January 10, 2025 • 17 mins
We're getting a rare glimpse into what major podcasters make, focusing on the salary disclosures from Barstool Sports. This thought-provoking conversation explores the impact of transparency in podcast earnings. Then we tease a topic of discussion for our next episode—AI's role in podcasting and what jobs should have a human's touch?
Don't forget to let us know what you're most proud of accomplishing in 2024 for our next episode's Sound-Off segment!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin (00:00):
I can't believe you opened the last episo de with
the pump up music and do youknow how insane that sounds when
you're listening on 2X?
It sounded so crazy.
I was in my car.
The new episode of Buzzcastdrops, fire up my podcast app
and it just starts playing.
I'm like what happened with ourepisode?
(00:20):
Something is terribly wrong.
I had no id ea what what wascoming.
I had to slow it down to 1l or1x to figure it out.
Alban (00:28):
1.
0, just like a chat gpt model Iactually um, we got a fan mail
message from Devin from theKingdom and Amelia podcast.
Jordan (00:38):
He said what was going on the pre-show with the singing
along to the music.
I was like, oh, maybe we shouldhave like explained this, so
sometimes to get pumped up foran episode, kevin will play the
song from that.
Kevin (00:52):
I think it's stock on the roadcaster is that right,
that's right, yeah, yeah, thiscomes stock music track that
comes on the roadcaster and Iwill play it and I will make
sure jordan and Alban aresufficiently pumped up before we
start talking this.
Jordan (01:04):
This time, after I don't k now how many episodes, it
just finally made it into thefinal cut.
So you're welcome everyone, Allright.
Kevin (01:16):
So did you guys see this?
There's a little bit of podcastnews going around around
Barstool Sports and I don't knowthe name of the podcaster, but
she is a comedian and she wasworking with Barstool Sports and
she went on another podcast andshe didn't make any allegations
, as far as I can tell, in thecontext that I saw.
But she alluded to the factthat Barstool made a lot more
(01:38):
money on the podcast than shedid.
She didn't get paid a lot ofmoney to do the podcast.
And then Dave Portnoy, who nowis once again the owner of
Barstool Sports he started it,then he sold it and he bought it
back, so he again is the owner.
He decided to go out on thesocials and just put it all out
there and just say exactly whatshe got paid.
(01:58):
So he said we paid her a basesalary of I think we paid her a
base salary of, I think $175,000for the year for the content
and then she got like 70% of anyof the ad sales that they were
able to monetize through theirsocial channels around her
podcast content or somethinglike that.
And so she ended up makingabout $250,000 a year to do the
(02:19):
show and his argument was thatthat was really good money for
somebody who was like anup-and-comer.
Now that she's has somenotoriety behind her and she's
done the show and it's beensuccessful and she's got a
bigger fan base and stuff,obviously she can go out and
make more money.
But like they were taking a bigrisk by starting her out and,
you know, paying for the wholeproduction of the show and
setting up the tour and payingher salary and everything else.
(02:48):
Anyway, I thought it wasinteresting because a lot of
people in podcasting they'rejust not super transparent with
the numbers.
Like, even like the Joe Roganshow and the Spotify deal, we
still are only speculating aboutwhat we think the contract was.
Like nobody really knowsexactly what the number was.
Everyone says somewhere around$200 million, some people
reported 150, some peoplereported 300.
So I think everyone's just kindof said, well, it's probably
around 200, but we don't reallyknow for sure and you don't get
real numbers often in podcasting.
So I thought that wasinteresting.
It was one of the actual firsttimes in podcasting, at least in
(03:11):
recent years, where I'veactually heard hey, this is
exactly how much this person whowas on a really big podcast got
paid.
Alban (03:17):
Do we know how much Barstool made?
Now, did he say that part?
No, he did not.
So still be accurate that theymade a lot more than she did.
Jordan (03:33):
Well, maybe because so here's the thing is.
He said that she received 70%of the payout for ads played on
her podcast, which to me readsas they get a 30% cut.
Kevin (03:39):
Oh, wait, wait, wait.
Let me clarify that for you,because I went back and listened
again.
I don't think he was sayingthat she got 70% of the ads that
played on the podcast.
I think that was 100% them.
She only got paid for the adsthat they ran on the socials
associated with the podcast.
No, yeah, I think all the adrevenue for the podcast was
theirs.
Jordan (03:57):
Okay, so I thought it was 70% of the ad revenue from
her podcast.
I'm like that's actually reallyfair, because that's what you
get with like a marketing agency.
