AI in Podcasting: Enhancing Creativity or Threatening Authenticity?

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Episode 20 • 5th November 2024 • In & Around Podcasting • Mark Asquith, Danny Brown & Friends

It's not just for the geeks and OGs, this show's for those in and around podcasting.

Mark Asquith: 00:00:06

Hello there and welcome to In and Around Podcasting, the inclusive podcast industry show that highlights a range of powerful podcasting perspectives. We're back after a short hiatus, which is completely accidental to start with, and then by design in the second half of the hiatus. So welcome back.

We've been a little busy with travel, with events and with some product releases with Captivate Spark AI, which is kind of what we're going to talk about. The rise of AI in podcasting. The pros, the cons, the benefits, and of course, the risks.

My name is Mark Asquith, MD and co founder of Captivate, and I'm going to bring on my constant here at in and Around Podcasting, our wonderful co host, Danny Brown, in just a second. And we've got a superb guest co host as ever, that I'm also going to introduce in just a moment.

But before I do that, get yourself over to Twitter, X, whatever you call it, but I call it Twitter. Give us a little cheeky follow at InAroundPodcast and check us out or tell your friends about the show.

In and around podcasting.com you can also go in and around podcasting.com review or slash support to do those very things. And we know it means a lot as podcasters if you do leave a little lovely review there. So in and around podcasting.com review now I can do this show.

I just couldn't do this show, frankly, without a fantastic co host, someone that does probably more of these shows than I do because he just is better at podcasting than me these days. He's just better at it. It is, of course, the wonderful Mr. Danny Brown. Hello. You all right, mate?

Danny Brown: 00:01:56

I'm all right, mate. I actually had a little song for you. It's like Return of the Mark and it's our original song. Nobody's ever done that before.

Mark Asquith: 00:02:03

No, no, I've never heard it either. Classic song, though, that one.

Danny Brown: 00:02:07

It's gonna be a classic. You can just tell. It's got that little, you know, love a little melody there. But yeah, good to have you back.

Me, it's been a while since we've done one together, so. Looking forward to this.

Mark Asquith: 00:02:17

It has been a while, actually.

Danny Brown: 00:02:18

Yeah.

Mark Asquith: 00:02:18

So you were out of Pod Summit. So we had. So let's kind of recap. So we did a. We did one like around Podcast Movement. Then you went out to Podcast Movement.

There was a couple of weeks there where we were a little bit shaky with travel. Then you did Pod Summit.

Then we had some big heavy release of stuff and I've been working on a lot of podcasts, hosting strategy work for Captivate as well. So it's sort of.

I don't know, man, it sort of felt like we've just been a little bit busy, which I think, you know, that's so relatable for podcasters. I almost don't feel bad having this little break because I think it's just sort of part of the normal podcasting flow, you know what I mean?

It feels like every indie podcaster is just struggling with the same stuff with that.

Danny Brown: 00:02:54

No, no, I completely agree. And maybe we should do seasons, you know, introduce a season so we can do that stuff.

But yeah, it's definitely something that like you say indie podcasts when ourselves are always super busy. So this is just a reflection. It just shows you even the so called pros in the industry have the same thing.

Mark Asquith: 00:03:11

Exactly, exactly.

And we've got a wonderful co host this week, someone I had the pleasure of spending some time with actually at the Independent Podcast Awards in London only a couple of weeks ago. It is the superb Liam Heffernan. Welcome to the show. How are you, my friend?

Liam Heffernan: 00:03:26

Yeah, hi both. Do you know what? I've got a proper fanboy moment going on here because you two are legends in the industry, so it's lovely to be on the show.

Danny Brown: 00:03:34

Well, thank you very much. I'm just happy to meet another Liam.

Mark Asquith: 00:03:40

Wait a minute, you're not called Liam?

Danny Brown: 00:03:42

No, I'm not called Liam, but I like Liam Gallagher. There you go.

Mark Asquith: 00:03:47

That was like the most tenuous thing on the planet, to be completely honest with you.

Liam Heffernan: 00:03:52

Is that genuinely the only other Liam that you know?

Danny Brown: 00:03:56

I don't even know him. I know of him, but yeah, that's. Yeah, I don't think I know a lot of Liam's actually.

Liam Heffernan: 00:04:03

Madness.

Mark Asquith: 00:04:03

Well, that was, that was where we were all going with that. Like, holy crap. Danny actually knows Liam Gallagher. Like he's mates with him from the Scotland days.

