496. Podcast Piracy, Apple Video, and the Future of Growth

0:05 Good morning podcasters. Today is Wednesday, April 15th, 2026, and today it's our podcast news and comment edition covering rising podcast piracy threats, why treating your show like a real business matters more than ever, and surprising new creator earnings shaking up the industry. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom right, no top right hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, etcetera, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

0:51 The Podcasting Morning Chat is powered by Ironic Media, helping podcasters launch, Polish and grow great shows, and by Content Creators Accountant, helping creators build real business behind their content. Good morning again podcasting morning chat. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronik and currently on stage with me. My Co hosts we have DRFA, Ralph Estep, Sid Meadows, Jonathan Howard, Nick Naulback and BC Babbles. And from the audience Tide AKA Nikki has joined us on stage as well.

1:40 Thank you for being up here Nikki, and hello to Bez, our first audience member in the Clubhouse chat. And if you are watching us on video and want to know more about how to join us on stage here on Clubhouse, just go to podcastingmorningchat.com/join us. Also quick note while you're typing in podcasting morning chat.com do a slash EPC live empowered podcasting conference live EPC live. We are going Live Today myself, my business partners Co host Jason Sir Cone, Rich Perry and also Hall of Famer Dave Jackson joining us live.

2:22 He is one of our partners for Empowered Podcasting, specifically Pod Page and Dave is a big part of Pod Page. So we're going to talk to Dave a little bit about Pod Page, a little bit about podcasting should be a good time. So come join us there 1:00 PM Eastern today, April 15th tax Day, which happens to be well, we'll get to it in a minute. I'll pause right there and I will remind you that you if you're interested in some free podcast gear, you may want to pay attention here because we are in the final days of the chance to win Ralph E Steps Rd. Caster Duo plus a free monetization strategy session with him designed to help you make smarter moves with your show, particularly financial and monetization moves. The duo is a great piece of gear because it helps you sound Polish.

3:17 It works really well with multiple audio sources and gives you hands on control over your live production all in one compact unit. And when I say compact, I mean it. It's smaller size makes it especially convenient if you're traveling on the go, recording on the go. So check that out over at Podcasting Morning chat.com/duo and you can find multiple ways to enter multiple chances to win. So go there, increase your odds to win a chance at Ralph's Roadcaster duo. OK, let's dive in to the news.

4:03 And as I like to do when we start our news segments every Wednesday, 1st, a little bit of data for you. And I'm reading straight from podcastbusinessjournal.com. This is where I get this specific data. They say that a helpful number to understand the amount of podcasts being created is the total number of quote active podcasts. End Quote. These are podcasts that are still being updated and therefore actively marketing themselves. If you are making shows, podcast episodes, you might consider this number to be your competition. Even though that's not my favorite word to use in this space. But rather than the big number of almost 5 million podcasts that podcast index reports.

4:53 So with that being said, the total podcast updated in this past week, 182,544 thousand, which happens to be down 2.2% from the previous week. And if we want to look at the last 30 days of podcasts that have been updated, we're looking at 365,000 and change, which is up a half a percent from the previous month. All right, let's go to UDR for our top five lists, both from Apple and not Spotify this week. Go for it. Right, so the first one I want to give you is going to be Apple and #5 is the Joe Rogan Experience. Love that.

5:38 Number 4 is Pod Save America #3 Tiffany Day, 5 #2 is Crime Junkie, and the number one podcast on Apple is The Daily. I think the timpani cut you off there at #3 I think that was Dateline. Oh. It was dateline. Right. Got it. OK. Crime Junkie and number one was daily, so then the next one is good. Pods top five, always fun. So #5 is morbid #4 is up first from NPR #3 Coffees up dip.

6:20 Dip number. 3 is Ted Talk daily, number 2 is well, that's interesting, and the number one is the daily. Number one is the daily again, OK. And by the way, we are not editing out those slips. I will take that. I will take those lumps and be OK with it. That's fine. We'll leave them there. Thank you, Dr. Yeah, Morbid. Let's see that description is It's a lighthearted nightmare in here, weirdos. That's how the description starts. Morbid is a true crime, creepy history and all things spooky podcast hosted by an autopsy technician and a hair stylist. Interesting.

7:06 All right, well I could see there would be intrigue with that kind of show. So not surprised to see that at #5 have not listened to Morbid yet, but I am interested now. OK cool. Thank you Dr. for those top fives. Appreciate that and let's keep it moving with some events. I will make these short and sweet today. These are all events happening this very week. So Military creator Con, we've talked about that a few times. That's happening in Arlington, TX April 16th. I think it's for more than one day. Sid, I know you're in the area and I know although you're not necessarily a military creator, I know you know several people that are going to be there.

7:50 Are you going to actually go check this out? Oh, thank you so much for this reminder Mark. I am not going to the event itself, however. Tomorrow, Thursday. Tomorrow is Thursday, right? I'm having dinner with Shay, Janae, Sean and Simona and I get to meet little baby Sunny tomorrow. Oh, wow. Simona's newborn. That's awesome. Very cool, Sid. Thank you. For yeah, we're having dinner at 5:30 and then we're going to, I'm going to go, I'm going to be there plus one to the opening event and then I'm coming home. So cool, Very, very cool. Glad you're going to see all of those community members. Please take pictures and post them in our Facebook group or send them to me and I will Very cool. Thank you Sid for sharing that.

