Hey, it's Dave! In this episode (which uses chapters FYI), I take you through a year-end wrap-up, sharing stories, rants, insights, and predictions about the world of podcasting. Here are the main points I covered:

1. A Christmas Story with a Lesson for Podcasters

I kicked things off with a humorous Christmas tale about the Cridland Boys Choir, and what happens when you keep loosening your standards just to hit a target—a not-so-subtle lesson for the podcasting world.

2. Pushing Back on Changing Definitions in Podcasting

I strongly disagreed with Steve Goldstein and Jay Nachlis' take that YouTube should be considered podcasts. (also TikTok, and Newsletters).

I emphasized that a podcast, by definition, is audio, video, or PDF delivered via RSS—without that, it's not a podcast.

3. Why "Everything Is a Podcast" is Dangerous

I called out the industry for letting YouTube (and now TikTok) hijack the term "podcast," muddling data and damaging clarity around the medium.

4. The Hazards of Exclusive Distribution Deals

I discussed how exclusive distribution (like those seen with Netflix and Spotify) leads to loss of control and audiences for podcasters.

5. Warning Signs of Big Companies Manipulating Podcasting

Shared concerns about major corporations and what happens when their decisions are driven mainly by shareholder profits and not creators or audiences.

6. AI Content Flooding the Podcast Space

I highlighted the dangers of companies like Inception Point AI mass-producing low-value podcasts, cluttering directories, harming discoverability, and devaluing advertising rates.

7.Common Missteps Hurting Podcast Discovery

I warned about creating duplicate listings in Apple Podcasts and elsewhere, usually when moving hosts, and the importance of understanding how to migrate your show correctly.

8. Show Name Collisions

I noted the confusion caused by multiple shows using the same title (like "Thinking Outside the Box") and urged creators to do their research before naming their show.

9. Monetization Predictions for the Coming Year

I predicted a shift toward premium/patron-supported models as podcasters get frustrated with low ad rates.

10. The Fight Against "AI Slop"

I advocated for collectively pushing back against low-quality, AI-generated spam content in our medium.

11. Upcoming Industry Mergers

I think we'll see podcast-related companies merging or being acquired in the near future.

12. The Reality of YouTube for Podcasters

I expect many podcasters to try YouTube, realize it's not for them, and return to audio-first approaches—while some will succeed by mastering the video platform.

13. A Desire for More Creativity in Podcasting

I called for a resurgence of risk-taking and creative experimentation, rather than everyone following the same tired formats.

Podcasts/Shows Noted:

Pod News Weekly Review

No Agenda Show

Good Hang with Amy Poehler

Things We Learn in a Bar

Work for the Wind by Aliyah Langley

Steve's Blog That Drives Me Nuts

Captivate

Transistor

Buzzsprout

Supercast

For more details, behind-the-scenes commentary, and my thoughts on where the industry is headed, give this episode a listen. And as always, if you need help planning, launching, growing, or monetizing your podcast, check out schoolofpodcasting.com (coupon code: listener).

Mentioned in this episode:

What is Your Favorite Podcast and Why?

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Question of the Month

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to you and your family!

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Join the School of Podcasting

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School of Podcasting

The school of podcasting uses chapters in their episodes. So if

I'm talking about a topic and there are many in this episode, feel free to

skip to the next one. Today I kind of want to do a

year wrap up of podcasting, the Good, the Bad

and the Ugly. And of course, that means we're going to start off with.

And now it's time for a power rant. Actually, let's not do

a power rant. What I'd like to do, because it's

Christmas time. Let's start off with a fun Christmas story.

This is called the Cridland Boys Choir.

Mildred Broombaugh had finally become the

superintendent of all the schools in Cridland.

And she had one mission. You see, when she was just a little

girl, she had seen the Vienna Boys Choir and

she wanted to create one in Cridland. So she reached out to

all the teachers in Cridlin and said, I want to put on a

Christmas concert. Everyone who meets this criteria

will be in the Cridland Boys Choir. They will be between the

ages of 9 and 14, have a red sweater,

black pants, and be able to sing. So

the teachers went through all the classes and there were 27

boys who met the criteria, but that was a long

way from 100. So Ms.

Broombaugh, she changed the criteria. She said, well, you

can wear any color of pants as long as you have a red

sweater and a boy who could sing between the

ages of 9 and 14. And this got her closer to her

goal as there were 34 boys who met that

criteria. But she was still a long way off of her

goal of 100 people. So she

changed the criteria again. And she said, okay, I'm going

to change the ages from 9 to

27. And the teachers went out again.

And it turned out there weren't that many older people in the

elementary schools. And so it only got her up

to 50. Fine. She said,

I need this choir to be 100 people. I've got it.