Um, but hearing that, perhapsthey kept it, yeah, I think they
did, I think.
Kevin (04:13):
I think that was probably again we were all speculating,
but this is just fun stuff tospeculate about people who make
a lot of money in podcasting.
But I think if you negotiateyou know a salary that's a very
low risk thing.
She was going to get paid$150,000, whether the show
bombed or went on to be a hugesuccess either way.
(04:34):
And so when you de-risk to thatlevel of like that's a great
salary for a year and anybodywould be super happy with that,
Even if the show goes nowhereand does nothing and they sell
no ads and they never make theirmoney back on it, she's
de-rested a lot.
So I'm sure they said, okay,well, if we're going to give
$150,000 as a salary, then we'regoing to get whatever we do in
ad sales, that's ours.
Now other stuff outside of thiswe can talk about splitting the
(04:56):
revenue, we can do a rev share,and I think that's what he was
talking about is we did havesome rev share stuff outside of
the podcast.
But the podcast itself soundsto me like they said we're going
to pay you upfront for it, soyou have no risk.
But if there's, if it turns outto be a big upside, that's all
ours, that's our price.
Alban (05:11):
Yeah, and that makes sense, because the company wins
when the show blows up, but thecompany is going to get crushed
when the show does poorly.
And during 2020, we saw so manyinteresting shows come out that
lots of people were working onand so lots of money was being
invested in them, even if theydidn't get a huge following.
(05:32):
So I just remember lots ofthese shows.
They popped up lots of agenciesand then lots of them started
getting shut down.
Two years ago ago, and Spotifybought a bunch and they're
shutting them down.
And it's because you spin up 10shows One of them is a hit and
pays for all 10, nine of themonly cost money.
You know, in the end they don'tmake something big, and so I
(05:55):
know the creators of the hitshow are kind of like all right,
well, we're not getting a greatdeal here anymore, which is
true but you are actually payingfor the company being able to
recoup the money from the ninethat didn't win out.
Obviously, if you're a solocreator or you're an indie
creator and you're somebody whodoes the whole show yourself and
(06:16):
you own all of it and you tookall the risk on your and you
were successful.
The reward of that is all theselike a hundred million dollar
plus deals that we saw back thenwere Rogan and smart lists and
a bunch of others sold thesereally big shows because they
had all the upside, but we allforget they had all the downside
too.
You could have made these showsfor a long time and been like,
(06:39):
okay, it didn't do anything.
The companies are excitedbecause they go oh, we don't
even have to worry about theduds, we only get the big winner
.
Yeah, We'll pay big money forthat.
Kevin (06:49):
Yeah, and I thought it was a pretty good deal that she
only had a one year agreementwith Barstool.
So the show ended up beingsuccessful and she's able to.
I think she ended up leavingand she's going independent now,
but if she wanted to, she couldhave renegotiated.
She could have said, okay, likethis year, we're going to do
$150,000 salary Plus, I'm goingto do, you know, 50% of whatever
(07:10):
you do on the ad side orwhatever, cause we know it's a
success, we know that you'vealready made your money back, we
know this is a winner.
So she has more leverage.
I think oftentimes, at least inshow business anyway, from what
I've heard, they want to lockyou into a longer term contract.
Upfront that.
So even if the show ends upbeing a huge success, you still
can't renegotiate for five yearsor something like that, or for
(07:31):
10 years or whatever.
You know.
When that big story with, likethe Friends cast, when they did
the Friends TV show, I think thefirst 10 seasons or something,
they had them, or maybe not 10,but a long amount of time they
couldn't renegotiate.
The show ended up blowing upand then all the actors were
sitting around waiting for theircontract to come up.
So they go back to renegotiate.
And that's when they did thebig thing where they said hey,
(07:52):
we're all going to go intogether, we're not going to go
negotiate our individual deals,we'll be stronger together.
And so they went in togetherand negotiated and I think they
got like a million dollars perepisode, each or something.
Jordan (08:04):
It was a huge deal at the time.
Alban (08:05):
Yeah, you see this a lot with music contracts, where the
record labels used to be like,hey, you might be up and coming
big band, why don't you signthis deal and we'll help you out
?
And they're like, oh cool.
And what they would end uphaving in the small print is
like this is a seven record deal.
This is an old band, but jarsof clay Do you remember that,
(08:27):
kevin?
Yeah, I'm sure jars of clay werelike the story of like the
worst deal that they got like aseven album deal and they, you
know, started taking off andthen they went oh wait, this
record label has us and we haveto do seven albums.
