Can We Make the Podcasting Technology Invisible?
"Welcome to the 50th episode of the 'Future of Podcasting' with your hosts, Daniel J. Lewis and Dave Jackson. Today, we look closer at how podcasting technology is becoming increasingly 'invisible' to end users (and needs to keep heading in that direction).
We'll explore how reducing technical barriers is making podcasting more accessible, comparing it to the early days of the medium and its evolution. From iTunes revolutionizing podcast access in 2005 to modern innovations like Anchor and advanced podcasting equipment, we’ll highlight the key turning points that have shaped the industry.
We also discuss future predictions and the enhancements needed in podcasting, such as seamless cryptocurrency payments and better integration with platforms like Spotify. Stay tuned as we celebrate this milestone episode and imagine a future where podcasting is effortless and intuitive for everyone."
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FOLLOW THE SHOW ON A MODERN PODCAST APP
00:00 - None
00:45 - Make the Technology Disappear
04:20 - Inflection Points
05:06 - Juice Software
07:17 - How Did Dave Discover Podcasts
09:12 - Apple iTunes
12:55 - Thank You Anchor?
15:34 - The View Has Disappeared
16:54 - Spotify Deserves Credit
18:19 - Starting in Podcasting 2.0 Today?
21:10 - Who Makes the Wallet?
25:54 - PayPal
27:04 - When It is E Z
28:17 - A Twist From Sam and True Fans
31:28 - Eliminate Thinking
34:16 - Boostgrams
35:30 - Saturn?
Can we make the podcasting technology invisible? This is the
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future of podcasting, where we ponder what awaits the
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podcasters of today. From the school of
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podcasting, here's Dave Jackson. And from the audacity
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to podcast, here's Daniel j Lewis. Daniel,
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future of podcasting episode 50. Whoo. We're
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50. I can feel the gray hairs coming
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in. Oh. Dave, I hate to break it to you.
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They all came in for you a long time ago. Yeah.
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Actually, I was 29 when I got my first gray hair, which was also the
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same year I got married. Coincidence? I don't think. I don't know. Anyway,
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but we're talking about invisible technology? What what what
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what's the idea here? I asked Dave if I could have
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another soapbox on this because I wanted to dig into this further, and
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I've posted some stuff on x Twitter about this. Way back in
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2015, I did a presentation, a keynote,
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on the future of podcasting, and we'll have the link to that in the
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notes for this episode. I'd love for you to check it out because
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while in hindsight, I kind of regret some of the ways that I presented
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that, maybe not the most keynote worthy style of presenting the
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information. To be honest, I am humbly proud, like in a good way,
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proud, happy, I'll put it that way, happy with my predictions
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because they're coming true and because they were
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unique predictions where many of the predictions that people have for podcasting
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basically comes down to the word more. You know, we'll have more of this, we'll
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have more money, more podcasters, more celebrities, more opportunities, more this,
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more that. Just put the word more in it, and that's all the predictions pretty
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much out there. I had some specific predictions, not like
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this company will do this thing, but some specific
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things of what I think will happen in the podcasting
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industry. And one of those was
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the technology will disappear. And by that,
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I don't mean our technology that we use
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or the things that technology can do will cease,
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but that the technological aspect of it
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will no longer be visible to us. Just like with our
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phones that we have and our computers, and there are a lot of things
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that we do that are extremely complicated processes
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that we do that we have no idea what's going on in the
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background. We don't care. We shouldn't have to know what's
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going on in the background. We just want to see our latest
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email or the latest social post or we want the quick answer to our
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question. We wanna know if so and so team won the game last night so
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we can get a free donut from Kroger today. That's the kind of stuff that
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we want to know. We don't care what kind of technology happens in the
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background. I want that for podcasting. Dave, who is
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it that you often talk about as your symbol for this? Well,
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that would be aunt Cheryl. She's the person that when you go just copy
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and paste that, she goes, what do you mean copy and paste?
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So we want that person, and there's nothing wrong with aunt Cheryl, by the way.
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But we want it to be easy. When I was talking with,
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a member of the Apple staff at podcast movement, They
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he just said this podcasting 2 point o's looks really interesting. He goes, but it
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has to be easy, like, easy. And the
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minute you're like, okay. First, you gotta do this and then the thing and
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do the hokey pokey and turn yourself. Nope. We've already lost aunt Cheryl.
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So it got easy for a minute there when we had Albie
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kinda going in. Now we're looking for okay. We tried that.
