Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey, Stewart here. Matt and I recently caught up to chat about some of the headlines and events and the audio space that we thought you'd like to hear about. And of course, we're working hard on new episodes that will be coming out in the next few weeks. That conversation is coming up next. But before we get to that, I actually would like some help from you. I mentioned new episodes, right? Well, currently I'm working on a story about the use of stock media and podcasting. As a podcaster, do you use stock media for your projects? If so, what's that experience been like? Are you a creator who makes stock media for others to use? As a listener, can you tell the difference between stock media and something that's been commissioned? No matter how you relate to the medium, we'd love to hear from you about your experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. You can reach out to me personally via
[email protected].
Speaker 2 00:01:04 This is the episode where we dive into some of the important topics that, that at least these two chaps on the side of the microphone feel like are important for, for you. The podcast creator, the Casto customer. Uh, if you're trying to improve your show or you just wanna stay up to tabs of what's going on in the, uh, in the podcasting world, you know the headlines, the big headlines. We're here to share them with you, uh, once a month. It's what we do. I was really happy with how the centralized versus decentralized story wrapped up. And again, to pat yourself on the back, you did a fantastic job, uh, producing that series. So, if folks have missed it, go ahead and listen to the Centralized versus Decentralized series, three episodes, Audience podcast.fm. If you're wondering like, what is this whole thing? I see people <laugh>, some people arguing, some people debating, some people conversing on Twitter about centralized versus decentralized three episodes at the tail end of August.
Speaker 2 00:01:59 It was great. I'm gonna pull the last link, uh, that we have as a segue. Uh, it comes from one of my favorite podcasts if, well, listen, if you're like me and you like businessy podcasts, it's not full on business. There's a lot of sort of like, I don't know, arts and science behind it as well. But six pixels of Separation, probably one of the longest running business category podcast that I know, know of. Mitch Joel, he's up in, uh, Toronto. I believe he had Tom Webster, uh, it podcast industry tighten Tom Webster on his podcast to talk about the future of podcasting. And a lot of it had to do, of course, you know, Tom, coming from Edison Research research, we've cited a lot on this podcast. Uh, he does a lot at, obviously now as a partner at Sounds Profitable. So ad tech ad industry is 98% of his time, you know, evaluating the podcast landscape.
Speaker 2 00:02:53 So, a fantastic episode if you want to talk, if you wanna listen to him talk for, you know, nearly an an hour about his predictions in the podcast space. So a lot where he said, you know, advertising and Dai stuff and programmatic ads shouldn't be looked at, you know, as this purely bad thing. And I know we come down hard on it often, largely because for the small creator, it doesn't make sense. Very hard to make money there. Uh, but the industry is improving. Uh, and I think that was one of the threads about him talk, uh, that he talked about with ads, is that the industry's improving. Of course, the technology is improving, and hopefully this awareness of making a good advertising experience, aka you know, if you're doing programmatic ads and they're dynamically inserted, that it's not a jarring experience. And, and, you know, I, I think it was a fantastic conversation.
Speaker 2 00:03:48 So if you're interested in the future of, of podcasting and ads, and listen, I, I've been listening to this new series, uh, from Sounder Media, uh, Sounder podcast or media, I forget the name of the, their full title, and you'd like this, uh, Stewart. It's, it's called Real Dictators <laugh>. And, uh, it's this walkthrough, uh, dictators from throughout history. And I'll tell you, it's tough to be listening to, you know, this well designed story about Napoleon, and you hear, you know, the horses and the, and the gun powder and the cannons firing, and it's fantastic. You feel like you're there and then suddenly it's just like purple mattresses. And you're like, Wait a minute. You know, where were you on the battlefield? Right? And this is still not something that's completely solved, but I am hopeful when I hear Tom Webster talk about, you know, the future of, of ads, even if it's not for you as a podcaster.
