2024 Vision: Hopes and Wishes for the Future of Podcasting

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:

It's not a prediction show. It's what we hope to see in 2024.

Announcer [00:00:07]:

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.

Dave Jackson [00:00:22]:

Daniel, future of podcasting episode 34, last one of the year. So what are we talking about tonight?

Daniel J. Lewis [00:00:32]:

Well, I'll tell you what we're not Talking about we are not talking predictions because everybody's talking about the predictions for the next year or their highlights from the last year. We're also not talking about that. But I had this thought of this is Christmas time, holidays, and, yes, New Year is coming. So looking toward the New Year, What kind of hopes do we have? Not this is what we're going to predict. I'll I'll say this. I made some predictions years ago. I was so happy to see that they're taking place. Now the predictions most predictions are just like more.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:01:04]:

We're going to see more of this, more of that, more of this, more of that. There's not much that's different, but what I'd love to talk about and hear from you is what do you hope will happen in podcasting in 2024?

Dave Jackson [00:01:19]:

But that's a good one. The thing I somebody asked me for a prediction, and I said, this isn't a prediction. It's math. And I go, but in theory, now that all these hosts have made dynamic insertion an option, so that means there's all sorts of slots to fill. And if I'm a person that wants to advertise on podcasts, I can go to somebody and say, Will you take $15 CPM for a host read or whatever? And they'll go, no. Then you go to the next one, and then and suddenly well, somebody will finally Take 15, and somebody will take 12, and somebody will take 10 because it's gonna be a buyer's market. I think that's I think I have that right, and so That's something I I hope people retain their value, especially the niche shows. Like, hey.

Dave Jackson [00:02:10]:

Don't don't sell out because they're the only people offering you an ad, like, hold the hold the line or whatever. I feel like I'm in war. Hold the line. But, that's something that I go at least on math, it looks like that could happen. And I've heard a couple people talk about the race to the bottom, and I'm like, well, we'll we'll see. But that's That if somebody said, what do I hope? There's that. And then the other thing, I I just did an episode about What do people do with ads and podcast as a listener standpoint? And most people said, I skip them. And so if CPM model goes down and people need to eat and they're actually using this to pay for bills and stuff.

Dave Jackson [00:02:50]:

Their only option is to add more ads to the show, which then, in my opinion, ruins the experience. So I'm I'm hoping you know, advertising is a great model for those people that it works for. I just hope they don't, You know? I hope they keep in mind not to ruin the experience of the listener.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:03:12]:

Yeah. And that goes along with one of my hopes for advertisers specifically is that they would increase their payout, and the way that they'll increase their payout is by selling more so that it becomes more profitable. So I do hope for those podcasts that want advertisers, I do hope that those advertisers find more success or the podcast will get better advertisers that will be more relevant to their audience So that it's far more profitable for those companies to be on those podcasts, and thus, they will be willing to pay more for those ads. It's so much the supply and demand thing or, like, you look at stocks, bonds, crypto, gold, all of that stuff. It's really only worth what people are willing to pay for it. If people are willing to pay only $5 for an ad, That's all it's worth. But for some stuff, they might be willing to pay much more, and we've seen much higher ad rates in the past for host endorsed stuff, baked in ads. Maybe some of that will have a resurgence as people see what's working, what's not working.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:04:17]:

But I really do want to see advertisers succeed. Even though I don't like listening to ads. Here's the thing. The more the advertisers succeed, the more the podcaster profits. The more the podcaster profits from 1 ad, the less they need to do other ads. So I would love for the advertisers to make more and be able to pay out more.

Dave Jackson [00:04:40]:

Yeah. I I still remember the 1 show. I don't remember the name of the show. I just remember it was about web design, and I listened for the ads because they did a really good job of finding things that really fit their And so the the actual content was a lot of chitchat and a little WordPress talk, but every time they went to an ad, I found some new tool that I was like, wait. I'm on the Internet all the time. I've never heard of this thing. And so that would be great if we can somehow I know it's more programming and stuff, but if there's a way to really get targeted ads, I know they're doing it great geographically. It's always kinda freaky when I hear an ad from my local hospital or whatever when I'm listening to a podcast, but that would be great too, if we can somehow get them to Really, Target, I know, you know, in the early days of podcasting, Todd Cochran was working and trying to herd all the small podcasters of similar topics together to try to get 1 advertiser to kind of advertise in bulk in a way, but that's That's a lot of work.

