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- [00:00]
A
Jordan, Kevin, I just got some breaking news from John. He ran some numbers for me and I was going to ask, do you want to take some guesses about how many people are doing video with Buzzsprout right now?
- [00:14]
B
I shouldn't guess. I can't do it. I can't lie because I. Because, you know, I know the numbers.
- [00:19]
A
I looked at them this morning because I made it. I also, I need them for a pitch. And so I put them in a pitch that I did send to Kevin. So you probably did see it. All right, Jordan, do you want to play this guessing game against nobody?
- [00:34]
C
I was going to say I love this game where I'm just completely uninformed and have no basis from which to jump off of. Except for a couple weeks ago when we said that there was like a hundred and something. So wait, is this podcasters that are doing video or like video podcasts, like episodes?
- [00:51]
A
So the first one will be, how many people do you think are on a video plan on Busspar?
- [00:57]
B
Oh, I don't know this number.
- [00:59]
A
So this is just to give you an idea of, percentage wise, how many of our customers are really creating video content right now.
- [01:09]
C
I think people are getting really excited about it and they're starting to make that switch and they're finding that's a little bit easier than I thought. So I want to say I'm going to be reserved and say like 200.
- [01:21]
B
I think it's more because we were at 120ish or something within the first three days of launching and that was over a weekend. So I'm gonna go, I'll go 500.
- [01:31]
C
Whoa.
- [01:31]
A
We're up to 860.
- [01:34]
C
Oh, I was way hard.
- [01:35]
A
860 podcasters are on a video plan and the only incentive to upgrade to a video plan is to get access to Apple Podcasts video. So first off, that's just a really big number. I'm really surprised at how quickly that's getting adopted and how many people are eager to get their podcast into Apple Podcasts. I imagine a lot of that is driven that. We had lots of people who were doing video already and now we gave them access to Apple podcast video. It's not that we're getting a bunch of new people to start creating video. All right, another number. Tens of thousands of episodes get uploaded to Buzzsprout every week. What percentage of the episodes that were uploaded in the last week were video episodes?
- [02:23]
B
This is the one. I can't guess on.
- [02:24]
A
This is the one.
- [02:27]
B
Okay, I'm going to give Her a hint, though. Jordan is more than you think.
- [02:32]
C
Okay, well, it's hard because, like, I don't even think. Because I don't even know, like, how many episodes were even, like, oh, just.
- [02:39]
A
Just give me a percent.
- [02:41]
B
Anywhere between 0 and 100%.
- [02:43]
C
I'm going to say 35%. Okay.
- [02:49]
B
Jordan, it's way, way, way less than you think.
- [02:55]
A
I mean, this is way more than I thought it would be, but it's 2.8%. So 2.8% of all episodes uploaded to Buzzsprout right now are video.
- [03:04]
C
Okay, well,
- [03:07]
B
you have to remember the scale of. Yeah, like, the number of episodes that get uploaded is just massive. Thousands and thousands of episodes uploaded daily, and now almost 3% of those accounting for video. That's a lot of video episodes going up, like, hundreds a day.
- [03:23]
C
And that's.
- [03:24]
B
That was what was shocking to me.
- [03:26]
C
This is like, when you ask someone to guess, like, the percentage of, like, planets in the Goldilocks zones in our universe, like, I. I don't know.
- [03:34]
A
And you're wildly influenced by, like, the. The how big the number you've just heard is. So if you hear a big number, you just guess big number, and you hear small number. You guess small number.
- [03:44]
C
That's exactly it. I was watching, like, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, like, he had, like, a globe, and he was talking about when people go to the sp. Go to space, and, like, the space shuttle, when it's, like, orbiting the Earth, it's actually like, if you hold a globe, it's, like, like an eighth of an inch away from the globe. I was like, what?
- [04:05]
B
That felt a lot like when my kids were super young and they were trying to guess, like, how much money does daddy make every year? And they'd be like, $17 a year. And you'd be like, no, no, way more than that. Way more than. They'd be, like, $47 a year. And you're like, nope, still way too low. The biggest number you can think of. And then they're like $8 billion a year. And you're like, somewhere in the middle
- [04:30]
A
of those two numbers.
