What you're gonna do, brother, when Jeff Townsend Media runs wild on you. Have you been searching for a podcast? Do you want to learn from some great content creators? Well you've come to the right place Indy Podcaster with your host Jeff Townsend, the Indie podcast Father. All right, all right, all right, this is Jeff Townsend. Thank you for checking out another episode of Indie Podcaster. This podcast is made for podcasters and other content creators. Certainly don't consider myself a guru, or either do any of my friends that will be featured in these episodes. But what we do like to do is talk content creation, pick each other's brains, and have a good time. I'm proud to mention that this podcast is sponsored by Indie drop In. Now, let me tell you something about Indie Dropping. This is an awesome network that my friend Greg has created. What he does is drop episodes from independent content creator into his established podcast audience on his feed, and he shares your episodes to an audience that already exists. Yes, it's like free advertisement promotion for your podcast. He spent a lot of time, money, and effort building it, and he already has an audience interested in the content, and he can certainly help you by sharing your content is great promotion. Go to indie drop in dot com slash creators and check it out. If you're a comedy, true crime, paranormal, for various other different kinds of podcasts, you can benefit from this. So I really encourage you once again go to indie drop in dot com slash creators and see if you can get your stuff featured on indie drop in. We'll go back to the podcast here Indie Podcasters. So what we've currently been doing is sharing content from three different projects that I'm involved in. The first is Good Morning Podcasters with my good friend Fuzz Martin. We also do some content on podcasting Sucks, and then in these episodes you will also hear some content from podcasting Power Hour. Podcasting Power Hour is a live thing we do on Twitter spaces. We get a whole bunch of great podcast minds together we talk podcasting. So if you're a content creator a podcaster, I think you'll take something away from every episode of the content I'm going to share with you. With that being said, make sure you check out Eddie drop in and make sure you enjoy this episode. I think it's important that we all continue to learn and grow every day, and that will help us become even better content creators. That's certainly what I try to do, learn something new every day. I'm excited to share this content with you. I think it'll be a learning experience for you. Let's get to this episode, and I hope you have a great time listening to it. Welcome to Podcasting Power Hour with your host Jeff Townsend, aka the Indie podcast Father. I'm your co host Greg from Indie drop In Network. Podcasting Power Hour is recorded live every Monday at nine pm Eastern Time on Twitter Spaces. Every week, an experienced panel of podcasters and other experts will tackle your podcasting questions. We will, of course put links to all of our guests and any irrelevant information in the show notes. All right, let's get this party started. Podcasting Power Hour here on July eighteenth. I'm Jeff Townsend, of course, and we all want I want to start this off by saying Greg is in our thoughts and prayers as he overcomes a little bit of an illness, So this evening is dedicated to him. What do you think, tinner? Yeah, I like that, And let's just provide a little clarity. We're not kidding about that. He's been in the hospital for the last couple of days. He's coming out of it. But yeah, it's nice to have him. I don't do thoughts and prayers. I do thoughts, some would say I don't, but I don't do prayers. But keep them in your mind, your mojo, whatever it is you do to hope people pull out of things. There you go, do that. You want to go ahead and introduce yourself the greatness of yourself, Tanny. Oh, you're not gonna do it for me this time? Great? Thanks. Finally, Hey, I'm Tanner. I host the Good Morning Podcaster Show. It's a daily podcast. It helps podcasters hone their craft, trying to get better, and it also opines occasionally on things that are happening in the podcast industry. It's a good show. Hope you listen to it. Here to help, that's all I've got. You know, Tanner, You're the reason I should have introduced you, because you're the reason I've actually started drinking here lately. So I just wanted to mention that, yes, and you're the reason I've started drinking. Doesn't sound like you think it does, all right, we'll go ahead. We'll get to you in a second. Tom. Jim Mallard from The Mallard Report, a long standing eleven year podcast. Jim, I don't know how you do it. I even show up one week at a time and you don't worry about how many years it's been. You just God of time. That's how you do it. Thanks, thanks for being here, and Tom, I'm glad you're up still. This should be good. Thank you. Jim. And Jen is here, creator of Jay Vision Advertising and Marketing. She deals with some pretty good clients in that space. So Jim, thank you for taking the time. I know you've been on vacation. Hi, Hi, and now thank you for the invite. Yes, I was on vacation and as you know, when you come back, everything is like all together waiting for you. So I finally was able to stabilize everything and happy to be back. Awesome. This next man, he's a Hall of Famer. He's been podcasting since two thousand and five. He's very influential yet sensual. It's Dave Jackson. What's going on? Dave? Oh, glad to be here. I don't know about the central part, but I appreciate the looking forward to having some fun hit it ladies. Oh, Tanner, you know how to kill her? Room all right, and our special guests this evening, Tom Webster, formerly for Medicine Research and partner now with Brian Barletta sounds profitable. Tom, appreciate you taking the time to join us. Well, thanks for having me, and I'm I'm not in danger of falling asleep jokes aside, but I did get a Greyhound about six months ago, which reliably wakes us up at about six am, So I'm not as much of a night out as I used to be, but I'm ready to give it as much power as I can for an hour. He has listened to the show before, has he? If he's I mean, this show will put him to sleep exactly exactly. So let's kick it off here. I don't want to spend too much time on it. But Tanner, there was some big news today. One of your favorite businesses in the industry made a purchase. You want to run us through that? Yeah, sure, sure, Oh you can listen tomorrow's episode now, I really feel about it. I'll keep it short. A cast a cast acquired Podchaser, Podchaser. Everybody in this room probably knows. Is kind of like a IMDb mixed with Facebook experience for podcast creators to list their credentials on the shows they've produced, guest guested on had some kind of hand in, and for podcast listeners to discover new podcasts and you know, be better listeners. It's a great platform. It's been around for a few years and a cast is acquiring it for reasons I'm not smart enough to figure out. But it's got something to do with data. I'm not really happy about it. I don't know what they're gonna do with it. Hopefully they don't ruin it. The press release says that Podchaser is going to retain complete control over their brand. They're not going to change anything. They're still going to be able to steer where Podchaser goes in the future and what they do. Anybody who has ever been involved in any kind of corporate merger or merger of any kind knows that that is what everyone says in the first year and then the shit changes. So I'm nervous about it, But what could go wrong? It's a cast. Dave Jackson, what are your thoughts? I'm with Tanner on one hand, this answers my question, which I've had for many years, heck Chazer because it's kind of like why I use it for research when I was, you know, researching a guest or something like. But the whole time I was kind of like, what does this really do? I never quite kind of got that. And the answer is it's a great tool to get acquired and my my biggest hope out of this whole thing. Does this mean that acast will now stop spamming us because they already have our data? No, of course not, because