Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 We're back for the, uh, July podcast news Stewart. Welcome. Welcome back. Oh
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Yeah. Yeah. Welcome. Welcome to you, Matt. Uh,
Speaker 0 00:00:07 Thi this is the sound of, I have no idea how to intro this. <laugh> this, this new show is, is, is what that
Speaker 1 00:00:13 Was. What does it all the influencers say? It's Matt and Stewart, back at you with another,
Speaker 0 00:00:19 Uh, don't make me hit the airhorn button on the roader
Speaker 1 00:00:23 Protein smash that like button mash that like button it's. It's calling
Speaker 0 00:00:27 My name.
Speaker 0 00:00:31 If you don't know every last week of the month, Stewart and I sit down and, uh, we'd chat industry, podcast, podcast, industry news, audio news, creator news, uh, the headlines that have come across our desk that we feel, uh, are gonna impact, uh, you dear podcaster, Casto customer. Uh, and we want to just share that stuff with you, and hopefully you can learn a little bit more about it. Don't forget too. Follow this podcast@audiencepodcast.fm, all the subscribe buttons are there, press those buttons. Subscribe to the show. Follow us, send us at your questions. If you have questions for Stewart and I email us hello@casto.com, we'll get you on the next, uh, news episode that we put out with your questions. Send us an audio file. Your, I mean, you should be applied caster, listening to this, throw it in a Dropbox, make it quick, and we'll air it on the show.
Speaker 1 00:01:22 If you're not a podcaster, I'd love to hear from, from, from them just more intellectually, be curious, why a non podcaster would, would be listening to this.
Speaker 0 00:01:30 Maybe the plan is to launch a podcast. <laugh> that? I would hope I
Speaker 1 00:01:34 Would hope. No, no, no. I want a person who just, just finds this titillating. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:01:40 Begrudgingly. Okay. We're gonna talk about this Acast news. Acast primarily a competitor to Casto big company, big podcast hosting company. And, uh, they do a lot with ads and original series and subscriptions and everything like that. They made some, they made a big splash. They purchased pod chaser, which was what I used to refer to as the only social media network for podcasters. I spent a, a little bit of time on it, but oh man, I, I never really got a lot of value out of it other than yeah. You could create some nice bios, like you could create like a creator bio. You could list all of your podcasts that you host or co-host. The cool thing was, you know, they had the producer and the host tag and the co-host tag and all of that stuff. That was cool, but I never really used it a lot. Did you?
Speaker 1 00:02:36 No, I, I, on your recommendation, I went and, and got set up there <laugh> and really, really didn't stay at it after it. I like the idea in theory, I've always hoped that there was some kind of like IMDB for podcasters where it's like, all right, this is the authoritative source. This person has produced this many podcasts, not as quite in tuned with all this stuff as, as you are. But, uh, that seems like a big deal. That two big companies like that would merge
Speaker 0 00:03:05 Yeah. Deal worth almost 34 million. If you go to pod land, we'll try to, uh, we'll try to link this up in the show notes as well. Uh, Sam, Seth, James Cridland, they both host, uh, a weekly news pod podcast over at pod land. Uh, Sam Sethy is, is on the story. We've been talking about the story now for a couple months. <laugh>, uh, we're working on, uh, uh, something called the story. You'll hear actually, Sam Sethy on the, on these airwaves, the, uh, they covered obviously the deal and they interviewed the founder of pod chaser. And why I said begrudgingly about a cast is because they've been in the news, especially on, on pod news for the last few months, as well about their email, spam marketing tactics, effectively going after other podcasters and saying, Hey, we are a better podcast. Host, come over here.
Speaker 0 00:03:59 And, uh, infuriating of course, <laugh>, you know, every time like it just kept going, right. And, you know, we heard from some Casto customers were receiving these emails, all their podcast hosts were specifically targeted as like a blanket mass email across all of their customers. Uh, not a good look for a cast, uh, which is why, you know, I, I don't really care to, to cover it, but this is big industry news. And I say that because if you're into pod chaser, like everything, we just don't know what's going to happen with this data. Uh, James Cridlin actually made a joke on Twitter was like, oh, they, you know, that's a pretty big email list they bought like, yeah, it is because they have a ton of emails like you, yours and mine, Stewart. Um, but for building our bio. So this is all this kind of data now pouring into Acast, uh, you know, to do God knows what, but, you know, one would hope that they they're looking to improve pod chaser, but not a lot of good, uh, marketing tactics Cridlin has been following it on pod news says that the spam has, has subsided from a cast, but you never know it could happen again.