And then they cranked throughseven albums quickly to be like
we got to get out fromunderneath this, because you
(08:48):
negotiate that deal when you'renobody and you go I mean, who
cares, we're probably nevergoing to take off.
And then you're the one thattakes off and you kind of got
locked in so you can end upmaking 150 grand for a one-year
deal and then, if it takes off,you get to go independent.
That ends up sounding prettysweet to me.
Jordan (09:06):
Yeah, it doesn't sound bad.
Kevin (09:10):
The internet is not the place you want to go to for
sympathy when you you know shedidn't actually just make 150.
She made $250,000 in a year.
I don't think you're getting alot of internet sympathy in that
scenario.
But, to her credit, I don'tthink she was disparaging
Barstool as much as like Davetook it personally a little bit
Because I mean, he's the founder, so that's bound to happen.
(09:32):
But to be fair to her, I don'tthink she was trying to
disparage them.
She was just saying the showactually ended up being a lot
bigger than any of us dreamed itwould be and my deal wasn't
that great.
But I don't think she wascomplaining about it.
So I just want to be fair toboth sides, at least from stuff
that I saw about it.
Alban (09:47):
Yeah Well, I don't need to do market research, kevin, to
tell you that the averagepodcaster, or the median
podcaster, makes $0 from theirshow.
The median is negative money,that they're putting effort in
buying tools and stuff and inthe end they're getting
something else back.
Mostly it's not monetary.
Jordan (10:07):
Hobbies are expensive, so it's kind of whatever.
Kevin (10:11):
They are.
But that was a refreshing story, at least for me to hear,
because just a lot of newsaround podcasting recently
anyway, has been, I don't know,a little bit negative.
Like a lot of companies,especially companies that put
all their eggs in the ad basketand stuff have downsized, have
been letting people off, havegone under.
Is the audio world ofpodcasting?
It's not.
(10:31):
You know, maybe theexpectations were too big, but
it's.
It's not fulfilling whateverthose expectations were.
And we've been here all alongsaying like podcasting just
keeps getting better and we loveit and the hosting business is
great and more creators thanever are coming in and starting
new shows and everything is finefrom our perspective.
But mainstream news, wheneverthere's a story about podcasting
, usually it's been negative.
Anyway, it was encouraging forme to say, hey, this person just
(10:52):
started a podcast last yearBarstool started it for them.
It was a win, sounds like onboth sides.
The podcaster now is in abetter position to go on and
create new shows and do morecontent and have a great,
flourishing career.
That was a win for Barstool.
They're going to go out andcontinue to invest in the
podcasting space and create newshows.
So I think good news forpodcasting.
Jordan (11:09):
I like good news like that too.
It's been a rough year to beputting together outlines for
episodes about current topicsthat have like a positive spin.
It's been a struggle this year,so I always appreciate a good
story.
Alban (11:24):
A topic I want to talk about on our next buzzcast is
something around all these likeAI tools that keep coming out,
and I've got to formulate thismore, so it wasn't good for our
quick cast today, but I'mfeeling more and more like
there's all these AI tools andwhat they end up doing is
replacing the good part of thehuman in the podcasting.
(11:47):
It is not a tool.
Sometimes these tools come inlike what we tried to build with
co-host, which was we know thatwriting the description can be
kind of painful, or we know thatidentifying the chapter markers
if of painful, or we know thatidentifying the chapter markers
if you already edited it, that'snot like one of the critical
aspects of podcasting.
And so we're like oh, we canstep in and help.
But now I'm seeing some thatare like clone your voice, pick
(12:09):
out some new sources, and thosenew sources will then get turned
into what sounds like youtelling the news and will
publish that every day, and I'mlike okay, so all of the human
aspect is gone.
And the only thing that'sconnected is that you're like a
fake voice actor and I just wantto like think through what
parts of podcasting are reallyhuman and valuable, and what do
(12:32):
we want to keep, and what partsare we excited to offload to the
robots, you know, when they'reable to do all these jobs?
What parts do we want to keepfor ourselves, or do we give
podcasting up to the robots andwe go?
Oh yeah, there's nothingspecial here, ever to begin with
.
Jordan (12:47):
Yeah.
Kevin (12:48):
I hear you.
So, yeah, you want to put onyour futurist hat a little bit
and try to problem solve andproject, and I think that would
be a lot of fun, because thishappens a lot with emerging
technology.
Right, Let me explain what I'mthinking about here.
A technology comes out and itshows a lot of potential, but
all the use cases in thebeginning are kind of like the
worst actual implementation ofthat technology.
