December 22, 2025 • 52 mins
Hey, it's Dave! In this episode (which uses chapters FYI), I take you through a year-end wrap-up, sharing stories, rants, insights, and predictions about the world of podcasting. Here are the main points I covered:
1. A Christmas Story with a Lesson for Podcasters
I kicked things off with a humorous Christmas tale about the Cridland Boys Choir, and what happens when you keep loosening your standards just to hit a target—a not-so-subtle lesson for the podcasting world.
2. Pushing Back on Changing Definitions in Podcasting
I strongly disagreed with Steve Goldstein and Jay Nachlis' take that YouTube should be considered podcasts. (also TikTok, and Newsletters).
I emphasized that a podcast, by definition, is audio, video, or PDF delivered via RSS—without that, it's not a podcast.
3. Why "Everything Is a Podcast" is Dangerous
I called out the industry for letting YouTube (and now TikTok) hijack the term "podcast," muddling data and damaging clarity around the medium.
4. The Hazards of Exclusive Distribution Deals
I discussed how exclusive distribution (like those seen with Netflix and Spotify) leads to loss of control and audiences for podcasters.
5. Warning Signs of Big Companies Manipulating Podcasting
Shared concerns about major corporations and what happens when their decisions are driven mainly by shareholder profits and not creators or audiences.
6. AI Content Flooding the Podcast Space
I highlighted the dangers of companies like Inception Point AI mass-producing low-value podcasts, cluttering directories, harming discoverability, and devaluing advertising rates.
7.Common Missteps Hurting Podcast Discovery
I warned about creating duplicate listings in Apple Podcasts and elsewhere, usually when moving hosts, and the importance of understanding how to migrate your show correctly.
8. Show Name Collisions
I noted the confusion caused by multiple shows using the same title (like "Thinking Outside the Box") and urged creators to do their research before naming their show.
9. Monetization Predictions for the Coming Year
I predicted a shift toward premium/patron-supported models as podcasters get frustrated with low ad rates.
10. The Fight Against "AI Slop"
I advocated for collectively pushing back against low-quality, AI-generated spam content in our medium.
11. Upcoming Industry Mergers
I think we'll see podcast-related companies merging or being acquired in the near future.
12. The Reality of YouTube for Podcasters
I expect many podcasters to try YouTube, realize it's not for them, and return to audio-first approaches—while some will succeed by mastering the video platform.
13. A Desire for More Creativity in Podcasting
I called for a resurgence of risk-taking and creative experimentation, rather than everyone following the same tired formats.
Podcasts/Shows Noted:
Work for the Wind by Aliyah Langley
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The school of podcasting uses chapters in their episodes. So if
I'm talking about a topic and there are many in this episode, feel free to
skip to the next one. Today I kind of want to do a
year wrap up of podcasting, the Good, the Bad
and the Ugly. And of course, that means we're going to start off with.
And now it's time for a power rant. Actually, let's not do
(00:23):
a power rant. What I'd like to do, because it's
Christmas time. Let's start off with a fun Christmas story.
This is called the Cridland Boys Choir.
Mildred Broombaugh had finally become the
superintendent of all the schools in Cridland.
And she had one mission. You see, when she was just a little
(00:46):
girl, she had seen the Vienna Boys Choir and
she wanted to create one in Cridland. So she reached out to
all the teachers in Cridlin and said, I want to put on a
Christmas concert. Everyone who meets this criteria
will be in the Cridland Boys Choir. They will be between the
ages of 9 and 14, have a red sweater,
(01:08):
black pants, and be able to sing. So
the teachers went through all the classes and there were 27
boys who met the criteria, but that was a long
way from 100. So Ms.
Broombaugh, she changed the criteria. She said, well, you
can wear any color of pants as long as you have a red
(01:30):
sweater and a boy who could sing between the
ages of 9 and 14. And this got her closer to her
goal as there were 34 boys who met that
criteria. But she was still a long way off of her
goal of 100 people. So she
changed the criteria again. And she said, okay, I'm going
(01:52):
to change the ages from 9 to
27. And the teachers went out again.
And it turned out there weren't that many older people in the
elementary schools. And so it only got her up
to 50. Fine. She said,
I need this choir to be 100 people. I've got it.
(02:13):
This will work. Find dogs that can howl.
They don't even need sweaters. And so some of the children
brought their dogs to practice and the howling was awful. But at this point,
she was up to 82 people, or 82 participants,
and still a fair amount to go to reach her goal of 100.
Now she was beyond frustrated. And she was walking down the
(02:36):
halls one day of Cochrane elementary with when she saw a
cleanliness engineer mopping the floor. That's it. She
said, prop all the mops up and put a red sweater on them.
And someone said, Ms. Broombaugh. Mops don't make any
noise. They can't sing. And she quipped back, but it
will have a red sweater. And that's close enough.
(02:59):
So the night came and the choir assembled with a bunch of creepy dudes
with mops standing in the back row, dogs howling over a
few talented boys who you really couldn't even here
over all the ruckus. But Ms. Broombaugh had achieved her
boys choir. And then the concert
was over. And it turns out the entire audience had left because,
(03:21):
well, they expected to hear a boys choir
and, well, it was awful.
The end. Now, what does that have to do with
podcasting? I'll explain in just a second.
Hit it, ladies. The school of podcasting
(03:41):
with Dave Jackson.
Podcasting since 2005. I am
your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave
Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you are new to
the show, I am so glad you're here. You are in the right
spot. This is where I help you plan, I help you launch, I help you
(04:02):
grow, I help you monetize. If you want to your podcast,
my website is schoolofpodcasting.com you can
use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly,
quarterly, or yearly subscription. So,
Dave, what the heck was that? Well, this is in
remarks, and I need to say this up front.
(04:25):
I'm not picking on Steve Goldstein. I like
Steve Goldstein as a person. I've met him. Really nice guy. I remember one of
the first calls we had was probably back in 2000, 2006. And so
he's been around a long time. And I'm just letting you
know you're allowed to disagree with people even
if you're friends. And I cannot disagree more
(04:48):
with Steve Goldstein and some of his
statements. And this goes back to two years
ago when he announced that if you weren't on
YouTube, well, you were going to miss the boat, in fact, in his presentation.
And YouTube has moved rapidly. We've seen studies
over the past couple of years as it's growing and growing, and now it
(05:11):
is dominant, but it is different.
It is a bit vexing for most podcasters because it does involve
video. There's no RSS feed. There will be. And
yet this was two years ago. There's still no RSS feed out. You
have to watch YouTube. On YouTube, it's a closed system.
It's video based, and 3.7 million people
(05:34):
are uploading content. Videos are uploaded every day,
500 hours, every minute. I mean, it's just incredible how
big it is. And I've never argued that YouTube is not huge.
It has a huge number of people that are watching it. More people are
watching now on their television set. But they came out with
this. The new rules of podcasting on YouTube. And it was Steve
(05:56):
Goldstein and Jay Naturalist. And here's what they said
about the whole podcasting. And in
this case, they were talking about defining it. Big headline from this
study today. The definition of a podcast is changing.
Says who? Coleman Insights. Because you interviewed a
thousand people, there are hundreds of thousands of podcasters.
(06:19):
That's not a great sample size. I mean, look, I love
Mariah Carey. She's majorly talented. But I did not get
my ballot when it came to voting her Queen of Christmas, because
I've had enough of that song. And I did not get my ballot when they
said, hey, we're going to change the definition of podcasting. Because
I would have said, you're wrong. You know, we hear all the time everybody's got
(06:41):
their opinions of what a podcast is, particularly in the podcast
industry. Now, why is that? Because there is a
definition of what a podcast is. It's audio, video, or
PDF delivered via rss. And we all agreed on that
because, well, you know, it's a fact. But we thought it was
really important in the study to take it outside of the industry
(07:04):
and figure out, you know, what are podcast consumers
saying? And I guess my question is why?
Why do we care what the consumer says? Because we are also
the first to say the consumer doesn't
care how we define it. But the thing that drives
me nuts is a. There was a study called
(07:26):
the New Rules of podcasting on YouTube. And right
there, we should have said, hey, guys, I
appreciate the work you put into that, but I don't know if you know this
or not, but podcasts aren't on YouTube. We did
not push back. And everyone
believed this whole thing about YouTube. There's been some major
(07:47):
shifts, and as a podcaster, this really impacts your
marketing plan and how you get your podcast out there.
It's a YouTube world. We're just living in it. Ugh. No. And
why were there major shifts? And by saying there are major shifts, you're kind of
going, hey, look, our report was important because nobody
pushed back to say, hey, I don't know if you realize this or not, but
(08:08):
YouTube's not a podcast. All right? And I'm going to point out
just one thing, and this sounds kind of mean, and I don't mean
it to be mean, but we're taking podcast advice from guys
that sound like that? Because I know you're thinking it, and
I just said it. These guys are telling me how to grow my audience on
YouTube. I would tell them, figure out how to work a microphone. They got
(08:30):
a background in radio in some cases. That's some horrible audio.
Sorry, just saying it. So the reason people aren't
pushing back is because of the massive
megaphone that is YouTube and Spotify. So with YouTube,
the advertising market, they were losing a
small percentage, but nonetheless a percentage from TikTok.
