Can we make the podcasting technology invisible? This is the
Speaker:future of podcasting, where we ponder what awaits the
Speaker:podcasters of today. From the school of
Speaker:podcasting, here's Dave Jackson. And from the audacity
Speaker:to podcast, here's Daniel j Lewis. Daniel,
Speaker:future of podcasting episode 50. Whoo. We're
Speaker:50. I can feel the gray hairs coming
Speaker:in. Oh. Dave, I hate to break it to you.
Speaker:They all came in for you a long time ago. Yeah.
Speaker:Actually, I was 29 when I got my first gray hair, which was also the
Speaker:same year I got married. Coincidence? I don't think. I don't know. Anyway,
Speaker:but we're talking about invisible technology? What what what
Speaker:what's the idea here? I asked Dave if I could have
Speaker:another soapbox on this because I wanted to dig into this further, and
Speaker:I've posted some stuff on x Twitter about this. Way back in
Speaker:2015, I did a presentation, a keynote,
Speaker:on the future of podcasting, and we'll have the link to that in the
Speaker:notes for this episode. I'd love for you to check it out because
Speaker:while in hindsight, I kind of regret some of the ways that I presented
Speaker:that, maybe not the most keynote worthy style of presenting the
Speaker:information. To be honest, I am humbly proud, like in a good way,
Speaker:proud, happy, I'll put it that way, happy with my predictions
Speaker:because they're coming true and because they were
Speaker:unique predictions where many of the predictions that people have for podcasting
Speaker:basically comes down to the word more. You know, we'll have more of this, we'll
Speaker:have more money, more podcasters, more celebrities, more opportunities, more this,
Speaker:more that. Just put the word more in it, and that's all the predictions pretty
Speaker:much out there. I had some specific predictions, not like
Speaker:this company will do this thing, but some specific
Speaker:things of what I think will happen in the podcasting
Speaker:industry. And one of those was
Speaker:the technology will disappear. And by that,
Speaker:I don't mean our technology that we use
Speaker:or the things that technology can do will cease,
Speaker:but that the technological aspect of it
Speaker:will no longer be visible to us. Just like with our
Speaker:phones that we have and our computers, and there are a lot of things
Speaker:that we do that are extremely complicated processes
Speaker:that we do that we have no idea what's going on in the
Speaker:background. We don't care. We shouldn't have to know what's
Speaker:going on in the background. We just want to see our latest
Speaker:email or the latest social post or we want the quick answer to our
Speaker:question. We wanna know if so and so team won the game last night so
Speaker:we can get a free donut from Kroger today. That's the kind of stuff that
Speaker:we want to know. We don't care what kind of technology happens in the
Speaker:background. I want that for podcasting. Dave, who is
Speaker:it that you often talk about as your symbol for this? Well,
Speaker:that would be aunt Cheryl. She's the person that when you go just copy
Speaker:and paste that, she goes, what do you mean copy and paste?
Speaker:So we want that person, and there's nothing wrong with aunt Cheryl, by the way.
Speaker:But we want it to be easy. When I was talking with,
Speaker:a member of the Apple staff at podcast movement, They
Speaker:he just said this podcasting 2 point o's looks really interesting. He goes, but it
Speaker:has to be easy, like, easy. And the
Speaker:minute you're like, okay. First, you gotta do this and then the thing and
Speaker:do the hokey pokey and turn yourself. Nope. We've already lost aunt Cheryl.
Speaker:So it got easy for a minute there when we had Albie
Speaker:kinda going in. Now we're looking for okay. We tried that.
Speaker:We can check that off. That did work, but it's not long
Speaker:term maybe the best solution. And I wouldn't even call that easy either.
Speaker:Yeah. That's true. It was well yeah. Because you had to okay. Well, first you
Speaker:have to set up a wallet. And then the other thing was
Speaker:that nobody ever really asked, which was kinda good, but I didn't get
Speaker:anybody going. How do I get my satoshis and get them into my bank?
Speaker:It was always just, how do I set it up to receive them? I didn't
Speaker:have anybody really, and they want to give them back. And so that was kind
Speaker:of something I thought was kind of unique and in an
Speaker:interesting insight that nobody was like, okay. How do I put this in my, you
Speaker:know, wallet so I can go buy some groceries? And I'm like, well, I think
Speaker:you can get a Mountain Dew with 4,000 sat, something like that.