This will work. Find dogs that can howl.

They don't even need sweaters. And so some of the children

brought their dogs to practice and the howling was awful. But at this point,

she was up to 82 people, or 82 participants,

and still a fair amount to go to reach her goal of 100.

Now she was beyond frustrated. And she was walking down the

halls one day of Cochrane elementary with when she saw a

cleanliness engineer mopping the floor. That's it. She

said, prop all the mops up and put a red sweater on them.

And someone said, Ms. Broombaugh. Mops don't make any

noise. They can't sing. And she quipped back, but it

will have a red sweater. And that's close enough.

So the night came and the choir assembled with a bunch of creepy dudes

with mops standing in the back row, dogs howling over a

few talented boys who you really couldn't even here

over all the ruckus. But Ms. Broombaugh had achieved her

boys choir. And then the concert

was over. And it turns out the entire audience had left because,

well, they expected to hear a boys choir

and, well, it was awful.

The end. Now, what does that have to do with

podcasting? I'll explain in just a second.

Hit it, ladies. The school of podcasting

with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting since 2005. I am

your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave

Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you are new to

the show, I am so glad you're here. You are in the right

spot. This is where I help you plan, I help you launch, I help you

grow, I help you monetize. If you want to your podcast,

my website is schoolofpodcasting.com you can

use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly,

quarterly, or yearly subscription. So,

Dave, what the heck was that? Well, this is in

remarks, and I need to say this up front.

I'm not picking on Steve Goldstein. I like

Steve Goldstein as a person. I've met him. Really nice guy. I remember one of

the first calls we had was probably back in 2000, 2006. And so

he's been around a long time. And I'm just letting you

know you're allowed to disagree with people even

if you're friends. And I cannot disagree more

with Steve Goldstein and some of his

statements. And this goes back to two years

ago when he announced that if you weren't on

YouTube, well, you were going to miss the boat, in fact, in his presentation.

And YouTube has moved rapidly. We've seen studies

over the past couple of years as it's growing and growing, and now it

is dominant, but it is different.

It is a bit vexing for most podcasters because it does involve

video. There's no RSS feed. There will be. And

yet this was two years ago. There's still no RSS feed out. You

have to watch YouTube. On YouTube, it's a closed system.

It's video based, and 3.7 million people

are uploading content. Videos are uploaded every day,

500 hours, every minute. I mean, it's just incredible how

big it is. And I've never argued that YouTube is not huge.

It has a huge number of people that are watching it. More people are

watching now on their television set. But they came out with

this. The new rules of podcasting on YouTube. And it was Steve

Goldstein and Jay Naturalist. And here's what they said

about the whole podcasting. And in

this case, they were talking about defining it. Big headline from this

study today. The definition of a podcast is changing.

Says who? Coleman Insights. Because you interviewed a

thousand people, there are hundreds of thousands of podcasters.

That's not a great sample size. I mean, look, I love

Mariah Carey. She's majorly talented. But I did not get

my ballot when it came to voting her Queen of Christmas, because

I've had enough of that song. And I did not get my ballot when they

said, hey, we're going to change the definition of podcasting. Because

I would have said, you're wrong. You know, we hear all the time everybody's got

their opinions of what a podcast is, particularly in the podcast

industry. Now, why is that? Because there is a

definition of what a podcast is. It's audio, video, or

PDF delivered via rss. And we all agreed on that

because, well, you know, it's a fact. But we thought it was

really important in the study to take it outside of the industry

and figure out, you know, what are podcast consumers

saying? And I guess my question is why?

Why do we care what the consumer says? Because we are also

the first to say the consumer doesn't

care how we define it. But the thing that drives

me nuts is a. There was a study called

the New Rules of podcasting on YouTube. And right

there, we should have said, hey, guys, I

appreciate the work you put into that, but I don't know if you know this

or not, but podcasts aren't on YouTube. We did

not push back. And everyone

believed this whole thing about YouTube. There's been some major

shifts, and as a podcaster, this really impacts your

marketing plan and how you get your podcast out there.

It's a YouTube world. We're just living in it. Ugh. No. And

why were there major shifts? And by saying there are major shifts, you're kind of

going, hey, look, our report was important because nobody

pushed back to say, hey, I don't know if you realize this or not, but

YouTube's not a podcast. All right? And I'm going to point out

just one thing, and this sounds kind of mean, and I don't mean

it to be mean, but we're taking podcast advice from guys

that sound like that? Because I know you're thinking it, and

I just said it. These guys are telling me how to grow my audience on

YouTube. I would tell them, figure out how to work a microphone. They got

a background in radio in some cases. That's some horrible audio.

