Introduction to Podcasting 2.0 Debate

Speaker 1 0:01

The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout .

Speaker 2 0:05

Start podcasting , keep podcasting . I'm joined by a very good friend of the show . His name's Matt Medeiros . He is a contributor to the podcasting 2.0 scene , but he also writes thepodcastsetupcom and he also works for Rocket Genius . I think I've got there finally , edit 67 . No one noticed it was seamless , matt . No one noticed it was perfect .

Speaker 1 0:29

You are great at your craft .

Speaker 2 0:32

Yeah , you can tell . I've got the brain of the size of a pea . How the hell do I do anything else in life ? Right , matt ? Welcome , welcome , welcome . Now , what are we here to talk about ? I guess Because there are so many things we could talk about . Since the beginning of the year , there seems to be a little bit of a negativity to this thing called Podcasting 2.0 . It was kicked off a couple of weeks ago by Mark Asquith and Danny Brown on their show In and Around Podcasting , where they simply titled it has Podcasting 2.0 Failed ? What were your thoughts ?

The Value of Open Source in Podcasting

Speaker 1 1:07

Yeah , so pleasure to be here , sam . Thanks for having me . The backdrop of my perspective on all this is I also cover WordPress . I have covered WordPress for 15 years . Wordpress is another open source publishing platform that complements podcasting perfectly . Todd at Blueberry knows this really well . We were kind of competitors back in the day when I worked at a podcast hosting company and I've seen the WordPress grow through the lens of open source and I have a huge respect for all the efforts . People contribute their time and efforts to grow WordPress , and I have the same affinity for this podcasting thing .

Speaker 1 1:47

When I hear criticisms , like in the WordPress world , where people say it's slow , it's lethargic , nobody uses this anymore , yet 45% of the internet is powered by WordPress I scratch my head and I say , well , we got to be doing something right . Same goes for podcasting . When I see the RSS feed constantly get criticized or podcasting 2.0 get criticized , I have to look at this and go look , there are people trying to innovate in a space that is fragmented , of course , but this is all done in the open . This is your chance to vote and have a say in improving podcasting . Why punch down on it ? And even if things were said as like clickbait and to hype you know , hype the conversation . Only so much of that can go around . Like , at some point we have to stop and say like here's all the good things that podcasting 2.0 efforts and RSS feeds grant us .

Speaker 1 2:40

Right , when we look at the crowning achievement , you know the ragtag team of podcasting 2.0 folks got the transcript tag adopted by Apple . That is massive and I look at these as real solid wins , not only for podcasting but for open source , for groups of people without any VC backing , knocking on the door of Apple saying you want this and Apple saying okay , we'll take it the biggest company in existence , almost . And you know I have to take a step back and say let's talk a little bit more positively about Podcasting 2.0 instead of just going at it for all of its you know warts and bruises . Like , let's look at the good stuff happening . Claire Wade Brown does this as well with her podcast Fantastic resource for Podcasting 2.0 . And there should be more advocates like Claire , like yourself and others , to just say we've got this thing here , let's adopt it and let's be good stewards of it . In my opinion , Okay .

Speaker 2 3:39

So , as you said , the Apple adoption was a crowning moment . I would argue back

Apple's Adoption of Transcript Tags

Speaker 2 3:45

, playing devil's advocate , that Apple only adopted it because there was a court case about accessibility and transcripts and that they would not . And I have spoken to the Apple team and they have no interest in the person tag in anything else , particularly in anything else . Particularly so I'm playing devil's advocate here because I think sometimes we can drink our own kool-aid and sometimes believe that what's been achieved is because of what we did rather than externalities that made them adopt it very quickly .

Speaker 2 4:16

Now , yeah , that said , that said , the podcasting 2.0 namespace came about because adam curry , the inventor of podcasting 2.0 namespace , came about . Because Adam Curry , the inventor of podcasting , went away . There was the podcasting ice age , where nothing really happened and the stewardship was under Apple . And then suddenly Adam and Dave Jones came back and said look , you know , we should do something about it . And was born the podcasting 2.0 namespace and a number of people uh , yourself , myself and many others included started helping and working on it , and it's been great . But tom webster wrote a post last week . What did he say ?

