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Podcast Editors Mastermind
Is A.I. Making Us Less Valuable? Hot Takes From 2025 and Podcast Editor Predictions
00:43:43
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- [00:00]
A
Are you self employed and get your insurance through the marketplace? If so, you need to know about the subsidy cliff. This is a change to the tax law in 2026. It's actually the expiration of some benefits to people and if you are not aware of it, you need to know about this. I'm going to be doing a live webinar Tuesday, Aug. 4 at 3pm Eastern, 12 noon Pacific. Please adjust for your time zone with Sean Mullaney, an advice only financial advisor. We're going to go through at least 12 different ways that you can control your income to legally avoid the subsidy cliff. I'm facing a $24,000 tax penalty if I don't do this right. You know, I'm taking notes already and I'm going to be prepared to not pay that tax penalty and I'm hoping to save you a lot of headache as well. I'll be sending reminders through the Podcast Editor Industry newsletter and if you're not signed up for the newsletter, go do that now. It's podcasteditoracademy.com newsletter. Podcasteditoracademy.com newsletter will give you reminders of the upcoming webinar. Tuesday, August 4th at 3pm Eastern, 12 Pacific. Please adjust for your time zone. This might be the most important webinar I have ever done and I'm hoping to save a lot of people, a lot of self employed people who are getting health insurance through the government, a lot of headache and a lot of money. Podcast newsletter to stay in touch and I'll see you there. Welcome to the Podcast Editor Mastermind Show. I am Steve. I just do this podcast to help myself, Stuart and I'm here with a great panel of people for this topic. We're going to reflect on the past in 2025. See what has been the big changes in the podcasting space. We're also going to look at and predict what we think is going to happen in 2026. I'm joined with my co host, Mr. Mark Deal.
- [01:41]
B
Hey everyone. I'm here to keep Steve on track and if anyone is playing the drinking game at home, I am not going to call out the years, either the past or previous. So you're on your own.
- [01:50]
A
I didn't know that was a thing.
- [01:51]
B
Well, it apparently was the last year we did this.
- [01:54]
A
I'm going to share my screen. Drink, drink, drink. Okay. With us we have Pam Cameron. She began as a freelance editor and now runs end to end post production. I guess that includes podcasting and the post production side. Full time producer of Acquiring minds. Do you do the full production, start to finish, or do you just do the post production, Pam?
- [02:13]
C
Oh, I start by mailing out a headset to the guests. I don't live produce because the host is actually so good at wrangling the guests that I don't have to help with that at all. And then afterward, I do line editing. I send it to the marketing, the newsletter. I make sure it gets uploaded to transistor and YouTube and all the things.
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A
So you do all the things except host it and be there for the program. You train them well enough that you don't have to be there during the recording.
- [02:43]
C
Oh, exactly. Yes, yes, I'll take credit for that.
- [02:46]
A
All right. Also with us today, it's a pleasure to have Jay Yao with us. Jay is an audio professional for over 16 years in both music and podcast production. He's collaborated with a ton of people. Benedict Cumberbatch, Mike Myers, Mary Louise Parker, and most notably, at least the one I remember is James Altucher show. You've been on that or producing that show for a long time, Jay.
- [03:08]
D
I only started producing the show in 2019, actually 2020, but I've been with James since 2016. So I was started as a assistant engineer for like two days, and then they upgraded me to engineer and then I became the head engineer for the show. I'm the one that go around studio, like, hey, do you guys have a slot open so I can I book the studio for James and then have the guests come over to the studio and sit down and set up so recording, editing and mixing and then just send it to the post productions?
- [03:38]
A
That's about as long as I've been doing this full time in the post production side. It's incredible, isn't it?
- [03:42]
D
It is.
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A
It's like a lifetime ago.
- [03:43]
D
Yeah. And it's also so different is a weird jump between 2019 and 2020. There's like a huge jump right there. All of a sudden everyone's like, oh, we got to do video. I'm like, okay.
- [03:52]
C
Yep.
- [03:53]
A
And also with us back once again is Chad Parisman, podcast production and strategist from Etter Communications. What's new with you?
- [04:01]
E
Oh, what? What is new? Kicking off a new show for a client that was a guest on another show that I produce, which is like always the best way to earn a client. Like, oh, that's what it takes. I think we can do that. And they're like, you know, two weeks later you get that email of like, hey, so if we wanted to launch in in Q1 of next year, what would we have to do? And then, like, we've been off to the races since then. So that's on the editing side. The most exciting thing in my world these days.
