The Infinite Dial Insights & HLS Streaming Explained

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Todd and Rob in the afternoon.
Hey. Afternoon
delight.
With Todd and Rob.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. And here we are for another
new media show. Welcome, everyone. Rob, how are
you doing? I'm doing alright in this late
afternoon.

(00:21):
And if you're on the East Coast, we're
at 8PM now.
And we will be at 8PM every Wednesday
for, for some period of time here, Todd.
Oh, May 11.
May eleventh. Okay. Alright. Terrific.
Well, it's been quite an eventful week in
the podcasting space.
Well, in certain circles, in the in the

(00:42):
insider
circles, it's been eventful. Otherwise, it's, you know,
I I don't know if it's been that
eventful, but
It's well, yeah. On an external basis, it's
probably not that eventful. But inside the industry,
there's a lot of,
I guess, a angst and,

(01:02):
concerns about the direction. And it's really
coming out of some of the research that's
been coming out, and hope hopefully, we can
cover that a little bit today. Yeah. Absolutely.
We've got,
on the on tap today, we're gonna talk
about the infinite dial.
We're gonna talk a little bit about HLS.
Many of you are on what the hell
is HLS.

(01:23):
Right.
And, you know, and then whatever topics else
Rob has dug up in the, in the
dock here. But do you wanna start by
digging into the the infinite dial? Is that
where we wanna begin?
Yeah.
And do you wanna bring it up on
the screen or something? Or is that possible?
Yeah. Let me go full screen here with

(01:44):
this because it's
do we do that?
Let me go here. Let me get it
up at least, and then I can figure
out how to go full screen.
K. So let's see here.
There's no, like, play button, is there?
Alright. Well,

(02:06):
so
and, of course, the Infinite Dial has been
of course, they did this before podcasting started.
So it's it's been out twenty plus years,
I think. But the part that we wanna
look at is the is the podcasting angle.
And we don't need to go need to
go over the overview, but we'll say that

(02:28):
they,
they conduct a nationwide survey of 5,020,
12 and older,
thousand six for telephone surveys, and 4,014
were online surveys.
Survey offered in both English and Spanish and
data weighed to national 12 plus US population
figure. So
let's look at this first slide. This is

(02:50):
the one that
hasn't changed very much.
91%
of people have smartphones.
I think we all kinda know knew that.
It's not going up much, is it, anymore?
No. It's kind of kinda peaked.
And I know 262,000,000.
Yeah. Estimated, it says. Yeah. And I I

(03:11):
don't think you can see the screen,
Rob, so I apologize. No. I can't. I'm
yeah. I popped it up on my own
screen so I can see the deck. Is
it yeah. As long as you tell me
which slide you're on. So,
27%
on, smart watch ownership, 78,000,000.

(03:32):
Yeah. These numbers just incrementally
barely going up. Headphone ownership,
hundred and 70,000,000, which get to me seems
a little low. Seems like everyone has a
set of headphones.
I guess it's Bluetooth
enabled.
Seems like everyone has a smartphone, would have
one. Of course, smart TVs are now in

(03:52):
three quarters
of American homes, and I just bought a
brand new smart TV
for my apartment.
As I mentioned
here before we started the show, I
moved to a little bigger apartment, and the
bedroom did not have a TV. So,
went and bought a TV. But
smart speaker
is at a 1,000,000,

(04:13):
up 1%.
Audio listening through smart speakers
actually has
well, it's went up in the last month,
but down in the last week. Still very,
very small,
22%.
Mhmm.
So social media,

(04:36):
this should be interesting.
86
big jump. Let let let let's kinda summarize
what we just saw with the whole device
of stuff. And I think what we've really
seen here is kind of a
we've reached kind of a saturation point of
sorts or very close. Right? Yeah. For sure.
Of all of these
devices and platforms.

(04:56):
And
and, you know, where do we go from
here?
Is it just going to go up a
point or two now and then? And I
saw in a few of these that they
actually went down and then up by a
point over the last couple of years. But
I guess the smartphone or or the smart
TV ownership,

(05:16):
was the one that grew the most. It
went from 72%
to 75%. And I know all all three
of the TVs that I have in my
home are all smart TVs.
And if you don't have a smart TV,
it's really easy to just get get like
a
like a Roku stick or something like that.
Yeah. Instantly, it's a smart TV. Yeah.
And that's why it's to me, it's, you

(05:39):
you know, it's kind of just like headphones.
Everyone's probably got a stick now if they
have an Internet connection. So
social media usage,
that's the biggest jump, 86%
at 248,000,000.
And,
yeah, social media reached 86%

(05:59):
of
folks.
I I believe that completely.
But here's the breakdown, the big one, social
media brand awareness.
Facebook is still number one. Instagram.
Facebook at 94. Instagram at 91. TikTok at
90. Very, very high.
Snapchat,
which I

(06:21):
people still use Snapchat,
87%.
Twitter at
85.
Pinterest at 81.
LinkedIn, which is a big spam haven, 77%.
Yeah. I've seen,
some surveys point out that Snapchat's
actually bigger than, TikTok.

(06:43):
So
I think it depends on
the study. And then also, I think it's
interesting that,
86%
of Americans,
are using social media where where we saw
on the smartphone
adoption, it was 91%,
I guess. So there's a there's a percent
of
5% of Americans are not

(07:05):
using social media if they have a smartphone
is kinda what that tells me. So here's
interesting is,
true social, 39%
probably made up most of conservatives and then
blue sky at 23%
mostly made up
of liberals. I'm going to assume.
So kind of Well, I think that's a
reasonable assumption. Yeah. And it and it's an

(07:27):
interesting,
kind of
separation there in adoption. But I I also
noticed that the
the split around and and I believe this
is in the numbers too. The split around
x,
formerly Twitter,
is
still leans
I thought it leaned more

(07:48):
heavily towards the Democrats just by a couple
of points.
Is that in this later?
Or is it I believe so. Yeah. Yeah.
So we'll we'll get down to it. 85%
on x Twitter.
Mastodon seven percent.
You know, I'm one of those 7%
Mastodon.
Let's see your social media brand usage.

(08:11):
Currently use social media.
66 on Facebook,
48 on Instagram,
34 in TikTok.
So what's the real difference between social media
brand usage
and
brand? Oh, brand awareness.
That's not usage. It says social. It says

(08:33):
social being a being familiar with the the
name, I think. Social media brand usage.
That's in No. No. I'm
17. No. I'm talking about the one above
it that said social media brand awareness. Oh,
yeah. That was awareness. Yeah. Yeah. That's not
usage. Usage. Yeah. You're right. Right. Right.

(08:53):
So, really, if you look at,
the social media brand usage Much lower.
That's that's the more significant number there. Yeah.
Twitter's twenty two percent.
Facebook, 66.
LinkedIn, 29.
I find it hard to believe people are
using LinkedIn more than Twitter, but

(09:14):
I guess, you know, as much spam as
I get on
LinkedIn, that's probably the truth.
Blue Sky, five percent. True Social, three percent.
Mastodon, one percent.
Very low numbers.
Mhmm.
What's the next one here?
But what's different there is awareness doesn't match

(09:35):
with usage. Yeah. Yeah.
On those because Oh, I know.
Yeah. I know a lot of people on
Facebook that have never posted,
which is kind of weird.
They just kind of lurk. Yeah. You know,
they've been there for,
you know,
last post is, you know, 2023.

(09:56):
You know?
So some people are on there, but the
next one is on
the split, you know, shows decline and decline.
But if you look at
Facebook, they went from
from twenty twenty three from 61 to 66%.
There any big winners or losers yet? Twitter

(10:18):
dropped from 27 to 22.
They came a little back from 24.
Yeah. So
Yeah. They're back back to growing again. Yeah.
Yep. They were they're back to growing again.
So let's go into the next one here.
And it looks like Snapchat's about the same
size,
as ex Twitter. Yeah. I just is is

(10:41):
it mostly kids on Snapchat?
I think so.
Yeah. Or young adults?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
So
x Twitter usage by political affiliation.
Yeah. Here's a real breakdown.
And 23, 30 four percent were using it,
22%
in '25,

(11:01):
independence '20 '8, '20 '1,
republicans
'20 to '20 '5. So it was a
growth of republicans, drop of
Democrats, and independents drop. So
this kinda makes sense.
Well, the independents stayed the same from '24
to '25. They didn't as comparing '23.

(11:24):
And and the Democrats actually went up. Yeah.
Point to '24.
They came back. '25.
Yeah. Well,
incrementally.
Yeah. Incrementally. And then Pretty small. So yeah.
These are the deltas between

(11:44):
excuse me. Purely
Democrats and Republicans. Sixty nine sixty eight
is a blue line.
69 is the Democrats. So
for those of you listening,
x twenty two twenty five, of course, that's
blue sky. Oh, wow. Definitely 9%

(12:05):
Democrats, one % Republicans.
Drew Social, two %
Democrats, seven %
Republicans, probably the lurkers,
you know, that
are over there trying to see what's going
on but maybe not participating.
Yeah.
That's interesting. But if you look at

(12:26):
brand used most often by age,
I'm actually kinda shocked that,
actually not. If you look at,
above the 34,
20 three Facebook, 20 six Instagram, 26%
TikTok.
It's pretty evenly split. 1111%

(12:50):
Snapchat.
I'm looking on slide
21.
30 five 50 four.
So 50% I don't see a number. Okay.
Yes. Social
media brand used most often
by age. Oh yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. 50%
on
35 to 54 on Facebook.

(13:13):
20%. So basically Facebook as people get older,
Facebook dominates
and then the other services
shrink.
Yeah. But the
I oh, I guess
the 12 plus, it's still Oh, yeah. Still
the biggest platform. It's just the younger demo
that 12 to 34 is what it really

(13:34):
Yeah. I'm looking at I'm looking at the
delta between
Yeah. The age groups. So
I guess I'm not I'm guessing I'm not
surprised.
And then the Snapchat usage,
is pretty high between the ages of 12
and 34 too. I see. Yeah. 11%.