(13:10):
We don't know it yet becauseit's all too new, but over time
we start to figure out how thistechnology can actually solve
more realistic problems.
That seem obvious kind of inhindsight, but not at the
beginning.
At the beginning it's kind oflike oh well, you could do this
and it's like, but nobody reallywants that.
Or well, you can make it dothis, but nobody really wants
that.
And they're neat things andthey're novel things, but
they're not super useful things.
(13:31):
And I think we are seeing a lotof that, as AI is a very cool
and very exciting new technology.
But most of the use casesespecially around podcasting,
where it's being implementedright now, like we chipped away
the obvious ones right away,Like it can help you with coming
up with a description for yourshow and some show notes and
chapter markers and stuff likethat and now like, oh well, it
can actually create the wholepodcast for you.
(13:52):
Well, that's not great.
Now we're just trying to forceit in other places.
But that happens a lot and I'llthink through for the longer
discussion other examples ofthis in history, but I think
it's happened before.
Yeah, another one.
I think Ben Thompson justtalked about this.
I should go back and listen tothis episode, but he has a
Stratechery episode where he'stalking about the glasses, the
(14:15):
Google Glass, and MetaSolution.
Jordan (14:18):
The Ray-Bans right.
Kevin (14:19):
The Ray-Bans are out and, of course, apple's what do they
call it?
The Vision Pro and how all ofthis stuff is like.
He's like it's going to workout at some point, but no one's
quite nailed it yet and we have,like, all the hardware pieces
and stuff.
It was one of the things thatwas very genius about Steve
Jobs' insight into how and whento release the first version of
(14:40):
the iPhone.
It's not that smartphoneshadn't been around before.
It's not that touchscreens werea new thing.
It was coming together with allthis right technology and the
right use case in the right timeand delivering it in the right
package, and it's very rare thatsomebody has the skill set to
be able to do that really well,and Steve Jobs was one of those
unique individuals who seemed tobe able to do that a couple of
times throughout his career, hislife.
Alban (15:00):
Yeah, the thing that's like hitting me wrong with the
AI is that we keep getting somany of these pitches from
people that are like, oh, here'swhat you can do and I'm like
you're going to do to podcastingwhat we did to blog writing
like a year ago, which was wejust had a bunch of people who
were like, wait, I could spin upa blog and copy every other
(15:21):
blog post that was written andrewrite them using chat, gpt,
and now there's like aproliferation of junk, just a
bunch of AI junk, and there's nolike human in there trying to
guide it to be like I'm going towrite something even better,
I'm going to use AI to do allthe research and I'm going to
compile it into somethingbeautiful.
(15:41):
Instead, it's just like I'mgoing to pretend like I wrote
thousands and thousands of blogposts.
We've got to figure out whatpart of podcasting is like human
and good.
We want to be a part of it,even if we didn't have to be and
what parts are we excited tooffload so we can do better and
better work, and theopportunities to replace the
good parts are here.
(16:01):
So we got to make sure weunderstand which are the good
parts, which are the bad parts,and which parts are we happy to
give up, which we need to keep?
Jordan (16:09):
It's like saying that you enjoy painting but you
actually don't paint.
You just print out AI generatedpaintings.
I love painting.
It's just weird.
Alban (16:19):
I don't like painting the walls of my house.
I want to hire somebody to comein and paint the walls because
I've never enjoyed rolling walls.
But you know what I do enjoy?
It's like the little sittingdown with the family and like
we're doing a little painting.
Like little things and theydon't look great, but you
painted a little art piece.
That's fun.
Jordan (16:38):
Yeah, even if you're not creative, you can buy those
like paint by number kits, likeyeah, sure, maybe you're not the
best artist, but you can stillenjoy the process of painting so
we need a podcast by numbers,like okay, I have to land the
plane on this because it'ssupposed to be a quick cast and
we're coming up on like 18minutes so
Kevin (16:57):
I know jordan doesn't want to do a lot of editing, but
I think we have a great topicto discuss for the next show.
I'll do a little bit ofhomework so I come a little bit
more prepared.
I also want to point out I justdiscovered that Riverside Sorry
folks, but you've got a littlebug Every time I open the people
tab, my camera goes off.
If anybody from Riversidehappens to listen to the show,
please report that for me.
Jordan (17:14):
Oh, Alban just did.
Kevin (17:16):
Alban like.
Is there a?
Jordan (17:17):
bug.
Alban (17:19):
And then he does it, triggered it.