now they have a whole bunch of new users email addresses. So exactly what they did with Radio Public, they're going to do with this probably, so get ready for that. But the other product they have, Dave, I should have said it, and I think this is the real product as far as how they're monetizing what they're making money with. You're familiar with Reefhonic, I think, which is far newer than Podchaser, But podchaser pro is essentially Reefhonic. So it's a way for PR professionals to get a beat on what podcasts are influential, what kind of listeners they have. I think it's all kind of quackery. I don't know how they're coming up with these numbers. I think it's probably as reasonable or as reliable as fucking listen notes is, which is the bane of my existence every time I come across someone who thinks they're in the top point zero one percent of podcasts. But I think that's their real product. And to be frank, I'm afraid that that's the one that acasts is shown up for, and I think that's probably the one they're going to ruin. All right. I tried to, you know, give a speaker invite to James Kridlin. He did not accept it. I was really dying to hear his opinion. But Tom Webster, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, it kind of reminds me of there was a product years ago called Muse that was just basically a giant database of uh, you know, lyrics and artists and albums and titles, and that actually became kind of a hot property in the same way that four Square became a hot property long after we all stopped using it. It became valuable as a database. And I think as we see you know, the death of cookies and more intrusive kind of ad targeting measures that the data that Podchaser is collected to be used for contextual targeting. I think is a value, and you know, honestly, that's a I'm okay with that part of it, because that's a that's a less intrusive way to reach me rather than kind of give up cookies and my online behavior and things like that. That said, I don't want to get any more emails from acast. That's say, dear podcaster James finally decided to join. I guess I called it amount and it worked well. I didn't see the invite, so there you go. Yeah, I to be honest, I think I share a lot about what Tanner has been as saying there. It'll be interesting to end up seeing quite what a cast is going to do with this. The one thing I can tell you is that a cast, sorry, is that Podchaser has been telling people for the last year or so that pod news has half of the listeners that it actually does, and also that pod news accepts guests. We're a three minute long podcast, guys, we don't accept guests. So if the rest of the database is as reliable as what I've seen, then I'm not so sure, to be honest, fair enough, fair enough. I never thought i'd hear you stay you agree with Tanner though, so this is definitely one of those j did I just say that I do apologize. I do apologize what has got over me. James and I agree on a lot. It's just our public rowse that get the most attention. Yep, with you and James and about I don't know a doesen other individuals anyway. Everybody's another space for another time, tenneral let you go ahead and kick the conversation off with Tom Webster while in the meantime, if you have any questions or something you want to talk about, feel free to request to speak and we'll get to you throughout this conversation here. I didn't realize that was gonna be my responsibility to night. Tom. Hi, how are you? This is the second time, Round two. I'm good. Make this one better. I can't. That was my best shot the first time. Okay, So well, let's start with the report that you and Brian under the Sounds Profitable banner with partnerships with Edison, I'm pretty sure have released about podcast creators. A lot of good news in that report as far as diversity and inclusion, I think we're now more diverse as podcasters than we are even as a nation. The one thing that I saw that was I think there's still a lack of female creators when compared to male creators, right. I think it's there's still a large disparity there. But the largest disparity I noticed wasn't that, It was the financial disparity. Do you have any ideas about First of all, talk about that financial disparity poor people essentially, and I hate to use that term. I'm considering myself to be a poor person. There are not there. There are not a lot of poor people podcasting. Is there a way to fix that? How do we fix that? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean I would look at the income as a as a trailing variable, honestly, and it's a trailing variable of education. It's really the education attainment disparity that drives a lot of that. And if you look at some of the data and the creators, you know, look at the percentage of people who say that they've ever worked on a podcast who have attained at least some level of you know, graduate credits, if not an advance degree, and compare that to the US population and it's an enormous disparity, and everything else stems from that income and income and the type of job that you have. Right, many of us have white collar jobs, information jobs, and those are the kinds of jobs that we can do at our desks. Are the kind of jobs that you know, maybe afford us time to work on a podcast. You know, maybe not as much time as we would like, but you know, certainly it's a class of humans in the United States that were much more likely to be able to work from home, which is not a thing you could do if you're in the restaurant business or the service indust or the service business or manufacturing. So so, as much as anything, I think it's educational attainment and that drives a whole series of class disparities. I think that that stem from that. So I hold on, gon I needed the wrong thing. So I know that we've jumped through hoops to get the the ethnic diversity things sorted. It seems like we have. We will jump through hoops to get the gender disparity things sorted. Certainly we already are. Do you think we'll jump through hoops to try to solve this problem? I hope so. And I think it starts, you know. And I look at how Apple really built its brand years and years ago in Steve Jobs's first run with the company, and that was in the education space. You know, when they weren't making it in business, they made a huge effort to put Apple computers into schools. You know, this was even before MacBooks and power books and you know, these are these were some bad computers, let's face it. But they made a huge effort to put them into schools. So with the hope being that when these Cree kids left high school went to college, that they would that they would take their love for Apple computers with them. And I think the same kind of thing has to happen with podcasting as well. I think kids from all social stress uh and and all classes and urban and rural. I don't know what happened there you were with us time That is so strange. I was, it's like it's self muted. How very strange. Yeah. I think I think Twitter recognized that the content of what I was saying was was really low, and UH canceled, canceled culture, I got canceled. I got canceled by Twitter. Yeah, so I'm not sure where where it get cut off there. But I think, you know, getting the the impetus to have to speak your voice, that your voice matters into schools, uh, into rural areas, into exurban areas, uh, you know, in uh with with indigenous people in this country, with all manner of people in this country where those things are not necessarily being filtered into schools. I think that's kind of where it starts. And even the knowledge that you could do such a thing is a thing that many of us in this particular space take for granted that so many Americans don't even know that they have, So I do think it starts there. I think it starts with outreach. I think it starts with reaching to hear communities and voices that have been underheard and underserved and actually coaxing those stories out. And I know organizations like air here in the US air dot org if you haven't been there, they do a very good job with that. But I think there needs to be more. So maybe part be the change you want to see in the world. In part, let's get a big philanthropic