Speaker 1 4:57

yeah . So there was a lot of criticism and I took it as criticism because I was under the weight of all of podcasting 2.0 criticism , right , and the headline podcasting 3.0 was something that just kind of , I guess , sparked me to write a blog post and makea video , you know and coincidentally , yes , it wasn't a podcast that I responded with , because I just don't have a podcast for podcasts . I don't have another podcast about podcasting , not yet anyway . So these were the mediums that I had to . You know , share my opinions and I agree with a lot of what Tom said , especially with his recent article that he put out today . But the criticism for apps is certainly just and I look at this as criticism all around .

Speaker 1 5:44

I worked three years at a podcast hosting company as I was the advocate for podcasting 2.0 . And this is not easy , right ? Hosts have to do their part , apps have to do their part , the podcasters have to do their part in convincing listeners to do it and , at the end of the day , the listener has to want to engage in all this cool stuff that we're putting together . But I just don't agree squarely putting the blame on the Podcasting 2.0 team and , again , having just huge respect for folks who dedicate their time to this . Is the listener experience getting better for podcasting ?

Speaker 1 6:18

Like you said , I think a lot of us drink our own Kool-Aid Probably not as much as we want it to be laid , probably not as much as we want it to be . Are we under the gun against YouTube and Spotify ? Absolutely . Is it hard to put audio up against this behemoth video social platform that is YouTube ?

Speaker 1 6:37

Yes , these are challenging times for podcasting ,

Criticism of Podcasting 2.0 Implementation

Speaker 1 6:42

but I believe that preserving all things open podcasting is important to humanity and I think for publishers it is , at the very least , a threat of insurance to say , well , if YouTube changes the algorithm , if Spotify changes the algorithm , if some other player comes into the game and they're trying to do a walled garden , you always have your fundamental base of audio RSS or your blog with written words of content to fall back on as your foundation . So it's a long way of getting at . You know , I don't think Tom was completely off base . He is steeped into this industry further than I am . He is an award winner and I am not , so I have a high respect for his point of view . I am just coming from this as like let's not beat up the podcasting 2.0 efforts . Let's try to find the parts where we can make it shine and adopt that as tech providers , hosts , apps and advocates .

Speaker 2 7:46

So , first of all , when I read Tom's article , I wholeheartedly had to say , actually I agree with you . And when I read or listened to Danny Brown and Mark Asquith talk about how podcasting too , that I failed , I went . It's not failed , but it's not succeeded . I think there's a different way of phrasing that , right as in . I think it's done some great things . I think there's a different way of phrasing that , right as in . I think it's done some great things . I think there's been a tremendous effort by many people to produce 27 plus tags that are metadata features that enhance the podcasting experience . They don't change the audio but they make it a better way of discovery or interactivity or monetization . So I think those things are unquestionable . But I think companies like Spotify , where we often say , well , why aren't they adopting the podcasting 2.0 standards and all these things , they can't . I mean , I've been in large corporates they can't . They cannot wait for the ratification of a new tag before they can adopt it . They haven't got the time . They've got shareholders , they've got investors , they've got 680 million users . They need to go and make money from that market and they cannot wait . So you know , you could argue , they use what is called the pod love chapters , same as YouTube . So why can't they call those open chapters ? Because there's more people using them than the podcasting 2.0 chapters . It's just a moniker . Calling it open , it's just because we want it to be open across platform standard . But actually , spotify could argue with YouTube that it is a better , more open standard . Right could argue with YouTube that it is a better , more open standard . Right .

Speaker 2 9:27

James has argued that . Why are we adding a new image tag when there is already a image tag available that is in adoption ? There's a media tag . So all I'm trying to say is that I don't think we can expect the large corporate companies to come and adopt these things . Maybe they will , apple , but they'll be bit piece adoptions . They won't be mass adoptions of what's been produced . So I think when Tom Webster said two things , one was where is podcasting 3.0 ? I want to ask what does that mean ? And then the other one was he talked about it being rudderless and tillerless . What do you think he meant by that ?

Speaker 1 10:05

first , yeah , I mean , once again it was a little disheartening for me to read those words , but then also I got the double take of Adam and Dave sort of almost agreeing with that thread of thought and I sort of lost a little bit of air in my chest because I was like man once again , like you guys have been doing an amazing job , and you know I won't belabor this but like just a huge amounts of respect for both sides , but especially those who have committed the time to podcasting 2.0 . Yeah , you know , when I look at again , if you look at WordPress as an open source movement , and I look at what , what I've been in for the last 15 to nearly 20 years , yes , there are more community . It's a first of all . It's a much bigger community , right , you're talking about 40,000

Marketing Problems and Implementation Challenges

Speaker 1 10:57

people in Slack that are , you know , interested in committing to WordPress , never mind the hundreds of thousands of people who develop for it , right ? So huge , huge community . And , yes , there are regular meetings , like we have the Friday afternoon show , as , like the air quotes boardroom as the only official meeting that I see .