- [04:32]
C
Somewhere in there, Right?
- [04:35]
A
Well, I think probably the best way for me to think about it is how long did it take us to get to where 3% of our podcasts had transcripts? And I think the number was, like, over a year of, you know, having tons of support and telling people about transcripts and the value of transcripts to get to high. Transcript adoption took a long time. You know, probably now only 3% of people are probably Using fan mail with any regularity. There's tons of features that we roll out that are end up being relatively niche and others that get a lot of adoption. And video is being adopted super fast. And I think it's because people are excited to jump into video on Apple podcasts and soon to be video in lots of other locations. But yeah, I, I saw that. It just got me excited. You know, you work really hard on something, and to see lots of our customers using it is a positive. And to see them using it and not hear a bunch of feedback that it's blowing up makes me feel even more confident that it's going well.
- [05:39]
C
Yes, absolutely.
- [05:40]
B
Here we.
- [05:47]
C
One of the things I want to talk about today is.
- [05:49]
B
Wait, one of the things. This is a quick cast.
- [05:51]
A
It has to be the only one thing. 10 minutes.
- [05:53]
C
Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry, You're right.
- [05:54]
B
One topic, 10 minutes. Everyone knows the rules.
- [05:57]
C
Everyone knows the rules. All right, thank you for reminding me of the rules. Okay. The one thing that I want to talk about today is how it's. It's not exactly AI podcasts, but it's sort of how these companies, these larger platforms are using AI podcasts and they're using that language, if that makes sense. So this started like four weeks back. I saw this crazy story from Katie Nitopoulos at Business Insider. She tweeted because she came across in Amazon, like in the actual shopping app, that she had the option to create a mini podcast going through and reviewing, like diaper rash cream. And it's. Did you see this?
- [06:41]
A
Well, not this story, but I've seen this feature that you can just, you can be looking at something on Amazon and say, like, make me a podcast about this product and you can ask questions. And the hosts. It's kind of like Notebook lm. It's just like a fake podcast, but it's kind of like they're looking at all the reviews and trying to give you a feel for what is this product like, but it just feels like unhinged when it's like diaper rash cream. And you're like, no one would ever make a podcast about this. No one's doing a call in show because you can like interrupt them and say like, oh, I've got a question. Actually follow up on this. And they're like, oh, very important, you know, so, yeah, it's just, it feels totally off.
- [07:23]
C
What's so funny is like, at first I was like, oh, no, like, this sounds terrible. And then, you know, people were being people and they started having it create these mini podcasts selling the most, like, unhinged things. Like I saw one for like, fake dog poop and they're asking questions about the fake dog poop and they're like, yeah, like this is, you know, the length of it.
- [07:44]
A
Like, like the plastic fake thing your kids use for a prank.
- [07:49]
C
Exactly.
- [07:49]
B
All right, again, not going to be a shocker to any of you, but I did not read this article. I really have no idea what you're talking about, but I have some questions. Okay, Is this something like. Like Amazon and Spotify are creating these podcasts and then putting them out there for people to listen? Or you create it yourself so you can kind of interact with it as it's, as the podcast is happening. Can you like interrupt it and say, I have a follow up question?
- [08:14]
A
All right, Amazon.com, famously started by Jeff Bezos with books, and then they started doing reviews at some point and then they got tons of reviews. And to go through all those reviews was like, really cumbersome. So then one of the first and I think really good implementations of AI with shopping was Amazon going through all those reviews and kind of writing you a summary of, here's what people seem to think about this product. And then they said, what we'll do is we'll actually create an audio version of this, like a podcast, like, quote unquote, like a podcast. And you can listen to, hey, here's what this product does. But then they added the ability that you can just interrupt and be like a call in show and ask questions, but you. It ends up being this weird. It's almost like QVC channel podcast for any product. And so it just becomes very unhinged very quickly.
- [09:08]
B
Okay.
- [09:09]
C
But then I started seeing more things about AI podcasts popping up in like, Amazon, Alexa. And then Spotify announced that they are also doing a thing where listeners can generate podcasts based on, like, what's already on the platform. And I said, oh, I don't like that. In my mind, the way they were pitching it, it was no longer like a notebook lm, where it's clearly there's just them spewing out like daily briefings and things like that.