Speaker 2 00:04:52 Let's keep working from the bottom up of this, of this link list cuz it keeps segueing in. What's the, the bad side of this stuff? Besides the audio experience of getting purple mattresses while you're listening to Napoleon, uh, you know, craft a, uh, an offensive is just breaking news. Right before we hit record by Ashley Carmen from Bloomberg, uh, she has an article inside Podcasters, uh, explosive Audience Growth through Purchasing the Downloads podcast companies are buying millions of listens through auto playing episodes populated in free mobile games. Uh, iHeart the top podcast publisher on pod track has bought around 6 million unique downloads per per month, uh, since 2018. Listen, these are things that, you know, let's just hold the thought of like the illegal side <laugh> of things maybe. Um, but in the podcast space, like vanity metrics from big publishers have been around since the dawn of time.
Speaker 2 00:05:50 Uh, anchor, you know, famously sites 4 million plus, uh, in their directory, uh, average amount of podcast episodes. A user makes like all of these like metrics, but they have a free service that just like people try out and then they leave. You know, they try it out for two seconds. They, What's this, what's this, uh, anchor thing? They record something. I don't want that. What was it? What is this podcast thing? I don't, I don't want this. They leave now. That's an RSS feed now that's a podcast. And that goes into the investors report. We've talked about this on past episodes. So like this whole gamification of, of the industry is, is something that I think has been around at all corners, uh, of the web. What's interesting here is we keep hearing, again, the flip side of the coin. We keep hearing about the multi-billion dollar industry, the podcast industry is the amount of ads, uh, uh, being allocated and the inventory being built.
Speaker 2 00:06:50 I hear people all the time saying that there's so much inventory to backfill with programmatic and dii. Like, there's so much on the table for, for creators to make air quotes. And then you see something like this where people are just, you know, gamifying the downloads. What does that mean for advertisers, right? And that then that all the advertisers on iHeart, now they have to question the ethics of, of iHeart and what's a download? What's not? Do they listen to it? You know, listen, I, again, not in the weeds of ad tech or advertising space like Tom Webster because I don't want that drama in my life, <laugh>, uh, but I can only imagine advertisers now are, are are gonna start asking for things that are, are gonna be it probably pretty tough to prove in the podcasting world, right? So now it's like, prove to us that you, that these downloads, cuz look what iHeart did to us.
Speaker 2 00:07:43 Prove to us what these, that these downloads are actually being downloaded and listened to and by whom. And, uh, well if you listen to our centralized versus decentralized series, ya ain't gonna get that kind of data through an RSS feed. Um, it's only gonna come from the, from the Spotifys and the closed gardens, uh, wall gardens, excuse me. Um, because that's just the way the data flows and we're not gonna get that in open, in open RSS publishing. So, um, that's how I see this. Like, I start getting worried, you're like, Oh man, RSS is gonna be under fire again because you can't prove this stuff. And that's a little scary to me. I could tin foil hat that, but that's what immediately my gut says.
Speaker 0 00:08:21 Yeah, to me it all just seems fraudulent. <laugh>, right? You're defrauding your defrauding advertisers and possibly even an investors just seems like a real gray area ethically, especially
Speaker 2 00:08:33 Like I, I can, you know, through video games, I can just see like, I don't play a lot of mobile games or anything like that, but I know the ad driven mobile game where it's like, before you get to the next level, before you do the next thing, watch this ad. I'm sure it's something like, listen to this episode and it probably is like one, one of those like five second counters that comes down and as soon as you have five seconds, you can just skip it. And they're counting it as an ad. Like, that's how I would imagine the experience to be like. And that's no fun. That's no fun. That's no fun for creators or advertisers in the space.
Speaker 2 00:09:12 A technology though, Stuart, a technology that well, will it save the day? I don't know. <laugh> Podcasting 2.0, A lot of it is connected to, uh, Bitcoin for monetization. It's also known as Satoshi. We've covered this before on this episode. And I have on the, on the YouTube channels as well. And the centralized versus decentralized series of course, get lb.com is a product called lb. Uh, and it makes the whole taking dollars, turning them into Bitcoin, and then being able to monetize your podcast or tip other podcasters or share in the value versus, uh, value for value stuff with other podcasters. It's a service that makes all of that a lot easier. They introduced this system called Saturn. S A t u R n emphasized the SAT for Satoshis. And what's really cool about this technology, whether you are a fan of, uh, Bitcoin or crypto or not, you can kind of see like, boy, if this worked for real dollars, I'd be all in.