Speaker 0 00:05:05 It's just not fun. It's not fair in this industry to do something like that.
Speaker 1 00:05:10 Yeah. And I mean, I think, I think it was like pod news, even in one of their newsletters didn't they refer to them as the biggest spammer in our industry. And that's, I I've, I have not been targeted by a cast, so I don't know whether to feel offended or slighted or happy <laugh> about that.
Speaker 0 00:05:25 But, uh, well you'll know when it comes through your podcast, Chas or bio what's the saying, uh, the saying is any news is good news, bad news is good. I, I forget how it goes. Uh, but uh, also some news for Acast as well, uh, WTF with mark Marinn podcast plus launched on ACA and what this is, is a subscription podcast, um, where, uh, uh, fans of the show of mark me's podcast can pay to subscribe. Uh, you we'll have the link in the show notes, but you can buy in for $5 a month, monthly or $5 a month or $3 a month. And there's some different levels here. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because subscription podcast is something that we've been doing at Casto now for well over a year. And it's, it's a slow it's look, it's a slow adoption.
Speaker 0 00:06:13 When people think about monetizing their show, which you've been listening to on this very podcast, do our interviews, folks that, that monetize their shows in different ways, subscription podcast is still yet to, to catch on. And I think it's just, it's not a tech, it's not a tech thing anymore. It's still slightly technical. We make it fairly easy at Casto, but it's, it is a mindset thing where, where, I don't know, maybe get your, your opinion on this Stewart. But I think that people, there's a few things that they think of, they go, God, I have to create original content on this RSS stream. I'm already struggling enough to get it on my open RSS stream, let alone this other one. Um, you know, he's doing something or he or Marin's team, I'm sure, you know, he has the archives. Uh, and then he has the full Marin's what he calls it for the $5 a month.
Speaker 0 00:07:01 That's an interesting play too. It's like, if you have hundreds and hundreds of episodes, uh, I mean, if you want a back catalog, uh, that's an interesting play. Something I've not thought of before is just selling the archives. That's one way to monetize a show. It doesn't have to be original content could be your list of hundreds of old episodes. He has 1300 plus. Um, and then the $5 a month. I think all of this, what I'm saying here is once this catches on subscription podcast that is do it at casts, number one. Uh, but I think it's gonna be something that a lot of people are gonna lean into because I don't know if ads are gonna survive.
Speaker 1 00:07:33 What mark me's doing is, you know, five, $5 a month is not a lot of money, but it's gonna be spread out over probably a few hundred thousand listeners. I would, I would guess. Right. <laugh> maybe not that many but tens of thousands. Certainly. So even something like that, of course, the bigger your audience, the bigger windfall you're gonna have. And of course, again, it's not always a fair comparison because if you're starting from scratchy, you don't really have anything to build off of making that distinction between what's exclusive content and what isn't can be pretty tricky. And in mark me's case, it's kind of a no-brainer right. I mean, 15 years worth of, of interviews and audios that he can repurpose. It's a little bit different. So if you're thinking about making a subscription podcast, keep that in mind. Um, and again, I think I like what you talk about it being the slow build.
Speaker 1 00:08:25 I mean, I think like the idea of monetizing a podcast is not something that's gonna happen very quickly for, for most people, uh, particularly if you don't have a public profile. So it's a cool story. I was, you know, I, I know I, I wanted to talk about that because, uh, I think it's it, it's probably on, on the better, I guess more positive news of things Acast is doing, because I think that's, that's also great for a creator like mark Marinn like, I know he's already probably pretty wealthy and last I heard he was getting something like, you know, 13 grand per episode, just from, from ad revenue, maybe even more now based on some of the new numbers we're, we're gonna look at. So I'm glad a person that, you know, he probably, and in my view, he's done a lot, I think, to make podcasting better. He's a good guy, a good comedian. I love his, I love his podcast. So I'm, I'm always happy, even if someone's already successful, that they can kind of find some ways to reap the benefits of, of their hard work.
