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- [00:00]
Windows 11 Student Offer Announcer
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- [00:31]
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- [01:01]
We Fixed It Show Host
Welcome to We Fixed it, you're welcome. The show where we take over companies, you come along for the ride, and we try to put them back better than we found them.
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Aaron
Podcasting used to be easy to explain,
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Melissa
and honestly, it was pretty easy to do.
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Aaron
People sat behind a microphone, talked for a while, and then put the show
- [01:21]
Melissa
up wherever they could. Pretty simple. These days, if you're at the top of the industry, podcasting is big business. And podcasts are a little harder to define. Some podcasts are audio only, some are video only, some are made for YouTube, some have exclusive Netflix deals, some only live on Audible. And let's complicate it even further. There's a new wave of podcasts that aren't even created by creators. So here's what I'm talking about. On May 21, Spotify announced personal Podcasts, a new feature that allows users like you and me to generate entirely customized podcasts, which with AI, Spotify wants listeners to start creating the content they want,
- [01:59]
Aaron
not just consume it.
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Melissa
So you want a custom show created just for you and nobody else done. Which raises the question we're here to fix. What is a podcast now? What should it be if everyone can just go generate their own podcast, what's going to happen to shows like ours? Does we fixed it.
- [02:16]
Aaron
You're welcome.
- [02:16]
Melissa
Need a Netflix deal to stay in the game? We love doing the show for you, so let's figure this out. I hope we can build a compelling case that our show still matters, because we're not done fixing everything. We're far from finished. Well, to keep us from going into
- [02:29]
Aaron
panic mode about this.
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Melissa
We're going to need someone who brings a long range perspective about podcasting. Joining Chino, Melissa and me is Rob Walch. One of the most respected voices in the podcast industry. Rob was inducted into the Podcast hall of fame back in 2016. He's the co author of the book Tricks of the Podcasting Masters. He's now the VP of Podcast Relations at Captivate. He's consulted for major shows I'm sure you've listened to, and he's creator and a podcaster in his own right. It's great to have you here, Rob. Did I miss anything?
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Rob Walch
No. I've been podcasting since 2004. I've been full time in the podcast industry since April 1, 2005. So this has been my full time job for 21 plus years.
- [03:10]
Aaron
Well, thanks, Rob. You definitely bring that perspective here and we're glad to have you. If anyone's going to help us figure out what's going on with podcasting, it's you. And we're really happy to have you here.
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Melissa
All right, well, let's start with this.
- [03:22]
Aaron
Is podcasting played out to the point where AI can just come in and take over everything? Well, no, actually, it's thriving. According to Edison Research, monthly podcast consumption now reaches 58% of Americans age 12 and above in the U.S. advertising revenue for podcasts, all podcasts, not our show specifically, officially surpassed $2 billion in 2024 and then jumped up from there in 2025. That's serious business. So that means the audience is there, the appetite's there, people want podcasts, revenue and trend lines are going up.
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Melissa
Hooray.
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Aaron
But the challenge is that when a business takes off, success fundamentally changes the medium. These days, you can't just put up a podcast and hope people find it.
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Melissa
That's why we're on Spotify, Apple, Podcasts, and everywhere else.
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Aaron
You can get podcasts now, including YouTube, because there are over a billion YouTube viewers who watch podcasts every month. Across the industry, podcast platforms are going video first. We don't have a Netflix deal yet,
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Melissa
but if you scroll through Netflix, you'll
- [04:22]
Aaron
see an entire category dedicated to podcast programming. So if you have a podcast and you don't do video, you're missing out
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Melissa
on at least some of your audience,
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Aaron
but not all of it. According to Cumulus Media and Signal Hill insights, 58% of audiences still prefer audio over video. So at least for now, a podcast is still a legitimate podcast. If it's audio, video, or both.
- [04:42]
Melissa
That's a little complicated, but it's good news for creators.
- [04:45]
Aaron
But in other news, AI podcasts. On May 21, Spotify unveiled a feature called Personal Podcasts, which is exactly what it sounds like. With the help of AI, Spotify users can now generate recurring podcasts tailored to
- [04:59]
Melissa
anything they want, no creator needed. So we're at this weird crossroads of
- [05:04]
Aaron
audio, video, Netflix, AI. We what's going to happen to the podcast industry because we want to keep
- [05:11]
Melissa
bringing you this show. We've got to figure this out quick. Chino, let's start with you.
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Aaron
Gut reaction.
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Melissa
What did you, what did you think
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Aaron
when you first heard about Spotify's announcement about everyone can do their or their own AI podcast now?
- [05:23]
Chino
You know, when you look back even a year ago, and I use LinkedIn as a great barometer for this, right. You now can really tell when someone is using AI and you kind of refer to this AI AI slop that we keep getting. And quite frankly, I'm getting tired of it. I've stopped posting on LinkedIn because I didn't want to add to this AI, you know, dumpster fire that is, that is happening, to be frank. And so my gut reaction is, ah, not another AI slot machine. Because I think, you know what's great about having podcasts that are content and creator led is, is the fact that we can hear different voices. I also don't like the sound of a robot, so I was also very curious as to like, who is going to be sharing the podcast. What is that going to even sound like? Is it going to sound like a robot speaking to me? Because again, personally, I'm tired of the AI slop. So I think it's a great thought in theory. I'm not sure how the execution is going to be and what their customer and the demographic of people who are actually going to be using this AI generated podcast. So I have a few questions there that Rob, I'd love to talk to you about, but that's my first initial thought.