donor or a couple of them to really get this kicked off and start solving this problem. Yeah, you know, education is a part of it. But it's the same battle that I think public media has been fighting in this country for decades. And you know, public media also has very kind of similar profiles. Right, public media appeals to to wealthier people, to older people than even podcasting does. It's a little bit white and all of those things. You can say, well, we just need to educate, educate, educate, but sometimes you actually just need to do You actually just need to get into communities and start taking field recordings and start getting voices on tape. And to me, it all starts at the local level and at just how underserved the average local community is in terms of telling its own story. And you know, I've been in the audio business, in audio media for nearly thirty years now, and you know, in radio, there's this graveyard of programming. It happens Sunday mornings at like five am, public service programming. They're all like required to do it, or used to be, and it's you know, you get like a Saturday Night Live used to make fun of it, uh, you know, with with a skit on the show called Perspectives, and it was just sleepy and awful. But every city town and you know, uh uh, you know, the tiniest borough in Maine where I grew up has has stories to tell and no real record of that. And I think starting with that, starting with some of these hyper local things, getting them, you know, getting people used to understanding the value of hearing their voice, of getting their stories out there. This is not something that is that has broken through to to all of America. And I think that instigates I know I'm going on here, but that that instigates a love for the oral tradition, that instigates a love for audio and oral storytelling, and that's what drives the love for podcasting period. Yeah. I agree with you on all those points. G M, I see you with your hands up, or rather your hand up. Go ahead. What's how the data compares to YouTube? Because I think a lot of younger kids are more appletic. Great videos on YouTube, then trade a audio format. Jim Mallard sounds a lot like Dave Jackson. Dave, do you mind it? Do you mind if we take Jim first? Oh? Yeah, absolutely, thanks man, I'm not talking. I'm listening to Jim. I think we have a glitch in the matrix there, No that that was me being rude. I apologize. Yeah, Well, you know, the one thing about YouTube is that YouTube is a is a singular force and it's its own dog, right. I mean, podcasting, for better or worse, is spread out and fragmented over dozens of platforms, and everybody's trying to own their own little their own little piece of the garden, whereas YouTube is kind of big, fat and happy, and you know, they have created a lot of models for success. And now you have kids wanting to be YouTube stars, and you can't laugh at that, right, That's something that you could have laughed at maybe five years ago, if you want to crush the dreams of your children, as many of us do. But it's not something you can you can really laugh at now. Because the models for success are there, then models for success in podcasting are not so clear. It's really hard to do. It's really difficult to do. The audience is not quite there yet, even even for the medium in general. So but I think it could get there. I do think that it's podcasting has increased prominence on larger platforms like Spotify. Help. Not that I'm painting Spotify to be the savior of the industry here, but look, a lot of people have Spotify subscriptions, and if they're going to promote podcasting in front of those people, that's an opportunity. Yeah, I agreed. I'll keep my thoughts on Spotify and myself, I'm a little too pro Spotify. I don't get one of the accused of you are. So I'm confused here, Dave. Did you ask that question or did Jim? Because I was not looking at the screen on my phone. That was Jim. Okay, I was sitting here listening. I do have a question, though, go ahead, and I think the nail on the head I think people don't know that it's possible. But I would love to know, like how many of this group have cell phones, because, you know, God help us. If they got a cell phone, they have Anchor it's free, you know, So I Michael, maybe they just don't know that's available because you can definitely podcast for free if you have a phone. And I thought, well, maybe that's a case where this demographic doesn't have a cell phone. I think it's probably more. I mean, tom stop me if I'm putting words in your mouth here, but I get the impression of what you're getting at, and I would agree with you. Is that people from lower income areas families, however, you want to put a geographic locations that they are not even of the mindset because of the life level of what do they call another country standard of living that they have, that they're not even to a point of being anywhere near self actualization, and so they're not thinking about these things that are very self actualized based, like I'm able to podcast. I have the freedom to podcast, and that's because I have a certain income, I have a certain flexibility. Like you were saying your job schedules. Is that where you're getting at that this isn't that they don't know they can do it, it's that they don't know they can they can do it. I don't know that I would go that far. I would say they don't care, and I don't know that anyone's made the case to them that they should care. You know, this is the thing that in my career as a researcher, I've looked at extensively, and you know, two of the five most widely cited reasons why people who are familiar with the term podcasting don't listen to a podcast are Number One, I don't have anything on my phone or an app that lets me listen to them, right, And number two, it doesn't give me anything I don't already have and what they already have to a certain extent, are you know, Yes, there's radio, but there's Netflix, and there's TikTok, and does podcasting give them something better than that? I'm not sure that that case has been made. So in no way would I look at skance at the background of people that aren't listening to podcasts with some kind of thought that they're deficient. I don't think anybody from a content standpoint has made a compelling case. And there's a significant percentage of the population that thinks podcasting is just catch up radio and they already listened to it on the radio. So what are they getting that's new here? And we haven't made the case. I think you did you think I meant listeners. I was talking about creators. I don't know what you meant, Tanner, We never do. Sorry, that's okay, go ahead, you have you get them. No, but ed, I know you requested to speak. Anybody else has any comments or anything about podcasting they want to talk about, go ahead and request ed. You've been waiting patiently. What you get? Oh, sorry, I wasn't expecting to be called I just wanted to chime into the thing with the computers in the seventies. I'm when I was twelve and went from elementary school to middle school. My school, in a middle class neighborhood in suburban California, had multiple Apple to computers in our math classes. I learned how to program a computer when I was twelve, with the old punch cards with the zero through nines that you would have to run through the reader. But that was right before California voted in Proposition thirteen, which cuts school funding severely and has kind of directly led to the stupidity of America, in my opinion, by just cutting taxes over and over and over and over again. That's another story for another time. But yeah, when I was a kid, the first time I ever saw a computer was in my seventh grade math class, and we were actually expected to learn how to operate it, which was much more interesting than math itself. But now today everybody's got a computer in their hand, and we've become dumber for it, because it's so smart that we've become dumb in many ways. But with the podcasting, I just think that you know, podcasts only interest a certain amount of group. I mean, what was the numbers that was released. There's like in the a Cast Catcher press release state there's like four million podcasts