Speaker 1 11:16

Could it be more organized ? Yes , what I know is that open source is slow and messy and you know it's a snowball effect as it rolls down the mountain it gets a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and it's just gonna take time for that to grow . And you know it's unfortunate that I feel like now both sides feel like , yeah , there's nothing really here , it's just a little experiment that we're all doing . I wish it wasn't . I wish there was more organization around it . I know Adam and Dave just don't have the time nor want to be in that direction .

Speaker 1 11:52

Hosts when I was at my time at a hosting company , hosts would be perfect to get together and try to get some momentum going around this so that there can be quarterly meetings going around this , so that there can be quarterly meetings . You know some kind of in public meeting that breaks down the different 2.0 tags that are being adopted . You know , once again I look at if you were to buy an account from GoDaddy , you're going to get WordPress one way versus a Bluehost . You're going to get WordPress one way . It's still WordPress at the core , but this open source framework allows them to build their own experiences and I hope that's what that hosts will do and apps will do in a more joint effort . So I guess at the end of the day , as the dust settles . From this it sounds like it is slightly rudderless , though I hope for a future where it does get a little bit more organized , much to the corporate chagrin of podcasting 2.0 , I guess .

Speaker 2 12:50

I think mirroring your point about the way that web hosting companies have adopted WordPress and they are a different experience based on a different host . I think that's true with podcasting as well . You'll see Buzzsprout have implemented some of the tags . You'll see RSS have implemented others Captivate , blueberry , pod2 , podhome All of them have got different levels of adoption . As an app developer TrueFans I wish they'd go faster and further , but that's just my desire . But they are making business decisions about their customer base and the amount of time in engineering required and also in customer support . So you can ask them to go faster , but they will go as fast as they want to go .

Speaker 2 13:38

Have you ever heard the parable of the elephant and the four blind men ? Yeah , right , yes , I think that's what podcasting 2.0 is . We all look at it as what we want it to be . It's transcripts , it's micropayments , it's live , it's whatever we think it wants to be right . And I think people adopt or look at podcasting 2.0 when they see it and they touch it in many different ways and somebody will describe it in one way and somebody will describe another , but it's still an elephant if they could all see what it was . So this is my issue . I think we as a group have missed a trick , and I think we all know that , because the podcast standards project was going to be the marketing arm of Podcasting 2.0 . And I stepped up to be the evangelist and I wanted to do that role , but sadly I don't believe I can do that role without funding , so that role doesn't exist . But I did think and I genuinely believed that the smart , smart people who work with Adam and Dave and what I would call the R&D of podcasting 2.0 , coming up with some crazy ideas , some hit the cutting room floor , some make it through . Those people would then chuck that over to the podcast standards project group who would then be in the marketing side of the business saying , yep , we'll adopt that tag as ex-host and , yes , we'll adopt that tag as ex-host and , yes , we'll market it this way and we will spend time and money pushing that to the end user so they're made aware . And I think that's what I had hoped would happen .

Speaker 2 15:14

But I don't believe that will happen now and in the last three or four weeks I've tried and Adam has done , clearly , told me and the rest of the community he is the inventor of podcasting , but he will not be the evangelist . He will not be at the events . He was treated badly by podcast movement and I think he's just said screw it , I'm not going to go and put myself . You know you wouldn't get Tim Berners-Lee walking into an event and going oh , we're talking about the web , who are you ? And I just think you know there was no respect to Adam . So guess what ? We've lost that one .

Speaker 2 15:49

So I think the other part of what I wanted to say was we are missing the marketing . That's one of my beliefs . So I think podcasting 1.0 was Adam , with Dave Weiner coming up with the

The Rachel Maddow Problem & Future Interfaces

Speaker 2 16:02

enclosure 20 odd years ago . Right , that's 1.0 . I think Adam and Dave Jones came back and said , okay , we can make this better . And that was , I think , the start of podcasting 2.0 . Now I think that could have been of the 27 tags , maybe eight or 10 of those tags could have been part of 2.0 .

