July 16, 2025 • 61 mins
In this episode titled “Adam Curry Returns and Spotify’s Seven Million Shows,” hosts Todd Cochrane and Rob Greenlee welcome listeners to the new media show. Rob expresses his excitement about discussing various topics, particularly noting the significant milestone of seven million podcasts, mainly attributed to Spotify (wink)(wink). As they delve into the numbers, Todd and … Continue reading Adam Curry Returns and Spotify’s Seven Million Shows – LOL
The post Adam Curry Returns and Spotify’s Seven Million Shows – LOL appeared first on New Media Show.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Everybody, welcome to
the new media show. And, here we are.
I had to do the quick clap in
case something disconnected.
But,
Rob, how how are you?
Doing great, Todd. It's great to be doing
the show again.
So got lots of interesting stuff to talk
about.
Yeah.
(00:20):
7,000,000. Like the podcasting space is in a
blender. Uh-huh. 14,000,000
shows.
Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Spotify,
7,000,000.
Well, that that's what happens when most of
your new podcast creators through the your your
your,
podcasting platform,
(00:40):
never turn on RSS.
Yeah. And then that's all they're they're just
on Spotify. That's it. Yeah. It's it's a
great way to get a bunch of exclusive
content. Especially a lot of so many of
them are just tests. Test. Test. Test. Right.
You know,
publish a real number like how many of
those 7,000,000 have published a new episode.
And then, you know,
(01:03):
you know, it got so bad that the
podcast index stopped
allowing new shows to be listed on on
their platform because it just it was it
was bad bad bad, you know. From Spotify
specifically? Yeah. From Spotify specifically
because the
making sure my yeah. Because
(01:25):
the shows were just again,
you know, like test shows and there was
nothing to them. So
they set a minimum number. They yeah. No.
There's no real
commitment there. Oh, and we offered a with
it. Right? When we offered a free no
credit card
free no credit card required free trial, we
got 800 in a month.
(01:47):
And
but guess what? We got the same number
of actual conversions.
And meanwhile, we're left with 800 shows and
you know about,
an 8,000 were scammers
and dealing with people that were uploading radio
shows and publishing episodes and applying for programmatic
(02:07):
and,
you know, it's just like
Yeah. You know,
it it's it was bad. So, you know,
much as we'd love to offer a free
non credit card required trial, it's just
not possible.
But they don't care. They just let them
go.
And Well, free is a great way to
(02:29):
get
higher numbers
Sure. Look good to investors. Yeah. It doesn't
really translate into very much around,
you know,
alignment or commitment to the platform or
being a solid content creator that can contribute
content to the platform is
yeah. No. Anyway, so yeah. It's
(02:50):
it's just, you know, lots and lots of
dead shows
and,
you know, but at the same time, there
was an article that came out that talked
about
active shows and the number of new shows
coming online,
which is way down,
this year
compared to others.
(03:10):
So
it it I guess it is what it
is. But,
Yeah.
I think a lot of people are realizing
that it's
it's it's a real commitment to
make a podcast.
And then you equate that to expectations
around.
(03:31):
Everybody wants to make money from everything that
they're doing with creating content these days. Right.
They may not be able to make money,
but everybody wants to, and everybody is
searching around to find
whatever,
you know, side hustle they can do
to make a extra extra buck on the
side. And a lot of people thought that
(03:52):
that was
possible through podcasting.
And it is possible, but Mhmm. It's not
a quick buck situation. Everybody's looking for a
quick buck these days.
So, you know, it's just a number to
report to stockholders. It doesn't mean anything.
And,
and, you know, Spotify
is, by default turn off RSS feeds. So
(04:15):
people get over there and they think they're
podcasting and it's just like YouTubers. I ask
them,
where where is your I can't find you
on Apple Podcasts.
And, you know, it's funny as we get,
tickets all the time. For some reason, people
think we're Spotify support even though they
they Google podcast support and, of course, Blueberry
(04:35):
ranks real high on that ranking
and they come over and they send us
a ticket saying, hey, how come I'm not
on
Apple Podcasts? And we go to look and
they're not even hosting with us. They're hosted
over at Spotify
and they can't even get an answer over
there.
So they don't even lot of yeah. I
hear it too. There's a lot of confusion
around,
(04:56):
you know,
people will think that, like, Blueberry is
is a listening platform. Right? Well, they don't
so much consider it anymore.
You know, use No. No. I'm just saying
but I hear people think that the, like,
Lipsyn and Buzzsprout and all that stuff are
actual listening platforms.
So it is a little more confusing than
that because, you know, like, Podbean does have
(05:18):
a strong kind of listening platform, and there's
some players that that's what makes this whole
ecosystem so complicated for people to really understand
about how it all works because everybody's doing
something different, and it always works different. And
and people that publish to Spotify don't even
realize oftentimes that they need an RSS feed
(05:38):
to be an Apple. Right? So
this lack of knowledge is permeating this space.
And of course, Spotify didn't integrate with Apple
to do auto submission after all those years
of paying people in
India or wherever it was to submit shows.
They have an automated way of doing it
and they haven't done that because
we don't want
(05:59):
They don't want people to be on Apple.
Want people to be on Apple. Right.
Yeah. So Yeah. It just, you know, it's
a very, very poor
very, very poor
mindset.
So it is it is Yeah. But that's
that's Spotify.
Spotify's always had kind of a a,
break it and then maybe fix it later
(06:22):
type of an approach to the market. And
and they're not So if you look at
oh. Go ahead.
If you look at the podcast index, they
they have 4,600,000
shows in there, and Spotify is showing 7,000,000,
and Apple Podcast is showing 2.8 Right. Million.
So
Apple's doing a good job of kind of
curating their catalog,
(06:43):
much better than anybody else in the industry.
That's for sure. Well, to be honest with
you, you know,
even though we don't have a director anymore,
we still have the full catalog of shows
and we're still pulling in. And there
and
the amount of shows on a
monthly basis that the we get a red
flag in our system that basically said either
(07:04):
the RSS feed is dead or the media
went offline.
One of the other
or both
is astronomical numbers.
And
we kill those but yet a lot of
the platforms
don't clean up.
And
Podcast Index included. I don't think they've been
doing any,
(07:25):
any cleanup
per se of
dead dead,
you know, dead dead shows. And what I
consider a dead show is no media, no
RSS feed. That's a dead dead show.
Mhmm. And we give them enough time to
come back in case there's,
you know,
some some technical issue that's going on.
And very rarely do they ever come back.
(07:48):
Well, there are
shows, I think, out there that,
that have kinda like either
an active RSS
feed, but no episodes Yeah. Or Yep. Episodes
that are available off the server, but no
RSS feed. So They didn't they didn't clean
up. Yeah. They didn't get cleaned up. Right.
Yeah. That's right. Has to be one or
(08:09):
the other gets excluded from Yeah. The directory.
And who based on your your own directory,
Todd, which of these three has the closest
to
what you find as far as active,
you know,
live RSS feeds. Is it Apple or is
it podcasting?
Probably Apple.
Apple's closest? Yeah. Probably closest.
(08:31):
But again,
there's a lot of
there's a lot of debt over there too.
So, you know, they So what you define
as debt? Well, again, it all depends. If
the RSS feed is
up,
you know, I don't know what their criteria
for killing the show over there is you
know, and and the delisting.
(08:53):
I know that what our internal criteria is.
So
That that piece of information would be good
for Apple to disclose to the industry. They
can't because it's a stockholder thing again.
Well, no. No. What the criteria is for
being included in the catalog or not.
(09:14):
That should be should be disclosed to the
industry. So We had a know what to
expect. We had an interesting one the other
day. We had a a very rare, your
show's been rejected from Apple podcast. And I
was like, what is this?
And I thought it was something, you know,
I said, do we have someone that's doing
something really naughty? Or is it, you know,
obvious?
(09:35):
You know, what what was the reason?
And the in the email it said was
audio quality.
And so I popped into the system and
I started listening to the audio and
the audio didn't sound
bad,
wasn't the best.
I was pretty surprised. So I don't know
(09:55):
if they have an automated system over there
that's looking
at the audio. Maybe, you know, Ted, if
you're listening,
I I think the tech support team worked
with the podcaster and maybe got it resolved.
But maybe it was some maybe there was
some media because I just listened to the
latest episode. I didn't list stuff that was
down the stack.
Maybe there was some malformed audio or something
(10:16):
causing a problem. But, yeah, it was the
first I think that's the first time I've
ever seen
that. It wasn't in it was basically kind
of a it was a suspension,
like a suspension email.
And,
so that again, that's the first time I've
I've ever seen that come back from Apple
from a show.
(10:36):
So based on its format or based on
said audio. It was, basically, the audio quality
that was Audio quality. Yeah. I'd have to
pull up the email. I've got it saved
because it was so unusual.
But
but one thing's for sure, some things that
will never be
are actually going to happen again.
(11:00):
I will never
I will never go back to podcast movement.
I'll never go back to podcast movement, Adam.
No. That's what he specifically told me. Adam.
I'm sure we had with him. Yeah. Going
back and he's you see, he has got
so it's it's I think what has happened
is,
Rocky Thomas was on podcasting two point o
(11:22):
show
on the boardroom.
And,
I'm actually
in between episodes. I
listen to the current episode, but I need
to go back and listen to Rocky's episode
because I was trying to get the the
insider scoop on what he had to say
about coming and speaking. But he'll be speaking
on podcasting two point o in a prime
afternoon
spot, not one directly after lunch. At least,
(11:44):
I don't
I think he said 01:30,
which is probably okay.
Yeah. That you never know.
And they're gonna he, they're gonna be on
the SoundStack stage.
So I remember just a short few years
ago that,
Dave Jones and he
(12:04):
had a had a session
And It wasn't was it a podcast movie?
Or dozen people that yeah. It was a
podcast movie. Yeah. So only a dozen showed
up. Yeah. It was only like a dozen
people that actually showed up for that. But
it was right after immediately after lunch, and
it was kind of a weird
time to have a session and but you
know, here's the key.
(12:27):
Adam, you got to promote it.
You got to promote your session and
and and talk about it. We'll talk about
it and make sure that it's promoted. But
the only way you're gonna get,
guarantee a good, you know, good number of
people is to is to promote it because,
these podcasters don't know
(12:49):
you, I, or Rob from a hole in
the ground at this point.
So,
you know, yeah, you need to promote it
and I hopefully SoundStack will promote the heck
out of it too and we get a
get a full house and educate,
educate creators. So he's gonna fly up from
Fredericksburg
and
(13:09):
speak and then fly home. So
I can't even buy him a beer.
He's not gonna be in town long enough
to do that. So
So he's,
that's right. He's out by Austin, isn't he?
Well, Hill Country, wherever that is, that's like
three two, three hours.
(13:30):
I don't know. Someone from Texas can tell
us and chat.
Yeah. Two or three hours from
maybe it's two, but wherever Hill Country is,
Fredericksburg is where he's living these days.
Yeah.
So he's got a dentist friend that has
a snazzy new airplane and they're gonna fly
up and,
(13:50):
you know, much better than driving. That's for
damn sure. Coming from Austin to
Dallas up I 40, that just sucks. That
drive just
s u c k s sucks.