(13:54):
Then it drops dramatically 35 to 542%.
Fifty five plus one. I think I have
a Snapchat account, but I don't think I've
been out there. I do too. Been on
there in years. I haven't been on there
in a long time. Yeah.
Yeah. Though I was thinking I probably should,
but I don't I don't know if it's
in in the proper demo for me. It's
an interesting one. This talks about the next

(14:16):
slide talks about so should social media be
banned in The US for anyone 16?
Well, I I count me in on this,
12 plus be just because of the craziness
out there.
Maybe not 16, maybe 14, but 12 plus
48%

(14:37):
says, yes, it should
be banned for anyone 16.
Men are less inclined
to think it should be banned for 16
than women, 46 to 51.
And Republicans are much stronger, 58
to 45,
thinking it should be banned for anyone 16.

(15:01):
I I tell you, I I honestly think
things would go better in schools
if they didn't have
access to social media. I think this is
all mute point. It's a it's a question
that will never
they'll never ban.
No. They won't. They'll never I'm not even
sure why they're even asking the question. Yeah.
They'll never ban that. But again, almost half
Americans support banning social media for those 16.

(15:25):
So here's the part Yeah. I don't here's
the part we wanna look at the most.
I guess for that next session, it just
shows you that Snapchat is still relevant.
X
is grown some,
and there's definitely a split between
Republicans and Which one are you looking at?
Hanging out. I'm I've moved ahead. I I

(15:46):
just talked about the summary,
online audio.
Oh, okay. Yeah. I didn't know where where
you were. Well, I'm just was summarizing the
last section.
Oh, so monthly online audio listening
has grown to 79%
at 228,000,000.

(16:06):
That's a pretty good that's a 3% bump.
But that's not podcast listening? No. That's online
audio listening. That's that's streaming
and podcasting. It's anything. Any type of audio
listening.
Online audio listening to AMFM radio stations online
and or listening to streams audio content available

(16:27):
only
on the Internet.
Right. But they don't say
Yep. Where specifically is the growth
is the question. Well, I guess we'll find
out, hopefully. Yeah. We will.
Monthly online listening
by age group. Yeah. Look at that 12

(16:48):
to 34, 90 percent.
30 five to 34, 80 five, 80 seven.
What's interesting is the 55 group had a
huge jump by 11%.
Huge
jump.
They're shifting from from
traditional broadcast.

(17:08):
So that tells you
that
they're finally
maybe because they have to,
you know, they had to adapt is reason
why it's if they've jumped. I don't know
what's maybe they'll come up with a reasoning
why that segment has jumped.
Well, also, Todd, keep in mind that

(17:29):
the most popular
in the past,
age demo
for podcasts
were those that are in that middle demographic,
that 35 to 54
Yeah.
Is historically where the largest numbers of podcast
listeners have been. But here we are twenty
years later.
Yeah. So those people have maybe aged into,

(17:53):
that 55 plus. That's that's probably true. That's
probably driving it, but it's a big increase
year over
year. Online audio biggest. Yeah. Online audio now
reaches
79%
or 228,000,000
people listen monthly.
Let's go and switch that to weekly online
audio listening.

(18:13):
Again, 210,000,070
to 73.
Mhmm.
Yeah. Now let's talk about online audio brand
awareness.
Which listening platforms? Right. Spotify 87, Pandora 84.
Wow. That blows me away.
77

(18:34):
Apple Music.
Yeah. You never hear anything about Pandora. No.
Never. Amazon Music 77, YouTube Music 77.
Again, they're talking about brand awareness,
aware of online audio brands. They've been around
long enough people should be aware.
IHeart 76,
SoundCloud 43, NPR one 20 five, the Odyssey

(18:57):
16,
and TuneIn Radio 14.
So
interesting
decline.
Online audio brands listened to in the last
month, Spotify is again number 135%,
YouTube Music 28,
Pandora 17, Apple Music 16.

(19:18):
Yeah. I think it's interesting that the the
Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and iHeart
are all about the same.
Yeah. Only difference too is listening to last
month, iHeart is at 9%.
Yeah.
Let's break this out by
age groups,

(19:39):
and this is telling.
If we look at the age brackets,
twelve to thirty four, Spotify is at 47%.
But if you go to 55,
Spotify is at 17.
Whereas twelve to thirty four at 19%
on YouTube music and 55
20 three.

(19:59):
Wow. That's interesting. Yeah. So
and I think it's true.
Spotify to me has always trended really young.
There's a dividing line and when we talk
when I talk to my team,
everyone that is in that
twelve to thirty four bracket
are listen to Spotify for music.

(20:21):
Yeah. Always on Spotify. Yeah. And then everyone
that's older, they're kind of whatever.
You know,
if you're you know,
I listen to some Latin music once in
a while and if I want to listen
to Latin music, I go to Spotify
because I got a better playlist.
So but if I'm looking for
my music playlist, I use

(20:44):
Apple Music.
So I guess it depends on
on where or you know at least for
me it's based upon what genre of music
I want to listen to. So
Well, I think it's interesting.
I think the most interesting thing on here
that kinda surprises me is the

(21:06):
the consistent percentage of usage of YouTube music.
I'm a little I'm a little surprised at
this.
Even the 12 to 34 at 19%,
and the 34 to 40,
to 54
or the 35 to 54
is 22%,

(21:26):
and the 55 plus is actually
the top of
the chart. Do you think they get mixed
up and talking about YouTube?
Because
I No. I watch
I I every once in a while, I'll
get out of kick and there'll be some
u music on YouTube,
like a music video,

(21:47):
and it'll start showing up in my playlist.
So I wonder if people confuse.
I would find that I find that number
pretty shocking that
I know. That's why it really really jumped
out at me. I didn't think that the
YouTube
music platform would be that popular with the
55 plus. I just I didn't make that
connection.
I haven't used

(22:08):
the only reason I've opened YouTube music recently
is to look at a podcast listing.
That's the only reason.
Yeah. So
So I think you're right, Todd. I think
there is some brand confusion between
YouTube Music and YouTube. Yeah. I'm guessing.
And, you know, that's a hypothesis
here.
Alright. Keep clicking the wrong button.

(22:30):
Alright. Next slide.
Audiobook listening.
It's stayed flat.
2335Percent,
20 4, 30 8 Percent,
20 20 5 going down. Yeah.
Yeah. And and I know some people listen
to audiobooks, but I have never listened.

(22:50):
I I can't listen to an audiobook.
To me, it's,
I don't know. I I I I can't
yeah.
But again, I think some people love it
and but still,
it shows the percentage at about a 4,000,000.
Yeah. Alright. The section we've been waiting for,
podcasting.

(23:14):
Incrementally up. Yeah. 84 to 85. Rarity. Right?
So just you know Do you think, Todd,
do you do you think we're ever gonna
we're we're gonna get much above 85?
Well, if you think about that first slide
we saw was 91. Right?
Aware of podcasting. This is aware.
That's

(23:34):
wasn't that smartphone adoption?
At the beginning, it was at the beginning,
it was how about how many people listen
to
or aware Audio? Of audio. That was pretty
high. I'd have to go back to that
slide, but
but still, you know, it it so we
went from
79, 80 three, 80 four, 80 five. At

(23:55):
least it's not going backwards.
You know, that's Well, that's just a brand
familiarity.
Right. Right. Those that Right. Are have been
fairly recently talking about how, you know, like
it always is talked about.
It's time to rename the
Mhmm. The industry to Netcast or to

(24:17):
VODcast.
At least we haven't heard too much of
that recently. Thank goodness.
Well, I think, you know, I think this
this nails the
the coffin. Right?
That it's a dead it's a dead topic.
Yeah. Podcasting
I think the question is, does the term
podcast apply to video now? And I would
say that's probably a question that needs to

(24:38):
be asked. Yeah. I'll see if they get
into it here at all, but sounds profitable.
We'll probably get into that question more. And
also, Coleman Insights is gonna be doing something
at Podia's Movement
along with Steve Goldstein.
Ever listened to a podcast? This is a
big jump. 70%,
sixty seven to 70.

(24:59):
So we've seen
example '22, '60 twos, '20 '3, '60 '4,
'20 '4, '60 '7,
'20 '5, '70. And I just, you know,
I wonder if this, and I'm seeing the
remnants of the next slide. I'm just wondering
if
the reason they've said that is
the following

(25:20):
service most used often to listen to a
podcast.
This blows me away. I just
and this doesn't add up to a %.
YouTube, 33. Spotify, 26.
Apple Podcasts, 14.
Well, there's a bunch of other platforms that
people use. Right? Yeah. Where's the rest of

(25:41):
the list?
Pocket cash and
Yeah. But
service most often used.
I just I just don't you know, between
Spotify and Apple Podcasts, that just doesn't add
up
from anything we see. It just does not

(26:03):
add up.
The YouTube number is whatever the YouTube number
is, but
the Spotify's Apple podcast one has got me
so confused because
we just don't see that
that split. We still
of
between Apple and Spotify,

(26:23):
Apple still dominates.
Well, I think we're talking about two different
things here.
This this slide doesn't address the question of
how much is being consumed Yeah. That's true.
Of podcasts. Right? This is only
But
I mean I mean, a person could open
one of these apps once and be counted

(26:44):
in this.
And
and actually never
actually
clicked on something. Oh, it says percent it
says percent of US Weekly podcast listeners 13
plus use
each service most often for podcasts. So they
could have been, oh, could have been more
than one person answering this question because, oh,
I use YouTube and Spotify.

(27:06):
Yeah.
Oh. Right. Interesting.
Yeah. Ever consumed a podcast?
Total population.
Listen to podcast 70.
50 one watched the podcast. Podcast.
Well, that's a video.
Yeah. And then 73
consumed a podcast.
Well, I don't know. What's the difference there?