Sorry, just saying it. So the reason people aren't

pushing back is because of the massive

megaphone that is YouTube and Spotify. So with YouTube,

the advertising market, they were losing a

small percentage, but nonetheless a percentage from TikTok.

And they're like, we gotta get people talking about YouTube again. And so

they said, oh, I know. We'll just say that YouTube is

now a podcast. Now, why would they say that? Because every report.

In fact, there was one that came out today that said how YouTube

advertising on YouTube is not as good as

advertising on a real podcast. And that's the part

that kind of makes my blood boil, is the fact they're hijacking

our reputation. All right? And for those of you

that are like, oh, who poked the bear? There is new information

that I'm just like, oh, are you kidding me? Because if you look at,

like, a clock, 12 o', clock, that was normal. That was where

things made sense. 10 o' clock was when we said, sure,

YouTube's a podcast, and nobody pushed back. And now

we're going even further away from common sense.

YouTube is a wolf in

podcast clothing that drives me nuts. And

now it's filtered over. TikTok now is

calling itself a podcast. Why not? If YouTube can do it and

nobody's gonna push back, we're a podcast, too. In

fact, this kitchen timer sitting right here on my desk is. It's

a podcast. I'll tell you more about that in a second, because

now there's this show on TikTok featuring Demi

Lovato, who I love, and they're calling it a

podcast. There's no RSS feed, but it's a podcast. And James

Kridlin from podnews.net made a great point.

So figure this. You're a marketing person.

You want to spend your marketing dollars the best. Here's another report that

shows how podcasting outperforms everything.

And you're like, I gotta spend some money on this podcasting stuff.

TikTok comes along and says, hey, we're a podcast. Now,

here's the thing. When that comes down

to reporting, is that gonna be classified as

money spent on a podcast or money spent on

social media? And I can't answer that question. Only the

marketing director that's sponsoring that show can do

that. But I just know that people in the podcast industry

are jonesing so hard to get over the $2 billion

mark that they will call anything a podcast. So

that marketers will spend money on podcasting so they can say,

look at us, we're growing. And they don't care

if their actions actually are a detriment to the

whole podcasting space. They're going to get their money, so they

don't care. But that report about podcasts on

YouTube, we should have pushed back on that. I don't understand why we didn't.

I don't know if Steve and the guy from Coleman

Insights have friends at YouTube because this

video is such an advertisement for YouTube.

And so the new thing that came out. And this is such

bs, this is from Amplify

Media, and it's Steve Goldstein. And again, I don't

dislike Steve. I just really disagree with his opinion.

And this is what he says. He says podcasting is no longer

a one size fits all medium. And I would say

it never has been. It's always been from day one,

audio, video, and PDF. The video thing is

not new. He says it's become an ecosystem. A

podcast can be a YouTube show. No,

it can't. Not without an RSS feed.

He says it can be vertical clips,

newsletters. And that's the one I went,

that's it. We got to talk about this. A

newsletter is not a podcast. And you might say, but, Dave, some blogs

can be delivered via rss. And I would agree,

and I would say that's why it has a different word. It's not a

newsletter, it's a blog. When you have a different

definition, you have a different word.

Live streams or even a live event. So let's read that again.

Podcasting is no longer a one size fits all medium. It has

become an ecosystem. A podcast can be a YouTube show, vertical

clips, newsletters, short episodes, live streams, or even a live event.

You can. There's one thing he forgot to put, and I would have been perfectly

fine if he said, when it's delivered via RSS

in honor of my grandma Irene, I have one thing to say.

Poppycock. Yeah. I don't understand

why people didn't push back. When Jay and Steve are like, hey,

guess what? YouTube's a podcast. We should have said, no, it's not.

And that's kind of like, now people think that

YouTube is a podcast. It's still not.

And yet now that causes people. And then they say things like, it's

weird. We don't have as many new Podcasters as we used to. Yeah,

because you've convinced everyone they have to be on video and people don't want to

be on video. Way to go. Congratulations. Here's a question.

Are podcast reports from the major companies that do

podcast reports, are they better or worse?

Are they helpful or less helpful than when

people came down from the mountain with their tablets saying, YouTube is a

podcast? In my opinion, they are less helpful because

they say things like, yeah, well, video podcasts,

better known as YouTubers, are exploding on YouTube. Yeah,

no kidding. Wow. Then they say other brilliant things like, well,

if you. If you're just an audio podcast and

you're not using YouTube, you're limiting your audience.

Wow, Sherlock. How did you come up with that? Wait a minute.

Audio podcasting is a stage. Video on

YouTube is a stage. You mean if I got on another stage, I might grow

my audience, but a different audience? Yeah.

