How Will Video Fit Into Podcasting's Future?

Video, video, video.

Everybody's talking about video.

How will video fit into podcasting's future?

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 57.

It's been a while.

I think it's 57, but glad to be back on the mic, fresh back from podcast movement, and boy, the one thing if you boy, you want to have a good drinking game and come out completely hammered, Everybody take a drink.

When they said video not actually recommended.

Unless you.

You'll be on the floor before it's over.

Yeah, we heard a lot about it there.

Different points of view, and so I guess we should probably define or whatever, what are we talking about?

What are we not talking about tonight?

Well, I know that everybody's talking about video and video this, video that, video, podcasting, YouTube.

Right now, we're not going to get into the definition of podcasting.

I mean, we might touch on it a little bit, for sure, but we should do a separate episode about that.

Maybe that will be our next episode.

But I was really thinking, all right, video is here to stay.

We've known that for decades now.

People love online video, and there is the cultural misconception, slash understanding that podcasts include video to some degree.

So I was thinking, instead of talking about, hey, should we be doing video, or should we change the definition of podcasting to include stuff like YouTube or anything like that, how about just exploring, accepting the fact that video is here to stay and video and podcasting are going to be closely associated with each other going forward and more and more in the public eye and in the way that these tech platforms talk about it.

Why don't we just discuss what might this look like?

What are some ways that we can leverage video going into the future of podcasting, as well as some things to think about, how to do it or what considerations there might be stepping into this future?

Yeah, I know for me, on my lunch now, I have a Gcast is basically how I get my TV into my flat screen.

So that's Google's product versus the Fire TV from Amazon.

And it has a YouTube button.

And when I sit down, I click the YouTube button.

It fires up my TV, opens up my YouTube.

It still asks me, who is watching.

That drives me crazy when there's only one person, like, can you not figure out that there are no kids?

So let's just go to my account.

And I will watch YouTube on and on my lunch.

And there are times, like right now I don't watch a lot of tv and so I think there are like two or three shows that I watch and I think one's on Friday night, one's on Tuesday.

So there are a lot of times when I go to my library in YouTube TV, which is what I use to get my, quote, regular tv, and there's nothing there in the library to watch.

So so I'll just go to YouTube because there's always.

I'm subscribed to a bazillion different things.

And the only thing that kind of drives me nuts, and I heard Tom Webster talking about how it's so easy to click on YouTube and it just serves you and you hit play.

And I'm like, not in my house it doesn't.

Because what drives me nuts is I will watch a long form interview and then the next day I'll go in and it will be all the shorts of the long form interview that I've already seen that I now have to step over looking for another long form thing for me to watch.

But I've definitely, if you compare 2025 to 2024, my YouTube consumption has gone through the roof.

How about you?

Oh, I've always been watching stuff on YouTube ever since I stopped following video podcasts.

And when I say video podcasts, I do mean actual podcasts, like through an RSS feed.

And side note, by the way, for years I'd said I am holding onto my subscription to Ask a Ninja.

Yes, with my dying hands, hoping that someday Ask a Ninja will be back.

Well, did you see the news, Dave?

No, I did not.

Ask a Ninja is back.

Nice.

But not as a video podcast.

It's only on YouTube, which for a show like that, that is a video first kind of show.

Definitely one you have to watch to really appreciate the humor of it and really enjoy it.

And so it makes total sense for that to be a video show.

And as a video show, it also makes total sense to be on YouTube.

Right, let's just embrace that.

But here's a question I thought of when you were talking about your consumption on YouTube.

Where do you go first on YouTube?

Like do you go to just the YouTube homepage?

Do you go to a channel?

Do you go to the subscriptions page?

Where's your homepage on YouTube?

Yeah, what I'm trying to think about, what comes up when I pull it up on my TV, because I watch it probably about 55% TV 45% on a computer.

And it's usually I discover stuff on my computer because I'm not having to use the remote control to search, which is kind of a pain in the butt.

But it comes up to the front page and I almost always have to somehow navigate to library, which leads me to like finding my subscriptions.

Always seems to be there's some friction there that I'm like, can't I just see the stuff that I've already said?

I want to see this?