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We can check that off. That did work, but it's not long
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term maybe the best solution. And I wouldn't even call that easy either.
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Yeah. That's true. It was well yeah. Because you had to okay. Well, first you
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have to set up a wallet. And then the other thing was
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that nobody ever really asked, which was kinda good, but I didn't get
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anybody going. How do I get my satoshis and get them into my bank?
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It was always just, how do I set it up to receive them? I didn't
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have anybody really, and they want to give them back. And so that was kind
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of something I thought was kind of unique and in an
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interesting insight that nobody was like, okay. How do I put this in my, you
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know, wallet so I can go buy some groceries? And I'm like, well, I think
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you can get a Mountain Dew with 4,000 sat, something like that.
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But, yeah, that was still too hard. The reason I've been thinking about this a
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lot lately is looking at the inflection points within
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podcasts and the podcasting industry. And where I
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differentiate that is podcasting is the art of making
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podcasts. So a podcasting app is an app that
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helps you make podcasts. So Steve Jobs was
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wrong when he said he was bringing podcasting to iTunes
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4.9 way back in 2005. He brought
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podcasts. But that was the
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first major inflection point for podcasts since their
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birth was when they came to Itunes 4.9 in
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2005 because well, for me, that was my
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introduction to podcasts. Dave, what was it like
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listening to podcast before that? Oh, before that, it was insane.
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I was using I know on the Mac, it was called iPad or X. I
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think it was called Juice, and it had a big picture of a lemon on
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it. And I would fire that up in the morning. It would
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go out and check for new episodes. And while I was showering
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and doing my hair and eating my bra, I'd come down, like, a half hour,
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45 minutes. Hopefully, I would have, like, 5
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or 6 episodes because there really weren't that many podcasts that I was listening to.
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But there was no iPhone. There was no iPad at that point
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even. And so I had this little thing called an iRiver 899.
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I think it held was either 256 or 528
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megabytes. And it back then, it was like, oh, holy cow.
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And when you plugged it in, it looked like a little hard drive. So I'd
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have to know where Juice had downloaded my files,
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open up that folder, copy them, open up the iRiver, paste them
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there, wait for it to transfer over, and then I would go out. And I
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forget how I had them wired up in my car. I know at one point
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I used, like, a cassette converter, and that sounded awful.
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And I think I had I think and back then, that was huge. I had
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an auxiliary in. It was so I think that's how I ended up plugging
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this into it. But what was sad is I would listen to Howard Stern in
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the morning. I'd start listening to all my podcasts, all 5
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episodes that I had copied over. And by 3 o'clock, you're like, oh,
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man. I'm on a podcast. And he was like, well, gotta wait till I get
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home. So it was not a fun you know? And and to say the
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technology was way like, you know, that's why when
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you ask people, do you listen to podcasts? A, they thought you had to have
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an iPad once the iPad was invented. That's why the
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iPad was such a great thing because I literally would wake up,
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plug my iPad into my computer, and that was it. I would
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come down later, grab my iPad, and get in the car because everything had
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already transferred over. It had already downloaded. And that was the first time
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when Apple brought in podcast. It's the first and only time I've ever
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actually seen hockey stick growth. Because I remember going into my
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stats and just it was just it just shot right through the roof. I'm like,
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what is going on? We're like, oh, it's the Apple thing. I was like, oh,
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yeah. That might help a little bit. Well, and even before that
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so that was complicated enough. How did you even
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get the podcast? How did you discover them? How did you
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even start downloading them? Where did RSS fit
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into this? Well, the the first one, and I think
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I have the clip for this, but when I downloaded Juice, the
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voice of 1 Adam Curry came out. Nice.
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And I was like, hey. I know that guy from the Headbangers Ball. So that's
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what really one of the first things that got me into it. And I started
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listening to The Daily Source Code, and then he would mention C.
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C. Chapman from Accident Hash, which was a radio show. Okay. So
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then you hear another podcast or of another podcast. How would
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you get that other podcast into your podcast app? Oh,
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yeah. You'd go over to let's say I was gonna listen to the scene scene
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by Marcus Couch. I'd go over to his website. He'd have an RSS button.