Speaker 2 00:10:18 Um, but still, if I'm using, uh, Albi and converting my dollars to, to sat, it is really easy with the booster grams and the value for value. Creators can actually see the moments in time that people have boosted their show. Um, the moment that they sent them, uh, a boostgram, how long they're listening to an episode. This is actually all the data we want as, as creators layered on top of that RSS feed. You know, you have to succumb to the learning curve of, of, of podcasting 2.0 and Satoshi's and Bitcoin, you know, for a little bit. They do a fantastic job. If I say, if you want to get started, you definitely check out get LB for monetization. It works with Casto, but this is really cool because as a creator, man, if I'm telling people Boost the show, send me a comment, it's building that for you. You can see when people are commenting, you can see how long they've listened to a show because they're, you know, boosting you at the end of the show in the middle of the show. This is like really good data, not only just for monetization, but just to see how engaged your, your listeners are because they're, they're handing over value at the time that they make that comment. And I really like that. Um, and it looks like a really slick, uh, integration. And, uh, for those of you jumping on, I definitely check that
[email protected].
Speaker 0 00:11:34 Yeah, a little bit different than that, uh, than the vanity metrics you just said. This is actually, this actually tells you something.
Speaker 2 00:11:41 There's a, um, one, uh, a link that didn't make it into, uh, but I guess it's, it's making it into
Speaker 0 00:11:46 It just made it, I
Speaker 2 00:11:47 Just made it know John Spurlock, who's, uh, a developer in the podcasting 2.0 world and, um, uh, an advocate for podcasting 2.0, of course he's launching this new service for open analytics. Um, and it's an attempt to have people opt into analytics so that there's a, so that the, the raw data is public. In other words, you know, how do we know what the best performing shows are? Uh, what's the average length of a podcast? How many listeners does, you know, this category of podcast get right now that data is one, it's all over the place. Two, it's behind the, the world of Spotify or Apple and, and or big publishers and big media like iHeart. And God knows what they're doing with that. He's launching an initiative that he hopes people opt into, and all of that data is publicly tracked so that we can all be, be rising tide lifts, all boats kind of thing.
Speaker 2 00:12:50 Um, where all of that can be correlated and graphed and understood for the open industry at large. So we could have a place to point to and say, this is data from real podcasters being gathered here. And if you want to know what that data looks like, uh, you know, check out this, I think it's called O P three Source. It's super cutting edge right now, like nowhere near for ready for the average user. Um, and it's something you have to opt into, but, um, it looks pretty promising. And like what they're doing at get lb with Saturn, like, this is the stuff you, you want to know. This is the stuff you wanna know. And it's, it's not left up to ambiguity. It's literally when people are giving you money. <laugh>, you know, was that joke funny that Stewart and I said at the five minute mark, you'll know because people commented or donated at that moment. If you're wondering, geez, do I keep this fireside chat segment in every episode? And then you look at your reports, you say, Nobody boosts me at that time. Well, that segment's probably on the chopping block. Um, and there's no surveys, nothing else you have to do. You just see where people are interacting the most and it gives you a much better North star as a creator.
Speaker 0 00:14:07 Yeah, I'll be interested to see where that goes for a small company. We're probably giving Spotify a little bit too much exposure here, but I think this is an important, I think it's important because I think we've always known it was coming and a lot of folks probably saw this one on the headlines or in their inboxes somewhere if they subscribe to any podcasting newsletter at all. But Spotify now launching their audio books, it, it sort of goes back on what's central to my philosophy in terms of making audio. It's, it could be anything. And now audiobooks, presumably, I don't know if they're being released via RSS or not. I don't know if that is is happening, but, uh, yeah, Spotify, they're, they're just a jugg or nott when it comes to audio. And that trend is just gonna continue with this, because now if you went to Audible to go get your audio books, but you wanted to listen to your podcasts and music on Spotify, uh, this could be bad news for Audible because I know they really, it invested hard in, uh, making like original content and on the, on the audio side.
Speaker 0 00:15:12 And we, I've heard stories of kind of inside scoops on some of the challenges there, and it didn't seem like they, they quite really made the headway they wanted to. And now Spotify is really gonna, obviously they filled that void and now now they're kind of treading on, on audibles turf.