- [04:29]
A
Excellent. Well, today we want to talk about the hot takes we got from 2025 in the podcast space. And then we want to jump in later on our predictions and just predicting what's going to happen in 2026, because I think we all can agree here. Do you all agree 2025 was a big year, Lots of change in this space. Does anybody have something that they want to lead with in this discussion about big changes in 2025? Jay?
- [04:56]
C
Well, I can tell you something that was big for me. I don't know if anyone even realizes this tool is out here, but it solved a huge problem for me. The podcast I produce is almost two hours long and it debuts twice a week, every week, rain or shine. Something we do as a service to our YouTube audience is put YouTube chapters, because these are long episodes and up until now it's just been manual, you know, typing those out. And this is not revenue generating activity. This is something I don't love spending time on. And so I was for six months searching, like, how can AI automate this? How can I stop doing this? And I found blogfox AI. All you have to do is take the URL of a public YouTube video, you paste it in, you click go, and within a minute it gives you accurate, beautiful timestamps. My team saves an hour a week.
- [05:55]
A
Now, have you tried other tools that do that? Because there are a lot of tools. I know that Daniel J. Lewis just came out with a chapters feature that'll help determine where the chapters are or name them. Plus you could use an outline. Throw it in there. What makes blogfox AI, I think, is what you said. What makes that so special?
- [06:12]
C
I don't have to do anything. Once the episode is edited and it's on YouTube, I take the URL, I paste it, it gives me the chapters. By the time I've pasted the URL, I may not even remember what this episode was about, because we are cycling through these things so quickly. So this makes my life so much easier.
- [06:32]
A
You know, we've all seen AI tools coming out just out of the woodwork this last year. Not even just this last year, but this. I mean, Mark, you know this. When did OpenAI become public where anybody could use it? Was it November of 23 or 22?
- [06:45]
B
I remember November 23rd when I started having mass adoption and A lot of people within our circle started signing up for it and joining in December of 2023 as well. In fact, back then it was like a wait list type thing. They didn't have the premium ChatGPT function. It's been out before then. And there were some startups that was using the ChatGPT AI API engines underneath. And then when OpenAI came out with OpenAI so anyone can use it. Yeah, it really took off around that time. So yeah, so the last couple years it's been taking off as well as other AI driven tools. And here we are a couple years later having all this, everyone having all this for a couple years and really changing the landscape of, of how we work and what clients expect and what the market is used to consuming.
- [07:33]
A
Yeah, I went into it knowing that I'd be using some AI tools. We just heard from Pam. Jay. Chad, AI has changed how we do audio engineering, has it not?
- [07:44]
D
Yeah, I mean, for me it helped tremendously because I do tons of post production and then somehow I attract a lot of people that forgot to click record button during the set and then they're like, hey, we only record on one mic. Can you help us? So having AI is great because I usually just put it into three different AI services like Podcast Enhanced descript Studio Sound and I have this tool called, it's a plugin called, I believe it's called Clarity dx. And then I would just mix and match and try to make everything sounds as natural as possible. So yeah, AI definitely helped post productions tremendously.
- [08:28]
A
Jay, do you feel. And Chad, you can chime in here too. Do you feel a little less valuable with all these AI tools out there or are you using them to the max where it helps you become better?
- [08:39]
D
I'm not threatened by it and it definitely helped me make my workflow better and faster. You know, like AI can help me for sure, but I still in charge of the creative side of it, right? So let's say the AI like, hey, this is how I fix it. And then I'm like, no, that sounded a little bit too bassy. Like it just sound like you come up straight from the radio. So I have to EQ after the AI has fixed whatever the problem is. So you still need that human touch and humans experience to actually fix anything that quote unquote fixed by AI. But it make you work faster. So rather than doing like maybe one episode a day or two episodes a day, you can do like three or four episodes a day. You can fix up to six to seven hours of audio issues in a day rather than just one or two.
- [09:29]
E
Yeah, I agree with, with Jay. I come at it from two sides. One is, you know, it's not just the even making the audio a little bit better than what the AI can offer. But I am typically for my clients, I'm doing everything else from helping them find guests and writing discussion guides all the way through offering them titles, suggestions, show notes, research for them, all kinds of other things. So anything I can do that actually frees up my time on just the editing piece allows me to be doing, you know, one more social media marketing clip, an extra 20 minutes on researching the next guest. Like that's kind of how I view it. And then I'll just throw. The one tool that like I can't live without now is auphanic. I've gone from the izotopes and the plugins and there have been a whole bunch of other, I mean, I, I, we probably all have hundreds of dollars of locally installed plugins and things like that that I bought over the years. And I, I don't know why everyone just doesn't use Authonic. Like Auphonic to me is just kind of magic. Like, I understand why we don't, but like the cost for it is so minimal compared to what I think it does. And especially once they move to the, the multi track solution where you can go in there and tweak and then it just does the whole thing. I mean it's everything from Jay, your point of like we forgot to turn the mic on to like I've done live recordings where that has bad mic bleed that Auphonic just gets rid of like 98% of it. I mean, you name it, that's the one tool for me that I can't live without right now. And I mean it's just all AI magic. That alone has saved me hours of time that I know and I would never have been able to get it nearly as good even if I put in the hours.