(08:53):
And they're like, we gotta get people talking about YouTube again. And so
they said, oh, I know. We'll just say that YouTube is
now a podcast. Now, why would they say that? Because every report.
In fact, there was one that came out today that said how YouTube
advertising on YouTube is not as good as
advertising on a real podcast. And that's the part
(09:15):
that kind of makes my blood boil, is the fact they're hijacking
our reputation. All right? And for those of you
that are like, oh, who poked the bear? There is new information
that I'm just like, oh, are you kidding me? Because if you look at,
like, a clock, 12 o', clock, that was normal. That was where
things made sense. 10 o' clock was when we said, sure,
(09:38):
YouTube's a podcast, and nobody pushed back. And now
we're going even further away from common sense.
YouTube is a wolf in
podcast clothing that drives me nuts. And
now it's filtered over. TikTok now is
calling itself a podcast. Why not? If YouTube can do it and
(09:59):
nobody's gonna push back, we're a podcast, too. In
fact, this kitchen timer sitting right here on my desk is. It's
a podcast. I'll tell you more about that in a second, because
now there's this show on TikTok featuring Demi
Lovato, who I love, and they're calling it a
podcast. There's no RSS feed, but it's a podcast. And James
(10:21):
Kridlin from podnews.net made a great point.
So figure this. You're a marketing person.
You want to spend your marketing dollars the best. Here's another report that
shows how podcasting outperforms everything.
And you're like, I gotta spend some money on this podcasting stuff.
TikTok comes along and says, hey, we're a podcast. Now,
(10:44):
here's the thing. When that comes down
to reporting, is that gonna be classified as
money spent on a podcast or money spent on
social media? And I can't answer that question. Only the
marketing director that's sponsoring that show can do
that. But I just know that people in the podcast industry
(11:07):
are jonesing so hard to get over the $2 billion
mark that they will call anything a podcast. So
that marketers will spend money on podcasting so they can say,
look at us, we're growing. And they don't care
if their actions actually are a detriment to the
whole podcasting space. They're going to get their money, so they
(11:30):
don't care. But that report about podcasts on
YouTube, we should have pushed back on that. I don't understand why we didn't.
I don't know if Steve and the guy from Coleman
Insights have friends at YouTube because this
video is such an advertisement for YouTube.
And so the new thing that came out. And this is such
(11:53):
bs, this is from Amplify
Media, and it's Steve Goldstein. And again, I don't
dislike Steve. I just really disagree with his opinion.
And this is what he says. He says podcasting is no longer
a one size fits all medium. And I would say
it never has been. It's always been from day one,
(12:16):
audio, video, and PDF. The video thing is
not new. He says it's become an ecosystem. A
podcast can be a YouTube show. No,
it can't. Not without an RSS feed.
He says it can be vertical clips,
newsletters. And that's the one I went,
(12:38):
that's it. We got to talk about this. A
newsletter is not a podcast. And you might say, but, Dave, some blogs
can be delivered via rss. And I would agree,
and I would say that's why it has a different word. It's not a
newsletter, it's a blog. When you have a different
definition, you have a different word.
(13:01):
Live streams or even a live event. So let's read that again.
Podcasting is no longer a one size fits all medium. It has
become an ecosystem. A podcast can be a YouTube show, vertical
clips, newsletters, short episodes, live streams, or even a live event.
You can. There's one thing he forgot to put, and I would have been perfectly
fine if he said, when it's delivered via RSS
(13:24):
in honor of my grandma Irene, I have one thing to say.
Poppycock. Yeah. I don't understand
why people didn't push back. When Jay and Steve are like, hey,
guess what? YouTube's a podcast. We should have said, no, it's not.
And that's kind of like, now people think that
YouTube is a podcast. It's still not.
(13:48):
And yet now that causes people. And then they say things like, it's
weird. We don't have as many new Podcasters as we used to. Yeah,
because you've convinced everyone they have to be on video and people don't want to
be on video. Way to go. Congratulations. Here's a question.
Are podcast reports from the major companies that do
podcast reports, are they better or worse?
(14:11):
Are they helpful or less helpful than when
people came down from the mountain with their tablets saying, YouTube is a
podcast? In my opinion, they are less helpful because
they say things like, yeah, well, video podcasts,
better known as YouTubers, are exploding on YouTube. Yeah,
no kidding. Wow. Then they say other brilliant things like, well,
(14:35):
if you. If you're just an audio podcast and
you're not using YouTube, you're limiting your audience.
Wow, Sherlock. How did you come up with that? Wait a minute.
Audio podcasting is a stage. Video on
YouTube is a stage. You mean if I got on another stage, I might grow
my audience, but a different audience? Yeah.
(14:57):
Never would have figured that one out. Adam Curry, co creator of
podcasting, said it best. Every book doesn't need to be
a movie. And I have people that come to me all the time, and they're
thinking of starting a podcast, but they don't want to be on video. As
always, if I said this from day one, if you want to be on YouTube,
I am on YouTube because I want to be.
(15:19):
But you don't have to be. If you don't want to be on video,
you don't have to. There are plenty of people who
achieve success without doing video.
And one more thing I want to point out, because Jay said this, but.
We thought it was really important in this study to take it outside of
the industry. And I kind of go, why did you
(15:42):
go outside the industry? I guess if you're trying to do a study
on what makes a good teacher, you would ask the students,
but you weren't asking what makes a good podcast. You were asking,
what makes a teacher? And
then people said, well, I sometimes learn
when I stub my toe on a chair. So a chair is a
(16:05):
teacher. And while that is a lesson,
it's not an actual teacher standing up in a classroom.
And so do we have the courage
to stand up and go, hey, people that do these,
you know, surveys, because they have been doing them for decades,
(16:26):
maybe they're not asking the right questions. How long have we
heard that the average podcast listener listens to
X amount of podcasts? And we still kind of have
to go, is that episodes or shows? Maybe
they're not asking the right questions. It's just a
thought. And I know you probably fast forward to
(16:49):
this point, and you're asking yourself, dave, why do you care? And I totally
get that. Because you know what? The audience doesn't care. They don't
care how the sausage is made. They just want the sausage. I
get that. Totally get that. And it comes down to rss, and it comes down
to control. If you get kicked off of YouTube, you're kind of
screwed. But if you're doing a podcast on
(17:11):
RSS and somebody kicks you off, Spotify, you have a whole bunch of
other apps that you. You can still listen to me on. In
fact, if I get kicked out of all the apps and I still have an
RSS feed, my audience can still consume my
data. It's a little more challenging, but I'm not dead in the
water. And when the bigger these companies get
(17:33):
and the more they dig their trenches in, what they're really doing
is they're going for control. They're going for
control. They want it to be. They're already putting things in place.
Spotify is to where you have to use their ads, and they
don't pay much, and they're going through all these different things. It's all
about control. And I'm just here to say, the more we
(17:55):
water down the definition of a podcast, now it's a
newsletter. That is such crap. That is such
absolute nonsense. It's idiotic.
A podcast is not a newsletter, and
we need to start pushing back, because the more blurry it
gets, the more we're wasting our time to talking about what a
(18:18):
podcast is when we could be
informing advertisers what a great deal it
is to advertise in a podcast.
And then we would have reports where people didn't have
to go, I think this means this, because I don't know if they're doing this.
No, the reports would be crystal clear, and we would know
(18:40):
exactly what to do to enhance
podcasting to make it better and what was working and what
doesn't. And when everything's a podcast, you're like, well,
wait a minute. This box of Kleenex is a podcast. All right, I'll
shut up. All right. And to finally wrap this up, we're going to play a
fun game called Is this a Country Song
(19:02):
or a Pop Song? Ready?
This could easily be Def Leppard. I was running on
the dad. Right? That's
off the. And yes, I know I'm breaking the rules here, but
(19:24):
that's the number 19 hit from
Spotify's Country Hits 2025. The song is called
Things We Learn in a Bar where I was expecting it to
sound like this.
Right. Little lap steel, you know, this is
(19:46):
Work for the Wind by Aliyah Langley. And
that, to me, sounds like a country song. And so
if everybody sounds like Cody Koz,
then all the pop guys, all the rock people are like,
wow, they're playing rock on this station. Notes. New country.
You change the definition, and all of a sudden, what do you know?
(20:09):
It's the most popular genre now. Why?
Because you changed the definition of the genre and it
doesn't sound like country anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, next subject. Netflix. People are
all excited that some shows that are really, really popular
(20:30):
are getting on Netflix, but Netflix is
dictating how you can consume
that subject. And to that I go,
no, no, thank you. I mean, we learned that all from
Spotify. I mean, they had the Joe Rogan experience call
her Daddy, Armchair Expert, Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain,
(20:53):
and various Spotify owned shows from
Gimlet. Remember Gimlet? Yeah. And
what's interesting about that is, aside
from, well, there's Joe Rogan, but Joe now has his
stuff beyond Spotify. You can find
him on YouTube and Apple. Same thing with Alex Cooper
(21:15):
and Caller Daddy. And they're all, if you notice, they're not
exclusive anymore. They're Spotify
originals. And so this is where, being
an old curmudgeon who has seen things over 20 years, I'm like,
yeah, you don't want to do that. They separate you from your audience,
and then they get mad because your marketing efforts don't
(21:38):
work. Why? Because the audience that's going to follow you
follows you, and the rest don't. And big,
large companies don't care when big money gets involved.