- [06:39]
We Fixed It Show Host
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- [07:40]
Aaron
Yeah, some of those AI voices have gotten pretty good, but we'll go back to that. Rob, AI is everywhere. Everything, every industry. You can throw yourself into a tailspin about it. We'll what, let's go back. What was the last big innovation in podcasting and the last one before that?
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Rob Walch
Well, there's been a lot of innovations throughout time. Most of them had to do with distribution. If you go back, it was, how do you even find a podcast? Because prior to 2005, June of 2005, there were a bunch of podcasts that were starting up, but there was no central directory. And Apple addressed that with iTunes. Two years later, the iPhone came out. That started the whole Internet in your pocket trend. But I think that, you know, one of the biggest inflection points where we really saw the biggest change was when iOS8 came out and made the Apple podcast app native. And people go, what's this purple icon? And how come I can't delete it off my iPhone? That really was really where it took off. And I know a lot of people think, oh, the serial was where podcasting took off. Serial came out a couple months later and was took advantage of that. But if you actually looked a year after iOS 8 came out, all the gains in podcast consumption were iOS Android actually went down. The amount of consumption went down because Google had just killed off. Google was one of their original Google ways to get audio. And so they had killed that off in the summer before iOS 8. So a year later, games are all on iOS, not on Android. That tells you it was iOS 8 that really that podcast app. So that was one big one. Then there was some slow ones over the next 10 years where Spotify came out with a directory. Basically all the major music services. So Deezer, Ghana, Geosavin, Boomplay all added podcast directories. So now any place someone listens to audio, they can find podcasts. And that really helped the IAB coming out with what is a download. In 2019, late 2018, having that defined really helped the monetization of podcasting. And so that was a big help. And then shortly after that, some of the tracking pixels and prefixes for tracking as well, for helping advertisers feel a little bit better. So those are the big things that have changed over the time. How you record a podcast has become a lot easier right now. Riverside, what we're on, and streamyard and other services like that, even Google, you know, Google Rooms or Microsoft Teams, none of that was available in 2000. We used Skype and we recorded audio out of Skype on a. On a mixer into a physical device. That was how we recorded 20 plus years ago. So, you know, those are what I see as trends. But I will say this video has always been part of podcasting. It's been there since the beginning. And some of the biggest podcasts early on were video, Tiki Bar, TV Rocket Boom, Hot for Words, Chad Vader. These were early podcasts that were on video that did really well. But. But then YouTube won video and ultimately, while the video was still available, everyone just went to YouTube for video.
- [11:08]
Aaron
It's interesting you say that because it seems, you know, that video came somewhere along the way. Like, like when I was talking about the innovations or the milestones or the evolutions of podcasting. It seems like video is somewhere in there, you know, the distribution, and then it goes to video. And now we're going video first.
- [11:27]
Windows 11 Student Offer Announcer
So.
- [11:27]
Aaron
But you're saying video was early days, early pioneers.
- [11:30]
Rob Walch
In 2005, 2006, the biggest podcast you looked at the top 200. It was almost 50, 50 audio versus video.
- [11:37]
Aaron
Wow.
- [11:38]
Rob Walch
And then slowly YouTube won video and itunes really became. And Apple podcasts became where you went for audio. And it, it became to the point where when if you launched a video podcast and an Audio, you know, two different RSS feeds, you would see 20 to 1 audio consumption versus video for your RSS feeds. And that was because people in itunes that chose audio and just. There's just more time in the day to consume audio, plus people that want to consume video. Going to YouTube, you know, I have
- [12:11]
Melissa (CX Champion)
an opinion, but hit it, you know. Well, I think that there are so many operational alignments and, you know, it really is a very interesting time right now for podcasters and creators because you're really facing where you need to build it, like a small media empire or company. I feel for Aaron here, who helps us sound and look good every week. You gotta manage all the video versions, the clips, the thumbnails, the distribution, the community analytics plan. Platform specific packaging, all of these things to really get to a podcast audience. And I think in today's world, we're seeing that the business side of this is becoming so demanding, including advertising and who you're managed by and how you, you know, if you're using Riverside, what the tools are you, you are using. So it just keeps climbing in complexity. And so really, our creator stories and podcast stories are really starting to become more operationally driven. You know that the that win are often the ones that can really do that. Well, they can publish timeliness that, you know, they repackage themselves. They really make their feeds through multiple channels like YouTube, as well as through, you know, the podcast versions of their universe and ecosystem. So those are the things that we are under pressure to do. And at the same time, you know, when we think about AI and podcasting, one thing that I really think about is the audience, right? And if we think about how podcasting has become such a prevalent and really important outlet of information in all arenas. So it is news, it is sports, it is culture, it is people, it's current events. It's fascinating, you know, how tos, it's fixing things like what we do every week. It's really an interesting idea that Spotify wants to do this because in a world of unlimited content, I feel like the best listener experience really feels curated. So can they use that in a way to create something that is relevant to me? Yes. Would I still want to hear our voices, you know, on the podcast? Of course I would. And our opinions. But I think that there's a way where AI could help to curate your morning feed.
- [14:52]
Chino
Right.
