking to a video feed might be an interesting option.
I like that idea.
It's a, it's a strong possibility.
I think that, okay, look, we started off the show saying you've been here.
Looking back 19 years in some ways, things have changed.
We just talked about those changes, the podcast two.
Oh, and in fact, that's probably over the last three or five years.
Right.
At the moment.
So there was a, you know, a long hiatus where things just moved along.
We didn't really change.
Okay.
Put your hat on Todd and tell me what's five years from now.
What's 19 years from now.
Whoo.
Uh, I'll give you a 12.
Okay.
I'll take that.
Um, because, um, the AI will be part of every podcast hosting platforms offering.
Everyone's going to have something.
Um, if they don't, they're, you know, they're not going to be in
business three years from now.
Um, I think that, um, I'm not talking about an AI voice creating content that, uh,
no, but here's what will happen.
As all this proliferation of AI content, written videos, all this stuff, people
are not going to know who to trust or what to trust.
So people that are doing original content, I'll include YouTubers as well.
People are doing original content, audio podcasts, video podcasts, YouTube
channels, where there is a voice that you can trust, they are going to
flock to those voices.
And personalities, because you're not going to know what you're reading.
If it's true or not, if it's bias through you, if it's how it's been written, where
AI is going to help podcasters is folks that are a hit a writer's block, or maybe
they're having a hard time coming with questions for a host, or maybe they've
been horrible at writing summaries of their episodes, but they're going to
be horrible at writing summaries of their episodes that thunking work.
And I stole that word from Google, by the way, that thunking work is what AI is
going to do.
It's going to help.
It's going to assist.
It won't be the authority.
Here's, here's what's going to end up happening here.
We're very creative.
We're all creators.
I consider myself prayed, but I can't draw.
If I asked to draw something, I draw stick.
You and me, but journey, I'm in that a lot of time.
Okay.
I can, I can visualize what I want.
Right.
And I, and I know the kind of things I want to bring out in my shows.
So being a creator, you're not going to give anything up, but the assistance is
going to come with that thunking is show notes, maybe questions, creative ideas.
That's thunking work is going to be helped by AI.
And then the, you still have to be the subject matter expert of everything
because you're going to do your content, you're going to be the SME, the subject
matter expert of your content.
And then you're going to have to make sure that you're the subject matter
expert of whatever that AI puts out.
So this was the summary.
You know, Todd talked about this, this, and this, and this.
You said, Oh no, I didn't talk about that.
It made it up.
Let me delete that from the draft and correct that you do the QA on the output.
And when you hit publish, it's still your product because you've had to edit this
because these AIs are, you know, they're the dumbest they'll ever be right now.
Exactly.
But I think it's good.
And I think it's going to help the creative types in some of this stuff, but
in the playing field is going to be equaled because everyone's going to be
doing the same thing.
Everyone's going to have comprehensive notes.
But what does that do then?
And this is why it's going to change the podcasting space a lot.
You don't write for your audience.
You write for Google.
And now you're going to be writing for language models.
So the more in the more in depth your show notes are when a language model
comes by and indexes your page.
So Todd talked about podcasting 2.0.
Sam talked about podcasting 2.0 or whatever it may be.
Then as these things evolve, then as search changes, tell me about podcasting
2.0 and there's like, well, here's Sam and Todd talking about this.
Here's Adam. Here's Dave.
Here's the authorities.
And this is not going to happen right now because it's pretty dumb right now.
It's built on data that doesn't shift very much between models.
But over time it will.
So the one to three years, the world is going to change completely for
knowledge workers.
And I think that podcast hosts better be, you know, I mean, probably if
they're not aware of it, then sorry.
Sorry. So I think that's what's going to happen now.
What's going to happen for listeners?
Well, we just want listeners to engage.
We want listeners to be, you know, that's what is the thing that most
podcasters care about the most besides growth?
Someone saying I love your show.
Interactivity.
Someone saying I hate you.
Someone saying that sucked or that was great.
Or, you know, my biggest span that I had years ago was a hater because he, he,
he co co-lust my audience.
I would read every one of his hateful comments he sent to the show and the
audience would rally around me and I build a stronger user base just because
of one one Sal, where are you at?
Come back to the show, brother.
You know, so self-reporting, put them on the splits.
Exactly.
You know, so I think that, uh, you know, we want this listener engagement.
What does listener engagement do that keeps us motivated to create content?
Cause being a content creator, being a podcaster can be lonely.
Yeah.
I remember when doing radio shows, it was also very lonely until he got someone
calling in, Oh, someone is listening.
Um, switching slightly.
We both know this person, uh, Leo Laporte.
Um, he's got a podcast network.
Uh, he is not very clearly not adopting any of the podcasting
two to own namespace stuff.
Um, which is the weirdest thing in the world.
Cause if anyone's ever listened to Leo from the beginning, he's always talked
about wanting to have fans pay him directly and I'm going, it's available now.