Speaker:But, yeah, that was still too hard. The reason I've been thinking about this a
Speaker:lot lately is looking at the inflection points within
Speaker:podcasts and the podcasting industry. And where I
Speaker:differentiate that is podcasting is the art of making
Speaker:podcasts. So a podcasting app is an app that
Speaker:helps you make podcasts. So Steve Jobs was
Speaker:wrong when he said he was bringing podcasting to iTunes
Speaker:4.9 way back in 2005. He brought
Speaker:podcasts. But that was the
Speaker:first major inflection point for podcasts since their
Speaker:birth was when they came to Itunes 4.9 in
Speaker:2005 because well, for me, that was my
Speaker:introduction to podcasts. Dave, what was it like
Speaker:listening to podcast before that? Oh, before that, it was insane.
Speaker:I was using I know on the Mac, it was called iPad or X. I
Speaker:think it was called Juice, and it had a big picture of a lemon on
Speaker:it. And I would fire that up in the morning. It would
Speaker:go out and check for new episodes. And while I was showering
Speaker:and doing my hair and eating my bra, I'd come down, like, a half hour,
Speaker:45 minutes. Hopefully, I would have, like, 5
Speaker:or 6 episodes because there really weren't that many podcasts that I was listening to.
Speaker:But there was no iPhone. There was no iPad at that point
Speaker:even. And so I had this little thing called an iRiver 899.
Speaker:I think it held was either 256 or 528
Speaker:megabytes. And it back then, it was like, oh, holy cow.
Speaker:And when you plugged it in, it looked like a little hard drive. So I'd
Speaker:have to know where Juice had downloaded my files,
Speaker:open up that folder, copy them, open up the iRiver, paste them
Speaker:there, wait for it to transfer over, and then I would go out. And I
Speaker:forget how I had them wired up in my car. I know at one point
Speaker:I used, like, a cassette converter, and that sounded awful.
Speaker:And I think I had I think and back then, that was huge. I had
Speaker:an auxiliary in. It was so I think that's how I ended up plugging
Speaker:this into it. But what was sad is I would listen to Howard Stern in
Speaker:the morning. I'd start listening to all my podcasts, all 5
Speaker:episodes that I had copied over. And by 3 o'clock, you're like, oh,
Speaker:man. I'm on a podcast. And he was like, well, gotta wait till I get
Speaker:home. So it was not a fun you know? And and to say the
Speaker:technology was way like, you know, that's why when
Speaker:you ask people, do you listen to podcasts? A, they thought you had to have
Speaker:an iPad once the iPad was invented. That's why the
Speaker:iPad was such a great thing because I literally would wake up,
Speaker:plug my iPad into my computer, and that was it. I would
Speaker:come down later, grab my iPad, and get in the car because everything had
Speaker:already transferred over. It had already downloaded. And that was the first time
Speaker:when Apple brought in podcast. It's the first and only time I've ever
Speaker:actually seen hockey stick growth. Because I remember going into my
Speaker:stats and just it was just it just shot right through the roof. I'm like,
Speaker:what is going on? We're like, oh, it's the Apple thing. I was like, oh,
Speaker:yeah. That might help a little bit. Well, and even before that
Speaker:so that was complicated enough. How did you even
Speaker:get the podcast? How did you discover them? How did you
Speaker:even start downloading them? Where did RSS fit
Speaker:into this? Well, the the first one, and I think
Speaker:I have the clip for this, but when I downloaded Juice, the
Speaker:voice of 1 Adam Curry came out. Nice.
Speaker:And I was like, hey. I know that guy from the Headbangers Ball. So that's
Speaker:what really one of the first things that got me into it. And I started
Speaker:listening to The Daily Source Code, and then he would mention C.
Speaker:C. Chapman from Accident Hash, which was a radio show. Okay. So
Speaker:then you hear another podcast or of another podcast. How would
Speaker:you get that other podcast into your podcast app? Oh,
Speaker:yeah. You'd go over to let's say I was gonna listen to the scene scene
Speaker:by Marcus Couch. I'd go over to his website. He'd have an RSS button.