8:36 Also, by the way, we haven't talked about this in a couple weeks, but Podcasting Made Simple live, that is Alex Sanfilippo's event. He is of course the founder of Podmatch and Podcasting Made Simple is his podcast, but every quarter he does a live event virtually and that is usually hosted by multiple voices in the podcast industry. So consider it similar to like a convention but a one day event all online. Check that out. You can find out more at podmatch.com or just Google Podcasting Made Simple live. By the way, BCI saw you flash of pepper earlier and I forgot to go to you.

9:19 Did you want to add anything or ask anything? Yeah, I was going to say with those a couple of mess ups earlier, Ralph, it's time for you to make a new Jingle foam Mark called Buttons are Hard. That is true. That is my infamous mistake that I've made all through podcasting. I have a problem hitting the right buttons and I accept that it is what it is. All right. And finally, as I mentioned earlier, Empowered Podcasting Live does happen today, 1:00 PM Eastern. We have some big announcements including, well, I'm just going to tell you, well, I don't want to tell you yet. It has to do with our speaker deadline today. So if you haven't submitted yet, now is a good time to go and do that.

10:02 Empoweredpodcasting.com/speakers and Apply to Speak If you've got some knowledge, experience that you think is valuable and other podcasts may want to know it would love for you to apply to speak. You can do a presentation 30 minutes or a workshop style, which would be we give you an extra 15 minutes on that 45 minutes so it can be a little more interactive. So go check that out. Go apply today. I promise you, if you've got experience doing this, you probably have some knowledge to share with some fellow podcasters. So go check that out. Now again, button pressing.

10:43 I got to play this quick tip, smart move. Yeah, content creators business fight. Let's go to the content creators business by which is brought to you by the guy who's hosting this segment, Ralph Estep, junior of Content creatorsaccountant.com. If you don't know by now, Ralph is a licensed accountant, also happens to be my accountant. I think Dr. could use his help as well. That's a pre show discussion we had earlier. With over 30 years of experience at contentcreatorsaccountant.com. Ralph helps creators stop guessing about taxes and money, turning financial chaos into clarity.

11:27 So I highly recommend Ralph. He really helped us big time with our taxes this year. We are very happy with the results of it. So thank you, Ralph, for that. And I know today it must be like a holiday for you or at least a celebration for you because April 15th is the tax deadline. All right, Ralph, I know you have two interesting stories today. Take it away. I do and thank you. Yeah, a little bit of a celebration today, but I woke up not feeling great today. So I might have about 80% of my normal energy, but we'll get through it. So this first one, the title of this is your podcast is a Business. Are you running it like 1? And when I saw this, I thought this is perfect. Now this was a recent article by a law firm named Loeb and Loeb. This is by entertainment attorney and Kennedy McGuire. And her basic contention is that podcasting has matured from some side hustle into a real business model. And I loved it when she said that because I agree 100%. Now here's the thing she said in the article, which I 100% agree with.

12:29 Podcasting is no longer just make a show and hope it pops. The article's core argument is that podcasting is now an enterprise play, and early business decisions can shape whether a show becomes a lasting brand or a dead end. I thought that was really important. And the next thing she said is YouTube has changed the game because it's solved discovery now. I think that's something a lot of us could argue about, but it basically says that the audio only podcasts were harder to stumble onto and YouTube's autoplay and recommendation engine now helps grow organically and make them attractive to brands. Now she also pivots, and I'm going to talk about this in a few minutes, to video and video creates a bigger upside, but she also notes it raises the cost of entry and she is very right about that.

13:12 The move from audio to video makes podcasting more powerful commercially, but it also makes production more expensive and creates new barriers for smaller creators, which IA 100% agree with. The next thing she mentioned in the article, and this is this is where a great article. We'll put a link to it in the show notes, but the Conversation podcast, she took a little bit and talked about that has become the dominant, partly because it's cheaper to do that. And the article notes that host and guest formats are more accessible than heavily produced narrative shows because they require less research, writing and post production. And actually what we're seeing is a trend that those shows are actually performing well. They're retaining their audience, and they're really working.

13:52 And here's the big take away. The smartest creators decide the end game on day one. One of the strongest points in this piece is that creators need to know whether the show is a marketing tool, a passion project or the foundation of a media company before signing deals. And that really was the big thing. She talks about blurring the lines between television and podcasting. And there's a bunch of opportunities with bigger audiences. And the other thing she mentions here, and if she's an attorney, understand where she's coming from here. Bigger audiences mean bigger legal targets and that's where we always have to be aware of that. But the bottom line is this. Winning podcasters will look more like mini media companies and I think we're seeing that. So the take away here is that podcasting is no longer just content, it's IP. And I'm going to leave you with this. The story says the future of podcasting belongs to creators who think like owners, not just performers. And I think that is well said.