Never would have figured that one out. Adam Curry, co creator of

podcasting, said it best. Every book doesn't need to be

a movie. And I have people that come to me all the time, and they're

thinking of starting a podcast, but they don't want to be on video. As

always, if I said this from day one, if you want to be on YouTube,

I am on YouTube because I want to be.

But you don't have to be. If you don't want to be on video,

you don't have to. There are plenty of people who

achieve success without doing video.

And one more thing I want to point out, because Jay said this, but.

We thought it was really important in this study to take it outside of

the industry. And I kind of go, why did you

go outside the industry? I guess if you're trying to do a study

on what makes a good teacher, you would ask the students,

but you weren't asking what makes a good podcast. You were asking,

what makes a teacher? And

then people said, well, I sometimes learn

when I stub my toe on a chair. So a chair is a

teacher. And while that is a lesson,

it's not an actual teacher standing up in a classroom.

And so do we have the courage

to stand up and go, hey, people that do these,

you know, surveys, because they have been doing them for decades,

maybe they're not asking the right questions. How long have we

heard that the average podcast listener listens to

X amount of podcasts? And we still kind of have

to go, is that episodes or shows? Maybe

they're not asking the right questions. It's just a

thought. And I know you probably fast forward to

this point, and you're asking yourself, dave, why do you care? And I totally

get that. Because you know what? The audience doesn't care. They don't

care how the sausage is made. They just want the sausage. I

get that. Totally get that. And it comes down to rss, and it comes down

to control. If you get kicked off of YouTube, you're kind of

screwed. But if you're doing a podcast on

RSS and somebody kicks you off, Spotify, you have a whole bunch of

other apps that you. You can still listen to me on. In

fact, if I get kicked out of all the apps and I still have an

RSS feed, my audience can still consume my

data. It's a little more challenging, but I'm not dead in the

water. And when the bigger these companies get

and the more they dig their trenches in, what they're really doing

is they're going for control. They're going for

control. They want it to be. They're already putting things in place.

Spotify is to where you have to use their ads, and they

don't pay much, and they're going through all these different things. It's all

about control. And I'm just here to say, the more we

water down the definition of a podcast, now it's a

newsletter. That is such crap. That is such

absolute nonsense. It's idiotic.

A podcast is not a newsletter, and

we need to start pushing back, because the more blurry it

gets, the more we're wasting our time to talking about what a

podcast is when we could be

informing advertisers what a great deal it

is to advertise in a podcast.

And then we would have reports where people didn't have

to go, I think this means this, because I don't know if they're doing this.

No, the reports would be crystal clear, and we would know

exactly what to do to enhance

podcasting to make it better and what was working and what

doesn't. And when everything's a podcast, you're like, well,

wait a minute. This box of Kleenex is a podcast. All right, I'll

shut up. All right. And to finally wrap this up, we're going to play a

fun game called Is this a Country Song

or a Pop Song? Ready?

This could easily be Def Leppard. I was running on

the dad. Right? That's

off the. And yes, I know I'm breaking the rules here, but

that's the number 19 hit from

Spotify's Country Hits 2025. The song is called

Things We Learn in a Bar where I was expecting it to

sound like this.

Right. Little lap steel, you know, this is

Work for the Wind by Aliyah Langley. And

that, to me, sounds like a country song. And so

if everybody sounds like Cody Koz,

then all the pop guys, all the rock people are like,

wow, they're playing rock on this station. Notes. New country.

You change the definition, and all of a sudden, what do you know?

It's the most popular genre now. Why?

Because you changed the definition of the genre and it

doesn't sound like country anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, next subject. Netflix. People are

all excited that some shows that are really, really popular

are getting on Netflix, but Netflix is

dictating how you can consume

that subject. And to that I go,

no, no, thank you. I mean, we learned that all from

Spotify. I mean, they had the Joe Rogan experience call

her Daddy, Armchair Expert, Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain,

and various Spotify owned shows from

Gimlet. Remember Gimlet? Yeah. And

what's interesting about that is, aside

from, well, there's Joe Rogan, but Joe now has his

stuff beyond Spotify. You can find

him on YouTube and Apple. Same thing with Alex Cooper

and Caller Daddy. And they're all, if you notice, they're not

exclusive anymore. They're Spotify

originals. And so this is where, being

an old curmudgeon who has seen things over 20 years, I'm like,

yeah, you don't want to do that. They separate you from your audience,

and then they get mad because your marketing efforts don't

work. Why? Because the audience that's going to follow you

follows you, and the rest don't. And big,

large companies don't care when big money gets involved.

They don't care about you. I'll give you a quick example. I live in

Cleveland, Ohio. The Cleveland Browns are our American

football team. And the previous owner, in the middle

of the night, picked up the team and moved them to Baltimore. Years

later, we got a new. We got our team kind of back.