Liam Gallagher's very famous Scotland phase that he went through up at the old firm Games have it avid. I love that. Well, Liam, welcome to the show, mate. We are going to dig into AI.

We've got a fantastic stupid stuff in podcasting that I know is going to get us riled up and we of course will wrap with the. Before we get into any of that, Liam, you know what's your name and tell us what you do. To quote Cilla Black.

Liam Heffernan: 00:04:37

Yeah, so Liam Heffernan, been a podcaster and a proud Captivate user for about four years now. So keep up the good work, guys, and I'm sure we're going to talk a bit more about Captivate Spark as well in this episode.

But I make indie podcasts, so at the moment produce and host America history. So check that out. And I've worked for agencies, clients, all this, that and the other. You know, I do what other people do, just go where the work is.

Love making podcasts.

Mark Asquith: 00:05:08

Love that being about a bit. We can relate. We can relate. All right, let's. Let's talk about AI, artificial intelligence and the use of AI in podcasting.

There's been a couple of different interesting things recently.

And Danny, you've been a part of some of these because you've, you've actually used some of these tools to create a podcast yourself, notebook, LM and so on and so forth. But for me, there are a couple of different types of AI in podcasting.

I want to really upfront, I kind of want to just add a bit of demarcation to this before we dig into it, because as with everything, not all AI is created equally.

So to me, there's the useful, the functional workflow based AI, the stuff that Spark does and other tools do, where it will take some transcription and it will generate things for you based on that and also take other bits of data like Spark will do, and generate things like episode ideas and whatnot. So that's like the useful functional AI.

Then you've got the other AI, which is voice cloning, the ability to create audio from written word that is sounding more and more like humans.

And the stuff that listen, notes have wrote about the stuff that you wrote about, Danny, when you created your Notebook LM based podcast as an experiment, which was fascinating.

So just upfront, I wanted to put that demarcation in place because I think otherwise you run the risk of saying, oh, all AI is amazing, or all AI is bad, or I am ambivalent to all AI. And I just think we're in a place now where that's, it's just, that's oversimplification of it. So I suppose, first and foremost, what AI do we use?

All right, boys, what AI do we use here? So, Liam, what's your AI stack at the minute when it comes to your podcast? What are you using? What are you kicking into?

This is not a promo for Spark. I know you're a Captivate user, but you know what I mean.

Liam Heffernan: 00:07:00

So, look, I could bang on a lot about AI, mainly my reticence towards AI. I've tried to avoid it and maybe to a degree that maybe I shouldn't avoid. But I don't use many AI tools.

I've run stuff like transcripts to Riverside, I've used the occasional Little hack on ChatGPT for a bit of scripting. But I guess I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I try and stay away from AI tools. I feel like you can overuse AI and maybe because of that I underuse it.

But I think the real value in podcast production comes from the human touch. And I think AI is there to enhance rather than to replace. And I think for me that's finding that balance is kind of where it's at going forward.

Mark Asquith: 00:07:58

Yeah, I hear that. And it's what I said on the Captivate Spark release video and the demo, the whole webinar that we did.

You know, for me AI gets a 70, 80% of the way there with any task that we're trying to achieve in the 20 part is the human element. Danny, obviously you use Spark, probably get it for free actually, but. Whoa. But what, what's your experience on the other side of the coin?

Because we've got great tools like Descript that did the, you know, the, the remedial voice cloning. Okay, look, I've screwed up here.

I'm going to, I'm in my text editor and when I change the text, it's going to replicate my voice based on training and it's going to fix the little mistake that I made. But you've got a little bit further with the Notebook LM stuff.

So just explain a little bit about that side of it, which is to me, that's the voice side of it, the cloney side of it, that sort of more contentious side of it, I guess.

Danny Brown: 00:08:51

Yeah. And I think that's why it's got a bit of pushback in industry as well.

So NotebookLM, you use a resource, so it can be a blog post, it can be copy paste, some text, et cetera, but basically it's a text based resource that now support links to YouTube videos, et cetera. And you feed that into Google's Notebook LM them and they'll then come back with resources about that article.

So it's really a learning tool for maybe teachers, students, you know, educational side. That's what it was built for.

But they also have an audio creation option where they have two AI co hosts if you like, of a podcast that discuss the resource that you've uploaded and try turn it into a conversation around that with takeaways, little laughs in between the track Essentially they try to replicate a human pair of cohorts and I was very skeptical. So I thought, okay, I'm going to test this out. James covered it in Pod News and Matthew Passy talked about it over on LinkedIn, I think.