out there around the world, but there's a eight billion people. So you know, most people probably aren't interested in just becoming podcasters because they don't think they have anything to more than any kind of technological bridge because most everybody, even in the most remote parts of the world, have cell phones now that can do the things that we do. So I don't think it's a technological barrier or a financial barrier. I just think it's a apathetic barrier. Well, Tom, to that point, what do you think about the idea that and maybe you think nothing, but here we go. What do you think about the idea that of all the types of media that are consumed online, podcasts are just such a small percentage. Is that an indication that maybe this is as big as we grow? I mean the Edison research where you used to work, the Infinite Dial that's been coming out the last couple of years, even though it spanned COVID, there wasn't a significant amount of growth over the last few years. If I remember it was only up and down a percent or so. Do you think that we're getting to a point where we're peak podcast listeners? I mean, are we going to get bigger than that? No, I don't think we are at I don't think we're at peak podcast listeners. And you know, if I know, I've heard that figure of four million podcasts a few times. There are a million self published books released in America every year. We're lousy with books, and I don't think anyone's saying that we've reached peak book, right, you know, I continue to think, well, let me rephrase that peak giving a shit about the books or giving a shit about the podcast because I know a lot of people who self publish, myself being one, and they can't sell more than twelve copies. Well, and that's very true of podcasting, right, So I think there's I think there's an enormous room for more podcasts that nobody gives a shit about, if that's what you're saying. Perfect. So, like, I think the appetite for that is is unlimited. But you know, every time that we create a creator, you know, even on a free platform, you know, something like Hanker and so on, we are we are creating at least one listener. And that's another thing that we learned in the creator study. I think a sizeable percentage of creators are actually new to the medium period, and indeed it may have been the creation of a show the desire to make a show that got them into being regular podcast consumers in the first place. But I don't think we're peak podcasting. I think all you have to do is look at the top podcasts in America and or the top podcast in whatever country that you're listening from, and then look at your top television programs, right. I mean, the top TV shows in America are live sports and police procedurals with acronyms, and that's not what the podcast charts look like. They still look pretty highbrow compared to that. So there's still a ways to go for the content, I think, to become more broadly appealing. And you know, and I still think there's tremendous opportunity in fiction and drama too. I like that you just said that that podcasting is highbrow. TV's lowbrow, and then you said there's plenty of room for us to get more content, which is kind of like you just said, there's plenty of down for us to go. We could get way worse in the in the quality of condem were producing. We could make the bodio version of Cops. Yeah but let but let me let me challenge you with this, Tanner. The average episode of you know, Law and Order or NCIS or you know whatever is quality wise way better than most podcasts. Right. Lowbrow and highbrow have nothing to do with quality. Uh, They instead have to do with the percentage of the population that maybe wants to lean forward and learn something. Right, Maybe they want to learn something about stoicism and they listen to your podcast tenor or they want to learn something about research or marketing and they've listened to something that I've done. But some people just want to laugh. Some people want to lean back, And you know, I think there's still plenty of opportunity for podcasts to appeal to people that want to lean back and and be entertained as opposed to want to learn something. It's the largest of a population leaning back instead of forward. Isn't a great metaphor for the current state of this country. Man. We're going to have to move on, tom Okay, So let's let's talk more about the Creator Report. What was the thing that surprised you? Yeah? Thanks, ver, go ahead. Yeah, well someone's got to do it. No, Tom, I thought that you kind of like were touching on it there the like what it was? It? Four and ten creators have been listening to podcasts for under a year. I thought that was interesting. So they're getting into this space with not necessarily any historical knowledge of it, even from a consumer standpoint. But that shouldn't be that shouldn't be a surprising point. That shouldn't even be interesting. We know that most podcasters. Of course, most podcasters are going to be new to podcasting because they only create seven episodes and then they dip. I feel like those two things we're talking about are very related. Well, yes and no. And I think the percentage of creators that are fairly new to the medium actually means two things. One thing I think we just touched on, and that is that many of them have come to the medium specifically to make a show, or maybe they heard one podcast and felt like, oh, this is something I would like to do, and so they then made their own podcast. Right, And it's corroborated by another data point in the report that shows that creators don't actually listen to that much more podcast programming than the average podcast listener does. Right, They're not these kind of twenty hour week freaks. They're listened to about the same amount. That's one explanation for that. But the other explanation for that, for the forty percent of creators coming to be regular listeners of podcasts within the last year, is that that's not incredibly different from the general population of weekly podcast listeners period. And the reason for that is that there's a lot of churn in podcasting. And we can tell ourselves that when the percentage of weekly podcasters goes up from twenty two to twenty four to twenty six, that it's the sort of continual growth, but it's not. It's a roiling sea of churn that's three steps forward and two steps back. Someone gets into podcasting because they like to hear, because they want to hear Doctor Death or Dirty John, and then Dirty John ends, they don't necessarily go right to another podcast, everything go to TikTok. There's a lot of churn in podcasting. That's something that I know personally, we're going to be turning our attention to a lot that sounds profitable because that's a fairly unexplored you know, box to poke, but we're going to poke it. Sorry that you off, Tanner. You can go ahead, but I know Mike has been waiting and it looks like has something to say. Yeah, I was just going to say, Mike, you've been patiently waiting. Go ahead. Sure, I was actually going to talk about this same topic, which is about this this new podcaster. And you know, my personal view looking at the data is that I really wonder how much Anchor and the quote unquote you know four and a half million podcasts that are out there are influencing that number. Four and a half million is a big number. You know, a significant portion of that has made an appearance in the last you know, twelve or twenty four months. How much do you think specifically Anchor and quick pod fading podcasts affect that that figure? Well, I think significantly. I mean, you know, it's probably a million podcasts on Anchor right There's there's a number right there, So obviously it's a huge part of it. I don't I don't place a stigma on pod fading. I mean, you know, Star Trek pod faded, Seinfeldt pod faded, Cheers pod faded, lots of things pod fade, right. The only difference between a pod fade and a television show being canceled is who decides to end it? I guess, but you know, I'm thrilled that so many people have tried sort of these newer, free, easy to use tools, just to try it out, Like, you never know unless you try it out, and some people might decide it's it's not for them, and