We've gone through a few owners in the latest one is horrendous.

But the good news is Cleveland, which at one point in the 70s was a

horrendous town, has really turned itself around. We have

a stadium for our football team. We have an arena for our basketball

team. We have a, you know, a diamond or whatever for our

baseball team. And the city

of Cleveland made a law that said you can't move the football team without

our acknowledgment and approval.

And the current owner wants to

move about 20 minutes from where he is. Which would cost the

city millions in taxes and local

businesses because it drives a lot of traffic

downtown. But here's the thing. You got the you can't move the team

law, called the Modell law because the old owner was Modell. And

then where they want to build the land, coincidentally, the land is

now owned by the billionaire owner. They said you can't put a stadium

there because it's right next to an international airport. And

you're like, well, between the you can't move the team law

and you know, you can't change the flight path at

a international airport. Well, this guy,

there's no way he's going to get to move. Did I mention he's a billionaire?

And, yeah, they're moving the team. So when big

people get involved, they don't care many times

about the audience. They don't care about really. It

appears to be anything but making more millions.

And so my favorite Spotify story

was, I think it was 2025, when they brought in

audiobooks into Spotify,

even though there's no bookmarking tool, because, you know, why make it a good

app, but you can listen to audiobooks. And when

they brought those in, I'm not sure authors were really thrilled because

we know how well Spotify pays the

musicians. But once they brought them in,

they then came up with a plan that

allows you to bundle music and audiobooks.

And when that happened, it enabled Spotify,

who's not paying the musicians very much, to

pay them even less. So I say this

to say I am weary of when

companies with billions of dollars and millions of dollars because

they don't give a crap about you, they care about

making money for stock owners. And I know that

because I worked for a company that was,

you know, open or whatever you call it, It's a public company,

and there were times when many bad decisions were made

because they are not serving you

the customer, they're serving their stock owners.

So I say this about Netflix. If you are

like, hey, I gotta get on Netflix, that would be cool.

A exclusive. Deals are crap. Unless, I guess,

you're getting paid millions of dollars and you save and invest.

Well, okay, but here's the thing that James

Kridlin said that I was like, oh, we got to bring this up. James Kridlin

again. Podnews.net if you're not subscribed to that newsletter,

and then I'm not supposed to give you

my favorite show, that's next week's episode. But there's a

really good chance that podcast Weekly Review is going to be my favorite

show for I think the second year in a row. But here is James

talking about Netflix.

Netflix and iHeartMedia have announced an exclusive video partnership

for top iHeart podcasts. IHeart continues to retain

audio only rights and distribution, but the 14 announced

shows will be removed from YouTube. And for me,

that's a bad idea. I don't want to be exclusive on anybody,

but we know we always hear about video shows and things like

that. James also mentioned this. One of iHeart's biggest shows

is also obviously missing stuff you should know doesn't

currently make video versions of its podcast. So for all those

people going, can you even be successful without having video? Yeah,

apparently you can. But check this out. How big is Netflix?

Well, in 2023, Pod News built a tool using Netflix's

own data to help compare the size of Netflix shows to

podcasts. Our own Pod News Weekly Review is bigger than

1 in 5 of all the shows on Netflix, despite

only getting 26,500 downloads a month.

And I'll be at PodFest in January cheering

James on as he is inducted into the

Podcaster hall of Fame. And congratulations on

that. Well deserved. Some more things that may

be hurting the podcasting space right after this.

The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. One of my favorite interviews this year was from Pod

News Weekly Review, where my buddy again, James

Kridlin, he interviewed the woman

Janine Wright, behind Inception Point. And if you're like, what's

Inception Point? It's a company that uses

AI to source and then voice

thousands, thousands of

episodes per week. And I

know a lot of people complain about how it's hard to discover podcasts

in different directories and stuff. They

are flooding, they are adding litter. Just think of that.

If podcasting is a street, they're coming by with

thousands of bags of garbage and throwing it all

over your neighborhood. So why is

this bad? The one thing that podcasters

need every year since I have started podcasting, you know what it is?

More listeners. And now when we finally

get Uncle Merv to try a

podcast at Thanksgiving, the chances of him

finding absolute garbage

worthless, zero value content is

a lot greater than it was a year ago.