So I thought I'm going to check it out. I used some of my Substack as the resource and I was pretty impressed, I will not lie, it was very well done.

You could tell some of it was AI, but overall it was pretty good.

So yeah, I was interested in what that might mean for podcasters who are push for time or want to create content and they might not have the confidence or there's other reasons they don't want their voice to be heard on a podcast. I approached it from that side and like I said, I was pretty impressed and it was scary how good it actually was.

Liam Heffernan: 00:10:15

I just, I think, you know, the risk there is that it's great you using it as you have and it being a bit of an anomaly, but the more take up it gets and the more people use it, the more commonplace the same voices, the same sort of intonation, the same delivery ears.

And maybe I'm underestimating AI here, but it just feels like it works because not everyone is using it and as soon as everyone does use it, it's going to just feel a bit samey.

Mark Asquith: 00:10:40

Well, the tonality is an interesting problem because you mentioned it in your LinkedIn post about Spark, how you've been quite reticent to use things and it took someone getting a little bit close to cracking the code of usefulness in the workflow for that part of the AI.

But also on the flip side of that, the Listen Notes piece that we'll put in the Show Notes is quite interesting because that breaks down some of the risk.

You know, take out copyright, take out the fact that, you know, James Earl Jones licensed his voice and sold the rights to his voice to Star wars and Disney. Rightly bloody so, you know, because why not? Why not?

You know, if, if you have an asset that's very valuable, then sell that asset if you so wish to do so. But we know that people like Robert Downey Jr.

And whatever else have gone on record and said that they will never do that, or, you know, people cannot do things in their likeness or he will sue them to death. And so there are two different schools of thought when it comes to the creation of content. And I feel like, I do feel like I will get better.

I think the intonation will get sorted out.

I feel like the different variations in voice and inflection and enunciation and all the weird little accents, you know, if it replicates me and Danny them sound, you know, it's nailed it. The. I do think AI will get better, better in that regard just because it's, it has to. There's nowhere else for it to go.

Like, if it gets worse, it's virtually impossible for that to happen. So that then leaves us with one, the morality side of it. But number two, sort of like the what's the point side of things.

Like, I don't want podcasting to become, you know, like the guru as an example, the guru entrepreneur bs where it's like, you gotta create content everywhere. And guess what? You can now create a podcast for free using my AI voice.

And you're like, oh, you did that with blog posts, oh, you did that with social, you did that with all that. And suddenly the entrepreneurs come for your stuff and it's crap. And that's just one example. It's not just those people.

It's actually there's, you know, there's a number of people that would come and commoditize the point of podcasting, but listeners don't want that.

You know, look at Edison and all the things that we love about the data in podcasting, the way the agencies buy host reads and the way that we sell host reads and so on and so forth. It's all about the human connection, isn't it? And I don't know, it just feels like that might be the biggest risk.

Danny Brown: 00:13:00

It's true, but I feel as well, it's like anything in podcasting, right? You have like, there's five, six million podcasts, but there's only three hundred thousand actively updating, et cetera.

So I feel you get to a point, even with the human podcasting approach, where listeners will determine what succeeds and what doesn't, and they will determine if an AI heavy podcast would succeed or not. So I feel that's a good barrier there. Obviously you have to disclose it, right?

You have to be upfront and say, this is an AI tool that's being used and be honest with your listeners. But I do feel that, I mean, I'm old, right? I'm like ancient, so I should really be railing against this stuff.

It intrigues me where it could go for the very reasons that I've certainly defended Notebook LM online with people that have come on against it hard because it can protect people that might have been abuse sufferers. And they want their story out there, but they don't want their voice because their husband or someone or the abuser could find them.

So I feel, you know, in that respect it's, it's still a human person, it's input and everything, and it's just having someone do something on their behalf. So at the end of the day, I feel like that's a sort of barrier that the listeners will determine whether there's too much or too little of AI use.

Liam Heffernan: 00:14:18

I mean, I think that one of the real selling points of podcasts and the reason that they've been able to proliferate so much in the last few years is because they feel more personal and more relatable, more authentic than other mediums do.

And as a producer, I am worried about the risk of losing that the more that AI is used to create content, especially when we get to a point where AI is being used to replicate voices and then we have podcasts that are 100% AI generated, there is no authenticity there. It might be clever enough to create something that feels like new content, but it's still learning from something else.

This is not, this is not completely genuinely new stuff. Right.