guess what, they didn't risk anything so great. Podcasting Power Hour is part of Indie drop In network. If you are a podcaster looking to grow your listeners, check out Indie drop in dot com. Indie drop in is always free and we have opportunities right now for comedy, true crime, scary and paranormal podcasts. Just go to indie drop in dot com to learn more. It's always been interesting to me that we have I mean, what's the figure, tom something like there's four point two million podcasts according to Accessible by rss feed according to Podcasts Index, but big butt really only six hundred and eighty seven hundred thousand have published within the last is it ninety days or sixty days? It's I think it's ninety from Yeah, I think that resonates ninety to me. So what's curious about that to me is that that means that all of those other podcasts are offline but are maintaining their hosting. That's always been curious to me. Well, look, I've got four podcasts that I'm not active in that I that the hosting is maintained for like, you know, it's it's ego, Like I don't want to I don't want those things to disappear forever. I'm not doing them anymore. But but yeah, I'm still paying hosting bills for you know, defunct shows, but they're still they're still creative output. There's there's still things I put out there. I'd still like them out there. We've also had the greatest song ever sung poorly, hey man, how are you? Go? Ahead, good Tanner, how are you? This is actually all this stuff kind of us back into what I used to do for a living when I work in television. So if you think about it, it goes back to what you say, a lot with closed versus open systems. So back when we had three major networks in the United States, a show like Bonanza could have a season where they did a twenty eight rating and a forty one share because there were so few options out there in terms of what's available and what's in distribution. Can you for those of us, including myself, who don't know what twenty eight school get forty share means? Yeah, you got you. So the rating part was the amount of viewers, and the share was the percentage of viewers who were watching that program at the time. Let me just look up something contemporary, real quick top rated share show. I mean, ultimately, this only too Ultimately, this is a discussion about what that because we're talking about there's too many, the fact that there's so many there there is competition to be discovered. That's what this discussion is. Yes and no, it's not just that it's the competition certainly helps to lower that across the spectrum, but the distribution systems too, that we're not all listening on Spotify, that we're not all listening on Apple podcasts, that there's a million different options and there's very very poor tracking system wide for all of that stuff does play a factor in some of it. I think, well, you're looking, why don't we go to Dave? Go ahead, Dave. Yeah, First things first, I couldn't hear a thing he said that's really weird. I think my phone's are I don't know, having a bad night, And so if I ask a question, it sounds like I'm ignoring what he just said, and I just I didn't hear what he said. But I'm dying to know the thing that got me because we've been screaming women get into podcasting, women get into podcasting for years, and when I go to podcast movement or pod except you know, podcast, et cetera, it seems like it's fifty to fifty, if not in some cases I'm outnumbered kind of thing. And I just wasn't sure, like, why is that such a discrepancy? I guess I love that you brought this up, and it's you know, it's a really important point, I think, especially kind of when you think about just demographics and statistics, and it's a much broader point. I think, you know, first, I want to I want to explain how we got the number that we got in the Creator's study for this year, and this is the first year of it. We had a very broad screen to get into the survey. We asked a very simple question, do you currently or have you ever produced a podcast? Right, So, there's a historical look at this. Now, there's going to be a bias because it's survey research. There's going to be a bias on recency. But if you look back at the history of MA podcasts, you know, back in two thousand and five, when I first started researching podcasting and really started getting into the space, you know, the podcast audience itself was like nearly seventy percent men. Right, it was hugely biased towards white men. And you know, there are some reasons for that, which which I can touch on in just a second, But it just takes a while for that to write itself. Because here's the thing is, setting things to be equal and fair does not make things necessarily equitable. Right, if I have a dollar and you have fifty cents, and we agree to continually split every dollar from now on fifty cents apiece, I will always have more than you. So the only thing that writes the ship is unfairness or inequitableness in the other direction. So for that to be restored, it can't just be that, you know, half of New creators are women. Has to be more than that. We have to we have to work harder at it. Well, that has just it's great that you brought that up, because that's just happened with underrepresentation of white creators in podcasting. We are, for the first time that we know of underrepresented by not by I'm I say points, that's probably not right from a data perspective, but by like a few points. Yeah, And I think you know this is uh, this is I think indicative of a segment of the population that is not being heard in mainstream media, and they're not being represented in mainstream media. They've actively sought out the tools to write the ship and I think that's that's going to continue to happen. I have I fully expect that the podcast audience, it's already trended that way, will continue to be more diverse than the US population. We see that with creators, but ultimately, the creators inform the content that is being created. And I think the fact that we have so many creators of color has absolutely led to the audience for podcasting being as diverse, if not more diverse, than the US population. But it does still the audience for podcasting does still lag behind in gender equality, and it's a little warped in terms of age too. We haven't even touched on that. So those things I think have to be that those have to be addressed somehow for podcasting to really occupy the footprint that I think it can in this country. And what footprint is that, well, I can tell you what the what the what I think the ceiling is. And I don't know that it's going to be the ceiling for podcasting, but I do know the percentage of the population that listens to spoken word audio. And but you know, when you roll up talk radio, sports radio, you know, talk based, public broadcasting, audio, books, and podcasts. When you roll all of that up together, it's about two thirds of the country listens to at least some form of spoken word audio. Most of us listen to music, and most of us listen to mostly music, but about two thirds of us listen to some form of spoken word audio. And we're not there with podcasting. I think, you know, there are places to grow in some of the areas of content that I've suggested. I think there are places to grow. They're going to continue to be crossings of the streams with audiobooks, I think. But that is what I think the ceiling is. The ceiling's not one hundred percent that's ludicrous. We don't all want to listen to spoken word audio, but you know that's where it could go. So you think it's sixty to seventy percent somewhere in there, you'd feel like, all right, we've done it. This is as big as we're going to get. I think so yeah. I mean, there's there's a point to which people there are people that just don't that don't have that tradition, they don't have that experience or desire to listen to spoken word audio. There's the percentage of the population that doesn't listen to anything. If you can believe that I don't listen to anything, so well, how about I'm interested to get your thoughts after having said that and correct me if I'm wrong, because I believe you were a co author of this stuff. Unless I'm getting my