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And because we were all nerds, I knew don't click on it. I had to
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right click and copy and then go into the Juice
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software and paste in the RSS feed. So then it would go out and
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check, and you're like, oh, wow. Marcus has, you know, 5 episodes. He's been doing
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this a long time. And then you would just wait for them
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to download. And then, you know, like, okay. And then you'd
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you'd put them on your iRiver and off you go. So those who fell
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asleep through all of that wake up. Now we
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have iTunes and Itunes
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well, now we have Apple Podcasts actually, but Itunes was a major
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inflection point in that it made all of that so much
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easier that discovering a podcast or adding
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a podcast was as simple as pressing
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a button to subscribe, and that was it. And it added
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it to your library. It would automatically check for new episodes every
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I think the default might have been every hour or maybe it was once a
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day back then. I forget. But it would check for it automatically frequently.
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And if you had an iPad or even for a little while,
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the Itunes app would synchronize with a Motorola Razr flip
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phone, but you could synchronize your media. And other people
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made special little scripts that could then synchronize what was in
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your Itunes library with some other third party MP
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3 player that you could take with you, and there were other things.
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But Apple Itunes was a huge inflection point for
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us because it made things easy.
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It made it so easy that you didn't have to know what
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an RSS feed URL was for a podcast you wanted. You didn't have to
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copy and paste. You didn't have to try and do any of that. You
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pressed subscribe. You searched for the podcast by name
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or by subject, and you pressed subscribe. And we still have that same kind
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of workflow today, although the language is mostly followed now, but it's
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still the same basic thing. It's now just that simple. You
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click or tap and you have it. None of this having to
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worry about the RSS stuff. It's there. And
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then look at other major inflection points within the podcasting
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consumption and podcast creation, like the invention of the
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iPhone. So the iPad was way back in 2002, I
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believe, when that came out. The iPhone was
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2,007, I believe. And so that was after the
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invention of podcasting. The iPhone made it even more convenient
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because then your device could do some of the synchronization
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a little bit more for you, and especially when they started doing things like being
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able to download the episodes directly onto the device instead of having
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to synchronize through your computer, again, making the technology
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disappear. And now people never connect their
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smartphones to their computers to synchronize or transfer stuff hardly
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ever, and that technology has disappeared. Think about it from the
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perspective of the podcasting side. So
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creating podcasts, we give Anchor a lot
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of grief, but what did Anchor do
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to the growth of podcasting? They brought a lot of crap into the
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space? Yeah. They also made it easy. The word
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crap. That sentence is still correct. They brought a lot into the
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space. There was an explosion of interest in podcasting
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because Anchor made it so dead simple
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that, yes, it was super simple to make a lot of crap, and that's what
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happened. But it was a win for the industry
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because it was so dead simple. People didn't
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have to worry about technology. They didn't even have to worry about
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microphones or mixers or stuff like that. It was just open the app, press
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record, press stop, type a little bit of text, give it a
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title, press publish, and it's, you're a podcaster now with
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whatever you just said. You're a podcaster now, and it's in the Apple Podcast
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Store and some other places. It made it simple, and that created
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a measurable explosion in the growth of new podcasts.
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Yeah. A lot of them crap. Yeah. You didn't even need talent.
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Exactly. But there are, I think, today,
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a lot of talented now podcasters who
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got their start because Anchor made it
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so dead simple for people. Think about the gear that we
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use now with podcasting. Dave, you and I have both
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been around long enough to have experienced
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having to mess with mix minus. The good old
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days. That's something we haven't had to say for years. Right?
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Yes. Mixed minus. That was such it was such a thing that, like, once
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you got it, you got it. But getting the light bulb to turn
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on was not easy at all. There are a lot of people that were like,
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so I do what? I'm hearing an echo. What? And it's like, And
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then trying to make it work like some gear, you would get these tiny little
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mixers because people would hear, oh, I need a mixer to connect with my microphone.
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And how do I get the mixer connected to my computer? Oh, now I need
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a USB audio interface. And now with this tiny mixer that I only
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spent $50 on, how do I do mix minus with this? And
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it's, like, it's not possible where you have to do this convoluted thing with
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the auxiliary output, the auxiliary sends, or maybe you do something where it's
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like the left and right balance of the audio. It starts getting complicated.
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Now huge credit to RODE, I think, really led the industry. I'm
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not gonna say they're the first on this, but they certainly
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led and continue to lead the industry with the innovation of the RODEcaster
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Pro. And that one device, when the
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Rodecaster Pro came out, that one device
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designed for podcasters made so much of the
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technology just disappear. Yes. There's a mix minus
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toggle switch inside of the Rodecaster Pro, but that's
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it. And I think out of the box, it's doing the mix minus
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for you. Yeah. So you don't even have to think about
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it at all. It just works. When I
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first got the Zoom PodTrak p 4, I was going through all
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the menus looking for the mix minus setting, and it was
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so bad. I actually had to look at the manual.