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Melissa (CX Champion)
This is your morning drive podcast list, and it's gonna include the top highlights of what happened overnight. It's gonna give you a traffic report. It's gonna give you your little, you know, I'm all into the murder mystery, you know, so gonna give you the serial latest download of murders first, whatever it might be. And then, you know, it's. It's actually kind of a different way of radio, you know, like, I feel like radio has kind of gone out of style, so to speak. Like, I know people used to spend a lot of time in their cars listening to radio, and then Sirius came along and satellite radio, and you're. Again, it's curating that for you. So I guess I'd love to see AI help that way. I don't know that I actually want to see it. As Chino said, like, if that AI slop of, like, kind of dumbing down a podcast, you. I Mean, how do I trust what they're saying? I mean, I even am careful about how we use AI when we're prepping a podcast to understand background content information. So, Rob, what are some of your watch outs when you think about like AI being, you know, kind of coming into this space? Cause AI is everywhere. So we have to at least acknowledge that.
- [16:11]
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- [16:12]
Rob Walch
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- [16:15]
Priceline Announcer
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- [16:40]
Indeed Sponsored Jobs Announcer
Priceline.
- [16:41]
Rob Walch
So I put AI kind of in three buckets. One is the AI tools that can help podcasters, help them research, help them doing the editing. The post production. There's a new service called pipbl. It's spelled P I B B L. I think it's get the right URL here, P I B B L.net and that connects to your RSS feed. So when you release an episode, it then goes and it looks at the episode and it figures out what should be some clips and shorts and posts and it puts it posts up on, on LinkedIn and on Blue sky and threads and other social media places that are out there. So that takes care of that post production work that you've talked about. So again, AI is a tool to help humans create content. All for it. Thumbs up, build the data centers as fast as you can. Right. Just not in my backyard. But, but go ahead. And you know, that's great. Then there's the AI slop that's going in. And those are the ones that are being literally, in the last month, there's been more new podcasts that are AI generated than human generated. And that's really sad. And these companies are doing it for nefarious, in my opinion, nefarious reasons. They're creating the content, hoping that people will stumble upon it, thinking it was something else and get a few downloads. They're going to roll out thousands of shows, and thousands of shows with hundreds of downloads means hundreds of thousands of downloads, and they're going to make some money, which ultimately means the ROI for advertising goes down. So all of us who are trying to make money as humans get a lower cpm. That's no different than people shoplifting and you as a consumer having to pay more. Well, when these AI content comes out, that means we get paid less. I don't like AI slop for that reason. I think that hurts the community and I don't like the reasons why people are doing it. Then the third bucket is what Spotify is doing curated for a human by that human created content to help them with their day. Right. More time in the day to consume audio than anything else. Well, if someone is really busy and they go into Spotify and say, hey, give me the top three highlights on Ms. Now last night, or the top three on Fox and give me the top scores for my, the NFL or anything that was breaking any trades that happened. And then tell me about the weather for Nashville and tell me about any concerts that are coming up in the next year that have been announced in the last week. And then you get in the car and you play that and it gives you boom, boom, boom. It's no different than creating some blog lists, you know, in the days and now you don't have to read it, you can listen to it. And I think that's fine. I think it'll have its place. But as Spotify said, it's short audio, it's not long audio. It's not going to get you through your commute. And on top of that, you have to pay, you have to be a premium user and you only have so many tokens, so you can't do a lot of it. So it's not going to, it's not going to take away or steal time from someone else's podcast for the most part. I think it's going to take a little bit of someone's time in the day. The beginning, they're going to listen to that and then they're going to go off and they're going to listen to a hardcore history or they're going to go listen to whatever, you know, revolutions podcast, whatever it is that they were going to listen to anyway. So I'm okay with that.
- [20:12]
Aaron
That's the hope. And you might even rod the way you're saying, you might even build an appetite for a podcast audience and create an AI tool that leaves everyone just a little unsatisfied where they now they want the actual content. And it's a stepping stone or it bridges the gap between, you know, a few minutes here and there. But is that, you know, I have to ask, is that just because the technology limitations where, you know, compute credits are expensive right now and, and It's a rudimentary technology compared to where it could be. If you could create long form content that's fully immersive and engaging and you can do it all day long and the costs are cheap. Like is this just the start of something? Or they Spotify companies. I've said this before, but companies don't, aren't known for restraint. So is Spotify going to keep it at these small bite sized bits of content or are they going to say, look, this is a huge success, let's double down and put everything toward this new endeavor?
- [21:08]
Rob Walch
I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think it's going to replace. I still believe that most humans are going to want to have a podcast they can talk about. I like the all in podcast and I'll talk to some friends about it who will listen to it, but I can't do that for my own personalized podcast. I can't recommend it to somebody. Here's the thing about AI slop. No one's going to recommend to their friend to go listen to an AI generated podcast because they're going to be embarrassed that they're actually listening to it. So they're not going to want other people to know that, hey, go listen to this history podcast with this voice that sounds just like the voice in the burner ads or the Pratt, you know, the guy that's running for mayor in la, his ads. Yeah, it's the same voice. Don't worry about it. You're not going to recommend that? I just, I wouldn't recommend that. I wouldn't recommend a podcast to somebody that didn't have human hosts.
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Melissa (CX Champion)
Well, I love what you're saying there because I do feel like creator and human led shows survive by leaning into what AI cannot easily fake.
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Chino
Right?
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Melissa (CX Champion)
So that is, we have perspective, we have taste, hopefully relationships, lived experiences and stories that we're sharing and credibility. And Rob, you've kind of brought up. This kind of more long view is also useful to look at historically because podcast as a medium has changed and evolved over time and we've already survived different format shifts, you know, the video, all of these kinds of things from, you know, Download first to YouTube versus, you know, audio first, whatever it might look like. So that is a really interesting point. And that's probably the winning strategy, right? That we can't necessarily maybe be AI at scale, right. Because it's so, you know, it's prevalent everywhere, but we can outperform AI at connection to the audience. And I think that's what's important. And I think Chino, you've mentioned it about a bit before is you can tell AI slop when you see it or hear it or feel it or you know, and it is missing that connection. And I think that's something that's really important here.