(27:30):
I I think that was a silly question
to ask. Consumed.
I think you need to have clear,
listened, and watched.
I don't think that there's a distinction by
saying consumed.
Do you?
That's a
combination.
So
seventy fifty one. Yeah. But

(27:52):
mathematically, that doesn't make any sense to me.
I think, you know, again, the perception of
the public that podcasting is anything with a
person with it holding a microphone
or have a microphone in front of them.
Does that mean 73%
have
consumed
a an audio Or video. And or a

(28:12):
video? Yeah. I think so.
That's my speculation here. I'd have to listen
to their their, you know, their their telecast
or whatever they did.
So I guess that number could match up
with some earlier data that they have around,
you know,
what percentage of the population is actually,

(28:34):
you know, listen to a podcast in the
last month or something like that. Yeah.
That's ever though. It's ever. Right. So here's
an interesting ever consumed a podcast.
So what they did is they brought that
number in
and it says 73 at 210,000,000,

(28:54):
but they have a 70%
reported
watching
but not listening.
Reported
watching but not listening. Oh, it was 3%.
That's where it is. Reported watching but not
listening.

(29:15):
Well, that's a little unclear there.
Is it
well,
is it 70%
Let me go let me go back to
the
so 73
consumed a podcast, but then this new number
is
3% reported watching

(29:35):
but not listening. How do you watch and
not listen?
Well, this is where the
where you have to be clear
in what you're asking someone.
Yeah. I don't either. The made a note
at the bottom, it says twenty
twenty twenty five listened to and or watched

(29:55):
a podcast.
Reported
watch. So I guess if you watch,
you are
listening. Well,
if you can start playing a video and
put the phone in your pocket
No. They they said the audio. They said
reported watching but not list. I I I

(30:16):
don't get it. I we're gonna have to
go back and listen to their they they're
definitely gonna have something specific to say about
this slide. I think we're gonna have to
go in and listen to the audio
of the actual
presentation,
understand what they did there. I'm assuming
So which one are you questioning or what's

(30:36):
your question?
Well, I'm assuming
so before
On
on what slide are you talking about? You
talking about I'm ever consumed a podcast. Yeah.
Okay. Okay.
Ever listened to or watched a podcast. So
70%
would be that number.
But

(30:57):
say they must have had some additional question
reported watching but not listening. Again, I I
don't get it. So let's go to the
next slide. There's some can definitely confusion there
on my part.
Yeah. And then it doesn't really match up
with well, I guess,
it does match up with the earlier slide
where we're at 73%.

(31:18):
But the question is if 51%
watched a podcast
in the prior bar
and 70%
listened,
so Okay. I don't understand where the Go
to the next slide.
Where's the delta there? It's it's not 3%.
Well, go to the next slide and you

(31:40):
may be able to be confused even more.
Listen to and watch a podcast, 48%.
Listen to
and watched a podcast. So that means you've
listened to and or watched.
Okay. Next slide. And it says ever listened
to a podcast but never watched.
Oh, only 22%

(32:01):
have only ever listened to a podcast
but not watched.
And then
27%
never listened to
or watched a podcast. Okay. So that's a
percentage
that have never listened to
or watched a podcast. 27%.

(32:22):
But here's again this 3% number. Ever watched
a podcast but never listened 3%.
So that's means that people are
watching
but not
listening.
That is so bizarre. I don't
who would do that? Is it
well,
there is a a phenomenon

(32:42):
around,
Closed captions.
Closed captions scenarios. Yeah.
But I I can't imagine that would be
such a big chunk of consumption here.
I mean, unless they're they're tracking
shorts or something like that.
I don't know of that many podcasts that
have captions on them, but on on the

(33:04):
video side Well, YouTube automatically includes it.
Yeah. That's true.
Yeah. And it does
and it is
on the shorts as well. Actually, sometimes there's
even competing captions.
So if we move to the if we
move to the next slide, percent listened to
or watched a podcast in the last month,

(33:27):
we'll 47 to 48. But again,
if we include where are you now? Oh,
monthly podcast consumption? Is that where you're at?
Yeah. Okay. Next. Yeah.
So there again, they split it.
Reported watch but not listen is 7%
of that total.

(33:47):
We're missing something here in this,
you know, 47 to 48
that
listen to or watch a podcast in the
last month.
And then I took took away from this
that there's,
there's just a slight increase in audio consumption
is what I I took away from this

(34:09):
1%, and then the rest of the growth
was the 48 to 55.
Yeah. I'm
And that was on the video. But again,
it said reported
watching but not listening is 7% of that
48 to 55.
They're
I hate to say, but their breakouts here

(34:31):
are not clear. Very confusing.
Alright. Let's let's move to the next one
here.
Podcasts achieves new heights. 55% of Americans now
consume podcast. Okay.
Let's go to the next one. Monthly podcast
consumption.

(34:52):
48%
listen,
37
watch, 55%
consumed.
So be say, basically, you've there are people
that have done audio and video.
Monthly podcast consumption
between men and women.
Again, they reported watch and not listen is
throwing a

(35:13):
a monkey wrench in this thing.
48 to 51, 40 five to 55. And
then if you if you include this
reported watching but not listening,
it's 48 to 57, which is a massive
jump for both 45 to 52.
I have to go back and listen to
the
study to fight figure out where this

(35:34):
little delta mark is.
Well, it also you know, that consumed a
podcast should be
a a listing of how many people
just listen to a podcast
as a breakout. And I don't think they're
being clear enough here on

(35:55):
what's going on here. I think what
what they need to have is a breakout
of how many people,
alternate between listening and watching a podcast and
how many people
listen to
a podcast and then also occasionally watch a
podcast. Yeah. My confusion is where they say
reported watching but not listening.

(36:17):
That not listening has got
me confused. This is where my confusion factor
is.
Well, that's
that's
I think they're assuming if you're watching, that's
not listening.
So I think is what that is. Okay.
Well
And that's that's not being clear either.
Yeah. I I watch and listen.

(36:40):
I know.
But then you have to classify that completely
different. Right?
Somehow you gotta separate the audio
the audio only consumption. Yeah. They should they
should have said that. The video only consumption.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway
So Anyway, we're we're growing one way or
the other.

(37:00):
Something is growing anyway. And it looks like
it's the it's the watching side is where
the growth is. It is. So next slide
is percent listen to or watch a podcast
the last month,
12 to 34.
Again, that split fifty eight sixty four actually
dropped
on that side. It went from 59 to
58. So that age group is watching more

(37:23):
than listening, and I think that makes sense.
They're 35 to 54 went from 55 was
stayed the same, 55, 50 five, and then
that age group is listening or watching more,
apparently.
And it
also looks like the younger generation, the 12
to 34 is listening less. Yeah. That's what

(37:44):
I said.
Yeah. And and then 55 plus went from
27 to 33. And if you include video,
38.
30 eight. Yeah. I guess we're just gonna
say include video because I think that's the
easiest way.
Monthly podcast consumption
Democrats is

(38:05):
45 to 46 up to 53, then fifty
fifty up to 56.
So Todd, I think it's it's funny.
You know, both of us have been looking
at these studies for Years. Many years now.
Many years now. I think this is the
first year I don't know if you saw
it last year or not where where they
felt the
the need to incorporate

(38:27):
political
sides
in in the survey.
Yeah.
And it may and I understand why they've
done that. Oh, I understand why too, but
it is a sign of the times. Right?
It's a sign of the
the cultural
shift that's happened
that,
I don't think is very positive. So I
think it's a

(38:49):
it's a pretty negative thing to focus on
in my opinion. But
Well, if you are looking for information on
what type of content to make, you know,
there's
I guess
everything
and this is my point. Everything is being
seen through the lens of politics now.
Yeah. And it's and it's and it's dividing
us.
So let's go into weekly that and everything.

(39:10):
Let's go into weekly podcast consumption.
Percent listened to or watched a podcast in
the last week
went from 34 to 35 if you include
video 40%,
which is a massive jump.
Yeah. Alright. Next slide.
Percent listened to watch a podcast in the
last week, listened to a podcast 35, watched

(39:32):
a podcast podcast 26,
consume a podcast 40. So,
basically, I think that 40 number is
did you I yes. I listened and I
watched.
I'm just gonna yeah. I'm just gonna assume
that.
So anyway I don't know why they I
don't know why they just don't say that.
Yeah. Because
It's an it's an audio term. It's Consumed

(39:54):
is a confusing term. Here's the reason why,
Rob. This is the infinite dial.
An
audio, you know, audio centric
report and, you know, we don't wanna talk
about we don't wanna call video video.
So maybe that's
why they will. They they focus pretty heavily

(40:15):
on on the video side here, but they
just call it watched. Nor could be watched.
So next slide is in car media.
This should be interesting.
Have automotive phone integration systems and have a
auto okay.
Question is,
do you have a system in your primary
vehicle that has phone integration?

(40:38):
Apple CarPlay
28,
Android Auto 19,
have either system 40. My car has both.
Android audio and Apple CarPlay.
My car doesn't have either one. That's right.
Yeah. But it does have Apple capability
in it. Yeah.
It's just not CarPlay. Right?

(40:59):
So 40% of vehicles now have phone integration.
I think we can understand that will continue
to grow.
Use automotive phone integration systems in vehicle. Apple
CarPlay 22. In other words, are you using
your phone
Android Auto 13%?
That's still pretty small numbers, isn't it, Todd?

(41:19):
Yeah. Yeah.
It's
it's it's surprising how long it's taken for.
Yeah. I would have thought it would have
grown faster.
Yeah.
It's Let's see here. This is this item
I I this this next one
audio sources currently used in car. Now if
you think about this now, if you if

(41:40):
you deduct
okay. So we go back to the previous
slide
or the previous couple slides where, you know,
AMFM. So let's okay. Let me go up
here. Let me go back.
So Apple CarPlay was '28 and 19.
Okay. So let's assume your vehicle has Apple
CarPlay or Android. So for no. Have either

(42:02):
system, 40%.
Now let's go to this slide here that
talks about
audio sources in car.
And if we if we take a look
at AMFM radio and we did and we
deduct
40%
from that 74.
So if you assume that you have a
car that is

(42:24):
Internet ready, Apple CarPlay, Android,
you're probably not gonna listen to
AMFM that much.
So
but they say
currently use audio source in primary car.
So they are using it. AMFM 74, online
audio 55,

(42:45):
podcast 31, SiriusXM
24,
CDs,
24%.
Really?
Apple CarPlay, 22,
m p three digital audio files, 14,
Android auto 13.
It doesn't say how much they're being used.

