Welcome to Podcasting Tech, a podcast that equips busy entrepreneurs

engaged in podcasting with proven and cost effective solutions

for achieving a professional sound and appearance. I'm Mathew

Passe, your host and a 15 year veteran in the podcasting space.

We'll help you cut through the noise and offer guidance on software and hardware

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join us on this exciting journey to unlock the full potential of your

podcast. We are going to take you down to

Naples, Florida. We are chatting with Miguel Gonzalez. He is the owner of

Podcast db. This is a service that will

actually help you track and find podcasts that are

in the niches and the sizes and all the other things that you try and

find out about a podcast. Maybe if you're looking for places to advertise, to

be a guest on or just to kind of understand what the competition looks like.

Miguel, thank you so much for joining us here today. Happy to be here,

Matthew. We are so happy to have you. So before

we really talk about what Podcast DB is, take me back a little bit. Like,

how did you even get started wanting to create a

platform for podcasts? Like, where did your interest in podcasting and then

the ability to build tech on top of it come from?

Yeah. So to go back to the beginning,

the actual website, the original format of it, was

created by my previous partner. His name's George Ledge.

Nine. He's the brains, the programmer behind

the product, but he had no real way,

you know, he's very tech savvy. He, you know, does

everything about programming, but he didn't have a way to,

you know, market it, provide the sales for it. And so

at the time he was looking to get out of it

and go into something else. So I ended up buying it off

of him and then, you know, planning to do

it myself, running my way, you know, do the sales, do the marketing and do

the changes. Only thing is, I know nothing about tech.

Right. You know, in terms of programming. Like I'm, I'm, I'm not. I'm a sales

guy. I've been in sales. I've been selling aviation software for

the past five years. You know, did an internship at Gartner.

A lot of my background is sales and some marketing.

And so there was a bunch of changes I wanted to make to the website

to where I Thought, you know, it'd be more appealing to the client,

it would be more appealing to the use case.

And so, you know, I'm starting to think, like, okay, I could do this, I

could do that. And I was like, but I don't know how to do it.

So then I reached back out to George and I'm like, george, how you doing,

man? Listen, I don't know anything about

changing a website, about, you know, doing the programming because

it's from scratch. It's not like a, you know, template bill or anything

like that. Like, he built this from scratch. So I'm like, listen, I'll pay you

a salary, and then you come back on as a programmer.

And so we did that for a while, and then at certain

point, I was like, okay, you know, we're doing

having a good partnership here. Let's do 50, 50 ownership.

So then we have 50, 50 ownership on the platform

for quite some time, for about a year and a half. And it

takes time to build a company. It takes time to get everything

right, to get the data you need to market it, to get your name out

there. And so, you know, George was a little bit

fatigued in that matter, and he actually got another opportunity

within the, you know, his style or

his skill set. So he ended up taking that job

and then left me with Podcast db. And for

three, four months, again, it was back to that challenge, that struggle of,

you know, how do I make the changes I want to make and how do

I, you know, maintain it? And then I finally found the right team

to help me with that, so I brought them on board,

and here we are today, you know, making all the changes,

running it myself in the marketing, the sales, and then I have

my team in the background doing any. Implementing any changes and

maintaining the site. All right, so for. For those listening, tell us a little

bit more. Why should we be looking at

Podcast db? What is this resource? What's the best way to use it?

You know, give us the. The elevator pitch of why

PodcastDB should be in our tool case. Okay, so the first

reason is hosting, right? Being able to host your

podcast on PodcastDB. It's a very new future

that we've released just, you know, maybe a couple months ago.

But every new user that comes on to

PodcastDB for hosting actually enhances the experience for the

next new user, because we'll take the feedback, we'll take the experience

that these current users are having, and we make changes right away. Right?

The difference between us and any other company is that we're a Small team. Right.

So you can message me directly, I'll message you back directly,

and we'll get any issue you have, you know, resolved within

48 hours. We're on the ball and we're

going to take care of you like you are. You're not just another client, you

know, with podcast tv, you are the client. I'm. I'm watching. Right.

So every client that comes to the door, I personally can connect with, I'll

personally reach out. What's your feedback? Where can we do better? What have we

done good so far? So on and so forth.

That's the hosting side, but we also provide outreach.