So then there's a knock on effect of okay, when, when podcast loses that unique value add of being so personal and so authentic, then is the monetization going to be there the same as it is today, or does it just become just another channel to throw ads on? And I realize I'm being very doom and gloom about this, but you know, I am worried about how much we, we might rely on AI in future.

Mark Asquith: 00:15:31

There's actually a number of layers to that, Liam. I think that's super worth digging into.

Wholeheartedly agree with the point of the, you know, that example is great, Danny, of, you know, if I want to get my story out there but don't want, for example, my abuser to realize it's me, what a fantastic way to liberate and to help and to allow for people that otherwise would be suppressed and not be able to share for them to be able to get their message out. Like if that's, if that helps with that, what a great use case.

But then on the flip side of it, I think Liam has some great points in that the value of AI, excuse me, the value of audio content as it's delivered via podcasts is that, excuse me, a host read ad is way more valuable than a programmatically inserted spot ad. You know, the CPMs are higher, the brand recalls higher, the deliverability of that ad is higher.

The, the output and the ROI of that ad is significantly higher. We know all that. And then you sort of then get to the point of, well, wait a second.

I could generate host read ads, and I could take a celebrity, I could pick a celebrity I could take, instead of having that celebrity having one podcast, I could create five podcasts from that celebrity and sell, quote, unquote, horse read ads. One of our hosting competitors the other day released an AI tool that allows you to, quote, unquote, have a horse reads.

And I was like, well, it's, you know, technically marvelous, but it cheapens, cheapens, cheapens the entire point of a host read ad. And the agencies that I know, the ad partners that I know, the people on the delivery side that want to be on the demand side, sorry, that want to.

By our inventory, they don't want that. They simply don't want that yet. And maybe that's because we've not got there.

But then to take that to the next level, to the next extreme, we know that there are free podcast hosting platforms out there that when they were created, enabled the ability for piracy in podcasting. I don't care about your lock tags podcast 2.0 lock tag. The lock tag is absolute BS.

The reason it's BS is I can copy the feed out into a text editor, save it as an RSS feed, xml, fire that up to a hosting platform, bypass the lock tag, all right? The lock tag does not stop fraud.

And what we saw was that people would take podcasts that were popular and they would stick them into one of the free hosting platforms that enabled spot monetization without any thresholds and any barriers, and they would monetize those podcasts based on piracy. And it still happens to this day. And the problem that AI in my view brings in that regard is that, well, why?

What's to stop someone spending one week building 500 AI podcasts with AI clone voices of celebrities, making enough money from programmatically inserted spot advertising on a free podcast hosting platform with barely any thresholds and making enough money in the month or two that it takes someone to clock it, that they just don't care. They just keep spinning it up. They just keep spinning it up. And it's a huge risk.

And I know there's a lot to unpack there, but I see that as one of the big inherent risks with this, because that. Let's be really clear that piracy happens now even with podcasts that have got the lot tag. All right? It happens to this day.

I can show you pirated podcasts on free hosting platforms, and surely AI will just enable more of that, I don't know. Liam, what are you thinking?

Liam Heffernan: 00:19:05

Yeah, but I think that the risk of piracy and of, you know, any sort of fraud, which essentially piracy is, I think is always that cat and mouse game. You know, there's new tech, so people find new ways of manipulating that for their advantage.

And then the controls were invented to stop that, and then there's more tech and, you know, the cycle goes on and on and on.

I think if we, if we limit the potential of things like AI or any other tech based on the potential of it being used for piracy or other means, then I think we're really limiting our ability as an industry to keep moving forward. So I just think it's one of those problems that we have to learn to deal with.

Mark Asquith: 00:19:51

Danny, we've not talked about discoverability because that's an area that the big, certainly the biggest, you know, we'll call them closed walls, whatever you want, walled gardens, you know, first party ecosystems, whatever. Spotify, YouTube.

Anyone that hosts first party data essentially has the same capability as we have with Spark and, you know, Capture and whoever else has with their tools. You transcribe an episode, you can do more with it now that AI exists properly or it's more accessible.

You know, if we put our glass half full cap on, that could actually be pretty cool for discoverability. It could help me to refine my listening tastes or my discoverability based on real deep dive topical stuff. That could be quite interesting, I guess.

Danny Brown: 00:20:39

Yeah. And I always look to the streaming platforms like Netflix when it comes to this because they do an amazing job.

Say what you want about Netflix or Disney, et cetera. Generally they do a great job of recommending content, especially Netflix and Amazon.