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I was trying to think, what is it? And then finally, you know, I think
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I emailed support, and they're like, yeah. It's just there. It's on already. You don't
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have to turn it on. And I was like, this is amazing. So,
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yeah, it's that's another one where you take it for granted. It's kind of
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funny now when you stumble across old pieces of
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technology and you're like, oh, I remember I remember mixed minus. And I remember,
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you know, you even right there, you said you the whole panning sometimes. You could
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pan things different ways to get separate tracks, all sorts of weird it
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was just we're all just hacking everything good because nothing was made
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for podcasting yet. But that technology, the
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actual thing that technology is doing hasn't disappeared, but our
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view of the technology has disappeared that now it's just we plug it in, we
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turn it on, it is plug and play. Or even look at stuff
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like as much hate as we give to the Blue Yeti microphone.
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Right. It was accessible. It was easy for people. They
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go out to Best Buy or Circuit City, and they buy the microphone,
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or they plug it in, and they start recording. And let's not forget its predecessor,
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of course, the brilliant blue snowball.
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I always think that there's this doctor who a series of
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these episodes with these particular characters, the Ood,
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who hold their brains in their hands in a little ball that is then
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connect with this like it looks like an umbilical cord to their heads, and their
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brains are in the ball. And they talk, and it, like,
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glows as they talk. So I always I did this the first time I
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held a Blue Yeti. I did I went live on Instagram
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video, and I said, you know, we must feed. We must feed
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because that was a line from when you meet the oud because that's that's what
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it like, it's this giant softball sized microphone,
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but it was easy. Yeah. Because you just plugged it directly in. It
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was a USB microphone. You're like, wait. I don't need a mixer or anything. Nope.
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Just plug the microphone in. So Yeah. And you look at other things
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too, like Spotify. Okay. They're doing a lot
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that we don't like in the podcasting industry,
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but we have to give them credit that like Apple did
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with bringing podcasts to iTunes, Spotify bringing
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podcasts to Spotify has made podcast consumption
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easy for countless people because it's right
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there with their music so that they can listen to
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their music, they can listen to their podcasts, and now they can listen to audiobooks
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through Spotify too. That is brilliant for them to put it all there
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and make it easy. It's kind of funny though that
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now Apple has split out the different media consumption
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from their app. And that might eventually happen with Spotify where we'll have a
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Spotify podcast app and a Spotify music app and a Spotify audiobooks
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or books app or that might happen someday. But while it's
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still all in one app, they made it easy. They made
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the technology disappear. They made other podcast
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apps disappear. And that is what we
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need to do in the future of podcasting and with podcasting 2.0
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development and stuff. And I know everything starts out geeky. So I'm
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not saying, hey, we need to make this dead simple on
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arrival or else it's dead on arrival. I'm not saying that.
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I think we need to constantly think of how can we make
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this super easy. Dave, you've asked me a
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question a couple of times on the kind of advice I would give.
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What is that question? Yeah. I had somebody
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ask me, hey. You you talk about this 2 point o thing, and they were
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talking about the streaming satoshis. And they're like, how do I get started in
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that? And I was kinda like, well, you go to oh, wait. You're in the
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US. Yeah. And that's where I was kinda I
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guess I need to find I mean, I know originally, I I was doing something
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with Telegram. I don't even remember how I did it. I just remember there was
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this thing, and you put it in. And setting it up on the index is
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pretty much the same, but the whole wallet thing is the part that's gotten we're
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we're all kind of in a holding pattern right now. I I know we could
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do probably something with fountain. I know in terms of receiving
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no. For sending sats, Sam over Truefans
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has a setup, so it's super easy to fill your wallet and then
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send to people. But if you're the podcaster looking to receive,
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I'm kinda like, fountain, I think.
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So what so what would be your answer to that? What I would
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love to say is talk to your hosting
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provider, and they can help you get set up with it. Years ago,
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now at this point, it was podcast movement, I believe, 2021.
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I was talking to Tom Rossi from Buzzsprout, and so maybe he'll remember
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this conversation, but I shared a vision of what this could look like. And
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this is the vision I would still love to see. It's developed a bit more
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since then. And I touched on this previously in our episode about the
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future of ad slots. This technology of streaming satoshis
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and boostergrams and such, I love it. I love what
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we've built. I think it's a fantastic foundation.