- [11:16]
A
Does anybody here feel like they're losing gigs because AI is able to be? I mean, it's so consumer facing now. There's so many consumer tools. The podcaster can do stuff themselves. Do you feel like you're losing jobs? Is it impacting your income in some way?
- [11:31]
C
I have this full time gig, but I still kept one client from back when I was freelance and he reached out to me in January and said, hey, money's really tight. I am so sorry to ask you this. Could you teach me how to edit my podcast myself? I was thrilled I'd worked with him for three years. I'm a big fan of his work. I didn't need the money anymore because I was full time with this new gig and I was like, absolutely. Let me make you a little video. I did a screen capture in Riverside. So technically, yeah, I guess I lost the gig, but it sounded like the gig was going to go away anyway and I've got another gig. So I guess I say, yeah, I guess I did, but I don't feel bad about it.
- [12:13]
A
Interesting.
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D
I thought that was a great story. Not going to lie, because.
- [12:16]
C
Thank you.
- [12:17]
D
I'm happy that AI exists for that reason, because, like, lots of chores I felt like we shouldn't be doing, or at least I didn't want to do. Let's say they are like, hey, can you edit this episode for me for 50 bucks? I'm like, it's only 50 bucks. You know, that's not worth my time. I'd rather you do it. And then after they just send it over for me to master or whatever, I do something that's either easier or not, take as much of my time so I can move on and do something else that need my attentions more and stuff like that.
- [12:48]
E
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, maybe I come at it from a different angle because I think I came to podcast editing from a different area than maybe a lot of people that I've met. I would come from it, from the comms and marketing world, and I came to podcast editing and production kind of late in life. I didn't go to, like, school for it. You know, I didn't go for, like, media production or work in TV or radio or anything like that. What I provide is so much more than just the editing that again, like, I'm not really losing clients to someone that thinks that they can use descript on their own or Riverside or anything like that. Because again, I'm typically helping them soup to nuts with everything from concept and launch all the way through marketing and paid promotion and things like that. So I think, if anything, AI is probably forcing podcast editors to have to learn and to be more. And it's the same thing that I saw with, like, social media managers five, eight years ago. Coming from that world for a while, you could just be like, I know Twitter and Instagram, and that was great. And now to be a social media manager or marketer, you have to new paid media, you have to know how it impacts on SEO. You have to know probably some type of video editing. You have to write like, there's A million things involved. Will it weed some people out? Are people losing jobs? Probably, like, I don't want to discount that. But I think it's also making podcast editors, podcast producers have to upskill and become more than just like, I'm taking 45 minutes in audio and making a great 25 minutes. Like that's a piece of it. But I think you need to be able to do more.
- [14:28]
A
Mark, I know you've been using a lot of AI tools lately. I want to get your perspective on this whole thing.
- [14:34]
B
I have, I have my thoughts on this. And we've seen this doing the podcast editor survey for six years or more. You know, we have seen a big divide in podcast editing, whether people are in a. We'll just say like a first world nation or not. So there's been what I call like commodity editing for many years, even before AI, right. There's people that will cut out the amaras for like 5 bucks an episode, 10, 15 bucks an episode, whatever it was back in the day and now with AI, that skill set has pretty much gone away. So the editing race to the bottom where people were trying to do editing work, the minimal editing work, not what the production work that everyone does here on the panel, that has been replaced by AI. And I think a lot of clients, at least the ones that are paying for the results, not so much the tools or the tactical actions that you take, they're looking at the overall results. So an AI editor, a production assistant, podcast manager, producer, editor, whatever you want to call yourselves, they're looking for a podcast production partner. And whether you use AI or not, they kind of don't really, they really don't care and they don't want to learn the tools. I mean, we've name dropped about a dozen tools and I'm sure there will be more tools that we're going to talk about even later on in this episode. Steve, there's lots of tools out there. They don't want to learn all that. They want to know someone who can use the tools. Great. You know, if you save yourself 90% time, that's awesome. But if you listen to it and it sounds like what sounds or looks like what my client base or my market wants, that's what I want. So I think AI has cut out a lot of the lower bottom of the Amara podcast editing and has made the higher end production stand out even more.