Jordan (17:21):
All right, and then we still need some submissions for
our sound off question from lastepisode what were you most
proud of in 2024?
Don't forget to tap the text,the show button, and let us know
what you're proud of.
So until next time, keeppodcasting.
I can't believe you opened the last episo de with
the pump up music and do youknow how insane that sounds when
you're listening on 2X?
It sounded so crazy.
I was in my car.
The new episode of Buzzcastdrops, fire up my podcast app
and it just starts playing.
I'm like what happened with ourepisode?
(00:20):
Something is terribly wrong.
I had no id ea what what wascoming.
I had to slow it down to 1l or1x to figure it out.
Alban (00:28):
1.
0, just like a chat gpt model Iactually um, we got a fan mail
message from Devin from theKingdom and Amelia podcast.
Jordan (00:38):
He said what was going on the pre-show with the singing
along to the music.
I was like, oh, maybe we shouldhave like explained this, so
sometimes to get pumped up foran episode, kevin will play the
song from that.
Kevin (00:52):
I think it's stock on the roadcaster is that right,
that's right, yeah, yeah, thiscomes stock music track that
comes on the roadcaster and Iwill play it and I will make
sure jordan and Alban aresufficiently pumped up before we
start talking this.
Jordan (01:04):
This time, after I don't k now how many episodes, it
just finally made it into thefinal cut.
So you're welcome everyone, Allright.
Kevin (01:16):
So did you guys see this?
There's a little bit of podcastnews going around around
Barstool Sports and I don't knowthe name of the podcaster, but
she is a comedian and she wasworking with Barstool Sports and
she went on another podcast andshe didn't make any allegations
, as far as I can tell, in thecontext that I saw.
But she alluded to the factthat Barstool made a lot more
(01:38):
money on the podcast than shedid.
She didn't get paid a lot ofmoney to do the podcast.
And then Dave Portnoy, who nowis once again the owner of
Barstool Sports he started it,then he sold it and he bought it
back, so he again is the owner.
He decided to go out on thesocials and just put it all out
there and just say exactly whatshe got paid.
(01:58):
So he said we paid her a basesalary of I think we paid her a
base salary of, I think $175,000for the year for the content
and then she got like 70% of anyof the ad sales that they were
able to monetize through theirsocial channels around her
podcast content or somethinglike that.
And so she ended up makingabout $250,000 a year to do the
(02:19):
show and his argument was thatthat was really good money for
somebody who was like anup-and-comer.
Now that she's has somenotoriety behind her and she's
done the show and it's beensuccessful and she's got a
bigger fan base and stuff,obviously she can go out and
make more money.
But like they were taking a bigrisk by starting her out and,
you know, paying for the wholeproduction of the show and
setting up the tour and payingher salary and everything else.
(02:48):
Anyway, I thought it wasinteresting because a lot of
people in podcasting they'rejust not super transparent with
the numbers.
Like, even like the Joe Roganshow and the Spotify deal, we
still are only speculating aboutwhat we think the contract was.
Like nobody really knowsexactly what the number was.
Everyone says somewhere around$200 million, some people
reported 150, some peoplereported 300.
So I think everyone's just kindof said, well, it's probably
around 200, but we don't reallyknow for sure and you don't get
real numbers often in podcasting.
So I thought that wasinteresting.
It was one of the actual firsttimes in podcasting, at least in
(03:11):
recent years, where I'veactually heard hey, this is
exactly how much this person whowas on a really big podcast got
paid.
Alban (03:17):
Do we know how much Barstool made?
Now, did he say that part?
No, he did not.
So still be accurate that theymade a lot more than she did.
Jordan (03:33):
Well, maybe because so here's the thing is.
He said that she received 70%of the payout for ads played on
her podcast, which to me readsas they get a 30% cut.
Kevin (03:39):
Oh, wait, wait, wait.
Let me clarify that for you,because I went back and listened
again.
I don't think he was sayingthat she got 70% of the ads that
played on the podcast.
I think that was 100% them.
She only got paid for the adsthat they ran on the socials
associated with the podcast.
No, yeah, I think all the adrevenue for the podcast was
theirs.
Jordan (03:57):
Okay, so I thought it was 70% of the ad revenue from
her podcast.
I'm like that's actually reallyfair, because that's what you
get with like a marketing agency.
Um, but hearing that, perhapsthey kept it, yeah, I think they
did, I think.
Kevin (04:13):
I think that was probably again we were all speculating,
but this is just fun stuff tospeculate about people who make
a lot of money in podcasting.
