Future of Podcasting: Daniel and Dave's 2025 Wishlist

Our biggest wishes for 2025.

This is the future of Podcasting, where.

We ponder what awaits the podcasters of today.

From the school of podcasting, here's Dave Jackson.

And from the Audacity to Podcast, here's Daniel J.

Lewis.

Daniel, future of podcasting.

Episode number 55, Happy New Year.

It's our biggest wishes for 2025.

It's a new year.

We've got new hopes, new dreams, new things to.

And so I know, I guess it was last year we talked about our.

Our biggest hopes for 2024.

It wasn't a prediction show, it was a hope show.

And so this year we thought we would pick just.

If you could only have one, what would be your biggest hope, your biggest wish?

If you had a whole team of developers and they could only work on one thing, what would you have them work on?

Yeah, because there's so much being developed right now, and I understand there is some frustration among the community right now because there are lots of little things being discussed, lots of little features, lots of other things being talked about and experimented with and problems trying to be solved and certain things being played with and certain new ideas being developed.

There's a lot of stuff going on.

So this isn't to downplay any of that, that there is momentum, there is stuff moving.

But what if.

What if we could all unify around one or two features?

And even for this episode, what is our one feature?

Like, my one feature and your one feature, Dave, and you listening right now, what would be the one thing you would want too?

Now, your ability to respond to that kind of depends on one of these two things that we're going to share as well.

Yeah, that is true.

And I get it.

We're a bunch of nerds and are creative, so it's really easy for us to just scamper off.

And there are times when, like you said, I know there are times I'm a little frustrated because it's like we have a hundred peanuts and we're all pushing them, like a centimeter each.

There's part of me, and then I feel like I'm selfish.

I'm like, but I want my thing.

I feel like I'm in.

What was the bad girl in Willy Wonka?

You know, I want it now, Daddy.

You know, but if we could just pick one peanut and move it a mile, you know, I think in a way we might feel like we're accomplishing more because we are.

Like you said, we are moving forward.

We're moving 100 peanuts at a time instead of four peanuts a mile.

And we have two things we're going to talk about.

Daniel, I will let you have the floor First.

My big thing that I would love to see happen in 2025 is finally cross app comments.

The reason for this is I'm now looking aggressively at every proposal and discussion point and idea that comes in with podcasting 2.0.

And there are so many good ideas.

I love it.

I love the creativity.

With every new idea that comes in, I think, how does this benefit the audience?

Because that's what we really, really need to focus on.

For the audience to want to use a different podcast app, there has to be a benefit to them, not a benefit to the podcaster.

Not some little data thing that's just a super niche sort of need.

But there needs to be a big benefit to the podcaster that they think, yes, I am so willing to switch podcast apps because I want this other thing and I would love to see that be cross app comments.

And I think it is something that benefits everyone, really.

It is of benefit to the audiences and it's also of benefit to the podcasters because it is that engagement.

So, again, cross app comments is the idea.

I'll give some implementation examples in a minute.

But it's the idea that you can use whatever podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast app to consume a podcast.

And there would be a comment field where you could post a comment in there and read comments from others who are using the same or different podcast apps.

So that's where it's cross app comments.

It's comments across the different apps out there.

It doesn't matter which app you're using.

You can still participate in the conversation with the podcasters as well as other people in the community listening to the same episodes.

Because that is where so much happens.

Like, Dave, you see this every Saturday morning.

What happens in the chat room while you're doing Ask the podcast coach.

Yeah, a giant chat that many times is having their own show.

Like, I'm talking about topic A and I look over in the chat room has gone into topic B and C.

But the beauty of it is, and that's one of the reasons why I still do that show, is I'm getting instant feedback.

And in the case of across a comment, I mean, those are live.

And yeah, I can go back and have YouTube play them, but the fact that I could not have to go to YouTube to see them and the fact that they're just kind of there and you can just go in and see them, I don't have to like scroll through, halfway through.

I could probably just have it there to do that.

That would be one of my questions.

Where are these comments going to live?

Because they got to be stored somewhere.

Yeah.

And there are multiple technical approaches that could be considered to that.

Like, we've talked about things like Activity Streams and Activity Pub.

There have been other proposals for different things.

Here's what I think it comes down to.

Technologically, we need something in the RSS feed.

And as I pointed out a while back, and also has been brought up again recently, there is already a comments tag for RSS feeds.

And what the comments tag is supposed to do is it points to the location of comments and that's it.

And there is no specification for how those comments are then formatted.

We could say in podcasting 2.0, maybe it's simply podcast colon, comments is the tag.

Maybe we hijack the comments tag.

But we could say that comments need to follow a particular structure, a data structure for it to be readable for the app.

Whether that's XML, GraphQL, JSON, anything like that, it doesn't really matter.