And so from there I look for the little blue dots.

Who's got new content?

And then what will happen is I will go to the first one and if all I see is a sea of shorts, I'll be like, okay, ain't got time for that next.

And I'm looking for long form content and I'm sure if I probably, I know on a computer I saw a button where it's like, show less shorts.

And I was like, where is that?

On the YouTube, like app on a TV.

Because I'm not a huge shorts fan.

I have a couple people that I only watch their shorts, but most of the time I'm looking for long form stuff.

But wherever the app dumps me and then I look for subscriptions, I am hardly ever going on to my TV and searching for the guest that wouldn't go home.

SNL skit from, you know, 78 or something like that.

So it sounds like you're at the YouTube normal homepage.

Yeah, I pretty much only watch YouTube through my computer.

I've got a 27 inch iMac, so I've got a nice screen for watching things for myself.

And it's very rare that my son and I will watch something from YouTube together.

If we're going to watch something together, we watch something else.

I actually have an extension on my browser that whenever I type in YouTube.com, it actually takes me to the subscriptions page.

So I don't discover new content right there when I first visit YouTube.

Because if I'm going to YouTube for me, usually either I'm doing a direct search for something or I want to see do one of the channels that I follow actually have new content out.

I'm looking for something specific and I noticed something recently.

So thinking through this whole idea of, okay, let's embrace the idea that people are consuming more content on YouTube.

And certainly I think you and I have both said this.

If you do any video whatsoever, right, put it on YouTube plus, try to be everywhere else too.

You can be with your video even A video podcast, if you can afford that and if it makes sense.

But something I was thinking about is compare the consumption experience of YouTube to a podcast app.

And when I started thinking of it like that, I started realizing I have a lot of frustrations using YouTube to consume video shows.

Like, in a podcast app, I can see the episode titles and I see the title first.

There's none of this, oh, you know, I really hate the competition over the YouTube thumbnail stuff.

When I publish a video on YouTube, I don't care about the thumbnail and which one performs better.

I know I should care more, but I just, I don't want to play that game of, oh, let's capture a photo of me with a certain expression on my face.

And you know, that's not me.

If you see me doing that on YouTube, I don't know, maybe ask if I'm okay and if everything is okay in my life.

But I will probably have to embrace some of that because that's just.

That's what works on YouTube, unfortunately, and that's why so many people do it.

But that aside, on a podcast app, I see the title first and foremost, not so much the episode cover art, although that does, at a glance, let me know what podcast it is.

But if there's something that does not interest me, I can delete it.

And it's no longer in my podcast app.

It's no longer distracting me, and it's a simple swipe inside of my app to delete it.

In Overcast, in Apple podcasts, in a bunch of apps, you can then delete an episode that's already downloaded or it's unplayed.

Basically, whether that's downloaded or it would be streamed, you can remove it from your queue and it's gone.

You can't easily do that on YouTube.

I did see that.

If you're on, like the subscription page of YouTube and you press the three dot menu on a video before you click into that video, you can hide that video, but that is two clicks on every video.

And the other thing is in a podcast app, once you consume a podcast episode, it's gone.

Yes.

You can set certain defaults to save your episodes after you've played them.

Some podcast apps default to that, which really frustrates me.

But on YouTube, when you finish watching a video, it stays there.

Yes.

You might see the little red bar on it.

That helps indicate.

And I'm not sure if that red bar.

Yeah, you can see that in the app.

Sometimes a little.

I'm a little confused of what is this YouTube extension, I think it's called Improve YouTube.

I'm a little confused sometimes.

What is it giving me versus what's built into YouTube?

But regardless, if I've watched a video, it stays on that screen.

Now, I do wonder, improve YouTube might actually have a way to hide videos I've already seen.

But that's not the default experience on YouTube.

When you go to YouTube, you're bombarded with all of these videos.

And sometimes even if you go to the main screen on YouTube and it suggests things through its smart algorithm, sometimes it will suggest videos you've already seen.

Yeah.

And that's a frustrating experience.

And I know I'm coming to this from the podcast app perspective, but for Those who consider YouTube a podcast app, and if we were to, just for the sake of conversation, if we were to consider YouTube a podcast platform and a podcast app, it's not a good one.