Dave Jackson [00:05:45]:

That's the problem. Yeah. It's a lot of paperwork.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:05:48]:

And now that's replaced mostly by the dynamic content insertion with ads And programmatic ads because now those same advertisers can do that same thing without all of the The overhead of having to audit all of those ads and make sure did they really promote it in this spot, did they include the ad in this episode that we need to track, Now that's all being tracked. So, yeah, for for the little guy, the hobbyist like us, and and we podcast hobbyist wise and professional wise, For those who are trying to make money that way, it is a lot easier, but also not as profitable. But it's easier. You have that trade off.

Dave Jackson [00:06:29]:

Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be tricky to see how that moves in the future as we go along, but the other thing I'd love to see them do, and Luckily, I don't I don't have ads on my show, but in working with different people, it's you you wait a long time to get paid because there's a whole you know, if there's a for me, like, there's a 30 day money back guarantee. Well, they you know, most ads don't have that, but there's a thing where they have to make sure that If the person especially if there's a coupon code or a activation code, you know, just use Dave 27 to get, you know, blah blah blah. Well, If there's some sort of refund policy on that, they have to wait to make sure the person does return the product, and then it's, like, another 30 days after that, and then, Oh, well, then the bank has to write the check. It just seems like from what it sounds like, you wait forever, so you're like, oh, I got a sponsor. I'm gonna go I'm gonna take my wife to dinner next week, and you're like or next month, and you're like, no, probably probably not next month or the month after that, so hopefully that will also get, streamlined.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:07:34]:

How about for hosting providers? Now you work for a hosting provider, Libsyn, so I'll go first here. And Our opinions are our own, so I don't want people thinking that anything reflects on that. Yeah. But hosting providers, companies like Libsyn, Captivate, Blueberry, all of them, What I would love to see is more integrated openness, and that would be through APIs. Now APIs are how programs communicate with each other through different things. So, like, if you use the Libsyn published to YouTube feature, that's using a special API. If you are Using WordPress, so much of WordPress is built around API. So APIs are how programs communicate with each other.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:08:18]:

What I'd love to see in regards to hosting providers is opening up more for this to integrate With other things. So that could be, like, stats, for example. Very few hosting providers actually provide A stats API so that, for example, if I'm hosting on well, let's just say Libsyn because I know Libsyn doesn't. If I'm hosting my podcast on Libsyn and I'm in a WordPress website, there's no way for me to see my Libsyn stats inside of WordPress. That's what an API would enable. So I know there are certain other hosting providers like Blueberry, for example. Blueberry is so WordPress centric That it does bring in the stats, some basic stats into WordPress. You can see those right there.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:09:04]:

That's really handy. I also love to see stuff like more public information. I I love how Lipson, for years, has been sharing their global download stats and information and insights from that, and Buzzsprout has started doing that. Transistor has started doing that. I'd love to see more hosting companies do this too so that we could get a bigger picture and maybe even, as I've hinted in the past, Some way integrating these stats with each other so that we could get better picture of the whole industry and also Stuff with WordPress. Like, some of these hosting providers don't have any kind of integration with WordPress that's easy for those people who want to do something also in WordPress Without having to do a lot of copy and paste. So that's what I'm looking for. What about you, Dave?

Dave Jackson [00:09:51]:

I would just love to see, Again, I think my expectations were a little unrealistic. You know? When I heard of the standards project, I really like, okay. 6 months, we'll have another feature that everybody's gonna do and then another 3 months, and it's like, So I'm ready just to say I was very happy to hear Buzzsprout, rolled out pod roll, and I forget who else did. There was somebody else. And then today, Captivate announced that they are now I'm not sure how inside of Captivate, but the the press release said they now Do both, for lack of better phrase, old chapters, which are the ones where you burn them into the m p three, which for the record, I still think was much easier than what we're doing, but then you have the ones with the the JSON and however that's going on behind, which, again, we talked about that. The advantage of that is you don't have to reupload the file. So Captivate has now adapted that. So I'm hoping to see more of that, and I know John Gibbons, the Main guy at Lipson said on, Sam's Show that in 2024, Lipson would be looking at podcasting 2 point o.

