Video and Audio Convergence in Podcasting

James Cridland 0:00

It's Friday , August , the 25th 2023 .

Speaker 2 0:04

The last word in podcasting news . This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi .

James Cridland 0:13

I'm James Cridland , the editor of Pod News , recording this into my MacBook in an airport lounge because I've packed my little travel microphone and I forgot to record this intro before I did that . Today , a special edition of the new media show and the Pod News Weekly Review live from the show floor of podcast movement 2023 in Denver in Colorado . We're sponsored by Busbrout's powerful podcast hosting with remarkable customer support , and on the show today , rob Greenlee , who's working with StreamYard and Nomano , and Kavanaugh from the OSSA Collective and the first voice you'll hear straining a bit to make himself heard over the noise in the expo hall . As you can probably tell , we all were the CEO of Blueberry , todd Cochran .

Todd Cochrane 0:59

So , of course , there was a big acquisition here a few weeks ago with the script buying , squad cast or acquiring , or however it might be . So what does that tell us about the podcast market today ? Are we going to see more consolidation ? Where is this headed ? James , you want to start ?

James Cridland 1:16

Yeah , I think this is , and greetings everybody . It's wonderful to be back . I think it's really interesting . It's a really interesting time seeing lots of different tools that podcasters are using , basically consolidate . So now Descript has a remote recording tool . If you look at Libsyn , they have a remote recording tool . You know Descript has editing with text and there are other podcast hosting companies working on editing with text and all of the all this stuff is going on . So I think what we're seeing is less you know , sets of different companies doing stuff and more large companies who are offering a whole range of tools to work on .

Todd Cochrane 2:01

But it is an interesting that squad cast does support video and audio . So it is a script , so it's a perfect fit . So does that really mean that we're seeing a convergence in audio video ? What do you think ?

Anne Kavanaugh 2:17

Yeah , I mean I think it's been very fragmented or segmented on the video and the audio side and the tools coming together to make that easier for the podcasters or the creators is incredible , because it gives them more opportunity and to be able to take their audiences from one platform onto another . You know , good or bad .

Todd Cochrane 2:38

You know , but we've heard lots of folks say , oh , video is important , video is not important . It's been from all those session to session where folks have had disagreeing opinions on whether or not you should do video . Now , we've been doing video for this show for a long time , right ?

Rob Greenlee 2:55

And what video has been part of a podcasting since podcasting started , right ?

Todd Cochrane 2:59

But I also think too that some people like to watch , some people like to listen . So I think there's a place for video . The question is , at what cost . Like Rob , you're having some challenges today to get the stream set up there . You are scrambling , so yeah , video is always harder .

Rob Greenlee 3:16

Yeah , it does take a set up and stuff . I mean we're streaming this live on my iPhone , of all things , through StreamYard , which really makes it really easy to do this kind of stuff right from your iPhone . I think we're going to see more of that kind of stuff happen . Really , the simplification of doing this is really . Technology is really helping with that now , and it's really exciting to see the production of content to be as easy as it is today and I think it's going to get easier too .

Todd Cochrane 3:47

So how many of your podcasters are using video at ASA ?

Anne Kavanaugh 3:52

Really great question . I think right now we actually just started offering the opportunity with the simulcasts . I want to say maybe 10% have already opted in with their video . But what I will say actually is interesting is we've got some podcasters that are on a way smaller scale like less than a thousand downloads per month on audio , but they've got 10,000 plus on video and so those podcasters have been restricted in their access to brands because there hasn't been a way to be able to reconcile or consolidate it . Now they have an opportunity because we're able to track across platform and with some of the attribution solutions , yeah , I think it's an exciting time .

Rob Greenlee 4:41

I think video coming into the space , becoming more of an emphasis , is nothing new , but it's also , I think , just like I was saying , it's about the tools getting simpler to use , and podcasters just need to have really a strategy for how they're going to merge audio with video and to do it in a way that's right for the audience . I don't know , what do you think about the convergence here ?

James Cridland 5:09

Yeah , I think it's fascinating seeing a ton of different converging things going on . Lots of talk about video , lots of clearly podcasting . Audio podcasting is still . I can hear Adam Curry spinning in his grave . If I'm talking about audio podcasting , he'll be shouting at me next week .

James Cridland 5:31

But I find the whole thing interesting and I think it goes to show there was some research that was talked about today here at Podcast Movement . About 75% of normal people out there who listen to podcasts think that podcasting can be video or audio and I think , from my point of view , I think the podcasting is an audio first experience that may or may not have video , but if you can close your eyes and still enjoy it , then it's probably a podcast .

Rob Greenlee 6:01

Right . I mean , if the listener thinks it's a podcast , it's a podcast to them , right ? So that's what we're seeing . I think YouTube is really pushing the envelope on this . In the perception of consumers or listeners or viewers , if it looks like a podcast , it must be a podcast . So I think it's really interesting what's going to happen . James , you broke some news today about YouTube and what they're doing and what's coming up , so why don't you tell us about it ?

YouTube's Podcasting and Cross-Platform Strategies

James Cridland 6:34

Yeah , I mean , I think YouTube's move into podcasting is in equal parts exciting and terrifying , but I think the really interesting thing was actually something that Steve McClendon , who was here from Google yesterday , didn't say on stage , which is that the YouTube Music app will accept RSS feeds , and I clarified with him this morning . It's passed through as well , so it will actually properly in inverted commas play RSS audio if you subscribe in that way . So you may have a choice in the future . Obviously , you won't be on YouTube properly if you don't upload your show onto YouTube , but at least you can have a listen to an RSS show on the YouTube Music app , which I guess Todd makes it a podcast app .

Todd Cochrane 7:28

Well it does and actually , in the simple fact that they are going to do pass through , allows anyone that is monetizing their shows to at least have their podcast on YouTube music . Get the content delivered the way you want it to and then , if you still want to have a YouTube channel , I would assume then you would uncheck that from being a podcast channel . So there wasn't confusion in the YouTube app , I would , or YouTube Music app , I would think .