- [09:38]
B
All right, so wait, let me, let me wrap my head around this scenario now. Okay, so this one is like, I like, whatever. We'll just use a very popular podcast. I like the Joe Rogan Experience, but I don't want to spend three hours listening to this episode. Create a summary version of the Joe Rogan Experience for me, and then I can basically get the gist of it in 10 minutes by listening to an AI generated version of it. Is it something like that?
- [10:02]
C
I think that you could potentially do that. The example that they gave was like, let's say you want a personal podcast for an upcoming trip, and you can ask them to create a daily audio brief for my road trip through Italy. Walk me through my day using my calendar and bookings, and then recommend memorable dinner spot.
- [10:20]
B
Okay.
- [10:21]
A
I've actually run into another thing similar to this. YouTube Music has this feature where I turned it on at some point and in between it playing songs, it would be like a music. Like a DJ popping in to give you a little anecdote. But the anecdotes are like, you know, it was really sad. I was listening to some music and then it popped in. It was like, oh, this song charted twice. Once when you know, this happened and another when the artist committed suicide. So it's really poignant when you hear the. These lyrics about being sad which remind you of their death. And I'm like, gosh, this is like dark. And this was dance music and you're
- [11:01]
B
just bopping around and now you're sad.
- [11:03]
A
And then it hopped back into another one of their songs. And I'm like, okay. The second time it popped in, exact same story. And I'm like, no, dude, this just feels, like, gross. You know, if a DJ did it in real life, you'd kind of be like, oh, it's a person trying to talk through how they feel. It just felt weird. And I was like, I got to get. Turn this off. Because there was no. I never got, like, an interesting story. It was mostly like these really mundane stories mixed in with somebody who knew, like, two trivia facts about, you know, each artist and then just kept telling them to you over and over.
- [11:37]
B
I could see how that could be fun, though. Like, I used to love you guys. Ever watch VH1 pop up videos where you're watching the video and then they'd pop all these little, like, fun, interesting facts up on the screen?
- [11:46]
C
Oh, yeah, Is that like behind the music or something?
- [11:49]
B
Like, it's kind of like that. But it was. You were just literally watching the music video that the artist created and it's playing the song. And the most, like, uninterruptive way that they could do it, they wouldn't pop in with a voiceover because that would disrupt the song you're listening to, but it would just, like, little. Little bubbles would pop up on the screen and tell you, like, fun facts about, like, this scene in the video, they actually, you know, was an outtake that. A blooper, but they loved it, so they kept it in. And the song was actually, you know, written in 10 minutes when the artist was in high school and whatever. Just fun facts about the song, but it gave you, I don't know, more interesting insight. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. That would be fun to bring something like that to podcasting or whatever.
- [12:26]
A
All the AI creating audio content. I think I'm. We all work in podcasting, so I think we have pretty strong taste around what is an appropriate way to implement it. And I think the. It sounds like the YouTube one, at least. My experience of it was pretty poor. The Amazon, I'm a little bit more open to because it's pretty clear this is a one per. This is, like, for you. Do you want to listen to the reviews of this product? And if you want to interrupt and you want to ask weird questions about, like, fake dog poop gag gifts, then, like, you can. And Amazon handles it pretty well.
- [13:03]
B
Let's just burn some AI tokens. But, like, fun. I mean, why not?
- [13:06]
A
It's kind of impressive that Amazon handles it so gracefully. There's so many times where the AI stuff blows up and the Amazon one seems to be like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I saw somebody, I don't know, they were like, oh, maybe this picture of a clown will trigger ptsd. I have from seeing a clown in my childhood, and they gave this wildly unhinged story, and the host, like, kind of handled it gracefully, like, oh, I understand how that would really bother you. This may not be the right product for you. And I was like, that kind of did a pretty good job.