(43:08):
Well, let's see if they get into that.
Okay.
Audio sources audio sources currently used in cars.
And if we look at the comparison,
let's see. Oh, 18 to 34, of course.
5054%.
Thirty five to 54

(43:30):
is 78%.
H 55 and above is 84%
for AMFM radio.
Whereas podcast,
18 to 34 is 48.
30 five to 54 is 13%
is 55 plus.
I I I just I

(43:50):
I there's one station.
And when I'm in my vehicle, there's one
station that
There's a lot of older cars, Todd.
Yeah.
But I think that's that's what's going on
here.
Or cars that aren't
don't have that full capability, maybe. I don't

(44:13):
know. It just blows me away that AMFM
set high.
Observations.
Podcast consumption is as an all time high.
Audio Audio consumption for podcasts continue to grow,
but podcasts using video are attracting more podcast
consumers to the medium,
and online audio adoption is at an all
time high.

(44:33):
That's the that's the end. Let's look at
the next slide. Another observation.
Car audio is becoming increasingly digital.
Social media you see continue expand in strong
public support
for social media regulation are the
observations of this report.
But podcast consumption, of course, is at an

(44:54):
all time high.
But
is
this a again, I go back to this
AMFM thing,
and I look at look at the age
group,
18 to 34, which are my that's my
kids.
Yeah.
I've been in every one of their vehicles,
and they are not

(45:15):
they are not
listening to AM FM radio.
Yeah. It's almost the same
number. I mean, it's off by six percentage
points with,
that age group utilizing podcasts in the car
too. Yeah.
Because that far off from that. Yeah. Online
audio, 82%

(45:36):
of 18 to 34.
But that could be Spotify. I mean, there's
Could be. Yeah.
Could There's a lot of crossover between these
two things,
actually, between online audio and podcast.
And if you look at Sirius, my car
has Sirius. And, actually, I canceled Sirius
because it was just crazy money.
Uh-huh. They went in, like, $300

(45:56):
for a month or something like that. And
Wow. It was I mean, not for a
month. I mean, not for a month, for
a year.
And I thought, oh, you're you're insane. No
way.
So I canceled. And then with, like, ten
days, I said, I'll come back for, you
know, like, $70 a month or something like
that. And I and I said, okay. I'll
come back for $70. Not $70, but $70

(46:17):
a year.
And
I
I haven't listened to any Series XM since
I renewed, so it was kind of a
wasted
amount of money.
The
the light item
on here that always and it's been in
here for years, but always throws up a
red flag for me on the overall numbers.

(46:39):
It's the categorization of m p three digital
audio files. Yeah. Who does that?
Is that does that mean I'm playing m
p threes on my phone?
Yeah. Well From my own library?
I guess it could be.
Or am I carrying a USB stick out
to the card and sticking it in and
playing? I mean, who's

(46:59):
who and where
would that be classified
as a source for that?
Is it it's just personal collections? Is that
what that is?
Well, you know, there's been such a
you know, Apple really screwed the pooch on
this and, you know, in
in making the,

(47:22):
they wanted you to, you know, sync your
library
Mhmm. And then pay
to access your library or whatever happened years
ago. And I basically double barreled them. I'm
like, screw you. I still have my entire
collection. But I'll be honest with you.
I remember the last time I actually
queued up that library.

(47:45):
So they even converted me
because I've got Apple Music that is
I pay every month for
and it's a playlist.
You know, I guess if I wanted to
reduce it but they bundled everything so
they made Yeah. But they made it so
convenient to get music on demand.

(48:06):
That's what I say. Everything has shifted to
streaming. That's why I'm I'm surprised now. Granted,
there's a lot of people that, I guess,
over the years has
downloaded and purchased a bunch of m p
threes.
I I had 45,000
audio files
from all my albums that I had because
I digitized all my albums.

(48:27):
That was like a two year project.
Got
it. So you what platform do you play
those
from? No. I don't. They're just on a
hard drive.
So how would you play them into the
car? I don't know. I'd have to I
don't
know. Are people storing these up in

(48:49):
the up in, like, Google Cloud or something
like that? I doubt it.
And playing them off of their phones?
Again, I used to use.
It's been years since I actually played my
own. There's a lot of people doing it.
It's like, you know, for 18 to 34
group, it's 19%.
Well, I

(49:10):
either they're ripping MP3s
and I don't know how they're playing them.
It just doesn't make sense to me because
with all with Spotify and Apple Podcasts and
all these other things that are are Apple
Music
that are readily available.
Oh, Todd. Did you see did you see
the news that,
I guess Napster
is gonna come back?

(49:31):
Well, it's under a new name, not same
features for sure.
Oh, it's yeah. It's it's the same name,
but it's coming back as a different product.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Good luck with that. Purchase for what? $207,000,000
or something like that. So overall, podcasting is
good and video is growing. Is growing too,

(49:54):
which
I I guess isn't really news to us
too much.
No. But it's you know, I when when
the number numbers go negative though,
that's when to watch out.
Again, the people are still listening to content,
and this is what creators need to understand
is they're still here.
And we've had some other evidence recently that

(50:16):
the audio has been,
it is still doing very well
as opposed you know, video is still climbing,
but audio is still doing good.
Yeah. On
on on the monthly podcast consumption
percentage,
the breakdown between men and women,
I think may
be the sign of

(50:38):
where
where the growth is really coming from. It's
coming from the audio consumption is coming from
men.
The growth of audio consumption because
women, it's kind of plateaued.
I'm backing up here.
So,

(50:59):
men
audio consumption
went from 48%
in,
2024
to 51%
in 2025.
And if you include
if you include video, 57.
Right. Right.
And But audio is forty five forty five

(51:19):
with the ladies.
Right.
Well,
do you think that,
Rogan Brofractor
is part of that? I don't know.
Well, men have always been disproportionately
larger consumers of podcasts.

(51:39):
It's just that that
that lead has been kind of
or that that separation is
has been, you know, fairly significant in the
past. It's pretty narrow. It's
state about it. Go ahead.
Well, back in 2023,
the difference
in monthly consumption
was,

(52:00):
what, 7%.
Yeah. It's it's been hovering between and then
it narrowed in '24 to 3%.
It's it's hovered between, like,
historically, like 5% difference.
Five to 6%.
But now it's separated quite a bit. It's
it's only 45%

(52:21):
for women and it's
51 for And I think by US population,
there's more women than men.
Yeah. I think Which
which makes it even more disproportionately
off. Yeah.
Well, the reason is women live longer largely
because of men.
Yeah. You know, we Right. Nursing homes are

(52:41):
full of ladies, not full of guys.
So
My dad is in that same situation. He
understands quite clearly. I see it all the
time when I go see him. Yeah. When
you go there, what do you think the
what do you think the delta is, Rob,
that you see in a nursing home?
I I know when my grandparents were in
there, it was Jesus. It was like He's

(53:01):
in a yeah. He's not in a nursing
home, but he's in, you know, he's like
in a retirement assisted living. Yeah.
Kind of a
it's an independent living Yeah. Yeah. Thing for
seniors. But,
I mean, on just on his floor in
in his complex,
I I I think there's, like, maybe 20

(53:21):
apartment units or something like that. Yeah. I
think, like,
17 or 18 of them are women. Yeah.
And there's only a couple of guys in
the whole complex. Yeah. Because all the all
the men are dead
at that age.
Well, I mean, yeah. You could probably make
a fairly accurate generalization on that. Yeah. They

(53:42):
die
younger. Yeah. Right.
So
well,
it's
I guess that's not surprising on the men,
women split. But proportionately
and again, I don't know what the difference
is,

(54:03):
globally. I'm not I mean Yeah. The actual
population.
Right. Yeah. I'd like to know what what
these same numbers are on a on a
global scale, but it's hard to do survey
like that. Yeah. For sure.
Alright. Let's,
anyway, that's infinite dial. If you didn't already
attend their
webinar and,

(54:23):
of course, the infinite dial is done by,
Edison Research at edison research dot com.
So, where credit is credit is due.
Yeah. If you wanna go get the the
PDF file, it's, it's right off of their
website, so you should be able to download
it. That's what we were just showing on
the screen. So

(54:44):
yeah.
So
So,
Rob,
what do you what do you think my
little fancy snazzy background here?
Looks like I've got,
neon I think we,
accidentally
aligned in our
color selection.
Oh, yeah.
Chat g p the new chat g the
new chat g p t image generator is

(55:07):
fantastic.
It's definitely a lot better. It
it rock three is
outstanding too. I was able to bring back,
and colorize some old black and white pictures
of me playing
college basketball.
Yeah. I was I was so sick of
the DALL E three.
I don't know. I I haven't Oh, it's
horrible to work with. Oh, yeah. So I'm

(55:28):
wondering what the API is. So
I haven't run an API call since they
upgraded. I hope they updated everything, but
the API call to the image generation was
even
generations behind DALL E three. So
we'll see what they what they've done here.
But anyway,
yeah. Yeah. I have been playing around with
that. And

(55:49):
I'm I'm learning that you really have to
be
you have to use very specific language in
the prompt Yeah. To be able to have
it generate what you want. And and I
found myself
playing around with the,
prompt
quite a bit trying to use the right
words
and describe what I want. I I got

(56:09):
a pretty good
I can,
Yeah. Maybe I can
let me do let me show you something.
Because that that image behind you is really
good quality image. Yeah. So let me show
you what

(56:29):
let me share my screen on Zoom.
I don't know that I'll be able to
see it. Yeah. You should be able to
see it on Zoom. Hang on here.
Make sure I've got the right
yeah. So,
can you see the screen? Oh, man. I
just I just screwed it up for

(56:51):
the the watchers. Let me bring this yeah.
I totally checked it up. Let me
stop sharing screen here in
Zoom. Oh my god. Stop share. Bring the
camera back.
That wasn't good.
All I can say is the
I asked it to
as you talked a little bit about what

(57:12):
we're gonna talk about, and I said,
create a YouTube thumbnail for episode six twenty
three. We'll be covering HLS streaming and
the twenty twenty five infinite dial report.
And it created me
with perfect English.
One site says HLS streaming video. The other
site says the twenty twenty five infinite dial
with a circle with percentage marks and then

(57:35):
underneath episode six twenty three.
So
it created the absolute best
thumbnail art for YouTube that I've it's ever
created.
It it it looks like it was professionally
done not by
some of this cartoon stuff that we've been
dealing with.