Speaker 2 16:25

And I think and I've said it over a year ago that we missed a trick to align ourselves with the monikers of the web web 3.0 , now web 4.0 that's coming out . So I think web 3.0 is a decentralized , own your data monetization , bitcoin , blockchain platform . That's what people think of Web 3.0 . Web 2.0 is Facebook , it's Twitter , it's centralized , it's ad-driven and that's what I think we are . I think podcasting 2.0 today is DAI , I think it's host-read ads , I think it's all of that stuff . It's centralized around YouTube and Spotify and Apple , and I think RSS is a perfect analogy of a Web 3.0 app with all of its characteristics multiple hosts , multiple apps own your RSS , own your data , move it to where you want , and data portability exists , right . All of those characteristics of podcasting are all the characteristics of Web 3.0 . And I think we as a community then could have made it easier for non-technical people and for publishers and even some hosts to adopt bits of the elephant instead of trying to adopt the whole elephant .

Speaker 1 17:42

And I think that's what we missed . Yeah , it's a marketing play no-transcript that just do boosts , just boosts . Or an exploration of chapters , or an app search engine that just does transcripts . They're just these individual tags . One could have an entire app just on that . Right , I understand what I'm saying to a guy who's building an entire platform , you know , using all this stuff . But there could be , you know , just a place where you go for all live episodes happening using the lit tag . Right now , that's all it is , you know , and that's where I feel like I look around as just an advocate myself to be like no , there's opportunity to build this stuff here . The tech exists . You just have to align this with some marketing and messaging . I mean , are you going to build the next you know massive social media platform ? Probably not , but a host could adopt this kind of thinking , you know , and I think it's just very important and I would be remiss to just not mention .

Speaker 1 19:15

I understand , like , maybe podcasting 2.0 is not the best title . Maybe value being tied so closely and misconstrued to Bitcoin all the time is also not a good thing , because I've been operating under the auspice of value for value since I started my podcast 15 years ago .

Who Will Lead Podcasting 3.0?

Speaker 1 19:31

I just put out content and I turn to sponsors and I say I've got a valuable audience here . How about you sponsor it ? And the numbers are 20 , 30 , 40 , x of what you would hear . You know , tom and and even James report on for CPM , like podcast , does 50 , $60,000 a year in sponsorship . And it's a fraction . You know the the download counts are very small , but it's a super trusted audience that I have and that is the essence of value for value .

Speaker 1 20:02

That is the essence of like being able to build something your way , monetize it your way . That sort of bucks the trend of , well , if you're on YouTube , you got to have , you know , at least 500 subscribers before you can turn on monetization and then , when we do , you're going to get three cents . It's like , well , I don't want to be a part of that . I want to be able to adopt this technology and sort of do it my way . I mean , it takes a different kind of person to lead that charge , but I , you know , through education , through my efforts and others' efforts , I hope that we can educate folks that you don't always have to fit the mold of the algorithm to get this stuff done . You can do it your way . And again , that's what I love about podcasting in general and , of course , the efforts of Podcasting 2.0 .

Speaker 2 20:44

I wholeheartedly agree . I think , you know , what we should see is piecemeal use of the tags and people will adopt apps based on that . So Adam and Dave are building Godcaster . It's using some tags , not using all tags . There are other apps out there . There's music-specific focus podcasting like Wavelake , like Tune FM , like LM Beats . There are audiobook specific ones as well . So there are generalist apps like Fountain , true Fans , podverse , podcast Guru , and there are vertical specific ones .

Speaker 2 21:22

But I think I go back to my point . When I woke up after reading Tom Webster's post and having mulled over it overnight , and I read the title , which was called Podcasting 3.0 , and when I was in marketing with Netscape and Microsoft you know I've been down this road in was it HTML1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5, . We use monikers very well with iPhone 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , right , and Apple knows that iPhone 17, . Ooh , new phone , what's in it ? What's the features ? And that's what I want us to do with podcasting . I want podcasting 2.0 to have a cutoff line . I want it to be 10 tags , 12 tags , whatever that decision is , and then the next set of tags are the next version . So in podcasting 3.0 , I would put micropayments in there and I agree with you . By the way , value for value is

The Hope for Apple as a Champion

Speaker 2 22:15

not micropayments , it is a economic thinking , theory of Correct . Yeah . So it's more of a theoretical way of monetizing and it's not specific to any mechanism of monetization which the two get conflated . But I would put , you know , bitcoin wallets and micro payments into the 3.0 . I'd put live into the 3.0 , I'd probably put wallet switching into the 3.0 . I would put other more advanced technical things . So it's easier then for companies to say yes , yes , we're podcasting 2.0 compliant . We have chapters , transcripts and all these nice , easy to understand things we bring along the audience with us .