So I know for me, I've been playing with different apps and I came across Pocket Cast because I always hear it's like in the top five, and I didn't think I was going to like it because they kind of have playlists.

You can make folders.

So I have like a podcast about podcasting folder and a podcast about marketing, et cetera, et cetera.

And you can go in there and click there and it will play those episodes.

But then they have a queue.

And so I can go into an episode or I can go into a show like Pod News and I say add this to the up next queue and put it to the top of the list.

And then Erica over at Newsworthy, I'm like, hey, put this to the top.

So when I wake up in the morning, I have a couple short shows.

Sounds profit roles there too.

So I have like three short shows there at the top of my list and then from there it goes through and like you mentioned, I can see the titles and if I don't want them in my up next, I can go in and remove them.

But it is pretty much I open up that app and click Play and it picks up wherever I left off.

And then I believe by default it will go to your up next folder or your up next list if you're not in some sort of folder or whatever.

But it's for me, it's a piece of cake.

I usually go to it, click on the top thing on my up next list and hit play and it goes through that.

And then once that list is gone, then I'll start digging into the folders.

So not a lot of friction.

Like you mentioned, when I'm done playing an episode, I have it set to automatically archive it.

I can always go back and get it later.

But the only thing.

And I love the fact, I mean, they've implemented chapters and transcripts, but there's no streaming sats, and that's a whole other episode.

I'm slowly grasping the reality that that's probably not gonna get fixed.

I think we're like, hey, that was an experiment.

It kind of worked until it didn't.

And we'll come back to that later.

It's been tabled.

But as an app, that one's pretty cool.

I like that.

So I'm with you.

When I heard different people say how great YouTube is, I'm like, not.

When I use it, I'm always stepping over something to find something I actually want.

Now, bringing this back to the idea of podcasting's marriage with video and some of these platforms and the way that YouTube works, at least currently, this is, I think, why the thumbnail game is so important to play.

Because when people go to their subscription page, they see a whole lot of videos, and depending on the channels that they're subscribed to, they might see a lot of videos that they are just outright not interested in.

That's something else that's interesting for me with the consumption on YouTube versus in a podcast.

I almost always listen to every episode from a podcast.

That's why I can so easily fall behind in my listening, right?

Because I want to listen to every episode.

But content on YouTube, it feels very skippable to me, like, to completely skip a video.

And that's most likely just because of the kind of content, I think on YouTube, people tend to play a little bit more toward the algorithm, intentionally or maybe subconsciously of making more varied content.

Whereas in a podcast, it tends to stick around the same theme and just build on that theme.

Especially when it comes to audio dramas, stories, comedy, anything like that, that tends to stick with the same theme.

But, like, there are some developers that I follow on YouTube and I'll see, they'll have a video that I'll think, oh, that that's great.

I want to watch that.

And I'll see several other videos that they publish for maybe a week or two, and I just think, no, none of these interest me.

I know it can be that way for some podcasts, but thinking about the way that YouTube works, and as we see this merge and this bigger emphasis on video and podcasting, I think it means for podcasters, we really need to up our visual game.

So think about the thumbnails, thinking about even the episode artwork for your episodes, and how can you make those stand out?

Not just to reinforce your branding that is an important part of it, but to make your podcast compelling from the visual.

Because imagine this.

Currently most of the podcast apps focus on the title, and the thumbnail is very small next to the title or above the title until you tap into the episode.

Some podcast apps, I think pocketcast has this view to it where you can browse your episodes with a bigger emphasis on the episode artwork.

Yep.

So I think as podcasters, we need to realize that as podcasting becomes more visual and visual aspects are part of it, we need to focus on making our visual elements compelling and communicating better what the episode is about.

Yeah.

The other thing you have to.

If you decide, hey, I'm going to do video.

I was listening to a show that I've listened to for years, and I did notice that his audio was a little just slightly off.

Now I'm listening through the ears of a podcaster, but I was like, he sounds like he's not as close to the microphone as he usually is.

And then about halfway through, he said, oh, and you'll see right here where the numbers are such and such.

And I was like, oh, that's why his audio isn't as good.