And outreach basically is a database of all of the

podcasts that we have.

Think it's like 3.4 million now where you can download

data for their emails, podcasters,

emails, social sites, YouTube

channels. Where is it pulling? So, like, I know the

emails are accessible within the RSS feed, but where are you pulling all that other

information from? Also from the RSS feed. Also from the RSS

feed. Really? Yeah, yeah. So if you. The more information

that you, as a podcaster add to, you know, your RSS

feed, the more information people are going to be able to get to follow

you, reach out to you, try to advertise with you.

Right. So it's all embedded in that. And so we

capture that, put it into an organized and. Organized

and readable format, and then we provide it to you. Right. And it's a

large database, so we always have things running in the background, updating things on a

rolling basis. But, yeah,

you'll find everything you need within podcastdb

to reach out to, reach out to hosts, get new guests,

advertise, et cetera. Maybe It's a podcasting

2.0 thing, but I didn't know social feeds were one of the

fields available inside of rss. I mean, I know

lots of platforms they included for landing pages

purposes or profile pages purposes, but I didn't realize that

that was inside the RSS feed itself. Do you know how many of the

other hosting platforms are actually using that feature right now?

I do not. I do not. We haven't done any market data, and to be

honest, I have been running podcast DB sort of

on the side for the past two and a half years. So I haven't

given it the time it needs to really analyze competition to go into

market research, stuff like that. Just recently,

about three months ago, I've taken it on sort of

30, 40 hours a week now, where I'm really diving in. We have a bunch

of new Changes coming as well. But no, I haven't done any market research

like that on my end. Okay. So, all

right. So again, I'm an outsider. I'm downloading all this information. You

know, maybe I'm thinking about going and sponsoring a

podcast about golf. And so I go to the platform,

I say, you know, golf is my interest, and, you know, looking for shows of

this size and this nature, how do we know that what we're getting from Podcast

DB Is, in fact, what these shows are all about?

I understand if I host it with you, right? That's easy. You know, that information

you could share, but, you know, your database is all 3.4 million

podcasts that are in existence. So how do we know the numbers that we're getting,

you know, really reflect what applies to that podcast?

Right. So the numbers

are. The listener numbers are a little bit off

because we're not getting YouTube, we're not getting Amazon

podcasts, and we're not getting

Spotify. We are getting Spotify soon. We're gonna be getting that

within the next couple weeks, but we don't have it now. So currently, what we

get is from itunes. So what. You're listening. And your downloads are from

itunes. How do you. How do you get my

Apple numbers without me giving you that

permission? That's proprietary.

Okay, yeah. Understand, I'm not

trying to challenge the proprietary nature of what you're doing, but I've

been in the space for a long time. I've had plenty of podcasts. I work

for a hosting company. That data isn't

publicly available. There's no API that will let you

access other people's download numbers. Right.

So we don't. We have a formula, okay. That we

use certain metrics to calculate the listenership. Now, when we

went to podcast evolution. Now, I'm not saying that a hundred people

is a statistical significance at all, you know, but we

interview virtually. Yeah, we've interviewed virtually

everyone at the booth. And the

listener count for itunes was fairly close. It was like

an 85, 90% accuracy. And then the ad

cost, the estimated ad cost was about

75% accurate. And the 25%,

like, I guess 75% accurate accurate, then like

15% higher than

what the podcast host are charging, and then like 10%

were lower than what podcast was recharging. So all of our data

we use, we use different equations to calculate

what the estimate ad cost is and what the estimated listenership is,

and we try to take into account all the

other platforms that are being used. But

our metrics, or the Way we calculate, it doesn't include metrics

for that something that's what's going to change is coming soon down the

line. But the accuracy with those hundred people was pretty darn

good, and they were surprised by it as well. And,

you know, I know you're speaking on listenership and potential ad

costs and whatnot. One of the things that we do with

podcast dp, this is really new, is you're able to

buy ads directly on podcast ap. So how does that work? You

know, there's no way you connect to 3.4 million podcasters. We're not. We're not

connected with 3.4 million podcasts podcast. But let's say

Matthew, right, you have a podcast, seems to do very well, gets quite a

few downloads. And you know, maybe someone wants to advertise

on podcast tech shows. Maybe let's say a new

podcast DB type company wants to advertise, or a new

hosting company wants to advertise on, you know, your, your

podcast. So they could go into our database, search up

podcasting tech podcast, right? You'd

pop up Matthew Passy, right? And

so then what they can do is they can just click buy ad, right? Buy

ad. And they want to buy, let's say, $100 worth of ad spend

with your podcast. Now, assuming we don't know each

other, right? I can take that. And Now I have $100.