(57:56):
Can you can you pull it up somehow?
What's the best way to do it?
Is it what happened was is I've got
the screen on the let me let me
see if I can bring screen over.
This
this is not let me let you see
stuff easy, Rob, with
OBS right now. So I don't think I

(58:18):
can.
Unless you go to newmediashow.com
on your website and look at the
image on
the top of the page.
Why is it letting me do that?
Okay. I can I can share my screen?

(58:39):
Yeah. If you wanna do that.
So
what am I specifically looking for here? Is
it Just just go to the note
show nume show Com and and look at
the top. Don't hit play on the YouTube
embed on the
Yeah. I won't.
Okay.

(59:03):
Okay.
See that in it it's not perfect.
It didn't do a nineteen twenty by ten
eighty but that was done by
Yeah.
That's much better than what what it was
before.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's interesting.

(59:24):
I've been waiting for
these image generators to have a have a,
a better understanding of what the,
what the needs are
of, of being a successful show on YouTube.
Right.
And what it, what it really
best practices, I guess, is where I'm going
around how to how to present

(59:46):
in a thumbnail.
Yeah. And and what I said that my
prompt was create a YouTube thumbnail for episode
six twenty three. We'll be covering HLS streaming
video and the twenty twenty five infinite dial
report. That's what it came up with.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's Oh, and I did tell it
to make it 16 by nine. Originally, I

(01:00:08):
didn't tell it 16 by nine. It created
a square. Yeah.
So So I said you You'd have to
tell it a widescreen
16 by Yeah. You did not create 16
by format. Please listen to the instructions. Well,
actually, I didn't give it the instructions. And
it duplicated the image exactly in 16 by
nine. And before, it wouldn't do that. It
would give you a whole new
image. So

(01:00:29):
Yeah. Yeah. And it actually,
used
a
straightforward font Yeah. That,
isn't like rounded
edges. And it spelled it right.
It looks good. It's much, much better.
So I think Yeah. From this instance, I'll
be playing around more with this now,
you know, to get better episode art too.

(01:00:51):
So
Yeah. Because I've
been I've been creating all the art for
this show,
for
YouTube and Canva.
Yeah. And I'm not artistically
inclined. So,
Yeah. So
this is yeah. If you haven't seen it,
this is what I created,

(01:01:12):
for
for this
this particular episode. Yeah.
Yeah. I try and keep the
the headlines here kind of broad, more broad
and
less specific to
but I think it it is kind of
an interesting contrast in,
in in strategies. I know

(01:01:34):
that most people will tell you is to
use as few words as possible. Yeah. But
they it's it's it's the clickbait stuff is
what it is.
Yeah. Right. So that's the
that's the artwork that that I used.
But I guess we're gonna hear some stuff
at podcast movement.
Coleman Insights is gonna do some stuff on

(01:01:54):
the state of video podcasting. And actually,
Jay has They actually published their findings. Oh,
they did the publish. Note that it was
a a new study because
I've got it in the outline here if
you scroll past the
the infinite dial. It's the the study that
the Coleman Insights did with

(01:02:15):
With Amplify Media. Yeah.
Right.
Talking about
Gen z leads towards
video is kind of their
their takeaway.
Yeah.
It says
and they kinda backed into this number too,
but they made
this claim that only ten percent

(01:02:35):
of Gen Z
podcast consumers
never consume video podcasts. So it's kind of
a backwards way of saying it. Yeah. Because
they can't actually say
technically,
my understanding of this, they can't actually say
that 90% of Gen z podcast consumers
consume video podcasts. So, you know, it's one

(01:02:57):
of those things that,
I don't think this is a little confusing.
I don't think this is everything because
Jay
was asking me a couple of questions because
they I won't go into it because I
don't know if it's been rude. They just
teased.
Yeah. They teased it. Or something? He asked
me a question,

(01:03:18):
because they had something interesting come out of
the results, and they were puzzled.
Yeah. So it said in the post here
that we're we're looking at here that they're
gonna present the whole Yeah.
Deck of sorts at the evolutions event on
April 3 from nine to 09:30AM.
So he he had asked me and I

(01:03:39):
don't wanna say what he asked me but,
they had one thing that came out of
it that they were they were just kind
of
surprised about, I guess. And
he says, hey. Can you look at your
data and
tell me what you see from a
they're not going to change their data but
he was just looking for validation

(01:04:02):
because they were kind of surprised
at something that came from the
from the study
and
I gave him that data and he said,
ah makes sense.
So
we can talk about Can you ask you
about
video or I can't I don't want to
blow it for them. So Okay. We can

(01:04:23):
talk about it after podcast movement,
when we have the whole presentation. But I
think there's gonna be a few surprises,
in the presentation
in in regards to video. I'll just say
that. Yeah. Because it does say here,
the study also shows forty one percent of

(01:04:44):
Gen z
podcast consumers
only
or mostly consume audio.
So forty one percent
of Gen z age group
Well, that's that's good that's good news.
Mostly consuming audio podcasts.
So that's good news.

(01:05:05):
I think Yeah. I think yeah. I think
audio is not going away. No. No. No.
I'm not saying it is, but I think
that we're we we are heading back to
our time. And this is where the
the,
kind of title of my thumbnail was kind
of pointing at is that
we're we're we're actually like we've talked about

(01:05:25):
many times on the show, we're kind of
a back to the future moment of sorts
is that
video is now coming into the space. And
I guess as an industry,
we have to decide, do we want to
embrace it? And if we do embrace it,
what does embracing it look like for us?
You know, and that's where this whole conversation

(01:05:45):
about,
you you know, if we're gonna compete, then
we need to compete. Right? If if YouTube
is is on the path to disrupting RSS,
which Spotify is definitely pointing to that,
then
what is the
competitive response that the podcasting space needs to

(01:06:06):
to do to,
you know,
embrace
continue embracing RSS,
which I think we all want.
So how do we do that as a
effort to compete against these big platforms?
So obviously there's, there's an interest in shutting
down the download

(01:06:26):
and, and let's be honest about Todd.
The reasons why the download exists
from the early days of podcasting,
that situation,
for all intents and purposes, doesn't really exist
anymore.
I think we've been
so, you know, I built a huge audience
with a radio show that I had for

(01:06:46):
many years, Todd, before podcasting that was built
on streaming.
And our
our justification
for download was because of
bandwidth
restriction.
Right? People would set their subscription to their
podcast. They would download their episodes overnight.
They would come down to their computer, and

(01:07:08):
then the software, whether it be Windows Media
player
or iTunes, would
grab that file and transfer it over to
the portable media player.
So, you know, that's what that's what podcasting
was when we started. So we needed a
download.
Mhmm. I don't know that we need the
download anymore. People are just really experiencing podcasts

(01:07:31):
as a stream anyway. Really. It's just
it's being and again, no one no one
knows no one knows the difference.
Right. And I think that's the argument that
some people make that, you know, well,
it's not gonna move the needle to to
change. But if we're thinking increasingly more about
how we compete and how we distribute video

(01:07:52):
in combination with audio,
How would we do that, Todd? And and
I I increasingly hear people say, well, offering
video as a download is doesn't make much
sense anymore.
Right?
Well So how would we deliver that? I
again, maybe there'll be some surprises with a
common insight study.

(01:08:14):
Yeah. Yeah. And amplify media.
I I I think what we
people don't know if they're downloading or if
they're it's the same if they click play
for this show.
They don't know. It's
Yeah. Right.
So at the end of the day, it's
an industry question. I mean, it's an industry
question.
It's not a

(01:08:35):
it's not really. And I think I, I
talked to James Kridlin about it a little
bit too. And, and, and I think Tom
Webster's also taken, taken this position that, you
know, podcasting two point zero project and what
we're doing with this
is very focused
on catering to the industry's needs. Right? You
know? No. It's it's it's wants wants more

(01:08:57):
metrics.
They wanna have all these things,
but It's not very little that's
user focused. That's that's bullshit, Rob.
Well, that's that's that's what I hear them
saying. Well, then they then they're not paying
benefits. They're not paying attention.
Everything we have done has been
primarily focused to help the listener.

(01:09:18):
But, but,
you have to get the app developers to
develop to employ it.
Yeah.
Yeah. So,
you know, you can you it's a chicken
and egg thing at this point.
We've added lots of features for listeners
with the understanding that the goal is to
keep them on a recommendations.

(01:09:39):
Yeah.
Cross app comments.
All this stuff has been designed
for the listener.
Listener focus. And, you know, again, the goal
is what there's for sure there's been a
few technical things. But, again,
transcripts for the listener.
Closed captions for the listener.

(01:10:00):
You know, these are things we've all done
in two point o for for the listener.
Right.
You know, my personal recommendations
for the listener.
I think we're Chapters for the listener.
Yeah. I
think what the thinking was around all that
was more focused on

(01:10:21):
discovery. Right? No. It's not about That's going
to be It wasn't about discovery. More done
by Robert, are you listening to the podcast
two point o podcast?
No. No. I'm I'm listening to everybody else
in the industry too. I did actually listen
to it. Yeah. But that's not the
that's not where the argument's coming from. It's
not coming from the podcasting two point o

(01:10:43):
podcast. Oh, I know. But people if obviously,
if people are saying we're not doing stuff
for the listeners, they're not paying attention to
what's really happening with podcasting
two point o.
The the key takeaway here. I'm not here
to argue argue that point. I'm just trying
to say that that that the discussion is
kinda split in the industry right now around

(01:11:03):
the path forward here. And
and I think what we're seeing is is
okay. We're we're we're in a situation where
we're
we've built this industry around pass through. Right?
So if you back up and you look
at what's the interests of many of these
big platforms has been is around

(01:11:26):
caching and Right. Redistribution.
Pandora wanted to do it. Spotify actually wanted
to cash all the episodes. We went through
the struggle with Facebook. We've been through the
struggle,
with many platforms over the years that wanted
to take control of the content. Yeah. Right?
And and make it make it Make it
theirs. And screw and screw the creator.