- [23:28]
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- [23:34]
Aaron
Hey, Meta, where's the nearest metro station? Closest metro to you is Union Square,
- [23:38]
Rob Walch
about three blocks away.
- [23:39]
Aaron
Hey, Meda, text mom, I'm getting on the train now.
- [23:42]
Chino
Sending message.
- [23:42]
Ray-Ban Meta Glasses Announcer
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- [23:59]
Chino
Yeah, and kind of going back to this idea of Spotify curating, you know, a little mini newscast for you, right. To start your day. I think again, as you said, Rob, really hard to share maybe my interest on a day to day again. I'm in Toronto. Aaron, Melissa, Rob, you don't want to hear what the weather is like in Toronto, I don't think. And whatever the musical taste that I might have based on what I'm already listening to, I would love that. I wouldn't mind you telling me, hey, this person is in concert, their tickets have gone up. Great way to do that. Here's a pre sale code, just so you know, like a little five, ten minute. I think that in the same way if we go back to like Alexa and the Google Play and that being involved and I remember when it was first introduced again, it's a language learning model. They're listening to what you're, you're, you're talking about. They're learning about what your interests are and you could curate kind of, you know, hey Alexa, tell me about my day, right where it's hey, Spotify, give me a little inside scoop on interest that I'm looking at. Great. I think those smart, smaller tidbit tidbits would be great. But the challenge I would say again, going back to longer form or with the human connection is that you can never replace what we're going to do. And hot takes are something we do quite often on our podcast. And I have another hot take. I don't think it'll ever really be longer form because then that does what replace the news. And you know what, Spotify is one giant somewhere and sure, radio has died and you've seen a lot of radio stations Die news stations have become very powerful entities on their own. I don't think they would allow Spotify to take over what people consume as news. And we've, again, wherever way you lean politically, that is a big piece I don't think that those stations are going to let go of. And so I think, yes, there's the appetite for AI that I don't think is really there in terms of the connection and hot takes like that. But also I think that there are other players and industries that are probably going to cut it a little bit short or get ahead for lobbying against Spotify, really curating longer things, not just for podcasters like us who have vested interest in not having AI take over, but for other news sources and other media where they're also looking at AI and saying, please don't take our whole industry as well.
- [26:42]
Aaron
Well, I'm not, I'm not mad at Spotify for, for trying it or going into the space. You know, it would be probably irresponsible if they didn't try to make inroads with AI right now. They have to. And, and you know, we need them as a platform. If they told all us humans to go away. We're all AI podcasts now. We lose out on a big distribution of our audience. And they need us for now because if they, you know, they still want shows that have people behind the scenes putting effort in production and, and work and thought and engagement into what the shows are like besides just spinning something up.
- [27:19]
Melissa
They, they need us.
- [27:20]
Aaron
They can't just be all AI all the time. So it's. We have this very interesting symbiotic relationship. But again, I'm not mad at them for creating a new category or furthering a new category called AI Podcast or figuring out what that means, because we're all kind of, you know, still figuring AI out. So I'm not putting them on blast by any means. I just, I just think it's really, it's a very interesting heightened moment in time. And we're seeing pushback in Hollywood. You know, people are saying, well, no, don't replace us with AI actors. And, you know, we'll use CGI and production tools and things like that. But the minute AI becomes the creator. No, but maybe it's happening, Rob. But I'm not hearing the same kind of pushback from podcasts or podcasters, the industry. Not quite yet. Everyone's just. The way I'm seeing is kind of a wait and see.
- [28:10]
Rob Walch
There are some vocal podcasts, there are some podcasters that are about Podcasting that are, you know, very. The anti AI slop. And, and I understand, you know, and I am very anti AI slop because of the financial impact and other things. Again, most of that doesn't generate any real audience, but it generates enough that it makes a difference. But I, I'm not worried about them as a competitor to my podcast. I'm more worried about them as driving down the CPM rates that I can generate for my podcast. And, you know, and I think Spotify calling AI podcast, the personalized podcast, I think is just them playing on the term podcast. It's not a podcast. And, you know, we, I think we're going to talk about the definition of a podcast. I, I've had the same definition of a podcast for a long time and it hasn't changed and it's not going to change. And it's audio or video content delivered by RSS feed that's available in Apple podcasts. And that's been my definition of a podcast from day one, pretty much. And it used to be itunes. But the reason I say it in Apple podcasts is because Apple podcast directory feeds 400 plus other apps directories. So if you're not in Apple podcasts, then you're not in Overcast and you're not in Pocket cast. You're not in a bunch of other apps. So if you really want to be out there fully distributed, which you should be, you should be everywhere, right? Your podcast should be Everywhere. You mentioned YouTube. You should also be on Rumble because If you're on YouTube and it's a big part of your, your audience and you get three strikes, you're gone and you've lose, lost your audience. And I've seen people lose their audience on YouTube. A sports podcast that was about Ohio State football got three strikes in a short period of time and he couldn't get back. Why? Because some Michigan fan was complaining about his podcast and it was not even a legit complaint. You always want to make sure if your video first that you also are in Rumble. Now, you make your video available via Apple HLS and Spotify video. If you're audio first. Yeah. Have a, have a version of your podcast over on, on YouTube. YouTube. You can take the RSS feed, drop it there. It'll convert the audio to video and put it in there and be everywhere. But you want to also be on Ghana, Geosavin and boomplay and all the other directories, Iheart and Odyssey and Amazon Music and so on. Be everywhere. And then you'll be protected. And that's to me, that's a podcast when you're everywhere, but when it's just one place, then it's a Netflix show or it's a YouTube video, but it's not a podcast.