Speaker 2 00:15:31 Do you have a creative opinion on what, just like we have in the opinion on what's a podcast, what's an audio book to you? Like what is it creatively obviously has to be a, like a book, I guess, or for a, you know, for a book that was was published. Um, but what is it to you? Like why, why couldn't one, because I advocate it for cast's private podcasting all the time. When I, when I talk to people about monetizing, Whoa, you have an audio, you have a book, turn it into an audio book and just sell it with cast's private podcast. There's not, there's no difference in my eyes, it's delivering audio to the customer. So do you have an opinion?
Speaker 0 00:16:10 Yeah, I mean, I think an audio book is, it is a book that is read and let me kind of expand on that and maybe give a more profound answer in that it's not a creative interpretation of the book necessarily. It's not a dramatic recreation of it. It is a person reading it. They might add some inflection with the character's voices. Uh, but it's, it's not an audio drama, it is a, an an exact reading of the book.
Speaker 2 00:16:42 I mean the audio book, it's just packaging audio in a different, a different way, right? It's saying audio books are here, and if you can say that you have the most of those, then most people will go to you like, just like Audible has, uh, over there, guy, they've been around forever. Um, you know, and now people do that, you know, at Spotify. But, you know, in terms of, if you're just thinking like, what can I do with audio? What can I do with a podcast? And, and you've written a book or thinking about, you know, writing a book, um, what came first? The book or the <laugh> the book or the audio book, right? Uh, the Chicken or the Egg. I mean, I guess, you know, you could, the technology doesn't really matter in this case. Now, maybe Audible does. Uh, I do have an Audible account, but I rarely look at the app, uh, while I'm playing it. So maybe there's like a book like experience, like in the app, but I'd say like, I never look at it. Maybe that's a low, you know, a low engagement thing, but maybe there's like illustrations and stuff like that and things you can swipe through, but, um, at the end of the day, you're just feeding
Speaker 0 00:17:48 Audio out to somebody. Yeah, in my eyes, pull, pulling from the, pulling from the same toolkit, so to speak, if you can. Now there's, as someone who's worked a little bit in voice work, and I've never done an audio book before, but I have narrated, uh, like how to manuals and that and that type of thing, uh, there's obviously some nuance there. It's a little bit different than making a podcast. It's a little bit harder in my opinion, from a, just from a technical standpoint. It's, it's a lot harder or at least more excruciating or tedious, however you wanna think about it. But yeah, I mean, at, at the end of the day, it is still, it is still producing audio. A lot of the skill sets are, are pretty similar, but I, beyond that, that's, that's all I can say. I don't actually listen to a lot of audio books. I prefer to read. I like going through books and highlighting things, making notes, that sort of thing. You can't really do that with an audio book as much.
Speaker 2 00:18:41 You have another fun link here, James Earl Jones.
Speaker 0 00:18:44 So not it, this is not podcasting per se, but I think it's something that should be on everybody's radar now. James Earl Jones, of course, most famously voice of Darth Vader. Uh, and as the Star Wars franchise continues to expand with like a million different movies and TV shows and, and all that stuff, uh, James Earl Jones, of course, uh, he's 91 years old, 91 years old. Uh, I didn't even realize that. Yeah, 91 years old. Um, Fordo, he's, he's perfectly healthy, but yeah, 91 years old, you know, not to get too morbid, but, uh, you know, you gotta start thinking about <laugh>. You gotta start playing it for the future. Playing it for the future is the way we'll put it. And James Earl Jones has done just that. He has signed over the rights to his own voice, uh, of Darth Vader. Uh, so filmmakers now, he'll no longer be voicing the role, but they'll be using his voice via, uh, some artificial intelligence.
Speaker 0 00:19:46 Uh, the makers of this film, and I'm getting the story by the way, from Vanity Fair, uh, Vanity Fair is in, they've enlisted the help of a company called Re Speecher. This is a Ukrainian company that, uh, uses technology that's well beyond my comprehension to capture people's, the lightness of someone's voice and then be able to recreate that voice for furious purposes. And they're, they're gonna be doing just that. And, uh, so re speeches, they, they've is, is a massive, uh, I don't know if they're a massive company, but they've landed some pretty massive clients. And so one of their, one of their clients are, uh, the folks making this Obiwan Kenobi miniseries. And uh, obviously Darth Fedder is gonna be a character in that. I guess I'm not really a big Star Wars guy, uh, where, where I'm going with all that is, again, it's just one more kind of wrinkle or one more spec of technology that I think is going to impact how, how we can make audio.