data houses mixed up. Wasn't there a study done in Ireland within the last couple of years that the that the percentage of the population in Ireland that listens to podcast is extraordinarily high. I was not a part of that study, but it doesn't surprise me for two reasons. And we're starting to see that in the UK also, I think and that's just that there's a there's a rich heritage of spoken word content in those countries. I mean, some of the biggest radio stations in Ireland are talk stations. They're massive. There's a huge tradition in many European countries for people of all ages to listen to the main kind of state broadcast, state run news and information service. It's not a tradition that we have here in the United States, or at least we haven't in decades. So I would expect, certainly in English language speaking countries in Europe to exceed the percentage that we have here in the United The States and other countries I think are really just being held back by the amount of quality content in the native language of those countries. Hey, James, you're still on stage. Do you have any input on any of that. I mean, I would certainly agree with Tom around Europe, and you know, I think it's interesting seeing some of the latest data that we're seeing from Edison Research is Infinite dial which is showing, you know that the amount of podcast listening, I mean, arguably the amount of podcasts listening going on in places like Canada, Australia and the UK is doing particularly high and particularly well and you know, and that's a great thing. I'm not aware of any specific data coming out of Ireland other than the Writers' Institute stuff, which is a little bit more focused on the news, but I think that there's you know, certainly a ton of a ton of really interesting data coming out of that. And I think it's always worth keeping an eye on the places other than the US, because I think you'll get a fresh, you know, a fresh focus on some of the on some of the different things going on there. You know, fiction podcasting incredibly strong in France, paid for podcasting doing really great guns in places like Denmark, France, Germany. So always worth keeping an eye overseas, so to speak. So as we as we enter into the last fifteen minutes here or so we always seem to go over I'd like to invite anybody who has specific questions for Tom or for anyone else up here, to use the It's like a hand raising icon if you could do that, so I could more easily see you, and Jeff could more easily see you that you don't just want to come on stage, you have an actual question to ask, so request put your hand up and then I will go to Dave, make sure Dave doesn't have anything he'd like to ask, and then to Jim Dave Jim, No, I'm good at this point. Thanks Wy, Jim, Jim, how about you. I'm going to jump on the Dave Jackson Bandlagen begin and just let anybody else want to jump in here. I'm excited to talk about data because I think in the other countries I've noticed, Ireland definitely is strong, for sure, because I've had several guests done from over there and it always does well. So I just mentioned I should just mentioned, by the way, that the number one thing on Irish radio for a long long time has been the obituaries who has died today? That's actually the number one thing, which is a really weird, weird thing. But also again just worthwhile clocking that actually in Ireland radio, even the hit commercial radio has to have a percentage of speech content as part of the license condition. So I think it's twenty five percent time you maybe you may know better than me, and so therefore, actually people are very used to hearing large chunks of spoken word, which of course you know, it's very good for podcasting as well. I have got to ask before I go to Mike with his hand up, James, is that a squeaky chair or a cockatile in the background, It'll be a cockpatoo outside. Yes, go ahead, Mike, Yeah, thanks for letting me chat Tom. You know, on Red Circles Support channel, at least a couple times a week we get people writing and ask me where they can upload their content to YouTube, in other words, expecting that podcasts and YouTube are the same thing. We even had somebody apply for a job and get through a couple interviews I think before they realized that we were an audio company, and I wonder if you think that may have some influence on the data here. When you asked, you said that the question was sort of have you produced a podcast, whether some of those folks may be video creators, and how you think that may adjust the data. Well, I think there's some extent to which that could be true, right, I mean, it's a simple survey research question. The one thing I will say, though, in this particular data set, it's much less likely to be true. And it's worth explaining just for thirty seconds about where the data comes from. It's derived from a data set that is actually provided to us by Edison called Edison Podcast Metrics, and Edison Podcast Metrics is a significant study. It's about to bump up to twenty thousand respondents a year who are all weekly podcast listeners. And as the co creator of that particular study and a designer of it, I can tell you the amount of labor that goes into it. When someone takes the survey, one of the many things that they're asked is to name the shows that they've listened to in the last week. And they may name things that are on YouTube, they may name things that are on Spotify. But every single show written down by them in their own language literally is verified by Edison to be an actual podcast with an actual RSS feed that you can actually also get in a podcast client. So then, in other words, the only way that what Mike is getting out here would be if it was a YouTube channel and a podcast, then the ress, yeah, they would not be in that particular sample. Now, if we ask just ask this to a general public, it's possible you'd get some of that crossover, but in this particular data set it's less likely to occur. Of course, I won't say impossible, but I will say that everything is verified in this data set as actually being a podcast available as a podcast even if it is also on YouTube. Awesome. I mean times twenty thousand. That sounds like a lot of work. Thank you and to doing it. We were glad to sponsor it, and thank you for sponsoring it. And it's actually more like times eighty thousand, because most people will name four or five podcasts, so an enormous amount of work. It's about seventy percent algorithmic at this point. You know, someone types in Bill Simmons, it'll get matched to the Bill Simmons podcast. But people will type in all kinds of crap you never know, and then the rest of it's just brute force. It's humans looking at text fields. I'd like to thank our sponsor, Red Circle. Go to redcircle dot com. Check that out. Thanks Mike. Okay, so, speaking of data set and sample sizes, this first one of the creator's report was was it under a thousand? I remember thinking that it was a bit small. Yeah, So the sample for this was six hundred and seventeen and it was as I mentioned, it was derived from a larger sample. But that's what came back in this particular study, which is plenty actually to give sort of the top down demographics to say, you know, the percentage men, percentage women, and the percentage in each age group. That's plenty to do that within a few percentage points. What it's not enough to do is to dive deeper and do any kind of in depth analysis on black creators or older creators. But that's going to come. That's going to come in subsequent years. I'm confident that we'll begin to get larger sample sizes and and increased ability to do that. But what we anything that we presented is data that I'm one hundred percent confident in within a within a few points. So it's it's solid, and I think that's what I was getting at. I wanted to kind of tease out of you what you think the future of this Creator report will be. I mean, i'magine you're gonna do it every year, and every year it's going to be a little bigger every year, it's going to get a little better and then therefore a little bit more accurate. Where do you where do you think it becomes or what's your hope that it becomes as accurate as it could