Dave Jackson [00:10:57]:

And I can say this. They said it again in a meeting. So that's that's you know, it wasn't a fluke. I've heard it twice now. So that's gonna be, happening in 2024, so we'll see what what happens over there. Yeah. That's I think that's really for you know, it'd be interesting just to see Like, I'm a big fan, and and I get why because it it is the most confusing part, but the whole streaming Satoshi thing. Because when we talk about ads, Like, that could be a an income stream if it just was made a little easier, and it's it's taken lots of strides since it first came on board.

Dave Jackson [00:11:32]:

The whole, what was the name of that Telegram? You know, you were jumping through all sorts of weird hoops to to monitor things and things like that. So I'd I'd like to see that become a little more mainstream, and there are things like PayPal and the Cash App and a couple other things now that you can basically Buy and trade or sell or whatever you do with Bitcoin to to get it in and out of your bank. So I'd like to that I would love to see just because I've been talking about it for so long. Right now, when you mention it, you can just tell who's excited about it, and the other person has already left by the time you said Bitcoin. And then it's like, wait. Where where did they go? We're, oh, dug on it. I lost him again. So for me, that's what I'd like to see.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:12:17]:

I I would hope that along those lines, in 2024, we'll see some kind of government Decision that will basically say, hey. Crypto's okay. You guys can have your crypto. You can do what you want with it kind of stuff Because lately and I'm not a fan of getting the government involved in stuff, but I I I don't know exactly who needs to make the decision or what Or if we will have to wait until after the election or what, but I I just really hope that in 2024, we see Less of the government going after crypto companies, unless they deserve it, that is, but more actually saying, okay. This is okay. Here's the way that we need you to register this or track this and and to be reasonable with that too. So I would love to see that. I don't know if we'll actually see that in 2024.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:13:12]:

It seems kind of early for that Because politicians just don't seem to understand crypto all that well. Some of them do, but most of them don't. But I would certainly hope for that.

Dave Jackson [00:13:24]:

Yeah. That would be great. What other things in terms of the industry do you think you'd like to see?

Daniel J. Lewis [00:13:31]:

Well, for the industry, I mean, we're Talking about the future of podcasting, I'd love to see the industry as a whole embrace Podcasting 2.0 more. In when I say podcasting industry, I'm thinking of all points of the industry, the audiences, the Producers, the developers, the advertisers, just everybody involved in everything that makes podcasting possible in every point, every end of podcasting. I want to see Podcasting 2.0 embraced more. And I'd really hope that at some point, we can just decide this whole, like, Content moderation debate and and brand safety and all of that stuff, I just love to see them not clamp down so much and just Realize, okay. We we've done this enough. This is enough. Let's just stop clamping down on opinions we don't like. I don't Yeah.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:14:26]:

I don't expect that to happen. Really, I expect it to get worse, but I hope it gets better.

Dave Jackson [00:14:32]:

Yeah. That's gonna be an interesting thing to see because I there's now I know James just reported on an app that was going you paid them $5, and they would remove the ads from podcasts.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:14:45]:

Oh, yeah, that, oh, that's a scary situation.

Dave Jackson [00:14:49]:

Yeah. Yeah. So that will be interesting to to see. I know AI is gonna be probably still a hot topic next year with more things coming out, and, you know, this one will do your laundry while you, You know? I just saw somebody online. It was, this will take your, you know, whatever from Chatt GPT and turn it into a book, which is not new, but it was Yet another company, and that's that's the thing I think is funny is I keep seeing more companies doing, oh, just like that other company did, like the other company that Like, I don't see a lot of originality. It's all, oh, I know. We can have it do this. I'm like, oh, you mean, like, you know, whatever.