James Cridland 7:57

Yeah , I mean , I think I think , if you're going to use it cleverly and it's not going to be , it's not going to be particularly easy from the start , but I think , if you're going to use it cleverly , you would use YouTube for clips of your show , but make your full length show available as an audio podcast , available through RSS , which is , by the way , the work that TikTok is currently doing as well , where they're encouraging content creators to produce clips , rather than to put the whole thing onto TikTok but link through to the podcast . I mean , I wonder , is that something that Osser is doing ?

Anne Kavanaugh 8:37

Actually , we just we hosted a six week accelerator program earlier in the year . So we had 72 podcasters for six weeks , two sessions a week , and we recorded all the video content and we recently just actually took the video content and turned it into a podcast . So we're using the video snippets to promote up a driving traffic to the show . So it's something that we're actually doing ourselves to try and get the crossover between audio and video content . Yeah , I mean a lot of our podcasters are used for promotional content to drive it to whatever streaming service that their listeners are listening on . You know .

Todd Cochrane 9:15

You know . If you think about TikTok is doing , though . You know . Their approach , at least at this point is you use TikTok to promote an episode of a podcast ? It's not . It's not going to be a direct listen app . It's a place where you could listen all the way through , but probably they won't . They'll probably use that more as a way to sample . So it's going to be really important and I've heard many people say this many times the first 30 to 60 seconds of your show is got to be the most important part of your content . To get that lead in , to get people to stick and say , oh , this might be something I want to listen to more of . You got to get them in and get them started and get them hooked quick , or otherwise they're just going to swipe up and you're going to be off the off the screen as far as TikTok goes .

Rob Greenlee 10:05

But there's also a perspective on this too , that each of these consumption platforms have a little different audience , so the issue with this strategy of using one to drive listeners to another may not pan out .

Rob Greenlee 10:21

So you may want to have a dual strategy , and that's kind of what I've been advocating for a little bit , and I think I'm starting to feel a little bit stronger about that Now . Granted , that adds a heavy lift to the creator to actually create like two different versions of their show or something like that , but I think if you can make one version that will work in both places , I think that's the best way to do it , but that may not be the right content for YouTube . And I do wonder about if you're primarily a YouTube creator that is producing your show like a podcast , that it may not make sense for you to submit your audio version to YouTube , right ? I don't know , I mean , it's already going to be listed in YouTube music as the video , right ? So does that ? I mean , what's your comment based on what you learned , is it going to make sense for somebody that has a full video podcast right now in YouTube to submit their audio version to YouTube as well ?

James Cridland 11:28

I think my understanding is that you submit one version to YouTube and that's the version that goes on . That's it .

James Cridland 11:35

You can turn on or off the picture , but that's about as far as it goes . But I was listening to a bandrew Scott podcast . He was explaining how the YouTube algorithms work , and if you listen to a show and you skip out after 20 seconds , that is essentially telling the algorithm that that show is rubbish . Now , that is if you listen to Wait , wait , don't Tell Me as a podcast , the first 30 seconds are the intro music and Carl Castle , or whoever the new Carl Castle is talking about , live from the such and such theater in beautiful downtown Chicago . All of that stuff will work really badly on YouTube in terms of the algorithm , and so what Bandrew Scott , for example , has been doing in his podcast is he's been editing a different version for YouTube , which is a different version to the audio version that he puts everywhere else , and perhaps obviously the real scale on YouTube is the video website where all of the videos are , and perhaps the plan there is to upload something that you edit slightly for the YouTube algorithm and put the normal audio show everywhere else .

Todd Cochrane 12:53

For those of you that are here that are not subscribed to our show , we had a guest last week to talk about dual strategies for having a successful podcast and having a successful YouTube channel , so I encourage you to go over to the website and listen to that episode . It's real world on how it's being

The Impact of AI on Podcasting

Todd Cochrane 13:11

happened . But I want to change topics . Ai . I've had half a dozen folks stop by the booth today or the past couple of days and say we've got an AI solution , let's work together , and I think AI is moving quickly . We've talked about it a lot on this show in past episodes almost probably the point where we're driving people away . But is AI enabling a new type of podcast SaaS service , as you say in here ? Model ?

Rob Greenlee 13:39

Yeah , I kind of wonder about that . Yeah , I mean it's they're going to be a consolidation of some of these AI services and do , and I thought that maybe the script and squad cast was kind of like an early indication of that , because the script is using AI technology to some degree . But I do think that more and more of these platforms and Todd you're an example of this You're starting to embrace AI technology and your publishing platform . But are we just going to see AI come in and have an influence over every aspect of podcasting ?

Todd Cochrane 14:18

My thought process and it's pretty public at this point . The .

Todd Cochrane 14:25

AI is going to be a great tool for all of us to use , but just remember , there's going to be mass production of content being put out by AI and the 100 and what 35 million listeners they're going to be seeking original voices . So , as long as we stick to our core and original voices and don't let AI affect our content and our voices and our opinions and our stories , I think we're going to be have a very , very positive future ahead . Now the tools can be using pre-production , post-production , social sharing . I think that's all going to be fantastic . As a matter of fact , it already is and we're already using the dumbest AI we'll ever use today , so I think it's going to have a big change .

James Cridland 15:15

Yeah , I was going to say that I think that the real benefit of AI is doing not necessarily the podcast itself , but doing some of the other stuff around the podcast . So the Pod News Weekly review , which you may be listening to this on , which is sponsored by Buzzsprout Sorry , todd , buzzsprout has AI tools built into it , so when you upload , it , does a transcript , it then works out what the show notes should say , it gives you a title and all of that kind of stuff which is using podium under the hood . It's a very good first step to basically go okay . Well , that's a job that I don't have to worry about right now , and I think that actually that's where AI is going to be super useful to us as podcasters . It's almost as if AI stands for assistive intelligence rather than anything else .