That's bad. When you look at the technology

that powers the actual podcast industry,

things like Apple Podcasts and

the podcast index, this is more data

that they have to store about shows that are

absolutely worthless. There's one

that is supposed to be about Sydney, Australia, and it

is for about 50% of the episode. And then from what

I'm Told it, then switches and starts talking about

Sydney Sweeney. Why? Because there's only about eight people

at Inception Point AI and they admit, yeah, we don't

listen to this stuff, or at least most of the stuff before we put

it out. So they're littering, they're

cluttering up the podcasting space. Now the other thing that's bad about

this is I've said, and reports have come out over

and over and over, true podcasting, because of

the relationship we build with our audience, it

outperforms everything. Say it with me,

everything. And the one thing

that will drive the price of ads down if we don't

hold tight is when you get that idiot that will take the

low paying ads. Well, that idiot is called Inception

AI. It's basically spam in

the podcasting space. How do we fix this? Adam Curry, co

inventor of podcasting and co host of the no Agenda show,

said this. "Instead of this being a problem, why don't we just block as

much as we can and every single app that uses the index

should market itself as slop free. If you want to listen to

AI Slop, go use Spotify." And then the other thing that could

be potentially bad, Look, I know I talk about advertisers,

but look, there are times when advertisers, when they're treated

like partners, it's a win, win, win for everyone. It's a win for

the podcaster, it's a win for the audience and it's a win for the advertiser.

But in this case, when an audience finds a horrible

podcast and they get greeted with two to

who knows how many ads before the show even starts,

who's losing there? The advertiser. And

so now they're like, well, we advertised on this show and they said they were

great because they, the woman used to work at Wondery, she must know what she's

doing. No, they're putting out spam, they're putting out horrible

content and your ads are not going to perform well there because the

minute the podcast listener figures

out this is AI Slop, if it's me, I can

only talk about me, I'm tuning out. So it's

going to hurt discoverability, it's going to hurt the

directories, it's going to hurt the technology and it's going to hurt the

advertiser. We need to, to push back.

If podcasting is a pool and we're all swimming in

it, companies like this using this strategy

of just dump out all this AI into the space,

that space is us, that's our living room. That's our swimming pool, and

we're in it, and the water's turning bright yellow and starting to stink. And

everybody's going, hey, anybody else notice it's getting kind of warm in here.

We need to kick them out of the pool. And I

know you're like, but, Dave, that's censorship. Yeah, but here's the

thing. We all need an audience.

And when they come in and chase our audience away,

we gotta do something or we all go away.

So, again, I don't have all the answers. I just know

we need to push back. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. And just to clarify, I'm not anti

AI. Chris Stone from castahead.net

was showing off some really cool stuff at a group coaching call

we did at the school of podcasting. I've done some interesting things

with SEO where you can have chat GPT

find the right kind of post you have on

your website to link to your main. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff

that AI can do. The one thing I wouldn't use it for is

generating content unless it was an image. But actually

having it write something first, I prefer. So this is one of

those, hey, it's Dave's opinion. I like to write it and have

AI kind of basically polish it

a bit and keep my voice for me.

If you think about it, AI is trained on the best stuff, that's a 10,

and the worst stuff that's a 1. And then if it gives you the average

of that, that's a five. And so I'm not a big fan of having it

generate stuff, but that all depends on who's gonna be reading it. But

if it's your audience, I would start with you

and then let ChatGPT keep your voice

and buff it up. But there's some really cool things you can do with

AI. I just know I was approached by a company and their

whole thing was, you don't even have to talk. You can just

basically type in an idea. You know, type in two sentences.

It'll write a script. AI will read it, it will publish. It's your media

host. And I'm just like, I don't want any part of that. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Another thing that is hurting the podcasting space,

and this is just a case of you don't know what you don't know, or

in some cases, you're asking the wrong person. You're asking your web

hosting person a podcasting question. And in the same way

you wouldn't ask me a JavaScript question, I don't work in

that. I'm a podcast guy, so. And that is

people are submitting their shows

multiple times to Apple Podcasts and all the other

apps. So again, this creates a discovery problem. It

also makes it harder for you to rank in the charts because

Instead of having one listing, that is 500

subscribers, you've got two listings, and both of them have 250.

And that can affect your ranking in the charts,

because now we're talking followers. And why is this? This is

because people don't understand how podcasting

works. And I might actually do a webinar on this in January.

But in a nutshell, when you move from one host to

another. So let's say you're just tired of your media host

and they aren't putting out any new features, and

you want to move to Captivate or Transistor or Buzzsprout or whoever,

anybody but Spotify. And you

take your feed, you import it into the new host, we'll just

say it's Captivate. What you want to do is

redirect your old feed to point at your new one. It's kind of a change

of address. You know, you drive by a small business and it

says, hey, we've moved. We're now on South Howard street at 4:56.

Stop by and say, hi. It's a change of address. And that's

fine. And when you do that, one of the things that sees that change of

address is Apple Podcast. And they update your listing

to keep looking at the new source of your content.