Leo it's available, but he blinkers it, but he's talking about advertising now,
you know, diminishing quite rapidly.
They've gone down to one advert per show.
Now, um, they got, I think James reporting, they got ad blocked recently.
Um, you know, they got blacklisted, um, and they've been having to get
themselves whitelisted again.
Do you, the question really then is, you know, you see, I'm looking at the sort
of slow demise of a very good network that's been going for 10 plus years and
you've been going for 20 years nearly.
Do you think advertising within podcasting is going to evolve and grow or
diminish because nobody wants advertising in their podcast.
They just want money.
So if we can replace money value with value for value, sorry.
So we can place money with micro payments that direct from fans.
You wouldn't want advertising in your show.
So is advertising just the sort of hanging around like a bad smell and then
we're just, we'll see in five years gone.
Well, well, I, you know, I'll be honest, the studio where I'm at right now would
not be, I would not be here in this setting where I am physically right now.
Had it not been for go dad.
Now I might still be in a bedroom in my house.
Um, I think that first of all, I love Leo, love Lisa, love the team over there
at twit, but Leo's thinking about retiring, you know, Leo's close to, to
pull on the plug and Leo is the linchpin to twit and you know, I've seen Leo get
rid of some people in the past.
I thought there was the legacy to continue on your network, but Leo made
his own business decisions.
So Leo for many, many years, didn't call podcast a podcast either, called it a
netcast.
So Leo's been a little slow adopting on some things, but still very successful
on his own, right.
But he came from television.
He had the prebuilt audience, had a syndicated radio show.
So Leo's operating at a level that 99% of podcasters don't.
So if you build a big audience and I'm a big audience, I'm going to say is
above 10,000 listeners, 10,000 plays at download, you can do very well in
monetizing your podcasts through some great host read advertising.
And as the bigger you get, you can adopt, you can gain those advertisers on your
own or through a partner where the problem is, in my opinion, is the partners
have now started and employ a whole bunch of tech that is not beneficial to
the content creator.
We're in this world of everyone has to be can't have their feelings hurt and
advertisers are risk adverse to someone saying that something they shouldn't.
In the early days of podcasting, there was a guy that was doing a podcast, had
an advertiser and his name is show name was the daily download.
And you can imagine where he recorded his show.
So I wouldn't have known, but visual image.
Okay.
He had, he had an advertiser.
Right.
All right.
Now let's move to where we're at today.
I think you can do well if you have an advertiser relationship that is built
upon trust and brain providing value and you love the product, you can endorse
that and do very, very well.
The problem I run into now with advertising is I listen to some shows
and there's an ad break every seven minutes.
There's three, two ads, someone droning on about something they really don't
believe in.
It's absolute crap.
And get on my soapbox a little bit.
Media buyers are lazy.
They are lazy.
They have ignored.
Nine.
Okay.
Fifty percent of podcasters don't want no advertising to begin with.
So let's just throw that out.
Let's say 10 percent and that's being generous or being monetized today.
That leaves you 40 percent of podcasts that want advertising that that
inventory is empty.
It's setting to be filled because media buyers have been lazy and not bought
down into it.
Some of the most engaging and beautiful audiences that are out there.
So I think advertising can work, but you are now living in a world where.
You know, you say one word and boom, you're you're you're off the platform.
You've had your ads pulled.
So I think there's a there's a way forward.
I think the way things are going now were automation.
The automation is what they're trying to do is trying to build volume.
And then in case and at this point, the automation is hurting content creators.
So we're value for value comes in.
It's hard for a content creator to say.
Hey, can you provide time, talent or treasure?
I think the talent is easy.
Asking someone to support the show, maybe be a moderator, maybe help with social
talent, being maybe submitting album art or whatever it may be.
Some sort of, you know, maybe ideas for the show episode.
The treasure piece is the hard part.
And you have to ask.
And, you know, I don't want a buy me a coffee.
That that doesn't work.
That doesn't keep the insurance and lights on in this place.
So until people start learning to support with if you provide value and you get
monetarily value back, whether it be in dollars or in, you know, in Satoshi's.
I think Satoshi's at this point are largely a feedback mechanism.
They're, you know, I've collected a lot of Satoshi's.
I can't complain.
I've done well.
Personally, probably six or seven hundred dollars in donations on Satoshi so far.
But at the same time, my fiat funds that come in via PayPal donation probably equal
just about that much in the same amount of period, too.
So, again, it's a mixed piece.
I think they can coincide with one another.
But a lot of these automated systems that 90 percent of podcasters will never have
to deal with are hurting that 10 percent.
But those maybe those podcasters need to stay up, stand up and say, stop.
Yeah, I know.
I guess my question to you is trying to fast forward.
What is the crossover time frame in your mind between people who are reliant on
advertising as their monetization, which we know is just a bad way of doing it,
because there is no payment.