Rob Greenlee 16:07

I think that's a good use for it .

Todd Cochrane 16:09

And I think too is , and I'm sorry , what I've seen over 19 years of podcasting is podcasters are horrible . Horrible at writing good episode titles , writing good show notes , because you're recording for your audience , but you're writing your show notes for Google and if you don't give Google enough to chew on , of course your episodes are not going to be discovered . I think AI will solve this for people that have been lazy in creating good show notes .

Anne Kavanaugh 16:41

Well for us . We started working with Podscribe recently and we're using it for all the air checks and , from an operational perspective , it's been night and day , like actually Victoria was sitting there and there has to listen to all those episodes on a monthly basis . It's completely offloaded operational side for us . And then also internally , what we're thinking about , or how we're thinking about AI is , I think , one of the challenges that exist in the market and the reasons brands continue to work with the same shows over and over again is because they're taking a risk on smaller shows that have no historical performance data . You don't know how they're going to perform is how can we leverage AI to understand what type of shows work best for brands , based on shows that have , you know , converted well in the past ? So like really thinking about how do we do that to unlock monetization for podcasters way earlier on in their career then , or their journey , versus having to wait until they get to 10 , 20,000 downloads , you know .

Rob Greenlee 17:54

Yeah , I think that the tools , I think , should be thought of as assistive right now . There may be a day when you can trust them , but I think that the big thing is that they need to give you choices . You know , give you like three or four or five different episode titles to pick from . You can edit them still , but it just makes suggestions . And I was talking about this earlier today with someone I was doing another interview and I was thinking to myself what if the AI really was smart enough to know what works the best with YouTube , what works the best with Spotify ? And it makes those suggestions back to you based on that knowledge and that understanding . So it kind of takes the heavy load of the podcaster to know all these intricate details about how each of these platforms works and how to reach the proper audience , and I think that the listening platforms would probably like that too .

Todd Cochrane 18:59

I think it also can help depending how the platform you're using is configured . If it knows your goal , if it knows the goal of your show , if it knows the goal of the episode and it can analyze the content that you record for that day , it might just write a better title to help make you reach your goal , For not only the show but for the episode and ways that maybe we weren't able to do ourselves . So I think there's lots of opportunities here from utilizing these tools smartly to gain audience , because everyone says , oh , I can't be found , I'm not growing . Well , often it's because again , we've heard Tom Webster this morning you need to be talking to that specific group and attracting them to your show . You can't be everything for everyone and if you know what the goal of your podcast is , maybe this can help .

Speaker 6 20:00

Yeah .

Rob Greenlee 20:02

James , you try and automate a lot of what you do with Pod News , because I've seen you do it before . I was just curious if there's any inkling of possibility that AI could help you .

James Cridland 20:12

Well , I wrote a . I actually went to see a presentation last week from Adobe in a home in Brisbane . Somebody came to Brisbane to talk Who'd have thought it ? And that was interesting because the guy from Adobe . He was talking about pictures and images and stuff , but he was saying that they've worked on a specific tool that helps people looking at pictures to know how fake they are , how real they are . What was the initial part of this picture ? Was it a prompt ? Was it another image ? You know , et cetera , et cetera , and I , basically I came home from that and the first thing that I wrote was the AI policy , which you'll find on our About page , which basically says we don't really use AI .

James Cridland 21:02

I've used AI a little bit for taking a press release an impenetrable press release that I sometimes get , and asking Google , bard or whatever . Please could you tell me in two sentences what this press release is about ? That's quite helpful but , to be honest , most of the times it gets in the way of my speed . But I think if you're slower at writing you need some help with those sorts of things . It's a totally useful tool and really good . I'm not necessarily using it for that , but what I am using it for is obviously things like transcripts and for this show for the Pod News Weekly Review I also use it for I'm also using the other stuff as well , so I think that there's certainly something there , I think , in terms of that .

The Role of Open Podcast Standards

Rob Greenlee 22:00

So I want to change gears a little bit and talk a little about this tension that is growing to some degree between these large platforms Spotify and now coming TikTok , twitter and possibly Twitter might jump into podcasting at some point and YouTube and how that conflicts with open RSS . Todd and I are involved with the open podcast standards project of trying to extend RSS , make it a much more robust kind of protocol for podcasting with much more capability and features , and I know , james , you're a proponent of the open podcast project , podcast 2.0 , all that stuff . What do you see as the role of the open podcast standards project to be and how should it be deployed ? Do you think ?

James Cridland 22:59

Yeah , I think there's two things here . There's the open standards for new podcast features , and Blueberry has really been leading the way in terms of this . The amount of work that your team have been doing , todd , in making sure that as many of the new podcasting features are being supported in Blueberry and in PowerPress is super impressive , so you've been really leading the way in terms of that . So I think it's partially that . I think it's just partially reminding ourselves that we are . We come from an open environment . We come from open podcasting . Podcasting was always designed to be open . That's what Adam and Dave did when they invented it .

James Cridland 23:42

I find it interesting that ACAST last week made an announcement that they didn't want Spotify ad attribution to be used on their services anymore from the 1st of September . Now I got an instant quotation sent to me from Spotify telling me how much Spotify loved the open podcasting ecosystem and we love talking to all of the industry . I would just point out that we're in a large hall . As you can probably hear at home . We're in a large hall full of other stages , other speakers , other booths . Blueberry is here , streamyard is here , Nemono is here . Who isn't here ? Spotify ? Spotify has a room , but it's the other end of this hotel and you can only get in invite only . That's not really a company that is too excited about open podcasting . I don't think .

Todd Cochrane 24:43

If you think about what ACAST did , it's something that we've talked about on this show for a while . Spotify bought Charitable and Podsites and essentially anyone using Charitable or Podsites . Again , you have to use the assumption that Spotify bought them for a reason . What did they buy ? They bought intelligence . Did they buy intelligence on your shows Speculation or did they buy intelligence on your audience Speculation ?