Speaker:And because we were all nerds, I knew don't click on it. I had to
Speaker:right click and copy and then go into the Juice
Speaker:software and paste in the RSS feed. So then it would go out and
Speaker:check, and you're like, oh, wow. Marcus has, you know, 5 episodes. He's been doing
Speaker:this a long time. And then you would just wait for them
Speaker:to download. And then, you know, like, okay. And then you'd
Speaker:you'd put them on your iRiver and off you go. So those who fell
Speaker:asleep through all of that wake up. Now we
Speaker:have iTunes and Itunes
Speaker:well, now we have Apple Podcasts actually, but Itunes was a major
Speaker:inflection point in that it made all of that so much
Speaker:easier that discovering a podcast or adding
Speaker:a podcast was as simple as pressing
Speaker:a button to subscribe, and that was it. And it added
Speaker:it to your library. It would automatically check for new episodes every
Speaker:I think the default might have been every hour or maybe it was once a
Speaker:day back then. I forget. But it would check for it automatically frequently.
Speaker:And if you had an iPad or even for a little while,
Speaker:the Itunes app would synchronize with a Motorola Razr flip
Speaker:phone, but you could synchronize your media. And other people
Speaker:made special little scripts that could then synchronize what was in
Speaker:your Itunes library with some other third party MP
Speaker:3 player that you could take with you, and there were other things.
Speaker:But Apple Itunes was a huge inflection point for
Speaker:us because it made things easy.
Speaker:It made it so easy that you didn't have to know what
Speaker:an RSS feed URL was for a podcast you wanted. You didn't have to
Speaker:copy and paste. You didn't have to try and do any of that. You
Speaker:pressed subscribe. You searched for the podcast by name
Speaker:or by subject, and you pressed subscribe. And we still have that same kind
Speaker:of workflow today, although the language is mostly followed now, but it's
Speaker:still the same basic thing. It's now just that simple. You
Speaker:click or tap and you have it. None of this having to
Speaker:worry about the RSS stuff. It's there. And
Speaker:then look at other major inflection points within the podcasting
Speaker:consumption and podcast creation, like the invention of the
Speaker:iPhone. So the iPad was way back in 2002, I
Speaker:believe, when that came out. The iPhone was
Speaker:2,007, I believe. And so that was after the
Speaker:invention of podcasting. The iPhone made it even more convenient
Speaker:because then your device could do some of the synchronization
Speaker:a little bit more for you, and especially when they started doing things like being
Speaker:able to download the episodes directly onto the device instead of having
Speaker:to synchronize through your computer, again, making the technology
Speaker:disappear. And now people never connect their
Speaker:smartphones to their computers to synchronize or transfer stuff hardly
Speaker:ever, and that technology has disappeared. Think about it from the
Speaker:perspective of the podcasting side. So
Speaker:creating podcasts, we give Anchor a lot
Speaker:of grief, but what did Anchor do
Speaker:to the growth of podcasting? They brought a lot of crap into the
Speaker:space? Yeah. They also made it easy. The word
Speaker:crap. That sentence is still correct. They brought a lot into the
Speaker:space. There was an explosion of interest in podcasting
Speaker:because Anchor made it so dead simple
Speaker:that, yes, it was super simple to make a lot of crap, and that's what
Speaker:happened. But it was a win for the industry
Speaker:because it was so dead simple. People didn't
Speaker:have to worry about technology. They didn't even have to worry about
Speaker:microphones or mixers or stuff like that. It was just open the app, press
Speaker:record, press stop, type a little bit of text, give it a
Speaker:title, press publish, and it's, you're a podcaster now with
Speaker:whatever you just said. You're a podcaster now, and it's in the Apple Podcast
Speaker:Store and some other places. It made it simple, and that created
Speaker:a measurable explosion in the growth of new podcasts.
Speaker:Yeah. A lot of them crap. Yeah. You didn't even need talent.
Speaker:Exactly. But there are, I think, today,
Speaker:a lot of talented now podcasters who
Speaker:got their start because Anchor made it
Speaker:so dead simple for people. Think about the gear that we
Speaker:use now with podcasting. Dave, you and I have both
Speaker:been around long enough to have experienced
Speaker:having to mess with mix minus. The good old
Speaker:days. That's something we haven't had to say for years. Right?
Speaker:Yes. Mixed minus. That was such it was such a thing that, like, once
Speaker:you got it, you got it. But getting the light bulb to turn
Speaker:on was not easy at all. There are a lot of people that were like,
Speaker:so I do what? I'm hearing an echo. What? And it's like, And
Speaker:then trying to make it work like some gear, you would get these tiny little
Speaker:mixers because people would hear, oh, I need a mixer to connect with my microphone.