There's always wrecks. There's always traffic jams.
Yeah. It's a good choice to fly.
Yeah. Yeah. Very, very, very, very, very smart.
(14:13):
But I was kind of
surprised
on YouTube saying they're gonna crack down on
the slop. But the question is,
well, they said they were.
And then I saw some post commentary where
saying, well, this is just the start. Yeah.
K. I think you should back up and
give it some context there, Todd.
(14:35):
What are you talking about?
AI slop.
Where? On YouTube. I said YouTube. Okay. Yeah.
You did? Oh, I didn't hear that. Okay.
Sorry. Yeah. So they're planning to crack down
on AI slop
and repetitive content. You know how much slop
there is out there now? How much
AI generated content on YouTube? And they're not
gonna allow it to be monetized.
(14:55):
Did YouTube actually use that language?
Or I'm re I'm re I'm reading your
show notes. So I'm going to No. I
know. But, I mean, I just I just
wonder if people actually use that,
from from YouTube,
or is it
it's being painted in that way? That's where
(15:16):
this article
came from was TechCrunch.
So Yeah. They said the first crack down
on mass produce and repetitive video is consumed
over AI slot
grows. So Yeah. And that was the title
of their article.
So Yeah. So That's good news.
Yeah. So I don't believe that YouTube
(15:38):
actually used that language. No. Is what I'm
saying. Yeah. But, you know, it's I I
it's almost
hard to avoid it now.
And
yeah. There's so much that's,
you know, history.
You know, it's all these history type things
and
and unfortunately stuff that I like to listen
(15:58):
to real people
talk about,
you know, certain topics. It's that same
voice that you hear
across multiple channels and
so yeah. And then not monetize if they
demonetize it at a great level,
(16:20):
that's gonna just shut down
the incentive
to do this
because they want real voices.
Well, yeah.
And I think it specifically says,
content that's
repetitive
in a podcast
(16:41):
style upload,
is what what it is. It says that
the concerns about AI
impact on quality
content,
originality,
and audience trust, it's a it's a potential
bellwether for,
future platform policies affecting podcast distribution. Now, if
(17:03):
we're talking about YouTube here,
that would apply generally across
all video content, not just what's being termed,
podcasts
on
on YouTube. So I think we're
a little bit confusing the issue here. I
think to some degree, I'm not sure that
TechCrunch really did a good job on this,
(17:24):
but,
I'm not sure that what they're referring to
specifically would be what I I would consider
to be podcasts. I would consider them just
Oh, it's it's just
on videos on Yeah. On YouTube that are
being
mass produced. Yep. Yep. They're being done via
creating a transcript and then,
and then adding that transcript to, let's say,
(17:46):
a clone
And pick and some pictures. Yeah. And then
creating a video from it. Yep.
I I wouldn't necessarily lump it in as
a podcast per se. Oh, it's it it's
I don't think they said specifically it's about
podcast, but it it definitely
basically brought up two points. Repetitive
content,
(18:08):
AI,
and you've got people that are blatantly ripping
off
content as well and then reproducing and calling
it its own.
So,
you know, there's a lot of that. It's
it's on there.
But I think the best part of it
is is,
is the ability to get rid of these
(18:30):
AI synthetic hosts,
and
to be monetized
and get rid of the content. Because I
think what they're worried about is just being
overwhelmed,
and they're already being overrun. They should have
acted some time ago, but this is gonna
be some automated process. But I was sure
would love for YouTube to put
(18:51):
some sort
of flag. Basically, we'd able to say, yes.
This is AI generated content and flag videos
as a user that it was AI. But
that's somewhere we can just say report
to help them,
you know. I I I I you know,
I'm of the opinion that if you're gonna
(19:12):
create content, you you need to create content
as a creator.
And
that work should be rewarded.
I can build a script, you know, our
my myth series.
I have,
AI helped me with ideation.
And,
and then I write a rough script and
(19:33):
then I have it help me clean up
my script
that I'm doing for the podcast news and
myth show that I'm
putting out.
And
but I don't
I don't use the AI to
write the original script.
So and and what I do is I
do talking points. I walk through my eight,
(19:55):
nine, 10
talking points and
and then then I get some help. But
and then I have to edit it again.
So it's a couple hour process to do
a five minute show.
And again, it's I think as long as
a human is involved and the human is
(20:16):
narrating,
but at what point does it get so
good that they can't, they can't detect it?
Well, I think that's what's coming here. And
I'm actually looking
deeper at the article itself
and the article doesn't actually use the term
podcast. Oh, no. It's it was never mentioning
podcast at all.
It has nothing to do with podcast. It's
(20:36):
purely AI generated
content on YouTube.
And yeah.
Yeah. So
but if you're creating that type of AI
generated content and calling it a podcast, then
you're probably gonna be demonetized.
Yeah. I think the term that was used
in this summary was podcast
(20:57):
style uploads, which I'm not even sure what
that is. That's interesting.
Yeah.
So But it's any content. It's not podcast
content.
Right. It's just any any AI generated
video that just isn't doesn't come across very
authentic and real,
which there is quite quite a bit. I
(21:18):
mean, I see it on
on YouTube all the time.
And you do have to wonder
really how good the content is,
that comes out of that. And and and
I think it's also a reflection on
to some degree how good the content is
that's coming out of AI too. Yeah.
Because there is a direct correlation between
(21:41):
the content that comes out in these AI
video pieces
that is generated based on AI.
If, if
all of the,
the script and the narration
is AI created, then, then it's really the
fault of the AI.
It's, it's not really a human problem. It's
(22:02):
just that the AI is not very good
yet.
Yeah.
So yeah. Yeah. It's it's a complicated
topic here. And this is something that we're
gonna have to
wrestle with increasingly,
especially as the AI actually starts to get
better. I know that we saw the the
launch of Grok four
(22:22):
here this past week. I don't know if
you've had a chance to play around with
it. I haven't. At all. No. But I
heard it's pretty good.
Yeah.
So it's interesting. You know, things are progressing
on this front and I keep hearing about
chat GPT
five Yeah. Is coming around the corner. Yeah.
It should be here. Sometime this
(22:43):
late summer or something.
Yeah. Speculation. It could drop at any time.
Yeah. So
we could see a big jump
in
quality of this stuff. I never thought I
would pay $200 a month for a single
tool.
You know? I
it's pretty amazing. I
you know, there's,
(23:04):
there are some things I've been working on
that we're gonna announce
mid August or so.
And I had to do some deep research
to
determine, okay, is,
is this an is this the right move?
And and from an announcement standpoint, and and
how
(23:25):
do I frame
the messaging of what we're going to announce.
And,
it's been very very helpful
as it's, you know,
if you announce something, you know, people can
take things one or two ways and take
it positive or negative.
And,
so, you know, you want to make people
understand, you know, here's here's the reason.
(23:47):
And The sentiment analysis. Yeah.
Yeah.
So
and it's been helpful for me because it
took gave me some
ideas on which I
probably
would not have
got it myself right off the bat. I
(24:08):
may have got there after, you know, a
week or two.
But,
and maybe after four or five people looked
at it. But, you know, basically, I've got
a good
pathway
for for, you know, the the messaging that
we're gonna use. So,
I think that,
just like anything else,
(24:28):
the
the the
key to these tools is you don't let
them do the work but let them help
you.
And,
that advanced reasoning tool, it sit there and
crank for, like, forty five minutes on my
they fed it spreadsheets and, you know, I've
I've fed it a bunch of stuff
and,
(24:49):
risk analysis and, you know, all kinds of
different things,
and use personal, you know, what I think
and, you know, and and
it's it's it's like having a data analysis
and a
advisor. And that's why I'm kind of using
that advanced tools, using it kind of as
an advisor.
(25:09):
And I'm not letting it make a decision
for me, for God's sake. But,
at least I can be advised and and
potentially,
you know, do something the way that probably
is the way for success.
So it's just like we're getting ready to
launch guest match pro.
Probably not Monday,
(25:30):
as we found some stuff today that needs
to be fixed in our beta testing. But
I'm hoping sometime next week
and,
there you know, there's a whole bunch of
we've got copy done but there was a
whole bunch of things that needed,
there's you know, you have a question mark
next to a prompt.
And I'm like, oh God. I don't want
(25:51):
to write these, you know, because so I
just did screenshots of all those pages
that had those question marks where you hover
and you have a little pop up and
I I had chat g p t create
those
those hover pop ups in about twenty minutes.
I took about another hour to edit them.
I was like, okay.
Yes. You know, save me a massive amount
(26:12):
of time.
So
Yeah. I think it's really easy to ask
these
large language models to
to do things that
we humans think is important
to get an answer to.
And then when it actually outputs the answer
to you,
(26:33):
you
it gives you so much
that it makes it difficult to figure out,
well, what's
what's really usable out of this? It's all
about the prompting,
you know. You have to really,
you
know, answer these three questions.
Yeah. You know. The answers it gives you,
I kinda I kinda wonder
(26:55):
somewhat if it if it just doesn't have
the
It's still a language model. It's not AGI
yet. So
It just doesn't have the
the the human intuition
Yeah.
Aspects of it that makes the output usable.
Yeah. The danger is thinking it does and
then using those outputs and
(27:18):
is it you know, you have to be
very, very careful. I think goes back to
what the the Google lady said a couple
of years ago that there's gonna be, you
know, the super creative people that are doing
great prompts and then there's gonna be the
quality assurance folks and those that have had
knowledge and experience and then,
everything announcement in the middle is the thunking
is what's gonna be affected the most. And
(27:38):
I I kind of see that already
is that
the inputs are super important and then the
analysis of the outputs and making sure that
what it's giving you is correct.
And actually doing the math, going back and
make sure you've done the math on a
spreadsheet
and not, you know, let it create a
(28:00):
to create, you know, pie charts and stuff
for you without making sure it got the
formulas right.
Yeah. I had to create some spreadsheets,
here
recently,
and I
it told me that it gave me all
these,
a list of 50 different
detailed items and different columns and stuff like
(28:21):
that. And I exported the spreadsheet
and I pulled it into Excel
and all of the columns and all the
rows were filled with
generic information.
So, you know, I
I just think that we're still at a
stage where this stuff just
isn't as good as it's being spun up
(28:42):
to be.
And I do wonder
if if we're still
a ways out from this stuff really being,
usable at a at a level, or is
the the really good AI being reserved for
those that are paying the big high prices?
So by the way, I I gotta ask
(29:03):
you something,
because I've been looking through my email and
I can't find it. Did you send me
an email? Just something to do with the
podcast hall of fame
a couple weeks ago.
I don't think so here.
I'm probably soon gonna do it, but I'm
Okay. Because I thought I saw an email
come in and I said, oh, I have
to look at that later and maybe it
was for some other awards.
(29:24):
I think you and I were both interviewed
by Carmen.
Did you get interviewed by Carmen
talking about the hall of fame and
Yeah. Yeah. I did too. He come in
one well, he wanted to talk to me
about the podcast awards.
So
Yeah. That's probably what it was. Maybe that
was the the kicker but seems like it
was before that. So I'm glad I didn't
(29:45):
miss something.
Yeah.
I saw this.