14:45 Yeah, well said. On point with a lot of discussions we've had as of late too that we, yeah, we got to really if, if we want to monetize, if we want our podcasts to be successful, depending on your definition of success, I think we do have to treat it like a business. We really do. And yeah, it's like you were saying in the article there like a media company because there are way more components to a podcast than just the podcast. Yeah, and there's a place for hobby podcasting, but I think you just have to understand that from the front end, if that's your goal, it's a completely different set up. 100% agreed with that. OK, so with that Ralph here. Well, I was going to clean the slate and do a little whoosh for you, but I don't want to hit the wrong button.

15:27 So whoosh, what's our next story? So. The next thing is I attended the Captivate HLS webinar yesterday and this is all about Apple rolling out the video and I just wanted to go through. I grabbed a couple clips from Elsie Escobar and Rob Walsh, and if you want to play the first clip, Mark, we'll start there. I will. And side note, I think I've convinced. Well, it didn't really take a lot of convincing, but I think Elsie is going to be a speaker at Empowered Podcasting this August, so I'm really excited about that. She is one awesome woman, especially when it comes to this podcasting industry. Let's hear what they have to say. So the question, this is from the content creators accountant and they asked how is the separate audio file going to work if the listener wants to switch between audio and video.

16:18 Now in my understanding from this is that if you upload a video into the video using HLS, that's what's going to go into Apple Podcasts and it's going to use the audio from your video. The extra audio that you would like to upload separately is going to go to all of the other apps that support audio. Via RSS. Via RSS for the podcast app. So it's not going to like if you upload a separate edit of your audio. If that is not going to go into Apple Podcasts, it's going to pull the audio from the video and then the special audio is going to go everywhere else.

17:08 Interesting. Any if and if anyone has questions, comments while we're playing these clips and want to respond to them, by all means raise your hand. Let me know and we'll come to you because I am sure there will be at least some questions or comments on some of this stuff. But Ralph, please continue. Yeah. And this was interesting because this kind of reaffirmed some things that we've been saying. But the good news about that though, at this stage at least you have the option. Now this is just Captivate. I'm not sure what the other platforms are going to do, but I think they're going to follow suit based on what I'm seeing here that if you can upload a separate RSS feed. But if you want to go on to the second clip, Mark, now we're going to get into cost discussions. And this is where it really got interesting for me. OK, I'll play that in a moment.

17:50 Two things. One, the separate RSS feed. So that would mean then that your show would exist twice on in the Apple directory. Not the way I understand it. The way I understood it is you're not going to have a separate show in the Apple directory. That RSS feed is going to be attached to your show and that's going to go out to the other apps who aren't using the video feed. They they talked about that a little bit and there definitely was no place for this to be a second feed. So I don't believe that's going to be the case, Mark. OK, gotcha. All right. And by the way, shout out to Tim in the audience who joined us. Tim, I'd been thinking about you because I know you had some medical stuff and I'm hoping you're feeling better. We didn't see you for a couple days, so I was just thinking about you.

18:35 Hope you're doing well. My friend. Nick had something before we go to the next clip. Go ahead, Nick. Good morning. Hey. Good morning, everybody. One thing like that's really interesting that one you're able to upload both and they both do exist. And it wouldn't surprise me and will be kind of cool if you were able to utilize that RSS feed for like years paid listeners, like if you wanted to run some kind of like, I think Apple has their own like paid tier, don't they? They do. Where, yeah, so you could essentially have your video feed, which is going to be probably your your cut version of the episode, but then in the future maybe you'd be able to offer that full quote UN quote raw edit of the podcast, like the full version to your paid subscribers. Not saying that's what they're doing, but that that would be pretty neat.

19:30 And definitely within the realm of their capabilities if that was something that they could offer in the future. Yeah, very cool. I have no idea if that is on the horizon or not, Ralph. I will interject one thing, and I don't know the answer to that question. The one thing I will interject is Captivate has made the decision to post the video in 78720P. So some people kind of grumbled about that. You can upload a 1080MP4 file, but they're still going to cut it down to a 720. They're actually going to cut it down to three different levels. Depending upon how you want to view it, depending upon your bandwidth. But they didn't specifically speak. But my big take away for this piece is understand if you're doing a deeper audio edit, once you flip that switch to go to video on Apple, your people on Apple aren't going to get that deeper RSS feed. They're just not going to get that anymore. Matt, I saw you put something in the chat. Did you want to say it here on stage? Caught me out again not eating an apple though. Morning.

20:28 I missed the captivate thing and obviously just stumbled into the room trying to quietly pick a seat at the back of the classroom. So I noticed. But I said 720P480P and 240P as the three available resolutions from Captivate. Is that kind of what people are angling too? Yeah, that's correct, Matt. And the reason they're doing that, and they were very clear about that, is the cost, because the cost of storing those 4K files was so high that they couldn't make it valuable to the customers. So, yeah, yeah, go ahead, Matt. Just very quickly, I did catch the end and there was a lot of discussion in the chat from that live stream about the cost and the structure of it. The big question for me from that was going to be whether they hosted the video themselves or did a transistor beta where they were going to connect outsourced video streaming to somewhere else.