He's probably using a different mic, it's out of the shot kind of thing.

And I went, you know what?

I like this show.

Maybe this will be one of my YouTube shows if he's going to start doing visual stuff.

Kind of like when radio shows do a lot of visual stuff, that always drives me nuts.

The morning guy in Cleveland does a lot of visual stuff.

And I'm like, I'm listening to you.

And so I went to his YouTube channel and I'm looking for the.

I looked down at my podcast app, I got the title, and I just quickly went to his YouTube channel expecting.

Cause this was a new episode for the video to be right there for me to click on.

I'm like, oh, I'll just rewatch this.

And you know, et cetera.

And I couldn't find.

It wasn't.

I don't know if it wasn't there, but I know I clicked around on the videos and I was like, oh, wait a minute, that's a playlist.

I just want to go to videos and go to recent.

And I couldn't find it.

And I was like, oh, maybe he just started doing this.

And because you can kind of tweak your YouTube page when people go to it, what people see first, et cetera, et cetera.

So if you're going to do video, make sure your, your latest videos are easy to find.

Because I was kind of like in the end, I didn't listen to, I didn't listen or watch.

I was like, well, I'm not getting anything out of the audio and I can't find the video.

And I just went to the next podcast.

So that's something to keep in mind.

A try not to do the.

Oh, you'll see right here where Daniel is holding up this thing.

No, you know, it's not.

Granted if you're doing a show about woodworking or something, yeah, that's a visual kind of video first type thing.

But if you can try to avoid any kind of video reference, just be sure to like, oh, I'm holding up this thing and it's this and that.

And I know for me, I do a show called the, the podcast review show where we used to review somebody's website and we always made very sure to say very descriptive of what we're doing.

We like that you have a lot of white space and et cetera, et cetera.

But in the end I thought, you know what we need to do because we could drive traffic to our website and say, if you'd like to see the visual audit of the website, we've got a video for it on our website.

Go and watch that.

And that would drive traffic to the website.

But just keep that in mind as you're doing video, you kind of have to upfront, I think, answer the question and am I audio or video first?

And in some of these frustrations with how YouTube works and what YouTube does works really well for YouTube.

So yeah, don't think that it's a horrible thing that they're doing.

It's a different style of presenting content.

And I think because people traditionally have consumed content differently from YouTube, compare that to other video streaming platforms like Apple TV plus Netflix, Amazon prime, where it's very much, you're watching this show.

Would you like to resume this show that you're watching?

Watch the next episode of the show.

YouTube doesn't work that same way.

They'll just show you all the videos.

But there is something that I think we could take from this approach.

Even if you're focused only on audio, think about what YouTube is doing with their discovery thing where if you go to a channel frequently, they will show the most popular videos first to new people visiting that channel and they'll show if you made a special Channel welcome video or trailer, whatever they call it now, they show that up front too.

So people can click on that to see whatever that welcome video is.

And they'll see probably your most popular videos, as well as some playlists.

What if you could put that same kind of thing in your website, either as your homepage or as some kind of getting started page where you show your best episodes, especially show if you've got a trailer, maybe put that up front as well as part of your introduction to the show for people coming to your site, but then surface some of that best content.

And that can be pretty easy to do with almost any publishing system where just look at your stats, see which episodes were downloaded the most or played the most.

Or if you've got YouTube videos of your content, see which of them were watched the most, both the straight plays as well as the video itself.

People watched the majority of the video and didn't abandon the video.

Look also at engagement, what episodes inspired the most comments or the most feedback or anything like that, and then feature those episodes prominently on your site as a way to better get people into your content more deeply.

Especially for the podcasts that are not serial, and I don't mean serial like the podcast serial, but serialized content.

If people don't have to start at a specific episode, then don't worry about where they start.

Point them to your best content because you want to get them hooked in.

And that's the way YouTube works, and it works really well at that.

Yeah, that's one of the things, like you said, you can go into your media host or whatever to see, but the whole point is when somebody comes to your website, you want to make a great first impression.

So you want to have a description or something so they don't have to scratch their head and go, what is this about?

But Yeah, I mean, WordPress, there's categories, there's plugins.