Speaker 0 00:20:51 I mean, cuz if you're able to recreate the voice of James Earl Jones, what does that mean for audio fiction? What does that mean for people making podcasts? What does that mean for people who have been able to use their voice to make a living? Uh, those are the types of things that I think cross mediums right now. It's a thing in film, but what's it gonna mean for people making, making audio? I think it's, uh, something to, to be cognizant of. I don't think it's gonna impact your immediate workflow, but I'm very curious about this and it's both exciting and terrifying at the same time. I think it's like a lot of, like we've said about AI before, I think it's got the ability to really improve your workflow. It can really add some creative spice, but I also worry, what does this mean for art? If you can just plug in an algorithm and create something there, there are parts of me that are very, very concerned about that and I'm not 100% stoked about it.
Speaker 2 00:21:53 Yeah, yeah, it's tough. I mean, uh, but it, it wouldn't put it, I wouldn't put it past Disney to do that. <laugh> number one is like, Hey look, we have to secure this iconic character. Uh, and the voice is certainly 80% of, of, you know, when you think of Darth Vader, that's the voice and then it's, you know, then it's the look. But I think ultimately if you heard a different voice, the look wouldn't work, you know, in most people's brains, especially if they've been a, a fan for 40 plus years in the Star Wars franchise, we see these things now with like descript. So descript does that where you can train the voice, they call it over dub. And you can spend a few hours, like you have to spend the hours training descript. And then I can actually, like if you were an editor on my account, you could actually fill words in of me speaking <laugh>, uh, without even having, having to have me like rerecord something.
Speaker 2 00:22:46 Now I'm sure there's limits on it, I've only tested it. I don't really use it, uh, to that, you know, to that capacity. So if you just filled in one word, I'm sure it's fine, but if you tried to fill in like an entire sentence, it can sound pretty off. It's funny, I was on one of the podcasts that I do personally, um, quite often I'll do it asynchronously and I'll send somebody a bunch of questions in a short form so it's not like this really long like, you know, conversation. And I'll send somebody a bunch of questions and I'll have them record the answers and then just send it back and then I edit in as if I'm having a conversation with them. And I've done this probably a dozen times with folks <laugh>, and I did one the other day and the gentleman sent me back his responses.
Speaker 2 00:23:34 But the problem this time, which I had never anticipated before, was he wrote out his answers first and read the answers. So his response, like his responses to me, everyone else, just like I, how I would tell people to do it is, Hey, here's the question. What I want you to do is hit record, say the question, and then just answer the question as if we're having a conversation. And I, I say this to everyone, I said it to him, but he wrote out his answers and then he read his answers. So it was very, if I'm trying to have a conversation with, it sounded like I was having a conversation with a robot because it was like I, it was like I ask a question, uh, and then I just get this very like, formal, you know, response. So in that episode I had to actually, this is, uh, going off a little off course, but it might be interesting to some people I had to pretend like I did, like I would play like, Did you read that off of a book or off of a, off of a notepad?