- [13:38]
C
Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah, it's just. It feels like the Wild West a little bit with, like, AI and all this, like, integration. I'm starting to feel a little bit of, like, overwhelm with how many different things are getting integrated, because I think I saw something about Spotify, like, also adding the ability to create, like, AI generated music based on your music tastes. And so, like, create, like, a new song. And to me, that's just. It's just. It feels like a bit much. And I will say I'm normally not like this, especially with all the discussions that we've had, especially around, like, the companies, like, actually can't remember what the company's called, but the one that is, like, generating hundreds of episodes. Inception point. Yes. So we already. We already talked about that. We. We said our piece about it. We don't love it. And I'm also not too concerned about it. But then when it started, like also introducing these like AI generated podcasts that like listeners can just do on the fly about like whatever topic they want. And it made it sound at first like it was pulling from other podcasts and stuff like that. It just, it gave me the ick and it made me a little bit worried, if I'm being honest. And then when I looked into a little bit deeper, I thought, oh, phew, this is just like Notebook lm. They're not actually competing with real podcasters, they're just, they're competing with other chat bots. And this is probably one of those fads that's going to like, like clubhouse or whatever that's going to like not be used as much and it's just going to kind of fade into the mist.
- [15:03]
A
Yeah, I'd really point people back to this old article. I know you've read it, Kevin. All podcasts are shows, not all shows are podcast. From Jon Gruber from 2019. He wrote it during luminary launching, which was going to do a bunch. It was basically trying to be the Netflix of podcasts. A bunch of really high end shows. They're all behind a paywall. It didn't end up working out like many ideas don't. But his whole point was a podcast is distributed audio through RSS feed on the open web. And it's worth like trying to keep that definition in place. We can have shows and we've. The further and further we've gone, we say, okay, video content distributed through HLS is now podcast. And we're getting so far that you hear stuff and it's like, oh, but you can listen to a podcast about the reviews of like stuff on Amazon. You can listen to a podcast that's a summary of a review. It's like, it's just people are using it to mean, I don't know, listening to things. Yeah, I think it's valuable to try to keep like the definition a little bit tighter so that it still has some meaning.
- [16:17]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a valid argument to be made. Surprisingly, I will be. I'll take the optimistic approach to this news and I will say that I'm sort of excited that these companies find it valuable enough to figure out. We have a bunch of written content that people seem interested in, but we know a lot of people like listening to stuff and there's a lot of environments where demanding the person's full attention to be able to read something, whether it be review summaries on Amazon or answers to questions that you're typing into an AI chatbot or something like that. Your full attention isn't always available. It's not always the best experience. And so they are investing a lot of time and resources and saying we can make those audio experiences as well. I do think that that stuff will start to compete with podcasts because anytime you have available to listen to something right now you have like music that you can listen to, you have audiobooks and like the traditional definition of a podcast, those are the things that are kind of like readily available for you to listen to. And now if these experiences start getting better, there'll be another thing in the category. So it will compete a little bit. But I don't necessarily know that it's. I don't, I don't know that it's like a big threat. I just think it's. Again, my positive take is that I like audio experiences. There are times when I go on a long car ride and I'm like, I'm in the mood for a book. And I know that's different than a podcast, but for whatever reason, I just want to hear a book right now. And so I'll queue up the Audible app and I'll find a book that I want to listen to or resume a book I've been listening to. There's of course I have some of my favorite podcasts and so if they've dropped a new episode, I want to listen to that. There's times when I just want to listen to music and there's times when I now a new thing in my life is that it's a short drive. But I've got something on my mind that I might want to have a conversation with my little chat GPT friend. So I pop her open and we start chatting about a topic, maybe something work related or something, or a question that my kid asked I didn't know the answer to. But I love that these audio experiences are getting richer and stuff and, and I think it's additive overall. But at the same time you have to recognize that, well, that 10 minute drive that you were just talking to, that AI bot could have been 10 minutes you were listening to a podcast. So it is going to like raise the bar in terms of people are going to have more choices and if you want them to choose your content over something else, then we have to produce better content as podcasters. But I think again, being optimistic and the rising tide lifts all boats. Like the more people get into, I enjoy private time I enjoy walking the dog, I enjoy exercising. I enjoy going for long car drives now because I enjoy audio experiences. I think overall it helps podcasters, I guess.
- [18:58]
C
Well put. All right, so if you want to hear us cover a topic or a current event or a question that you have in the future, go ahead and tap the Set Us fan mail link in the show notes. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.