But it's something that the apps can use in something that's standard.

But we could go with that approach where it simply links to where those comments exist.

Then there is the issue of how do those comments get there?

And the ability for the podcaster to have moderation control over those comments, which is a very important thing without blocking someone.

Because there could be a case like a family friendly podcast and someone says, that's the bleeping funniest thing I've ever heard.

And they're just being genuine that they thought was hilarious.

But you as the podcaster think, ah, I don't want bleeping there in my comments because this is a family friendly podcast.

I don't want that profanity in the comments section.

So you might want to delete it, but you don't want to block that person from commenting because it's not like they're being abusive or they're attacking you or they're trolling, anything like that.

You just want to remove that comment.

And I think there might also be a good need for the audiences to be able to edit their comments to fix typos, correct things, update things as needed and such.

The editing, that's not necessarily as important, I think, but it would still be really good to be there.

But technologically all you need to do is whatever that comments tag is linking to could be essentially an index of, here's where all of the comments exist.

So just like an RSS feed is basically an index of audio or video files along with some metadata with each of those things, the comments feed for each episode and for the show overall could simply be that index of.

Here's where all of these comments are.

Now an interesting advantage to that is that it could then be easily multi platform where you could tie it in with bluesky or X or Mastodon or Activity Pub or your website or anything like that.

All it needs to be is that the data from whatever that platform is is accessible, freely accessible through some kind of API method so that that comment could be displayed in.

So imagine this, you could have some people commenting through Activity Pub, like en masse Dawn.

You could have some people commenting on your website, you could have some people commenting on some podcast apps.

Proprietary commenting system like GoodPods has a proprietary commenting system.

It could be anything like that.

Then all that needs to be done is that data needs to be exposed in a standard way and then each comment has an entry in that index file.

And then the podcast apps though would have to understand how to read each of those comments from those separate platforms.

You know, GoodPods might format their JSON data differently from how Activity Pub formats it.

That could be allowable as long as it's obvious which format it is.

And then the podcast apps can just support new things.

So there is that kind of method that does push more onto the app developers to build in support for, okay, now we need to support this new protocol that's supported in this.

But still the concept is that I really think the technology itself that we use should not matter so much as the accessibility, which is what's most important for the audience.

The audience should not have to create some account somewhere else outside of their podcast app.

I think everything they do should be right there inside their podcast app.

I even think they shouldn't have to have an account they log into with the podcast app.

They could comment anonymously or they wouldn't have to use a third party account like a Facebook or an X in order to log in to identify themselves.

They could just inside of the app identify themselves as they choose to, you know, fill in the blank fields of this is my name, this is my email address in order to identify me in the system or anything like that.

Kind of like we've had with WordPress comments and other commenting systems on websites for years.

We need to make it simple and easy for the audience to leave a comment, to read the comments and to respond to each other.

Because the other thing, Dave, I go to Ask the podcast coach on Saturday mornings for is the community?

Yeah, it's fun to watch you and Dave live and to chat a little bit with you, but it also just feels like, hey, I'm hanging out with some other podcasting friends because it's often the same couple dozen people or so in there.

So it's like, hey, good to see you again.

You know, happy Saturday.

Haven't seen you since last Saturday.

Or how'd that thing go that you tried since last week?

Anything like that, where the community is building around the content, and that's when you get the super fans, because you have made a tribe for them.

You have made a community for them to communicate with each other.

That's why I want Cross App comments to be that number one thing that we finally get working in 2025.

I know, and I will accept that I may not like the method or the technology or maybe the name of the tag or anything like that, but at this point, it's kind of like I just want to see it done, because this is something that everyone I've told that this could be a possibility.

They've been really excited about it, Both podcast consumers and podcasters.

We need to have this done.

It's taken so long.

I know Adam has bemoaned a couple times saying that basically it seems like the community's given up on it.

Whatever it takes.

If I need to be the one to spearhead this too, I take that on if I can.

But we need something, and I think this both benefits the audience and the podcasters, and it's what I would love to see happen in 2025.

If I could have nothing else in podcasting 2.0 developed, or just in the future of the development of podcasting as a whole industry.

If nothing else, I want this thing.

Cross App comments.

Yeah.

And I'd love to see it rolled out in a way.

And this kind of goes back to the Podcast Standards project instead of like, oh, this app has it.

And then three weeks later, this app has it.

And I'd love if we could somehow coordinate it to where we all launch together.

So all of a sudden it's like, hey, here are seven apps that if you are using these apps, you're going to see these comments, because I think that would create enough fear of missing out.

But like, wait a minute, I'm using Apple Podcasts.

What are these other.

How many?

Well, okay, maybe I'll go try this now.

I'm with you.

I think you then create your tribe.

The only thing you said that Made me scared is people posting anonymously because I know comments on WordPress are many times my.