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Now it's time for all of that technology to disappear
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because I think the whole thing of getting a wallet, that shouldn't be
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necessary. The whole thing of learning how to
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even go to the index or connect your wallet or there's a
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hosting provider. I don't wanna throw them under the bus, so I'm not gonna name
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them. But they do a lot of things very innovatively. And they have a
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field where you can add your value information, but they have this
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drop down for when you add your wallet.
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And even I, with understanding of some of these
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things, I sometimes don't know what am I supposed to pick from
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these things that use the Cyrillic alphabet, but I
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have no idea what that means. It's like, is it
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the the, you know, the x y z wallet type or is it
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a satoshi or is it a a whatever, a hash or is I don't
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even remember what it was, but I remember that someone
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else, unless they were told, use this option,
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they're not going to know, and they shouldn't have to know. Even just
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simply copying your wallet address into your podcast
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feed, I think you shouldn't have to do that. So the vision that I
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have for this is I would love to see,
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let's follow this from the very start. The
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podcast apps, I think, should make wallets
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where the podcast consumer simply
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purchases tokens. We don't even have to call it Satoshis. We can because that's
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probably what's going to power it. But we could call it credits,
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tokens, Satoshis, whatever. They put
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some money into this podcast app. That
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app then converts that to whatever digital
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currency necessary, and then the podcast
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consumer can choose where that money goes.
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Then the podcast app will send that to the podcaster.
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Now the podcaster, of course, needs a way to receive that money. That's where the
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podcast hosting providers, I think, need to get into this. And I know there
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are certain concerns about custodial wallets
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and cryptocurrency exchanges and some of this stuff.
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I think and I I am not a lawyer on this.
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Please keep that in mind. So this is not legal advice.
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But my perception of things looking at the
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industry is that when you are
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handling and holding someone else's money, that's when things
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get complicated. But if you are selling them something
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or you are regularly paying them out for something, that's when things are
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simpler. Like you look at all of these affiliate programs that you can
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join. I have an affiliate program for Podgageman. I'd love for any podcaster
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to join that affiliate program and recommend it to other podcasters. Most of the
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way that these affiliate programs work is that you earn a certain amount of
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money. And then probably once a month, usually near the beginning of the month
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or maybe near the end of the month, you get paid what you have
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earned up to that point or up to a certain cutoff point
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for accounting for any kind of refunds or anything like that. They're
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not managing your money for you. It's you've earned this
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amount and we will pay you this amount at the end of this
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particular term or waiting period or anything like that. That's the way it could
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be for podcast hosting providers where they set up
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maybe they need only a single wallet on their
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side. So they set up their own Albi Hub or whatever technology
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they need to do that is invisible to the podcaster. They
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receive the payment. With the payment, there's the information of what
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podcast it goes to, what episode it's for, you know, all of that stuff that
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currently we talk about being in the TLV record. Maybe it will be in some
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other thing like an activity stream in the future. Whatever technology that
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is, doesn't really matter in this context. But they get that information.
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They then can add that to a balance to
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the podcaster, and the podcaster can then either
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set up something that's automatic or maybe it's a manual payout,
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but then just they decide, I want to get my payout,
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and then it goes out to some other place where it's less
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complicated. Like, you look at Coinbase, what Coinbase has done in the United
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States. Coinbase is working really hard to follow all of
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the laws, and they're doing a much better job than places like Binance
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US and many other places who had just decided, nope. We're not going to
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even serve people in the United States. Or if you're from the US, you cannot
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use our cryptocurrency platform. But Coinbase, it's
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even a publicly traded company. I do not own stock in Coinbase. I do
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use Coinbase, but I don't I'm not invested in them currently.
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They do have a lightning wallet feature, but it's the
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traditional style where it does this kind of invoice
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thing in the background that is still a little bit technical.
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But to get that money then from the podcast hosting
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provider to your Coinbase wallet, From Coinbase,
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then you can take that cryptocurrency, convert it
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to dollars, deposit it into your bank account. And even
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that could be a little bit easier. Yeah. But I think that
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is fairly easy right now. Once you're in that
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space of having an exchange account, you're very familiar with the concept
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of depositing and withdrawing and converting between different
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currencies and tokens and such. But this whole process
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should be invisible. I think it should be as simple for the
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podcast consumer of, I wanna upload $10.