(01:11:47):
Right. They could monetize it. Okay.
As we move into a more video
focused
kind of world, I mean, it's not like
overtaking
podcasting, but it's as we saw just saw
in the numbers, it's incrementally starting to become
a thing. Right? We're starting to see more
people consuming

(01:12:07):
video that maybe is associated with podcasting that
maybe happened in the past. So if we're
gonna keep RSS,
what strategy can we take with RSS
that will put us in a competitive position
against
Spotify and and YouTube?
How can we take control of the content

(01:12:29):
back from them? Has to be the app
developers have to support us.
Right.
But that's part of the reason why I'm
talking about HLS.
But for but okay. So HLS doesn't doesn't
give these big platforms
your content.
It forces them to access it and link
to your HLS stream. They'll never do it.

(01:12:51):
Well,
they'll never do it because
everybody's
not going to push the issue.
We all push the issue with Spotify to
keep it a pass through. No. But but
again,
Spotify is not even taking
RSS
video feeds.
I know that. So And that's part of
the problem, Todd, because they're using a direct

(01:13:13):
upload path Yeah.
To disrupt the RSS feed. So you're saying
we remove
thing is Spotify is not gonna change.
YouTube
has adopted RSS. So you're saying
that and YouTube doesn't take video either, by
the way.
Well, see, that's that's where if we pull
the content back and say, well, our content's

(01:13:35):
gonna be HLS stream. If you wanna take
it, you have to take it on more
of a pass through relationship because it's an
HLS stream. Oh, that's a great that's a
great idea. Good luck.
Well, I know. But
what option do we have?
I mean,
if these big platforms keep pushing the way
that they're pushing,
I don't know that RSS YouTube is gonna

(01:13:56):
YouTube is gonna say no because
you can't guarantee
the listener experience that we can do. Yeah.
I don't know that yeah. I agree with
you. That's their excuse.
I don't think that we can do anything
about YouTube. Yeah. I think
YouTube is past the point of being able
to Yeah.
Strong-arm them. Right? They're just too big. They're

(01:14:17):
too powerful.
There's too much of it in entrenched interest
that exists of content creators in their platform.
Here's a little secret.
If you if you
have a YouTube embed
and you put it on your website
or you put a YouTube
HLS
excuse me. YouTube in a YouTube link

(01:14:39):
into the alter basically
it's the support that podcasting two point o
has for video.
All that happens there is that and this
is already happening on podcast apps, is they
play the HLS stream from YouTube.
So they they are able to get the
video
ironically from YouTube as an HLS stream.

(01:15:02):
So when you Into their player or embedded
on their website. Right. No. No. Not on
their website. In the app.
Oh oh I see in the podcast two
point o apps
they're actually able to play back YouTube videos
as an HLS stream so that's what YouTube
does when if you want become external

(01:15:24):
or put you a YouTube
video
in an app, you're getting an HLS stream
from YouTube. So they're doing it to us.
Yeah. And I think as we move also
into another era of,
private
communities that are
like, I was talking to the

(01:15:45):
the Uscreen folks. Are you
familiar with what you called? U what? Uscreen.
Uscreen dot com. I'm not familiar with him.
They're a content creator
kind of platform
to to create your own private community
and be able to sell
access to your content. There's a lot of

(01:16:06):
people that do this. Yeah. Yeah.
But if you think about it,
you might be able to
use an HLS stream to stream into those
platforms
if you have it centrally hosted. And this
is this gets back to another bigger issue
is,
and we're overseeing the beginning of it,

(01:16:27):
around people
building new podcast hosting platforms
that are
video podcast centric.
Right?
If you go to flightcast.com
Is it still served by our SaaS
feed? They are
they are not embracing that at this point.
Then they're not a bit then okay. So

(01:16:49):
they're just a a video platform.
Well, they've got direct API submissions into YouTube
and Spotify. All of us do.
No. They don't tell you not to Spotify.
They don't. Yeah. They do.
Well, then they're done.
Deal. They just got a deal Spotify asked
all of us to do that.
He he must

(01:17:10):
have acquiesced and done that.
Well, he's he's trying to build a video
podcast
syndication platform. Mhmm. Not a not a singularly
audio podcast.
Yeah. The problem is is if if you're
video only, then that works.
Yeah.
And so anyway, it's it's,

(01:17:32):
no matter what path we take here, it's
gonna be a challenge.
You know, trying to change the direction of
this industry to
to have a more compatible environment between audio
The conversations I'm hearing with content creators right
now is how do I take this back?
How do I take control?
It's not about

(01:17:52):
Well, that's that's entirely what my point is.
How do we take control of this back?
Because we're slowly losing it. We're I don't
I don't agree
with that at all. I think we have
complete control. It's up to the podcaster to
determine where they want their content.
Even right now. Well, that's certainly true. You
can choose not to be on Spotify. Yeah.

(01:18:14):
You can choose there's people that choose not
to be on Apple Podcasts.
So I think we're in complete control.
Yeah.
Yeah. Is it it's it's more about the
business
impact.
That's what it's really about is the is
the business impact. Yeah. Yeah. But it's also
I mean,

(01:18:34):
I hear a lot of people in the
industry talk about how metrics needs to be
improved too.
Yeah. So you know? You know, that I
mean, they see what's going on at at
at YouTube and they're
Todd Todd has Todd has a solution for
them. They just need to listen.

(01:18:55):
I've already proven I can get client side
data
for Chapters. Through chapters.
Yeah.
And
Yeah. Not we're but we're not gonna get
that data back from
Apple or Spotify.
They're not gonna they're not gonna support chapters.
So, again, it's all about third party apps.

(01:19:19):
And, you know, what do we do to
have that help the app ecosystems?
You know, again, I I think in the
end, what it's gonna boil down to is
communities. It's gonna boil down to if you're
a tech podcaster, you're gonna have to have
a tech site with your network. You're gonna
have to bring things back in.
I I don't think things are gonna change

(01:19:40):
for independent creators too. I don't think think
that ship has sailed.
So as an industry, we're just gonna sit
back
and
let let let the video side kind of
Okay. So it would be a death its
own growth trajectory that separate from It would

(01:20:00):
be a death sentence for me as a
podcast host
to say, okay, if you're gonna do video,
we're gonna only have it available as an
HLS stream.
And you can't submit this to
YouTube.
That would that that would be
a death sentence.
Why?
Because my that's what my customers want. I

(01:20:22):
have to do what my customers want.
Which is? Distribution everywhere.
Just audio?
Video too. Sending their video to YouTube through
API.
They they want all that.
Okay. But they're giving control of everything over
to YouTube, I guess. Yeah. So That's that's
probably gonna happen either way. Yeah. So it's,

(01:20:44):
you know, I can tell the I can
tell my customers. Oh, no. We don't support
submission to YouTube.
That and they would be like, okay. I'll
go over to Buzzsprout or go over to
wherever, Libsyn, wherever.
They do.
Well Buzzsprout doesn't support Vidya.
Right. Exactly.
Actually, I think there's only a handful of

(01:21:05):
hosts that do Podbean, Us, and Libsyn. I
know there's a few others.
Yeah.
But again, I, you know, I have to
do what I can do internally to basically
make
the product better.
I can't I I wish everyone would tell
Spotify and YouTube screw you. You can't have

(01:21:27):
our content.
I would love to see that happen. But
that's I don't think that's reality at this
point.
So what's the answer then to to I
mean, how is an industry can can we
respond
to what's going on? I you know, we
can't compete with the YouTube messaging. That's just
that ship has sailed.

(01:21:48):
Oh, no. I agree with that. I'm talking
about the rest of the industry, though. I
mean, if I I mean, how do we
keep RSS
from being disrupted?
RSS is not being disrupted. It's only being
disrupted by two players.
Yeah. The two biggest players. Yeah.
Everything else is status quo,
for better or for worse.

(01:22:10):
But you know, in my opinion,
it's again,
there's there's a if you go back
to the source of podcasting, if you go
back to
the medium,
everyone that's a creator has ultimate control of
where their content is going to be. If
you have an RSS feed, you make the

(01:22:30):
decision
where you want your content to be. And
that's the beauty of this whole thing that
still remains
is you have that control.
If you go away from RSS,
you lose that control completely,
because then other people are gonna adopt
proprietary systems and you're gonna have more walled

(01:22:52):
gardens.
And
if you can So how do we keep
RSS at the forefront
of audio and video?
Video is the challenge.
Audio, it still is. Oh, it is clearly.
I agree. Yeah. But but but video just
needs better support,
you know. And again, I'm

(01:23:12):
I'm not one to
you know, we support video but video is
not supported by
the apps. It goes again, it goes back
to the apps.
And and they have some reason that they're
not supporting video the way they the way
they should.
And this making a second class citizen, it
drives me crazy. But I can only preach

(01:23:35):
to the choir and say, please support video.
I can only tell Apple, please, but hiding
video.
That would help.
Yeah.
I mean, it is But that's just one
step of many.
Well, I mean, the podcasting two point o
project has pushed for the live lit tag
Sure.

(01:23:55):
And functionality
I think it's been that has a better
I think it's been support for video. I
think it's been very successful. We're live. The
podcasting two point o live piece, we're live
right now streaming.
So on audio and On audio? Yeah. Oh,
audio and video. Yeah. So Well, that's that's
all I'm talking about, Todd, here is just
trying to

(01:24:16):
do a do a better job of making
RSS
a utility for audio and video more. The
tools are there. We just need adoption.
You know Marco at overcast, he could support
all this stuff
as he well, there's some business reason he's
decided not to.