I forget what I use Akismet, I think to find spam.

And there's always.

And it's marketers ruin everything.

So I could see them just creating a bot to leave comments on podcasts that all point to some website.

And I think there's more to be developed there that can help prevent that or to give more power to the podcaster.

Like the podcaster could decide, I do not want anonymous comments.

Some podcaster could decide, I know my podcast is sensitive.

I know that whether it's political, moral, whatever.

And so I'm going to be okay with people not identifying themselves because I want this to be a safe space for them to be able to comment anything like that.

Yeah.

So there are certainly lots of things to figure out, but it's the core that I think is what's most important and as I harp on frequently, is thinking about what will we want this to do later?

To make sure that we build a foundation now that we can build on later?

Yeah, anything we build now, we have to kind of go, will this work?

And I know technology changes all the time, but is this going to be, to the best of our knowledge, future proof that it's not going to shoot ourselves in the foot?

And speaking of technology changing all the time, podcasting technology changes all the time too.

Dave, is there a podcast and maybe even a membership site where people could go to keep up with leveraging the technology and really focusing on making a better podcast?

If only there was a school for that.

Do you know of a place?

I think there's a place called schoolofpodcasting.com in fact, I think they even have a coupon code.

If you use the coupon code listnr, you can save on either a monthly or yearly subscription.

And one of the members there was talking about how they really liked seeing where they were in the charts on the different charts of Apple and such, because it gave them a sense of things are working or things are not.

And if only there was some place because doggone at Chartable went out of business.

If there was only a place where somebody could not only get voicemails and reviews and everything else, but if they could see the chart positions.

Daniel, do you know of any place that somebody could do that?

Well, you know, it's funny you ask podgagement.com this sounds so scripted, but I promise you, listener, this is not scripted.

But yeah.

Podgagement.com I launched the charts feature about two months ago.

And actually I quietly launched a new feature too that I haven't announced yet to my members.

But now you can embed ratings and reviews on your site through dynamic lists.

Like, you can say, I want all my 4 star and 5 stars reviews to appear on my site, or all the reviews that I tag with this particular tag, or all the reviews from Apple Podcasts or from the United States or whatever.

You can make the smart list or embed individual reviews.

That's now available too, over@podgagement.com Wayne, I.

Have a question on that.

So if I say automatically show all five star reviews and I get the code and put it on my website, there I've got five star reviews.

Then 20 minutes later another five star review comes in.

Does it automatically then show up on my website?

Yeah, there will be some caching involved with it, but yeah, it will automatically show up.

Now, if you wanted to do something like you always want only 5 reviews, you can also do that.

You can limit it to show only the latest five.

Interesting.

Yeah, I had fun building that when that one was fun.

Now I want to throw this to you, Dave, for you.

What would be that one thing you would want in 2025 if you could have nothing else but this one thing?

What would that be?

Yeah, the thing for me when I was talking about it was like, what's podcasting 2.0?

And I'd explain that we're expanding its reach and it's going to have more features and blah, blah, blah, and they would kind of go, that sounds like a good idea.

And then the minute I said, oh, and people can stream Bitcoin to you, so the longer they listen, the more you get paid, that always be like, wait a minute, how do you sign up for that?

That always caught people's attention.

And when we talk about being future proof, we've talked about Albie on this show and I understand why they did what they did.

I'm still not quite sure.

And this is where I've said it many times, I don't know anything about crypto, but I just want that back.

Because right now it's.

I don't want to say stalled.

That's.

That's a little negative, but it's not.

We've taken a step backwards and it doesn't seem.

I know there are plenty of people working on potential fixes.

I know there's now the split box that Steven is put forth and a.

Lot of great potential there.

I really like the concept.

Yeah, I just remember when I worked at Libsyn if there was ever a time that there was a problem with stats, that place like everybody dropped what they were doing and everybody like stats were fixed.

There was never a stats problem that went longer than five minutes or something like that.

Everybody dropped everything.

And you never lost your stats.

It was usually how they were displayed because there was always this machine collecting them.

But the minute there was a problem with displaying them because we knew that the longer that went on, the more emails support was going to get.

And so when this went down, and this is where I feel selfish, I'm kind of like, hey, can we do kind of like an all hands on getting this streaming thing back up?

Because for me, that was the one that gathered people's attention.

They're like, wait a minute, how hard is it to set that up?

And so if I'm completely honest, when I hear like the godcaster sounds like a great project and paying musicians is a great thing because I'm an old musician, but there is a part of me that wants to be Veruca Salt.

I believe if I remember it was her name, you know, I want streaming payments now, daddy.

And that's where it's great that Dave and Adam, like, I heard about the split box.

I was like, okay, good.

And that's my own fault.