Speaker:And how do I get the mixer connected to my computer? Oh, now I need
Speaker:a USB audio interface. And now with this tiny mixer that I only
Speaker:spent $50 on, how do I do mix minus with this? And
Speaker:it's, like, it's not possible where you have to do this convoluted thing with
Speaker:the auxiliary output, the auxiliary sends, or maybe you do something where it's
Speaker:like the left and right balance of the audio. It starts getting complicated.
Speaker:Now huge credit to RODE, I think, really led the industry. I'm
Speaker:not gonna say they're the first on this, but they certainly
Speaker:led and continue to lead the industry with the innovation of the RODEcaster
Speaker:Pro. And that one device, when the
Speaker:Rodecaster Pro came out, that one device
Speaker:designed for podcasters made so much of the
Speaker:technology just disappear. Yes. There's a mix minus
Speaker:toggle switch inside of the Rodecaster Pro, but that's
Speaker:it. And I think out of the box, it's doing the mix minus
Speaker:for you. Yeah. So you don't even have to think about
Speaker:it at all. It just works. When I
Speaker:first got the Zoom PodTrak p 4, I was going through all
Speaker:the menus looking for the mix minus setting, and it was
Speaker:so bad. I actually had to look at the manual.
Speaker:I was trying to think, what is it? And then finally, you know, I think
Speaker:I emailed support, and they're like, yeah. It's just there. It's on already. You don't
Speaker:have to turn it on. And I was like, this is amazing. So,
Speaker:yeah, it's that's another one where you take it for granted. It's kind of
Speaker:funny now when you stumble across old pieces of
Speaker:technology and you're like, oh, I remember I remember mixed minus. And I remember,
Speaker:you know, you even right there, you said you the whole panning sometimes. You could
Speaker:pan things different ways to get separate tracks, all sorts of weird it
Speaker:was just we're all just hacking everything good because nothing was made
Speaker:for podcasting yet. But that technology, the
Speaker:actual thing that technology is doing hasn't disappeared, but our
Speaker:view of the technology has disappeared that now it's just we plug it in, we
Speaker:turn it on, it is plug and play. Or even look at stuff
Speaker:like as much hate as we give to the Blue Yeti microphone.
Speaker:Right. It was accessible. It was easy for people. They
Speaker:go out to Best Buy or Circuit City, and they buy the microphone,
Speaker:or they plug it in, and they start recording. And let's not forget its predecessor,
Speaker:of course, the brilliant blue snowball.
Speaker:I always think that there's this doctor who a series of
Speaker:these episodes with these particular characters, the Ood,
Speaker:who hold their brains in their hands in a little ball that is then
Speaker:connect with this like it looks like an umbilical cord to their heads, and their
Speaker:brains are in the ball. And they talk, and it, like,
Speaker:glows as they talk. So I always I did this the first time I
Speaker:held a Blue Yeti. I did I went live on Instagram
Speaker:video, and I said, you know, we must feed. We must feed
Speaker:because that was a line from when you meet the oud because that's that's what
Speaker:it like, it's this giant softball sized microphone,
Speaker:but it was easy. Yeah. Because you just plugged it directly in. It
Speaker:was a USB microphone. You're like, wait. I don't need a mixer or anything. Nope.
Speaker:Just plug the microphone in. So Yeah. And you look at other things
Speaker:too, like Spotify. Okay. They're doing a lot
Speaker:that we don't like in the podcasting industry,
Speaker:but we have to give them credit that like Apple did
Speaker:with bringing podcasts to iTunes, Spotify bringing
Speaker:podcasts to Spotify has made podcast consumption
Speaker:easy for countless people because it's right
Speaker:there with their music so that they can listen to
Speaker:their music, they can listen to their podcasts, and now they can listen to audiobooks
Speaker:through Spotify too. That is brilliant for them to put it all there
Speaker:and make it easy. It's kind of funny though that
Speaker:now Apple has split out the different media consumption
Speaker:from their app. And that might eventually happen with Spotify where we'll have a
Speaker:Spotify podcast app and a Spotify music app and a Spotify audiobooks
Speaker:or books app or that might happen someday. But while it's
Speaker:still all in one app, they made it easy. They made
Speaker:the technology disappear. They made other podcast
Speaker:apps disappear. And that is what we
Speaker:need to do in the future of podcasting and with podcasting 2.0
Speaker:development and stuff. And I know everything starts out geeky. So I'm
Speaker:not saying, hey, we need to make this dead simple on
Speaker:arrival or else it's dead on arrival. I'm not saying that.