Speaker 0 00:09:23 A lot of the challenges that, that, uh, we face. And I know you face too, when you, uh, are producing a show, especially for somebody who's just getting into the podcasting space is it's a lot of this upfront education of not just producing great audio, but creating a business out of it as whatever that business means to you, whether that's just getting some donations or whether that means running a subscription podcast like this, or going into like an ad network. And I think that a challenge is a little bit of the tech, okay, how do I do the subscription podcast? How do people get it? But also I think from the, uh, novice podcaster, they might look at what mark Marinn has here. And they say $5 a month. You know, I've got, you know, 20 listeners, <laugh>, that's not gonna, you know, that's not going to, or a hundred listeners, let's be fair.
Speaker 0 00:10:11 Let's, you know, we got a hundred listeners a month. We're not really gonna make a lot of money. And that's the problem, I think is a little bit of a mindset thing. I think when you're at scale, like a Marin who's, whatever podcast, celebrity, top 20 podcasts, or maybe top 50 podcasts, um, every month when you're at scale, you have, like you said, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to make this $5 decision. But if you're somebody who's running an Indy like a real small indie show, um, a hundred listeners, 200 listeners, a thousand listeners, your monthly subscription could be $15. It could be $50, but you're gonna give more to that. It's not just gonna be about the audio. The audio can be the foundation of it. It could be the thing that, that spawns the extra value.
Speaker 0 00:10:57 So you get this audio feed and through this audio feed, I'm gonna tell you about all these other things and create this original content for you, but also give you access to like a membership or book or something like that. And, and that's like the sort of mindset that the small creators have to put themselves in into, I think, to make this successful because on the ad front, just to share some news about what we've been testing here on our own competitor's platform, we, uh, you and I Stewart ran an ad for the audience podcast on, uh, bus, uh, bus sprouts, uh, ad network. And, you know, we, I paid the a hundred bucks. You made the audio, you made the, the, the ad. I paid the a hundred bucks and we were guaranteed 5,000 impressions, 2,500 impressions. Uh, I forget the number, uh, what it was if it was a 5,000 or a 2,500, um, I think it was 5,000 and our stats didn't move an inch.
Speaker 0 00:11:53 <laugh> now, do I blame you Stewart on that ad? No, no. Um, oh, I don't blame <laugh> I don't all right. You know, I don't blame still a job. Yeah. I, I don't blame you. Uh it's it's just not how advertising works, right. It, you know, one month, one time is not going to move the needle in advertising anywhere else. Uh, and especially if the ask is to go listen to another podcast. Now this is sort of taking, this is sort of a sidebar moving away from the a, uh, eight cast topic and into something that we didn't really plan on talking about, but advertising, uh, that a hundred bucks didn't move the needle. I'm not saying that buzz S browse platform is wrong, though. I would have liked to be able to target other podcast shows or audio, uh, engineering shows like some kind of category that's close to podcasting that I know would drive that traffic to us, their ad platform didn't allow me to do that.
Speaker 0 00:12:50 I could select categories. I could see they had like this weird. It was yeah, 5,000 reach, 5,000 listeners for a hundred bucks. I could see the shows that I was advertising on. Like, I could see a few of them. I couldn't see all of them, which was weird. I assume our peers over at buzz pro will improve that. Uh, but advertising is gonna take, if you're trying to grow your show, advertising your show, it's gonna take a lot of time and a lot of money. It's just how advertising works. It doesn't happen instantly. It's not month one. That's why you keep hearing mattress ads on Maron's show and other popular shows over and over and over again, because that's how it works. And I don't think a lot of indie podcasters are gonna wanna throw 1200 bucks a year at bus sprout ads to grow their show cuz 1200 bucks a year, they could do probably more with other marketing assets or CR uh, content creation, video, stuff like that. Yeah. And I try to have a lot of,
Speaker 1 00:13:46 Yeah. I mean like I, and I try to have a lot of compassion with, with newbies, cuz again, I think, I think audio's given me so much in my life. I, I wanna share that with people, but I also, I also want people to be smart about it.