With PodPage, we have a creatively named thing called Featured Episodes where you simply just go in and say, this is featured.

And then you can pick where you want that to show up on the front page.

And it just makes sense because the goal is for them to get the best content.

So they're like, wow, this is really good.

So let's say you had, I don't know, three episodes on the front page, and they kind of were just clicking around and every one they're like, oh, this sounds good.

Oh, this is wow.

I want to hear more about this.

They're also hopefully somewhere on your website a button that says follow that they can go follow on Apple or Spotify or Pocket Casts or podcast guru or whatever.

But that's the whole goal is we want them to follow the show.

And you get them to follow the show by going, look at the awesome things that, you know, are here on our show.

So that just makes total sense.

That's actually Brendan from PodPage was supposed to talk at Podcast Movement Evolutions.

Unfortunately, his entire family got wiped out.

And so I kind of took.

We should clarify there.

They were just sick.

Sick.

They didn't die.

There was no terrorist attack.

No.

But when you have, you know, little ones, like very little ones sick, and mom and dad, it's like, yeah, time for me to step in.

He's like, I'm not going to make it.

And part of his presentation was find out what's working.

And you can do that through, you know, your media host through Apple Podcasts has their dashboard, Spotify has their dashboard.

There's Google Analytics.

There's, you know, a audience survey.

That's never a bad idea.

Find out what's working and put that on your front page.

And I had somebody once said, yeah, but won't that then make the show like an episode that's already one of your top listen to.

Isn't that kind of like feeding the rich?

Like, it's already popular.

You're just gonna make it more popular.

And I'm like, yeah, but it's your best stuff.

You know what I mean?

Like, you don't want to, like, oh, well, I'm gonna put this new episode up because it only has, you know, 10 downloads.

I'm like, yeah, maybe there's a reason it only has 10 downloads.

So put your best foot forward.

If you go to a restaurant and look at their menu frequently, they will highlight, this is our most popular dish.

Yeah.

And yes, you could get a conspiracy theory going that maybe it's their.

They say it's their most popular dish because that's the one that's easiest for them to make.

And that's what they want you to think is their most popular dish.

But usually it is a unique dish.

And I love.

Whenever I go to a restaurant, I love asking them, what is your unique dish?

What are you known for here?

Because that's what I wanted to try.

I want to try something unique.

But talking about this thing of what performs well and exponentially building on that performance.

I did this also when I was building my email list years ago, where for, I think, two months, I was doing an experiment of trying to make lead magnets opt in Incentives, bonuses, they're called different things, but something that I offer as an incentive for people to join my email list.

And I tried to make a new one for every episode of my podcast or maybe every other episode.

I did this for a couple of months and one in particular really stood out that a lot of people subscribed to my emails and downloaded this specific opt in incentive that I had.

So I decided I'm going to take that one and make that something that's promoted on my website.

Ethically.

I don't blast you with a pop up the first time you get to my site, but if you browse around or if you're intending to leave from the site, one of those things where then I pop up a thing that says, hey, before you go, you might like this resource.

And that worked for me and that resource and that approach that I took for only a couple of months skyrocketed the growth of my email newsletter list to the point that I have more email subscribers than I have podcast subscribers, which is a really interesting flip to be in that position.

But think of what that could do for your podcast too.

Just like Dave was saying, maybe your latest episode isn't what you should be promoting at the top of your homepage.

Maybe it should be something else, get people really hooked so then the other things you talk about will make more sense.

Well, to piggyback on that, I, when I read this, I'm like, oh, that can't work.

That's just too simple.

So I went into Google Analytics to see what were my top 10 pages that brought in traffic.

Smart.

And I was like, okay.

And then I made a lead magnet for all of those.

Oh, brilliant.

And I was amazed at how my, my list grew.

And the one was how to take a phone call on a podcast.

And I was like, when Was this made?

1977.

I'm like, what the heck?

And so all I did was I made a little box there that said, would you like this post as a PDF?

Because I was like, I don't know what I'm going to make for this.

And so for about a month and a half it just said, would you like this post as a PDF?

And people would sign up to get it.

And I was like, you do know you can bookmark this, right?

And I later went back and kind of made a here's how to take phone calls.