Speaker:I think we need to constantly think of how can we make
Speaker:this super easy. Dave, you've asked me a
Speaker:question a couple of times on the kind of advice I would give.
Speaker:What is that question? Yeah. I had somebody
Speaker:ask me, hey. You you talk about this 2 point o thing, and they were
Speaker:talking about the streaming satoshis. And they're like, how do I get started in
Speaker:that? And I was kinda like, well, you go to oh, wait. You're in the
Speaker:US. Yeah. And that's where I was kinda I
Speaker:guess I need to find I mean, I know originally, I I was doing something
Speaker:with Telegram. I don't even remember how I did it. I just remember there was
Speaker:this thing, and you put it in. And setting it up on the index is
Speaker:pretty much the same, but the whole wallet thing is the part that's gotten we're
Speaker:we're all kind of in a holding pattern right now. I I know we could
Speaker:do probably something with fountain. I know in terms of receiving
Speaker:no. For sending sats, Sam over Truefans
Speaker:has a setup, so it's super easy to fill your wallet and then
Speaker:send to people. But if you're the podcaster looking to receive,
Speaker:I'm kinda like, fountain, I think.
Speaker:So what so what would be your answer to that? What I would
Speaker:love to say is talk to your hosting
Speaker:provider, and they can help you get set up with it. Years ago,
Speaker:now at this point, it was podcast movement, I believe, 2021.
Speaker:I was talking to Tom Rossi from Buzzsprout, and so maybe he'll remember
Speaker:this conversation, but I shared a vision of what this could look like. And
Speaker:this is the vision I would still love to see. It's developed a bit more
Speaker:since then. And I touched on this previously in our episode about the
Speaker:future of ad slots. This technology of streaming satoshis
Speaker:and boostergrams and such, I love it. I love what
Speaker:we've built. I think it's a fantastic foundation.
Speaker:Now it's time for all of that technology to disappear
Speaker:because I think the whole thing of getting a wallet, that shouldn't be
Speaker:necessary. The whole thing of learning how to
Speaker:even go to the index or connect your wallet or there's a
Speaker:hosting provider. I don't wanna throw them under the bus, so I'm not gonna name
Speaker:them. But they do a lot of things very innovatively. And they have a
Speaker:field where you can add your value information, but they have this
Speaker:drop down for when you add your wallet.
Speaker:And even I, with understanding of some of these
Speaker:things, I sometimes don't know what am I supposed to pick from
Speaker:these things that use the Cyrillic alphabet, but I
Speaker:have no idea what that means. It's like, is it
Speaker:the the, you know, the x y z wallet type or is it
Speaker:a satoshi or is it a a whatever, a hash or is I don't
Speaker:even remember what it was, but I remember that someone
Speaker:else, unless they were told, use this option,
Speaker:they're not going to know, and they shouldn't have to know. Even just
Speaker:simply copying your wallet address into your podcast
Speaker:feed, I think you shouldn't have to do that. So the vision that I
Speaker:have for this is I would love to see,
Speaker:let's follow this from the very start. The
Speaker:podcast apps, I think, should make wallets
Speaker:where the podcast consumer simply
Speaker:purchases tokens. We don't even have to call it Satoshis. We can because that's
Speaker:probably what's going to power it. But we could call it credits,
Speaker:tokens, Satoshis, whatever. They put
Speaker:some money into this podcast app. That
Speaker:app then converts that to whatever digital
Speaker:currency necessary, and then the podcast
Speaker:consumer can choose where that money goes.
Speaker:Then the podcast app will send that to the podcaster.
Speaker:Now the podcaster, of course, needs a way to receive that money. That's where the
Speaker:podcast hosting providers, I think, need to get into this. And I know there
Speaker:are certain concerns about custodial wallets
Speaker:and cryptocurrency exchanges and some of this stuff.
Speaker:I think and I I am not a lawyer on this.
Speaker:Please keep that in mind. So this is not legal advice.