Speaker 0 00:13:58 It's it's gotta be multiple things. Right. And speaking of the story, we talk about this with Adam Curry as well is at least in my opinion is, you know, he is all about value for value and getting paid in, uh, Bitcoin, also known as Satoshis in, in their context and which is fine. Like he's, that's what he's all about. I'm all about do all of them. <laugh> like, because as a starving artist, I I'm gonna just throw out all of these options and someone out there pick one to give me something in order to continue to create this content, nothing wrong with the buzz brow stuff, 24 podcast, 5,000 downloads, uh, are the needle. Didn't move what that translates to on the other side. And I'm gonna bring this up again is hopefully not coming off as like bashing our, our peers at, at buzz sprout.
Speaker 0 00:14:41 But when people think about like, which route do I go, do I go and sell one-on-one brand deals, which is the arguably the hardest thing to do because you have to find the brand, you have, have to sell to the brand and you have to be comfortable doing all that. Or you go the easy route, which are ads, but also the lowest form of, uh, of return, right? Because you just go into a network and please God pay me the $28 per CPM, uh, thousand downloads. And in the case of buzz route, we actually had a customer email us the support desk the other day. And it, it came to me, they were asking about ads and they were mistaken. I gotta love the novice podcaster. They said, Hey, at bus route, I can make $1 and 14 cents per download. Nope. <laugh> because if that were the case, I'd be rich.
Speaker 0 00:15:29 <laugh> uh, it's not it's uh, zero it's 0.014. Uh, so, uh, a penny and almost a half that you get, uh, uh, per download and that's once you hit the threshold of a thousand. So, uh, once you get a thousand, you can get that payout $14, right? For a thousand downloads, a lot of us work really hard to get to a thousand downloads. And this is where I look at subscription podcasts as the winner, because if you have a thousand downloads, chances are, there's a hundred people there that might pay you a buck a month. Even if that, like, if that's the lowest form you want to go, chances are that might be even in 50 people who would pay you a buck a month is still gonna outperform the $14 per thousand. You know, that you'll get from, from ad networks or at least bus sprouts ad network. And, and largely all the other ones are, um, around the same thing, 14 to $28. If, if you have the right advertiser buying your in inventory. So, I mean, this is just me. I just see subscription podcasts as the advantage, but I also say do all the things to make yourself money because ain't nobody helping you. We'll try. We're trying to help you. <laugh> uh, but you know, none of these ad networks or, or big platforms like a pod chase or like an ACAS really gonna help.
Speaker 1 00:16:53 I'm excited to share that Adam Curry conversation with, with people. Because again, I think he has a, he has a pretty practical, uh, and, and simple way of just kind of leaning into your audience for support. And you might actually find that yeah, people actually are willing to support your show. And the only reason they haven't is because they haven't been asked
Speaker 0 00:17:14 Mm-hmm, <affirmative> a hundred percent, let's pump our chest a little bit here. Not that we take any claim. Uh <laugh> you know, to this, um, to this victory, uh, there's a podcast hosted here at Casto called the masala podcast recently came in third place at the British podcast awards for best show. I getting that correct? Yeah. Nominated in 2020 and 20 21, 1 this year hosts at Casto, uh, we were thrilled. You reached out and hopefully getting them on the, the, um, on the audience podcast, right?
Speaker 1 00:17:51 Yeah. That's something to kind of, I won't say mark your calendars for it, but keep yours to the ground. Cause we're gonna have, we're gonna have a conversation, um, with that host and I, and apologies in advance if I don't, uh, say the name exactly correctly, but send JTA Pali is the host of that show. Uh, it, it's a pretty neat concept. It's a feminist podcast, uh, based in south Asia. And the premise of it is that they just discuss topics that are, that are taboo, everything from sexuality to body, shaming, mental health, sexual harassment, all that stuff. You have stuff people in particular women deal with and, and every walk of life. That's one of the great things about this medium is that, you know, you have, you have people who are able to kind of knock down walls like that things that maybe in a more mainstream media platform, they wouldn't be able to discuss, you know, she, she does that. So yeah, not, yeah. Again, no one at cast's had anything to do with her winning that award. It was all her and her team. But, um, it, it is great to be able to have some small role in providing that platform, uh, for, for somebody to, to make something all awesome.