be? I mean, is there such a thing as too much of a too big a sample size. Does that exist? No, not, especially not if you're in the business of charging for research as I used to. No, I don't think so. But I do have some hopes and dreams for the study, and I think, you know, first of all, again the source data for this is coming from Edison Podcast Metrics, and they have recently dramatically increased the sample size for the core study. So I would expect, doing nothing else, that our total sample for next year would be at least double what it was this year. But things that I hope to, you know, continue to add to the study a little bit more detail on what these creators are creating. And we do have some data in this study about what these creators are consuming, because that's data that's collected of everybody in Edison Podcast Metrics. But I would like to get a sense of the you know, our certain topics or genres in podcasting being overserved, underserved at least in proportion to what the tastes of the general audience are, because again that's I suspect that's going to have a lot to do with growing podcasting in the future. All right, Tom, we're coming over the last five or six minutes so let me ask you this, what is there? Is there anything that you would like to share with the people who are listening. A big project you're working on, future plans, you know, where you get your dog's haircut at how that's going. Well, let's start with the dog. Let's start with the dog. Tanna a good place. This is a retired racing greyhound. It has very little hair, so that would be that would impede its forward progress. It is a very lean and muscular beast. But as far as projects that we're working on right now, we are super excited Brian and I for Sounds Profitable to be hosting day zero of Podcast Movement for our sponsors. So basically, if you're a sponsor of Sounds Profitable, which we are pushing about one hundred, and you have a ticket to Podcast Movement, you are you have a ticket to the Sounds Profitable Business Summit and we're going to be premiering a brand new research study there. And it's basically the best I can do to look at a very sticky question, and that is is there really a difference between you know, live host red ads, dynamically inserted host red ads, and announcer red ads? If they are all set equal, done to a high standard, done for the same brand, done on the same show. Tried to eliminate every variable that I could in the design of this study, and we are going to get to the bottom of this, and I'm super excited to put that out. I am so afraid that the answer to that is that it doesn't matter. I think the answer to that is that it's not going to matter much. And I think what that's going to do is that's going to that's going to unlock some things, and it's going to make some people unhappy, but ultimately it's going to make some people better because I don't think I think the difference between, you know, a crappy radio style i'll know, programmatic ad and a great host red ad, it's not about where that ad came from. It's the care that went into it. And a lot of times when you hear like some screaming crappy ad that's twice the volume of the podcast you're listening to, it's not the fact that it's programmatic. It's like some dude that didn't do his job right right, And hopefully that all gets better, and that all gets better with education and I'm proud to be a part of that. Well, so this is how if you have a ticket to podcast movement, you might have a ticket to this if you're a sponsor of Sounds Profitable. For anybody who's not aware of Sounds Profitable is that I understand it to be a sister publication of pod News, which I'm sure everybody in this room knows about, and it focuses specifically on the ad tech world. So if you are a data wonk, if you really care about learning about this stuff, Sounds Profitable dot com is the domain. It's free to sign up, doesn't cost you anything. However, if you'd like to be a sponsor of this, what are we looking at here? Tom? Is this expensive or people going to be like, holy shit, this thousand dollars a month, I can do that? Or is there space for people who you know, maybe could do one hundred dollars a month sponsorship for something? Yeah? Well, I mean I would say two things. First of all, we put out an enormous amount of content for free, including all of these studies that I'm talking about. These studies are put out simultaneously for free, and you know, we've really expanded the purview of Sounds Profitable beyond ad tech to be the business of podcasting. And that's kind of I think why I was so excited to join Brian is that we both have an opportunity here to make the space bigger, to try to give people the careers that we have had, right So that's something that we're very focused on. So we will continue to provide a lot of free things. Sponsors to Sounds Profitable have access to consulting services and you know obviously attendance to We're going to be doing four of these summits a year, and that's five hundred dollars a month. And as I mentioned, we are where we've got just about one hundred sponsors. Thank you Red Circle and thank you read Circle for being one of the sponsors to the Creator Study. But that's the cost of sponsorship, and that has a number of benefits. And would you say, and I think the answer this is going to be asked, but would you say there's a particular kind of creator that would want to be a sponsor of this, right, this isn't for the average creator is going to get more than enough to learn more than enough from the newsletter, from the articles from the other stuff you're doing that you mentioned, the load of free stuff you're doing. Who is somebody who would really benefit from from sponsoring. Maybe they're in this room, maybe they're not, But who's the ideal sponsor? Yeah, I think you know, one of the things that Brian and I as a function of having so many sponsors and these sponsors having consulting time with us, is that we are talking to everybody. So you know, we are talking to everybody in the space that's you know, that's making money in a variety of ways. And so I think if you're serious about taking the step up, which is not just an investment in US, but it's an investment in and you know this is these are things that you've talked about tenner, an investment in marketing and investment in the quality of your content. It's the next step up, I think. But having said that, we are very committed to continuing to provide even more than we have provided for free. And I think you know, when I started serving the space back in two thousand and five, it was very much for the independent creator because that's all there was. And so that's definitely in my DNA, and that's going to continue to be in our DNA as we go forward. Go ahead, Jem, I see coming off. Mike. Yeah, I was a second that I think the future of ads is a well read host AD because it'll be more integrated than the show. That's just my two cents, but it's still early in that though. I think I think this first set I'm talking in ten years, just my two cents for the record market. That all right, we will mark it down and we'll see if Tom agrees with you. Podcast movement to man for I want to make it real clear, real quick too. That that uh, and I hope that this was clear. If you have a ticket to podcast Movement and you are a sponsor, you have a ticket to the sounds profitable business. I think I think that was clear, but I got a question about that. But but you know, I'll be there. I look forward to meeting and talking to as many of you as I can. We do have jacking around Jack Ingram podcast request to speak. Don't want to leave them out. Oh sorry, Jack, didn't see you go ahead or not? Jack mad That was just got some some interesting insights to I was provided by a big record company in Nashville, so they're concerned about concern relatively speaking with the they're seeing the podcast list you know, obviously the music listeners are increasing, but they're seeing their podcast listeners substantially increase, taken away listening time from the music space. So and their biggest impact is on gen Z, and they published an internal report about it. They were so concerned about