- [30:44]
Aaron
But does Netflix having an entire podcast category, does that change the definition of a podcast? Or is it just them capitalizing on a moment in a trend and then they'll be on to the next thing,
- [30:56]
Rob Walch
just them grabbing onto the name. Yeah, and it's just a few. I mean, it's just a few podcasts, right? It's only really few ones.
- [31:02]
Aaron
Yeah.
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Rob Walch
I mean, the reality is in podcasting, if you take the top 200 podcasts, the quote unquote podcasts that are in YouTube, take them out of the picture. The majority of podcasts are lucky to get 2 to 3% of their audience over on YouTube.
- [31:16]
Melissa (CX Champion)
Interesting.
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Aaron
Yeah.
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Melissa (CX Champion)
No, well, I was just also, you know, again, going back to the audience, that's always my perspective is like thinking about that. But how do they know now how to. Who to trust is is my question, Rob, because, like, even though Spotify's new personal podcast feature shows, you know, just a really quick snapshot, synthetic, individualized audio, but this could scale and it could become something bigger. And how does the audience trust and know, you know, the differentiating signals that are needed? I mean, obviously human connection is one of them, but, you know, we've seen it. They have AI generated actors and actresses and songwriters and songs and things like that. And so now they have podcasts. So do we think that there's going to be a point where this trust won't matter?
- [32:10]
UPS Store Announcer
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- [32:38]
Rob Walch
There was a survey. One company did a survey. Smith or Smythe OS or Smith OS, however they pronounce it. And they found 52% of people users disengaged from content once they found out it was AI. So, you know, having it labeled correctly is one thing. So people go into it knowing, but if it's not labeled and people realize, hey, what I'm watching or listening to is AI, they tend to disengage. You've probably all seen the videos where this big Rottweiler or a big dog is there, and a little Chihuahua comes up and barks at it and scares it and jumps up on the couch. And then as you realize, hey, just jump through the sofa, that's not real. It's AI. And you move on to the next thing, you're like, oh, that would have been cute if it was real. But because it's AI, I don't really care about it. Or there's the. You know, they'll have the heartwarming one where someone reaches into a well and pulls a kid out and saves this kid. And then you find out, oh, it's AI. And you're like, okay, I want. I want a heartwarming story to be real, right? You want that? And you ask, well, how's the trust come?
- [33:42]
Aaron
It's earned.
- [33:42]
Rob Walch
It's earned over time. It's not given. It's earned over time. And AI especially is known for hallucinations. AI will just make up facts.
- [33:52]
Google Chrome Announcer
You.
- [33:52]
Rob Walch
You can. Any of the AIs, you can ask it something, and it'll have some facts come out, and every now and then you'll find one that's wrong, and you'll call it on it, and you go, where did that come from? And then it'll go, I don't know. I found it somewhere. Maybe I was wrong. And it'll just. You call it out and it'll. I just made that up is basically what it says.
- [34:11]
Aaron
Well, yes, for sure. There's hallucinations. And that probably would happen in audio podcasts, too, that you generate for yourself. It'll just start, you know, going off in a direction that you didn't expect. But you said trust over time. We, you know, as. As our own show, we've. We've tried and worked very hard to earn audience trust over time and to grow one listener at a time and grow up the go. Go up the charts and grow our user base and get to distribution and all those things. But, you know, in addition to all the competitive. We'll call them competitors or replacements or, or it's just something. Something to do in between shows. But you also have. It's one of the only industries where a celebrity, a known entity can just kind of walk in and say, I do this now. You know, and they. And. And they take a bite out of everything, too. So they. They can't come in and say, I'm a surgeon now, or, I'm an attorney now. They can say, oh, I'm a podcaster now, and people throw money at them. So that's another complexity here.
- [35:04]
Rob Walch
Do know this. Just because you're celebrity doesn't mean your podcast is going to be successful there. I've seen many celebrity podcasts that, well, underperformed where I thought they would have. And, you know, people are like, oh, well, Joe Rogan's biggest podcast because he was a celebrity. Well, when Joe started, he was barely a celebrity. And he's gone up against other A list celebrities and just kick their butt. Right. So, you know, no celebrity has done what Joe's done. Nobody, Everybody's an order of magnitude below Joe. And there's a lot of A list celebrities that have tried podcasting and completely failed at it. The ones that have done well were in it for the long haul. And that's what Joe was, and that's what others have been. You know, the Kelsey's Brothers, their podcast was going along and it was doing well, but it didn't go to the next level until he brought a bigger celebrity into his family. Taylor Swift.
- [36:03]
Chino
Right.
- [36:03]
Rob Walch
And that helped that take off. And, you know, so there is some celebrity thing. But the thing is, if the Kelsey brothers podcast wasn't good, it would have been a spike, not a plateau. A lot of celebrities I've seen over the years, I don't want to name names, but there's been some that I would call borderline A list, B list, definitely be less A listers that couldn't get more than 2,000 downloads an episode. And. And I was just like, man, I would have thought this person would have done better. And they just.