But I think if you negotiateyou know a salary that's a very
low risk thing.
She was going to get paid$150,000, whether the show
bombed or went on to be a hugesuccess either way.
(04:34):
And so when you de-risk to thatlevel of like that's a great
salary for a year and anybodywould be super happy with that,
Even if the show goes nowhereand does nothing and they sell
no ads and they never make theirmoney back on it, she's
de-rested a lot.
So I'm sure they said, okay,well, if we're going to give
$150,000 as a salary, then we'regoing to get whatever we do in
ad sales, that's ours.
Now other stuff outside of thiswe can talk about splitting the
(04:56):
revenue, we can do a rev share,and I think that's what he was
talking about is we did havesome rev share stuff outside of
the podcast.
But the podcast itself soundsto me like they said we're going
to pay you upfront for it, soyou have no risk.
But if there's, if it turns outto be a big upside, that's all
ours, that's our price.
Alban (05:11):
Yeah, and that makes sense, because the company wins
when the show blows up, but thecompany is going to get crushed
when the show does poorly.
And during 2020, we saw so manyinteresting shows come out that
lots of people were working onand so lots of money was being
invested in them, even if theydidn't get a huge following.
(05:32):
So I just remember lots ofthese shows.
They popped up lots of agenciesand then lots of them started
getting shut down.
Two years ago ago, and Spotifybought a bunch and they're
shutting them down.
And it's because you spin up 10shows One of them is a hit and
pays for all 10, nine of themonly cost money.
You know, in the end they don'tmake something big, and so I
(05:55):
know the creators of the hitshow are kind of like all right,
well, we're not getting a greatdeal here anymore, which is
true but you are actually payingfor the company being able to
recoup the money from the ninethat didn't win out.
Obviously, if you're a solocreator or you're an indie
creator and you're somebody whodoes the whole show yourself and
(06:16):
you own all of it and you tookall the risk on your and you
were successful.
The reward of that is all theselike a hundred million dollar
plus deals that we saw back thenwere Rogan and smart lists and
a bunch of others sold thesereally big shows because they
had all the upside, but we allforget they had all the downside
too.
You could have made these showsfor a long time and been like,
(06:39):
okay, it didn't do anything.
The companies are excitedbecause they go oh, we don't
even have to worry about theduds, we only get the big winner
.
Yeah, We'll pay big money forthat.
Kevin (06:49):
Yeah, and I thought it was a pretty good deal that she
only had a one year agreementwith Barstool.
So the show ended up beingsuccessful and she's able to.
I think she ended up leavingand she's going independent now,
but if she wanted to, she couldhave renegotiated.
She could have said, okay, likethis year, we're going to do
$150,000 salary Plus, I'm goingto do, you know, 50% of whatever
(07:10):
you do on the ad side orwhatever, cause we know it's a
success, we know that you'vealready made your money back, we
know this is a winner.
So she has more leverage.
I think oftentimes, at least inshow business anyway, from what
I've heard, they want to lockyou into a longer term contract.
Upfront that.
So even if the show ends upbeing a huge success, you still
can't renegotiate for five yearsor something like that, or for
(07:31):
10 years or whatever.
You know.
When that big story with, likethe Friends cast, when they did
the Friends TV show, I think thefirst 10 seasons or something,
they had them, or maybe not 10,but a long amount of time they
couldn't renegotiate.
The show ended up blowing upand then all the actors were
sitting around waiting for theircontract to come up.
So they go back to renegotiate.
And that's when they did thebig thing where they said hey,
(07:52):
we're all going to go intogether, we're not going to go
negotiate our individual deals,we'll be stronger together.
And so they went in togetherand negotiated and I think they
got like a million dollars perepisode, each or something.
Jordan (08:04):
It was a huge deal at the time.
Alban (08:05):
Yeah, you see this a lot with music contracts, where the
record labels used to be like,hey, you might be up and coming
big band, why don't you signthis deal and we'll help you out
?
And they're like, oh cool.
And what they would end uphaving in the small print is
like this is a seven record deal.
This is an old band, but jarsof clay Do you remember that,
(08:27):
kevin?
Yeah, I'm sure jars of clay werelike the story of like the
worst deal that they got like aseven album deal and they, you
know, started taking off andthen they went oh wait, this
record label has us and we haveto do seven albums.
And then they cranked throughseven albums quickly to be like
we got to get out fromunderneath this, because you
(08:48):
negotiate that deal when you'renobody and you go I mean, who
cares, we're probably nevergoing to take off.