They don't care about you. I'll give you a quick example. I live in
Cleveland, Ohio. The Cleveland Browns are our American
football team. And the previous owner, in the middle
(22:00):
of the night, picked up the team and moved them to Baltimore. Years
later, we got a new. We got our team kind of back.
We've gone through a few owners in the latest one is horrendous.
But the good news is Cleveland, which at one point in the 70s was a
horrendous town, has really turned itself around. We have
a stadium for our football team. We have an arena for our basketball
(22:23):
team. We have a, you know, a diamond or whatever for our
baseball team. And the city
of Cleveland made a law that said you can't move the football team without
our acknowledgment and approval.
And the current owner wants to
move about 20 minutes from where he is. Which would cost the
(22:45):
city millions in taxes and local
businesses because it drives a lot of traffic
downtown. But here's the thing. You got the you can't move the team
law, called the Modell law because the old owner was Modell. And
then where they want to build the land, coincidentally, the land is
now owned by the billionaire owner. They said you can't put a stadium
(23:07):
there because it's right next to an international airport. And
you're like, well, between the you can't move the team law
and you know, you can't change the flight path at
a international airport. Well, this guy,
there's no way he's going to get to move. Did I mention he's a billionaire?
And, yeah, they're moving the team. So when big
(23:31):
people get involved, they don't care many times
about the audience. They don't care about really. It
appears to be anything but making more millions.
And so my favorite Spotify story
was, I think it was 2025, when they brought in
audiobooks into Spotify,
(23:54):
even though there's no bookmarking tool, because, you know, why make it a good
app, but you can listen to audiobooks. And when
they brought those in, I'm not sure authors were really thrilled because
we know how well Spotify pays the
musicians. But once they brought them in,
they then came up with a plan that
(24:16):
allows you to bundle music and audiobooks.
And when that happened, it enabled Spotify,
who's not paying the musicians very much, to
pay them even less. So I say this
to say I am weary of when
companies with billions of dollars and millions of dollars because
(24:38):
they don't give a crap about you, they care about
making money for stock owners. And I know that
because I worked for a company that was,
you know, open or whatever you call it, It's a public company,
and there were times when many bad decisions were made
because they are not serving you
(25:01):
the customer, they're serving their stock owners.
So I say this about Netflix. If you are
like, hey, I gotta get on Netflix, that would be cool.
A exclusive. Deals are crap. Unless, I guess,
you're getting paid millions of dollars and you save and invest.
Well, okay, but here's the thing that James
(25:23):
Kridlin said that I was like, oh, we got to bring this up. James Kridlin
again. Podnews.net if you're not subscribed to that newsletter,
and then I'm not supposed to give you
my favorite show, that's next week's episode. But there's a
really good chance that podcast Weekly Review is going to be my favorite
show for I think the second year in a row. But here is James
(25:46):
talking about Netflix.
Netflix and iHeartMedia have announced an exclusive video partnership
for top iHeart podcasts. IHeart continues to retain
audio only rights and distribution, but the 14 announced
shows will be removed from YouTube. And for me,
that's a bad idea. I don't want to be exclusive on anybody,
(26:08):
but we know we always hear about video shows and things like
that. James also mentioned this. One of iHeart's biggest shows
is also obviously missing stuff you should know doesn't
currently make video versions of its podcast. So for all those
people going, can you even be successful without having video? Yeah,
apparently you can. But check this out. How big is Netflix?
(26:31):
Well, in 2023, Pod News built a tool using Netflix's
own data to help compare the size of Netflix shows to
podcasts. Our own Pod News Weekly Review is bigger than
1 in 5 of all the shows on Netflix, despite
only getting 26,500 downloads a month.
And I'll be at PodFest in January cheering
(26:54):
James on as he is inducted into the
Podcaster hall of Fame. And congratulations on
that. Well deserved. Some more things that may
be hurting the podcasting space right after this.
The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. One of my favorite interviews this year was from Pod
(27:17):
News Weekly Review, where my buddy again, James
Kridlin, he interviewed the woman
Janine Wright, behind Inception Point. And if you're like, what's
Inception Point? It's a company that uses
AI to source and then voice
thousands, thousands of
(27:39):
episodes per week. And I
know a lot of people complain about how it's hard to discover podcasts
in different directories and stuff. They
are flooding, they are adding litter. Just think of that.
If podcasting is a street, they're coming by with
thousands of bags of garbage and throwing it all
(28:03):
over your neighborhood. So why is
this bad? The one thing that podcasters
need every year since I have started podcasting, you know what it is?
More listeners. And now when we finally
get Uncle Merv to try a
podcast at Thanksgiving, the chances of him
(28:26):
finding absolute garbage
worthless, zero value content is
a lot greater than it was a year ago.
That's bad. When you look at the technology
that powers the actual podcast industry,
things like Apple Podcasts and
(28:48):
the podcast index, this is more data
that they have to store about shows that are
absolutely worthless. There's one
that is supposed to be about Sydney, Australia, and it
is for about 50% of the episode. And then from what
I'm Told it, then switches and starts talking about
(29:10):
Sydney Sweeney. Why? Because there's only about eight people
at Inception Point AI and they admit, yeah, we don't
listen to this stuff, or at least most of the stuff before we put
it out. So they're littering, they're
cluttering up the podcasting space. Now the other thing that's bad about
this is I've said, and reports have come out over
(29:32):
and over and over, true podcasting, because of
the relationship we build with our audience, it
outperforms everything. Say it with me,
everything. And the one thing
that will drive the price of ads down if we don't
hold tight is when you get that idiot that will take the
(29:55):
low paying ads. Well, that idiot is called Inception
AI. It's basically spam in
the podcasting space. How do we fix this? Adam Curry, co
inventor of podcasting and co host of the no Agenda show,
said this. "Instead of this being a problem, why don't we just block as
much as we can and every single app that uses the index
(30:17):
should market itself as slop free. If you want to listen to
AI Slop, go use Spotify." And then the other thing that could
be potentially bad, Look, I know I talk about advertisers,
but look, there are times when advertisers, when they're treated
like partners, it's a win, win, win for everyone. It's a win for
the podcaster, it's a win for the audience and it's a win for the advertiser.
(30:39):
But in this case, when an audience finds a horrible
podcast and they get greeted with two to
who knows how many ads before the show even starts,
who's losing there? The advertiser. And
so now they're like, well, we advertised on this show and they said they were
great because they, the woman used to work at Wondery, she must know what she's
(31:00):
doing. No, they're putting out spam, they're putting out horrible
content and your ads are not going to perform well there because the
minute the podcast listener figures
out this is AI Slop, if it's me, I can
only talk about me, I'm tuning out. So it's
going to hurt discoverability, it's going to hurt the
(31:23):
directories, it's going to hurt the technology and it's going to hurt the
advertiser. We need to, to push back.
If podcasting is a pool and we're all swimming in
it, companies like this using this strategy
of just dump out all this AI into the space,
that space is us, that's our living room. That's our swimming pool, and
(31:45):
we're in it, and the water's turning bright yellow and starting to stink. And
everybody's going, hey, anybody else notice it's getting kind of warm in here.
We need to kick them out of the pool. And I
know you're like, but, Dave, that's censorship. Yeah, but here's the
thing. We all need an audience.
And when they come in and chase our audience away,
(32:08):
we gotta do something or we all go away.
So, again, I don't have all the answers. I just know
we need to push back. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. And just to clarify, I'm not anti
AI. Chris Stone from castahead.net
was showing off some really cool stuff at a group coaching call
(32:31):
we did at the school of podcasting. I've done some interesting things
with SEO where you can have chat GPT
find the right kind of post you have on
your website to link to your main. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff
that AI can do. The one thing I wouldn't use it for is
generating content unless it was an image. But actually
(32:54):
having it write something first, I prefer. So this is one of
those, hey, it's Dave's opinion. I like to write it and have
AI kind of basically polish it
a bit and keep my voice for me.
If you think about it, AI is trained on the best stuff, that's a 10,
and the worst stuff that's a 1. And then if it gives you the average
(33:16):
of that, that's a five. And so I'm not a big fan of having it
generate stuff, but that all depends on who's gonna be reading it. But
if it's your audience, I would start with you
and then let ChatGPT keep your voice
and buff it up. But there's some really cool things you can do with
AI. I just know I was approached by a company and their
(33:38):
whole thing was, you don't even have to talk. You can just
basically type in an idea. You know, type in two sentences.
It'll write a script. AI will read it, it will publish. It's your media
host. And I'm just like, I don't want any part of that. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Another thing that is hurting the podcasting space,
and this is just a case of you don't know what you don't know, or
(34:01):
in some cases, you're asking the wrong person. You're asking your web
hosting person a podcasting question. And in the same way
you wouldn't ask me a JavaScript question, I don't work in
that. I'm a podcast guy, so. And that is
people are submitting their shows
multiple times to Apple Podcasts and all the other
(34:23):
apps. So again, this creates a discovery problem. It
also makes it harder for you to rank in the charts because
Instead of having one listing, that is 500
subscribers, you've got two listings, and both of them have 250.
And that can affect your ranking in the charts,
because now we're talking followers. And why is this? This is
(34:46):
because people don't understand how podcasting
works. And I might actually do a webinar on this in January.