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How many credits does that give me? Okay. It gives me this many credits. I
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want to disperse these credits across these podcasts in this particular way.
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Those podcast hosting providers receive that, then
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they disperse it to the podcasters, then the podcasters can choose when they
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want to redeem that, or maybe they just withdraw it when they want
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to. That's what I'd love to see. Yeah. If you think about it,
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PayPal, if you think about all the stuff that goes on there where
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when you say I wanna pay $18 to Daniel
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using PayPal, it goes behind the scenes, goes to my
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checking account, removes $18, sends it to
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Daniel, goes into his PayPal, and then Daniel can throw it into
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his account. And it's not invisible because you have to click the
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PayPal button. But once you log in, you're done. At that point, it's
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really easy. So if you think about in the I don't remember
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what I really don't remember what life was like before PayPal. Right.
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I guess you had to send somebody a check. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's
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been around for a long time. But and now there are other
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you know, there's Stripe. But Stripe has a thing called link now that
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when I go to stuff, because I've used it once, it's like, oh, do you
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wanna use your link information? I'm like, sure. And it puts in
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everything. I think the only thing I have to do is put the little three
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digit code for my credit card to to prove that it's me. So that's pretty
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seamless too. So, yeah, if things are getting easier, we just need
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to and like Daniel said, we aren't gonna do this
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overnight, but that's where we wanna go. Yeah. And when it gets to that
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point, I think that's when the companies like Apple who are
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saying, you've got to make this easy, that's
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when they can start supporting that same kind of thing too. And in the
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background, maybe there can be multiple protocols. I
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think Bitcoin is a great way to do this because what we can do through
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specifically the lightning network with Bitcoin, Maybe it's something
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else that can come about in the future. But the whole point is whatever
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technology is happening behind the scenes, podcasters
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and especially podcast consumers should not have to
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care at all what it is. It should just
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be a seamless transfer of value
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from the consumer to the podcaster.
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And if a few places in between take a small
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cut, that's okay. As long as, of course, they disclose that.
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I think that's totally okay and should be that way because those
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places have some expenses when processing these things. And
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also they should be compensated for their work that they're doing
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in making the process easy. And to throw this back to the episode where I
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initially kind of shared a little bit of this idea when we were talking about
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more potential for ad slots, Sam Sethi from truefans.fm
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had sent us a boostergram, and we didn't read that in our last note.
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And he had mentioned something about our not reading that, and that's, I think,
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a a great conversation to have. But something that he wanted to point out
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and something that we briefly touched on in that episode is
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another layer to this that we can still
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think about. And what he said in his comment is the extra twist
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is the user in their settings can set a minimum streaming
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value. For example, 100 sats per minute for your
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time and attention to listen to an advertisement.
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If the advertiser only offers 10 sats per minute in
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then the advertisement is skipped by true fans. However,
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if the value offered is 100 sats per minute or
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more, then I hear the advertisement. But I still have the choice
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to skip if I don't like the advertisement and the streaming sats
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stops so the advertiser is not paying if I don't listen. So
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this is talking about some cool things you can do that Sam is doing with
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True Fans, not only the option for the podcaster
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to pay their audience in sats if they listen to
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ads, but also certain things, ways that the
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podcast consumer can change how they're paying
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in sats and some of the skipping and stuff that goes on. That kind of
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thing, the way that I explain that is probably kind
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of confusing and scratching some people's heads. The idea here that I
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want to touch on and why I'm bringing this in right now is that can
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also disappear, but potentially be reserved
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for apps that are promoted specifically for this thing.
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So imagine if, like, with this podcasting 2 point o stuff that we've got with
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value and all of these other great features, you can promote those
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apps. And then you could even tell your audience if you would like
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to earn some satoshis listening to my podcast or if you
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want the opportunity to hear my podcast ad free while you're
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streaming satoshis to me or exchanging value or
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whatever language that we use, streaming payments would be better,
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then use this app. Use Truefans or use whatever
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app because then that unlocks these new things or
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that helps you to skip the ads if you are paying this amount. So
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then you are incentivizing them with an experience. That
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experience could be skipping ads. That experience could be
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getting paid for listening to the ads if they switch
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apps, but still making that technology
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aspect disappear. That's what I would love
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so much to see. I know that a lot of this stuff is still
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technical, and it will continue to be for a little while.