- [36:33]
Aaron
You.
- [36:33]
Rob Walch
When you listen to the show, you could tell it was something someone told them to do, not something they wanted to do.
- [36:38]
Chino
And I think this goes back into the building the trust and organically growing your audience base. Right. Like for us, Aaron, Sure. Throw a celebrity there, make as much money as you can so that it actually hopefully drives up the sales and, you know, the ad. Ad buys on podcasts, and it helps that versus when we look at the AI side of things. I think, Rob, you talk about kind of, you know, thousands of little tiny things. And yes, people lose interest the second you realize that it's AI Legally, you need to start sharing that, you know, this content is AI, which is great and it'll be helpful. And where I'm curious with Spotify and their AI is how soon do they share that? Is that at the beginning of the Spotify AI, or will it be at the end? Because what we don't want to happen is for them to, you know, maybe it is only 10 seconds, but if there's a hundred thousands of that. And you know
- [37:42]
Rob Walch
the personal podcast that Spotify rolled out and announced in May, rolled out this month, that only goes into your playlist, nobody else sees it. So you know it's AI because you, you had to give it the prompts. And that's another thing why that may not be as big as people think. People are just lazy. They're not going to take the time to learn to put the prompts in to create it. They still have to do that beyond the tokens and having to be a premium user. So that's there. YouTube just announced on their side that if it's AI generated content, they now have AI bots looking at the content and they determine it's AI generated content. They are labeling it AI content right below. For long form content, right below the play button and above the description. And for short form content, they're floating a watermark on it, saying it's AI generated. And you can fight that, but you don't have to go through the appeals process. You can just go into your studio in YouTube and say, no, this wasn't AI generated. Unless you used YouTube's tools to create the AI generated content, in which case they super glue that. And so kudos to YouTube. They're doing the right thing. They're saying, hey, we know this was AI generated content. You used our tools. You cannot take that tag off. And if it's in the metadata tags, that's saying that it was AI generated. It'll also put super glue that, that tag in there. But unfortunately, people now that they know that's how they're going to look for it. People that are want to get around it or just put in the tags. This is human, human generated content.
- [39:19]
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- [39:52]
Melissa (CX Champion)
that trust layer, like you say, Rob, is really important. And I think that's something for, you know, podcasters to think about. Like, how do you build a trust layer into your show? Because any AI generated audio, that then becomes something that is more Common or can be used in other places. Just does need to have some sort of visible trust cues. Just like what YouTube is doing and what you see on social media, you know, when it says this looks to be an AI generated video clip or whatever and allow the person to kind of source that credibility and kind of feel a stronger connection, a decision making. Thinking of whether I'm going to, you know, absorb that and, and listen to the rest of the podcast or I'm gonna, you know, or I'm going to stop watching that video because, you know, I'm not interested in AI generated videos. You could be like me, I like to go in and block them. I don't, I just, it, it just bothers me that there's so many of those out there. But it does help to lessen the confusion. But also it gives you more confidence that you know what's real out there. And I guess my, I wonder still, like with all this AI generated information that's going to be blasted at us, you know, is that trust is so important in our world today. And it seems to me that that continues to be kind of the foundational basics for a podcast is that you need to be able to share like when, you know, I loved what you said, Rob, that there are three, you know, AI buckets, right. For podcasters. And I think that's great to share that.
- [41:37]
Chino
Right.
- [41:38]
Melissa (CX Champion)
I think that's transparency is necessary, but I also think where it gets messed up is when people have other reasons and they don't share it and it goes out there. So I'm glad that like the Spotify is kind of dipping their toe in the water. It's not a full fledged, you know, they're just dropping a bunch of podcasts. It's more personalized but you feel, feel like that's what's going to be coming later. Right.
- [42:05]
Rob Walch
And I think a lot of the aggregator apps and places where you consume podcasts, I mean app on YouTube just announced they're doing it. I think all of them, Apple eventually and others are going to start scanning and saying, no, this is AI generated content. If you don't disclose it. There's a couple of apps have already, you know, have that available. I think Fountain app or one of the other apps recently announced they're going to do that as well. But I think ultimately the apps that do it best are going to be the ones that get used the most because it's going to be better user experience. So I think all of them have to do it and the ones that do it Best will will thrive.
- [42:43]
Chino
It goes back to my original point too, of, you know, when do they disclose that it's AI? They think it should be something done at the beginning so that if you are someone that has no tolerance for any AI slob, you're able to opt out. And I think that is something in terms of like a fix for Spotify to look at so that as you shared, Rob, they're doing it best so that people know exactly what they're consuming versus bad actors where they're doing it blindly and, you know, literally losing the trust from their audience.
- [43:16]
Rob Walch
I think advertisers are going to step in at some point too and say, hey, on their iOS, they're going to say, you know, we only want 100% HTC human generated content. That's all we want. And if, you know, and if there's a certain percent, if we audit and we find a certain percent went to AI content, you owe us back. You know, we claw back some money. I think advertisers will ultimately look at it and go, hey, the ROI is not there because it's not a real audience. It's not a trust. There's no to trust. Right. And now trustful audiences make purchases and advertisers know that. And so I think advertisers are going to have to step up at some point and really push the industry as well.
- [43:58]
Aaron
I hope so. But if you can make a thousand AI generated podcasts a minute for every, you know, creator generated podcast, are we going to have to flip it and start labeling what's, what's creator generated or what's human generated and just assume everything else we're engaging with is AI. Are we going to reach that point?