Dave Jackson [00:15:28]:

Oh, you're so we're gonna re it's gonna be remote video and audio recording, and then you'll get separate tracks. I'm like, oh, like Zencastr, SquadCast, a script, whatever you wanna call it, Riverside, StreamYard, ECAMM, like, they all do that, so that will be fun to to watch. I'm trying to think of what else in the industry. Here's one thing I would like to see. I'd like to see another podcast conference that's small because both Podcast Movement and Podfest have become, you know, thousands of people. I really miss DC Podfest. It was about a 150 people, maybe. It was maybe a day or 2 with single track.

Dave Jackson [00:16:11]:

I love small single track kind of events, and and even if we go back to the early days of, pod camps, which were Just anybody could get up and talk. If you you voted with your feet, they were free. Those are fun. I because to me, When I go to events I recently went to a a meetup in Cleveland that Podfest was was doing a tour, so I went up to hang out with Chris, Went down to Cincinnati to hang out with you, and they're always smaller, they're intimate, as we like to say. It's an intimate gathering, but I do wish we had more of those because every time I go to them, I usually come away with either a a stronger relationship with somebody or some new insight or something like that, so I don't know. Do you think do you think we have too many conferences at this point? Or

Daniel J. Lewis [00:17:00]:

No. I love that hope of yours because It's so doable, especially, like, I'm sure that if you or I although we only live a few hours apart

Dave Jackson [00:17:11]:

Yeah.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:17:11]:

But if either one of us decided, hey. We're gonna do a 2 day podcasting conference. We rent a space. Either of us could probably book that space with a couple of 100 people, probably. Yeah. Because if we if we had good topics And a good selection of speakers. I think it's just the event industry is difficult to get into. I I've run an event before, PodCAMP Cincinnati, and

Dave Jackson [00:17:37]:

It just about killed you.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:17:39]:

I did not get very much sleep that weekend, But it was a lot of fun, and the people who attended made great connections, had a lot of fun there too. And that kind of thing, I think More regional stuff is certainly ripe for doing. It just needs someone willing to take the risk, and there is quite a bit of risk with it. Especially, like, the whole Podcamp thing, so much of it had to be funded by sponsors. The venue would sometimes give it for free. But I think nowadays, though, Pretty much the only place you'll be able to get a venue for free would be something like a library. Unless you've got really good connections at a local school, It can be difficult these days, but still doable. Someone just needs to try it, and I I'd love to see that happen.

Dave Jackson [00:18:30]:

And if that's something you do, be sure to let, you know, the Todd Cochrans and the me and the Daniels and and Mark Asquith, then there you know, James Cridland, like, let us know. We'll be happy to promote it because we wanna see these thrive, and They're great fun, and, I'm always kinda sad when I hear, oh, there was this really cool thing in Atlanta, and I'm like, wait. What? Where? I I would've driven to that. I'm like, Oh, yeah. It was 2 weeks ago. I was like, nobody told me.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:18:57]:

Well, you know, there was the SPARK Christian Podcasters Conference. How many people were there?

Dave Jackson [00:19:03]:

Yeah. That's about that size when I think about it. And they had a pretty big room, so probably couple 100. Yeah.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:19:09]:

So maybe not only, like, regional focus, But also niche focused like that. So that was a Christian podcasters conference. And I I often say this whenever I see someone Say, who are the other Christian podcasters here? I have to ask, well, do you mean a Christian who podcasts, or do you mean a Christian who podcasts about Christian things. Like, is the podcast the Christian, or is the person the Christian? Right. So so, like, a a Christian podcast conference could be like a regular podcast conference, but For Christians, you could have the same thing for you know, there are the, Afrozen audio. There's, Cheap podcast? Remember some yeah. Cheap podcast. Certain things like that where they are trying to niche to a specific audience, not just a region.

Dave Jackson [00:19:55]:

Yeah. I know, in Tennessee, there's Rockin Pod that, has a bunch of, kinda hard rock guys get together, and then I guess in a way, Comic Con has a podcasting track. I don't know that I would call that a podcast conference, though. That's more of a Comic book conference that minors in podcasting, but that kinda stuff would be great because I know the When I went to Rockin Pod, everybody there was networking with everybody, and oh, we'll swap interviews, and You know, how did you get so and so on your show? Oh, I've got the guy's manager, I'll you know, so there's a lot of cross promotion going on, so that's where those events would be great.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:20:36]:

What do you think about apps, like, specifically the podcast listening apps? What kind of hopes do you have for them?