And I can go and say, hey, email, no, or call you

like, yo, Matthew, I got XYZ

company. They're looking to advertise on

your podcast. You know, they give me 100 bucks. Our take is

20%. Your take would be 80%. So you get 80 bucks. This

is how many episodes they would want to be advertised on. And this is their

audio or this is their host, right. Ad that they want to give

you. And then it's in your hands. You know, you have 80

bucks in the wind that you can accept if you want, and

we can send out the hours. Now, if they come back and you

say, I don't want to advertise, I don't advertise my show. I'm not doing it

right. That's okay. We go and we pick up the next

10 best or the next 10 that are similar to your

podcast, I will reach out to them. Reach out to them. If we get a

couple yeses back, we'll reach back out to the client and be like, hey, you

know, Mathew Passy with podcast and tech did not

want to advertise, but we have 10 shows that are very

similar to his that, you know, were combined, they

could make up his listenership and we could spread out your budget accordingly. Would you

be interested in that? If they say yes, we go back, book the advertisements

and get it done. So that's another future within

podcast TV that we haven't promoted it really at all. I

need to change. We need to change quite a few things for our marketing landing

pages. But a lot of changes are coming to PodcastDB. They're very

beneficial for both podcasters,

guests, and, you know, public relations

and advertising agencies. So who

is really your like ideal customer then in this

situation? I mean, obviously you want podcasters to be hosting on the platform because

that does give you direct access to exact analytics and,

you know, possibly connections to Apple and Spotify and their social like

all the things that you, you want to be able to do are a lot

easier if the podcasters are on your, your platform. But

you know, going from one platform to another, there can be

moats that would prevent that ease of transfer. So outside

of potential new hosting clients, like, who really

is going to benefit most from having an account with

PodcastDB and taking advantage of the current and the future

features that you are talking about? Right. I'd

say, number one, public relations, right? They

grab it. They can reach out to you guys, advertise, communications,

promote on you guys podcast. When you get. When I say you guys, I

mean like podcasters. The second would be

like email marketing, right? People who have a product to sell you guys,

maybe new microphones, new laptops, I don't know.

Right. Something for podcasting. The third would be

podcast hosts themselves, right? Podcast hosts looking to have

guests on their show. Podcast hosts looking to

reach out to other podcast hosts and say, hey, I'm

Matthew Pass with podcast and tech. Would love to have

you on my show or would love to be on your show.

Right. And then, um,

fourth would just be professionals, like professionals in any arena. Like

you, you could be a professional in, let's say, sales and logistics, right? So if

you're a professional sales and logistics, you go on the website, you search up

podcasts within sales and logistics, or let's speak about sales and logistics and like, hey,

reach out, get their contact info. Reach out. I am

vice president of sales at a, you know, S&P 500

company. I have a ton of experience with sales and logistics. I'm looking to get

into the podcast and game. I want to share my knowledge. Boom,

another one. So I'd say public relations,

email marketing, podcasters themselves and

guests, right? People, professionals who want to be guests Those would

be, I say, the four ideal

client profiles that we would want within podcast to be. And

obviously aside from all that is the hosting client,

so the podcaster themselves, those are going to house on podcasting.

But those four, when it comes to outreach, for

sure, Are you worried at about

somebody using the platform and saying, hey,

I want to buy $100 of ads on podcasting tech?

And maybe there are

newer podcasters, folks just starting out, who are eager

to get advertising dollars, who are eager to have some income coming

in that they'll take anything

and potentially lower the overall, you

know, CPM or average rate of ads that podcasters

can expect or that the advertisers

are, you know, going to, going to try and force

upon others. I haven't thought of that,

to be honest, but I guess

I, I don't expect clients to

unadvertise on such

newer shows where

their dollar won't stretch as long as on

a more, I guess,

more mature show, one that's been in the industry for a while. I don't, I

mean, I haven't thought about it, honestly, but that is an interesting

question. Yeah, it's one that I see

coming up a lot more often as we see more

tools coming into the space to support podcast

monetization. Especially with AI tools

now, it's harder to have the kind of quality control that I think

podcasters would like to see in the industry so that their

CPM isn't brought down well.