- [44:15]
Rob Walch
I think you, I think we should as podcasters, put that in there in our, just in our author tag and say this is human generated content.
- [44:23]
Aaron
Yeah.
- [44:23]
Rob Walch
And just start putting it out there so that when people start searching for that, you'll show up.
- [44:28]
Aaron
Yeah, it's really tricky. I, There's a, like a news roundup website that I go to and they clearly have at least one or two AI authors. And they have real authors too. You know, they have real articles and things, but they have one or two AI authors to sprinkle through their columnists and they, but you could, you just know. So having some kind of distinction to be able to guide through it, if they owned it and said, look, this, this per, this is a Persona, this is AI. These are our real, like, you can feel about that. However we, however you want. And you could say, I'm out of here. You know, you cross the line for me. You could say, well, I'm only going to engage with the human side of this. You say, who cares, AI, Bring it on. Whatever. Everyone's going to feel, however they feel about it. But having. But they didn't. For me, it's challenging because they don't make that distinction. They just kind of present them like another columnist. But you're saying put. Put guardrails and precautions on this so that you at least know. I mean, you know, if you're going to magic up a podcast for yourself with your name in it and it's got affirmations for yourself and, you know, the. Your own sports team scores with the way you feel about them, you know, it's AI. Like, there's no getting around that. There's no hamster running that for you. And so we know that for what it is. But there's those. Those kind of unfortunate gray areas that we're in where it's, you know, you just, you don't. It's uncanny. You don't quite know what you're. What you're engaging with. Maybe you would feel about it. You would distance yourself from it if you knew there was AI. And there's these. Like you said, Rob, maybe it's going to come from advertisers, maybe it's going to come from within the industry, setting their own standards and creating some unified front against, you know, this type of. The three buckets you talked about. Maybe we create the level of acceptability
- [46:12]
Melissa
as one bucket, but not the other two.
- [46:13]
Aaron
You know what I mean? Like, we're not there yet.
- [46:16]
Melissa (CX Champion)
Yeah. I also think that we. Our podcast is a great example of doubling down. What we should do is continue to double down on community and relationships. You know, one of the things that guests have always said to us that. That they love about coming onto our podcast is it feels like a conversation. It feels like we're sitting down and having a discussion, having a cup of coffee with someone that we're learning from, that we might trust. And that is the type of content that I think is. Really touches a person. Right. A human, that kind of relationship there. And I think that even though AI can help the medium, it can help in different ways. It can't replace that. And I do feel that you can tell, like you said, Aaron, you can tell when it's AI generated, even when it. When you prompt it to use a human, engaging script, it ends up being way too formal. It doesn't sound like all of us, we're talking over each other. So that's not AI generated.
- [47:24]
Chino
That's. That's just how we do it.
- [47:26]
Melissa (CX Champion)
We have technical difficulties a lot of the times, you know, things happen. And so I feel like having those spontaneity and having those types of things that are in our podcast and having the content be really about servicing the audience is really something that is important and something that we have to continue to really strive for, because the more we do that, we will grow loyalty. We'll have better word of mouth, which will. You know, when we started, I remember asking, asking Aaron, like, who care? Who would care about what we have to say? Right? And then look at us, you know, two seasons, three seasons later, you know, to be in the top five is. Is amazing. But it helps to build more of, like, a stronger moat around AI generated alternatives when you have a strong foundation of trust, community, and relationship. And so I really feel like that's what's important for podcasters today.
- [48:24]
Chino
And I think just leaning on that, too. Going back to your point too, Rob, about, you know, people can be a little bit lazy sometimes, right? You, maybe you. You put the prompt in at the beginning to test out Spotify podcast AI. Cool. I probably will, just to see what it's about to look at our competitors. But there needs to be an off ramp. I think that they also need to build in some form of a system or guardrail where people can say, okay, put this in here. Can you remind me that this is AI or you know what? Refresh maybe the topics? Because as we also know with AI, the challenge of the whole system and the language learning model is that it spews what you've given it to you. And so as people by nature, we're curious, we want to explore maybe different things. And I think that is actually a huge miss for Spotify if they don't put a check and balance in place to allow people to discover outside of what they initially shared. Because otherwise we've all been there. You might have prompted something in AI on Netflix, and you just keep getting the same, the exact same movie. And you're like, I want to try a horror this time. I'm not really into romance this week. Right. And so, you know, for Spotify and anyone looking at AI is putting those guard rails in place to get people to explore other outside of what they've initially prompted.