And then you're the one thattakes off and you kind of got
locked in so you can end upmaking 150 grand for a one-year
deal and then, if it takes off,you get to go independent.
That ends up sounding prettysweet to me.
Jordan (09:06):
Yeah, it doesn't sound bad.
Kevin (09:10):
The internet is not the place you want to go to for
sympathy when you you know shedidn't actually just make 150.
She made $250,000 in a year.
I don't think you're getting alot of internet sympathy in that
scenario.
But, to her credit, I don'tthink she was disparaging
Barstool as much as like Davetook it personally a little bit
Because I mean, he's the founder, so that's bound to happen.
(09:32):
But to be fair to her, I don'tthink she was trying to
disparage them.
She was just saying the showactually ended up being a lot
bigger than any of us dreamed itwould be and my deal wasn't
that great.
But I don't think she wascomplaining about it.
So I just want to be fair toboth sides, at least from stuff
that I saw about it.
Alban (09:47):
Yeah Well, I don't need to do market research, kevin, to
tell you that the averagepodcaster, or the median
podcaster, makes $0 from theirshow.
The median is negative money,that they're putting effort in
buying tools and stuff and inthe end they're getting
something else back.
Mostly it's not monetary.
Jordan (10:07):
Hobbies are expensive, so it's kind of whatever.
Kevin (10:11):
They are.
But that was a refreshing story, at least for me to hear,
because just a lot of newsaround podcasting recently
anyway, has been, I don't know,a little bit negative.
Like a lot of companies,especially companies that put
all their eggs in the ad basketand stuff have downsized, have
been letting people off, havegone under.
Is the audio world ofpodcasting?
It's not.
(10:31):
You know, maybe theexpectations were too big, but
it's.
It's not fulfilling whateverthose expectations were.
And we've been here all alongsaying like podcasting just
keeps getting better and we loveit and the hosting business is
great and more creators thanever are coming in and starting
new shows and everything is finefrom our perspective.
But mainstream news, wheneverthere's a story about podcasting
, usually it's been negative.
Anyway, it was encouraging forme to say, hey, this person just
(10:52):
started a podcast last yearBarstool started it for them.
It was a win, sounds like onboth sides.
The podcaster now is in abetter position to go on and
create new shows and do morecontent and have a great,
flourishing career.
That was a win for Barstool.
They're going to go out andcontinue to invest in the
podcasting space and create newshows.
So I think good news forpodcasting.
Jordan (11:09):
I like good news like that too.
It's been a rough year to beputting together outlines for
episodes about current topicsthat have like a positive spin.
It's been a struggle this year,so I always appreciate a good
story.
Alban (11:24):
A topic I want to talk about on our next buzzcast is
something around all these likeAI tools that keep coming out,
and I've got to formulate thismore, so it wasn't good for our
quick cast today, but I'mfeeling more and more like
there's all these AI tools andwhat they end up doing is
replacing the good part of thehuman in the podcasting.
(11:47):
It is not a tool.
Sometimes these tools come inlike what we tried to build with
co-host, which was we know thatwriting the description can be
kind of painful, or we know thatidentifying the chapter markers
if of painful, or we know thatidentifying the chapter markers
if you already edited it, that'snot like one of the critical
aspects of podcasting.
And so we're like oh, we canstep in and help.
But now I'm seeing some thatare like clone your voice, pick
(12:09):
out some new sources, and thosenew sources will then get turned
into what sounds like youtelling the news and will
publish that every day, and I'mlike okay, so all of the human
aspect is gone.
And the only thing that'sconnected is that you're like a
fake voice actor and I just wantto like think through what
parts of podcasting are reallyhuman and valuable, and what do
(12:32):
we want to keep, and what partsare we excited to offload to the
robots, you know, when they'reable to do all these jobs?
What parts do we want to keepfor ourselves, or do we give
podcasting up to the robots andwe go?
Oh yeah, there's nothingspecial here, ever to begin with
.
Jordan (12:47):
Yeah.
Kevin (12:48):
I hear you.
So, yeah, you want to put onyour futurist hat a little bit
and try to problem solve andproject, and I think that would
be a lot of fun, because thishappens a lot with emerging
technology.
Right, Let me explain what I'mthinking about here.
A technology comes out and itshows a lot of potential, but
all the use cases in thebeginning are kind of like the
worst actual implementation ofthat technology.
(13:10):
We don't know it yet becauseit's all too new, but over time
we start to figure out how thistechnology can actually solve
more realistic problems.
That seem obvious kind of inhindsight, but not at the
beginning.