Speaker:But my perception of things looking at the
Speaker:industry is that when you are
Speaker:handling and holding someone else's money, that's when things
Speaker:get complicated. But if you are selling them something
Speaker:or you are regularly paying them out for something, that's when things are
Speaker:simpler. Like you look at all of these affiliate programs that you can
Speaker:join. I have an affiliate program for Podgageman. I'd love for any podcaster
Speaker:to join that affiliate program and recommend it to other podcasters. Most of the
Speaker:way that these affiliate programs work is that you earn a certain amount of
Speaker:money. And then probably once a month, usually near the beginning of the month
Speaker:or maybe near the end of the month, you get paid what you have
Speaker:earned up to that point or up to a certain cutoff point
Speaker:for accounting for any kind of refunds or anything like that. They're
Speaker:not managing your money for you. It's you've earned this
Speaker:amount and we will pay you this amount at the end of this
Speaker:particular term or waiting period or anything like that. That's the way it could
Speaker:be for podcast hosting providers where they set up
Speaker:maybe they need only a single wallet on their
Speaker:side. So they set up their own Albi Hub or whatever technology
Speaker:they need to do that is invisible to the podcaster. They
Speaker:receive the payment. With the payment, there's the information of what
Speaker:podcast it goes to, what episode it's for, you know, all of that stuff that
Speaker:currently we talk about being in the TLV record. Maybe it will be in some
Speaker:other thing like an activity stream in the future. Whatever technology that
Speaker:is, doesn't really matter in this context. But they get that information.
Speaker:They then can add that to a balance to
Speaker:the podcaster, and the podcaster can then either
Speaker:set up something that's automatic or maybe it's a manual payout,
Speaker:but then just they decide, I want to get my payout,
Speaker:and then it goes out to some other place where it's less
Speaker:complicated. Like, you look at Coinbase, what Coinbase has done in the United
Speaker:States. Coinbase is working really hard to follow all of
Speaker:the laws, and they're doing a much better job than places like Binance
Speaker:US and many other places who had just decided, nope. We're not going to
Speaker:even serve people in the United States. Or if you're from the US, you cannot
Speaker:use our cryptocurrency platform. But Coinbase, it's
Speaker:even a publicly traded company. I do not own stock in Coinbase. I do
Speaker:use Coinbase, but I don't I'm not invested in them currently.
Speaker:They do have a lightning wallet feature, but it's the
Speaker:traditional style where it does this kind of invoice
Speaker:thing in the background that is still a little bit technical.
Speaker:But to get that money then from the podcast hosting
Speaker:provider to your Coinbase wallet, From Coinbase,
Speaker:then you can take that cryptocurrency, convert it
Speaker:to dollars, deposit it into your bank account. And even
Speaker:that could be a little bit easier. Yeah. But I think that
Speaker:is fairly easy right now. Once you're in that
Speaker:space of having an exchange account, you're very familiar with the concept
Speaker:of depositing and withdrawing and converting between different
Speaker:currencies and tokens and such. But this whole process
Speaker:should be invisible. I think it should be as simple for the
Speaker:podcast consumer of, I wanna upload $10.
Speaker:How many credits does that give me? Okay. It gives me this many credits. I
Speaker:want to disperse these credits across these podcasts in this particular way.
Speaker:Those podcast hosting providers receive that, then
Speaker:they disperse it to the podcasters, then the podcasters can choose when they
Speaker:want to redeem that, or maybe they just withdraw it when they want
Speaker:to. That's what I'd love to see. Yeah. If you think about it,
Speaker:PayPal, if you think about all the stuff that goes on there where
Speaker:when you say I wanna pay $18 to Daniel
Speaker:using PayPal, it goes behind the scenes, goes to my
Speaker:checking account, removes $18, sends it to
Speaker:Daniel, goes into his PayPal, and then Daniel can throw it into
Speaker:his account. And it's not invisible because you have to click the
Speaker:PayPal button. But once you log in, you're done. At that point, it's
Speaker:really easy. So if you think about in the I don't remember
Speaker:what I really don't remember what life was like before PayPal. Right.
Speaker:I guess you had to send somebody a check. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's
Speaker:been around for a long time. But and now there are other
Speaker:you know, there's Stripe. But Stripe has a thing called link now that
Speaker:when I go to stuff, because I've used it once, it's like, oh, do you
Speaker:wanna use your link information? I'm like, sure. And it puts in
Speaker:everything. I think the only thing I have to do is put the little three
Speaker:digit code for my credit card to to prove that it's me. So that's pretty
Speaker:seamless too. So, yeah, if things are getting easier, we just need
Speaker:to and like Daniel said, we aren't gonna do this
Speaker:overnight, but that's where we wanna go. Yeah. And when it gets to that
Speaker:point, I think that's when the companies like Apple who are
Speaker:saying, you've got to make this easy, that's
Speaker:when they can start supporting that same kind of thing too. And in the
Speaker:background, maybe there can be multiple protocols. I
Speaker:think Bitcoin is a great way to do this because what we can do through
Speaker:specifically the lightning network with Bitcoin, Maybe it's something
Speaker:else that can come about in the future. But the whole point is whatever
Speaker:technology is happening behind the scenes, podcasters
Speaker:and especially podcast consumers should not have to
Speaker:care at all what it is. It should just
Speaker:be a seamless transfer of value
Speaker:from the consumer to the podcaster.