Speaker 2 22:54

And then , guess what , there's another version of podcasting . It's called 3.0 . Oh right , what's in this one now ? Now , I've got the elephant's trunk and I've got its tail and I've got one foot . I can get my head around the body now and maybe the ears are next and maybe I can understand , and then I can put it all together and go oh , I see , this is the new podcasting thing . This is the

Closing Thoughts on Podcasting's Future

Speaker 2 23:17

whole elephant . But I think we're asking people to understand what a whole elephant is when they can only feel or understand parts of it , and that's my problem , and I think tom webster said it very well . Podcasting 2.0 apps have failed because , as an app developer , we are not gaining market share in the way that spotify and youtube are doing it , and so , therefore , are all of our efforts leading to nothing .

Speaker 1 23:47

I'm not a developer but I have a chatbot that tells me I am . And I certainly wouldn't want to debate Tom Webster on his knowledge in , like , let's say , the ad tech industry or the ad industry for podcasting . But I see a world you know where I hear Todd talk about . Well , we have a way to look at , let's say , completion rate of episode listening with chapters . Right , let's say , we got the chapter tag and maybe why I'm so critical or what made me critical of Tom's post was I would love to see Tom and maybe he is , I just don't know it like advocate for , okay , bad platforms or large publishers . Like we've got this chapter thing over here and see , see down there in podcasting 2.0 , there's this tag called chapters . We can tie up a way of reporting on completion rate by just leveraging , let's say , this chapter tag . You complete the chapter . We know you've made it x , xyz percent through the episode and , by the way , chapters , we can display an ad or something like that , an impression for your brand .

Speaker 1 24:48

I would love to see those efforts tied in Now . That would also mean that Tom would come up with some data or some feedback from big ad tech and that means folks in the podcasting 2.0 world would have to look at that and say , ok , critical feedback , let's adopt it , let's think about it . Let's not shun it away because it came from , you know , amazon or some you know big publisher that we don't like to , uh , you know , align with . Let's look at it respectively just like tom's respecting the podcast 2.0 tags , I would love to see that world where , uh , you know , tom , is that conduit to add tech and advertiser advertisers out there and leverage some of this technology so that we can see something happen .

Speaker 1 25:29

You know , in that space , once again , tiny little tag pulled out of Podcasting 2.0 that makes a good impact or a big impact . It doesn't have to be the whole enchilada , you know . You know I don't go to therapy I should , but I've been thinking . I've been thinking about why I am like this , I am the way that I am , and you know Tom wrote an article that uses the brand name Saab right from automobiles . I grew up in a General Motors dealership and General Motors right . My family owned a General Motors dealership .

Speaker 2 26:03

Most of us grew up in a home , but it's very nice to know you grew up in a dealership .

Speaker 1 26:06

Maybe that explains a lot Quite literally . It like quite literally worked there when I was like five until I was 20 something , but I always , like I just grew up in a space where General Motors was constantly telling you what to do Right , here's the cars you have to sell , here's , here's how much money you get for advertising in this pool . Everything else figured out yourself , and it was just constant like breathing down our necks . And it was just constant like breathing down our necks . And maybe , as I had , this therapeutic moment is that's . You know this , you know corporate overlord is stuff that I've never been I've been able to jive with , because I grew up watching my father pull his hair out going I can't do this because of what GM is doing . And then they went bankrupt and that's a whole other story . But you know , that's , that's how I've sort of gotten to this place in my life .

Speaker 2 26:53

How do we fix it ? We can moan and groan , we can talk about it succeeded . If you listen to Adam and Dave , it's a massive success . Look at the adoption , look at all this , and I don't decry them . What I said was when Danny and Mark used the clickbait , has podcasting 2.0 failed ? They could have equally said has podcasting 2.0 succeeded ? And then we could have said what does success look like ? And Adam and Dave gave their opinion of what success looks like , and that's fine . Tom Webster doesn't think that their opinion of success is the same as his opinion of what success looks like . So there is a gap between the two . And what does podcasting 3.0 then have to be ? What do the apps have to do ? Tom wants a big shiny button and he wants serendipity .