But people don't realize that. And what they do is they go, oh, well, at

the old company, I went in, I clicked a couple boxes and it submitted to

Apple and Spotify for me. So on the new company, I click a couple

boxes and it submits to Apple and Spotify for you. And. And

from Dave Jones, who runs podcast index.org

he said there are times when there will be a show with

seven different listings. And this is just. You

don't know what you don't know. So I have a blog post

I put on my website on how to move from one host to the next.

But that, again, is costing you money in many

cases. It's hurting your discovery,

it's hurting your rankings. And it's not that you

are stupid, you're uneducated. And there is a difference

there, by the way. And it's also then

hurting these directories that they have to host

multiple versions of your show. And it just is confusing.

So here's how you can test to See, have I done that? Go to

Apple Podcasts and search for your show and see if it shows up more

than once. If it does, figure out which one has the most

reviews and then hide the other one. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. And this one, I don't know if it's hurting the podcasting space,

but it does hurt you, and that is you came up with a show for

your name and didn't take time to see. Hey, is anybody else using

this? My favorite is the title Thinking Outside the box,

which over 20 shows have the title Thinking Outside

the Box, which shows that they were not. Mm, Thinking Outside

the Box. So you want to go to Google, you want to go

to Apple, you want to go to Spotify and search for your show, and

if the name has already existed, check to see are they currently making

episodes. And if they're not, you might want to try to contact them and say,

hey, would you like to sell me your domain and your name? And you

take it over. So you're not really even starting from zero, but that is

something that, again, is. It's just causing hassles and

confusion in the podcasting space. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The school of podcasting. Well, what do I

predict for 2026? I think we're gonna

see more podcasters who are tired

of taking this $3 per

1,000 downloads, better known as CPM. I think they're gonna get

tired of that and just switch to premium

podcasts. That we've had this forever. There's Patreon.

I like Supercast. And the reason I say this

is if you gave me $5,

and right now, $5 won't even buy you a Happy Meal.

Five is like the new $1 bill. And if you gave

me $5, that would be the same if I was really, really

good of getting a thousand downloads.

So the question is, what's easier, getting a thousand

downloads or getting one person to give you $5

a month? It's been kind of fun because Sam and

James over at Pod News Weekly Review, they use

Buzzsprout. This is also available from Captivate.

You know, again, you could use super cash. You don't have to use this from

your media host, but they just threw it out

there, like, hey, if you'd like to support us, you know, buy us a

beer, whatever you want to call it. And I think the last time they talked

about it, they're up to close to 25 people. 25

people. And I think they're giving them. You can give them 3, 5, 7.

I think you can even name your own price. But just because

I hear so many people saying, I wish I could just cover the cost

of hosting. Well, I think if you put it

out there and you ask,

but that requires confidence that you're delivering value.

But to me, I think we're going to see people

do that where they're like, hey, if you'd like to support the show and

they're not going to get a ton, you might get 1%.

In my book, I talk about how the people that were really crushing it were

getting 3%. But I can see people saying, look,

this advertising where I'm making $1.17

isn't cutting it. Let's see if we can get one person

to give us five, let's see if we can get one Person to give us

10 or whatever it is. I think that's going to be a monetization

strategy that I think more people are going to try.

I think another thing, and I've kind of explained why,

but I think we're going to see AI slop. Not AI,

AI slop as in horrible, worthless content

I pray is going to get pushed back. I think we should all

just boycott it. Just get it out of here. And I know

somebody's going to say, but this is great for someone who

was hurt in a motorcycle accident. They had half their jaw ripped out

of their head and they can't talk anymore. Now this person. That's not what I'm

talking about. I'm not talking about the person that can't talk and is

using, you know, 11 labs to. No, that's not what I'm talking about.

Just crappy content created only for monetization

and no real value to the audience. I'm hoping,

I have faith in the podcasting space

that that will cause enough problems for

everybody that we all collectively just, just flush it down

the drain. I think we're gonna see some

podcast related companies merge.

There's just some weird stuff going on.

Companies doing things that really make zero sense.

And there's just a part of me that goes, I think they're trying to

thin themselves down to make them look more

attractive for a potential purchase. So

I, I'm watching a couple companies and I just think we're going

to see that happen. I think we're going to see

20% of people that try YouTube

decide this isn't for me. And I think that's

because people expect

faster growth. I think they expect it just to be.

We're all looking for that 10,000 download kind of

switch and I think they will realize that

audio is easier. Audio has a much better completion

percentage. So for me, YouTube is kind

of mile wide and an inch deep when it comes to actual

people consuming your content. And call me weird. I'm kind of

offended that my content may not even be

clicked unless I have some sort of clickbaity title. And

me looking surprised. It almost doesn't matter if your content is good now.