It was in pod
news. Indie film
follows Ronald Young Jr's hunt for breakout
podcast with cameos
from Adam Curry, Ira Glass, Kara Swisher, and
Mark
Marr Marin,
(30:07):
mainstreaming podcast culture on screen. So this is
some sort of,
it's gonna be premiered
at the Oak It's a documentary called Age
of Audio. Yeah. And it's gonna be premiered
at the Oak Cliff Film Festival, wherever that
is.
So I subscribe to their YouTube channel. So
I look forward to watching
what they've done. I watched the trailer for
(30:29):
it. Pretty good. And it's
it's like,
you know, there's been like three or four
documentaries like this made over the years.
Very similar, Todd. Yeah. And I was it
was kinda curious because, they highlighted the ambies
awards and,
you know, speaking of which I'm not even
heard anything from the ambies. Are they is
(30:50):
the podcast
that organization
still working?
Yeah.
Okay. It's been
very quiet.
Wow. Yeah.
Very Or it's Very quiet. Or they're talking
to
a different community than the Definitely definitely not
participating in Definitely not
(31:12):
not me.
That's for sure.
What's this thing that you've got here talking
about? Podcasts are making us miserable.
There's
well, I think you jumped to the
would you jump to the bottom or something?
Or here let
me No. I switched I switched pages because
(31:33):
we're working up two pages today.
Right. Yeah.
So
yeah.
The piece critiques the Persace of Nature podcast
in modern life arguing that endless podcast consumption
feeds anxiety only if you're listening at 1.52
(31:53):
or 2.5 speeds.
Should it feed anxiety,
loneliness, and performative
culture of always optimizing it questions the mental
health effects A podcast is a medium of
relentless content churn.
Yeah. Well, we're we're dealing with that every
day.
It continues. I think it's just part of
(32:13):
the what what the media culture now. Right?
Yeah.
Is a a lot
of anxiety,
you know, this loneliness, this performative
culture.
Right? As we all become
kind of creators, and I think that's that's
really the most interesting
thing about what's going on right now is
(32:34):
this
perception that
everyone now is a creator.
Right? And that,
and that it's all
funneling into. And I hear Gary Vaynerchuk saying
this a lot here recently, and then I'm
hearing other people say this too. It's an
it's an interest
based,
(32:56):
kind of economy now. It's not
social media or those terms,
social media, podcasting, all this stuff are kind
of legacy terms to
really
describe what's really going on is that people
everyone is now at some level a creator.
Right?
(33:16):
And and that it's all people are being
inundated with
media now. So people are gravitated towards things
that they have an interest in. Right? Which
I I guess has always been there when
you think about it. But
but that's what's driving, you know, like this
social e commerce stuff that's going on. People,
you know, people are coming together around these
(33:39):
communities
of sorts
that is based on their interests, which is
kind of always been fundamental to podcasting,
really.
It's just now it's kind of going into
so many different types of media, so many
different ways of of,
doing video now or doing audio,
on all these different platforms, whether it's a
(34:00):
private community or,
you know, on a on a public
channel like YouTube or any of these platforms,
that it's kind of evolving into,
you know, each one of us has our
interests. It's like you and I, Todd, have
interest in podcasting, right? So we gravitate towards
trying to follow news and information about podcasting.
(34:24):
So it's our interest and that's what drives
what
people do. And
and it's hard to think about people that
are kind of cross pollinating
themselves
across a lot of different,
interest areas.
So so, Rob,
I have breaking news, though.
You do? I have a news flash.
Hell flash. Hell has frozen over.
(34:46):
Yes. It has. Did you see my Facebook
post?
Oh, yes. About your
you're gonna get
fiber to your Yeah.
It has. Yeah. So
my mom sent me a picture
of orange spray marks on the yard. Spray
markers. Right. And
(35:07):
the reason I knew what that was is
about
a month ago, I was driving about five
miles from my house
and I there was they were doing something
alongside the road and Chris, it's a country
road service. So I stopped and said, what
are you guys doing?
And so we're putting in Fiverr
for Frontier and of course, I'm not a
(35:27):
big fan of Frontier, but
I said, holy shit. You know, really?
And I said,
what
what does it take to bribe you guys
to come down Bronco Bank Road? And the
guy just kind of looked at me kind
of funny. Right?
And so
my neighbors are a little upset because
(35:49):
they they basically
and it must be because of house density.
They basically came up a main paved road
and then the road that is just north
of me, they came up that road
across us and then turned right and went
back down. So they basically made a a
(36:11):
box
around
so basically the fibers gonna go right by
my property.
And,
so I don't know how long
but
hell has frozen. So how are they gonna
get it from the street to your house?
I don't care. I'll dig I'll dig the
trench myself.
Oh, you will.
(36:32):
Have you actually reached out to them to
find out? No. No. But, you know, that's
you know, I'm sure they're gonna be putting
flyers in the in the mail and stuff
when they're ready. But,
yeah, I will definitely,
you know, and I I told my mom
if they if they come by the house
before, before I'm back, I said make sure
we get a case of beer in the
(36:52):
back of their truck,
you know. So,
you know, you did I'm gonna make sure
that the the fibers in well around my
house.
So So how far is it from the
street to your house?
100 feet.
Oh, that's not bad. Yeah. Yeah. And I
(37:14):
like I said be too expensive. It was
like a quarter mile. No. No.
I
would go rent the trench or machine myself
anyway. I wouldn't care.
You know? So,
and one of my neighbors messaged in the
in the Facebook chat and she said, I
hope they come down my way. But they
had turned the corner and she's just two
(37:34):
houses up the street. So,
but there's not a lot of density
further down. So I that's the only reason
I think that they came my way is
because the opposite road
that
if if I look west in the section
of road that's a mile
that they didn't go along the main road,
there's not very many houses there but there's
(37:56):
a whole bunch of houses on
these basically these three segments.
So that's the only reason I think that
we've got it. So maybe
some of this rural Internet money is finally
going to be used to actually bring rural
Internet to the rural community.
So Okay. Yeah. I'm That'd be novel, wouldn't
it? I'm I'm jazzed, you know. Even if
(38:16):
it takes another six months, it's
it's,
you know, it's it's pretty awesome. So
So, Todd, I think we saw kind of
I don't know if this is a novel
moment or or not with,
Fox News, I guess, has launched its first
podcast licensing deal.
(38:38):
Did you see this? So it's for the
conservative leaning show Ruthless. Ruthless. Right. I have
no idea. I've never heard of that show.
Yeah. I hadn't either, but
but it's interesting that they maybe did a
licensing deal. But are they a YouTube channel?
On their channel.
Yeah. Are they a YouTube channel or because
they have that Fox nation thing. So I
(38:59):
wonder if it's gonna be in
Fox nation and not on Fox.
Yeah. They don't specify
who is of course CNN has been doing
some revamping of their
podcast too.
Heard a little whimsical about that.
(39:20):
Well So we might see more of these
or some of these
successful video podcasts
make it
to cable Yeah. Which I don't know if
that's the right path for them to go,
but I'm not sure that the scale is
there. But Well, who who who wants to
sign us
for some network? You know? Well well, you
know
(39:40):
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
What do we have to put together? The
podcast news network, PNN,
or something
like
that?
Right.
Yes.
So I guess, you know, it's part of
a bigger trend, you know,
around,
you know, social media
or
interest media is what it's been called now.
(40:01):
And in these video platforms are becoming
I've never heard that word. Interest media. Who
you hanging out with? Interest media, That's what
is that is that what the the next
this younger generation has called its interest media
or is that some executive come up with
a new slang word?
(40:22):
Well, I think the person that's that's pushing
that out there now is Gary Vaynerchuk. Oh,
okay. So Gary v is so over the
top half the times. I I haven't listened
to any of his stuff in
five years.
You know? So he so it seems like
he's always yelling. You know?
(40:42):
Well, I mean, he's a very bombastic personality,
but he does have a history of being
right Yeah. He does.
About these social platforms and the direction of
where things are going. And he's also really,
really hot on this
on this,
you know,
kind of
social
ecommerce
kind of stuff like the
(41:03):
the whatnot platform and things like that. He's
he's selling things. You know, it's this whole
thing around everybody has to
have a business now. Everybody has to start
a company. Everybody has to sell. You have
to have a side hustle. Yeah. So that's
the culture that this,
you know, this up and coming
(41:24):
generation,
has is that they're being put in a
box. Right? That they can't afford things so
that they have to make their whole life
about scrambling to make money in any way
they can. So Well, a certain part of
the population doesn't wanna work.
Yeah. Or they just don't wanna
(41:44):
work at certain things. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
So
I don't know. I'm I'm pretty,
pleased so far my son has been interning
with us. And
so, you know, I've tried to keep my
nose out of everything that's going on because
that I don't wanna influence things. But I,
you know, asked the dev team last week,
how's he doing?
(42:05):
You know, is is you know, I know
my kid's smart, but, you know, you just
wanna kinda know, you know, tell, you know,
tell me the truth.
Yeah. And, yeah. He's holding his own. So
I'm pretty proud of him. So maybe there's
a future Cochrane destined for,
for raw voice. That'd be kind of interesting.
Well, it's gotta be someone that eventually replaces
(42:27):
you, Tom. Yeah. Someone does at some point.
Yeah. Someone has to come in.
Well, you have to think about that at
some point. Is it you know, who's gonna
who's who's gonna take over the mantle of
doing the new media show? I guess nobody.
Probably. He he, he did send me a
note. He said, damn, you know a lot.
It's just been around a long time. Yeah.
(42:48):
That's that's exactly
it. You know?
And just hang out hang out there youngster
and just absorb the knowledge. You know?
Yeah. Right.
Well, Todd, I don't know if you've not
noticed the
world that we're in now is,
there's just seems I don't know if you
get this impression too in your own kind
(43:09):
of
mobile phone of, just there's always just a
constant
bombardment
of
what I can solve kind of like scams.
Right? Uh-huh. There's always
somebody after you for something. I almost got
caught by one last week.
Mhmm. Yeah. I'm a big Tumi fan and
(43:31):
I can never have afforded their suitcases.
Is there a thousand dollars?
Who's gonna pay a thousand dollars for a
suitcase? I can't afford that.
And they had I got this saw this
thing in Facebook and said Facebook some I
mean to me something year sale, you know,
as much as 80% off. I'm like holy
shit. So I clicked on the ad and
(43:52):
I'm like, wow.
I can get a Tumi suitcase for $210
and I was all in. I I I
had, like, three suitcases ordered.
And I got all the way through and
got to the point where I was to
click my credit card as clicking and said,
it's only letting me pay with PayPal. Why
why is that? I don't use PayPal. That's
my business account. I get to use my
(44:13):
personal account.
And I said, that's not gonna work. And
I'm looking at the site and I was
not on toomie.com.
And it
looked like toomey.
Yeah. And I guess it's
it's happening,
around social media accounts
(44:34):
getting hijacked.
Around,
fake podcasts and stuff like that. You know,
there's a scam trend where creators'
social media accounts
are hijacked
to promote fake podcasts
and
and scam products. Right? Kinda like what you
were just talking about.
So it's,
(44:55):
victims include
high profile creators like
Magic
Singh,
I guess is what
is one of them who was featured in
this article.