21:21 But I think what John has actually put in the chat here is the juice worth the squeeze? I think that's the biggest question people have been asking themselves. And what Elsie and Rob were making very clear is that, guys, this is one thing of a little bit. This isn't someone discovering a gold mine in the middle of nowhere. And I was wondering if there's plenty of gold mines there. If 6000 people roll up and this turns out to be terrible for 5980 of those people, then it's not going to be worth the squeeze. So this is video podcasting. It's not the gold rush, you know. Yeah, and John has joined us in the chat and John is the editor for Elsie and Rob's show.

22:05 And this technically wasn't their show yesterday, but still worth mentioning. And John says, is the juice worth the squeeze? All this extra work and cost for one app that who knows how many people will watch the video. I'm there with you. And I see Nick and Jonathan both are making fun of some of these resolution sizes here, 240. Nick says people watching from an old Nokia. Yeah, I'm not sure the need for the smaller resolution size, but they're doing it. I don't know, maybe they want to. Maybe they feel like having options offsets the fact that they don't have the higher resolution 1080P, which just really actually, I mean, I get why because it's a cost savings thing, but in this day and age, it feels weird not to offer the higher definition resolution.

22:53 Alex, did you want to add something before we go to the next clip? Yeah, it's, it's an interesting conversation. I'm like Matt, I kind of snuck in, you know, it's, it'll be interesting. Like you just said. Why did they offer it? But at the same time, who knows if they're going to roll out at the, you know, down the road. I mean, I, I don't know if it's going to be, I don't know. I had a train of clock and I just lost it. So never mind. Welcome to my world. Yes, Matt, go ahead. What I will say, and I can't remember if I said it on this show before or somewhere else, but people should be looking to Sam Sethi with his True Fans platform as kind of the foundational model for how this will probably work for podcast, how it hosts ongoing. Yeah, I think actually Matt Ralph is working on getting Sam to come join us one morning to talk about that. Great.

23:42 Yeah, that'll be wait for that, because the way he's built that platform is exactly what everyone will be doing with HLS anyway to some degree. So. OK, Yeah, cool, cool. And I don't know about you, but I often when I hear true fans, I immediately think it's only fans. And then I have to remind myself, no, podcasting is not on that platform. It's true fans. Yes. OK, so Ralph, I've been sidebarring here. Do you want me to play clip two? Yeah. Go ahead and play clip 2, because this is where we cut to the chase about cost, which a lot of people were wondering about. All right, let's do it. Here is that question. How will this affect pricing? And the answer is to enable Apple Video podcasting HLS video. It will be $12.00 per show.

24:28 So that's per show, not per account, $12.00 per show. If you have multiple shows in your account, it'll be $12.00 for each. That will give that show 1000 HLS downloads per month and then a bandwidth fee based on usage. Users will only be charged on the HLS bandwidth used if the contents delivered via HLS on Apple. So again, it'll be $12.00 per show with 1000 HLS downloads per month, then a bandwidth fee on usage thereafter. And Mark, this is going to be interesting because he was careful in the way he said that. And I tried to ask the question, if you understand how HLS works, it downloads packets and my question for him and once they roll this out is that 1000 packet downloads or is that 1000 complete show downloads?

25:20 Because there's definitely a difference. I was thinking about my own Daily Show. I do about 10,000 downloads a month. So at 1000, you know, $12.00 each, that's $120.00 potentially to host this assuming that it's the whole show. I don't think it is actually. I think that because if you think about it Mark, if you've got a hour, oh, the other thing I should mention is the cap on length of show is 90 minutes right now as well. So if you've got a 90 minute show, you know that's going to take a lot more bandwidth than a 10 minute show. So I'm wondering if they were careful and I'm not saying Rob was saying anything inappropriate or trying to dodge the question, but I think it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out because that is a big deal. I should also mention if you want to go to high resolution, they can do it, but you're going to have to work out separate pricing with them to do that.

26:09 They did make that offer, but you've got to like send him an e-mail and have him do it sort of on the sidebar. Nick, what do you got for us? That is a steep price to get a podcast onto a single platform, in my opinion. Like most people are paying around that to get their podcast on all platforms. And I understand that video takes up a lot of space and they're talking 720P just to like kind of save on cost and be able to offer at that price for all the storage and everything that's going on. But damn, like $12.00 to be on the Apple podcast. Like I personally I'd pass on it. I'm taking by chances on YouTube.

26:49 Yeah. I mean, look, I don't distribute the video other than we let our live broadcast stay, stay alive over on YouTube. But even if I were to to be putting out more produced content, I think I would just skip it right now with Apple, maybe down the road, maybe if the prices change, maybe if it does become a popular thing among consumers. But as of now, for me, I ain't interested. I'm just not interested in it. Let's see here, Matt, you had something and Alex had something. Alex, don't forget your thought. Go ahead, Matt. Yes, remember Alex on the technical side, I think the advantage for Captivate here for what Ralph was referring to there is that there are fewer unknowns if they take control of what the video is now.