- [16:30]
A
I don't want to continue talking about different AI tools. I think we all know that they're going to be. It's like Mark In a previous episode mentioned Pamela for Skype. Anybody remember Pamela for Skype? I mean, we're dating ourselves and we talk about, oh, this AI tool that came out last week. You know, anybody who listens to the show in six months is going to be like, oh, I remember that. That was the good days, right? The good old days.
- [16:49]
B
I don't feel like Pamela, even when it was relevant, was a good old day. I hated that.
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A
Oh, my goodness.
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C
Yeah, this is getting confusing.
- [16:56]
B
We're dating ourselves.
- [16:57]
C
Sorry.
- [16:58]
B
Steve and I have been doing this
- [16:59]
A
for a while, but some other big things that happened in 2025 that we've got to reflect back on. I'll just go through the list that I have. We lost a lot in 2025. We lost Neil Gal. He was a big component of the Messengers documentary, which is from, what, 2018 or something? I think very instrumental in Podfest. We lost him. I think it was February of this year. Todd Cochran, founder of Blueberry. I mean, that's a huge hit to the space. And then people who have lost positions in very influential places. Elsie Escobar, she got let go from Libsyn. That's a huge thing. Stephen Robles, Riverside. I thought he was the face and voice of Riverside for years. I mean, he's just so fantastic. A couple people from Descript were let Go. Christiana Cromer and Ashley Hammer Pritchard both let Go. That tells me that Descript is moving towards something that isn't that community. Touching base with the podcasters type of feel. But then again, they developed the AI tool that I think we all first recognized as. This is magic over here. You're editing with text and all these really cool things. Does anybody have any input on that? All the changes we had in the
- [18:16]
E
space, the Descript situation is the one I know the most about. I know a bunch of people over there pretty involved still in their communities. I think like anywhere else, they have realized that starting in the podcaster and I'll say slash influencer creator world is a great place to start. But eventually the fight for dollars is harder and it there's less return. I believe Descript is much more moving into the enterprise kind of workflow world. And the same way, right? We saw this with Canva 5 to 8 years ago, right? Where it's like, hey, you can do this. And now it's just like, no, you want to buy 35 Canva licenses for your marketing team to free up time for your other marketing or image resources. I think that's what we're about. To see with Descript, I think Descript is probably making much more headway into things like learning teams or internal comms, you know, things like that where again they can go into a company and they can sell 20, 30, 50 licenses at a time. I don't think they'll get away from what we're using them for, but I just think that there is a lot more money to be made in those spaces where one client at a time versus the DDC approach. There's a lot of people in the community that are having a hard time dealing with that and I think we're going to see that with a lot of these tools that we've all become reliant on. I mean we've seen that everything from like Adobe. Right. I mean people, I still edit an audition and audition seems to be like the thing Adobe still forgets that they have as part of their subscription. Yeah, they've built like a million things into Premiere. Audition still works but like there's been no major upgrades there. So I think that we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that a lot of these tools that we've relied on will eventually move beyond us. Unless, you know, Steve, I don't know what your thought is on like I know that there's lots of opinions on like the latest rollout of Audacity being open sourced I think is a very different type of situation. But I think a lot of these other tools will realize ultimately the folks that are listening to this and the folks that we're chatting with today are a really small piece of the pie of what these companies could be.
- [20:31]
D
Yeah, I just want to tack on that too. I think just the way that this script also changed the pricing to the creator. They changed from the transcription to per minute of media upload per second. Actually even if you upload one picture is considered one second. I'm like, that's crazy. It's supposed to be media. But yeah, everything is moving to enterprise. I sort of started to see this script move away from Community. When they let go or at least Ariel left this group, I'm like, okay, they gonna slowly stop listening to Community. I really have high hope for Adobe. They have Adobe podcast but from what I heard from some of the people in Adobe because I thought they were the one that supposed to, you know, go against or compete against Description and even Riverside from what I heard is that Adobe podcast just going to stick with just the AI stuff. No like multitrack editing, no multi track this and that. Maybe they were Just going to implement into Premiere, but I'm still using this script at this point. Hopefully they don't charge too much in the future.