The issue points to a broader concern around
platform security, reputation protection,
and monetization
pressures,
(45:16):
that the creators face today.
So I think there's just a, it's just
a constant war out there and it's all,
everybody's trying to scam everybody or,
you know, sell
expensive,
you know, mastermind programs.
Right. Right. And there's so many kind of
(45:36):
people out there that are think, well, you
know, it's so easy to,
to get rich quick and to, you you
know,
just sell
an ebook and you're gonna make $10,000
a month or or
launch a podcast and
you're gonna make all this money and all
this stuff. I I get emails all the
(45:57):
time from
Facebook,
you know, people trying to get into my
my account.
And then
well, and this is, you know, this thing
I was talking about a minute ago,
that's like the third thing in recent months
that I've seen on Facebook that was advertised
(46:17):
on Facebook that
was scam.
Another thing a few months ago was,
I has I have a Ford Edge and,
I've got the nice
I bought the aftermarket,
I don't know if it's the weather shield
or whatever they are, mats for it. Because
(46:38):
you live in Michigan, you know how it
is there where you live to you use
to get your vehicle and that you know,
the floor gets jacked up. So I wanted
those bucket types that
seal and
and I found some other company was selling
something really, really cool. And I got to
the point and I'm like, dollars 99
for what they're trying to sell me? I
said, something doesn't add up. Even Chinese stuff
(46:59):
is this should be more than that.
And
so I I get as I had looked
at it and I went and did Google
it and said, is this site a scam?
And yep. It sure was.
And,
again, using PayPal as
a mechanism to get to extract money and
and
I think people have to be real careful
(47:19):
with their accounts now and have two factor
authentication. So it drives me crazy having two
factor authentication on on x.
But you have to at this point.
Yeah. I guess this
this magic guy that I mentioned to,
(47:40):
was,
I guess, a a victim of a scammer
who had been posing
as a booking agent for a famous American
podcast.
Oh.
And it and was trying
to charge him money to be a guest
on this guy's podcast.
I get requests all the time from people.
(48:00):
Do you know this podcaster? Can you connect
me with them?
I get that request a lot.
I agreed to be on a
business AI summit.
They asked me come on. It's it's next
week and
the approach was very good.
The the interview and they, you know, they
(48:21):
prequalified me and, you know, what are you
gonna show? And
so it felt
it felt and it is legitimate, but their
marketing tactics that I've seen that they've used
as part of their,
you know, upsell,
it bothers me a little bit.
You know, so everything is leading to some
(48:42):
sort of sort of upsell and
so I guess that's the way things are
now.
So,
yeah, I think I'm gonna be just a
little more
cognizant of who I'm agreeing to
speak for or speak with.
(49:04):
Yeah. And I think there there's a lot
of danger areas here that people don't immediately
think of because a lot of these things
that are being perpetrated now are things that
just didn't happen in the past. Yeah.
People didn't try and
scam on every
every little type of business
opportunity
and deal, I think, and even employment type
(49:26):
stuff too. Right? Work stuff can be scams
too.
Yeah. And a lot of,
big employers will I've been hearing more about
this here lately
that,
some employers will just run fake employment ads,
just to make it look like that they're
growing, you know, business. It's just another PR,
(49:50):
effort on the part. The the roles that
they advertise never get filled and
they just keep running them over and over
again. And it generates all this interest
And and people think that they're a growing
company, that they're looking for, you know, so
they're getting thousands of people applying for jobs.
But
these the company never hires anybody.
(50:10):
So you kind of have, you know,
different levels of scams that are going on
out there.
And you have to, yeah, it, to me,
it just comes across as, you know, our
society and our business culture has, has become
desperate. Right? And people are willing to throw
ethics out the window. Well, that's what happened
in China.
(50:32):
You know, they it
that's they had a transition
at some point. I think yeah. You can
go and look at history, but
the business ethics really went completely sideways.
And that's where IP of The United States
companies started being stolen, just outright
stolen.
And it continues today.
(50:53):
You know, people get mad when I see
these kinds of things. But I've seen, you
know, having gone to
events like CES and so forth and you
know, I told people to have new gear
there. Put it have a have a, you
know, a drape or something that you can
put over your
booth when, you know, when these four or
five individuals come in with a camera notebook
(51:15):
and tape measure and don't let them touch
your device.
If they're gonna copy it sooner or later,
just don't give them six months head start,
especially if you're in prototype mode.
Yeah. And I've been increasingly,
this is another use for AI that I
found that can be pretty effective is that
(51:36):
if you get a pitch or you get
some sort of a solicitation or you get
some sort of
a offer that looks interesting,
then just take that what whatever it is
and run it through the latest AI platform
and just ask it, is this does this
look a little legitimate? Does it look like
it's real?
And just do a layer of vetting like
(51:58):
this because oftentimes
the
the AI models will have seen
patterns
out there that can give you a clue
that this may not be legitimate.
The amount of email,
I'm just that so scares me to death.
I just, you know, I I talk about
it almost every week with the team.
We had a support ticket come in and
(52:20):
Dave asked me, hey do are we expecting
a DocuSign from
some name? I'm like, no we're not and
for God's sake don't click on that link.
You know, so it's
I've been Always always look at the source
of the email that you're getting. It's so
if it's claiming to be from a,
(52:41):
you know, a legitimate company.
Visual That's not always the case now. They're
spoofing that stuff left and right. It's
yeah. You just gotta be careful. You know,
this and it's what it is is they
catch you at a It's called a phishing
attack. Yeah. And and they they catch you
at a weak moment. You click on something
and you're done. You know, your your your
accounts are compromised. You know?
(53:03):
Some sort of tracking software being put on.
People don't believe it. But,
on all my Macs, I run
antivirus and malware
And they they they're you know, everyone says
why? Well,
the amount of stuff that it catches, especially,
websites,
they'll don't go to this website. It'll it'll
(53:24):
pause
from loading a website. So,
yeah, I think it's,
because we're we're, you know, we're we're gonna
get tricked at some point into clicking on
to something.
Right.
It's gonna, you know, it's gonna be hard
to
decipher what's real and what's not real.
(53:46):
I mean, what's real
for for you to, you know,
give credibility to and what to ignore. It's
gonna be harder and harder to tell Yeah.
For sure.
Especially with AI.
Protect your assets, ladies and gentlemen. Two factor
authentication
even though it's annoying.
I got it's gotten to the point now,
(54:07):
like,
every
service
that has,
and it's tokens, RSA tokens, that type of
stuff.
I got three apps now that are running
token because every company uses a little bit
different token.
And,
I have to I got three different authenticator
apps now.
(54:29):
And, you know, you always worry about, okay.
I'm gonna change phones and is this stuff
gonna transfer and
which I'm not at this time, but that's
thing. It always worries me when I move
to a new phone.
But what is everybody hearing out there? You
know, what's going on? So it's summer. It's
a little quiet.
You know, minimal
(54:50):
news going on in the space. What is
what is everyone else in podcast land
hearing these days? We'd love
to love to hear from you.
Is there any
buzz that you're hearing about podcast movement or
any kind of exciting stuff going on with
that? I I have
(55:10):
the podcast standards project,
reached out to Dan
for a meeting room, and,
Dan made one available.
So we're actually gonna have a meeting room
at
Podcast Movement.
I offered up to,
you know, bring in some catering, water, coffee,
(55:31):
or whatever that,
could be in the room. And, of course,
you know, anytime you talk catering in an
event like that, it's, you know, that's a
thousand dollars
no matter what you do.
And
the
I was looking at the map of meeting
rooms and
(55:52):
there's a lot of openings,
for meeting rooms. So there's
it doesn't appear to me that they've sold
out,
their meeting rooms for this event.
Libsyn, Triton,
SoundStack
not SoundStack,
Sounds Profitable,
have a a segment of
(56:12):
them. If I can
in my Slack channel, I can't show a
screenshot of it, but
see here event planning.
It looks like they have one, two, three,
four, five,
six, seven, eight meeting rooms left.
And one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight,
(56:33):
nine, ten, eleven, twelve, 13 sold. So,
they got more than half of their meeting
rooms
sold. So
and I am appreciative of Dan that gave
the PSP a good rate. So I think
the companies are
are splitting the cost,
for the meeting room. So we'll have a
(56:54):
place to bring people in if we wanna
talk.
Maybe only chairs in there depending on how
much a cup of coffee costs.
So, Todd, I I
had
chat GPT four,
o, make a make an image for
tonight's episode. Oh, yeah? And I I pulled
the image into,
(57:16):
paint, which is part of Windows. Yeah.
And and
to try and There's a size it. There's
a word I haven't heard in a while.
Well and Yeah. They've added
Copilot
to Paint.
So there's a lot of advanced capability
in the just the basic
image editor that they had on Windows for
many years. So there's ability for AI can
(57:39):
generate images inside of that
application now. So they've even
even Notepad has AI capabilities now.
That's funny. They yeah. Well, it is. But
what what I wanted to mention was is
I pulled the the thumbnail that I generated
from
chat GPT
into
(57:59):
paint on Windows,
and it flagged the image. It
said, saved with content credentials.
Oh. Content
credentials
metadata
discloses that
the work was created with generative AI. Oh.
So it actually it's
(58:23):
another
it's another form of labeling. Yeah. We're starting
to see these bigger media or these bigger
companies, bigger tech companies start to
to enable that in in the metadata.
That's one thing that Stora will not do
(58:43):
and that's Stora.
The chat g p t version of the
image creator, they will not
create a nineteen twenty by ten eighty image.
It's some weird
it won't do a true 16 by nine,
so that you can just resize it up.
You have to do some finagling with it.
It it annoys me to know. What I
had to do with this one out of
(59:04):
chat
Yeah. GPT was I I had to resize
it to the
was it the the nineteen twenty by ten
eighty Yeah. Size.
Yeah. Yeah. It it and then I think
it does that on purpose, to be honest
with you. It doesn't create a perfect
16 by nine image. So I don't know
why they do that.
Mhmm. Anyway, we're we're top of the hour
(59:25):
here.
Yeah.
We got through it.
I have a little editing to do on
today's show. So if you've Yeah.
Yeah. We had a rough start, didn't we?
It sucks, but it's okay. I'll get it
chopped up and everyone that's listening to this
later will just hear have heard the
you know, where I chopped it.
So hopefully I can make it so it
(59:46):
doesn't sound too bad.
Yeah. Because I gotta master. I gotta master
recording.
So
I think that's it. Todd@blueberry.comatgeeknewsonxatgeeknewsatgeeknews.chat
on Mastodon.
Yeah. I'm on x as well at at
(01:00:07):
Rob Greenlee on YouTube at Rob Greenlee at
all the social,
or interest
media platforms now.
LinkedIn,
Facebook,
you know, all of the all all the
go to platforms now. So you can find
me there or at
rob greenley.com
too. So Everyone, thanks for being here. We'll
(01:00:29):
be back again. 8PM
eastern time,
is our kickoff time. And,
believe it or not, Rob, I've been up
for, like, seventeen hours. So I'm I'm going
to bed immediately after this.
Yeah. Work straight through today. So lifestyle.