But really it was like, you're not going to take phone calls on a show.

Here's, you know, use chat and use this and that.

But the basic idea of find out where you're getting the most traffic and put your pop up or whatever you want in front of that.

And I was really amazed at how well that works.

So.

And you can use AI to help with this too.

When you discover those things, you can give it the transcript or the page or the article, whatever it is, whatever the content is.

You can give an AI this kind of content and you can ask an AI give me some ideas of something I can make from this as a downloadable resource to give away or give me some ideas of how to promote this on my website to new people.

Because maybe it's an episode that's not necessarily like an intro or a necessarily good first episode to jump into your podcast, but because it's your most popular, you could then ask AI, tell me how could I better promote this to first time listeners?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's basically the same content.

If you're just talking head videos, you can go in and sort the videos by popularity and then sort the, you know, your media hosts compare notes to kind of, you want to cross reference if you want a second opinion on what's the best stuff.

If you're seeing that one episode both on video and audio is performing well, then it's a pretty good indicator that that's really good content.

And so that's something you can do.

The thing I see sometimes that I giggle at is somebody will start an audio podcast.

They're like, I'm ready to take my show to the next level.

So to grow my audio podcast, I'm going to start a video channel.

And that's kind of like saying, you know, I have a bunch of people that love to listen to my show, so I'm going to start.

Or somebody was really into TV and you're like, okay, I'm going to start a book club.

Well, these people like to watch.

And now you're trying to get them to read.

I have found, at least in my travels, getting people to swap one platform to another unless there's a reason to.

I don't know that that always works, but it's always like, okay, I started the video platform to try to drive traffic to the audio platform.

And then you have to ask, but what are you going to do to grow the video platform?

And that's where you have to learn.

Like you were mentioning thumbnails and titles.

That's where you have to learn the algorithm.

And I always kind of joke when I hear people say, but there is no discovery, there's no discovery tool in audio podcast, you know, and I'm like, what do you mean?

They're like, well, you know, something that would know you and know what you like and then recommend things that it thinks you would like.

And I go, well, there is one of those in audio podcast.

Mine is called Doug.

It's my brother, and he knows what I like.

He's known me my entire life.

And there's a movie out now, I think it's called so you killed a unicorn.

It's a dark comedy, and he knows I love dark comedy.

And it's got Paul Rudd and a bunch of really good people in it.

He's like, dude, that has got to be right up your alley.

So I went and saw it, and it was right up my alley.

You know, it's word of mouth, but it's still kind of doing the same thing an algorithm does, which is recommend things based on its knowledge of you, you know.

So as much as I hear that all the time, like, oh, there's no discovery in podcasting, I'm like, well, there's word of mouth and there's a study I think it's from.

It's getting a little old in the tooth.

2019, Jacobs Media said that basically around 70% of podcasts are discovered via word of mouth.

So I'm like, we have word of mouth in audio, and that's working, at least for me, working just as good as an algorithm and video.

And I think we should have a whole episode talking about recommendations, especially as they come into play more and more in podcasting.

So we'll certainly do that at some point.

But I tying this into something you were saying, I want to quote from someone.

I recently spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters, and one of the other panelists was Casey Helmick from newbridgestudios.com and he said something very good.

I love the exact way that he said this.

He said podcasters will almost certainly need a video strategy.

And I love that he didn't say podcasters need to be making videos or they need to make videos, video episodes, or they need to be on YouTube or they need to be using shorts.

What he said is a video strategy.

And that I think is perfect.

Yes, we should have a video strategy, whatever that is.

Maybe for you, that's posting full videos on YouTube of your episodes.

Maybe it's only posting shorts.

Maybe it's making separate video content.

Maybe it's audiograms.

That hasn't really worked too well in the last few years, but maybe.

Maybe that's what you want to try.

The main point is have a Strategy to use video in some way for your podcast.

It could even be live streaming, especially with what we've got in podcasting 2.0 being developed.

And even the podcast standards project is talking about standardizing some live streaming technology for video in podcasting apps using HLS streaming, which I know that's redundant, but using HLS and some other technology and such, but standardizing that so that all the podcast apps, the podcasting 2.0 apps that is, could get live video into those apps.