But in a nutshell, when you move from one host to
another. So let's say you're just tired of your media host
and they aren't putting out any new features, and
you want to move to Captivate or Transistor or Buzzsprout or whoever,
(35:10):
anybody but Spotify. And you
take your feed, you import it into the new host, we'll just
say it's Captivate. What you want to do is
redirect your old feed to point at your new one. It's kind of a change
of address. You know, you drive by a small business and it
says, hey, we've moved. We're now on South Howard street at 4:56.
(35:32):
Stop by and say, hi. It's a change of address. And that's
fine. And when you do that, one of the things that sees that change of
address is Apple Podcast. And they update your listing
to keep looking at the new source of your content.
But people don't realize that. And what they do is they go, oh, well, at
the old company, I went in, I clicked a couple boxes and it submitted to
(35:55):
Apple and Spotify for me. So on the new company, I click a couple
boxes and it submits to Apple and Spotify for you. And. And
from Dave Jones, who runs podcast index.org
he said there are times when there will be a show with
seven different listings. And this is just. You
don't know what you don't know. So I have a blog post
(36:17):
I put on my website on how to move from one host to the next.
But that, again, is costing you money in many
cases. It's hurting your discovery,
it's hurting your rankings. And it's not that you
are stupid, you're uneducated. And there is a difference
there, by the way. And it's also then
(36:39):
hurting these directories that they have to host
multiple versions of your show. And it just is confusing.
So here's how you can test to See, have I done that? Go to
Apple Podcasts and search for your show and see if it shows up more
than once. If it does, figure out which one has the most
reviews and then hide the other one. Yeah, yeah,
(37:02):
yeah. And this one, I don't know if it's hurting the podcasting space,
but it does hurt you, and that is you came up with a show for
your name and didn't take time to see. Hey, is anybody else using
this? My favorite is the title Thinking Outside the box,
which over 20 shows have the title Thinking Outside
the Box, which shows that they were not. Mm, Thinking Outside
(37:24):
the Box. So you want to go to Google, you want to go
to Apple, you want to go to Spotify and search for your show, and
if the name has already existed, check to see are they currently making
episodes. And if they're not, you might want to try to contact them and say,
hey, would you like to sell me your domain and your name? And you
take it over. So you're not really even starting from zero, but that is
(37:46):
something that, again, is. It's just causing hassles and
confusion in the podcasting space. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The school of podcasting. Well, what do I
predict for 2026? I think we're gonna
see more podcasters who are tired
of taking this $3 per
(38:09):
1,000 downloads, better known as CPM. I think they're gonna get
tired of that and just switch to premium
podcasts. That we've had this forever. There's Patreon.
I like Supercast. And the reason I say this
is if you gave me $5,
and right now, $5 won't even buy you a Happy Meal.
(38:31):
Five is like the new $1 bill. And if you gave
me $5, that would be the same if I was really, really
good of getting a thousand downloads.
So the question is, what's easier, getting a thousand
downloads or getting one person to give you $5
a month? It's been kind of fun because Sam and
(38:55):
James over at Pod News Weekly Review, they use
Buzzsprout. This is also available from Captivate.
You know, again, you could use super cash. You don't have to use this from
your media host, but they just threw it out
there, like, hey, if you'd like to support us, you know, buy us a
beer, whatever you want to call it. And I think the last time they talked
(39:17):
about it, they're up to close to 25 people. 25
people. And I think they're giving them. You can give them 3, 5, 7.
I think you can even name your own price. But just because
I hear so many people saying, I wish I could just cover the cost
of hosting. Well, I think if you put it
out there and you ask,
(39:39):
but that requires confidence that you're delivering value.
But to me, I think we're going to see people
do that where they're like, hey, if you'd like to support the show and
they're not going to get a ton, you might get 1%.
In my book, I talk about how the people that were really crushing it were
getting 3%. But I can see people saying, look,
(40:03):
this advertising where I'm making $1.17
isn't cutting it. Let's see if we can get one person
to give us five, let's see if we can get one Person to give us
10 or whatever it is. I think that's going to be a monetization
strategy that I think more people are going to try.
I think another thing, and I've kind of explained why,
(40:26):
but I think we're going to see AI slop. Not AI,
AI slop as in horrible, worthless content
I pray is going to get pushed back. I think we should all
just boycott it. Just get it out of here. And I know
somebody's going to say, but this is great for someone who
was hurt in a motorcycle accident. They had half their jaw ripped out
(40:50):
of their head and they can't talk anymore. Now this person. That's not what I'm
talking about. I'm not talking about the person that can't talk and is
using, you know, 11 labs to. No, that's not what I'm talking about.
Just crappy content created only for monetization
and no real value to the audience. I'm hoping,
I have faith in the podcasting space
(41:14):
that that will cause enough problems for
everybody that we all collectively just, just flush it down
the drain. I think we're gonna see some
podcast related companies merge.
There's just some weird stuff going on.
Companies doing things that really make zero sense.
(41:37):
And there's just a part of me that goes, I think they're trying to
thin themselves down to make them look more
attractive for a potential purchase. So
I, I'm watching a couple companies and I just think we're going
to see that happen. I think we're going to see
20% of people that try YouTube
(42:01):
decide this isn't for me. And I think that's
because people expect
faster growth. I think they expect it just to be.
We're all looking for that 10,000 download kind of
switch and I think they will realize that
audio is easier. Audio has a much better completion
(42:24):
percentage. So for me, YouTube is kind
of mile wide and an inch deep when it comes to actual
people consuming your content. And call me weird. I'm kind of
offended that my content may not even be
clicked unless I have some sort of clickbaity title. And
me looking surprised. It almost doesn't matter if your content is good now.
(42:46):
It does, because you have to hook them in the first 30 seconds. But
I think we're going to see a number of podcasters
say, yeah, this isn't for me. I tried it and they're going to come back
now. I also think probably 20% of those podcasters, another
20 will try it and actually
have some success because they'll study the algorithm and they'll
(43:08):
study the thumbnails and they'll do all the extra steps it
takes to make it on YouTube. But I think
we are going to see some say, yeah, this isn't for me.
And this one isn't really a prediction. It's more of something I want to
see. And that is, I want to see a
resurgence in creativity. I want to see people
(43:31):
getting outside of their comfort zones. I want to see people break the
format a bit. And it's not just a chat show. It's not just a
interview show. It's not just this just it's everybody's kind of doing the
same thing. I miss the days when people are being really wacky
on their show, and I kind of hope that we
break the cycle with True
(43:54):
Crime. That was the last genre to really take off, and
it's really kind of held the crown. And I'd like to see
something else step up and be way different. I
would love to see something way different
without being stupid. I listened to a show the other
day that is apparently very popular, and
(44:16):
I'm here to tell you, the first two minutes, I had no idea what they
were talking about. It was just endless chatter and laughing and
inside jokes. I'm tired of that. I want to
see somebody be professional, but also be super creative.
The only thing I saw creative that I was like, huh?
Was Amy Poehler's show where she
(44:37):
calls the friend of one of the interviewees
and asks them, what should I ask the interviewee?
And I know, I think she's up for a Golden Globe
and that whole nine yards now, to me
especially, her first episodes were not great, which I was kind of surprised
because she's been podcasting not in this format, but in a while,
(45:01):
and her first episodes really reeked of. Ooh,
I should have probably practiced more. I should have done my homework if I realized
people were actually going to listen to me. But then again,
everybody hates their first episode. So that show is called Good Hang with
Amy Poehler. And that was one of the few things that I was like, oh,
I've never heard somebody do that before. And it really wasn't that
(45:23):
crazy. So I'm hoping to see some people do.
You know, again, going back to that phrase, thinking outside
the box. Because the beautiful thing of podcasting is you
can do whatever you want. If you want to do a three minute opening
about a weird superintendent who keeps trying to
ruin Christmas with a yeah, you can do that.
(45:46):
It's yours. Some of it's good, Some of
it maybe not so good. But if you need help with your
podcast and you're like, dave, I don't have a podcast, well, then you need to
launch, I can help you with that. Like, Dave, I've, I've, I've got an idea.
Okay, well, I can help you plan that. Great. Okay, well, I've
got mine planned. Okay, I can help you launch it. Launching is so
(46:08):
easy. People really overthink that one and then you need to grow
it. Well, let's go back to the, the launch. Let's take a listen to
that. Because your content's what's going to help you grow. But we got other things
we can look into and we got members of the school of podcasting that have
tried a lot of things and you can learn from their mistakes and you
can learn and watch their success. It's all there
(46:30):
out@schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code
listener when you sign up. And that could be for a monthly, could
be for quarterly. A lot of the people doing the quarterly thing, I like that,
that's cool because you do save over the monthly and if
you got the budget, do the yearly thing and then you save a ton. And
that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.
(46:51):
I'm Dave Jackson. I've been podcasting for 20 years. I
love to help podcasters. It's really what I do. And I can't wait to
see what we do together. And until next
week, where we will be talking about your favorite podcast
and why, if you haven't answered it yet,
schoolofpodcasting.com? i need it by the
(47:13):
26th of December and we will be learning together
what makes a good podcast because we're going to really be digging into
the why. And of course we'll be
Putting the links to your website on my website.
Thank you so much for listening. Have a Merry Christmas. Happy
Kwanzaa, Massica. Whatever you're celebrating, I'm hoping you're taking time
(47:35):
to hang out with your family, your friends, and make those
memories that are absolutely tattooed to your forehead
that you will remember from years to come. Take care.