27:35 John has been putting a lot of thoughts in the chat as well about the structure of video and whether people can take can tell the difference. But the thing to remember about video is that you're adding an extra dimension to what is otherwise a predictable file type. But the transmission of that video is dependent on the type of video that it is. And there's lots of different formats that it could be that affects its size. So Captivate doing the processing on their end for different resolutions, they will have a predictable output that they control for with transmitting the bandwidth. Which is why they can probably have a $12.00 foundational price and then bandwidth beyond. Whereas the contrary case with transistor where Justin was asking people to go off platform to stream their content. I think he said it was like a $5. I can't remember if it was Cloudflare or something, $5 Cloudflare account to host your video over there. I think Captivate is going about this the right way and they've structured the payment model the right way to where I think, Ralph, you need to be.

28:39 You don't need to be as worried about the type of video files, the size, the bandwidth, because all of that is going to be predictable. None more so in the fact that they don't offer 1080P as an option unless you contact them, because that's when it does balloon. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate that. I'm going to keep it moving because man, we have lots of stories to get to and I want to go to Alex. I want to hear from him first. So go for it, Alex. And then one more clip. That long winded answer I did forget. No, I'm kidding. I'm with Nick on this. I'm really surprised at Apple. Maybe I'm a little novice on this. I'm surprised that they released this without the. It seems like it's a bug, not a bug, that's the wrong way, but it seems like it's unfinished and to offer something for 12 bucks, I don't know, it's just as a new like, I mean, look at Jen and she's in the audience. They do a video 1st, I believe podcast. I mean, that's a lot of money and it's a lot of time for, I don't know, I just, yeah, it's very frustrating because you're trying to make it right.

29:38 And I mean, when we do our video stuff, it's just it can't be free. But come on. I mean, I'm in the camp. I can't believe I'm saying this. I'm with ER in this case where it's just like, you know, Apple's crazy. Yep, thank you, Alex. And by the way, I just want to say I don't blame Captivate like they have to do something like this to make it work like I'm not I think we're just this whole thing is taking us back. We're again, we're not coming at Captivate because listen, I think we're going to see similar models with all these different hosts that are now adding this for Apple video and we'll see how podcasters respond. We'll see how consumers respond, but as of now, I think people are getting frustrated, as we can hear. It might be a big players game.

30:24 That's the problem. They're trying to set it up for the big players that have the sponsors and that's what it comes. Down to Yep, Yep. OK, Do you want me to play this next clip right? Let's go to the third clip. I just want to finish off on this. There's an issue about stats and you know, we always worry about stats. And I wanted to play this last clip Mark. Let's do it. Well, people switching between audio and video count as two different downloads. Video and audio analytics will be combined. Audio always plays, while video only plays if selected by the listener viewer. Downloads will continue to be measured by IB certification, which is a minimum of 60 seconds per playback or downloaded enough data to be able to be listened to based on a unique IP address user agent combo in a 24 hour window. Here's how this works a little bit. If someone downloads has a file that's downloaded in HLS audio and let's say your episode comes out on Saturday and that is automatically going to download the audio from us and that will show up in your downloads from that Saturday. Then that person goes to listen to that episode on Monday. If they are only listening and it's already downloaded, it won't be an additional listen.

31:43 However, if on Monday they start playing video and some video byte ranges are delivered and enough 60 seconds of byte ranges are delivered on that Monday, it will show up as a second download. Because in most, like most cases in in that scenario, the person's going to be watching the video probably from a different IP address than where it was originally downloaded and in. And this is true for all podcast hosts. We talked about this in the IEB committee on this for everybody. It's really going to show up as a second listen. So it will count as two in that scenario. And I just think it's important we understand that I think this is going to make the download numbers go up because if people are switching back and forth. So don't be surprised if you are one of those folks that moves towards this that you start to see a rise in your downloads. I don't think it's going to be a rise because of more people. I think it's going to be a rise because of different playing options.

32:39 Thank you, Ralph. And by the way, want to shout out Ashley Feller in the audience this morning. Great to see you here. Ashley, we've missed you. Thanks for popping in and hope to see more of you down the road. I have a question for Ralph. OK. Are they going to break it down behind the scenes or is it just going to be downloads? I don't know the answer. I don't know, Alex. They didn't say that. It sounds like there's they're not going to. I know that's one of the things I want to talk to Sam Sethi about because he's actually doing it differently, where he's actually measuring, you know, how much of A play that you have in the depth of the episode. So that's one of the reason why I talked to him.

33:19 Apple or Captivate hasn't said how they're going to do that. At this point, it sounds like they're just going to use the existing model. And if it's over 60 seconds then it's going to be considered a download. Thank you, Ralph. Appreciate that. And let's see here. All right. It looks like everybody is good to go. So very interesting stuff here with this Apple HLS edition. And like I said, not interested at the moment for me. So there you go all right, here's what I want to do. This took up way more time and that's fine I want to be clear, but it took up way more time than I thought. So I want to do my best here to get you guys as much of this info as possible. So I will do a couple of news bites for you and then we'll get into the headlines.