So think about your video strategy and it doesn't have to be full episodes, but do come up with a strategy for video.

Yeah.

The thing that gets me excited about because I know the one time I asked you what does it take to do a live stream?

And on a.

I think it was like step 22 that I finally went nevermind.

Because it was.

It's like, oh, it's easy, just do this.

But if you think about it, what's the one thing that radio has over podcasting?

And in theory, because a lot of it's especially at night's pre programmed, but they are live.

Like they can do live sports and things like that.

And if podcasting could bring in either live audio and video, that would be different.

I mean, I, I've done that in the past.

Just I w.

I forget I was at a Purdue game looking at my stepson and mom had made the trip and so she wanted to see the band.

So I just fired up a YouTube live stream and was like, here it is.

It was, you know, to her and you know, if we could do something like that, all sorts of local stuff.

I know right now Adam's really into hyper local stuff, but if you could blast the local football game as you do the play by play or whatever, that would be really interesting.

So I'll be interested to see.

It's, it's.

I was happy to see the standards project is not dead.

They're moving ahead.

And if we can, you know, if that's what we want to focus on, that's great.

I do a live show every Saturday.

And probably the reason I still do a live show is because it's.

The number of people that show up live is minuscule compared to the people that download.

But it's the same 20 to 30 people every Saturday.

And it's instant feedback.

That's.

It's really addicting when you start, you know, asking your audience and they answer you right there.

You're like, oh, well, this is worth getting up at 10:30 in the morning.

That's my Saturday morning cartoons.

Yeah, that's it.

But I think it's like you said, video's not going away.

It's the distant cousin of podcasting.

And some people like to read, some people like to listen, and some people like to watch.

And if your numbers are kind of flat on the audio side and you've got the time and you've got the budget and you have the desire to do video, by all means.

I did run into one person that decided because they heard that Spotify was all that in a bag of chips and video, that they weren't going to put their video on YouTube, only on Spotify.

And I was like, no, if you got video, it's more like YouTube first, and then if you have time, throw it on Spotify.

I have, I don't know, probably 15 videos on Spotify, and I don't know that any of them have double digits.

I don't promote it.

But as much as they're like, oh, people are consuming massive amounts of video, for me, a survey of one, no, they're not.

Now, I want to give a shout out to a great article by Tommy Serafinsky, and we'll have the link to this in the notes.

He shared this on X recently, and I loved his approach to this.

The title of the article is Time to Flip the Script on Video Podcasting.

And while we've been talking a lot about video in here, I love his approach to this.

And here's a brief quote from his article.

As podcasters, especially those of us who aren't stoked about the push towards video podcasting, we should not only keep highlighting the benefits of audio podcasting, but we ought to flip the narrative and demonstrate that much content presented as video would work as well or even better as an audio podcast.

And I love that he's taking that approach.

And I've seen that many times where I'll find a video on YouTube.

And I do have that thought of, oh, this should have been an audio podcast.

Just like, you know, the whole thing of going to a meeting at work, and it's like, oh, this should have been an email.

Yeah, well, there are plenty of videos out there and a lot of people who are thinking, oh, I need to do video, or even getting enraptured in the idea of I should only be doing video.

Don't forget about audio.

Certainly audio is so much more accessible and reachable in many places, certainly more consumable in many places.

So in the whole push toward video, often still have that question in your mind of, would this actually Be better as audio.

Yeah.

I mean, let's prove that point.

Let's have fun with stats, which always go over gangbusters with an audio show.

But when I did my research, it was 2 point.

We'll say 2.5 billion viewers on YouTube and 65.3 million creators.

And then I compared that to audio.

That's 202 million listeners monthly and then 358,000 active creators.

And if you do the math on that, it means there are 564.

If we're looking at the audio side, 564 listeners for every creator, where there's only 38 viewers on YouTube, even though the numbers are huge, there's actually more per creator on the audio side.

And already people are driving off the road or because they're falling asleep, because their numbers.

But that's an example of something that, like, anytime I'm doing an episode in the future and there's a lot of stats, and I was like, so how I'm going to make that less boring?

Even though it's, you know, it's like, wow, look, stats.