Yeah. It is. But, you know, that's the
(01:00:50):
price you pay for,
in in my opinion,
living where I am currently living right now
and still working.
So Yeah.
That's true. Yeah. Alright, everyone. Thanks. We'll see
you back here
next Wednesday. Take care. Bye bye. Alright. Bye.
Everybody, welcome to
the new media show. And, here we are.
I had to do the quick clap in
case something disconnected.
But,
Rob, how how are you?
Doing great, Todd. It's great to be doing
the show again.
So got lots of interesting stuff to talk
about.
Yeah.
(00:20):
7,000,000. Like the podcasting space is in a
blender. Uh-huh. 14,000,000
shows.
Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Spotify,
7,000,000.
Well, that that's what happens when most of
your new podcast creators through the your your
your,
podcasting platform,
(00:40):
never turn on RSS.
Yeah. And then that's all they're they're just
on Spotify. That's it. Yeah. It's it's a
great way to get a bunch of exclusive
content. Especially a lot of so many of
them are just tests. Test. Test. Test. Right.
You know,
publish a real number like how many of
those 7,000,000 have published a new episode.
And then, you know,
(01:03):
you know, it got so bad that the
podcast index stopped
allowing new shows to be listed on on
their platform because it just it was it
was bad bad bad, you know. From Spotify
specifically? Yeah. From Spotify specifically
because the
making sure my yeah. Because
(01:25):
the shows were just again,
you know, like test shows and there was
nothing to them. So
they set a minimum number. They yeah. No.
There's no real
commitment there. Oh, and we offered a with
it. Right? When we offered a free no
credit card
free no credit card required free trial, we
got 800 in a month.
(01:47):
And
but guess what? We got the same number
of actual conversions.
And meanwhile, we're left with 800 shows and
you know about,
an 8,000 were scammers
and dealing with people that were uploading radio
shows and publishing episodes and applying for programmatic
(02:07):
and,
you know, it's just like
Yeah. You know,
it it's it was bad. So, you know,
much as we'd love to offer a free
non credit card required trial, it's just
not possible.
But they don't care. They just let them
go.
And Well, free is a great way to
(02:29):
get
higher numbers
Sure. Look good to investors. Yeah. It doesn't
really translate into very much around,
you know,
alignment or commitment to the platform or
being a solid content creator that can contribute
content to the platform is
yeah. No. Anyway, so yeah. It's
(02:50):
it's just, you know, lots and lots of
dead shows
and,
you know, but at the same time, there
was an article that came out that talked
about
active shows and the number of new shows
coming online,
which is way down,
this year
compared to others.
(03:10):
So
it it I guess it is what it
is. But,
Yeah.
I think a lot of people are realizing
that it's
it's it's a real commitment to
make a podcast.
And then you equate that to expectations
around.
(03:31):
Everybody wants to make money from everything that
they're doing with creating content these days. Right.
They may not be able to make money,
but everybody wants to, and everybody is
searching around to find
whatever,
you know, side hustle they can do
to make a extra extra buck on the
side. And a lot of people thought that
(03:52):
that was
possible through podcasting.
And it is possible, but Mhmm. It's not
a quick buck situation. Everybody's looking for a
quick buck these days.
So, you know, it's just a number to
report to stockholders. It doesn't mean anything.
And,
and, you know, Spotify
is, by default turn off RSS feeds. So
(04:15):
people get over there and they think they're
podcasting and it's just like YouTubers. I ask
them,
where where is your I can't find you
on Apple Podcasts.
And, you know, it's funny as we get,
tickets all the time. For some reason, people
think we're Spotify support even though they
they Google podcast support and, of course, Blueberry
(04:35):
ranks real high on that ranking
and they come over and they send us
a ticket saying, hey, how come I'm not
on
Apple Podcasts? And we go to look and
they're not even hosting with us. They're hosted
over at Spotify
and they can't even get an answer over
there.
So they don't even lot of yeah. I
hear it too. There's a lot of confusion
around,
(04:56):
you know,
people will think that, like, Blueberry is
is a listening platform. Right? Well, they don't
so much consider it anymore.
You know, use No. No. I'm just saying
but I hear people think that the, like,
Lipsyn and Buzzsprout and all that stuff are
actual listening platforms.
So it is a little more confusing than
that because, you know, like, Podbean does have
(05:18):
a strong kind of listening platform, and there's
some players that that's what makes this whole
ecosystem so complicated for people to really understand
about how it all works because everybody's doing
something different, and it always works different. And
and people that publish to Spotify don't even
realize oftentimes that they need an RSS feed
(05:38):
to be an Apple. Right? So
this lack of knowledge is permeating this space.
And of course, Spotify didn't integrate with Apple
to do auto submission after all those years
of paying people in
India or wherever it was to submit shows.
They have an automated way of doing it
and they haven't done that because
we don't want
(05:59):
They don't want people to be on Apple.
Want people to be on Apple. Right.
Yeah. So Yeah. It just, you know, it's
a very, very poor
very, very poor
mindset.
So it is it is Yeah. But that's
that's Spotify.
Spotify's always had kind of a a,
break it and then maybe fix it later
(06:22):
type of an approach to the market. And
and they're not So if you look at
oh. Go ahead.
If you look at the podcast index, they
they have 4,600,000
shows in there, and Spotify is showing 7,000,000,
and Apple Podcast is showing 2.8 Right. Million.
So
Apple's doing a good job of kind of
curating their catalog,
(06:43):
much better than anybody else in the industry.
That's for sure. Well, to be honest with
you, you know,
even though we don't have a director anymore,
we still have the full catalog of shows
and we're still pulling in. And there
and
the amount of shows on a
monthly basis that the we get a red
flag in our system that basically said either
(07:04):
the RSS feed is dead or the media
went offline.
One of the other
or both
is astronomical numbers.
And
we kill those but yet a lot of
the platforms
don't clean up.
And
Podcast Index included. I don't think they've been
doing any,
(07:25):
any cleanup
per se of
dead dead,
you know, dead dead shows. And what I
consider a dead show is no media, no
RSS feed. That's a dead dead show.
Mhmm. And we give them enough time to
come back in case there's,
you know,
some some technical issue that's going on.
And very rarely do they ever come back.
(07:48):
Well, there are
shows, I think, out there that,
that have kinda like either
an active RSS
feed, but no episodes Yeah. Or Yep. Episodes
that are available off the server, but no
RSS feed. So They didn't they didn't clean
up. Yeah. They didn't get cleaned up. Right.
Yeah. That's right. Has to be one or
(08:09):
the other gets excluded from Yeah. The directory.
And who based on your your own directory,
Todd, which of these three has the closest
to
what you find as far as active,
you know,
live RSS feeds. Is it Apple or is
it podcasting?
Probably Apple.
Apple's closest? Yeah. Probably closest.
(08:31):
But again,
there's a lot of
there's a lot of debt over there too.
So, you know, they So what you define
as debt? Well, again, it all depends. If
the RSS feed is
up,
you know, I don't know what their criteria
for killing the show over there is you
know, and and the delisting.
(08:53):
I know that what our internal criteria is.
So
That that piece of information would be good
for Apple to disclose to the industry. They
can't because it's a stockholder thing again.
Well, no. No. What the criteria is for
being included in the catalog or not.
(09:14):
That should be should be disclosed to the
industry. So We had a know what to
expect. We had an interesting one the other
day. We had a a very rare, your
show's been rejected from Apple podcast. And I
was like, what is this?
And I thought it was something, you know,
I said, do we have someone that's doing
something really naughty? Or is it, you know,
obvious?
(09:35):
You know, what what was the reason?
And the in the email it said was
audio quality.
And so I popped into the system and
I started listening to the audio and
the audio didn't sound
bad,
wasn't the best.
I was pretty surprised. So I don't know
(09:55):
if they have an automated system over there
that's looking
at the audio. Maybe, you know, Ted, if
you're listening,
I I think the tech support team worked
with the podcaster and maybe got it resolved.
But maybe it was some maybe there was
some media because I just listened to the
latest episode. I didn't list stuff that was
down the stack.
Maybe there was some malformed audio or something
(10:16):
causing a problem. But, yeah, it was the
first I think that's the first time I've
ever seen
that. It wasn't in it was basically kind
of a it was a suspension,
like a suspension email.
And,
so that again, that's the first time I've
I've ever seen that come back from Apple
from a show.
(10:36):
So based on its format or based on
said audio. It was, basically, the audio quality
that was Audio quality. Yeah. I'd have to
pull up the email. I've got it saved
because it was so unusual.
But
but one thing's for sure, some things that
will never be
are actually going to happen again.
(11:00):
I will never
I will never go back to podcast movement.
I'll never go back to podcast movement, Adam.
No. That's what he specifically told me. Adam.
I'm sure we had with him. Yeah. Going
back and he's you see, he has got
so it's it's I think what has happened
is,
Rocky Thomas was on podcasting two point o
(11:22):
show
on the boardroom.
And,
I'm actually
in between episodes. I
listen to the current episode, but I need
to go back and listen to Rocky's episode
because I was trying to get the the
insider scoop on what he had to say
about coming and speaking. But he'll be speaking
on podcasting two point o in a prime
afternoon
spot, not one directly after lunch. At least,
(11:44):
I don't
I think he said 01:30,
which is probably okay.
Yeah. That you never know.
And they're gonna he, they're gonna be on
the SoundStack stage.
So I remember just a short few years
ago that,
Dave Jones and he
(12:04):
had a had a session
And It wasn't was it a podcast movie?
Or dozen people that yeah. It was a
podcast movie. Yeah. So only a dozen showed
up. Yeah. It was only like a dozen
people that actually showed up for that. But
it was right after immediately after lunch, and
it was kind of a weird
time to have a session and but you
know, here's the key.
(12:27):
Adam, you got to promote it.
You got to promote your session and
and and talk about it. We'll talk about
it and make sure that it's promoted. But
the only way you're gonna get,
guarantee a good, you know, good number of
people is to is to promote it because,
these podcasters don't know
(12:49):
you, I, or Rob from a hole in
the ground at this point.
So,
you know, yeah, you need to promote it
and I hopefully SoundStack will promote the heck
out of it too and we get a
get a full house and educate,
educate creators. So he's gonna fly up from
Fredericksburg
and
(13:09):
speak and then fly home. So
I can't even buy him a beer.
He's not gonna be in town long enough
to do that. So
So he's,
that's right. He's out by Austin, isn't he?
Well, Hill Country, wherever that is, that's like
three two, three hours.
(13:30):
I don't know. Someone from Texas can tell
us and chat.
Yeah. Two or three hours from
maybe it's two, but wherever Hill Country is,
Fredericksburg is where he's living these days.
Yeah.
So he's got a dentist friend that has
a snazzy new airplane and they're gonna fly
up and,
(13:50):
you know, much better than driving. That's for
damn sure. Coming from Austin to
Dallas up I 40, that just sucks. That
drive just
s u c k s sucks.
There's always wrecks. There's always traffic jams.
Yeah. It's a good choice to fly.
Yeah. Yeah. Very, very, very, very, very smart.
(14:13):
But I was kind of
surprised
on YouTube saying they're gonna crack down on
the slop. But the question is,
well, they said they were.