- [49:49]
Aaron
Yeah. Now, I love that you said that, you know, because I picture being at a restaurant where you order something and you really enjoy it and you tell everyone I Love it. And then the next day they bring you the same thing and they say, well, you love this. And then the next day they bring you the same. You're going to want to explore other options and you're going, sometimes at some point you're going to want to go off menu and go to a different restaurant. So, you know, we're probably going to find that familiarity with the AI generated content is good. You gave me everything I wanted, now I want something else. You know, I'm over it. So we'll see. But we do have to fix this. We have to fight. Well, I think we, maybe we made a case for our, our own relevancy. You know, we're not done yet. We want to keep this going. So Spotify, you know, we were, we're partnered with you one way or another. We don't replace your human creators with AI. You maybe you, maybe you've created a category, maybe you've created this viable little on ramp to podcast discovery for your creators and you probably keep it to, or what we're saying is keep it to short form, bite sized, digestible content and keep it to the, those personal engagement things. Maybe we're never going to cover your sports scores and your, you know, your meditation practice in the same podcast. That's not our show. So create those for your drive time. But then when you're done, roll over to a show like ours because we've got a lot to share and we're going to create a communal experience. You're just not going to get from AI as good as it is and as good as it can be because this technology is going to keep evolving. Those voices are pretty, they're pretty good. They're going to keep getting better, the capabilities are going to get better, the technology is going to get cheaper. It'll be easier to generate higher quality content with AI. Don't get rid of shows like ours because we, you know, at the end of the listeners are going to want what we have to offer probably more than the AI side of things. Well, I don't know if we widen our definition of podcasts to whatever Netflix does, to whatever videos do to, if they make a movie that's a podcast. Is that a podcast? I don't know. We'll just have to watch what it is. But Rob, I like your definition of, you know, the Apple Apple podcast because that is the RSS feed. That's the peak point of distribution for everywhere else. So if you're there, you're a podcast. If you're everywhere else Your podcast, the name podcast adjacent, and you're maybe leveraging the name, the category for your own purposes.
- [52:12]
We Fixed It Show Host
And let's just keep being creators and
- [52:14]
Aaron
putting out great, interesting content that only we can come up with. If we do that. Melissa, did we fix it at least more better than we started this?
- [52:25]
Melissa (CX Champion)
I think we've identified fixes and I think that's what's really important is because this is obviously very new, AI is not. And so I really love, love what you've shared, Aaron. I think those are definitely on target. I think we want to continue to build community and trust. And I think that, you know, the relevancy of podcasts are that it's these unfiltered conversations and opinions, and I love that. And I think that I, you know, I'm a CX champion and I know that personalization and responsiveness is the number one thing in cx. But what I fear with something like the Spotify podcast is that you're personalized to your biases and in your prompts, like the way you're, you know, like you may say, I only want to hear Fox News updates.
- [53:17]
Chino
Right.
- [53:17]
Melissa (CX Champion)
Which is only one side of the story as well. As if you just say, I only want to hear from the BBC, that's only one side of the story as well. So to me, I think there should be some safeguards there or recommendations, right? Like, hey, you know, yesterday morning I gave you the perspective from CBS. Today, I'd love to give you the perspective from nvc, whatever. So I do think that there is ways for us to engage with the tool in very smart ways, which, Rob, you've already shared and I love that and I think we should go full throttle in that, in that aspect. But I think podcast as a medium, and I just love what we're able to do every week is talk about fixing a hot topic. I think those podcasts aren't going to go away.
- [54:09]
Aaron
All right, thanks, Melissa. Gino, did we fix it?
- [54:12]
Chino
I think we gave some suggestions on fixing it.
- [54:15]
Melissa (CX Champion)
Right.
- [54:17]
Chino
I think one of the big themes here is trust and human generated content is what can help organically build trust. I think advertisers, I think other industries will need to look at it from a, you know, do you want to put your money in places that people are less engaged? And I think that will be a guardrail. There needs to be an off ramp so that people can explore new content and pieces of information. And I do think that if we can maybe start a pledge, maybe we're starting it here on the fix it podcast. You know, we should all have a human generated content as part of our messaging and really double down on that because that is what builds the trust, right? We can all talk to a robot. I've watched a video of a robot kicking a kid. I wouldn't put my kid with a robot. So we really do need to double down on the HGCs.
- [55:20]
Aaron
Sounds good. I'll take that pledge. Thanks, Chino. Rob, last word. Did. Did we get to stick around? Did we fix the situation a little bit better?
- [55:28]
Rob Walch
I. I think the fixes are coming. I think we identified the fixes. I think if you're a podcaster, you should. One of the fixes is keep on podcasting. And if you're someone who's thinking about podcasting, start podcasting. I think that's part of the fix. This is a strange thing, but people like other people and people like analog, right? The vinyl records. Most people have bought, bought music in the last year probably bought vinyl, not digital. So people like analog people like other people. I think there's still a place for humans to entertain other humans, and I don't think that's going away anytime soon.
- [56:06]
Aaron
Oh, thank goodness. Well, that's going to do it for this episode of We Fixed It. You're welcome. Before we wind down, I want to give a big thanks to podcasting expert Rob Walsh for being here with us. Rob, how can we all keep up with what you're doing?
- [56:19]
Rob Walch
You can go to podcast411.com that's my personal podcast. But you can also find me in, in and around podcasting with my co host, Elsie Escobar. Every other week we release new episodes and you can reach out to me. I always make myself very available. Rob Walch W A l c h@global.com so rob.walsh global.com Fantastic.
- [56:44]
Aaron
Thanks again, Rob. Thank you, Chino. Thank you, Melissa. If AI doesn't come for our show in the next week, we will be back with a new episode created by humans, AKA us. You've got a week till then. So if you decide to try Spotify's personal podcast feature, let us know what you think. We're interested. You can reach us at we fixeditpod.com if you'd rather leave the podcast to us, great. You can catch our past episodes on our website too. We fixed it pod.com if you love our show and you haven't told enough people about it yet, go do it now. Tell enough people. And whether you call it a podcast or not, we might just get that Netflix deal and we will see you next time.
- [57:20]
We Fixed It Show Host
We hope you enjoyed this episode of We Fixed It. You're welcome. We go into every episode somewhat cold and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice, or anything that would get us in trouble. All trademarks, IP and brand elements remain property of their respective owners.
- [57:35]
Melissa (CX Champion)
Owners.
- [57:38]
Google Chrome Announcer
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