Dave Jackson [00:20:44]:

That's a great question. I, right now, am pretty happy with Cast O Matic. I know I would say when I first started using it and, again, These all these new podcast apps are, hence, the name new, so they're gonna be a little buggier than than others. But right now, I I heard Mike Dell, from Blueberry Talk on a show how he was using Overcast because it didn't do any kind of, you know, Bitcoin streaming, and I said, Go download Cast O Matic. I I really think I mean, I love the guy from Cast O Matic, but, like, if I was Marco, I'd be like, how did you get my code? I mean, it looks really close to being exactly like overcast. And so, so far, I've been pretty happy with it. I I am a list guy. We've talked about this before.

Dave Jackson [00:21:28]:

There are podcast apps where you you make a smart list, so I basically say, hey, here are the the 10 podcasts that I listen to. When this episode comes down, put it in this list. When this one comes down, put it in list number 2, and this one goes in list number 3, so then when I'm ready to listen, I just open up whatever playlist I I mean, oh, there's my money stuff. Oh, there's my health stuff. Oh, here's my podcast stuff. So there aren't I'm finding out that I thought Everybody was like me, and no. Most of the apps are very much the opposite where you get a big pile of of episodes, and then you pick, okay. How many do I wanna put in the the queue or or the like, you get 1 playlist.

Dave Jackson [00:22:05]:

So, you know, I know Pod Fans right now is really interesting. They Sam's doing everything over there, but I don't think he he has a playlist feature. I'll have to go back and and look at that. I don't know. What are what are you, I know you're an overcast person. Right? I think so. Yeah.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:22:20]:

Yeah. And so I have 2 hopes here. 1 is for Overcast to start supporting, specifically, podcasting 2 point o chapters. I know that Marco has said he's never doing the crypto stuff. I understand that, so I'm not going to even hope that The lightning payments and any of that will come to Overcast, but I would love to see podcasting 2 point o chapters in there, especially If we can build on what chapters we'll do, and it sounds like, finally, someone's listening, and maybe that's in the discussion again about extending what chapters can do. So I'd love for that to come to Overcast. But if not, then I'd love to see some of these cutting edge new podcast apps really improve their user interface and user experience enough to win me over from Overcast. Because I know that while their interfaces might look similar, like you're saying, Cast O Matic looks a lot like Overcast, there are little things here and there that just bug me about the other apps that they need to improve before they'll win me over.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:23:28]:

Certain things I really gotten used to with Overcast. The way it works, like the Apple Watch app is one I frequently refer to that specifically. I know that you get a media player on the Apple Watch, but there are things that the overcast app can do on an Apple Watch that no Other app does, and I love that about the Apple Watch with the Overcast app. If other apps can add that, That might win me over. So either more podcasting 2.0 and Overcast or the podcasting 2 point o apps Improve to win me over from Overcast.

Dave Jackson [00:24:03]:

Yeah. I was actually considering going back to Overcast because Overcast has this cool feature where there's a web version. I really like the web version. It's nothing and Marco was gonna kill it because it's kinda ugly, But I just need something to listen so I can click play while I'm at work, and then it picks up right where you left off, and you can upload things on the web version, and then it will come down on your phone. And in researching that, I found out that Cas O Matic also It's that. So I was like, oh, very in fact, it's actually a little easier because it's both those are on, through for iOS only, and so you can go into your finder, just copy and paste into a folder, and presto, it's on your phone. So but I do I would like to see Cast O Matic have a web based version. I love Podverse.

Dave Jackson [00:24:50]:

That's another one that has a web based version. It's Android, it's iOS, but it's not a list thing, and my biggest problem with, with Podverse was I listen to a lot of podcasts and I was constantly, like it doesn't, I wanted to, like, get it off my phone when I'm done listening to it. If I if I wanna go back, I'll just redownload it, and I was constantly going into because you can make Your own little playlist, kind of, but I was always going back. I'm like, oh, there's the last 5 episodes that I listened to. Like, how do I get these off screen? And so I talked to, I forget his name, he's a really nice guy.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:25:26]:

Mitch Downey.