- [21:37]
B
Every SaaS platform is introducing some element of AI, maybe to make things better. Maybe it's a shiny object syndrome. And they started doing that about a year or so back. And now I'm sure everyone here on this panel has noticed all the prices of your services are going up, whether you use all these new features or not. AI isn't free. It may look free in the beginning, but eventually they're like, oh, wow, we have to pay for this. So a lot of the platforms where I'm going to sound like an old curmudgeon, like, oh, it's fine the way it is and I don't need all this AI hoop dee doo. But they're putting it in the AI hooptidoo. They're introducing that whether we want it or not. And maybe we play with it, like, wow, this is great. This is a game changer, which is probably a good thing for us in our business. Or it just gets, in a way. It's tough to relearn the same platform that you're using every three months because they move buttons around and add new things and maybe they change the name of a function that's doing the same thing. It's tough. And now, as we turn over the calendar from one year to the next, a lot of prices have gone up. There's been a lot of turnover, and a lot of these prices are going up as well, aren't they, Steve? Yep.
- [22:49]
A
Blueberry did their first increase in years. Buzzsprout also increased their prices this year. And then Libsyn has announced that they're going to be raising theirs in the next year, which has been the first big change they've had in almost a decade.
- [23:02]
B
And we know Descript increased their price a few months back.
- [23:06]
A
Yeah, that was the big hoop to do.
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B
Yeah.
- [23:09]
A
I think everybody's felt the impact this past year or two with all the inflation increases, things like that. It's going to be more important in 2026 than it has in the past, just because there are so many things competing for our dollars, whether it's our personal spending, business spending, and unfortunately, that's going to result in increasing prices on our clients. We've got to charge them more for our services. But AI is supposed to be saving us time. It's just like computers are supposed to do away with printing on paper, right? Well, that didn't stop it. Is AI going to help us to become more efficient and be able to keep our rates low because we can get things done faster. What do you all think?
- [23:46]
B
No.
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D
Well, I don't think you should lower your rate because just AI can help you do things faster. It's just like you go to school for 10 years to make a logo in 10 minutes rather than make a logo in 10 years. You shouldn't lower your price, you shouldn't lower your self worth. And also like you said, AI costs money. So maybe keeping the same rate, the amount of time that save you and save the money that actually go to paying the AI services.
- [24:22]
A
Mark, you were going to hop in there. Well, you just said no. I guess that's your answer. You don't have to expand on that, do you?
- [24:26]
B
I can't expand on it, no. It's an old axiom of project management. Parkinson's law basically says that the work will expand to fill up the resources that are allocated to it. So as we have more capability with AI, we're going to get more work and that could be more work with our same clients. Like clients now expect more because like, well, you're doing AI and other people are doing all this stuff with AI. Hey, can I get the Show Notes clients that I had a decade or so back? Show Notes was a premium add on. Now Show Notes is essentially an afterthought because it's an AI byproduct of all the other processes. So I think people will expect more as AI expands and can do more. Not because they want more, but because they know that more can be done with the same resources. So Parkinson's Law of Project management is now hitting us in the podcast editing space.
- [25:23]
C
Has anyone else had a situation where someone like you had a client ask you to do something and they were like, I'm sure you can just run it through AI and AI is actually not there yet.
- [25:31]
A
Oh boy.
- [25:33]
D
You mean the client that doesn't know what AI is
- [25:37]
C
that thinks it's magic?
- [25:38]
D
Yeah, the thing is like a small little elf that lives inside your computer to help you do your things.
- [25:43]
B
No, I think you mean the anonymous intern. If you have an anonymous intern, you can put that AI on it. But yeah, we don't have the tools, the technology capability yet. Come see me on Monday because maybe things will change then, right?
- [25:55]
E
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think probably video is the one space that I've seen that where again they see big name podcasters releasing impeccably looking video with well timed audio tracks and sound effects. Right. I mean, like that. I think that's where I've seen it where again, right, We've gotten all the, like the. The Steve Bartlett's, the Joe Ro, right. It's like, how do I get it to look like that? And it's like, well, you know, you're recording on your laptop camera from home with. And you don't even want to put up like an extra light, but you want it to look like a studio. Like, those I think are the tough to have conversations. And I think that there still isn't as much as there's like a sweeten the audio with a lot of these tools. We haven't really seen that with video. The video side of AI has mostly been around all this generative AI stuff that maybe six months from now we can come back and have a conversation of that of like, can we start incorporating those types of things? This is where I wouldn't mind paying more for Descript if they had yo the same way that they can now add a blur and add a green screen. Which actually is great and has come in handy because I've had clients be like, oh, I'm always on zoom. I totally forgot my bed was unmade. Can you go in and like blur that? And the fact that it's like one click now in a lot of these tools is a lifesaver. There's not the opposite of like, can you sharpen this for me? Can you make it look like studio lighting? Right. Like, we can now we can mimic studio sound, but we can't mimic studio lights. Yet a year from now, let's have that conversation and. And see where we are.