And then I saw some post commentary where
saying, well, this is just the start. Yeah.
K. I think you should back up and
give it some context there, Todd.
(14:35):
What are you talking about?
AI slop.
Where? On YouTube. I said YouTube. Okay. Yeah.
You did? Oh, I didn't hear that. Okay.
Sorry. Yeah. So they're planning to crack down
on AI slop
and repetitive content. You know how much slop
there is out there now? How much
AI generated content on YouTube? And they're not
gonna allow it to be monetized.
(14:55):
Did YouTube actually use that language?
Or I'm re I'm re I'm reading your
show notes. So I'm going to No. I
know. But, I mean, I just I just
wonder if people actually use that,
from from YouTube,
or is it
it's being painted in that way? That's where
(15:16):
this article
came from was TechCrunch.
So Yeah. They said the first crack down
on mass produce and repetitive video is consumed
over AI slot
grows. So Yeah. And that was the title
of their article.
So Yeah. So That's good news.
Yeah. So I don't believe that YouTube
(15:38):
actually used that language. No. Is what I'm
saying. Yeah. But, you know, it's I I
it's almost
hard to avoid it now.
And
yeah. There's so much that's,
you know, history.
You know, it's all these history type things
and
and unfortunately stuff that I like to listen
(15:58):
to real people
talk about,
you know, certain topics. It's that same
voice that you hear
across multiple channels and
so yeah. And then not monetize if they
demonetize it at a great level,
(16:20):
that's gonna just shut down
the incentive
to do this
because they want real voices.
Well, yeah.
And I think it specifically says,
content that's
repetitive
in a podcast
(16:41):
style upload,
is what what it is. It says that
the concerns about AI
impact on quality
content,
originality,
and audience trust, it's a it's a potential
bellwether for,
future platform policies affecting podcast distribution. Now, if
(17:03):
we're talking about YouTube here,
that would apply generally across
all video content, not just what's being termed,
podcasts
on
on YouTube. So I think we're
a little bit confusing the issue here. I
think to some degree, I'm not sure that
TechCrunch really did a good job on this,
(17:24):
but,
I'm not sure that what they're referring to
specifically would be what I I would consider
to be podcasts. I would consider them just
Oh, it's it's just
on videos on Yeah. On YouTube that are
being
mass produced. Yep. Yep. They're being done via
creating a transcript and then,
and then adding that transcript to, let's say,
(17:46):
a clone
And pick and some pictures. Yeah. And then
creating a video from it. Yep.
I I wouldn't necessarily lump it in as
a podcast per se. Oh, it's it it's
I don't think they said specifically it's about
podcast, but it it definitely
basically brought up two points. Repetitive
content,
(18:08):
AI,
and you've got people that are blatantly ripping
off
content as well and then reproducing and calling
it its own.
So,
you know, there's a lot of that. It's
it's on there.
But I think the best part of it
is is,
is the ability to get rid of these
(18:30):
AI synthetic hosts,
and
to be monetized
and get rid of the content. Because I
think what they're worried about is just being
overwhelmed,
and they're already being overrun. They should have
acted some time ago, but this is gonna
be some automated process. But I was sure
would love for YouTube to put
(18:51):
some sort
of flag. Basically, we'd able to say, yes.
This is AI generated content and flag videos
as a user that it was AI. But
that's somewhere we can just say report
to help them,
you know. I I I I you know,
I'm of the opinion that if you're gonna
(19:12):
create content, you you need to create content
as a creator.
And
that work should be rewarded.
I can build a script, you know, our
my myth series.
I have,
AI helped me with ideation.
And,
and then I write a rough script and
(19:33):
then I have it help me clean up
my script
that I'm doing for the podcast news and
myth show that I'm
putting out.
And
but I don't
I don't use the AI to
write the original script.
So and and what I do is I
do talking points. I walk through my eight,
(19:55):
nine, 10
talking points and
and then then I get some help. But
and then I have to edit it again.
So it's a couple hour process to do
a five minute show.
And again, it's I think as long as
a human is involved and the human is
(20:16):
narrating,
but at what point does it get so
good that they can't, they can't detect it?
Well, I think that's what's coming here. And
I'm actually looking
deeper at the article itself
and the article doesn't actually use the term
podcast. Oh, no. It's it was never mentioning
podcast at all.
It has nothing to do with podcast. It's
(20:36):
purely AI generated
content on YouTube.
And yeah.
Yeah. So
but if you're creating that type of AI
generated content and calling it a podcast, then
you're probably gonna be demonetized.
Yeah. I think the term that was used
in this summary was podcast
(20:57):
style uploads, which I'm not even sure what
that is. That's interesting.
Yeah.
So But it's any content. It's not podcast
content.
Right. It's just any any AI generated
video that just isn't doesn't come across very
authentic and real,
which there is quite quite a bit. I
(21:18):
mean, I see it on
on YouTube all the time.
And you do have to wonder
really how good the content is,
that comes out of that. And and and
I think it's also a reflection on
to some degree how good the content is
that's coming out of AI too. Yeah.
Because there is a direct correlation between
(21:41):
the content that comes out in these AI
video pieces
that is generated based on AI.
If, if
all of the,
the script and the narration
is AI created, then, then it's really the
fault of the AI.
It's, it's not really a human problem. It's
(22:02):
just that the AI is not very good
yet.
Yeah.
So yeah. Yeah. It's it's a complicated
topic here. And this is something that we're
gonna have to
wrestle with increasingly,
especially as the AI actually starts to get
better. I know that we saw the the
launch of Grok four
(22:22):
here this past week. I don't know if
you've had a chance to play around with
it. I haven't. At all. No. But I
heard it's pretty good.
Yeah.
So it's interesting. You know, things are progressing
on this front and I keep hearing about
chat GPT
five Yeah. Is coming around the corner. Yeah.
It should be here. Sometime this
(22:43):
late summer or something.
Yeah. Speculation. It could drop at any time.
Yeah. So
we could see a big jump
in
quality of this stuff. I never thought I
would pay $200 a month for a single
tool.
You know? I
it's pretty amazing. I
you know, there's,
(23:04):
there are some things I've been working on
that we're gonna announce
mid August or so.
And I had to do some deep research
to
determine, okay, is,
is this an is this the right move?
And and from an announcement standpoint, and and
how
(23:25):
do I frame
the messaging of what we're going to announce.
And,
it's been very very helpful
as it's, you know,
if you announce something, you know, people can
take things one or two ways and take
it positive or negative.
And,
so, you know, you want to make people
understand, you know, here's here's the reason.
(23:47):
And The sentiment analysis. Yeah.
Yeah.
So
and it's been helpful for me because it
took gave me some
ideas on which I
probably
would not have
got it myself right off the bat. I
(24:08):
may have got there after, you know, a
week or two.
But,
and maybe after four or five people looked
at it. But, you know, basically, I've got
a good
pathway
for for, you know, the the messaging that
we're gonna use. So,
I think that,
just like anything else,
(24:28):
the
the the
key to these tools is you don't let
them do the work but let them help
you.
And,
that advanced reasoning tool, it sit there and
crank for, like, forty five minutes on my
they fed it spreadsheets and, you know, I've
I've fed it a bunch of stuff
and,
(24:49):
risk analysis and, you know, all kinds of
different things,
and use personal, you know, what I think
and, you know, and and
it's it's it's like having a data analysis
and a
advisor. And that's why I'm kind of using
that advanced tools, using it kind of as
an advisor.
(25:09):
And I'm not letting it make a decision
for me, for God's sake. But,
at least I can be advised and and
potentially,
you know, do something the way that probably
is the way for success.
So it's just like we're getting ready to
launch guest match pro.
Probably not Monday,
(25:30):
as we found some stuff today that needs
to be fixed in our beta testing. But
I'm hoping sometime next week
and,
there you know, there's a whole bunch of
we've got copy done but there was a
whole bunch of things that needed,
there's you know, you have a question mark
next to a prompt.
And I'm like, oh God. I don't want
(25:51):
to write these, you know, because so I
just did screenshots of all those pages
that had those question marks where you hover
and you have a little pop up and
I I had chat g p t create
those
those hover pop ups in about twenty minutes.
I took about another hour to edit them.
I was like, okay.
Yes. You know, save me a massive amount
(26:12):
of time.
So
Yeah. I think it's really easy to ask
these
large language models to
to do things that
we humans think is important
to get an answer to.
And then when it actually outputs the answer
to you,
(26:33):
you
it gives you so much
that it makes it difficult to figure out,
well, what's
what's really usable out of this? It's all
about the prompting,
you know. You have to really,
you
know, answer these three questions.
Yeah. You know. The answers it gives you,
I kinda I kinda wonder
(26:55):
somewhat if it if it just doesn't have
the
It's still a language model. It's not AGI
yet. So
It just doesn't have the
the the human intuition
Yeah.
Aspects of it that makes the output usable.
Yeah. The danger is thinking it does and
then using those outputs and
(27:18):
is it you know, you have to be
very, very careful. I think goes back to
what the the Google lady said a couple
of years ago that there's gonna be, you
know, the super creative people that are doing
great prompts and then there's gonna be the
quality assurance folks and those that have had
knowledge and experience and then,
everything announcement in the middle is the thunking
is what's gonna be affected the most. And
(27:38):
I I kind of see that already
is that
the inputs are super important and then the
analysis of the outputs and making sure that
what it's giving you is correct.
And actually doing the math, going back and
make sure you've done the math on a
spreadsheet
and not, you know, let it create a
(28:00):
to create, you know, pie charts and stuff
for you without making sure it got the
formulas right.
Yeah. I had to create some spreadsheets,
here
recently,
and I
it told me that it gave me all
these,
a list of 50 different
detailed items and different columns and stuff like
(28:21):
that. And I exported the spreadsheet
and I pulled it into Excel
and all of the columns and all the
rows were filled with
generic information.
So, you know, I
I just think that we're still at a
stage where this stuff just
isn't as good as it's being spun up
(28:42):
to be.
And I do wonder
if if we're still
a ways out from this stuff really being,
usable at a at a level, or is
the the really good AI being reserved for
those that are paying the big high prices?
So by the way, I I gotta ask
(29:03):
you something,
because I've been looking through my email and
I can't find it. Did you send me
an email? Just something to do with the
podcast hall of fame
a couple weeks ago.
I don't think so here.
I'm probably soon gonna do it, but I'm
Okay. Because I thought I saw an email
come in and I said, oh, I have
to look at that later and maybe it
was for some other awards.
(29:24):
I think you and I were both interviewed
by Carmen.
Did you get interviewed by Carmen
talking about the hall of fame and
Yeah. Yeah. I did too. He come in
one well, he wanted to talk to me
about the podcast awards.
So
Yeah. That's probably what it was. Maybe that
was the the kicker but seems like it
was before that. So I'm glad I didn't
(29:45):
miss something.
Yeah.
I saw this.
It was in pod
news. Indie film
follows Ronald Young Jr's hunt for breakout
podcast with cameos
from Adam Curry, Ira Glass, Kara Swisher, and
Mark
Marr Marin,
(30:07):
mainstreaming podcast culture on screen. So this is
some sort of,
it's gonna be premiered
at the Oak It's a documentary called Age
of Audio. Yeah. And it's gonna be premiered
at the Oak Cliff Film Festival, wherever that
is.