Dave Jackson [00:25:27]:

Mitch, yeah. And Mitch is like, alright, your opinion has been heard, so I don't know When that'll happen, but it's it's always nice to be heard.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:25:35]:

I would love to see when you mentioned Ios only, it reminded me of something, and we say this every year. And I think even James Cridland and Adam Curry have a running bet each year. I really hope Apple Podcasts comes to Android. And now that they finally have a direct monetization from Apple Podcasts With the subscriptions thing, then they have some incentive to do so. Maybe they're waiting until they reach a certain threshold. Maybe it's just always going to be a certain thing that's like, you can only get this through an Apple product, but then they have iTunes still on Windows. It's still Itunes.

Dave Jackson [00:26:16]:

I was gonna say when you when you said that, I'm like, my hope is that we can get rid of Itunes. Just kill it. Take it out behind the barn. Thing is such a memory hog, and it's old and clunky, and, yeah, that would be another hope. Please kill iTunes.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:26:30]:

Well, maybe Apple will bring Apple Podcasts to Android when they add an additional monetization option and that monetization option that I think they will someday add. And I thought this would come first. I've been predicting this for years, is that you look at the App Store, and in the App Store, apps can buy advertising for their apps. So they'll appear in certain searches and that kind of thing. I would love to see that come to the Apple Podcasts app. You have that in Overcast, And Overcast has a great model for it for if you want to advertise your podcast, and it's only for advertising podcasts. I think Apple Podcasts could do that same thing and probably have great success with that of selling ad space, basically. Probably, I don't want it to interfere in the experience in any way, but, like, appearing in the search, you search for something just like you can on Google.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:27:26]:

You search for something and you see sponsored results first, and then you see other results. I'd love to see Apple do that Because then that would give them more of an incentive to put Apple Podcasts in more places so that it could be available to Android users.

Dave Jackson [00:27:43]:

Yeah. That would be great. I always love how James goes because, you know, they're not stupid. Oh, that would be great. I would I would love to invent a time machine and go back to Google and go, please don't do this with YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Is it is

Daniel J. Lewis [00:28:03]:

it morbid to say, we hope it dies? Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:28:08]:

Well, see, that's almost the prediction because some priests that's you know? Well, we'll see, but so I'd love to see an Overcast. There's an idea. I'd love to see Overcast or Cast o Matic on Android, like a really kick butt. Pocket Cast is a pretty cool app. I like that. That's that's a hope. I would love to see Pocket Cast. Remember when they said, oh, yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:28:32]:

We're gonna embrace the 2 point o stuff. Yeah. Hello? Hello? Anybody home over there? They raised their price for their, premium version so they can pay somebody to do the the coding, because that's a pretty slick app. It's also one of the most expensive ones, but I I'm still kind of like, what is the go to on Android. You know, Goodpods has a pretty decent app. It's really community based, A lot of a lot of comments and following and things like that going on over there, but I would love to see an overcast on Android. That'd be great.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:29:07]:

How about and this one might require a lot of extra thought. Audiences. Podcast audiences. My hope for podcast audiences is that they would support their favorite podcasts more So that the podcasters don't need advertising if they're trying to monetize, whether that's donating to the podcast, streaming Toshis to the podcaster buying whatever products the podcasters are creating or services they're offering. I'd love to see The independent podcasters supported more directly from their audiences. And the other way, though, the audiences can do this, and I'd love to see audiences do this more often would be to support the podcast virally, we could call it, or really just word-of-mouth. Help Those podcasts that you love to grow, this is something that I try to do every now and then. I'll get a wave of inspiration for this, And I will post on x Twitter to ask a question like, what's your favorite podcast that No one knows about or that you think isn't very popular, and I'll share some of my own sometimes.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:30:16]:

Like, for example, Knickknack News. That's The first two words are spelled with k's at the beginning. Knickknack News, fun podcast. I met this group, the 2 people that podcast, At Podcast Movement a couple years ago, it's a great podcast. I think more people should listen to it, but it's I don't think it's very popular. So I'd love to see more audiences spreading the word about their great podcast that they listen to that aren't the ones in the top ten.