So monetization through advertising was the option.
But nobody wants a D.A.I. ad injected into the middle of their conversation.
Nobody does. Right.
So. Well, this is planned and prepared.
Yeah. But even then, you probably you're only doing it because you want money.
I mean, how many squares based we want and, you know, my dad.
So I guess if you knew going back to, you know, if you looked at the amount of money
if you looked at the amount of if I could go all the way back.
Well, no, if you could go all the way forward, actually more more.
Oh, so. So if you could say, right today, I'm not saying you, but on average,
I make so much per episode through advertising.
At what point do you think you'll cross or the industry will cross over where
micro payments is actually the bigger revenue value generator than advertising,
at which point the content creator can go, you know what?
Screw ads. I'm now making more than enough money through this model.
Are we talking five years or hopefully not 19 years?
Oh, it's it's it's that's a loaded question, because if you only have a thousand listeners.
Today, thousand engaged listeners and you run one ad spot on a traditional CPM.
Oh, you make a whopping twenty five bucks.
Yeah. But what if those what?
What if so for smaller shows and value for value?
What if a thousand, let's say 10 percent.
Of those thousand send you a dollar a month.
In sats, yeah, equivalent value, then you've already replaced your ad.
If you're ten thousand and you cross that over, OK, ten thousand downloads an episode,
you could potentially make two hundred fifty dollars an episode.
You do four episodes a month. That's a thousand dollars.
You have to use this analogy to go and say, where does it cross?
You got to kind of do a little bit of simple math.
And again, it's about getting the getting the audience, training the audience
and providing value and getting in.
And I hate to say train, that's probably someone's cringing out there.
But to make them understand, hey, you want to support this show?
I don't have an advertiser, you know, please, you know, time to go.
Time, talent or treasure.
And it can work.
It can.
I think that I would consider my audience.
The size of the audience I have, if if just 10 percent donated every month.
Anyone have to be a lot.
I've always said one to two dollars and I could if actually if 100 percent of my
audience gave a dollar a month, I could hire like four people.
You know, there could be some significant changes.
So let's say 10 percent or five percent, because that's all you're really ever
going to get. Maybe five, six, seven percent.
Maybe the audience will donate.
So if you figure seven percent of your existing, let's say you have a thousand,
that means 70 people.
If they give you a dollar or two a month or more, it's a minimum.
You know, and again, it doesn't have to be a dollar.
It could be a hundred dollars.
They got that enough value out of it or a thousand dollars.
I mean, I've heard some contributors to, you know, Adam and No Agenda.
Wow.
You know, a couple thousand bucks.
I'm like, holy cow.
Exactly.
Talk about me.
Was you.
It wasn't me.
So, you know, those are those are fans that, you know, you love those types of fans.
And I think there is a path forward.
It just takes a mindset change.
And here's the thing.
Big shows are going to continue to monetize.
The 10 percent that are monetizing are going to monetize.
Let's take the 40 percent that can't get an advertiser if they wanted one,
unless they just want to run programmatic.
And I'm talking about when they want one, I mean, one that would pay a host read,
that you're going to get twenty five dollar or more CPM,
where programmatic is anywhere between seven and fifteen.
I think you have the option.
You have the ability there if you go value for value from, you know, starting early
and even adopt it now.
I mean, you've been podcasting for 19 years.
I think over time you can build that.
Build that revenue.
But you got to get you got to you got to do good.
You got to put out great content.
Todd, thank you so much.
Thank you on behalf of the industry for the last 19 years of what you've done.
Hopefully you're here for another 19 years.
Maybe maybe you will.
Maybe not in terms of you might be doing a, you know, a little important and leaving on a
steamship somewhere, but hopefully not.
But again, one of those last things I'd ask is if somebody wants to get involved in all of what
we've just talked about, you know, podcasting to that and power podcast mirror and all these things,
where would they go?
Well, if they want to talk to me personally, just Todd at Blueberry dot com,
Blueberry without the ease because we couldn't afford the ease.
There were two million dollars.
So BLUBRY.com.
And then, of course, you know, the podcast index and what's going on over there.
And, you know, it's very simple.
Search for podcasting 2.0 and you're going to find everything you want.
Value for value dot info, I think, is the site Adam set up.
The IO.
Talks about time talent.
.info.
Yeah, we'll have to share that one.
Yeah.
So, you know, again, if you want more information on podcast mirror, you just reach out to us and
we'll give you any information you want.
But I think the thing is, too, is if you're with a host that doesn't have any of these features,
ask them why we want everybody to enjoy the party here.
You know, doesn't have to be five or six hosts that are, you know, doing this alone.
Everyone could be a part of the party here and we won't have to be dependent upon the
YouTube, the Spotify's of the world.
Yes, the close shops told the close.
Thank you so much, mate.
Speak to you soon.
Hey, thank you.