And my goal is always to, my goal and podcast to be

goal is to enhance the podcasting industry,

is to lift it up. Right. And one

way to do that is increasing the earnings of

quality podcasts. Right. And if you increase earnings of

quality podcasts, more quality podcasts will appear

rather than having low quality and these other people charging

pennies on the dollar for ads. So I mean, our goal

would always be to sell the value

at industry value and, you know, pay

at the industry value for the ads as well. So,

I mean, when it come, I haven't given it much thought, but when it comes

to it, I think, you. Know. Industry

standard or better is where we want to be.

Right, but something we have to look into for sure. All

right, fair, fair enough question, fair enough answer. We are chatting

with Miguel Gonzalez. He's the owner of

PodcastDB. They have hosting services as well as

a large, large database of all the podcasts that you can find out there,

including some very interesting metrics and analysis

of the podcasting ecosphere, hopefully so that it'll

allow you to find the right Podcast for whatever your needs are, whether you're maybe

trying to find more podcasts to be a guest on, or you are actually looking

to advertise and support podcasts with

monetization. Before we let you go, some questions that we'd like to ask

everybody, and I'm sure you'll have an interesting answer. The first one, given that

some of the things that we've talked about. But are there

places in the podcasting ecosphere where you think

the industry as a whole could be improved

upon or that you would like to see improved upon?

I guess the culture, I guess sometimes

it's not very inclusive in terms of newcomers.

What do you mean by that? I mean, from our experience when we

went to Podcast Evolution, we were fairly new on the

sphere. Maybe I'm just speaking from personal experience. Right. You know,

very new.

Yeah, maybe everyone doesn't experience this, but

there were the larger companies and the. The people

that come by, you know, most of them were very nice, but a

lot of them would be like, you know, just have rude comments, rude

ways to say, like, how'd you get our data? You know, and

one thing you can always remember is if you're a podcaster and you want to

be removed from the database, we'll remove you right away. Like, just not a problem.

But we had that experience where we were relatively new and

some of the reception that we were getting wasn't all that great. You know, it

doesn't. It didn't stop us, didn't hinder us. But,

you know, they want. Maybe want to stick to the pod chase or the listen

notes or the whatever that they've been working with.

And so, yeah, I mean, that was one thing that we noticed. I'm talking about

we like me and George when we went. Because we were still partners at the

time. Well, I mean, I. I don't think it's. That the podcasting space is

not inclusive. You know, I. I've been around for

a really, really long time, and there are certain

problems that lots of people want to solve,

and there are problems that lots of people claim to solve, and

they are problems that by nature are

currently unsolvable. Right.

Given just given the tech of podcasting. Right.

The fact that you are coming up with an estimated listener number

raises a lot of red flags for people because either

a. As podcasters, they are protective of their listener

numbers and. Right. They. They don't understand

how you're coming up with that number. And if it does

reflect poorly on them, then I can understand them being, you know, sore about

it and wondering what this is and, you know, why this information is out there.

I think the other factor is that,

you know, there have been other.

There have been other attempts to do the things you're kind of doing, and

we've seen where lots of them are not

really. They're not good actors. And I'm

not saying that you're not a bad faith actor in any way, shape or form,

but, you know, you're newer to the space, and so you might not understand

that history, right? You might not understand that legacy that

podcasters have been fighting with for the past, you know, 10 to 15 years

of people coming in who claim to solve a problem

that, again, technically isn't solvable.

But then the other thing, and this one I can kind of go either way,

is that, you know, what you just said is anybody can come and have their

stuff removed, right? You're basically saying,

we built a platform, we're going to

take advantage of the potential podcasting

ecosphere. And you're basically asking for

forgiveness and not permission. And so whether or not what you're

doing will hurt podcasters, and I don't believe it actually will.

I do believe that there are plenty of podcasters who will benefit from having

your information out there, who, you know, it will get shows on

radars of people who might not have other been able to be found on radars.

Your search is more interesting than, you know, what we can find on the

traditional podcasting platforms. And so there might be some really good opportunities there to help

consumers more than podcasters. But the

fact is that, you know, there are so many podcasters who have been

burned by companies who just post and

use their content, their hard work without.