Speaker 2 00:24:36 Anyway, here's the next question. And then, then like his response, like, cuz I knew it and I wanted, and I knew the listener would know it, so I had to play into it as if I was like catching him reading the answers. And by like the ninth question, I was like, Wait a minute, you're definitely reading off of, you're definitely reading these answers off of, off of, uh, whatever the hell I said the scrapbook or something like that. And then at the end I said, Hey, if you didn't catch on, like this was an asynchronous interview, I sent him the questions, he sent them back. Uh, that's why it sounded this way. So that was a really long way of getting to, is like AI can kind of still make this jarring thing that we're not, that we're, that might not be creatively enticing to a human, uh, to listen to your
Speaker 0 00:25:20 Story Again, we're gonna, since we're just kind of going down this rabbit hole, your story brings up a a good point. Something maybe that's been a bit of a, of an issue for, for me lately. Uh, if you're gonna make a direct to tape podcast, make a direct to tape podcast. Don't <laugh>, don't record a conversation and then try to Frankenstein an episode together by going back and recording a lot of pickups. Yes, you could do that technically, but it's the sort of thing that should be done sparingly. If you're gonna make look people, the, the, the chat shows as we call 'em. Look, it's a genre people are used to and are comfortable with, and that's relatively easy to make. Uh, so don't make, don't make it really hard by, by going back and trying to script answers. Stuart
Speaker 2 00:26:04 Saying, Don't do what I did is basically what he's saying. <laugh>, I thought it came out pretty good. Okay,
Speaker 0 00:26:10 Yeah, I'm sure it, I'm sure it was beautiful <laugh>, but, uh, that probably wasn't very fun to do. Uh, you know, look, I, I'm someone I, I don't have a problem with working really hard on something or producing something very complex when the story calls for it. But, uh, yeah, if you're gonna do direct to tape, do direct to tape <laugh>, that's, uh, sort of a, yeah, sort. If I could kind of get on a personal soapbox there for a moment. I'll say one last thing about Respe. Your, I I'll just read this from their website because again, the technology is, is a little bit over my head. Here's how they describe it. Our system leverages recent revolutionary advances in artificial intelligence. We combine classical digital signal processing algorithms with proprietary deep generative modeling techniques to learn your target voice inside and out. Now, again, if they're working with the folks at, at Disney also, I think they, they used, uh, they made a movie about, uh, the, the moon, uh, it was called an Event of Moon Disaster.
Speaker 0 00:27:16 And the backstory there is, and this is true, Richard Nixon, who was president at the time, wrote two different speeches that he had prepared. One in case they crashed and died. He was gonna read a nation, he was gonna read a speech to the nation addressing that. Uh, and then the second, of course, thankfully that didn't happen. It was successful and it was one of the greatest moments in the history of our country, perhaps. Uh, but anyway, they were able to go back. They didn't hire someone to be a Richard Nixon impersonator. There's a lot of 'em out there. I'd imagine they used Richard Nixon's real voice based off of like speeches that he gave and were able to recreate this speech. Uh, so it can do some like really cool things. That's probably the type of thing where that's really cool. Like where I would champion the use of this type of technology.
Speaker 0 00:28:06 Uh, and again, you go on their website, it looks like they, they have some wonderful, uh, talent behind, behind this. There's real humans making this stuff. So again, I I'm not, I'm not trying to dump all over this thing, but, uh, yeah, sort of a, kind of bring this full circle. I think you could do some really cool things for the world of audio and for the world of podcasting. But it, but I, but I think you have to be very selective and, and smart about how you use it. I, I don't think it should be meant to just replace human intelligence. Just be like, Oh, I never need to, to hire a voice actor or anybody ever again for, uh, for my projects. I can just plug in this algorithm and it'll make a masterpiece. If that's your approach, I think you're gonna be sorely disappointed when you, when you try it.
Speaker 2 00:28:50 Speaking of Masterpiece, uh, a podcast that we hear referred to as I want to create the next Serial, Serial <laugh> should be, should be a Jeopardy question at the, at this point. You got some interesting news there. This podcast helps overturn the murder conviction.
Speaker 0 00:29:13 Yeah, correct. So if you listen to a serial, and, and by the way, I, I shouldn't even give this, uh, this spoiler alert warning because it's eight years, it's eight or nine years old at this point. So if that, if at this point you, you haven't listened to it, uh, then you're just gonna have to deal with it being spoiled Serial, uh, was again, I mean this was, if there was ever a, a turning point in the industry, in the podcasting world, it was serial, uh, it was produced by the New York Times, I believe, and it followed the, the murder conviction of a Sied and Sarah Ko NICU's, uh, an investigative journalist, she, uh, you know, did a phenomenal job reporting on this and producing it. And, uh, just recently it was announced that his murder conviction has been overturned, which is to say, look, podcasting has, you know, it, it has real world implications. The stuff is impacting people's lives. It's, it's a lot bigger than than just a listening experience. There's people out there doing meaningful and impactful work.