Todd Cochrane 25:14

So the question that a podcaster has to ask is whose services should I use to guarantee that my audiences are not being resold to ? Again , this is just my opinion and we don't know if that's exactly happening or not . So just be clear on that . But I think , as podcasters are picking services to work with , they have to consider their audience members . At Blueberry , we've been very public for many years about wanting to make sure our listeners' privacy is foremost . That's why we at Top GDPR globally a number of years ago . Some other companies do that as well and that's just not us . So I think that it was interesting . I think that was the most telling announcement that I had seen in a while . So if ACAST was worried about their audiences or their shows , intelligence being collected upon and then used against them or poached , or poached , and Spotify's down the hallway down here ? I don't know , does Spotify has all podcasters' best interest at heart , I would contend that's up to you to decide .

Rob Greenlee 26:29

So , anne , what's your thought on this ? How do you think your podcasters are thinking about this topic , right ? Our podcasters are one side of the spectrum or the other , which is they got the full spectrum . I don't want to do prefixes .

Anne Kavanaugh 26:47

I don't want to do attribution . We actually had a show recently on a campaign and was like I am not running any campaigns with a prefix and unfortunately , brands , more and more so now , are making that a requirement when you're working with them . And then there's the other side where they're like sure , how do I do it ? And so we work with multiple providers and we've been working with Spotify historically , or pod sites , and I think , in terms of like , there's also a lot of benefits for companies and for podcasters to be able to gain insight themselves into how they're performing and what they're doing . But I think , like you said , is like understanding which providers are the best ones for you individually , as a creator or as a company .

Rob Greenlee 27:41

Yeah , and I think it depends on the priority of monetization , because I think we're in a tension point here too of as a creator , who is your real audience . Is it advertisers or is it your listeners ? Right and this is an issue that has impacted radio too is radio thought more about their advertisers and they thought about their audience , and that's why they got to some degree and James jump in on this too and that's the tension that we're feeling in the podcasting space right now . So I think that there's a strong ethic in podcasting , that we want to maintain kind of a low advertising load medium going forward , and that's that's what's best for the listener , what's best for the content creator and should be good for the advertiser too , because there's fewer messages and their messages are going to get through .

Todd Cochrane 28:38

So so one thing to remember , though , is , because they took that prepend out , that only removes their intelligence access to what's not being consumed on the platform . Whatever has been consumed on Spotify and click , they still have that detailed information . So maybe it's it's enough . Maybe they don't need any more information . So maybe it was like okay , we didn't get the Apple podcast , we didn't get the Amazon music and we didn't get the the other stats , but we got the eight , nine , 10% of the audience over here . Maybe it's enough to say , okay , we know what this audience is .

James Cridland 29:14

But I also understand that that's why ACAST doesn't take part in the Triton Rankers in the US and in Canada , because , of course , Triton is owned by I Heart , who , I would remind you , Todd our number one for podcasts , and and so therefore you know , quite rightly , I think you know that that may well be one of their reasons we don't really want to give our entire log files , Thank you very much to one of our competitors . So you can kind of see that consolidation has been helpful in some cases to the industry , but actually hasn't necessarily helped some parts of our industry as well .

Todd Cochrane 29:50

And for the average podcasters not putting any money in their pocket when they want money put in their pocket . And that's where you guys come in .

Anne Kavanaugh 29:56

Yeah , and actually you know this is a question we get asked a lot because we're host agnostic , right ? So why are we host agnostic ? For us it's we want creators to be able to monetize without putting as many restrictions in as possible . But the downside to that is you're managing X amount of platforms and having to understand all of the good stuff that comes with that right or bad , yeah , but I think also on the RSVS , we actually just started to work with the podcast index on the onboarding , to be able to pull that out for the podcasters that are signing up for ASA . We look at tools like that as a way to be able to make enhance user experience where it's not dependent on a hosting provider , to be able to give us certain access to information to make the creators life easier .

Speaker 6 30:51

Yeah .

Rob Greenlee 30:53

I think also , and I wanted to ask you a little bit more pinpointed about the Open Standards Project , the Open Podcasting Standards Project , james , and just kind of get your , what do you think that group should do going forward ? I know many aren't that familiar with the Open Podcasting Standards Project , but it's just a group of podcast hosts and trying to build alliances with the listening platforms to extend some of the namespace tags in RSS . And I know you've been outspoken about the Open Podcast Standards Project and I was just curious what you would recommend to that group going forward to have more of an impact .

James Cridland 31:33

Oh , I can't believe that I'm now being called outspoken .

Rob Greenlee 31:36

You're always outspoken , James . It's a podcast with Todd and Rob on it .

James Cridland 31:42

I think , from my point of view , I was very excited about the Open Podcast Project because I saw this as being something which the Open Podcast Standards Project , because I saw this as being something which could bridge the gap between what some of the podcast hosts were doing adding new features transcripts being an obvious one here , and then talking to the podcast app developers , and we've seen a lot of really good but very small podcast apps like Fountain , who I advise for , and Podfriend and all of these other smaller apps adding some of these services in there .

James Cridland 32:27

But once you start looking at overcast or pocket casts , or even , of course , spotify , youtube Music and Apple , there's absolutely no move in terms of that and in fact , one of Spotify's announcements today was finally , we're going to give you the chance to choose the order in which your podcast appears on your page .

James Cridland 32:51

What , like Apple , did three years ago with an open tag that you could be reading Spotify . From my point of view , this is all open stuff , collaborative stuff that we can all be working together on and actually making sure that there is transcription and other new features such as that I think would be really exciting . So , from my point of view , I think that what the podcast standards project could be doing is being a bit more visible out there , being a bit more obvious that there is work underway and basically picking a feature and that might be transcripts because there are benefits for accessibility but also benefits for advertising in there as well and seeing how we can get that into as many possible podcast apps . And I don't see why Apple or Spotify would turn around and say we're not having transcripts . That's a dreadful idea , because of course it's not a dreadful idea , so maybe that's a good feature to actually start with .