God bless. Class is dismissed.
(48:01):
Hey, no real bloopers today, but just a little behind the
scenes. If you thought this episode sounded a little
with some weird edits or you thought maybe my voice sounded a little
weird, that's because I started recording this
about one o', clock, had to run and do some stuff, had to go and
sing tonight at a concert, and
(48:22):
I ended up recording this. I think. I think I'm on four,
maybe definitely three. And some of it was good, some
of it wasn't good. And so if you're like, man, he just rambled on. But
I did. I poked. This sounds weird. I poked my own bear.
Usually when people say, you poked the bear, it's like, no, no. I guess
in this case, that article poked the bear. And the first
(48:45):
crack at that, I went on for like 45 minutes. I
was like, I'm not even to the other subjects yet. So I was like, we
got to do that again. Get some bullet points. What am I really trying to
say? And so I did cut that down. But if you
heard some edits, like, what's going on with Dave's voice? That was what was going
on with Dave's voice. And it's pretty raspy right now. I gave it all I
(49:06):
had in the choir tonight. And again, I wish you a merry Christmas.
And if you're looking for something else to listen to, check out the
website, powerofpodcasting.com.
Yeah.
The school of podcasting uses chapters in their episodes. So if
I'm talking about a topic and there are many in this episode, feel free to
skip to the next one. Today I kind of want to do a
year wrap up of podcasting, the Good, the Bad
and the Ugly. And of course, that means we're going to start off with.
And now it's time for a power rant. Actually, let's not do
(00:23):
a power rant. What I'd like to do, because it's
Christmas time. Let's start off with a fun Christmas story.
This is called the Cridland Boys Choir.
Mildred Broombaugh had finally become the
superintendent of all the schools in Cridland.
And she had one mission. You see, when she was just a little
(00:46):
girl, she had seen the Vienna Boys Choir and
she wanted to create one in Cridland. So she reached out to
all the teachers in Cridlin and said, I want to put on a
Christmas concert. Everyone who meets this criteria
will be in the Cridland Boys Choir. They will be between the
ages of 9 and 14, have a red sweater,
(01:08):
black pants, and be able to sing. So
the teachers went through all the classes and there were 27
boys who met the criteria, but that was a long
way from 100. So Ms.
Broombaugh, she changed the criteria. She said, well, you
can wear any color of pants as long as you have a red
(01:30):
sweater and a boy who could sing between the
ages of 9 and 14. And this got her closer to her
goal as there were 34 boys who met that
criteria. But she was still a long way off of her
goal of 100 people. So she
changed the criteria again. And she said, okay, I'm going
(01:52):
to change the ages from 9 to
27. And the teachers went out again.
And it turned out there weren't that many older people in the
elementary schools. And so it only got her up
to 50. Fine. She said,
I need this choir to be 100 people. I've got it.
(02:13):
This will work. Find dogs that can howl.
They don't even need sweaters. And so some of the children
brought their dogs to practice and the howling was awful. But at this point,
she was up to 82 people, or 82 participants,
and still a fair amount to go to reach her goal of 100.
Now she was beyond frustrated. And she was walking down the
(02:36):
halls one day of Cochrane elementary with when she saw a
cleanliness engineer mopping the floor. That's it. She
said, prop all the mops up and put a red sweater on them.
And someone said, Ms. Broombaugh. Mops don't make any
noise. They can't sing. And she quipped back, but it
will have a red sweater. And that's close enough.
(02:59):
So the night came and the choir assembled with a bunch of creepy dudes
with mops standing in the back row, dogs howling over a
few talented boys who you really couldn't even here
over all the ruckus. But Ms. Broombaugh had achieved her
boys choir. And then the concert
was over. And it turns out the entire audience had left because,
(03:21):
well, they expected to hear a boys choir
and, well, it was awful.
The end. Now, what does that have to do with
podcasting? I'll explain in just a second.
Hit it, ladies. The school of podcasting
(03:41):
with Dave Jackson.
Podcasting since 2005. I am
your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave
Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you are new to
the show, I am so glad you're here. You are in the right
spot. This is where I help you plan, I help you launch, I help you
(04:02):
grow, I help you monetize. If you want to your podcast,
my website is schoolofpodcasting.com you can
use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly,
quarterly, or yearly subscription. So,
Dave, what the heck was that? Well, this is in
remarks, and I need to say this up front.
(04:25):
I'm not picking on Steve Goldstein. I like
Steve Goldstein as a person. I've met him. Really nice guy. I remember one of
the first calls we had was probably back in 2000, 2006. And so
he's been around a long time. And I'm just letting you
know you're allowed to disagree with people even
if you're friends. And I cannot disagree more
(04:48):
with Steve Goldstein and some of his
statements. And this goes back to two years
ago when he announced that if you weren't on
YouTube, well, you were going to miss the boat, in fact, in his presentation.
And YouTube has moved rapidly. We've seen studies
over the past couple of years as it's growing and growing, and now it
(05:11):
is dominant, but it is different.
It is a bit vexing for most podcasters because it does involve
video. There's no RSS feed. There will be. And
yet this was two years ago. There's still no RSS feed out. You
have to watch YouTube. On YouTube, it's a closed system.
It's video based, and 3.7 million people
(05:34):
are uploading content. Videos are uploaded every day,
500 hours, every minute. I mean, it's just incredible how
big it is. And I've never argued that YouTube is not huge.
It has a huge number of people that are watching it. More people are
watching now on their television set. But they came out with
this. The new rules of podcasting on YouTube. And it was Steve
(05:56):
Goldstein and Jay Naturalist. And here's what they said
about the whole podcasting. And in
this case, they were talking about defining it. Big headline from this
study today. The definition of a podcast is changing.
Says who? Coleman Insights. Because you interviewed a
thousand people, there are hundreds of thousands of podcasters.
(06:19):
That's not a great sample size. I mean, look, I love
Mariah Carey. She's majorly talented. But I did not get
my ballot when it came to voting her Queen of Christmas, because
I've had enough of that song. And I did not get my ballot when they
said, hey, we're going to change the definition of podcasting. Because
I would have said, you're wrong. You know, we hear all the time everybody's got
(06:41):
their opinions of what a podcast is, particularly in the podcast
industry. Now, why is that? Because there is a
definition of what a podcast is. It's audio, video, or
PDF delivered via rss. And we all agreed on that
because, well, you know, it's a fact. But we thought it was
really important in the study to take it outside of the industry
(07:04):
and figure out, you know, what are podcast consumers
saying? And I guess my question is why?
Why do we care what the consumer says? Because we are also
the first to say the consumer doesn't
care how we define it. But the thing that drives
me nuts is a. There was a study called
(07:26):
the New Rules of podcasting on YouTube. And right
there, we should have said, hey, guys, I
appreciate the work you put into that, but I don't know if you know this
or not, but podcasts aren't on YouTube. We did
not push back. And everyone
believed this whole thing about YouTube. There's been some major
(07:47):
shifts, and as a podcaster, this really impacts your
marketing plan and how you get your podcast out there.
It's a YouTube world. We're just living in it. Ugh. No. And
why were there major shifts? And by saying there are major shifts, you're kind of
going, hey, look, our report was important because nobody
pushed back to say, hey, I don't know if you realize this or not, but
(08:08):
YouTube's not a podcast. All right? And I'm going to point out
just one thing, and this sounds kind of mean, and I don't mean
it to be mean, but we're taking podcast advice from guys
that sound like that? Because I know you're thinking it, and
I just said it. These guys are telling me how to grow my audience on
YouTube. I would tell them, figure out how to work a microphone. They got
(08:30):
a background in radio in some cases. That's some horrible audio.
Sorry, just saying it. So the reason people aren't
pushing back is because of the massive
megaphone that is YouTube and Spotify. So with YouTube,
the advertising market, they were losing a
small percentage, but nonetheless a percentage from TikTok.
(08:53):
And they're like, we gotta get people talking about YouTube again. And so
they said, oh, I know. We'll just say that YouTube is
now a podcast. Now, why would they say that? Because every report.
In fact, there was one that came out today that said how YouTube
advertising on YouTube is not as good as
advertising on a real podcast. And that's the part
(09:15):
that kind of makes my blood boil, is the fact they're hijacking
our reputation. All right? And for those of you
that are like, oh, who poked the bear? There is new information
that I'm just like, oh, are you kidding me? Because if you look at,
like, a clock, 12 o', clock, that was normal. That was where
things made sense. 10 o' clock was when we said, sure,
(09:38):
YouTube's a podcast, and nobody pushed back. And now
we're going even further away from common sense.
YouTube is a wolf in
podcast clothing that drives me nuts. And
now it's filtered over. TikTok now is
calling itself a podcast. Why not? If YouTube can do it and
(09:59):
nobody's gonna push back, we're a podcast, too. In
fact, this kitchen timer sitting right here on my desk is. It's
a podcast. I'll tell you more about that in a second, because
now there's this show on TikTok featuring Demi
Lovato, who I love, and they're calling it a
podcast. There's no RSS feed, but it's a podcast. And James
(10:21):
Kridlin from podnews.net made a great point.
So figure this. You're a marketing person.
You want to spend your marketing dollars the best. Here's another report that
shows how podcasting outperforms everything.