Speaker:And if a few places in between take a small
Speaker:cut, that's okay. As long as, of course, they disclose that.
Speaker:I think that's totally okay and should be that way because those
Speaker:places have some expenses when processing these things. And
Speaker:also they should be compensated for their work that they're doing
Speaker:in making the process easy. And to throw this back to the episode where I
Speaker:initially kind of shared a little bit of this idea when we were talking about
Speaker:more potential for ad slots, Sam Sethi from truefans.fm
Speaker:had sent us a boostergram, and we didn't read that in our last note.
Speaker:And he had mentioned something about our not reading that, and that's, I think,
Speaker:a a great conversation to have. But something that he wanted to point out
Speaker:and something that we briefly touched on in that episode is
Speaker:another layer to this that we can still
Speaker:think about. And what he said in his comment is the extra twist
Speaker:is the user in their settings can set a minimum streaming
Speaker:value. For example, 100 sats per minute for your
Speaker:time and attention to listen to an advertisement.
Speaker:If the advertiser only offers 10 sats per minute in
Speaker:then the advertisement is skipped by true fans. However,
Speaker:if the value offered is 100 sats per minute or
Speaker:more, then I hear the advertisement. But I still have the choice
Speaker:to skip if I don't like the advertisement and the streaming sats
Speaker:stops so the advertiser is not paying if I don't listen. So
Speaker:this is talking about some cool things you can do that Sam is doing with
Speaker:True Fans, not only the option for the podcaster
Speaker:to pay their audience in sats if they listen to
Speaker:ads, but also certain things, ways that the
Speaker:podcast consumer can change how they're paying
Speaker:in sats and some of the skipping and stuff that goes on. That kind of
Speaker:thing, the way that I explain that is probably kind
Speaker:of confusing and scratching some people's heads. The idea here that I
Speaker:want to touch on and why I'm bringing this in right now is that can
Speaker:also disappear, but potentially be reserved
Speaker:for apps that are promoted specifically for this thing.
Speaker:So imagine if, like, with this podcasting 2 point o stuff that we've got with
Speaker:value and all of these other great features, you can promote those
Speaker:apps. And then you could even tell your audience if you would like
Speaker:to earn some satoshis listening to my podcast or if you
Speaker:want the opportunity to hear my podcast ad free while you're
Speaker:streaming satoshis to me or exchanging value or
Speaker:whatever language that we use, streaming payments would be better,
Speaker:then use this app. Use Truefans or use whatever
Speaker:app because then that unlocks these new things or
Speaker:that helps you to skip the ads if you are paying this amount. So
Speaker:then you are incentivizing them with an experience. That
Speaker:experience could be skipping ads. That experience could be
Speaker:getting paid for listening to the ads if they switch
Speaker:apps, but still making that technology
Speaker:aspect disappear. That's what I would love
Speaker:so much to see. I know that a lot of this stuff is still
Speaker:technical, and it will continue to be for a little while.
Speaker:Because even back in the early days of podcasts and
Speaker:podcasting, it was technical. That's why it was predominantly
Speaker:tech based shows and predominantly men because
Speaker:techy stuff stereotypically attracts more men than it
Speaker:does women. But that has changed over the years
Speaker:as the need for the technology aspect has
Speaker:changed. Then now it's made it more accessible for people
Speaker:who don't care about the technology. That's the thing
Speaker:I would love to see is that for podcasting, well, it is basically
Speaker:mainstream now because the majority of the population consumes podcasts at least
Speaker:on a monthly basis. To make that even higher, I think
Speaker:we need to make it so simple that people don't have
Speaker:to think about technology to get it. It's not like podcasts are only
Speaker:for geeks. And and I think we've crossed that point years ago of that
Speaker:impression of, oh, podcasts are only for geeks or even the
Speaker:impression that, oh, podcasting, creating my own
Speaker:podcast is only for the geeky people who know how to work the technology.