34:10 So bear with me and thank you Ralph for that content creators bite BC you are on deck. FYI here's some news bites for you. First, Spotify adds a Just let Me listen button. They rolled out a feature that lets users turn off all video content, including music videos and podcast clips, giving listeners a cleaner audio first experience. Again, the update comes after a steady push toward video across the platform, which hasn't exactly thrilled everyone. Now users can opt out and go back to using Spotify the way many of them started as a place to simply listen without the extra noise.

34:55 So a couple of points from this story. The this gives control back to the users who prefer a distraction free listening experience. It signals that Spotify knows not everyone is sold on video podcasting first. I know that's a little bit of an assumption, but it certainly points to that it could impact how podcasters prioritize video production over, or I should say, moving forward. And it reinforces that audio still holds value even as platforms chase video trends. Also, Overcast, the podcast player platform, has doubled its premium price for new subscribers.

35:39 Overcast is getting more expensive, at least for new premium subscribers. And this was found in a Reddit post yesterday. At least I found it yesterday. I'm not sure if that was the exact post date. Developer Marco Arment said new subscriptions are now 2999 a year with one week free trial, while existing premium subscribers will stay at that 1499 price for now, though he says legacy prices will likely go up gradually, possibly later this year. He also noted the premium features themselves are staying the same, and that anyone who cancels an older subscription and comes back later will have to rejoin at the new price. Armin's reasoning was pretty direct, he said. Costs are up, ad revenue is down, but more importantly, he believes Overcast has simply been underpriced for years and that 2999 is a fairer reflection of the app's value in today's market.

36:42 He also floated one possible future change that could matter to Sirius Podcast listeners. Adding custom and private feeds by URL may eventually become a premium only feature, though he said that's still under consideration. Dr. Will you take the story number six, our follow up story from last week of. Course OK, so this is a follow up story from last week. If you listened to our news episode last week, you knew you know that Open AICEO Sam Altman is stepping into the podcasting arena. He's teaming up with Open A is newly acquired podcast TBPN TBPN OK to launch a new show focused on artificial intelligence tech and the future of, well, everything.

37:37 The move puts Altman directly in front of the listeners instead of behind press releases, giving him a platform to shape the narrative around AI in his own words. It also signals that even the people building the machines now feel the need to explain themselves repeatedly. So some of the highlights are The podcast is part of a broader push by tech leaders to control public perception around AITBPN. Damn, I hate that T. Oh wait, I hit the wrong button. I have to hit it. It is not math, says Glorning. Guess I forgot words are hard in the morning.

38:18 Did I say that out loud? OK, TBPN continues expanding its network with high profile industry voices. The show leans into long form conversations, not quick sound bites, and this adds to the growing pile of thought leadership content competing for your attention. So here is a question. Would you actually listen to ACEO explain their company, or does that feel like just PR kind of, you know, in disguise? I think that depends on how they're delivering the podcast. I think it depends on the podcast itself because there are podcasts out there, big name podcast, big company podcast where the CE OS are a part of it. And I think it just depends, you know, are they they're really just pushing their products and services or are they doing an actual podcast adding value to their brand? And obviously for their audience, that's really what it comes down to.

39:20 Also, a lot has to do with reputation. Now, Sam Altman has quite a reputation for being difficult. That might bite him in the butt when it comes to people wanting to actually listen to him, or it might go completely the other way and people are hoping that he's really going to fly off the handle. Well, I think that the other option is that if they do it right, maybe he does humanize himself more. Maybe people, you know, after hearing him on a few episodes, they're getting to know him in a different light and maybe he becomes more trustworthy. I mean, that is what a podcast can do for you if you're doing it well. True.

40:01 Yeah. So I saw B TS Pepper come up. Yes, I saw lots of Peppers come up, and if you're wondering why we're saying that, that is how we get each other's attention on Clubhouse here. We flashed this pepper emoji because we used to have a hand wave and that has disappeared from Clubhouse. I'm going to go to Sid first. Go ahead, Sid. Good morning again. Yeah, good morning, everybody. So I interviewed studios on my show and people want to hear from them. And it's a SEC, a separate series. I call CEO chat. I did one on Monday and they're one of the most popular series within my show cuz people really like to hear from the industry leaders and share the insights of what's happening in their business, their thoughts on what's happening in the industry.

40:44 So this could work really, really well for Sam Altman. He is a controversial figure, right? And it could be done, if it's done right, it could actually really help his personal brand. It can really help open AI grow. It could really provide insights. So knowing that he's going to do this and I am an active user of Open AII will likely go listen to what he has to say and it, but if it's set up and all, it is a freaking pitch about open AI and why you need to you, not the behind the scenes and not the getting. And then it will fail. And I believe that the more leaders, executive level leaders, CEO, the C-Suite should be public with podcast appearance, video appearance, LinkedIn messaging.