Speaker 2 27:42

I actually and I'm probably going to be laughed out of every podcast in the future I would say web 4.0 . Oh my God , did he just say that ? Web 4.0 is Gentic AI ? It's the idea of an interface that will be personalised to us , voice enabled potentially . We've all moved the creepy line , as I call it . We now probably have a Google Home , alexa or whatever . In our house , we've all interfaced to some sort of voice system , even if dumb siri can't understand a word we say . But we've all tried it and now we're getting more intelligent versions of that and their interfaces to the web , and I think what we're going to see with podcasting for dodo god , there's another one to add to the book is going to be a user interface where , hey , matt , you've got three comments , you've got a new podcast ready for you and you're in the car , hands-free , and it's talking , and I think Adam and Dave have even said they've called it the Rachel Maddow problem , which is they don't want to see the podcasting 1.0 , 2.0 .

Speaker 2 28:46

Structure of lists and playlists . And have I got through my email list ? Have I read all the episodes or listened to all the episodes ? Have I got through everything ? Right , I'm ready for next week . And Rachel Maddow was talking about how she wants a destination , a community , an end point , and I think we're beginning to hear things like content , commerce and community being the driving fact that you hear that from Substack , you hear that from YouTube , you hear it from other platforms that are trying to make that happen PodPay and I think those are the driving thoughts . So now we've got to look at oh , dare I say it , going back to portals . Even my word you know let's go back .

Speaker 1 29:24

Everything comes full circle .

Speaker 2 29:25

Yeah well , mike Homer , who was the driver at Netscape for the Netscape portal , helped or instigated creating RSS it wasn't Dave Weiner and the idea was that RSS would bring you the weather , the sport , the news , and then it would be created onto a portal page . And Adam and Dave are fundamentally saying the Rachel Maddow problem is what I want to create , rachel Maddow world , and I want that world to be my blog , my events , my merch , my podcast , whatever , and it all comes to one portal page . So I think that's where we're heading . And then there's an interface layer on top that will be voice . How we get there , how soon we get there , I have no idea .

Speaker 2 30:08

But my bigger question to you , matt , is who's going to lead the charge ? Because , as I , because as I said when I woke up and said well , if I want to call it podcasting 3.0 , who do I have to ask permission ? Do I have to go to adam and say , adam , is it okay that we now start calling this podcasting 3.0 ? And adam will say I'm not the leader , so then I'll look at the pod stage . Davey , can I call it podcast ? Nope , nothing to do with me , mate . Then I go James Cridland , do I ask you Nope , okay . Head of Amazon , head of Apple , head of Spotify ? Who's the person who's going to anoint it and say yes , I grant you the permission to use it as podcasting 3.0 .

Speaker 1 30:54

And that goes back to tom's premise there is no one at the tiller . Yeah , so I'll get .

Speaker 2 30:56

I'll get kicked out of all the podcast events alongside of you .

Speaker 1 30:57

Good , because I have another crazy idea so it's just a good quick couple threads of thought here . This is why I am such a huge advocate for open source and and why I think my task in my online career life is to advocate for open source . It doesn't mean I'm a fanatic . I'm not using the graphene OS phone and , like I'm detached from you know , cell carriers . But open source very important , because I think I don't have an answer of who leads it . But I think what we'll see is this trend in people realizing that , oh , like the Maddow effect , yes , every publisher should be omni-channel and , quite frankly , we had a stimulus , a steroid of traffic when we had COVID right . That's when I got hired at Castos Podcast Hosting . I mean , we were selling podcast hosting accounts left and right . Private podcast feeds was a thing Companies were doing because that's how they were communicating to people at home . It was a massive shot of of purchasing and consumers coming into podcasting and now we see this dip . We also see this dip from organic traffic . We see this dip from social media traffic because there's just so much noise and Google's losing search and AI is up and coming . So a publisher who's trying to stay afloat without big money or without spending on ads needs omni-channel audio video , written newsletter and community right , it's the whole stack that we need and what I'm looking for in the future . This is the crazy theory . Part is , with the introduction of AI , you want to have these open standards to build from , because now people can build that stack , like Rachel Maddow can build that stack . Let's say , with AI , Proofread all your code , people , before James throws a shoe at me , don't ship bad code . Understand what you're doing . But the point is , is open source allows us to have that framework , so that , okay , I want to build from that . I want to build my own stack , my own community with all of my content in my little website app . Right , matt can build a tiny , tiny version of TrueFans just for Matt's content . Or TrueFans can build the portal for Matt and Matt can adopt that . I think this is why we need to keep open source available , so that we have something to pull from , so that it's not closed source and that innovation just doesn't come from closed source software .