I need to be more involved in Podcast Index social.

I'm sure they're talking about it over there more.

But if all you're waiting on is the podcasting 2.0 show, you have no idea what's going on.

And so it just seems like I remember every week and there was some company that Dave was working with that they had some sort of non disclosure that they couldn't talk about it, but they were working with it.

I forget the name of it.

And then nothing happened.

It was like, oh, so there's.

We're always kind of like, is this going to be the episode where we get back on track?

Where we get back on track.

So for me, it just seemed as much as we would always say, oh, there's so much more than streaming satoshis and podcasting 2.0, and there's transcripts and there's the people tag and the pod roll was great.

And, and that was one of the great things that happened in 2024.

But the, for me, the one just, just from telling people about podcasting 2.0, the one that people would go, wait a minute, hold on, how does that work?

I just saw somebody just posted a poll in Facebook.

I think it was in.

It might have been in podcast Movement.

And they asked about money, and it was like, are you using your podcast to make money for your business?

Are you a hobbyist but wouldn't mind making money or.

And I forget the third one, but the majority of people, and I've always said this, I know there are a lot of people.

I know Todd will say, there are a lot of people just doing it for fun.

And that's true.

I mean, we kind of do this show for fun, and I get to hang out with Daniel J.

Lewis, so to win.

But it's also in the back of my mind, it would be great if this also made money.

There's always that, yeah, it'd be cool.

And if we could make that easy.

Because I have found that when I bring up stuff with money, a lot of times the response is, well, if I could just get it to break even.

If I could just, like, I'm not really trying to make it my second job, but, you know, And I always hear the voice of someone's spouse in their ear going, you spent how much on podcasting?

If I could just get it to break even, I think I'd be okay.

You know, there's a funny psychological thing there that for years that I think I spoke incorrectly about.

And that was.

We often talk about, well, you know, if you get into a hobby, like model trains or baseball cards or any of that, do you really ask people, hey, are you making money with that now?

Some people do, yes, for sure.

So that aside, though, most people that get into those things, like, I was into baseball cards and coin collecting as a kid, and I just did it for the fun of it and that kind of hobby, the collecting kind of hobby, to just put a label on it.

This might not necessarily be the best label of it, but it is a selfish hobby.

It is me collecting something for myself or doing a hobby because I enjoy it.

Maybe that is shared with a couple other people, too.

You know, maybe you like being in this community of people who do this same kind of hobby, but you're all basically doing it for yourselves, and you're talking about the things that you're doing for yourselves, and you're comparing and getting tips and all of that.

Podcasting, though, and content creation in general, blogging, videos, wherever.

It's a different kind of thing, because it's not always for you, because we are creating something.

I know some people don't like that term creating, but we are giving content, we are giving value to other people.

It's not just about collecting stuff for us.

We are making stuff for other people that we hope other people will enjoy or benefit from in some way.

I think that is why we tend to think of podcasting, and I say we, as like the general independent podcaster, we tend to think of podcasting as, how can I make it break even?

How can I make some money with this?

Because it's not just a, quote, selfish, unquote hobby of.

We're just getting stuff for us.

We are giving value to others.

And I think that feeling is in us realizing we are giving value, and maybe there should be a value exchange.

How can we make a value exchange happen?

Yeah, I actually today had a coaching client, and he's had 30 years in sales and just wants to give back.

He's like, sales has been very good to me, and I want to share some of my knowledge.

And I said, well, how long have you been thinking about doing a podcast?

He said, probably five years, but he had imposter syndrome.

And I said, well, once again, when your need to give back or your need to serve is greater than your fear of looking silly, that's when you press record to go, and that's exactly where you are.

And so I think that is part of it.

People do this to give back, and then there comes a time when they realize, hey, podcasting is kind of hard.

If I did get some money back, I just saw a movie about this female Olympic boxer.

It's called the Fire Within.

Amazing story.

I won't spoil the movie, but she got a gold medal and came home, and, like, nothing changed.

She thought she was going to be on a Wheaties box and endorsements and not a lot of endorsements in female boxing back in, like, 2009 or something like that.

And so they were with kind of her manager slash agent, trying to get money, and they were talking about different things.

And he goes, well, is it the recognition?

Is it the money?

Like, what's the problem?

And she screams at him.

She's like, money is recognition.

And I think sometimes, even if it was just a dime, I think people just want to be recognized.

And so when they get that little bit of a bitcoin or buy me a coffee or whatever it is, it's like, hey, somebody likes this enough to buy me a coffee.

And I know Adam hates that, but it's like, it's.

It's, again, it's recognition.

And that's where, again, I want this to be more than a.

A cup of coffee.

I want it to be.

Because we've had people that.

That stream pretty high streams to this show that I was like, oh, that adds up.

Thank you very much.