- [27:30]
B
Because it can do a lot. Yeah, that's a good thing. Can't do that today. See me on Monday or next month. Who knows? The tools are evolving quickly, but right now, not yet.
- [27:39]
E
Can I throw out one more thing for 2025? Because I threw this out the other day to someone and they were like, I was a little overzealous about it and they were. They were taken back. But someone was like, can we have people stop wearing headphones? It just doesn't look good because again, they're used to seeing a lot of these videos of folks in studio that don't have good hang Rogan. Right? A lot of these, they're again, they're in $10,000 studios, understandably, they don't need to wear headphones. And I threw back at them what I thought was a big piece of the year was Taylor Swift wore headphones on the Kelsey Brothers show. Right? And it's like, because they are not. While the two of them were in the studio together, because Jason is remote, they still all wore headphones. If Taylor Swift is going to headphones for two hours, you can too. I'm just tired of the I don't like the way it looks. Or, I mean, a couple of you guys are like, wearing the in ears. I love in ears, but people are always asking about that. I'm like, unless you're willing to drop like 400 bucks for custom in ears, you're going to get much more playing around or unless you're really comfortable with them. But again, they're still headphones. So to me, that was just like. There's a lot of pop culture reasons why Taylor Swift being out of podcasts was big for the industry. But from like, the production standpoint, that to me was just like, frame it. Grab that screenshot. Anytime someone asks, why do I need to wear headphones? Like, this is the thing that I send them now.
- [29:06]
A
Yeah, I forgot that Taylor Swift was on a podcast. That was a big news. And I think that's why Marc Maron stopped his show. He's like, okay, Taylor's been on a show. I'm done now. I've been in the podcast industry for a long time. Podcasting since 2010, podcast editing professionally since 2016. And in that time, I've learned a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. And I've also learned you can never learn enough. Everything keeps changing. Look at what AI and video is doing in the past couple years. The Podcast Editor Academy has a goal of helping you to migrate through all of these changes as well. Draw on my over 10 years of professional podcast editing experience and my more than 30 years of running small businesses. Wait, is that right?
- [29:48]
D
30 years?
- [29:48]
A
No, wait, it's 35 years. More than 35 years of running small businesses. Get access to me and other resources in the Podcast Editor Academy. Register now for a 249 quarterly membership. Every week, I send out a weekly challenge. Get some of that windshield University Zig Ziglar always talked about with our private podcast you can take on the road with you and of course, our monthly office hours where you can get together with other professionals in this industry where the real learning takes place. Join now podcasteditoracademy.com that's podcasteditoracademy.com. We've been talking about the reflections on 2025, the year that was a lot of big change. Although I feel like we're living in the future, but what is coming up with 2026? There's going to be even more change. I don't see anything just keeping its position as it is. Anybody want to start off with a topic that they think is going to be a big deal in 2026?
- [30:45]
D
Yeah, I can go. I think a couple months back, they just announced the Netflix and Spotify podcast deal. So I think that's going to be a huge deal for the podcast industry. That people really just going to dive into video now because they're probably just like, I'm gonna start doing video like crazy video productions and maybe sometimes ignore the audio part of it, which I kind of hate because I'm audio person. But they probably would dive into the video so much more in the hope that they will get the partnership with either Spotify or maybe Netflix just got a bid on Warner Brothers. Who knows they have another podcast on that site. Other things too. So I don't know what you guys think about that.
- [31:26]
E
Yeah, I was actually gonna bring that. The Warner Brothers piece of it because for a while now, hbo, for a lot of their big tentpole shows, have been running these behind the scenes, but also doing official podcasts. Like right now, I'm in the middle of watching the it. Welcome to Derry. And Mark Bernardin, who has been on a couple of podcasts, is hosting the official podcast. James Gunn was the host of the one for Peacemaker earlier this year. I think there's a lot of synergy that, yes, we're making a big deal about this Netflix, Spotify, because it's the two big names, but we've been seeing a lot of these media companies have actually been getting into the podcast space. Maybe we. We're not seeing the. The headlines around it, but I think anything that's gonna elevate not only podcasting, but then video podcasting, you know, and kind of bringing it into new areas, whether that is downloaded to my tablet or the back of an airplane seat, can only help grow the industry.
- [32:25]
D
Yeah.
- [32:26]
A
Pam, did you have a comment on that? I think you were about to hop in and we.
- [32:29]
D
We stopped you.
- [32:30]
C
No, I. I exclusively just want to make my workflow faster. I have no idea what Netflix is doing.