So I subscribe to their YouTube channel. So
I look forward to watching
what they've done. I watched the trailer for
(30:29):
it. Pretty good. And it's
it's like,
you know, there's been like three or four
documentaries like this made over the years.
Very similar, Todd. Yeah. And I was it
was kinda curious because, they highlighted the ambies
awards and,
you know, speaking of which I'm not even
heard anything from the ambies. Are they is
(30:50):
the podcast
that organization
still working?
Yeah.
Okay. It's been
very quiet.
Wow. Yeah.
Very Or it's Very quiet. Or they're talking
to
a different community than the Definitely definitely not
participating in Definitely not
(31:12):
not me.
That's for sure.
What's this thing that you've got here talking
about? Podcasts are making us miserable.
There's
well, I think you jumped to the
would you jump to the bottom or something?
Or here let
me No. I switched I switched pages because
(31:33):
we're working up two pages today.
Right. Yeah.
So
yeah.
The piece critiques the Persace of Nature podcast
in modern life arguing that endless podcast consumption
feeds anxiety only if you're listening at 1.52
(31:53):
or 2.5 speeds.
Should it feed anxiety,
loneliness, and performative
culture of always optimizing it questions the mental
health effects A podcast is a medium of
relentless content churn.
Yeah. Well, we're we're dealing with that every
day.
It continues. I think it's just part of
(32:13):
the what what the media culture now. Right?
Yeah.
Is a a lot
of anxiety,
you know, this loneliness, this performative
culture.
Right? As we all become
kind of creators, and I think that's that's
really the most interesting
thing about what's going on right now is
(32:34):
this
perception that
everyone now is a creator.
Right? And that,
and that it's all
funneling into. And I hear Gary Vaynerchuk saying
this a lot here recently, and then I'm
hearing other people say this too. It's an
it's an interest
based,
(32:56):
kind of economy now. It's not
social media or those terms,
social media, podcasting, all this stuff are kind
of legacy terms to
really
describe what's really going on is that people
everyone is now at some level a creator.
Right?
(33:16):
And and that it's all people are being
inundated with
media now. So people are gravitated towards things
that they have an interest in. Right? Which
I I guess has always been there when
you think about it. But
but that's what's driving, you know, like this
social e commerce stuff that's going on. People,
you know, people are coming together around these
(33:39):
communities
of sorts
that is based on their interests, which is
kind of always been fundamental to podcasting,
really.
It's just now it's kind of going into
so many different types of media, so many
different ways of of,
doing video now or doing audio,
on all these different platforms, whether it's a
(34:00):
private community or,
you know, on a on a public
channel like YouTube or any of these platforms,
that it's kind of evolving into,
you know, each one of us has our
interests. It's like you and I, Todd, have
interest in podcasting, right? So we gravitate towards
trying to follow news and information about podcasting.
(34:24):
So it's our interest and that's what drives
what
people do. And
and it's hard to think about people that
are kind of cross pollinating
themselves
across a lot of different,
interest areas.
So so, Rob,
I have breaking news, though.
You do? I have a news flash.
Hell flash. Hell has frozen over.
(34:46):
Yes. It has. Did you see my Facebook
post?
Oh, yes. About your
you're gonna get
fiber to your Yeah.
It has. Yeah. So
my mom sent me a picture
of orange spray marks on the yard. Spray
markers. Right. And
(35:07):
the reason I knew what that was is
about
a month ago, I was driving about five
miles from my house
and I there was they were doing something
alongside the road and Chris, it's a country
road service. So I stopped and said, what
are you guys doing?
And so we're putting in Fiverr
for Frontier and of course, I'm not a
(35:27):
big fan of Frontier, but
I said, holy shit. You know, really?
And I said,
what
what does it take to bribe you guys
to come down Bronco Bank Road? And the
guy just kind of looked at me kind
of funny. Right?
And so
my neighbors are a little upset because
(35:49):
they they basically
and it must be because of house density.
They basically came up a main paved road
and then the road that is just north
of me, they came up that road
across us and then turned right and went
back down. So they basically made a a
(36:11):
box
around
so basically the fibers gonna go right by
my property.
And,
so I don't know how long
but
hell has frozen. So how are they gonna
get it from the street to your house?
I don't care. I'll dig I'll dig the
trench myself.
Oh, you will.
(36:32):
Have you actually reached out to them to
find out? No. No. But, you know, that's
you know, I'm sure they're gonna be putting
flyers in the in the mail and stuff
when they're ready. But,
yeah, I will definitely,
you know, and I I told my mom
if they if they come by the house
before, before I'm back, I said make sure
we get a case of beer in the
(36:52):
back of their truck,
you know. So,
you know, you did I'm gonna make sure
that the the fibers in well around my
house.
So So how far is it from the
street to your house?
100 feet.
Oh, that's not bad. Yeah. Yeah. And I
(37:14):
like I said be too expensive. It was
like a quarter mile. No. No.
I
would go rent the trench or machine myself
anyway. I wouldn't care.
You know? So,
and one of my neighbors messaged in the
in the Facebook chat and she said, I
hope they come down my way. But they
had turned the corner and she's just two
(37:34):
houses up the street. So,
but there's not a lot of density
further down. So I that's the only reason
I think that they came my way is
because the opposite road
that
if if I look west in the section
of road that's a mile
that they didn't go along the main road,
there's not very many houses there but there's
(37:56):
a whole bunch of houses on
these basically these three segments.
So that's the only reason I think that
we've got it. So maybe
some of this rural Internet money is finally
going to be used to actually bring rural
Internet to the rural community.
So Okay. Yeah. I'm That'd be novel, wouldn't
it? I'm I'm jazzed, you know. Even if
(38:16):
it takes another six months, it's
it's,
you know, it's it's pretty awesome. So
So, Todd, I think we saw kind of
I don't know if this is a novel
moment or or not with,
Fox News, I guess, has launched its first
podcast licensing deal.
(38:38):
Did you see this? So it's for the
conservative leaning show Ruthless. Ruthless. Right. I have
no idea. I've never heard of that show.
Yeah. I hadn't either, but
but it's interesting that they maybe did a
licensing deal. But are they a YouTube channel?
On their channel.
Yeah. Are they a YouTube channel or because
they have that Fox nation thing. So I
(38:59):
wonder if it's gonna be in
Fox nation and not on Fox.
Yeah. They don't specify
who is of course CNN has been doing
some revamping of their
podcast too.
Heard a little whimsical about that.
(39:20):
Well So we might see more of these
or some of these
successful video podcasts
make it
to cable Yeah. Which I don't know if
that's the right path for them to go,
but I'm not sure that the scale is
there. But Well, who who who wants to
sign us
for some network? You know? Well well, you
know
(39:40):
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
What do we have to put together? The
podcast news network, PNN,
or something
like
that?
Right.
Yes.
So I guess, you know, it's part of
a bigger trend, you know,
around,
you know, social media
or
interest media is what it's been called now.
(40:01):
And in these video platforms are becoming
I've never heard that word. Interest media. Who
you hanging out with? Interest media, That's what
is that is that what the the next
this younger generation has called its interest media
or is that some executive come up with
a new slang word?
(40:22):
Well, I think the person that's that's pushing
that out there now is Gary Vaynerchuk. Oh,
okay. So Gary v is so over the
top half the times. I I haven't listened
to any of his stuff in
five years.
You know? So he so it seems like
he's always yelling. You know?
(40:42):
Well, I mean, he's a very bombastic personality,
but he does have a history of being
right Yeah. He does.
About these social platforms and the direction of
where things are going. And he's also really,
really hot on this
on this,
you know,
kind of
social
ecommerce
kind of stuff like the
(41:03):
the whatnot platform and things like that. He's
he's selling things. You know, it's this whole
thing around everybody has to
have a business now. Everybody has to start
a company. Everybody has to sell. You have
to have a side hustle. Yeah. So that's
the culture that this,
you know, this up and coming
(41:24):
generation,
has is that they're being put in a
box. Right? That they can't afford things so
that they have to make their whole life
about scrambling to make money in any way
they can. So Well, a certain part of
the population doesn't wanna work.
Yeah. Or they just don't wanna
(41:44):
work at certain things. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
So
I don't know. I'm I'm pretty,
pleased so far my son has been interning
with us. And
so, you know, I've tried to keep my
nose out of everything that's going on because
that I don't wanna influence things. But I,
you know, asked the dev team last week,
how's he doing?
(42:05):
You know, is is you know, I know
my kid's smart, but, you know, you just
wanna kinda know, you know, tell, you know,
tell me the truth.
Yeah. And, yeah. He's holding his own. So
I'm pretty proud of him. So maybe there's
a future Cochrane destined for,
for raw voice. That'd be kind of interesting.
Well, it's gotta be someone that eventually replaces
(42:27):
you, Tom. Yeah. Someone does at some point.
Yeah. Someone has to come in.
Well, you have to think about that at
some point. Is it you know, who's gonna
who's who's gonna take over the mantle of
doing the new media show? I guess nobody.
Probably. He he, he did send me a
note. He said, damn, you know a lot.
It's just been around a long time. Yeah.
(42:48):
That's that's exactly
it. You know?
And just hang out hang out there youngster
and just absorb the knowledge. You know?
Yeah. Right.
Well, Todd, I don't know if you've not
noticed the
world that we're in now is,
there's just seems I don't know if you
get this impression too in your own kind
(43:09):
of
mobile phone of, just there's always just a
constant
bombardment
of
what I can solve kind of like scams.
Right? Uh-huh. There's always
somebody after you for something. I almost got
caught by one last week.
Mhmm. Yeah. I'm a big Tumi fan and
(43:31):
I can never have afforded their suitcases.
Is there a thousand dollars?
Who's gonna pay a thousand dollars for a
suitcase? I can't afford that.
And they had I got this saw this
thing in Facebook and said Facebook some I
mean to me something year sale, you know,
as much as 80% off. I'm like holy
shit. So I clicked on the ad and
(43:52):
I'm like, wow.
I can get a Tumi suitcase for $210
and I was all in. I I I
had, like, three suitcases ordered.
And I got all the way through and
got to the point where I was to
click my credit card as clicking and said,
it's only letting me pay with PayPal. Why
why is that? I don't use PayPal. That's
my business account. I get to use my
(44:13):
personal account.
And I said, that's not gonna work. And
I'm looking at the site and I was
not on toomie.com.
And it
looked like toomey.
Yeah. And I guess it's
it's happening,
around social media accounts
(44:34):
getting hijacked.
Around,
fake podcasts and stuff like that. You know,
there's a scam trend where creators'
social media accounts
are hijacked
to promote fake podcasts
and
and scam products. Right? Kinda like what you
were just talking about.
So it's,
(44:55):
victims include
high profile creators like
Magic
Singh,
I guess is what
is one of them who was featured in
this article.
The issue points to a broader concern around
platform security, reputation protection,
and monetization
pressures,
(45:16):
that the creators face today.
So I think there's just a, it's just
a constant war out there and it's all,
everybody's trying to scam everybody or,
you know, sell
expensive,
you know, mastermind programs.