Rob Greenlee 33:53

Yeah , I mean if there's some pressure on them to some degree from competitive apps . But some of the competitive apps that have adopted some of these namespaces , they don't have big market shares , so it's not like they're taking away market share from the big guys , and I think that's the challenge or the strategy of trying to launch with a bunch of small apps to try and get the big apps to add these capabilities . I don't see a lot of motivation on their part yet , unless the organization is doing something that it gives them something .

Anne Kavanaugh 34:28

Well , go ahead . I was going to say I think , as a startup , if we had known two years ago when we started engineering that those options were available to us , we probably would have maybe built a little bit differently , faster , and even though we know you guys , it was by chance that we came across . So I feel like even in the startup community or the tech community who are building products or technology around audio in any capacity , it's an incredible resource and tool that's available to be able to actually build innovation and product .

Todd Cochrane 35:04

For those of you that are like what are they talking about ?

Rob Greenlee 35:09

There's a danger of that .

Podcasting Challenges and State Ahead

Todd Cochrane 35:10

Let's back up when podcasting started . Rss was basically this invention that was with enclosures that allowed people to have syndication of content that was free and open , that no one had ever really been able to do that before because there was gatekeepers , you had to sign contracts to be on platforms and , of course , you could have a website with your content , but that distribution was difficult . So when Apple introduced podcasting in 2005 into iTunes , at the time and remember , this is pre-iPhone , we're still the iPod era they set up a set of specifications that podcast hosts would follow , that you fill out when you're hosting your show Name of the show description , those types of things that you've set up with your podcast hosts . From 2005, . Literally until probably 2019 , 2020 , apple dominated that specification space and Google added a little bit here and there , but in the end they controlled the narrative . So , starting about three years ago , adam Curry and Dave Jones started the podcast index podcast 2.0 initiative to add features to podcasting , to RSS , that would make podcast apps more robust . So , to break this down , so it's not technical , for you example , there's a tag that's commonly referred to as the credit tag and all you do is you say , ok , here's the host name , here's a link to his LinkedIn page , a picture of him , the co-host name picture of him , a link to his LinkedIn page , my guest name and so on , and what that can ultimately end up being is surfaced in the app when they click on the episode . That additional metadata is there . That's just one feature that is being done by podcasting 2.0 .

Todd Cochrane 37:03

So part of the challenges with the open and PSP , the podcast standards project , is as host and the participating apps we're setting . Hey , we are going to try to advance the space and adopt these new features to get podcasters more exposure , grow their show , make it more interactive for the audiences . The challenge goes back to what you were saying Apple and the others . They move at their own speed and you talk with an Apple representative and we're friends with many of them . They have their own language and they're never committal to anything . You can ask nicely and maybe two years you might see that feature in the Apple podcast . So it's a big challenge for us to get the big apps to move . But what you can do as a podcaster number one is ask your podcast host to adopt the podcasting 2.0 tags and features and then ask the apps that you use to add those features . You will have as much pressure on this growing ecosystem as anyone else , because you , as a creator , want your listeners to have the best experience . We're trying to make that experience better .

Rob Greenlee 38:24

Yeah , and I think to add another layer onto that , the history has been , when Apple makes any changes to their RSS namespace , the whole industry kind of like sits up and runs to adopt it , and that's one of the challenges here is that Apple has been dictating to the podcasting medium for a long time what features and what functions this industry has that aligns with their product and their service , and so what we're trying to do is kind of take that control back and say , as an industry , we want to have a say in what these capabilities are across all of the listening platforms , instead of basically being the tail that's wagged by the dog , which is what we've been up to this point .

Todd Cochrane 39:12

And you can start by trying one of the new podcast apps at newpodcastappscom . Go , try one of them as a podcaster and then see what this is all about . That's the best thing to do as well , to get educated on this .

Rob Greenlee 39:26

So there's some movement on planning and organizing for the podcast standards group about kind of escalating this and working with some of these listening platforms and other podcast hosts to certify them as being supportive of certain tags in the industry . So hopefully we will see this adoption start to spread across some of the larger apps , but definitely go check out some of the newer apps as well . There's some fun features in there . It's called , I know , Todd . Why don't you explain some of the cool features like the lit tag and things like that ?

Todd Cochrane 40:02

I think it's just best for them to go try the apps , experiment , play around with them and see what happens .

Rob Greenlee 40:08

Sure pass in the buck . Yeah , pass in the buck .

Todd Cochrane 40:12

I do . We've hit on this for a while , but I do want to ask the audience one thing how many of you here our new podcasters that have not created an episode yet ? Oh , okay .

Rob Greenlee 40:24

So we have a few Sorry to believe that .

Todd Cochrane 40:26

All right . So one thing as a podcast host that I see is someone will sign up for a hosting account and they'll never get to episode one .

Todd Cochrane 40:35

So for those of you that have got to episode one , you know , congratulations , you know you're you're , you're already ahead of 50% that have started , but yet pod fading continues to be a significant problem because historically and this is a number that I've talked about for many , many years really about 50% of the people that start never make it to episode seven , and then 50% of those remaining people never make it to episode 20 . And once you make it to 20 , you've got a pretty good chance to making it to two years . So will some of this new stuff help us ?

Rob Greenlee 41:11

I don't know . I mean a lot of the pod fading and that's . I'm not sure we've clearly defined what pod fading is . There may be people in the audience that don't know what that is , but it's . It's just when a podcaster starts and then they start to fade in their passion for podcasting and eventually , after usually about seven or eight episodes , they kind of no more new episodes get published , they quit .

Anne Kavanaugh 41:34

Right . So from your perspective , why do you think that that happens , outside of maybe losing passion for it ?