- [32:36]
B
I got a great hibachi restaurant up the street. I don't know what they're doing. I'm sure they're doing great Hibachi. You know, if I want that, I'll go to the hibachi restaurant. If I want Chipotle, I'll do, you know, mobile app order. At Chipotle. I produce audio forward podcasts that may or may not have A video component. So for me myself, I'm not too worried about all the share of entertainment. I'm focusing on ear share and that's where I try to specialize.
- [33:02]
D
Can I give one prediction? This is a pretty bold prediction.
- [33:05]
A
I like it.
- [33:06]
D
I think if Amazon done it right, Amazon would be the mega giant podcast platform in the industry. Right. So if you think about it, they have what they have art 19. Amazon also own AWS which is a backend server. Amazon also owned Prime. So if they did it right, you could upload your audio and video to R19 and then I don't know if you know this, you could self upload your video to Amazon prime and then it will appear as if your show was professionally produced by Amazon prime original. So if they did it right, they can literally upload the video from Art 19 to Amazon prime to appear alongside with auto show. So it's like you are the big thing and then they have the AWS backend server, you can build your website. And Remember back in 2015 almost every podcast has their own app. So they can do the same thing too with the aws. So my prediction is if Amazon did it right and if they don't have a lot of internal fighting, that could be the next big Spotify thing. Even bigger than Spotify because they already have server for videos anyway. Spotify is building from ground up for their video server.
- [34:19]
A
But how does that benefit Amazon selling AWS services both? And what's that going to cost a podcaster? Because the big problem with video podcasts is it's expensive. That's why everybody throws their stuff on YouTube. It's free. And you know YouTube makes money off of our clients content.
- [34:35]
D
Yeah.
- [34:35]
A
So how does Amazon beat that?
- [34:37]
D
It's just like Spotify, right? How does Spotify make money off spam? So they can drop ads in the video. So same with Amazon Prime. Maybe they make money off like how many people like hey, if you have Amazon prime then maybe you can watch this whole podcast without ads just like any other show or be like hey, if you want to pay Amazon prime and then you know they take a chunk of money off the revenue and, and then how the creator can make money is if you have Amazon prime, like depends on how much your watch time is, then you get paid that way. At least that's how I think that's how it works because like Udemy, like the self teaching course or whatever, that's how they the creator make money off watch time if someone subscribe the premium version of it.
- [35:23]
A
Interesting. Any other predictions for 2026.
- [35:27]
C
How about just a hope? Just a From my mouth to God's ears hope. How close are we to being able to log into my podcast platform and know where the traffic is coming from? Is this an impossible dream?
- [35:41]
A
Well, that means that the media hosts have to get all the data from all the different apps, right?
- [35:46]
C
I don't care how they get it done. I just, I just want to get it done. You know, we're going to have Taylor Swift's wedding. I think we can also know where our, our podcast traffic is coming from. That's all I want.
- [35:56]
B
Also, Pam, are you saying not so much like the sources, but what the person was listening or doing before they started consuming the podcast? Is that what you're saying? Or just like, what. Sorry, I. You mentioned Taylor Swift. I'm thinking like they go from Taylor Swift to your show. I'm like, wow, that would be, that would be interesting. If they've got that type of pixel
- [36:16]
D
ear tracking, then Spotify do that. Now like on, like sometimes I felt like I go to Spotify if I look at the stats. If you upload a Spotify, they're like, hey, your audience also listen to all this album. Oh, like for James Auditor show.
- [36:28]
C
Oh, for the wrapped.
- [36:29]
D
Not, not just the rap.
- [36:30]
C
I think what I want is like when there's just an inexplicable spike in traffic and you know, you haven't done any marketing that day, it would be so helpful to know where the. Where who was sharing this and on what platform because maybe I should be there and you can't know that right now.
- [36:46]
D
Someone should build an app for it. Like if you have a spike, give me an alert, big alert. And then see all the, you know,
- [36:52]
C
well, I'm keeping the dream alive.
- [36:53]
B
There you go, Pat.