41:30 They should be the face of their brand and they need to be more public. And so I think that can have a lot of benefit when your customer base sees the leader doing things and sharing messages. So it can be very powerful. Totally with you, Sid. Well said. And I'm going to keep it going. I think that's a good place to keep moving. Let's go to BC Babbles with some with a tech update, some products and software. This is where BC shares the newer products and software. So yeah, go for it BC. Yes, but of course maintaining the AI topic because we can't leave that too early in the show. So Shonda, this is going to be something more for DIY and indie podcasters. Shonda and AI powered podcast creation platform has launched a version three of its platform, a significant rebuild designed to remove the technical and creative barriers that prevent independent creators from making professional quality audio. Now the platform brings together recording templates, transcription based editing, AI audio enhancement and publishing distribution and AI generated metadata into a single workspace.

42:40 The founding thesis for Shonda is pretty simple. Audio is among the most human ways to share an idea, but the tools built around it have historically been designed for studios and engineers, not for independent creators. So version 3 rolling out here brings a number of interesting updates, including a rebuilt browser based recording studio with automatic background noise removal. It also supports over 12 languages. A multi track text based audio editor with natively built in that's built into the browser. It also has vinyl. A clean shareable episode page for each published episode, which to me sounds very captivate ish and a built in analytics and track episode. A building analytics system to track each episode among numerous other updates to this version. So for anyone who's interested, shonda 3 of course is now live. The platform offers a free tier pro plan of 19 bucks a month, a business plan at 49 a month, and a 7 day free trial for those who are interested in the paid plans. Thank you BC So this is an interesting story in the sense that this is where I think a product like this, it makes sense for podcasters.

43:52 It's using AI to help streamline your process, simplify your process, etcetera. And we know, I hope I can get to this next story. Well, you know what, I'm going to get to it really quickly 'cause I think it's interesting clash between what you've just shared, BC and how others are using AI. So yeah, thank you BC This is a story the headline reads. Podcast piracy has a new playbook and it's infuriating creators. And this came from pod news. It says it well, this is what they said. I'm paraphrasing. A shady new studio is ripping off the names, artwork and branding of dozens of successful history podcasts, not to make great content, but to siphon off unsuspecting listeners and the ad dollars that follow them. The operation was first spotted by Dirk, the host of the History of the Germans podcast, who noticed the copycat show using a visual clone of his branding.

44:55 The scheme targets history podcast specifically, with at least 75 shows affected so far. At least that I guess that know of this, right? It's probably more. Dirk put the listener impact plainly. Someone searching for his show could land on the fake show instead and assume the real one just isn't worth their time, making the first listen harder than it already is. The tactic exploits a gap in platform accountability. Since podcast directories don't have the same content matching guard rails that music or video platforms have developed. It underscores why trade marking your podcast name matters.

45:38 Something pod news and podcasting morning chat has flagged before as an underutilized protection for independent creators. The broader concern is that as podcasting grows into a real business, bad actors are increasingly treating listener attention as something worth stealing, not just borrowing. And bad actors could include not just humans, but AI as well. So who do you think should be responsible for stopping this? The creator, the podcast, the directories? Someone else? How do we nip this in the bud? Or can we? I don't know if that's a rhetorical question.

46:18 I don't know if any of us have the answers to that yet. Matt, what do you think? I've been keeping up with this story 'cause I saw it and there are a few podcasts in there that I was looking at the show notes of and I was like, that is so sneaky. The what seems to be the tenor, based on what I've seen of information released today, is that the big move is that the Podcast Index has been keeping track of what it believes a lot. This is in pod news today by the way. If you want to check out the episode that just went out, the Podcast Index is starting to mark and find a way to flag and feedback information in an API about which podcasts it believes are AI generated and could be doing very similar things. thatrss.com very quickly and hastily removed all these podcasts that were flagged so that they were unable to be found anywhere afterwards.

47:12 Was a really good thing. But I think I don't know, is it like social policing that we need as a result of this cause? The moral imperative not to do this kind of BS to manipulate the industry to try and make a quick buck. There's no technical way to stop it. It's why there's a huge movement against deception at the moment with AI generated content. The ability to pretend to be someone else in a zoom call is becoming less and less sci-fi and more real as time goes on. So I think it has to be like an ethical approach. I think we need maybe the podcast index needs a podcast, podcast, podcast ethics board that. Says glorning.

48:00 Guess I forgot words are hard in the morning. Did I say that out loud? Out loud. I made that yesterday, guys, yes. Now I'm getting hit with it, yes, but yeah. Thank you for shortening that up for us. I think we need a an ethics standard. I think for too long podcasting has been left to what can be done as opposed to what should be done. I think socially driven ethics would be a good way to approach this. Yeah, that's wishful thinking. Thank you, Matt. Ralph, did you want to chime in? Yeah, I just want to say one thing. I'm not a fan of a policing agency to do this because I think then it gets into this subjective conversation about what is this, What is that? So I'm just, I'm a sort of one of those guys. It's not a big fan of that.