And you're like, I gotta spend some money on this podcasting stuff.
TikTok comes along and says, hey, we're a podcast. Now,
(10:44):
here's the thing. When that comes down
to reporting, is that gonna be classified as
money spent on a podcast or money spent on
social media? And I can't answer that question. Only the
marketing director that's sponsoring that show can do
that. But I just know that people in the podcast industry
(11:07):
are jonesing so hard to get over the $2 billion
mark that they will call anything a podcast. So
that marketers will spend money on podcasting so they can say,
look at us, we're growing. And they don't care
if their actions actually are a detriment to the
whole podcasting space. They're going to get their money, so they
(11:30):
don't care. But that report about podcasts on
YouTube, we should have pushed back on that. I don't understand why we didn't.
I don't know if Steve and the guy from Coleman
Insights have friends at YouTube because this
video is such an advertisement for YouTube.
And so the new thing that came out. And this is such
(11:53):
bs, this is from Amplify
Media, and it's Steve Goldstein. And again, I don't
dislike Steve. I just really disagree with his opinion.
And this is what he says. He says podcasting is no longer
a one size fits all medium. And I would say
it never has been. It's always been from day one,
(12:16):
audio, video, and PDF. The video thing is
not new. He says it's become an ecosystem. A
podcast can be a YouTube show. No,
it can't. Not without an RSS feed.
He says it can be vertical clips,
newsletters. And that's the one I went,
(12:38):
that's it. We got to talk about this. A
newsletter is not a podcast. And you might say, but, Dave, some blogs
can be delivered via rss. And I would agree,
and I would say that's why it has a different word. It's not a
newsletter, it's a blog. When you have a different
definition, you have a different word.
(13:01):
Live streams or even a live event. So let's read that again.
Podcasting is no longer a one size fits all medium. It has
become an ecosystem. A podcast can be a YouTube show, vertical
clips, newsletters, short episodes, live streams, or even a live event.
You can. There's one thing he forgot to put, and I would have been perfectly
fine if he said, when it's delivered via RSS
(13:24):
in honor of my grandma Irene, I have one thing to say.
Poppycock. Yeah. I don't understand
why people didn't push back. When Jay and Steve are like, hey,
guess what? YouTube's a podcast. We should have said, no, it's not.
And that's kind of like, now people think that
YouTube is a podcast. It's still not.
(13:48):
And yet now that causes people. And then they say things like, it's
weird. We don't have as many new Podcasters as we used to. Yeah,
because you've convinced everyone they have to be on video and people don't want to
be on video. Way to go. Congratulations. Here's a question.
Are podcast reports from the major companies that do
podcast reports, are they better or worse?
(14:11):
Are they helpful or less helpful than when
people came down from the mountain with their tablets saying, YouTube is a
podcast? In my opinion, they are less helpful because
they say things like, yeah, well, video podcasts,
better known as YouTubers, are exploding on YouTube. Yeah,
no kidding. Wow. Then they say other brilliant things like, well,
(14:35):
if you. If you're just an audio podcast and
you're not using YouTube, you're limiting your audience.
Wow, Sherlock. How did you come up with that? Wait a minute.
Audio podcasting is a stage. Video on
YouTube is a stage. You mean if I got on another stage, I might grow
my audience, but a different audience? Yeah.
(14:57):
Never would have figured that one out. Adam Curry, co creator of
podcasting, said it best. Every book doesn't need to be
a movie. And I have people that come to me all the time, and they're
thinking of starting a podcast, but they don't want to be on video. As
always, if I said this from day one, if you want to be on YouTube,
I am on YouTube because I want to be.
(15:19):
But you don't have to be. If you don't want to be on video,
you don't have to. There are plenty of people who
achieve success without doing video.
And one more thing I want to point out, because Jay said this, but.
We thought it was really important in this study to take it outside of
the industry. And I kind of go, why did you
(15:42):
go outside the industry? I guess if you're trying to do a study
on what makes a good teacher, you would ask the students,
but you weren't asking what makes a good podcast. You were asking,
what makes a teacher? And
then people said, well, I sometimes learn
when I stub my toe on a chair. So a chair is a
(16:05):
teacher. And while that is a lesson,
it's not an actual teacher standing up in a classroom.
And so do we have the courage
to stand up and go, hey, people that do these,
you know, surveys, because they have been doing them for decades,
(16:26):
maybe they're not asking the right questions. How long have we
heard that the average podcast listener listens to
X amount of podcasts? And we still kind of have
to go, is that episodes or shows? Maybe
they're not asking the right questions. It's just a
thought. And I know you probably fast forward to
(16:49):
this point, and you're asking yourself, dave, why do you care? And I totally
get that. Because you know what? The audience doesn't care. They don't
care how the sausage is made. They just want the sausage. I
get that. Totally get that. And it comes down to rss, and it comes down
to control. If you get kicked off of YouTube, you're kind of
screwed. But if you're doing a podcast on
(17:11):
RSS and somebody kicks you off, Spotify, you have a whole bunch of
other apps that you. You can still listen to me on. In
fact, if I get kicked out of all the apps and I still have an
RSS feed, my audience can still consume my
data. It's a little more challenging, but I'm not dead in the
water. And when the bigger these companies get
(17:33):
and the more they dig their trenches in, what they're really doing
is they're going for control. They're going for
control. They want it to be. They're already putting things in place.
Spotify is to where you have to use their ads, and they
don't pay much, and they're going through all these different things. It's all
about control. And I'm just here to say, the more we
(17:55):
water down the definition of a podcast, now it's a
newsletter. That is such crap. That is such
absolute nonsense. It's idiotic.
A podcast is not a newsletter, and
we need to start pushing back, because the more blurry it
gets, the more we're wasting our time to talking about what a
(18:18):
podcast is when we could be
informing advertisers what a great deal it
is to advertise in a podcast.
And then we would have reports where people didn't have
to go, I think this means this, because I don't know if they're doing this.
No, the reports would be crystal clear, and we would know
(18:40):
exactly what to do to enhance
podcasting to make it better and what was working and what
doesn't. And when everything's a podcast, you're like, well,
wait a minute. This box of Kleenex is a podcast. All right, I'll
shut up. All right. And to finally wrap this up, we're going to play a
fun game called Is this a Country Song
(19:02):
or a Pop Song? Ready?
This could easily be Def Leppard. I was running on
the dad. Right? That's
off the. And yes, I know I'm breaking the rules here, but
(19:24):
that's the number 19 hit from
Spotify's Country Hits 2025. The song is called
Things We Learn in a Bar where I was expecting it to
sound like this.
Right. Little lap steel, you know, this is
(19:46):
Work for the Wind by Aliyah Langley. And
that, to me, sounds like a country song. And so
if everybody sounds like Cody Koz,
then all the pop guys, all the rock people are like,
wow, they're playing rock on this station. Notes. New country.
You change the definition, and all of a sudden, what do you know?
(20:09):
It's the most popular genre now. Why?
Because you changed the definition of the genre and it
doesn't sound like country anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, next subject. Netflix. People are
all excited that some shows that are really, really popular
(20:30):
are getting on Netflix, but Netflix is
dictating how you can consume
that subject. And to that I go,
no, no, thank you. I mean, we learned that all from
Spotify. I mean, they had the Joe Rogan experience call
her Daddy, Armchair Expert, Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain,
(20:53):
and various Spotify owned shows from
Gimlet. Remember Gimlet? Yeah. And
what's interesting about that is, aside
from, well, there's Joe Rogan, but Joe now has his
stuff beyond Spotify. You can find
him on YouTube and Apple. Same thing with Alex Cooper
(21:15):
and Caller Daddy. And they're all, if you notice, they're not
exclusive anymore. They're Spotify
originals. And so this is where, being
an old curmudgeon who has seen things over 20 years, I'm like,
yeah, you don't want to do that. They separate you from your audience,
and then they get mad because your marketing efforts don't
(21:38):
work. Why? Because the audience that's going to follow you
follows you, and the rest don't. And big,
large companies don't care when big money gets involved.
They don't care about you. I'll give you a quick example. I live in
Cleveland, Ohio. The Cleveland Browns are our American
football team. And the previous owner, in the middle
(22:00):
of the night, picked up the team and moved them to Baltimore. Years
later, we got a new. We got our team kind of back.
We've gone through a few owners in the latest one is horrendous.
But the good news is Cleveland, which at one point in the 70s was a
horrendous town, has really turned itself around. We have
a stadium for our football team. We have an arena for our basketball
(22:23):
team. We have a, you know, a diamond or whatever for our
baseball team. And the city
of Cleveland made a law that said you can't move the football team without
our acknowledgment and approval.
And the current owner wants to
move about 20 minutes from where he is. Which would cost the
(22:45):
city millions in taxes and local
businesses because it drives a lot of traffic
downtown. But here's the thing. You got the you can't move the team
law, called the Modell law because the old owner was Modell. And
then where they want to build the land, coincidentally, the land is
now owned by the billionaire owner. They said you can't put a stadium
(23:07):
there because it's right next to an international airport. And
you're like, well, between the you can't move the team law
and you know, you can't change the flight path at
a international airport. Well, this guy,
there's no way he's going to get to move. Did I mention he's a billionaire?