It does, because you have to hook them in the first 30 seconds. But

I think we're going to see a number of podcasters

say, yeah, this isn't for me. I tried it and they're going to come back

now. I also think probably 20% of those podcasters, another

20 will try it and actually

have some success because they'll study the algorithm and they'll

study the thumbnails and they'll do all the extra steps it

takes to make it on YouTube. But I think

we are going to see some say, yeah, this isn't for me.

And this one isn't really a prediction. It's more of something I want to

see. And that is, I want to see a

resurgence in creativity. I want to see people

getting outside of their comfort zones. I want to see people break the

format a bit. And it's not just a chat show. It's not just a

interview show. It's not just this just it's everybody's kind of doing the

same thing. I miss the days when people are being really wacky

on their show, and I kind of hope that we

break the cycle with True

Crime. That was the last genre to really take off, and

it's really kind of held the crown. And I'd like to see

something else step up and be way different. I

would love to see something way different

without being stupid. I listened to a show the other

day that is apparently very popular, and

I'm here to tell you, the first two minutes, I had no idea what they

were talking about. It was just endless chatter and laughing and

inside jokes. I'm tired of that. I want to

see somebody be professional, but also be super creative.

The only thing I saw creative that I was like, huh?

Was Amy Poehler's show where she

calls the friend of one of the interviewees

and asks them, what should I ask the interviewee?

And I know, I think she's up for a Golden Globe

and that whole nine yards now, to me

especially, her first episodes were not great, which I was kind of surprised

because she's been podcasting not in this format, but in a while,

and her first episodes really reeked of. Ooh,

I should have probably practiced more. I should have done my homework if I realized

people were actually going to listen to me. But then again,

everybody hates their first episode. So that show is called Good Hang with

Amy Poehler. And that was one of the few things that I was like, oh,

I've never heard somebody do that before. And it really wasn't that

crazy. So I'm hoping to see some people do.

You know, again, going back to that phrase, thinking outside

the box. Because the beautiful thing of podcasting is you

can do whatever you want. If you want to do a three minute opening

about a weird superintendent who keeps trying to

ruin Christmas with a yeah, you can do that.

It's yours. Some of it's good, Some of

it maybe not so good. But if you need help with your

podcast and you're like, dave, I don't have a podcast, well, then you need to

launch, I can help you with that. Like, Dave, I've, I've, I've got an idea.

Okay, well, I can help you plan that. Great. Okay, well, I've

got mine planned. Okay, I can help you launch it. Launching is so

easy. People really overthink that one and then you need to grow

it. Well, let's go back to the, the launch. Let's take a listen to

that. Because your content's what's going to help you grow. But we got other things

we can look into and we got members of the school of podcasting that have

tried a lot of things and you can learn from their mistakes and you

can learn and watch their success. It's all there

out@schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code

listener when you sign up. And that could be for a monthly, could

be for quarterly. A lot of the people doing the quarterly thing, I like that,

that's cool because you do save over the monthly and if

you got the budget, do the yearly thing and then you save a ton. And

that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

I'm Dave Jackson. I've been podcasting for 20 years. I

love to help podcasters. It's really what I do. And I can't wait to

see what we do together. And until next

week, where we will be talking about your favorite podcast

and why, if you haven't answered it yet,

schoolofpodcasting.com? i need it by the

26th of December and we will be learning together

what makes a good podcast because we're going to really be digging into

the why. And of course we'll be

Putting the links to your website on my website.

Thank you so much for listening. Have a Merry Christmas. Happy

Kwanzaa, Massica. Whatever you're celebrating, I'm hoping you're taking time

to hang out with your family, your friends, and make those

memories that are absolutely tattooed to your forehead

that you will remember from years to come. Take care.

God bless. Class is dismissed.

Hey, no real bloopers today, but just a little behind the

scenes. If you thought this episode sounded a little

with some weird edits or you thought maybe my voice sounded a little

weird, that's because I started recording this

about one o', clock, had to run and do some stuff, had to go and

sing tonight at a concert, and

I ended up recording this. I think. I think I'm on four,

maybe definitely three. And some of it was good, some

of it wasn't good. And so if you're like, man, he just rambled on. But

I did. I poked. This sounds weird. I poked my own bear.

Usually when people say, you poked the bear, it's like, no, no. I guess

in this case, that article poked the bear. And the first

crack at that, I went on for like 45 minutes. I

was like, I'm not even to the other subjects yet. So I was like, we

got to do that again. Get some bullet points. What am I really trying to

say? And so I did cut that down. But if you

heard some edits, like, what's going on with Dave's voice? That was what was going

on with Dave's voice. And it's pretty raspy right now. I gave it all I

had in the choir tonight. And again, I wish you a merry Christmas.

And if you're looking for something else to listen to, check out the

website, powerofpodcasting.com.

Yeah.