Speaker:No. It's now much simpler. So now the people who
Speaker:don't know about the technology, don't need to know about it, don't have the
Speaker:time, don't care about it, can still create
Speaker:podcasts and distribute it through the podcasting ecosystem
Speaker:without the technology because the technology is
Speaker:disappearing. And that's what we need to do. With all of these
Speaker:innovations in Podcasting 2.0, I plead for everyone thinking
Speaker:through new innovations. Focus on how it's going to help the
Speaker:podcast consumer first. And keep an eye to the
Speaker:future of how can we make this technology disappear.
Speaker:For the podcaster, maybe it's as simple as toggle the
Speaker:switch or fill in this field with something super easy.
Speaker:And for the consumer, making it that easy to
Speaker:toggle this, enter your credit card information, start sending money to your
Speaker:favorite podcasters, whatever that is. That's my dream for the
Speaker:future. To dream the impossible
Speaker:dream. Yes. It's not just for old geeky guys. Now
Speaker:it's for wives who wanna secretly learn how to murder their husband and get away
Speaker:with it. Well, see, I wasn't going to go stereotypical. You're the one
Speaker:who Well, another thing, though, that has it's it's
Speaker:slowly being phased out. I know with Patreon,
Speaker:if somebody wants to listen to your show
Speaker:not on the Patreon app, they have to still right click on the
Speaker:RSS feed and copy and paste it where things like Supercast,
Speaker:you basically when it signs up, it goes, oh, hey. You're on an iPhone. Do
Speaker:you wanna listen to this in Apple Podcasts or I see you have Pocket Cast
Speaker:installed? It somehow has some magic voodoo going on that it
Speaker:knows what apps are on your phone and says you wanna listen to this one.
Speaker:You go, oh, yeah. Pocket Cast. I love that app. Click. You're done. So
Speaker:that's something else that's, again, getting much easier than it used to
Speaker:be. And even that can still disappear to the point where you don't even have
Speaker:to present that choice. It's just, I wanna support this podcast and get
Speaker:this bonus content or skip the ads or or whatever.
Speaker:You do that all within the podcast app. You never leave the
Speaker:podcast app. You never have to switch your feeds or anything like that.
Speaker:It just works. Yep. And it's possible. It
Speaker:it it really is. Well, you mentioned the one Boostagram.
Speaker:Do we have any other boostograms? We had the one from Sam. We also got
Speaker:one from creativity found, and we mentioned this in our last
Speaker:episode, but we didn't read the message. And so to read that message,
Speaker:creativity found said it came a bit late to this episode. This was about the
Speaker:episode Podcasting More Than Just Podcasts. They said,
Speaker:holiday listening and liked the discussion around what more
Speaker:slash differently you can do with a podcast format. I have planned a step by
Speaker:step course format around the future of podcasting 2.0
Speaker:with explainer episodes where guests tell me what the thing
Speaker:is and why it's good, then practical episodes teaching the
Speaker:listener how to do the thing. Still a talk show, but we'll
Speaker:use the 2.0 features to teach the 2.0 features. I
Speaker:love meta stuff like this. Inspired by books I
Speaker:have worked on as a text editor, and this comes from Claire
Speaker:Creativity Found. Thank you so much for that boostagram, Claire.
Speaker:238 sets. And that boostagram, by the way, from Sam was
Speaker:204 sets. So thank you so much for those boostograms. And we
Speaker:continue to receive streaming satoshis too from, like, Brian Entsminger,
Speaker:Randall Black, and Johns Creek Studios, Sam, and others. So
Speaker:thank you so much. And as we record this, we hope this is
Speaker:temporary, but we usually look at our boostograms
Speaker:through Saturn. It's saturn.fly.dev. And
Speaker:right now, they're not having a good day. We got a whole lot of nothing
Speaker:and spinning going on. So hopefully the guys and gals at
Speaker:at Saturn are figuring out what's going on. That's always kind of
Speaker:spooky when you see that. I I love their dashboard. It was very easy. That's
Speaker:where we could see who our top supporters were and things like that. So, hopefully,
Speaker:they've just got, I don't know, a power outage somewhere,
Speaker:something super simple to fix, though. Alright, Daniel. Future
Speaker:podcasting episode 50. That is gonna do it for this episode.
Speaker:Thank you for letting me have a soapbox again, and remember, keep
Speaker:boosting and keep podcasting.