For anyone who's streaming, and then there are others, but it's.

It's.

Adam always says you can stream what you give.

You know, whatever you have to give.

If it's 2 cents a show or $2,000 a show, whatever you can do.

If you feel like giving back, that's the key.

It was a way for them to give back.

And I.

I hope it's.

It's easy.

I know now with the things, the way things are, again, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I know I went and bought the.

The Albie Hub or whatever it was, but now I have to go to Strike to transfer money from my bank into Strike.

And I think now I know for a while, I think I had to wait 48 hours before I could transfer it into Albi.

I don't think that's the case anymore.

But I just.

Every time I do that, I get confused because first I have to go in and am I on the Bitcoin tab or the money tab?

Okay.

And then it says withdrawal, and then it says there's like, four options.

It should be like, send or receive or whatever.

And I'm always like, wait, which one is the one?

Okay, this one.

And so I've started just transferring more money into Strike so I don't have to do it.

I used to do it once a month, and now be like, let's do three months worth, and then I'll throw that into Albie and it's there to stream, and I have to worry about it.

But every time I do that, especially, like I said, I was doing it once a month.

Well, every month, it'd be like, wait, how did I do this 30 days ago?

So I either need to make myself a cheat sheet or just remember.

But if we could make that easier.

And that's where I.

I need to ask Sam, because, like I said, I used to go into true fans, and I could just fill up my Albi wallet through Trufans, and then Sam would take his cut.

And that's fine.

He made it easy.

He gave me something valuable, let him take his piece, and then it would just fill my Albie wallet.

And then I think I had ca.

Well, I really cast Matic podcast guru podverse.

I think anytime I use those, those were tied into my Albie, my one wallet, and I could stream no matter where I was at.

That part was easy.

So for me, again, I think.

And when.

When you brought this up, it's a good point.

On one hand, it does make the podcaster more excited about it, but also, I don't know that from the listener side, there are people that are like going, man, I wish there was a way I could give this person money.

But I do think, I know.

I feel different because I know when the whole Alby thing kind of blew up, I was like, oh, I'm listening to this person's show now and I'm getting it for free.

And I was like, maybe I'll go out and see if they have a PayPal button or something like that.

Because I was used to giving back to that show.

And that's where I found it interesting.

Because as a listener, it's a different kind of connection when you're giving somebody money for their stuff.

I can't really explain it, but it's just like you're officially part of the team.

It's like you put on their jersey in a way, if it was a sports team, it's like, yeah, I'm part of their, their team now.

And you felt responsible for the stuff coming back to you.

Like, yay.

That last episode, I had a small part in that because of my contributions, just as a way to say thank you.

And sometimes that's all you need to keep going.

It's just to get a little bit of recognition and go, all right, this could be bigger in the future.

I'll just keep doing this for now.

So that's to me, I would love to see that come back.

And it sounds like it is coming back.

I just need to head over to Podcast Index Social and see if there's more news that I may be missing.

And if we can make it easy, that would be awesome.

And we've got a deadline.

I think that's either already passed by the time this episode comes out or is coming very soon, where the getalbi.com wallets will be no longer available.

So you have to move over to something else.

And they're pushing people to Albi Hub, which I've got to set up myself soon.

I'm going to do the Docker route, run it on one of my servers that I have.

But there are two things that could be big disruptors coming that could help or hurt what you're talking about.

And this idea.

Well, one thing with President Trump being reelected and coming in, and he is very pro crypto and he's spoken a lot about crypto.

I mean, bitcoin has doubled in value because of his being re elected and we could see it go even higher.

We don't know, but we're not making predictions here.

This is not financial advice.

Do not only invest what you're willing to lose, all of that stuff.

But I do think that certainly his administration will be far more pro crypto.

So everything that like Albie has been afraid of before and afraid of is, I think too demeaning.

But the stuff they've been concerned about or the laws and some of this stuff, some of that might become moot points in 2025 and beyond, because some of these laws could change that, make a lot of this stuff easier on the companies to be able to provide the services to us that we need to exchange it and send it back and forth and such.

So that could be one disruptor there, whatever happens with the incoming administration.

The other disruptor is you mentioned PayPal and Stripe and certain services like that.

There are two obstacles to using those more in the podcasting space with these microtransactions and like micro microtransactions giving 50 cents or 10 cents or a penny per minute that you listen or anything like that.

The two obstacles with these systems are, first of all, there are other systems you have to go elsewhere to use, whether that's PayPal, Stripe, Cash App, any of those things.

Fill in the blank.

You have to go somewhere else and send it, send the money to the podcaster.

It's not built directly into the app.

There have been some things here and there, like Marco recently talked about why he removed the PayPal button or the support button from Overcast, and it wasn't because Apple needed him to.