At the beginning it's kind oflike oh well, you could do this
and it's like, but nobody reallywants that.
Or well, you can make it dothis, but nobody really wants
that.
And they're neat things andthey're novel things, but
they're not super useful things.
(13:31):
And I think we are seeing a lotof that, as AI is a very cool
and very exciting new technology.
But most of the use casesespecially around podcasting,
where it's being implementedright now, like we chipped away
the obvious ones right away,Like it can help you with coming
up with a description for yourshow and some show notes and
chapter markers and stuff likethat and now like, oh well, it
can actually create the wholepodcast for you.
(13:52):
Well, that's not great.
Now we're just trying to forceit in other places.
But that happens a lot and I'llthink through for the longer
discussion other examples ofthis in history, but I think
it's happened before.
Yeah, another one.
I think Ben Thompson justtalked about this.
I should go back and listen tothis episode, but he has a
Stratechery episode where he'stalking about the glasses, the
(14:15):
Google Glass, and MetaSolution.
Jordan (14:18):
The Ray-Bans right.
Kevin (14:19):
The Ray-Bans are out and, of course, apple's what do they
call it?
The Vision Pro and how all ofthis stuff is like.
He's like it's going to workout at some point, but no one's
quite nailed it yet and we have,like, all the hardware pieces
and stuff.
It was one of the things thatwas very genius about Steve
Jobs' insight into how and whento release the first version of
(14:40):
the iPhone.
It's not that smartphoneshadn't been around before.
It's not that touchscreens werea new thing.
It was coming together with allthis right technology and the
right use case in the right timeand delivering it in the right
package, and it's very rare thatsomebody has the skill set to
be able to do that really well,and Steve Jobs was one of those
unique individuals who seemed tobe able to do that a couple of
times throughout his career, hislife.
Alban (15:00):
Yeah, the thing that's like hitting me wrong with the
AI is that we keep getting somany of these pitches from
people that are like, oh, here'swhat you can do and I'm like
you're going to do to podcastingwhat we did to blog writing
like a year ago, which was wejust had a bunch of people who
were like, wait, I could spin upa blog and copy every other
(15:21):
blog post that was written andrewrite them using chat, gpt,
and now there's like aproliferation of junk, just a
bunch of AI junk, and there's nolike human in there trying to
guide it to be like I'm going towrite something even better,
I'm going to use AI to do allthe research and I'm going to
compile it into somethingbeautiful.
(15:41):
Instead, it's just like I'mgoing to pretend like I wrote
thousands and thousands of blogposts.
We've got to figure out whatpart of podcasting is like human
and good.
We want to be a part of it,even if we didn't have to be and
what parts are we excited tooffload so we can do better and
better work, and theopportunities to replace the
good parts are here.
(16:01):
So we got to make sure weunderstand which are the good
parts, which are the bad parts,and which parts are we happy to
give up, which we need to keep?
Jordan (16:09):
It's like saying that you enjoy painting but you
actually don't paint.
You just print out AI generatedpaintings.
I love painting.
It's just weird.
Alban (16:19):
I don't like painting the walls of my house.
I want to hire somebody to comein and paint the walls because
I've never enjoyed rolling walls.
But you know what I do enjoy?
It's like the little sittingdown with the family and like
we're doing a little painting.
Like little things and theydon't look great, but you
painted a little art piece.
That's fun.
Jordan (16:38):
Yeah, even if you're not creative, you can buy those
like paint by number kits, likeyeah, sure, maybe you're not the
best artist, but you can stillenjoy the process of painting so
we need a podcast by numbers,like okay, I have to land the
plane on this because it'ssupposed to be a quick cast and
we're coming up on like 18minutes so
Kevin (16:57):
I know jordan doesn't want to do a lot of editing, but
I think we have a great topicto discuss for the next show.
I'll do a little bit ofhomework so I come a little bit
more prepared.
I also want to point out I justdiscovered that Riverside Sorry
folks, but you've got a littlebug Every time I open the people
tab, my camera goes off.
If anybody from Riversidehappens to listen to the show,
please report that for me.
Jordan (17:14):
Oh, Alban just did.
Kevin (17:16):
Alban like.
Is there a?
Jordan (17:17):
bug.
Alban (17:19):
And then he does it, triggered it.
Jordan (17:21):
All right, and then we still need some submissions for
our sound off question from lastepisode what were you most
proud of in 2024?
Don't forget to tap the text,the show button, and let us know
what you're proud of.
So until next time, keeppodcasting.
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