- [36:54]
E
So maybe building on that, the prediction that I'll make, and it's based on a couple of projects that I've worked on this year, is I actually think we're going to start to have much bigger, broader, honest conversations about how podcasts make money. Because I typically work on brand podcasts, not ad supported, but I got to work on a couple of ad supported this ones. And so I got a nice interesting view from what it would take to launch on a platform that monetizes. And then I'm working with someone now actually on running ads across podcasts and some pretty big name podcasts. And what I would say is like, your top 1 percenters are definitely commanding serious dollars to appear as, you know, host red ads. Right? What we Think about typically is making money. But then when you go from like the top 1% down into the middle, what I'm surprised and I, I have not seen a lot of people make noise about this or really talk about this a lot is I'm now seeing like media plans where 70% of the media plan is actually social media of the podcast hosts and has actually nothing to do with the podcast itself. You know, so it might be still a six figure buy, but the lion share is actually Instagram and TikTok posts and not running ads. I think that's just something people don't think about, aren't talking about, really drives home the idea that to be a successful podcaster you need to be multi platform. It is very difficult to be a podcaster that just only makes money on podcasts. And I feel like we've talked about it in like merch or maybe live events from comedians back in the day. But I think this kind of new podcaster where it's an influencer, someone that has a voice somewhere else and now they're coming into podcasting, is making money in a very different way than I think we've been largely having conversations about. And I think that, I don't want to say a breaking point, but I do think there'll be some type of scandalized headline about some podcaster that gets known as a podcaster, but actually like their podcast doesn't make money. It's all being funded by all the other things that that person does. And it's really just that they're, they're a successful influencer.
- [39:11]
A
Mark, what do you got for predictions or do you want to add on to Chad?
- [39:14]
B
Well, no, in fact, I'm going to take the, you know, Pam's angle and go for hope. You know, I hope that the podcast producers and the people running the production firms and things that they stop defending against AI and start embracing and deploying and being transparent that yes, they're using AI, they're now hybrid human AI editors. And I think that will be the edge saying like, yes, we use the AI, but it's AI enhanced, I guess production frameworks. So they become profitable packages for these podcast editors. And they're more of story stewards rather than just easy editors. They embrace AI. They don't need to tell their clients like I'm using this AI package or that AI package. Does anyone care what plugin you use in your daw? They didn't five years ago and I don't think they're going to care what kind of AI packages or what you're using for the production of it. But I think they're going to feel better to know that you as the production partner are going to be using AI to make their show better, to make your production better and a little bit more seamless. And I think it's all going to end. At least not end, but it's really just about what I was saying before. The editors are more the story steward of the show. VI is just an easy editor. And that's my hope, is that people stop defending against AI and they embrace. Like, yeah, sure, we use AI, but this is what we do. Like, oh, we use this AI platform, this, that and the other. Like, sure, we use AI as part of our production workflow, but this is everything you get. And if you want to do all the social stuff and the video platforms to Amazon, AWS or whoever Netflix ends up buying in the future or something, here's the collateral. But it starts here with the content, and we're here to help you curate it.
- [41:06]
A
These have all been excellent predictions. Does anybody else have anything else to add before I give mine?
- [41:12]
E
Do it, Steve.
- [41:13]
A
All right, this isn't a prediction. This is just something that we already know is coming. And I think it's important for podcast post production specialists, editors, people who work along with their teams, their clients teams really well. YouTube is saying that they're going to have video mid rolls available to creators. Once that's in place, be ready. We need to take advantage of that with our clients. Spotify has been promising this for years and they haven't delivered yet. So YouTube beat them with a punch. And I know that was going to be a huge influence on my clients. They were going video first hard because they were being hosted through Megaphone, which is owned by Spotify, and that would give them a direct link to Spotify and they'd be able to make money on mid rolls. Video mid rolls. That hasn't happened yet. If YouTube makes that happen, guess what? A lot of people are going to go for that. And it's going to take away from the audio audience, the audio experience. We already know this is going to happen. So that's something that we know should be happening here in 2026. Because YouTube has said it's going to happen. And then I have a prediction, actually, two predictions. Riverside is going to increase their rates in 2026. They have to. If they're doing all this, not only do they have the editing tools built in now while you record as well, they're now hosting podcasts. They're going to have to increase their prices or restructure them in a way where they're making more money per client. We already seen that with the script. It's going to have to happen with Riverside. And the other prediction is that the prices for Podcast Editor Academy will not go up in 2026.
- [42:43]
B
I can get behind that, too. I agree with you, Steve. I don't think they're going up. I've got a pretty close source to that.
- [42:48]
A
Yep. So everybody please pay attention to the Podcast Editor Academy newsletter. We're going to be giving more information when we reopen the doors in February 2026 on the podcast Editor Academy. We're going to be adding some things there and making some really cool advancements at the Podcast Editor Academy. So I thank all of our panelists. Jay Yau, thank you for being here.
- [43:10]
D
Thank you.
- [43:11]
A
Pam Cameron, thanks for joining us for this hour. We really appreciate your participation and Chad Paris has been always a pleasure to have you here with us.
- [43:18]
E
Thanks guys.
- [43:23]
A
Podcast editing news, podcast editing events, and podcast editing tips. You can get all this information free by subscribing to the Podcast Editor Industry Newsletter. Sign up@podcasteditoracademy.com newsletter. That's podcasteditoracademy.com Newsletter.