Rob Greenlee 41:40

Oh , I think there's a lot of reasons that people pod fade and it's probably too many of them for me to even mention here . But life changes , people lose a job or people just run out of stuff to talk about . I think it . You know , this is where the niching down of your podcast can kind of bite you in the butt , because if you niche down too far , you can kind of run out of things to talk about . So you have to find stuff that a topic or a genre that there's a lot of stuff that you can cover and a lot of people have an interest in . I don't know , what do you think about pod fading , james , as you think about the medium ?

James Cridland 42:17

Yeah , I mean , you know . What we do know is that the thing that works in podcasting is consistency . You know this show , the new media show , goes out every single week . It is a consistent listen . You know what you're going to get when you tune in most most of the time Sometimes it turns out that it's just Todd shouting at Rob for 40 minutes . Did you enjoy that one recently ? That was good , that was good .

James Cridland 42:41

But you know so , consistency is a massively important thing and I think once you lose that consistency , once you you know you drop a week because you know life has got in the way , or you drop a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden it's difficult to come back . But actually that's also a business issue for podcast hosts , because you want people to come back and you want people to , you know , be paying that monthly subscription . You know that's an important part as well . The thing that I also look at is the total amount of podcasts which are being updated . You know , every 90 days is the figure that I look at , and there's a massive big graph at podcastbusinessjournalcom slash data and that is showing a quite a ski jump , and it's a ski jump going the wrong way .

James Cridland 43:37

And I wonder why there are currently fewer and fewer podcasts being kept , you know being worked on , and I wonder whether some of that is just actually . It's still the end of the COVID explosion of new shows being made because , frankly , we couldn't go anyway . We couldn't do anything , but all of us could make a podcast . I wonder whether it's , you know a little bit of that .

Todd Cochrane 44:08

One thing I will say and based on you know , I agree with James if you look at the 10-day running average , we're down 50% from maybe 13 months ago . So it is a great time to be a podcaster and here's why that audience is still there . We're seeing indie growth now . That is , you know , 10 , 12 , 15% , where shows have been stagnant for a long time . So audiences are seeking new content now . So this is a great time to make hay when others have hung up the microphone or hung up the headphones or whatever you want to say . It's a great time to be a podcaster because it's a unique time , I think .

Rob Greenlee 44:56

Well , there's fewer competitive shows out there that are active .

James Cridland 45:01

Well , because I was going to say both fewer competitive shows , but also , you know , Anne , are you seeing consumption going down ? Because I'm not seeing consumption going down .

Anne Kavanaugh 45:09

No , and actually it's interesting for us . We've got like maybe 10% turn , which is way below what typically is . But I think it's also the profile of the creator . Right , you have some that are content creators . I don't want to say they don't care about monetization , but that's just the icing on the cake for them , and they show up and they , and then there's others that are it's a business for them . So I think it's understanding to where they're at in their journey and you know what , sometimes maybe it might be okay that they just do 10 episodes , and you know . So , yeah , I think a lot of it is around the community engagement as well . It's like how does the creator community support each other to keep on going ?

Todd Cochrane 45:53

Yeah , you know , but I think at the same time , I do calls with all of you not you specifically , but podcasters every week , and the number one question continues to be , to me at least how do I grow my show ? And the first question I'm always asking podcasters now is what is the goal of your show ? And oftentimes I get a pause , and if you don't know what the goal of your show is , then how can you focus the content to grow your show ? So that's a start . And number two oh my God , please make it easy for your audiences to subscribe to your podcast when they come to your website , because if I have to click three times to find or follow your show , it's never , ever going to happen .

Rob Greenlee 46:35

And then the next question is how do I make money with my show , right , todd ? Yeah , so that's a whole other topic . There's a , there's a millions of ways you can make money with your podcast , but I think both Todd and I realize that if I think back to the 18 , 19 , 20 years that we've been doing this medium , making money with your podcast has never been really the priority . So it's it's really a matter of building community , building an audience , and maybe you can monetize is kind of what always has been the thought process . So so how does also look at the that topic ?

Anne Kavanaugh 47:14

Well , all of our shows are there to monetize , so , but it might be . You know , we've got some shows that are like 20 , 30 , 40,000 monthly listeners and they've never monetized before and they're like I should probably start monetizing my audience . And then you have some shows who've you know 10 episodes in and they're like I need to make money now . So I think again , it's like the spectrum of who is the creator , where are they at ? And also , maybe advertising is not the right way to monetize and you know that can also be . You know , if you have a business to use your podcast to drive leads to your business and you make money that way , versus you know , I think it just goes back to the audience as well . It's like are your audience going to like it or are they going to be like I'm going to tune out now ?

Todd Cochrane 48:01

It goes again back to the goal Is the goal ? Money Is the goal . Authority Is the goal . To help someone Is the goal to drive leads . You know what's the goal of the show and I would almost bet if I asked people to raise hands . How many of you ? Is your number one goal of your show is to monetize . So a few , I would expect it a few more . Yeah , you know , because typically about 50% of podcasters want to monetize , but really only about 15 or 20% effectively do Well those two topics finding an audience and monetizing may be the answer to why we're seeing so much podfading .

James Cridland 48:44

Yeah , you could well be right and I think you know , when we talk about monetizing , there are some people who are thinking about thousands and thousands of dollars a month . But you know , as I think you say quite often , you know , Todd , there are some people here who are , essentially , when they podcast , they're making enough money to pay for Netflix . They're making enough money . Enough money to take , you know , their partner out for a nice meal or to pay the monthly installment on the car . You know , those are still incredibly useful things . And you know , yes , of course , we're all like you know , thousands and thousands of dollars every single month from our show , but actually , you know , even paying the Spotify bill is a useful thing .

Rob Greenlee 49:30

Yeah , oh , it's always good to make a little bit of money on your show and that's a little bit of a success right there , right .