It's because he was worried Apple might tell him that he couldn't put out an update because of that feature.

And that's disappointing.

I'm not going to criticize his moves.

There, but yeah, because it's been there.

A while, but it is gone now from Overcast.

And there are other apps, though, doing similar things, allowing people to Send payments through PayPal by clicking on a button that's inside the app.

I don't know exactly the developer rules that Apple has or that Google has that people might be concerned about there.

But anyway, even if you have that button, the other obstacle then.

So even if you bring the payment somehow onto the platform and it's something that enough people can use PayPal, Stripe, credit card, Cash app, Venmo, any of those things, whatever it is, even if it was just one thing that enough people used, the other obstacle is the fee structure, because most of these places take a percentage, which is common and totally acceptable to take a percentage but they also take a flat rate fee.

It's typically around $0.50 per transaction.

So if you get into a space where like even just you were talking about supporting podcasts that you listen to right now, cash flow is still an issue for me.

But I would love to be in a place where I could support podcasts that I listen to, even if it's simply $0.50 per episode or $0.10 per episode.

Because if I could do that, then maybe other people could do that.

And if I could do that easily, then maybe other people could do that easily.

The problem is you cannot send 10 cents through PayPal.

I don't think they'll even let you try it because the fee is more than the actual payment.

Yeah.

So the potential disruptor is what if these places like PayPal and Stripe, especially because Stripe accepting credit card payments and ACH transfers and Apple Pay and Google Pay, what if they change their payment structure so that they no longer have that flat fee?

Then you could very easily build something like that into a podcast app to send micro microtransactions without any of the crypto stuff that could be a huge disruptor.

They announced something like that.

I think they call it being Sherlocked because on the macOS side, there was an app called Sherlock that has been replaced many years ago by Command Spacebar on a Mac, which is the Siri shortcut or the Quick Find toolbar thing.

And so Apple every now and then comes out with something that basically kills some business's business model out there.

Like Apple now has the journaling app.

Well, day one is probably like, oh no.

And their business is probably suffering because of that.

They're getting Sherlocked in the podcasting space.

All of this crypto stuff could get Sherlocked if one of these major developer friendly platforms like stripe or even PayPal suddenly changes their payment structure to support the microtransactions.

And I think that could be a.

Good thing, actually, again, if it makes it easy.

And of course, the confusing thing is there is Stripe, which is what a lot of people, and then there is Strike, which with a K, which is what I was talking about earlier with tying my bank to it and that whole nine yards.

Yeah, it's the fees.

If you ever wonder, like, why do we keep going with crypto?

That's why it's the fees that make it pretty much impossible or worthless to do with, you know, for lack of a better phrase, regular money.

So it's, it's tricky, but I would love to see it come.

It's already back.

Like it's you can still use Fountain.

You can still use true fans.

I just, I'm looking for that, that universal place.

I guess the, the one thing that, that I kind of scratch my head with.

Like, okay, we come up with a new way.

Wherever I have my wallet, I think everybody's going to have to have.

Instead of Albie hosting my wallet, I'm gonna have to have my own wallet in something.

And that's, that's like, let's say I go, I know Strike with a K.

Strike sounds like they might have a way to receive crypto.

And I'm like, well, what's going to stop them from having the same thing that happened to Alby?

Like, if I get a bunch of people sending in Boostograms and all of a sudden they have a thousand wallets on their know their system and everybody gets a bunch of Boostograms, what is going to stop what worried Alby from making Strike with a K.

This is going to be their name now.

What's going to stop them from getting worried and going, hey, we're going to draw some attention here.

So that's the part that I don't know if you can future proof that because.

And I said the guy again, who doesn't understand crypto a whole lot.

But I just know, like, unless you host your own wallet, which then goes to, I guess maybe having your own server, I don't know, how do we.

Can you think of anything like how do we avoid that whole situation?

Well, I think the way that Strike does it is that they have the resources to be able to adhere to all of the laws and they have certain policies and procedures in place.

Like a big thing is called kyc, Know your customer.

Where if you're dealing with financial transactions, many of these companies are required to have information about you, like your identity, your address, your Social Security number, all of this stuff.

So they know their customer.

And some companies just don't want to deal with that.

And that's why they will forbid people from the United States from using their tool is because they don't want to have to mess with KYC requirements.

That's one thing.

There could be other aspects to it because the whole idea of if you are exchanging money, well, then you're in exchange.

And exchanges have to meet certain requirements too.

An idea I had recently that I wondered, could this be done?

It could.

Okay, how could it be done or how reasonable is it for this to be done is what if like you were talking about the wallet situation.

And yeah, that's a Messy thing.

Like, people shouldn't have to think about wallets at all.

It should just be, hey, I put money in my podcast app, I send money to a podcaster, podcaster receive money.

The end.