Right. Right. And there's so many kind of
(45:36):
people out there that are think, well, you
know, it's so easy to,
to get rich quick and to, you you
know,
just sell
an ebook and you're gonna make $10,000
a month or or
launch a podcast and
you're gonna make all this money and all
this stuff. I I get emails all the
(45:57):
time from
Facebook,
you know, people trying to get into my
my account.
And then
well, and this is, you know, this thing
I was talking about a minute ago,
that's like the third thing in recent months
that I've seen on Facebook that was advertised
(46:17):
on Facebook that
was scam.
Another thing a few months ago was,
I has I have a Ford Edge and,
I've got the nice
I bought the aftermarket,
I don't know if it's the weather shield
or whatever they are, mats for it. Because
(46:38):
you live in Michigan, you know how it
is there where you live to you use
to get your vehicle and that you know,
the floor gets jacked up. So I wanted
those bucket types that
seal and
and I found some other company was selling
something really, really cool. And I got to
the point and I'm like, dollars 99
for what they're trying to sell me? I
said, something doesn't add up. Even Chinese stuff
(46:59):
is this should be more than that.
And
so I I get as I had looked
at it and I went and did Google
it and said, is this site a scam?
And yep. It sure was.
And,
again, using PayPal as
a mechanism to get to extract money and
and
I think people have to be real careful
(47:19):
with their accounts now and have two factor
authentication. So it drives me crazy having two
factor authentication on on x.
But you have to at this point.
Yeah. I guess this
this magic guy that I mentioned to,
(47:40):
was,
I guess, a a victim of a scammer
who had been posing
as a booking agent for a famous American
podcast.
Oh.
And it and was trying
to charge him money to be a guest
on this guy's podcast.
I get requests all the time from people.
(48:00):
Do you know this podcaster? Can you connect
me with them?
I get that request a lot.
I agreed to be on a
business AI summit.
They asked me come on. It's it's next
week and
the approach was very good.
The the interview and they, you know, they
(48:21):
prequalified me and, you know, what are you
gonna show? And
so it felt
it felt and it is legitimate, but their
marketing tactics that I've seen that they've used
as part of their,
you know, upsell,
it bothers me a little bit.
You know, so everything is leading to some
(48:42):
sort of sort of upsell and
so I guess that's the way things are
now.
So,
yeah, I think I'm gonna be just a
little more
cognizant of who I'm agreeing to
speak for or speak with.
(49:04):
Yeah. And I think there there's a lot
of danger areas here that people don't immediately
think of because a lot of these things
that are being perpetrated now are things that
just didn't happen in the past. Yeah.
People didn't try and
scam on every
every little type of business
opportunity
and deal, I think, and even employment type
(49:26):
stuff too. Right? Work stuff can be scams
too.
Yeah. And a lot of,
big employers will I've been hearing more about
this here lately
that,
some employers will just run fake employment ads,
just to make it look like that they're
growing, you know, business. It's just another PR,
(49:50):
effort on the part. The the roles that
they advertise never get filled and
they just keep running them over and over
again. And it generates all this interest
And and people think that they're a growing
company, that they're looking for, you know, so
they're getting thousands of people applying for jobs.
But
these the company never hires anybody.
(50:10):
So you kind of have, you know,
different levels of scams that are going on
out there.
And you have to, yeah, it, to me,
it just comes across as, you know, our
society and our business culture has, has become
desperate. Right? And people are willing to throw
ethics out the window. Well, that's what happened
in China.
(50:32):
You know, they it
that's they had a transition
at some point. I think yeah. You can
go and look at history, but
the business ethics really went completely sideways.
And that's where IP of The United States
companies started being stolen, just outright
stolen.
And it continues today.
(50:53):
You know, people get mad when I see
these kinds of things. But I've seen, you
know, having gone to
events like CES and so forth and you
know, I told people to have new gear
there. Put it have a have a, you
know, a drape or something that you can
put over your
booth when, you know, when these four or
five individuals come in with a camera notebook
(51:15):
and tape measure and don't let them touch
your device.
If they're gonna copy it sooner or later,
just don't give them six months head start,
especially if you're in prototype mode.
Yeah. And I've been increasingly,
this is another use for AI that I
found that can be pretty effective is that
(51:36):
if you get a pitch or you get
some sort of a solicitation or you get
some sort of
a offer that looks interesting,
then just take that what whatever it is
and run it through the latest AI platform
and just ask it, is this does this
look a little legitimate? Does it look like
it's real?
And just do a layer of vetting like
(51:58):
this because oftentimes
the
the AI models will have seen
patterns
out there that can give you a clue
that this may not be legitimate.
The amount of email,
I'm just that so scares me to death.
I just, you know, I I talk about
it almost every week with the team.
We had a support ticket come in and
(52:20):
Dave asked me, hey do are we expecting
a DocuSign from
some name? I'm like, no we're not and
for God's sake don't click on that link.
You know, so it's
I've been Always always look at the source
of the email that you're getting. It's so
if it's claiming to be from a,
(52:41):
you know, a legitimate company.
Visual That's not always the case now. They're
spoofing that stuff left and right. It's
yeah. You just gotta be careful. You know,
this and it's what it is is they
catch you at a It's called a phishing
attack. Yeah. And and they they catch you
at a weak moment. You click on something
and you're done. You know, your your your
accounts are compromised. You know?
(53:03):
Some sort of tracking software being put on.
People don't believe it. But,
on all my Macs, I run
antivirus and malware
And they they they're you know, everyone says
why? Well,
the amount of stuff that it catches, especially,
websites,
they'll don't go to this website. It'll it'll
(53:24):
pause
from loading a website. So,
yeah, I think it's,
because we're we're, you know, we're we're gonna
get tricked at some point into clicking on
to something.
Right.
It's gonna, you know, it's gonna be hard
to
decipher what's real and what's not real.
(53:46):
I mean, what's real
for for you to, you know,
give credibility to and what to ignore. It's
gonna be harder and harder to tell Yeah.
For sure.
Especially with AI.
Protect your assets, ladies and gentlemen. Two factor
authentication
even though it's annoying.
I got it's gotten to the point now,
(54:07):
like,
every
service
that has,
and it's tokens, RSA tokens, that type of
stuff.
I got three apps now that are running
token because every company uses a little bit
different token.
And,
I have to I got three different authenticator
apps now.
(54:29):
And, you know, you always worry about, okay.
I'm gonna change phones and is this stuff
gonna transfer and
which I'm not at this time, but that's
thing. It always worries me when I move
to a new phone.
But what is everybody hearing out there? You
know, what's going on? So it's summer. It's
a little quiet.
You know, minimal
(54:50):
news going on in the space. What is
what is everyone else in podcast land
hearing these days? We'd love
to love to hear from you.
Is there any
buzz that you're hearing about podcast movement or
any kind of exciting stuff going on with
that? I I have
(55:10):
the podcast standards project,
reached out to Dan
for a meeting room, and,
Dan made one available.
So we're actually gonna have a meeting room
at
Podcast Movement.
I offered up to,
you know, bring in some catering, water, coffee,
(55:31):
or whatever that,
could be in the room. And, of course,
you know, anytime you talk catering in an
event like that, it's, you know, that's a
thousand dollars
no matter what you do.
And
the
I was looking at the map of meeting
rooms and
(55:52):
there's a lot of openings,
for meeting rooms. So there's
it doesn't appear to me that they've sold
out,
their meeting rooms for this event.
Libsyn, Triton,
SoundStack
not SoundStack,
Sounds Profitable,
have a a segment of
(56:12):
them. If I can
in my Slack channel, I can't show a
screenshot of it, but
see here event planning.
It looks like they have one, two, three,
four, five,
six, seven, eight meeting rooms left.
And one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight,
(56:33):
nine, ten, eleven, twelve, 13 sold. So,
they got more than half of their meeting
rooms
sold. So
and I am appreciative of Dan that gave
the PSP a good rate. So I think
the companies are
are splitting the cost,
for the meeting room. So we'll have a
(56:54):
place to bring people in if we wanna
talk.
Maybe only chairs in there depending on how
much a cup of coffee costs.
So, Todd, I I
had
chat GPT four,
o, make a make an image for
tonight's episode. Oh, yeah? And I I pulled
the image into,
(57:16):
paint, which is part of Windows. Yeah.
And and
to try and There's a size it. There's
a word I haven't heard in a while.
Well and Yeah. They've added
Copilot
to Paint.
So there's a lot of advanced capability
in the just the basic
image editor that they had on Windows for
many years. So there's ability for AI can
(57:39):
generate images inside of that
application now. So they've even
even Notepad has AI capabilities now.
That's funny. They yeah. Well, it is. But
what what I wanted to mention was is
I pulled the the thumbnail that I generated
from
chat GPT
into
(57:59):
paint on Windows,
and it flagged the image. It
said, saved with content credentials.
Oh. Content
credentials
metadata
discloses that
the work was created with generative AI. Oh.
So it actually it's
(58:23):
another
it's another form of labeling. Yeah. We're starting
to see these bigger media or these bigger
companies, bigger tech companies start to
to enable that in in the metadata.
That's one thing that Stora will not do
(58:43):
and that's Stora.
The chat g p t version of the
image creator, they will not
create a nineteen twenty by ten eighty image.
It's some weird
it won't do a true 16 by nine,
so that you can just resize it up.
You have to do some finagling with it.
It it annoys me to know. What I
had to do with this one out of
(59:04):
chat
Yeah. GPT was I I had to resize
it to the
was it the the nineteen twenty by ten
eighty Yeah. Size.
Yeah. Yeah. It it and then I think
it does that on purpose, to be honest
with you. It doesn't create a perfect
16 by nine image. So I don't know
why they do that.
Mhmm. Anyway, we're we're top of the hour
(59:25):
here.
Yeah.
We got through it.
I have a little editing to do on
today's show. So if you've Yeah.
Yeah. We had a rough start, didn't we?
It sucks, but it's okay. I'll get it
chopped up and everyone that's listening to this
later will just hear have heard the
you know, where I chopped it.
So hopefully I can make it so it
(59:46):
doesn't sound too bad.
Yeah. Because I gotta master. I gotta master
recording.
So
I think that's it. Todd@blueberry.comatgeeknewsonxatgeeknewsatgeeknews.chat
on Mastodon.
Yeah. I'm on x as well at at
(01:00:07):
Rob Greenlee on YouTube at Rob Greenlee at
all the social,
or interest
media platforms now.
LinkedIn,
Facebook,
you know, all of the all all the
go to platforms now. So you can find
me there or at
rob greenley.com
too. So Everyone, thanks for being here. We'll
(01:00:29):
be back again. 8PM
eastern time,
is our kickoff time. And,
believe it or not, Rob, I've been up
for, like, seventeen hours. So I'm I'm going
to bed immediately after this.
Yeah. Work straight through today. So lifestyle.
Yeah. It is. But, you know, that's the
(01:00:50):
price you pay for,
in in my opinion,
living where I am currently living right now
and still working.
So Yeah.
That's true. Yeah. Alright, everyone. Thanks. We'll see
you back here
next Wednesday. Take care. Bye bye. Alright. Bye.
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