Speaker 0 00:19:05 Yeah. I mean, and you know, me as, as the lead PR team for, for Casto, I always love to, uh, again, look around at the peer at our peers and say, Hey, we have an award-winning show hosted here. I didn't see, uh, some of my, uh, fellow podcast hosts. This is all in fun. Right. But, uh, I didn't see them on the pod news list, uh, like the real big, uh, podcast host that are out there, anchor being one of them, hilariously, uh, a cast again, uh, lives in some of these real large, uh, you know, podcast hosting companies. And then the ones that we kind of rub shoulders with, Hey man, we're out there, we're out there with our award winning, uh, podcast, and we're gonna get them on the audience podcast, which will be really cool. So just a fun moment for everyone.
Speaker 0 00:19:50 Uh, congrats to the Messala podcast. Last article sort of wrapping up here, digital audio takes up an increasing share of us and digital media time. We'll link that up. Uh, insider intelligence.com has a piece about rising podcast, listenership draws, of course, advertising dollars. Uh, I'm gonna read this quote within digital audio podcast. Listening remains the standout sub-category in terms of growth, digital audio includes music, digital radio. I wanna come back to that audiobook seminars and even a new format called audio mentors, audio mentors, but podcast continued to be the hottest item us adults spent with pod, uh, us adults, us adult time, us adult time spent with podcasts will expand by 15% this year reaching just over 23 minutes per day, that amounts to 23.1% of the total total digital audio time. Five years ago, podcast only accounted for 9.1% of digital audio time. It's not fair that dig digital radio. What is it? Just streamed radio. <laugh> like, get that outta here. Like it's just still legacy radio. The interesting thing for me was that definition of digital audio versus traditional radio, um, that is streamed online. This stuff is, is really interesting seminars. I don't even know where one goes to find a collection like as a consu, like if I said, boy, I'd really love to listen to seminars today. <laugh> like, where do I go?
Speaker 1 00:21:20 Is it, I mean, is it being released like via RSS, right? I mean, I technically that's technically that's technically a podcast if it is. I, I, I mean, I've never, I've never listened to a seminar on, on Spotify before or, or anything like that seminars. You, you kind of have to get there on, on purpose. I never just like come across a seminar while I'm scrolling through, through Spotify. This is, this is new information to me.
Speaker 0 00:21:46 Uh, I just searched for audio. God, I gotta be careful live searching on, on Google for this stuff. Audio seminars, I found learn out.com, which looks like it hasn't been updated in since 1997. <laugh> uh, oh, right here, right there. 2009. I wasn't that far off <laugh> uh, the last time that was updated. So audio seminars, Hey, you know, we'll link this up, uh, in the show notes, the good news is everything's growing, uh, for podcast. Uh, there was some maybe indication that it was shrinking, uh, you know, a little bit, I guess maybe it depends on where you get your data at the end of the day. Maybe it's just all even <laugh>. So like it's still as, as popular as it was.
Speaker 1 00:22:25 Yeah. Everybody like kind of freaking out or maybe not freaking out, but what wasn't theory of little bit of concern last time we talked about this, this subject,
Speaker 0 00:22:35 Listen, I mean, there's days I wake up, I can't eat peanut butter and you know, then you can't eat peanut butter and then you can't eat jelly. And it's just like, what am I supposed to do here? Do I know the podcast growing? Yes, no people still publishing. And then I just pick up the mic and do it again in a tweet from Marco Armen. So this is, uh, Marco Armen on, uh, Dai. So dynamic ad insertion, if you don't know what dynamic ad insertion is, it's, uh, basically a way where you can either load up an ad from a network or put in your own, uh, audio file and then dynamically insert it into your podcast generally at the top of the show as a pre-roll or Midroll wherever you want for some podcast hosting platforms. But anyway, Marco, Armit the developer of overcast.
Speaker 0 00:23:20 One of the world's most popular, if not the most popular third party podcast app on iOS tweeted out feedback from reviews, uh, apple app store reviews from his own users. And I quote, I really like the way the app works, but lately they've been adding on advertising to all of my podcasts. I get, they have to make money, but, uh, have a real hatred for gambling ads. And now I've started to get those. We'll probably switch back to an app that does, uh, that doesn't, I guess the person was saying doesn't add in extra ads purely because of the gambling ads. And, uh, so he went on a little tweet tirade about this stuff. It's not him. This is, uh, this is on either the podcast host as in the terms of service, like your free podcast host might be able to play ads on your behalf and you have no idea.