One way that could be done is, and I don't know the laws around this, but what if we'll say Cast o Matic?

So what if in Cast o Matic, I loaded up with $100 in my wallet?

In Cast o Matic wallet, in a general sense, but it's still dollars.

It's not cryptocurrency, it is dollars that they are holding for me and I can get back whenever I want, minus whatever transaction fees, probably.

Then when I want to send that to a podcaster, they then convert it to cryptocurrency, probably Bitcoin on the Lightning Network.

They send it over to the podcaster's quote, wallet, unquote, and.

And then the podcaster's wallet instantly transfers it back into dollars, so that it's been crypto for only the minute that it took to transfer and only for the sake of the transfer.

Then you lose or gain almost no value difference in it.

So if I send a dollar, you're going to receive very close to a dollar.

You'll receive less, of course, after the fees and such that are natural in the space.

But could something like that be done?

It's still, yeah, technically they're exchanging currencies, so I don't know the legality of that, but that's one idea that could be done with it.

The other thing, though, actually maybe a third disruptor in this.

Look at what Apple did with Patreon, the patreon app in 2024, where they were saying that anyone who supports someone through Patreon, through the Patreon app on iPhone, if that's where they created their payment, Apple wants a cut, they want their 30%.

That's going to happen to podcast apps too.

If they accept a payment, Apple is going to at some point probably say, hey, we need 30%.

So that could be a horrible disruptor there.

Now, maybe the loophole to that is, is Patreon accepts the payments on behalf of the creators and then sends those payments minus their fees to the creators.

So Patreon is receiving the money, but in the podcast apps, maybe it could be designed where the money goes directly to the creator and therefore Apple doesn't get their cut.

Like you look at any of These apps, Strike, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, all of these things that do work on Apple devices and Android devices and other Things you send money directly to someone or receive money directly from someone, and there are no fees from Apple.

And Apple is totally okay with that.

I think that's because it's a direct person to person transfer of money, and that's why Apple doesn't need their fees.

But if it's like a company taking lots of payments, like Patreon's case, that's where Apple wants their cut.

So that could be a disruptor too.

Yeah, kind of like in the Albi situation, it wasn't really much of a concern until it started taking off.

And that's when they're like.

And so it might be a similar situation where Apple's not worried about it now until they start noticing that.

Wait a minute, there's a whole bunch of people clicking that boostogram button.

What's going on with that?

Yeah, that's true.

I hadn't thought about that.

And there's for sure the reward aspect for the podcaster, even if it's just pennies.

And the more accessible it is, I think the more people that will do it as they realize, hey, I can give only 5 cents an episode automatically.

Sure, I can afford 5 cents.

But you look at, like, what Adam's talked about with the booster grand ball that he did the live thing recently, and some of these people that have been featured on Wave Lake and such, how they've gotten so excited at the money they've received, not because it's a huge amount, but because it is proportionally so much higher than they're getting from Spotify and Apple Music and Pandora and all of those typical streaming places.

And like you were saying, it's that fan aspect too, that the people are supporting the musicians directly and that makes the people get more excited and feel more part of it.

It's kind of this funny cycle.

I talk about this a lot with people who use podgagement is that once you get someone into an engagement cycle, then it starts to.

They just get into the circular cycle and it starts to get them exponentially more engaged.

Because once they engage, they're going to engage more deeply.

And then when they engage more deeply, they'll engage more deeply and more and more deeply like that.

So once someone pays and gives some money directly, they'll realize, hey, this is pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm a part of this.

I want to buy something again.

I want to support them again.

Absolutely.

Yep.

I heard that from Adam and he said, again, a lot of people are just like, this is recognition that what I created has value.

And it's it's in a way, I was kind of feel like, well, it has value even if somebody doesn't recognize it.

It's kind of if the tree falls in the woods kind of thing.

Like, if you make a great song and nobody hears it, does that mean the song wasn't any good?

No, it just means nobody heard it.

But again, that's why I want to see it work.

I want to make it easy and go there and, you know, if you think about just the two things we talked about, they're both ways are interacting with the podcaster, cross app comments, building that tribe.

And then some of those people might want to click the other button that says boost.

And both ways the podcaster is getting direct feedback.

And then they can turn that around to make a better show if they can, you know, somehow enhance it.

And when you get the audience involved, I still get giddy when I hear somebody.

I forget what I was listening to.

Matthew Passi does a show about podcasting tech, and Sarah St John was on and she said he asked him, like, what podcast do you listen to?

And she said, I listen to podcasts about podcasting.

So.

Well, you know, Dave Jackson, everybody knows that.

And instantly I was.

I got all giddy, like somebody said my name.

And so anytime a audience member does something, it's like, hey, I heard you.

I've listened to you.

I like that.