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Because even back in the early days of podcasts and
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podcasting, it was technical. That's why it was predominantly
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tech based shows and predominantly men because
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techy stuff stereotypically attracts more men than it
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does women. But that has changed over the years
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as the need for the technology aspect has
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changed. Then now it's made it more accessible for people
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who don't care about the technology. That's the thing
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I would love to see is that for podcasting, well, it is basically
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mainstream now because the majority of the population consumes podcasts at least
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on a monthly basis. To make that even higher, I think
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we need to make it so simple that people don't have
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to think about technology to get it. It's not like podcasts are only
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for geeks. And and I think we've crossed that point years ago of that
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impression of, oh, podcasts are only for geeks or even the
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impression that, oh, podcasting, creating my own
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podcast is only for the geeky people who know how to work the technology.
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No. It's now much simpler. So now the people who
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don't know about the technology, don't need to know about it, don't have the
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time, don't care about it, can still create
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podcasts and distribute it through the podcasting ecosystem
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without the technology because the technology is
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disappearing. And that's what we need to do. With all of these
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innovations in Podcasting 2.0, I plead for everyone thinking
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through new innovations. Focus on how it's going to help the
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podcast consumer first. And keep an eye to the
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future of how can we make this technology disappear.
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For the podcaster, maybe it's as simple as toggle the
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switch or fill in this field with something super easy.
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And for the consumer, making it that easy to
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toggle this, enter your credit card information, start sending money to your
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favorite podcasters, whatever that is. That's my dream for the
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future. To dream the impossible
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dream. Yes. It's not just for old geeky guys. Now
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it's for wives who wanna secretly learn how to murder their husband and get away
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with it. Well, see, I wasn't going to go stereotypical. You're the one
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who Well, another thing, though, that has it's it's
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slowly being phased out. I know with Patreon,
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if somebody wants to listen to your show
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not on the Patreon app, they have to still right click on the
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RSS feed and copy and paste it where things like Supercast,
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you basically when it signs up, it goes, oh, hey. You're on an iPhone. Do
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you wanna listen to this in Apple Podcasts or I see you have Pocket Cast
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installed? It somehow has some magic voodoo going on that it
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knows what apps are on your phone and says you wanna listen to this one.
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You go, oh, yeah. Pocket Cast. I love that app. Click. You're done. So
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that's something else that's, again, getting much easier than it used to
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be. And even that can still disappear to the point where you don't even have
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to present that choice. It's just, I wanna support this podcast and get
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this bonus content or skip the ads or or whatever.
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You do that all within the podcast app. You never leave the
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podcast app. You never have to switch your feeds or anything like that.
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It just works. Yep. And it's possible. It
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it it really is. Well, you mentioned the one Boostagram.
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Do we have any other boostograms? We had the one from Sam. We also got
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one from creativity found, and we mentioned this in our last
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episode, but we didn't read the message. And so to read that message,
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creativity found said it came a bit late to this episode. This was about the
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episode Podcasting More Than Just Podcasts. They said,
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holiday listening and liked the discussion around what more
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slash differently you can do with a podcast format. I have planned a step by
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step course format around the future of podcasting 2.0
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with explainer episodes where guests tell me what the thing
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is and why it's good, then practical episodes teaching the
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listener how to do the thing. Still a talk show, but we'll
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use the 2.0 features to teach the 2.0 features. I
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love meta stuff like this. Inspired by books I
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have worked on as a text editor, and this comes from Claire
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Creativity Found. Thank you so much for that boostagram, Claire.
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238 sets. And that boostagram, by the way, from Sam was
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204 sets. So thank you so much for those boostograms. And we
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continue to receive streaming satoshis too from, like, Brian Entsminger,
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Randall Black, and Johns Creek Studios, Sam, and others. So
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thank you so much. And as we record this, we hope this is
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temporary, but we usually look at our boostograms
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through Saturn. It's saturn.fly.dev. And
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right now, they're not having a good day. We got a whole lot of nothing
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and spinning going on. So hopefully the guys and gals at
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at Saturn are figuring out what's going on. That's always kind of
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spooky when you see that. I I love their dashboard. It was very easy. That's
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where we could see who our top supporters were and things like that. So, hopefully,
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they've just got, I don't know, a power outage somewhere,
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something super simple to fix, though. Alright, Daniel. Future
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podcasting episode 50. That is gonna do it for this episode.
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Thank you for letting me have a soapbox again, and remember, keep
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boosting and keep podcasting.