Speaker 0 00:24:11 Like you could be a health and fitness channel and suddenly like Pringles is advertising on your podcast. Just quite the opposite of what you, you wanna reach <laugh>. Um, and any host or any creator that injects dynamic ads. It's not his app, but the average consumer thinks because there's such friction with poor ads that people start blaming overcast. Uh, for that, you know, on one hand I have podcasters coming to me, Stewart saying, give me the ads. I wanted to monetize my show with ads. And then I see consumers, I see audio consumers going, I hate ads. This is oil and water. <laugh> right. Again, find value value for value or subscription podcast, or do something else other than ads. The easy button sometimes is gonna cause a lot of headaches and Marco sort of illustrated that and is, and is Twitter storm another review? Their ads for other podcasts are so loud. I, I blew out my eardrum and had to visit the doctor. You better believe I'll be speaking with my lawyers as well. Don't download unless you want ear problems. <laugh> and the review continue
Speaker 1 00:25:18 To do that's. The other thing is like, you know, we're, we're talking third parties. I mean, on one hand, I don't wanna treat the listeners too delicately. I, I think people can handle, look, you're listening to a podcast for free. Okay. Like, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect creators to wanna somehow get some return on their investment. So if that means adds, okay, I understand it. I don't always agree with it, but I, but I get it. I'll never be critical of someone who's able to do that. But when, again, when you lean entirely on a third party ad platform to, you know, dynamically insert ads for you or, or whatever, you sometimes gotta be aware of, like, how does that affect the flow of your show? You know, I I've, I was reading some things about these white noise podcasts and these people who make shows that put people to sleep on purpose, but then dynamically there's, there's an ad in there and it wasn't mixed by anyone involved in the show. So you're gonna have different levels of volume and all that. So again, I mean the, the easy button, like you said, I mean, it comes with its drawbacks. Yeah. It's one reason why I'm not a huge fan of just kind of giving up control to, to a third party.
Speaker 0 00:26:33 We're not too far off from like your apple watch syncing with like an ad network where like, it knows you're asleep and then like the subliminal ad comes on. You don't even know you're getting that ad, but it's in your mind and you wake up, you're like, geez, I could go for those Pringles right now. <laugh> yeah, boy, why do I I'm so hungry.
Speaker 1 00:26:53 This is where maybe my personal bias starts to show a little bit too much, but I, I just, again, I get it as a practical application, you know, you need sometimes to generate ad revenue or, or, or whatever, but man, it's just like, as just people, as human beings who just live on this earth, it just feels like there's very little time that like, we don't have people trying to sell to us. And I don't wanna, I don't wanna exacerbate that problem through podcasting through what I do for a living. So sometimes the more gentle, Hey, you know, subscribe or, you know, pay for this subscription. Or if you can donate a little bit to help support this, sometimes that just aesthetically can, can be a little easier to stomach, but that's just a personal take.
Speaker 0 00:27:43 So that's your monthly wrapup of, uh, the podcast news, Matt Stewart. Like God, we gotta work on an outro Stewart. Maybe that's what we'll do. <laugh> some kind of jingle something to really, you know, end bookend this, uh, this news. Listen, all you have to do email us. hello@casto.com. We want to hear from you. If you wanna send us a voicemail, uh, send it in a Dropbox. Uh, I don't have any fancy website set up for it yet. If you have a just question, you wanna type it to us in good old fashioned email, uh, we'll drop your name and your podcast name and a link. In the next episode, we just wanna hear from you email us hello@casto.com. Say you haven't questioned for the audience podcast. Thanks for hanging out today. Stewart covering the news with me.
Speaker 1 00:28:26 Yeah, man. This was fun and, and good work. Uh, kind of rounding up all these, these links and, and all that. This is, this is good stuff. Very informative. I learned something new every time we do this, this is good. It's good for me too. <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:28:38 Uh, alright, everybody, we'll see you, uh, in a month.