48:47 So I just want to throw that in there. I want to throw one other thing in. My wife turned me on to this show called Scarpetta. It is with Nicole Kidman and I want to talk about just for a second, it's about AI. Well, it's a very interesting thing. Her wife passed away and now she has an AI that she talks to her wife every single day. It was really an interesting thing. But you know, it's a very fascinating thing just how far that AI technology has come to where this person, it's like somebody is still around, but through the through the screen. So just this is where we are. Like, this is where we are now, so it's going to be hard to put the genie back in the bottle at this point. There's, I don't know if that's the same show or not. There was definitely a show on Netflix I saw a few years ago where, yeah, when people passed away, they could get their consciousness uploaded into this, you know, basically AI thing.

49:38 And yeah, it was a lot of the ethics around that was the focal point of the show, but there. Was This is a new one? This is a new one. Oh, this is a new kind of show like that. OK, Got. It it is. Got it BC what did you want to add? Wasn't there also a movie a few years ago called Her that was about a a man who had like AAI interface that he fell in love with? Essentially, yeah. Absolutely. I forgot who starred in that right now off the top of my head, but I yeah, I know exactly the movie you're talking about and it feels more and more real these days. Matt, did you want to add something? I can't remember, but I will say that probably what you're thinking of Mark is when Black Mirror, previously ABBC series, made its way to Netflix Season 2.

50:18 Episode 1 covers this as a premise of the episode. Maybe that's what it was. Someone died and they took their entire Twitter feed and turned them into an AI generated companion they could talk to. But Black Mirror I think is necessary watching for anybody who's going to operate in the world today. Is this for another episode? Watch. It that's a good show. Yeah, I agree. Go check that out. OK, Dr., can you do story #9 to take us home today? Absolutely. So podcasters are cashing in on fans, not ads, and the numbers are staggering.

51:00 So Patreon just dropped data. Data, as some of you call it. Data that makes a strong case for treating your podcast like a real business. Listen up Ralph, Podcasters earned 629,000,000. I always feel I have to say million like that 629,000,000 on the platform in 2025 and the direct to fan model is only picking up steam. So here's some of the little highlighted findings. More than 47,000 podcasters currently earn income on the platform, supported by 7.6 million paid memberships with top earners like Joe Boudin. Is it Boudin or Boudin pulling in 1 million or 1 million or more per month?

51:53 Patreon frames the growth as a deliberate shift away from reach based strategies, arguing that reach doesn't mean what it used to. And that's in quotes. Quote reach doesn't mean what it used to. In an era of crowded feeds and algorithm driven discovery that doesn't always translate to loyalty, the Spotify integration has proven meaningful. Nearly half of earning podcasters have enabled it, and 15% of Spotify listeners who visit a Creators Tron Patreon page convert to paid members. Patreon's framing of the most successful podcasters is telling. They're building full ecosystems around their show, including bonus content, ad free listening, exclusive series and live experiences often centered on tight knit niche communities rather than mass audiences.

52:54 And the top earning podcast genres in Patreon are pop culture and comedy, lifestyle and hobbies and education and information. How about that? Yeah, thank you, Dr. and Ralph, I know you use Patreon. What are your thoughts on this story? Oh, I think this is the future of content creation. I think the race to the bottom of CPM is going to end up more people moving in this direction. I have a Patreon for each of my shows, actually, and we post a ton of content there. It's not grown yet, but my intention was to start putting a lot of content over there. But I really think that's the truth of where we're moving towards.

53:36 I think that's the most sensible model, building your own ecosystem. It kind of goes along with the business bite I talked about today, and that is building your own media company, and you're basically using Patreon to do that. I think it's brilliant. And the truth of the matter is you can make decent money doing that with a very small audience. You know, you think about it, if you get $510 a month from 100 people, that's real money. And so I think you're going to see a lot more people taking that approach and putting it behind the quote paywall. But I'm doing it personally, I'm I'm not pushed it a lot yet. That's one of the things on my after tax season radar. But no, I think it's a great product. The only thing I don't like about Patreon is they take a lot of the percentage of the money from you.

54:18 So you just have to be aware of that. You're not going to get 100% of the dollars that you're getting. But they make it super simple. There's a little bit of friction getting involved with it, but it's easy to put content up there. My team puts content up there on each of our channels every single day. So it's it's really a great thing. Thank you Ralph BC did you want to add something? I was going to stay real quick. I'm not on video today, so I just wanted to make sure, Dr. Are you holding your pinky to your mouth every single time you say millions? Got to make sure you do it the right way it. Kind of feels like it. Thank you BC thank you, Ralph and Dr. Thank you for wrapping up today's news. We are back tomorrow with our evaluation series.

55:00 So we are evaluating the podcast Salvage. We will put a link to the episode we're breaking down tomorrow. This is a listener's podcast and that's what we do every so often on Thursdays is they submit their podcast for feedback and we'll provide it tomorrow for the podcast Salvage. And that's your reminder team to, if you haven't listened yet, go listen and be ready to share your feedback tomorrow on the podcasting morning chat. So until then, make it a great day everybody, take care.