And, yeah, they're moving the team. So when big
(23:31):
people get involved, they don't care many times
about the audience. They don't care about really. It
appears to be anything but making more millions.
And so my favorite Spotify story
was, I think it was 2025, when they brought in
audiobooks into Spotify,
(23:54):
even though there's no bookmarking tool, because, you know, why make it a good
app, but you can listen to audiobooks. And when
they brought those in, I'm not sure authors were really thrilled because
we know how well Spotify pays the
musicians. But once they brought them in,
they then came up with a plan that
(24:16):
allows you to bundle music and audiobooks.
And when that happened, it enabled Spotify,
who's not paying the musicians very much, to
pay them even less. So I say this
to say I am weary of when
companies with billions of dollars and millions of dollars because
(24:38):
they don't give a crap about you, they care about
making money for stock owners. And I know that
because I worked for a company that was,
you know, open or whatever you call it, It's a public company,
and there were times when many bad decisions were made
because they are not serving you
(25:01):
the customer, they're serving their stock owners.
So I say this about Netflix. If you are
like, hey, I gotta get on Netflix, that would be cool.
A exclusive. Deals are crap. Unless, I guess,
you're getting paid millions of dollars and you save and invest.
Well, okay, but here's the thing that James
(25:23):
Kridlin said that I was like, oh, we got to bring this up. James Kridlin
again. Podnews.net if you're not subscribed to that newsletter,
and then I'm not supposed to give you
my favorite show, that's next week's episode. But there's a
really good chance that podcast Weekly Review is going to be my favorite
show for I think the second year in a row. But here is James
(25:46):
talking about Netflix.
Netflix and iHeartMedia have announced an exclusive video partnership
for top iHeart podcasts. IHeart continues to retain
audio only rights and distribution, but the 14 announced
shows will be removed from YouTube. And for me,
that's a bad idea. I don't want to be exclusive on anybody,
(26:08):
but we know we always hear about video shows and things like
that. James also mentioned this. One of iHeart's biggest shows
is also obviously missing stuff you should know doesn't
currently make video versions of its podcast. So for all those
people going, can you even be successful without having video? Yeah,
apparently you can. But check this out. How big is Netflix?
(26:31):
Well, in 2023, Pod News built a tool using Netflix's
own data to help compare the size of Netflix shows to
podcasts. Our own Pod News Weekly Review is bigger than
1 in 5 of all the shows on Netflix, despite
only getting 26,500 downloads a month.
And I'll be at PodFest in January cheering
(26:54):
James on as he is inducted into the
Podcaster hall of Fame. And congratulations on
that. Well deserved. Some more things that may
be hurting the podcasting space right after this.
The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. One of my favorite interviews this year was from Pod
(27:17):
News Weekly Review, where my buddy again, James
Kridlin, he interviewed the woman
Janine Wright, behind Inception Point. And if you're like, what's
Inception Point? It's a company that uses
AI to source and then voice
thousands, thousands of
(27:39):
episodes per week. And I
know a lot of people complain about how it's hard to discover podcasts
in different directories and stuff. They
are flooding, they are adding litter. Just think of that.
If podcasting is a street, they're coming by with
thousands of bags of garbage and throwing it all
(28:03):
over your neighborhood. So why is
this bad? The one thing that podcasters
need every year since I have started podcasting, you know what it is?
More listeners. And now when we finally
get Uncle Merv to try a
podcast at Thanksgiving, the chances of him
(28:26):
finding absolute garbage
worthless, zero value content is
a lot greater than it was a year ago.
That's bad. When you look at the technology
that powers the actual podcast industry,
things like Apple Podcasts and
(28:48):
the podcast index, this is more data
that they have to store about shows that are
absolutely worthless. There's one
that is supposed to be about Sydney, Australia, and it
is for about 50% of the episode. And then from what
I'm Told it, then switches and starts talking about
(29:10):
Sydney Sweeney. Why? Because there's only about eight people
at Inception Point AI and they admit, yeah, we don't
listen to this stuff, or at least most of the stuff before we put
it out. So they're littering, they're
cluttering up the podcasting space. Now the other thing that's bad about
this is I've said, and reports have come out over
(29:32):
and over and over, true podcasting, because of
the relationship we build with our audience, it
outperforms everything. Say it with me,
everything. And the one thing
that will drive the price of ads down if we don't
hold tight is when you get that idiot that will take the
(29:55):
low paying ads. Well, that idiot is called Inception
AI. It's basically spam in
the podcasting space. How do we fix this? Adam Curry, co
inventor of podcasting and co host of the no Agenda show,
said this. "Instead of this being a problem, why don't we just block as
much as we can and every single app that uses the index
(30:17):
should market itself as slop free. If you want to listen to
AI Slop, go use Spotify." And then the other thing that could
be potentially bad, Look, I know I talk about advertisers,
but look, there are times when advertisers, when they're treated
like partners, it's a win, win, win for everyone. It's a win for
the podcaster, it's a win for the audience and it's a win for the advertiser.
(30:39):
But in this case, when an audience finds a horrible
podcast and they get greeted with two to
who knows how many ads before the show even starts,
who's losing there? The advertiser. And
so now they're like, well, we advertised on this show and they said they were
great because they, the woman used to work at Wondery, she must know what she's
(31:00):
doing. No, they're putting out spam, they're putting out horrible
content and your ads are not going to perform well there because the
minute the podcast listener figures
out this is AI Slop, if it's me, I can
only talk about me, I'm tuning out. So it's
going to hurt discoverability, it's going to hurt the
(31:23):
directories, it's going to hurt the technology and it's going to hurt the
advertiser. We need to, to push back.
If podcasting is a pool and we're all swimming in
it, companies like this using this strategy
of just dump out all this AI into the space,
that space is us, that's our living room. That's our swimming pool, and
(31:45):
we're in it, and the water's turning bright yellow and starting to stink. And
everybody's going, hey, anybody else notice it's getting kind of warm in here.
We need to kick them out of the pool. And I
know you're like, but, Dave, that's censorship. Yeah, but here's the
thing. We all need an audience.
And when they come in and chase our audience away,
(32:08):
we gotta do something or we all go away.
So, again, I don't have all the answers. I just know
we need to push back. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. And just to clarify, I'm not anti
AI. Chris Stone from castahead.net
was showing off some really cool stuff at a group coaching call
(32:31):
we did at the school of podcasting. I've done some interesting things
with SEO where you can have chat GPT
find the right kind of post you have on
your website to link to your main. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff
that AI can do. The one thing I wouldn't use it for is
generating content unless it was an image. But actually
(32:54):
having it write something first, I prefer. So this is one of
those, hey, it's Dave's opinion. I like to write it and have
AI kind of basically polish it
a bit and keep my voice for me.
If you think about it, AI is trained on the best stuff, that's a 10,
and the worst stuff that's a 1. And then if it gives you the average
(33:16):
of that, that's a five. And so I'm not a big fan of having it
generate stuff, but that all depends on who's gonna be reading it. But
if it's your audience, I would start with you
and then let ChatGPT keep your voice
and buff it up. But there's some really cool things you can do with
AI. I just know I was approached by a company and their
(33:38):
whole thing was, you don't even have to talk. You can just
basically type in an idea. You know, type in two sentences.
It'll write a script. AI will read it, it will publish. It's your media
host. And I'm just like, I don't want any part of that. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Another thing that is hurting the podcasting space,
and this is just a case of you don't know what you don't know, or
(34:01):
in some cases, you're asking the wrong person. You're asking your web
hosting person a podcasting question. And in the same way
you wouldn't ask me a JavaScript question, I don't work in
that. I'm a podcast guy, so. And that is
people are submitting their shows
multiple times to Apple Podcasts and all the other
(34:23):
apps. So again, this creates a discovery problem. It
also makes it harder for you to rank in the charts because
Instead of having one listing, that is 500
subscribers, you've got two listings, and both of them have 250.
And that can affect your ranking in the charts,
because now we're talking followers. And why is this? This is
(34:46):
because people don't understand how podcasting
works. And I might actually do a webinar on this in January.
But in a nutshell, when you move from one host to
another. So let's say you're just tired of your media host
and they aren't putting out any new features, and
you want to move to Captivate or Transistor or Buzzsprout or whoever,
(35:10):
anybody but Spotify. And you
take your feed, you import it into the new host, we'll just
say it's Captivate. What you want to do is
redirect your old feed to point at your new one. It's kind of a change
of address. You know, you drive by a small business and it
says, hey, we've moved. We're now on South Howard street at 4:56.
(35:32):
Stop by and say, hi. It's a change of address. And that's
fine. And when you do that, one of the things that sees that change of
address is Apple Podcast. And they update your listing
to keep looking at the new source of your content.
But people don't realize that. And what they do is they go, oh, well, at
the old company, I went in, I clicked a couple boxes and it submitted to
(35:55):
Apple and Spotify for me. So on the new company, I click a couple
boxes and it submits to Apple and Spotify for you. And. And
from Dave Jones, who runs podcast index.org
he said there are times when there will be a show with
seven different listings. And this is just. You
don't know what you don't know. So I have a blog post
(36:17):
I put on my website on how to move from one host to the next.
But that, again, is costing you money in many
cases. It's hurting your discovery,
it's hurting your rankings. And it's not that you
are stupid, you're uneducated. And there is a difference
there, by the way. And it's also then
(36:39):
hurting these directories that they have to host
multiple versions of your show. And it just is confusing.