(01:24:39):
Pocket cast is starting to adopt some stuff
but they're looking at piece by piece that
you know, if you're an app developer, you
have a wholly different whole different perspective.
You could give two shits about the host.
Right.
They don't care.
They're not there to prop up the host.
But in the end,
they should be more worried about the host

(01:25:01):
and they should be their focus is listener
experience.
So they have to decide
what their listeners want and what they want
to adopt in the app.
Do we does a do they want to
surface
the
support to creator with a PayPal link? Does
that go against their

(01:25:24):
does that make their make them less money?
You know, so the app developers
are are between a rock and a hard
place too because
they sell an app or they try to
do a subscription.
They're trying to sustain
their business model is just as hard as
a hosting provider these days.
So this is where the,

(01:25:44):
you know, and again, there's wrinkles in this.
It's where the value for value thing comes
in where anytime someone was supporting this show,
we were supporting
the app that they're listening on.
So there was this quid pro pro,
you know, support mechanism.
But sadly, in order to support micro

(01:26:05):
micro donations, the only way you can do
that effectively without cost is
is on crypto. Now they're working on some
stuff with Stripe and other things but
still there is going to be a
a percentage
taken
by the the processors.
So
when you end up cutting the cutting the

(01:26:27):
money two or three ways then
the creator ends up getting screwed.
Yeah. No. That's certainly that's certainly And you
know,
HLS?
Yeah. Sure. Let's go for it. Rock and
roll.
Easy to turn on.
Easy.

(01:26:48):
I mean, it's not even a heavy lift.
I mean I mean, for a podcast host
to support it, what do they typically have
to build? Oh, there's some infrastructure you have
to build, but it's not
not that complicated.
So it sounds like we mostly have all

(01:27:08):
the pieces that we need to make make
this happen. But but from a video standpoint,
consumption wise on the apps, it's they don't
know if it's HLS or if it's coming
from a fixed media file.
Right
now, they don't know. A consumer the only
difference is
they have to have an internet connection if
they are not downloading the file.

(01:27:29):
So if they're consuming media on their app,
it's just like a YouTube experience if the
app
promotes video.
Todd, do you think most of
the most of the consumption apps right now,
would present a better viewing
experience with HLS versus
a download playback scenario of a video? Depends

(01:27:52):
on how good your connection is.
Right. Right. I mean It's purely I mean,
I guess yeah. Because HLS is adaptable.
So Right. To your connection speed. Right. And
it can deliver
a a variability in the Right. Video quality
too. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So it can downscale
and then upscale. And it's one of the

(01:28:14):
reasons why I put this show out in
seven twenty p in
as a in the RSS feed
because I don't want a file that's too
big. This show is about five
no. About 800 megs
in in size when I put it online.
And it's not it's not four k.

(01:28:34):
And it's not ten eighty p
at a higher like, okay. Example. The video
I would upload to YouTube
from this show would be about
14 gigs.
You know, a good high quality
ten eighty p. It depends on the playback
bit rate and and what your typical playback
Because

(01:28:55):
when you send it to YouTube, they convert
it and and serve it back as HLS.
So when I'm
my consideration is when I put a video
because
we're dealing with fixed media
and I know people have
depending on their Internet connection,
that's why
make and it's usually being on a small

(01:29:16):
device or Apple TV.
Actually, experience on Apple TV is impacted because
of the smaller size. The quality of the
video is not as good because I'm making
it for a small screen
specifically
and
so I have to there's a trade off

(01:29:36):
I make. If it was HLS,
I could put that bad boy up there
at real high res
and then depending on the person's connection.
Whereas on fixed media, the reason I do
it smaller is just because I do have
people that download the media. Now this show
You could publish a a four k version
Sure. In a very in a in a

(01:29:58):
variable bit rate, and it would downscale it
to playback Well, the HLS would take available
screen and bit rate. Yeah. The HLS would
take care of that. Yeah.
So so
what bit rate do you usually encode this
show into?
Let me load You happen to know? Let
me look at Premiere. Hang on.

(01:30:21):
I've made I see here at 07:20
p. There's probably no reason for you to
be much over, like, maybe four or five
megs. I think recently, I've been doing ten
eighty. Let me let me double check. I'll
load one of the projects here
to your file. Open project.
Oh, let me just I think the last

(01:30:42):
the the last couple that I've gotten from
you off of the website were seven twenties.
Let me see here.
Alright. Let me do,
Apple m
and,
wait a minute.
File export.
How come you're not oh, there it is.
Export.
Oh, I have the media. I just don't

(01:31:02):
wanna do an export.
So would you say that there's some savings
that can be had on the bandwidth on
the delivery by using HLS
versus
No. It's gonna be more expensive.
Let me
I'm talking about bandwidth.
Is is that what you're talking about?
I mean, it's only gonna deliver

(01:31:25):
I mean, is it because it it has
Just because the infrastructure cost is just because
the infrastructure cost is more, it's gonna be
more expensive.
Alright. So on this show,
h two sixty four twelve eighty by seven
twenty, 30 frames per second,
progressive.
The encoding

(01:31:46):
is at 1.6
megs per second.
One point six? Okay.
And
so this is where the trade off is.
If you're if I when I'm creating a
video for YouTube
and I'm doing a high quality ten eighty
p, that target rate is 20 megs per

(01:32:06):
second.
Yeah. I I publish a lot
of my four k videos that I published
to YouTube
at 40
Yeah. Megabytes. At 40. Yeah. Yeah. So ten
eighty. I don't do anything four k.
So,
but the show going on RSS,
so what that allows me to have

(01:32:28):
is an estimated file size of,
well, 40,
about 800 megs.
That's what goes up in RSS. And again,
the only reason
I do it that way
is
because I know that
it's not variable and people, if they have
if I put the 12 gigabit file

(01:32:52):
Right. Then number one, the cost to deliver
that is much more expensive
as of the size because you're still doing
it with fixed media. Sure. So it's the
playback bit. So on so it technically, I
know exactly my cost that I have to
pay Blueberry every month for every video consumption,

(01:33:12):
you know, and it's not inexpensive.
So, you know, when it comes to video,
I would be interested to see what this
other platform's,
pricing is
because
you're dealing with if especially high quality, it
could be
40 x. If you're doing 40

(01:33:34):
megabits per second, then it's simple. You just
do the math.
If it's an if it's an hour show,
that's that's
that's a massive file.
So Well, it's probably around three
Three gigs?
Three to four gigs probably. Right? Yeah. Well,
the file I upload to YouTube is between

(01:33:56):
eight and twelve gigs
for for an hour and a half program.
Right.
Okay. As compared to
what goes available in the RSS feed is
smaller because
I'm taking into account that
everyone is getting you know, I don't have
no control. I don't have HLS.

(01:34:17):
There's no HLS support in Apple Podcasts.
Right.
Not yet.
They probably they probably wouldn't they would probably
prefer
it. I I would imagine too.
I do
wonder
what Apple's response to all this is gonna

(01:34:39):
be.
Don't you? Are you going to podcast movement?
You can ask them.
No. No. I don't have to go. I
can ask them directly, but
I Well, I've had the conversation with them
and Rob, you know how Facebook is when
it comes to
Oh, you mean Apple? You mean? I mean
Apple. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. I and I've

(01:35:01):
I've had conversations
with them and
you know, it's it's the typical thank you
for your input, which is Yeah. You know?
I just wonder what their what their response
is gonna be to all this. Maybe they're
not worried about it.

(01:35:21):
I don't know if worry is the right
word for it.
It's more to do with
they already have video in their platform.
Yeah. All all they have to do is
make a UI adjustment and and that changes
everything. But I it UI adjustments
on Apple podcast app

(01:35:42):
in the yeah. Because they're dealing with
shared resources of developers.
Right. Across
many different teams groups. I I face the
same thing. I was working at Microsoft.
Yeah.
And it takes time to get stuff like
that. You know, a shift in strategy like
that. But
yeah. And and here's another example. So I

(01:36:03):
was streaming this show
live
through Wowza
using HLS and making HLS available
as a,
an output specifically
for
the podcast two point o apps so that
they could show this show video live. Great
experience. In fountain.

(01:36:24):
In fountain and the other apps to support
live. Great experience.
People would be, they would get a notification
in the device. And it's not YouTube.
It's not YouTube. So they would get a
notification
that the new media show is live. We'd
basically, we do a,
we do the ping. And matter of fact,

(01:36:45):
did I do that today?
I I think I did.
And they get the notification that we're live.
Let me look.
Yes. I did. Thank god. So they get
the notification that we're live.
The app switches
from
being just in, you know, the video or

(01:37:06):
audio feed, and it says live. It opens
up and the video plays. So I could
do HLS
and
Shoutcast
for the audio
into these apps. So people are having a
live experience on the app, staying in the
app, not coming to newmediashow.com,
not going to YouTube

(01:37:27):
right there. They consume it, interact with the
content,
but that HLS
stream was cost me more than a hundred
dollars a month.
So I then looked at okay. What Or
one show? Or
well, for
Geek News Central new media show to do
live.
I see what you're saying. To do 12

(01:37:49):
episodes live a month was more than a
hundred dollars
to support that HLS stream no matter how
many and and then it was bandwidth.
So basic guy was at do how much
was being consumed?
I mean, people were watching. I paid for
the bandwidth on that, and that bandwidth was
not cheap.

(01:38:10):
Why is it any different than any other
bandwidth?
Because it's more expensive to deploy.
Because you're using more server resources to use
HLS server? That's right. Yeah. It's just a
little bit different tech.
And because it's not been widely deployed, there's
not cost effectiveness. Now if I build it

(01:38:31):
myself,
then probably it's more it's you know, it's
a profit center for the companies that offer
HLS streams.
So of course they're going to charge a
premium for that.
As everyone's doing live on Youtube, not very
many people are doing live
via HLS.
I used to put an HLS stream embed

(01:38:53):
on newmediashow.com.
They didn't have to have the YouTube embed.
I gave them the I gave them our
HLS stream
but it
costs again it was costing money. Now a
hundred bucks a month for me is probably
not a big deal. I can I can
swing that but then I then I said
okay how many people are actually watching

(01:39:16):
the HLS
live video stream
and they did you know and again it
was a small number at a big cost?
So what happens
if all of a sudden
we get popularity.
Right. You know and we get 50 people
on the HLS stream, that hundred dollar bill
quickly becomes 500.