I didn't know that.

It's up, it's down, it's sideways, whatever it is.

But I'm going to try to weave a story into the numbers, because just numbers, you can get away with that on video, I think a lot easier than if it's just audio, because numbers don't do much for the theater of the mind unless you Somehow say, picture 17 bushels of apples.

And, you know, you have to do something to trigger the theater of the mind.

So absolutely, some things work better.

RuPaul's Drag Race is a very visual show where.

Ask the podcast coach.

Not really.

Right.

Two guys, talking heads, some graphics, nothing too crazy.

One of my favorite lines, Adam Curry said, not every book needs to be a movie.

I love that line.

But then you also look at.

I had a list.

I know Justin Bieber is on there.

Ariana Grande, who's now in Was just in Wicked.

Kate Upton, who's a model.

Ed Sheeran, who's a pop guy.

Arnel Pineda, if you've never heard of that, that's the lead singer of Journey.

All these people are discovered on YouTube.

So, yes, every book doesn't need to be a movie.

But on the other hand, there are people.

Now, again, if you do the math on that, okay, how many people have actually been discovered on YouTube versus how many actual YouTube videos there are?

That might be one of those where it's like you have a better chance of being struck by Lightning after you won the lottery kind of thing of being discovered.

I think tying this all together, we're seeing waves of interest in video and audio.

And I wouldn't be surprised if a few years from now, audio only is rediscovered and has this big coming back and people are like, you know, I'm so tied up with all of these videos, but I just discovered I can listen to this YouTube show in audio and I can download it and I don't have to stream it, I don't have to watch it.

I don't have to have YouTube red premium plus, double plus, good.

I can just listen to it.

So we might see a renaissance of audio again.

Because think about video.

Like in the early days, video podcasting was really popular because video podcasting predates YouTube.

So back in the early days, like 2005, 2004, video podcasts were the only way to distribute independent video on the Internet.

And so it got really big back then.

But then YouTube stole the show and then audio podcasting was growing at the same time, and hits like serial and other shows were audio only and still audio only.

And then YouTube.

Then I think because of misconceptions and confusions, though, YouTube is stealing the show again.

But at some point it's going to come back around to audio, I think, and it's just going to wave back and forth and we can ride these waves.

It doesn't mean that we have to hold the line and be only audio or it doesn't mean we have to jump into video or stay only video.

But we can leverage these things right now to accomplish some cool things, reach people in different places for sure.

And the big thing is, I think we're always going to see video and audio podcasting mixed together and people wanting both ways.

And as much as we can, try to meet the audience where they are and where they will be.

Absolutely.

I think my last point that I always say anytime we talk about video, if you don't want to do video, you don't have to.

I'm kind of with Daniel that you probably should.

But if you don't have the time, the budget, or the desire, you don't have to.

Because so many people like.

But everybody says I have to.

Mike.

No, that's YouTube says you have to.

So.

But absolutely.

We want to thank everybody who's been streaming sats to us that's still going on.

If you're still doing that, that means you're hardcore.

We appreciate that.

I wanted to grab.

There's a sound bite I want of Adam from like I don't know, eight or nine episodes ago where he goes, we still need wallets.

I just want to like, hey.

But we'll see.

Thanks to Sam Sethi.

Sam Sethi was.

The guy was like, hey, like, when are you guys coming back?

Well, and at Podcast Movement Evolutions, I saw James Kridlin walking around with his laptop in one hand, holding a microphone in the other, and he's recording Pod News Weekly Review.

And then he comes up to me right as I'm chewing on some candy or something, and he wants to briefly interview me.

So I quickly glance at his screen to see was he recording?

And yeah, it was Pod News Weekly Review.

And he asked me, when is the future of podcasting coming back?

And I told him, we're going to record an episode after Podcast Movement Evolution.

So by the time you're hearing this, that was two weeks ago.

But, yes, we are back to.

We've got a list of topics that we want to discuss for future episodes.

So send us your feedback.

Send us those booster grams.

You know, attach money to your feedback.

We love feedback when it's attached with money.

Absolutely.

So that's going to do it for this episode of the Future of Podcasting.

Keep boosting and keep podcasting.