So here's how you can test to See, have I done that? Go to
Apple Podcasts and search for your show and see if it shows up more
than once. If it does, figure out which one has the most
reviews and then hide the other one. Yeah, yeah,
(37:02):
yeah. And this one, I don't know if it's hurting the podcasting space,
but it does hurt you, and that is you came up with a show for
your name and didn't take time to see. Hey, is anybody else using
this? My favorite is the title Thinking Outside the box,
which over 20 shows have the title Thinking Outside
the Box, which shows that they were not. Mm, Thinking Outside
(37:24):
the Box. So you want to go to Google, you want to go
to Apple, you want to go to Spotify and search for your show, and
if the name has already existed, check to see are they currently making
episodes. And if they're not, you might want to try to contact them and say,
hey, would you like to sell me your domain and your name? And you
take it over. So you're not really even starting from zero, but that is
(37:46):
something that, again, is. It's just causing hassles and
confusion in the podcasting space. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The school of podcasting. Well, what do I
predict for 2026? I think we're gonna
see more podcasters who are tired
of taking this $3 per
(38:09):
1,000 downloads, better known as CPM. I think they're gonna get
tired of that and just switch to premium
podcasts. That we've had this forever. There's Patreon.
I like Supercast. And the reason I say this
is if you gave me $5,
and right now, $5 won't even buy you a Happy Meal.
(38:31):
Five is like the new $1 bill. And if you gave
me $5, that would be the same if I was really, really
good of getting a thousand downloads.
So the question is, what's easier, getting a thousand
downloads or getting one person to give you $5
a month? It's been kind of fun because Sam and
(38:55):
James over at Pod News Weekly Review, they use
Buzzsprout. This is also available from Captivate.
You know, again, you could use super cash. You don't have to use this from
your media host, but they just threw it out
there, like, hey, if you'd like to support us, you know, buy us a
beer, whatever you want to call it. And I think the last time they talked
(39:17):
about it, they're up to close to 25 people. 25
people. And I think they're giving them. You can give them 3, 5, 7.
I think you can even name your own price. But just because
I hear so many people saying, I wish I could just cover the cost
of hosting. Well, I think if you put it
out there and you ask,
(39:39):
but that requires confidence that you're delivering value.
But to me, I think we're going to see people
do that where they're like, hey, if you'd like to support the show and
they're not going to get a ton, you might get 1%.
In my book, I talk about how the people that were really crushing it were
getting 3%. But I can see people saying, look,
(40:03):
this advertising where I'm making $1.17
isn't cutting it. Let's see if we can get one person
to give us five, let's see if we can get one Person to give us
10 or whatever it is. I think that's going to be a monetization
strategy that I think more people are going to try.
I think another thing, and I've kind of explained why,
(40:26):
but I think we're going to see AI slop. Not AI,
AI slop as in horrible, worthless content
I pray is going to get pushed back. I think we should all
just boycott it. Just get it out of here. And I know
somebody's going to say, but this is great for someone who
was hurt in a motorcycle accident. They had half their jaw ripped out
(40:50):
of their head and they can't talk anymore. Now this person. That's not what I'm
talking about. I'm not talking about the person that can't talk and is
using, you know, 11 labs to. No, that's not what I'm talking about.
Just crappy content created only for monetization
and no real value to the audience. I'm hoping,
I have faith in the podcasting space
(41:14):
that that will cause enough problems for
everybody that we all collectively just, just flush it down
the drain. I think we're gonna see some
podcast related companies merge.
There's just some weird stuff going on.
Companies doing things that really make zero sense.
(41:37):
And there's just a part of me that goes, I think they're trying to
thin themselves down to make them look more
attractive for a potential purchase. So
I, I'm watching a couple companies and I just think we're going
to see that happen. I think we're going to see
20% of people that try YouTube
(42:01):
decide this isn't for me. And I think that's
because people expect
faster growth. I think they expect it just to be.
We're all looking for that 10,000 download kind of
switch and I think they will realize that
audio is easier. Audio has a much better completion
(42:24):
percentage. So for me, YouTube is kind
of mile wide and an inch deep when it comes to actual
people consuming your content. And call me weird. I'm kind of
offended that my content may not even be
clicked unless I have some sort of clickbaity title. And
me looking surprised. It almost doesn't matter if your content is good now.
(42:46):
It does, because you have to hook them in the first 30 seconds. But
I think we're going to see a number of podcasters
say, yeah, this isn't for me. I tried it and they're going to come back
now. I also think probably 20% of those podcasters, another
20 will try it and actually
have some success because they'll study the algorithm and they'll
(43:08):
study the thumbnails and they'll do all the extra steps it
takes to make it on YouTube. But I think
we are going to see some say, yeah, this isn't for me.
And this one isn't really a prediction. It's more of something I want to
see. And that is, I want to see a
resurgence in creativity. I want to see people
(43:31):
getting outside of their comfort zones. I want to see people break the
format a bit. And it's not just a chat show. It's not just a
interview show. It's not just this just it's everybody's kind of doing the
same thing. I miss the days when people are being really wacky
on their show, and I kind of hope that we
break the cycle with True
(43:54):
Crime. That was the last genre to really take off, and
it's really kind of held the crown. And I'd like to see
something else step up and be way different. I
would love to see something way different
without being stupid. I listened to a show the other
day that is apparently very popular, and
(44:16):
I'm here to tell you, the first two minutes, I had no idea what they
were talking about. It was just endless chatter and laughing and
inside jokes. I'm tired of that. I want to
see somebody be professional, but also be super creative.
The only thing I saw creative that I was like, huh?
Was Amy Poehler's show where she
(44:37):
calls the friend of one of the interviewees
and asks them, what should I ask the interviewee?
And I know, I think she's up for a Golden Globe
and that whole nine yards now, to me
especially, her first episodes were not great, which I was kind of surprised
because she's been podcasting not in this format, but in a while,
(45:01):
and her first episodes really reeked of. Ooh,
I should have probably practiced more. I should have done my homework if I realized
people were actually going to listen to me. But then again,
everybody hates their first episode. So that show is called Good Hang with
Amy Poehler. And that was one of the few things that I was like, oh,
I've never heard somebody do that before. And it really wasn't that
(45:23):
crazy. So I'm hoping to see some people do.
You know, again, going back to that phrase, thinking outside
the box. Because the beautiful thing of podcasting is you
can do whatever you want. If you want to do a three minute opening
about a weird superintendent who keeps trying to
ruin Christmas with a yeah, you can do that.
(45:46):
It's yours. Some of it's good, Some of
it maybe not so good. But if you need help with your
podcast and you're like, dave, I don't have a podcast, well, then you need to
launch, I can help you with that. Like, Dave, I've, I've, I've got an idea.
Okay, well, I can help you plan that. Great. Okay, well, I've
got mine planned. Okay, I can help you launch it. Launching is so
(46:08):
easy. People really overthink that one and then you need to grow
it. Well, let's go back to the, the launch. Let's take a listen to
that. Because your content's what's going to help you grow. But we got other things
we can look into and we got members of the school of podcasting that have
tried a lot of things and you can learn from their mistakes and you
can learn and watch their success. It's all there
(46:30):
out@schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code
listener when you sign up. And that could be for a monthly, could
be for quarterly. A lot of the people doing the quarterly thing, I like that,
that's cool because you do save over the monthly and if
you got the budget, do the yearly thing and then you save a ton. And
that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.
(46:51):
I'm Dave Jackson. I've been podcasting for 20 years. I
love to help podcasters. It's really what I do. And I can't wait to
see what we do together. And until next
week, where we will be talking about your favorite podcast
and why, if you haven't answered it yet,
schoolofpodcasting.com? i need it by the
(47:13):
26th of December and we will be learning together
what makes a good podcast because we're going to really be digging into
the why. And of course we'll be
Putting the links to your website on my website.
Thank you so much for listening. Have a Merry Christmas. Happy
Kwanzaa, Massica. Whatever you're celebrating, I'm hoping you're taking time
(47:35):
to hang out with your family, your friends, and make those
memories that are absolutely tattooed to your forehead
that you will remember from years to come. Take care.
God bless. Class is dismissed.
(48:01):
Hey, no real bloopers today, but just a little behind the
scenes. If you thought this episode sounded a little
with some weird edits or you thought maybe my voice sounded a little
weird, that's because I started recording this
about one o', clock, had to run and do some stuff, had to go and
sing tonight at a concert, and
(48:22):
I ended up recording this. I think. I think I'm on four,
maybe definitely three. And some of it was good, some
of it wasn't good. And so if you're like, man, he just rambled on. But
I did. I poked. This sounds weird. I poked my own bear.
Usually when people say, you poked the bear, it's like, no, no. I guess
in this case, that article poked the bear. And the first
(48:45):
crack at that, I went on for like 45 minutes. I
was like, I'm not even to the other subjects yet. So I was like, we
got to do that again. Get some bullet points. What am I really trying to
say? And so I did cut that down. But if you
heard some edits, like, what's going on with Dave's voice? That was what was going
on with Dave's voice. And it's pretty raspy right now. I gave it all I
(49:06):
had in the choir tonight. And again, I wish you a merry Christmas.
And if you're looking for something else to listen to, check out the
website, powerofpodcasting.com.
Yeah.
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