Todd Cochrane 49:37

But it also goes back

Monetization and Advertising Strategies for Podcasts

Todd Cochrane 49:39

to . There's lots of ways to monetize . You know there's . You know my show . I've always had the ability for listeners to donate through what I call fiat funding coupons , which is like PayPal , you know they can send money to the show . That way . I've had a sponsor for the show which has been a traditional sponsor , which is like well , my sponsorship is a little bit unique , but I'm also participating in a new value for value , and this is something you should think about for your show and your audience .

Todd Cochrane 50:07

The biggest mistake is not asking Many of you I listen to your shows and you don't ask your audience to donate . You're afraid to ask . If you're giving them value , why should they not give you value back ? And , taking the word straight out of Adam Curry's mouth , time , talent or treasure is what you can get back from your audience . What's the talent part ? The talent could be contributing articles that you're going to cover in your show , or suggesting a guess . What's the time component ? The time component may be helping with chapters , maybe helping with show notes , helping with social and treasure . Some people don't have talent or time , but they do have treasure . So then , giving money back to the show in a monetary value . So I think the value for value model if you think about it and are willing to ask your audience is something that's an applicable way to earn money besides straight doing advertising , although I do both .

Rob Greenlee 51:08

Hey , todd , would you like to take questions from the audience ?

Todd Cochrane 51:11

Yeah , you want to be there and we can . We got a few minutes to take questions and at the same time , I can go out in the audience and All right . Does anybody have questions ? Does anybody want to ?

Rob Greenlee 51:22

ask any questions .

Todd Cochrane 51:24

Uh-oh , okay , dashaan does , I know he does .

Rob Greenlee 51:31

Yeah , I think I dropped out . Okay , yeah , I also wanted to say that this is being captured on a 360 degree video camera so you'll be able to see with your question .

Speaker 6 51:48

Great show , by the way , everybody . So I've been podcasting for a long time and the problem that I have is advertised and I don't have an advertising budget to advertise my show , but I still want to monetize my show and I do have a goal to monetize my show , but I also want to have more fan base . I have a different type of show with different types of statements and I love doing even covering places like podcast movement or another podcast convention , and I love doing it . So how do I advertise the right way for my show to be able to grow ? Thank you .

Todd Cochrane 52:31

So was there . I think there was two pieces of this . Number one was you want to have advertisers , right . So most podcast hosts today have a very easy way to monetize and that's through the programmatic advertising . If your host has that capable , I would encourage you to enable that or apply for programmatic advertising . But so far as advertising your show , if your budget is relatively small , there are a number of podcast apps like Overcast and others , for a small budget that you can advertise your show on other podcasts and that can be done at a pretty low level from financially .

James Cridland 53:10

Yeah , and also I would say it's not necessarily just advertising , it's letting people know about your show . You can do that for free . You can contact podcast newsletters , for example , iheart runs a very good one of those , I believe it's number one for newsletters but also you can do leaflets in your local store or you can . There are lots of different ways of reaching audiences , depending on what the podcast is about as well . So don't always think about advertising in a sort of standard way . Think about how you can get your particular show in front of the audience that you want to get in front of .

Anne Kavanaugh 53:51

Yeah , the thing is there is a . If you have looked at like networks or other platforms with shows that are in your niche , a lot of networks will actually offer cross promotion between the shows that are there . So , example , on awesome , we've got a program called PodSwap which is completely up to every podcaster to opt in . And then let's say , we're two shows , I'll interview you or I'll give you a script and you do a plug and then let's just say you don't want to join a network . Another great way is go to Chartable or Spotify or Apple or wherever , and look at shows that are similar to you and just reach out to them and say , hey , listen , I'll promote your show if you promote mine and you'll pick up similar based audiences to be able to . But it's a really effective way , even if you don't have the money to invest in it , to be able to build relationships with other creators like you .

Speaker 2 54:48

Yeah , hi Anna . That was great . That was one of my questions you just answered . I was a little bit late . I do have an OTT national network that reaches 10 million viewers per week and I'm launching a podcast station and being able to promote a lot of podcast shows . My question to you is specifically first , podcast as platform . What does OSA do ?

Anne Kavanaugh 55:18

the bottom line so we're a technology driven platform that connects brands with podcast creators . We're host agnostic , with no minimum download . You're in full control over the brands that you want to work with and , yeah , we connect you in whether it's baked in embedded dynamic . We just recently added programmatic as an option , and then episodic and sponsorship is soon to come and you're simulcast the other side of that question is does the advertiser retain you or does the podcast creator retain you ?

Anne Kavanaugh 55:58

Both . So the brand we do self-serve and direct . So the brand will come to our website , create an account , say I want to spend some amount of money , and then use a podcast or receive a push notification that says this brand wants to work with you . Are you interested ? This is how much you'll get paid . You opt in . So we do it a little bit different . You say yes , I want to , and now the brand can see the 30 shows that are interested in working with them and they say one , two , three , four . You say yep , I'm going to take it . And you go and execute yeah , they do that .

Speaker 2 56:29

No TT , and they'll do all that and broadcast I'm so glad you do it now and podcast and to get your company , it's osacom .

Anne Kavanaugh 56:37

Yeah , it's actually , osacollectivecom is the domain name . Okay , thank you , thank you .

Todd Cochrane 56:44

And she's being shy . They have a booth here too , so make sure you go see them 405 .

Anne Kavanaugh 56:48

Come see us .

Todd Cochrane 56:49

Yeah , absolutely .

Rob Greenlee 56:51

Does anybody else want to ask a question or ?

Todd Cochrane 56:54

before we close today so , james , trends and changes we're seeing and podcasting anything you specifically say what's going to happen in the next six months .

James Cridland 57:06

Oh , great thanks for giving me that one first , Todd that's kind of you .