Speaker 2 00:30:24 The, I remember Liz, I was already a, a podcast listener, uh, at obviously at the time that Serial came out, it was just that no one was doing serial that I knew of a serial like show with that much suspense and, and storytelling and all of that, uh, journalism around it. I remember being on the, I remember flying, I forget where I was going and I listened. Like I just constantly listened to that whole thing on the flight, um, through the airport. I mean, I just could not stop listening to it. Um, on the flights, flights to and from. And, uh, I mean, the true crime industry, the true crime crime podcast industry from that point on, Man is, was just, and still is just one of the top the top categories. And sometimes, like, I have some thoughts on this. Like, I think there's a lot of people who only, and I'm curious if your thoughts too, I think there's a lot of people who come into the space and who critique the space only through one lens of a podcast.
Speaker 2 00:31:27 And I think that true crime and like that kind of storytelling is, is a large one. Like, I think there's so many people in our space who are like, when they say, Hey, you know, this is a good podcast, that's not a good podcast. If you wanna start a podcast, it's this, We wanna mod monetize a podcast. It's that, but they only think of it through the lens of like, true crime or narrated like storytelling. And to them, like that's the only thing that is a podcast and not something that's like what we're doing right now, which is a utility. It's reporting on some of the news and giving you some commentary around it or what you do with the show, interviewing people and stuff like that. That's just my gut. Like I feel like there's a lot of people who are really biased in, in what they consider a podcast. And true crime is certainly like the biggest one, in my opinion.
Speaker 0 00:32:12 Well, it goes back to something we've said a lot of times, podcasting a medium, not a genre. Think about it that way. I mean, when you turn on TV and flip through the channels, a news broadcast is gonna be presented very differently than say, a 30 minute comedy program. Uh, a baseball game is gonna be a much different experience than watching say, uh, a documentary on National Geographic. Uh, it's just, it audio is simply just a medium and, and a podcast is simply just a techno is just a technology we use to distribute audio. Uh, so if you haven't heard us say it before, a podcast can be, you know, a lot of different things. I don't, I really believe there's, there's no limit on it. It's interesting you say that because we're, it's, we're coming at it from very different pers the perspective you're talking about.
Speaker 0 00:33:03 It's almost like the opposite of like where I, where I come from and that, you know, we spend a lot of time in this like, kind of B2B space right now, and we're, we try, we try really hard sometimes to get people to kind of, to expand their vision of what a podcast can be. It's, hey, it's not just a a q and a. It can be, sure, it can be a, a chat show, but you could do more if you want to or if the, or if you think it would benefit your, your audience. Uh, and then there's a lot of people who, again, like, like you said, they Serial is how they first interacted with it. But there's, there's all kinds of perspectives on it because I think, I think a lot of like the, the original podcasters would look at something like Serial and be like, Yeah, but you had, you had this American life behind it who developed it?
Speaker 0 00:33:51 And if I can kind of back up and clean up what I said earlier, uh, this American Life developed it, it's now owned by the New York Times, but in any case, you're talking two juggernauts there in this American life in the New York Times. So there'd probably be a lot of people who would be like, Yeah, it was a big podcast, but you, you had a lot of help. And I don't really know, really know where I'm going with that because I think Sarah Konik did phenomenal work with it. But my point is, is there was probably a lot of people who'd be like, No, wait a minute, podcasting is this gritty, roll up your sleeves, DIY you recorded in your, your basement. And all that's to say is it's been an evolving process. But if there was ever, you know, a podcast that proved, Hey, this thing can go mainstream, you can get a lot of downloads. It, it was serial and the real world Lord impact is that it, it might help this guy get his murder conviction overturned.
Speaker 2 00:34:45 All right, Stewart, I think that was a pretty good wrap up. Fantastic stuff. And listen, I, I think if you want your questions, I, I'm gonna surprise Stewart here. If you want your questions answered on this podcast, uh, send me a clip of your question, send me your question. It can be audio, it could be written out. Send it to
[email protected]. We'll play that clip on, uh, on the next Roundup episode that we do try to answer your questions. If you have questions about editing the show, producing a show, researching a show, marketing a show, The Ever Famous Growing Your Show <laugh>, we'll try, we'll try to answer that on the next episode. Thanks for listening, everybody.