Speaker 1 33:35

When it comes to , you know , podcasting , listening experiences , you know . So my crazy world is advocate for this stuff . Let people know that RSS is alive and well dare I say that and that we have a framework to pull from and maybe the new leaders come from the market shift . Youtube is great . Now they want podcasts , they're friendly with podcasts , but how many times have we seen something end up in the Google graveyard ? Right , it's only a matter of time . Hey , youtube's the biggest place for podcasting . Yes , because they quite literally shut down the Google podcast app and they said all of you come over here now . So , yes , okay , great , it's the it , because it's the only place on Google I literally have to put my podcast now .

Speaker 1 34:22

So I think what we'll see is this market shift where eventually , the top level money dries out at the big places . They tighten the grip around , like distribution and what you can do with a podcast , and inevitably , like it happened to Spotify and then YouTube came in , inevitably another player shows up . But I think the new leadership are going to come from people who are looking at these big platforms going . You know what I actually don't need , that I don't need to be on YouTube anymore . I can spin up , actually , my own little video library , because AI has helped me do it and cost of distributing video at a small scale actually isn't that bad , so I can start to build my own omni-channel stack the Maddow effect once again . Yeah , I don't have a direct answer who will lead it , but I have a hope that more people will spin up their own , you know efforts leveraging Podcasting 2.0 and other open source efforts to serve their audience .

Speaker 2 35:16

Yeah , again , I don't know who will lead the charge , but Aesop's fable comes to mind the tortoise and the hare . Those systems are always the hare . They are always the ones who have the deeper pockets , the better marketing , the engineering teams that can go and build proprietary technology , but it's the tortoise , behind which , I think , is the open source that then comes back and eventually , look at you know the thing that makes me laugh the most , when I was at netscape , we've , we fought ie , and now ie is basically chrome . So microsoft edge is chrome and chrome is basically firefox , and fire Edge is Chrome and Chrome is basically Firefox and Firefox is basically Netscape . Right , so the thing came full circle eventually , where Microsoft adopted the open standard underlying it , and I think I don't suspect that Spotify or YouTube will do anything anytime soon . They don't need to . They've got massive revenues and massive market share . But I do think that there will be a point where they go oh , how can we evolve ? And and the thing that I do hope and this is my last point , I guess is Apple is missing in action .

Speaker 2 36:25

I think Apple could be the champion of the open standards community . I think Apple could be the counterweight to Spotify and YouTube and they're failing . They're just failing . I joke with James , the IE7 of podcasting . They're an awful client . They've not innovated for God knows how long and my worry is that Apple themselves know Apple themselves .

Speaker 2 36:52

This week , mark Gruber basically threw Apple under the bus . The number one Apple fan basically said Apple intelligence is another year away . It's failed . And I think , when I look at what we started off with , saying that how great the podcasting community has got to get transcripts and the TXT tags into Apple . I want has got to get transcripts and the txt tags into apple . I want apple then to adopt the person tag and and the other tags , the location tag and all these tags , and be that company that is the champion of podcasting 2.0 or the new name space , and adopt as many tags as they can , and only then do . I think we'll get a counterweight to Spotify and YouTube , because Apple has the marketing clout behind them and the market share to do it . But here's the kicker Don't hold your breath , because they're not going to do it .

Speaker 1 37:45

Yeah Well , yeah , I guess , never say never . But I agree with you , like I , there needs to be a continued champion for a podcasting 2.0 . Right now , it's still herding cats , which are , you know , the community behind podcasting 2.0 , the hosts , the app developers , um , and the podcasters , right , getting everyone on board , and I , you know , I think that all I can do is continue to advocate for it so that light doesn't burn out . In my opinion , matt .

Speaker 2 38:12

Matt medeiros , thank you so much . Thank you for coming on and sharing your thoughts with us . Podcasting 2.0 , 3.0 , 4.0 is not going to die and there are too many good people behind it . But I do think it's not going to go as fast or as far as people think and it may take a little time for the tortoise to catch up to the hare . But when it does look out hare , we're going to win , I agree . I agree , sam , get updated every day . Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet .

Speaker 1 38:44

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