James Cridland 57:12

I think we're going to see . Firstly , I would keep your eyes on Europe and the Middle East . I think that's where we'll see an awful lot of growth over the next couple of years . I think that there's differences in the economy in those parts of the world , but I think also they're starting from a lower base and so actually we'll see significantly high growth there . But what I would also suggest is we'll see a bit more consolidation . We'll see more things like Squadcast and Descript . We'll see more companies joining together , particularly around podcast networks . We've seen Evergreen this week making an acquisition of shows , podcast One making acquisitions of shows from certain assets , from Cast Media and all that kind of stuff . So I think that we're going to see a bit more consolidation in terms of the content side of podcasting , and I think that that's going to be pretty good for the health of the industry as well .

The Future of International Podcasting

Todd Cochrane 58:12

The international expansion is , without a doubt , going to be big . You and I were both lucky enough to go to Riyadh and speak in front of about 3,000 creators . It was an amazing event . You would have never thought that I would go to Saudi Arabia and speak in front of individuals that were giving finally , for the first time in , let's say , 100 years , to have the ability to have a voice and create content openly , yet with probably some restrictions , but yet it just showed me that podcasting is exploding globally and I think you're right , the Arab market is going to just explode . But , rob , I asked that same question to you . What do you think ?

Rob Greenlee 58:59

Yeah , I think that the markets overseas has learned a little bit from the mistakes of what's happened in North America and it's just a different market . It's a different media market too . You think about the UK with BBC and you think about Canada with CBC . The population is very much in that mindset . So podcasters that start in those areas and James , maybe you can speak to this too , because this affects Australia too but I think the expectations of quality of audio and stuff are a little higher , aren't they ? Does that impact the professionalization of podcasting outside of the US ?

James Cridland 59:43

Yeah , I think that was one of the interesting things that Dave Weiner was telling me about when he was podcasting when he got into podcasting initially , that actually he was doing a show with Adam Curry and it was quite professional and he thought to himself actually this is scaring some people away , because Adam Curry is a professional broadcaster , he knows what he's doing and actually there needs to be something which is a bit more rough and ready to allow people to understand what podcasting can be like , which is why Dave then worked on Morning Coffee Notes , which I'm actually working with him on bringing back to the internet to be able to have a listen in a modern podcast app to that , and I think that's interesting that radio , particularly in some other parts of the world , has driven some of the podcasting that you actually end up hearing . I'm wondering whether Anne has any thoughts about where the trends are over the next six months as well .

Todd Cochrane 1:00:43

And we have to throw in our fire because you just become the CEO on Thursday , right ? And , by the way , ladies , everyone , please give her a round of applause . Isn't that fantastic ? So go ahead , annie .

Anne Kavanaugh 1:00:55

You know . Thank you , I think you know you guys kind of hit it on the head I as far as I think the tools that are becoming available will make actually the content creation and the marketing of the content much easier . So hopefully the creators have the opportunity to do more of what they love instead of . You know the admin and operation side of it all you know .

Todd Cochrane 1:01:21

And I think the world is going to change in a big way .

Todd Cochrane 1:01:25

It's going to affect everyone , as listened to a Google executive recently and they said there's going to be creatives and there's going to be subject matter experts . Well , I think in this audience , in this audience that's listening in here today , we have lots of creatives and lots of subject matter experts because , ultimately , some of the thunking that is we do today , where we're writing proposals and we're doing spreadsheets , that'll ultimately probably be done by AI in the future . But again , because we are creative and we are subject matter experts in our content and that there's going to be this desire for original voices , it's going to be craved . I truly believe this , that the landscape is going to change in the next two , three years and we are going to see the biggest upswell of listening to podcasts , youtube , tiktok , wherever contents being originally created . I think the future is very , very , very bright because AI is not human . We are , and as long as we put forth the human emotion in our content , I think we're going to win the day .

Rob Greenlee 1:02:34

You also think that trust is a big factor in all this too . Podcasters have an opportunity and , you know , really inherently build trust with their audience , and I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we face . Going forward is all of us knowing who , what information , where it comes from , to be trusted , and I think that's a huge factor . The podcasters have a big role in going forward .

James Cridland 1:03:05

Yeah , I think trust is hugely important . You should make a show about that role .

Rob Greenlee 1:03:09

I should it's called trust factor ?

Todd Cochrane 1:03:11

Yes , so we're going to wrap this up . We normally do 90 minutes , but there's beer to be drank , so we want you all to have well , those of you that aren't here and are listening to this later , anyway . So , james , go ahead and give them your contact information and how they can reach you .

James Cridland 1:03:32

So , please , if you don't already subscribe to pod news , it's free , you'll . You'll join 28,900 other podcasters getting that email every single day . Pod newsnet is where to find that . And if you want my contact details , I'm James at critland . That's my email address , annie .

Anne Kavanaugh 1:03:56

And our website is asaossacollectivecom . For any podcaster who's looking to monetize , you can go to our website , download the app and sign up easily , and then my contact details are is an and an . E at asacollectivecom . Thank you .

Rob Greenlee 1:04:13

Yeah , and I can be found on Twitter , Rob Greenley at Rob Greenley and I've got a podcast trust factor . Definitely go subscribe to the new media show . And James also does a couple of podcasts to does a weekly pod news weekly and a pod news daily too .

James Cridland 1:04:31

So right , absolutely . And thank you for the audio for this week's edition , that's very kind of you .

Rob Greenlee 1:04:35

Thank you very much .

Todd Cochrane 1:04:36

Yeah , and I can be found at X . I think that's what we're supposed to call it that's right . X at Geek News . Well , I think Twittercom still works . And I can be found in Mastodon at Todd at Todd at blueberrychat or Todd at blueberrycom for an email . But hey , we want to thank all of you for hanging out with us today . Thank you so much for being here , take care .

Rob Greenlee 1:05:00

We'll see you next year . Thank you , thank you .

Speaker 2 1:05:03

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Speaker 6 1:05:09

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Speaker 2 1:05:14

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