Dave Jackson [00:30:44]:

Yeah. That could be who knows? Maybe somebody will go big because of a pod roll, you know?

Daniel J. Lewis [00:30:53]:

Oh, we can hope. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:30:54]:

Yeah. So, yeah, that would be I would just like to see somebody asked me that, like, what does podcasting need in 2024? And I said, More listeners. I mean, really, in the end, that's that's where it all starts. I have thought about it at least Eighteen times have not taken a single step towards it, but I keep thinking I need to contact my local library and do, like, a a how to listen to podcast 20 minute presentation, and have a bunch of shows like here's you know, if you want the news, here's this. If you want that, and the fact that you can listen to most radio stations, Time shifted now and the fact that it doesn't cost you any money. And Tom Webster said that one of the biggest opportunities are boomers, you know, the older folk. And I was like, well, maybe I could get those folks at the library because they're still reading books. And But, yeah, we really do need more listeners.

Dave Jackson [00:31:48]:

And that's I I was at a picnic once, and somebody asked me about podcasting. And I went to Kind of explain it. Because I said, well, where's your phone at? And when they saw I was gonna really do a deep dive, like, half my family, all my cousins and stuff are I'm gonna Ask, like, what is what's a podcast again? And so I did like a little demo there on the back porch and got probably another 7 or 8 people listening to podcasts. So if we all did that somehow, I think it could, you know, collectively maybe make a little bit of a bump.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:32:21]:

Yeah. And the biggest thing I think for us podcasters is to not default to recommending our own podcast. Like, there are many times I actively recommend against listening to my podcast because it's a podcast about podcasting. The audience is podcasters or people who want to actually podcast. So if I meet someone at church and they say, oh, you have a podcast? Cool. What is it? I'd love to listen to it. I say to them, No. I don't think you'd love to listen to it.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:32:49]:

There is actually a friend of mine who listens to my podcast about podcasting. He has no interest whatsoever in podcasting. He tells me sometimes, I don't understand what you're talking about. I don't know why he listens, but I appreciate that he does. But I often tell him, you Shouldn't really be listening to my podcast. Let me hope you find 1 you'll actually like.

Dave Jackson [00:33:09]:

Yeah. My brother was telling me at Thanksgiving that he he like, some of his friends give him, You know, flack for not listening to my podcast, and I go, no. You I don't expect you to listen to my podcast. You're not a podcaster. I'm, like, Go listen. My brother's really into old typewriters. I mean, go find a typewriter podcast. I'm sure there's one out there somewhere, so absolutely.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:33:29]:

Another hope that I have, and this is my last hope to share, the last hope, that we would get more people streaming The Toshi's in sending us boostograms in 2024.

Dave Jackson [00:33:40]:

There you go. Absolutely. We did get 1 boostogram since our, last episode from the The one and only pod sage himself, Dave Jones.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:33:50]:

Yeah. He said clickbait title successful. Here's your reward. Talking about an episode about Whether podcasting development with podcasting 2.0 and the Podcast Standards Project has stalled. I wasn't trying to make a clickbait title. We Yeah. It's a legitimate conversation.

Dave Jackson [00:34:09]:

That's it. And if you missed it, cliff notes, no. No, it's not, so there we go. We just saved you some time. But, this will be our last episode for the year because we've got, you know, holidays coming and things like that. So, you know, we'll see you next year. Yeah. Exactly.

Dave Jackson [00:34:26]:

So, thanks to everyone who's been listening. It's been a fun year. Daniel, any final thoughts?

Daniel J. Lewis [00:34:32]:

Send us a boostogram or just a plain normal message with your hopes, not predictions, not expectations, but what you'd love To see happen in podcasting in 2024.

Dave Jackson [00:34:45]:

There you go. And we'll read them on the next show in 2024. So I think that'll do. Put a, put a fork here in episode 34, so thanks so much for listening. That's gonna do it for this episode of the future of podcasting.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:34:58]:

Keep boosting, keep podcasting, and have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.