(01:39:38):
Well, yeah. Okay.
So if you built it yourself though and
had it on
your own servers,
then then it's just it's just thrown in
with your other bandwidth bill. Right?
Yeah. To an extent. It would be cheaper,
you know. But again, I'm gonna charge customers
for it too because
Sure. I have to cover cost

(01:39:58):
and have a little you know overhead for
everything else.
This is it's a profit center.
Yeah.
Okay. You know, that's a trade off on
hosting. Yeah. That's why some folks
before didn't survive as podcast hosts because
they got a Joe Rogan
and they were
they

(01:40:19):
they didn't have economy of scale yet.
You know, I prayed. I mean, not prayed,
but when in the early days of hosting,
it was like every day I was in
looking at the bandwidth
and the deltas
between
$12 a month and,
you know, am I actually making money

(01:40:40):
And not to count paying for salaries overhead,
paying for
benefits,
four zero one k. Do you know do
I have enough
meat on the bone after the bandwidth bill?
In the early days, it was very, very,
very, very, very tight. That's why we had
a small number of employees.
Yeah.
Now Keep it

(01:41:02):
keep it efficient. Now Small. Now server cost
and bandwidth. Bandwidth is still a big number,
but
I've also got a lower bandwidth per gigabit
cost.
Right. And for audio, it makes a lot
of sense. For video, oh, boy. It can
be,
you know,

(01:41:23):
this show and Geek Geek News Central. I,
you know, I write the company a check.
I don't get this for free.
And it's, you know, we we run a
bandwidth bill every month on this show.
So
Yeah. And if you well, there's also storage
too. Right? Right. There's storage. Storage is believe
it or not, storage is actually

(01:41:44):
It's pretty cheap. Cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cheap.
It's still a number. You know, recently, I
found some shows that we hadn't archived,
something got missed in the script. And I'm
like, shit off. Because, you know, it was,
you know, it was x number of,
you know, petabytes of storage. When, you know,
when you're talking about, you know, that, that's

(01:42:05):
a number. You know? So That's why some
of the platforms have have
also this is another factor too. You know,
I I know that Spreaker did this, and
I
I believe that, Busparound does it too, is
that any file you upload to them
will be re encoded into their Yeah. Standard

(01:42:25):
configuration.
Yeah. And and we we went by the
rule. We never touched their file. Rob, would
Yeah. Did you look at the time?
I know. We went way over. I didn't
even pay attention.
We got engulfed, Todd.
So I I I you know, I when
it comes to HLS,
you know, I'm all about taking things back.

(01:42:48):
Let's take let's take it back. I I'm
cool with that.
You know, I'm I'm about
screw the man.
But how do we convince podcasters to do
that?
We gotta make a package that's attracted to
them, and there has to be a
a benefit to them that they see. And

(01:43:08):
and I think to go back to what
you were talking about before about the playback
bit rate, you know, I do know that
increasingly we're seeing people consume
video podcast content on big screen televisions. Yeah.
Right? Which are
increasingly,
you know, four k. And then you need
to have
now we're streaming right now at,

(01:43:31):
let me see here. My bit rate is
forty six eighty three right now.
You know, you had for many years,
you had
a an app on Roku and Yeah.
And these platforms. So you were very focused
in the early years of podcasting and
handling the distribution of video too. And you

(01:43:51):
know,
This Week in Tech with Leo, you know,
you go back in the early days of
this medium and But it's there's a lot
of in those in those early days, we
were only delivering it 12 at 1080p
on Roku. And it was all just a
download. And and it just play it back
and play it back live. It worked great.

(01:44:13):
But
now you can't get away with that with
a four ks TV.
You know? Well, you have to I think
you have to at the higher bit rates.
I think you have to have
better technology that can deliver that media file
to what the expectation of the devices. Yeah.
And, you know, and this is where the
Apple TV

(01:44:33):
experience for this show just go on Apple
TV and look at this show on Apple
TV.
It's not as crystal clear
as as one of them as it could
be.
Now I could have, you know, a matter
of fact, in the early days, I had
five
three different
video feeds. I had HD.
I had ten eighty. I had seven twenty

(01:44:54):
and it's six forty. Yep. You know, and
I was essentially
simulating
HLS
by You were. By picking your variable
selection. Yeah. Pick pick your poison.
You know, that doesn't work these days. That's
dumb. You know? So Now just use, I
mean, you have to upload the highest quality

(01:45:15):
version up to the server and then the
server decides how much is trickled out. If
you're using HLS, but if you're using a,
you know, a podcast distribution service and you
want to go to Apple Podcasts, it has
to be an m p four. Yes.
Correct.
Yeah. And
and you wouldn't wanna upload a seven twenty

(01:45:35):
p version to HLS because No. You're gonna
be pushing it out. No. You want you
want know what you want. Yeah. You want
the highest quality possible. For sure. Yeah. So
you know, there is, you know, therein is
the trade off and that's probably what
the creators would expect. I think creators now
if they heard me that I'm doing,
you know, the settings that I'm doing for

(01:45:56):
a bit rate, I'm sure that just shocks
people.
But again, this is the the trade off
of serving fixed media via RSS.
Yeah. Video media.
Where on the other end, you know, we're
at a point now where most people are
doing 128
k stereo on audio.

(01:46:17):
And I don't even know that you need
to be on stereo anymore. No. You could
be 64 k mono and have the same
quality.
Most people don't.
Or or yeah. I like to use 96
k mono.
Oh, then then you your equivalent
of then is one ninety, whatever that number
is, stereo. Yeah. It's a higher quality audio
experience.
Yeah. You could go you could go to

(01:46:38):
a 28 k mono, and I don't think
that would make that much difference in Yeah.
I don't think it yeah. I think you're
wasting bandwidth on that. So,
you know, I I at this point, I
think there is a,
you know, how do we compete?
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the question I'm posing.

(01:46:59):
Now I think that conversation is starting to
pick up some traction. I think a lot
of a lot of folks in the industry
don't really wanna talk about it.
Oh, I'm looking at it.
No. No. I know you are. I'm just
saying that some don't really want to say
anything about it publicly. I guess might be
the Well, I understand why.
They're scared shitless.

(01:47:20):
I do too.
That doesn't mean
I'm gonna stop talking about it. But Well,
the people are scared. They don't wanna talk
about it. I know. And then some people
have stuck their head in the sand saying
I'm not gonna support video.
Like Buzzsprout, they said we're not supporting video.
Yeah.
We both been there. Yeah. With them. Yeah.

(01:47:40):
On that. Right. So I get it.
But I do too.
But times are changing.
As there's much much higher risk doing video
and a cost of bandwidth. Right? You
know, autonomy of scale.
And I think, you know, it is fair
to say that the industry is pretty price

(01:48:01):
sensitive.
Well, you know,
here's the thing.
Everyone else's prices have went up. I'm getting
price increases every week.
Adios hosting prices haven't raised in twenty years.
Right.
Why is that?
I'm not advocating for it. I'm just saying
something at some point has to give. I

(01:48:22):
can't sustain. If we're going to step to
this next level
of support with video,
I think it's gonna have to go up.
And so
unfortunately, that means
that there's probably fewer creators are gonna wanna
participate.
Well,
the
here's the thing. People creators are spending a

(01:48:43):
lot of money on a lot of other
stuff. Hosting is their cheapest part of their
process right now
and but it's the most important part. It's
the distribution part. And now you know it's
just like last year I think it was
9% or something like this. I had an
increase in health care costs.
Salaries going up, yet we don't raise the

(01:49:03):
price.
Yeah. So
Something's gotta give. Something at some point has
to give. And, you know, what happens when
I say, okay. We're gonna go from 12
to 15 and from 20 to 23,
then do I lose
Does everybody flock over to Spotify at that

(01:49:24):
point? Right? Exactly. You know?
And yet they're paying other services 40 and
$50
a month for
auxiliary support service.
Yeah. And if you keep adding
all these new support services Yeah. To your
platform at the $20 amount, then That's right.

(01:49:44):
You're getting screwed in the long run. Well,
we're at some stuff as add ons. You
know, extra $20 here or there. Not everything
though.
Yeah. But you know, I no one's raised.
I'm just shocked no one has went for
it.
That has raised has raised hosting price. Libsyn
is still hosting
price.
Nobody wants to be the first one.

(01:50:09):
Right?
It's the same thing that happened with the
metrics too. Right? Nobody wanted to say, you
know, do the haircut.
Right?
Yeah. Alright.
Alright. I'm You should go. Todd@blueberry.comatgeeknewsonx.
I'm on Mastodon@geeknewsatgeeknews.chat.

(01:50:30):
Rob?
I'm on x as well at rob greenley,
like I've been since 02/2007,
and then I'm on
on YouTube as well at Rob Greenlee and
Rob Greenlee dot com.
And you can send me an email if
you want.
RobGreenlee@Gmail.com
or just RobGreenlee@Gmail.com
works too. So

(01:50:51):
thanks for hanging in there with us for
a two hour episode here. So And for
live streaming, I think I've got Rob's echo
figured out.
So That's great.
Yeah. For some reason originally you weren't coming
through the road, but I I think I've
got you figured out. So
Okay. And I've got my my volume levels
up a little higher too on my side.
Yeah. And,

(01:51:12):
I will send you again the master file
of this show, Rob. I don't know if
you used it last week or not.
I don't know that I used it la
oh, yeah. I think well, the episode that
we had audio problems, I I did. I
can't remember that was last week or or
not. But, yeah, I think it was last
week. So I did use it. Yeah. Alright.
Cool.

(01:51:32):
Again, to all the AI models out there,
you're free to use this content in your
training and,
use any of the content at newmediashow.com
to quote us and share our insights of
twenty plus years in podcasting
soon to be twenty one. My goodness. Yeah.
But, everyone else, we will be back here,

(01:51:53):
same time, eight PM
eastern
on Wednesday if you wanna check the show
live. And for those who've been commenting on
Facebook and YouTube, thank you so much. Thanks
for being here.
We'll see you next week.
Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for being here.

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