Whatever it is, you always feel like it's that recognition that makes you all giddy, giddy.

I say, what if something had to be sacrificed in order to make the payments work?

Like the streaming Satoshi's idea of streaming based on how long you listen.

What if that had to be sacrificed?

I mean, that's a neat feature because it was another kind of hack way to figure out how far people listened.

Because every minute you'd see it's, you know, Bob Jones, Bob Jones, Bob Jones.

Then at the 23 minute mark, all of a sudden, Bob Jones is no longer contributing.

You're like, oh, Bob dropped off.

What happened at the 23 minute mark?

But I also know to me, do we need that every, you know, minute representation?

So if that was something they like, man, that's a lot of taxation on the, I don't know, the app resources or whatever the technology is.

If it was something where every five minutes or maybe when somebody press stop, they press play, it kind of puts them in a little pile.

And then the minute somebody hits pause or stop, the app somehow then goes, oh, well, they accumulated 37 SATs.

Send it over to Dave.

I think I'd be perfectly fine with that.

Like, we've got streaming satoshis that have come in from Randy Black and Brian Insminer and Sam Sethi for the future of podcasting.

Especially, like, we've both complained to each other about the way some of these websites display this, where it's just streaming sat after one after another.

To see just a whole page of.

Here are all of these streaming sats from one person.

Because it's that minute by minute by minute.

Yeah, they need a filter on that somehow or something to give us a better idea of what we're looking at.

Dwev Also to give him a shout out.

Steve Webb.

Yeah, the original godcaster Steve Webb.

Nicholas B58.

Not to be confused with Nicholas B57.

Yeah, there was Nicholas B.

57.

There were that many other Nicholas B's, so he had to be number 58.

And 57's a jerk.

58's great.

So, yes, thank you to everyone who's been sending in the satoshis in.

However, whatever system you're using, if they're still coming in, we appreciate that.

You know, as long as we're talking about it, let's read some booster grams.

I've got them in front.

Randy Black said, I love the cheap plugs for your own products.

Lol.

I jest.

Love you guys.

Another great and informative episode.

A thousand SATs from Randy Black.

Thank you, Randy.

Were there plugs in this show?

I don't remember plugs.

Do you remember plugs?

I don't.

Maybe.

Maybe there was a plug for schoolofpodcasting.com maybe.

I thought I might have heard one for podgagement, but I don't know.

I thought that was just a coincidence.

I don't know, maybe people should go to those websites to find out if there's a plug.

And Brian Insprener sent 500 SATs saying Dave is a silent knight.

That's Knight with a K.

Yes.

And Brian Insprener also sent A Star Trek Boost 1701 SATS saying true fan zap from looking at splits, filling a wallet and CDNs.

Love the buzzwords.

Thank you so much for those streaming sats.

Do you know what A Silent Night is?

No.

Actually, A Silent Night is I've been donating 1111 to no Agenda for months, for decades, to the point where I've now given them at least a thousand dollars.

Oh, that makes sense.

And so I'm a silent night.

I've never claimed my.

I've never got my ring it's always one of Those things, I'm like, I'll send them a something to make me an associate producer and claim my knight, who I just can't figure out what I want.

My Sir Dave, Dean of Podcasting.

I'm like, what are you cannot be the Knight of podcasting 2.0.

That's me.

That's my title.

Yeah.

I was going to be Sir Lauren of Beef because my mom loved that pun in a Bugs Bunny.

It's like, I am Sir Lauren of Beef.

I think it was Daffy Duck and somebody took it.

I was like, oh, they took my surname.

So I have to.

And to me, I'm like, dean of Podcasting sounds way too cheesy.

So if I come up with a good surname, I will come out of the shadows.

You might have one right there.

You could be surname of podcasting.

There you go.

Maybe.

Anybody ever send us boosts over there, Daniel?

Or are we.

That was it for now.

Thank you so much for those booster grams, the streaming satoshis.

I think I mentioned everyone that's done it since our last episode and some of those streamings that don't always come in, we don't get the email notifications for the streaming sats.

So that's why sometimes we don't mention those as frequently as the booster grams that we receive.

But thank you so much for that support.

It means a lot.

Dave and I split it.

Dave gets the majority of it and we split those satoshis.

And it is very much appreciated.

When I get 51%, I think that's the majority.

I get them.

I was like, wait a minute, what?

But yeah, yeah, we do deeply appreciate that.

Every little helps.

And, you know, for more information, check us out@futureofpodcasting.net I think that's going to be it for episode 55 of the Future of Podcasting.

If you haven't followed the show yet, go to futureofpodcasting.net follow.

And if you're listening to this on the way down to PodFest in Orlando, stop by the PodPage booth to see Dave Jackson and stop by the PodGagement booth to see me.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's it.

Keep boosting and keep podcasting.