Without them having the opportunity to buy in instead being forced to

buy out. That I think it just, you know, it. It

sends them into a negative thought,

you know, a negative feeling towards something like this without

giving you the benefit of the doubt. Not that that's fair either,

but history has sort of

forced them and bred them into this kind of

feeling because of so many bad actors that have been in the space

before now. Does that all make sense? Yes, that does make sense.

And I do agree. I do agree as well. And something that we have

thought of in the past pass. And something probably going to implement

is the ability for podcasters to come on and, you

know, one, ask to be removed. We can remove you, no problem. And

two, is to claim. Claim your

podcast, you know, Ed, and then, you know, you confirm it, edit your data,

right? If this is not your listener account, you know, remove Listen account if you

want to hide your Listen account. Hide your Listener account if you want to change

how much your ad cost per minute is going to be. You know, change your

cost per minute. So that is actually you giving me

an idea, Mathew. Very interesting. Oh, good. I,

I love when that happens. That happens to me all the time. I'll be talking

to someone, they'll tell me about a problem, and they'll be like, oh, maybe I

could solve it that way. So hopefully, you know, we, we are

strengthening podcast tv. And listen, anybody listening

this? You know, what I want to say is check it out for yourself. Don't

let other people's, you know, past experiences

or preconceived notions determine how

you feel about a platform like this. Check it out for yourself. See what the

information is. See if it does, you know,

if there is a chance that it's hurting you, reach out and ask them to

fix it. But there is some very interesting things that this platform is doing that

I think podcasters should be kind of looking at first before jumping to

conclusions. Yeah. And if you have any questions at all, you know, support

podcast TV that I. Oh, I'll see that first thing and get

back to you within 24 hours. So, like, if you have any issues, any

problems, does email us. We aim to solve it as soon as possible.

Right. So anything, any disgruntle, any.

Anything we can help you with, reach out to us. And we'll

make sure we put that email as well in the show notes so you can

easily find it. Thank you. All right,

so next question that we always ask everybody, you know, you're not

a podcaster per se. You're working in the podcasting space right now.

But I'm curious, is there like, any

podcasting or content tech on your wish list, Right. Like

a device you want to buy or something you want to see built that isn't

out there yet that you're trying to get your hands on.

I would like a microphone. I just gave mine. I just gave mine to

my brother for his graduation. I would like one again.

I'm like, of course I'm scared away. And now I got. And I got a.

I'm going to be on a podcast. Should have got. I should have kept it.

If, if anybody is looking, you know, we always have

at our 20, 100 links, and Miguel could use one, so send him

a good one. And then because you are doing this, you know, platform, you're,

you're, you know, working with some podcasters as advertising, you're hosting some

podcasts. But I'm curious personally, are there one or

two podcasts on your listening list that you just

will always stop and listen to? Like they are. They are.

Must listen to shows in your

podcasting. You know, I want

to say diet, but that just feels like the right word right now. But yeah,

in your, in your media diet. My media diet? Yeah. I mean, I'm a big

on investing. Um, and Preston, pitch Stig

Broderson on the investors podcast. Wonderful. Show the

lesson to them for years now. My cousin originally

recommended it to me back in like 2019. Been listening

to them for, for a while. And then

I don't know, the toss up between Alex Harozi,

like quick five minute podcast and like my favorite

murder. Right. So I guess those,

those podcasts would be in the list.

All right, those are a good list. We'll, we'll include links to those here at

the bottom. Again, we've been chatting with Miguel Gonzalez. He is the owner of

PodcastDB. You can find more at PodcastDB

IO encourage you to check it out, look up your show and,

and honestly, like, I, I've used the search for a few other things and it's

been very, very helpful. So, I mean, that

search filter is a great feature and one that I think podcasters

should definitely be taking a look at.

Miguel, thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely. Thank you, Mathew.

Thank you for joining us today on Podcasting Tech. There are links to all

the hardware and software that help power our guest content and podcasting

tech available in the Show Notes and on our website at Podcast.

You can also subscribe to the show on your favorite

platform, connect with us on social media, and even leave a rating and review while

you're there. Thanks and we'll see you next time on Podcasting

Tech.