it. And I think this data was driven by I can't see where the data. It was just forwarded to me about two months ago by a marketing executive. But it's pretty interesting stuff. So you fifty six percent of gen Z now listen to podcast a monthly, up forty four from just two years ago. And then he says, we are seeing the impact of podcast sometimes event listening to music on the platform. So they're just overly concerned about spoken words beginning to take place of some of the music listeners in the country. And they have a bunch of international data too, So it's just interesting. I thought i'd jaer man. If that report accidentally made it to James atpodnews dot net, I think that might be okay. He can reach I'll read this call reach out to me via message, I'll read it to you. I don't I'll get my asked Jude if I shared it to you digitally. But I'll be more than happy to read this report. It's pretty fascinating report. But I would I would have to call my buddy see if it's okay to share it with you. I don't think you would mind. I would. I would love to share this reports, A twelve page report with a one page with a from our corporate insights team, so pretty interesting stuff. But reach out to me via the messaging or uh and then I'll let's I'll get permission to share this with you, and I'll do that very Oh, James, I might be an old fashioned scoop. You never know. Okay, well, hey, now I'm going to try this for the third time. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to be here and for answering what I'm sure were some inane questions for me and smart questions from other people. There are no stupid questions, Tanner. There are only stupid people. Well hopefully I'm not one of them. It is ten clock on the East Coast where you're at, so it's probably time for you to go to bed, and it's time for me to go to bed. And it's only eight o'clock where I am. Jeff over to you, my man, Well, we got to do things the right way like we usually do. Closing thoughts on this evening, mine is kind of a question for Tom aside from some of the things that you wanted to drill down more on what the kind of content's being created, what's something existing in this that in this report that was released, it's going to be the focal point moving forward. What do you want to drill down on more. I want to drill down more on content, you know, And like I said, I've got a thirty year career of looking at audiences and what audiences want and what audiences don't want in media in all kinds of media, and podcasting is not really at the stage yet where it's doing a lot of research on content, on kind of content holes and content opportunities. It's still very focused on sales and monetization and that's that's what's paying the bills. But you know, good old fashioned content research is kind of where I made my bread and butter in the first part of my career, and I'm looking forward to podcasting growing there. Tanner, You're closing thoughts on this evening. I think this has been great. It's always good to get to hear someone who really knows and understands the thing they care about talk about that thing. I have often said that I love listening to competent people talk about competent things, even if I'm not particularly interested in whatever that thing is. That's not the case with Tom. He's a competent guy who talks about something he cares a lot about and that I happen to have a lot of interest in. So it's always a good opportunity to get to hear him speak on it. So again, Tom, thank you. I have been through that Creator Report a couple of times, and if you guys have not want to see you guys, everyone in this room, guys and gals, if you've not seen that Creator Report, it's worth checking out. I am sure it is accessible from the front page of Sounds Profitable dot com because it was only released a week or so ago, so I would go there and check it out free PDF. I don't even think you have to register to see it. So go go snag that and see what's going on and see where you fit into this big, wide creator world that we're all part of. Tom. He doesn't say such nice things about you OFFLINEFI. I mean he's sucking up to you here, but yeah, I know that, Yeah, yeah, just making sure we're all on the same page. Jin, I know that you're not necessarily in podcasting, But did you take away anything from this conversation? I know, obviously I'm going to say data because I was just hoping somebody would and Mad did so. I know you're a data person. No, actually was an interesting conversation. I really enjoyed learning from it, and I'm the data for sure, data data. James Quidlin, mister pod news, what are you closing thoughts on this evening or morning for you? He must be busy. Jim Mallard, you're up, man, what are your thoughts? I know that you've been taking this all in. I want to say data just for you, and I'm also interested. I mean, we've I think I'm interested in all the other things that we've already been talked about, but I want to drop another one on us. The wild west of the marketplace. As company starts buying out other companies and consuming other companies, how the landscape looks in the next eighteen months compared to how it does now. I think there's a lot of movement in that top end stuff, and they'll be interesting to see how it trickles down to all of us. Come on, Tanner, you have to have something to say about that. I am trying to wrap this room up. Jeff, You're making it very difficult. I know. I'm sorry, Tanner, You're no fun. Tanner. All right, let's go to the Hall of Famer Dave Jackson. What a you're closing thoughts on this evening, and we will put a bow on ribbon on it. However you want to say it, Well, anytime you get to hang out with Tom Webster, you're gonna walk out smarter and probably thinking about you know, you basically get to brainstorm with yourself now. But I want to jump on the last thing he said, which was going back to content, you're never gonna get any kind of advertising. I listened to a podcast last night. Thought it'd be different, not my total typical kind of show, and it was supposed to be financed from a female perspective. And I'm not female bashing here. It doesn't matter if she was whatever sex she was, but the bottom line was this was a financial show. And I listened to eight minutes of this person explain how they were sad because it was their birthday, and I get it. I'm sorry to hear that you were sad on your birthday. But I tuned in for financial stuff. And if we want to know why people aren't listening to podcasts, I give you exhibit A. So I want to double down on that. It's all about content if you want to get to the advertising. That's my thought. Wow. Nice, I like that, and Tom Mike Tenner said, we appreciate you coming in. You're welcome anytime. We do this every Monday at nine pm Eastern. Thank everybody that was speaking and everybody that was listening. We'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the Podcasting Power Hour. Everyone is free to participate on Twitter spaces every Monday at nine pm Eastern time. To join, just follow Jeff at podcast Underscore Father or Greg at Indie Droppin'. If you found this podcast helpful, go into your podcast app and write a quick review. Other podcasters will see it and know this show is worth listening to. Also, I'll put a few links in the show notes for ways you can support the show. I think by now you know we love our coffee. Have a great week. Thank you for checking out this episode of Eddie Podcaster. I really do appreciate it. If you're interested and learn more about this podcast, you can go to podcastfather dot com. If you're interested in all the different kind of work that I'm doing, you can go to Jeff Townsend dot Media contact form on there various other different podcasts and projects that I'm evolved in that I think you will enjoy. But again, thank you for supporting me, and make sure you support any dropping network like we cover to the beginning, get your podcast featured on there. Until I see you next time, Take care of yourself and keep being you and keep being great. Jeff Townsend Media says you good night. And the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you gonna come back? Will you be back? Are you coming back?