When you go on Amazon shopping and they just recommend stuff to you based on your browsing history and your previous carts and all that stuff.

So I feel there's a huge opportunity that podcast apps are still missing when it comes to that kind of thing, where AI could step up and really lock down proper recommendations that you will listen to and follow and subscribe to and even maybe become a paid supporter of down the line, because it's all based on what you listen to, how long you listen for. So it looks okay. Mark only listens on Mondays and Tuesdays between 9am and 10am because that's when he's got some free time.

So let's make sure that we recommend content that fits into that, and it fits into the kind of content he listens to, the kind of people and topics and takeaways that he likes to enjoy, which I feel is missing. I think podcast apps, like good pods, are trying to fix that problem with a release update and they're doing a good job there.

Frank Racioppi over the Ear Worthy publication on Substack's got a great piece out today, funnily enough, as we record this about the discoverability issue and how you fix it or how to approach it. So yeah, AI, it makes sense.

You know, they're learning all the time, like Liam mentioned earlier, they're learning all the time to provide great content and help you create great content. So why not recommend great content as well?

Mark Asquith: 00:22:08

I feel like that relies on data as well. And I just wonder if this helps the walled gardens more than the open ecosystem.

You know, if Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney plus insert streaming here, you know, they rely on such a massive behavioral data and it's all first party. It is all first party event based data.

You know, Danny and Liam do this at this time, as you mentioned, Danny, podcasting is open and RSS doesn't deal with any of this. RSS doesn't care about behavior. It doesn't care about anything except being open and delivering stuff. That doesn't really fit with AI, does it?

It doesn't really fit with business models that rely on data, that rely on first party interactivity and event based data. And what does rely on data? What does rely on events? What does rely on measurability? Well, of course it's money, revenue, investment, advertising.

It all relies on data.

So I wonder if solving the discoverability issue using parts of AI is actually one of the stepping stones that leads to more of a challenging future for open rss. I don't know, maybe that's just me being a cynical kind of guy, maybe it's me being a bit devil's advocate, but yeah.

Liam, what do you think about that sort of angle?

Liam Heffernan: 00:23:28

I mean, you mentioned like the big streaming giants, and I think in the podcast world, the biggest sort of comparative there is Spotify.

When you look at how they're building this vertically integrated model of, you know, not only being able to create a podcast, host a podcast, monetize a podcast, but also they've got the distribution at the other end where people can listen to podcasts.

You know, I think what they're building is an ecosystem that I think has the potential to be quite self contained because they own the data that goes through Spotify. They can use that to optimize how they're distributing content, what they're pushing to content creators and the features that they're rolling out.

I think there's a danger to that. I think podcasting, being such an open medium has only benefited podcasting.

And I think it's one of the things that really adds value to the podcast space and to all creators. So I'd be a bit worried about how where Spotify goes. And I've always got a bit of a side eye on Spotify for that reason.

I think they're doing great things, but I think they're also maybe getting a bit too big for their boots in some respects. But my opinion is, and I've completely forgotten your first question is that podcasting should stay very open.

And I think there's ways to harness the power of data and roll in AI integrations into how we use that that can benefit everyone.

Danny Brown: 00:24:55

There's a great podcast app called Apollo and it's purely a fiction podcast, fiction audio app. That's all it is, that's all it built for.

And they kind of solved a lot of the discoverability problem by really locking down what their search experience looks like. So you can go like deep, you know, many filters deep into what kind of podcast you want.

So if you want a bipoc podcast hosted by two female co hosts that are only talking about the US bipoc industry or community, sorry, you can essentially type that in or set, set these parameters and it will then go and find these kind of podcasts and build your listening library based around that.

And I feel like that's an opportunity where I can collaborate with that kind of search functionality to really lock down what the filters look like and then learn as as you go based on what you listen to. And it might be. Mark, you mentioned obviously about the open RSS feed and why that's important for podcasting.

This feels like an opportunity for Podcasting Two to really work with AI companies and say, how do we get AI into the Podcasting Two ecosystem and what does that look like for the Open RSS feed?

Mark Asquith: 00:26:08

I think there's a lot of inherent challenges there with that as well, because everything becomes more valuable when you own the entire range of data and all the complete. You can run the gamut on the data points. I just don't see how you do that with Open RSS.

And this is from someone that loves Open RSS and built a company based on delivering RSS feeds. I just, as a business person, I see why first party data is so important. So I think it's really interesting challenge.

I'd be delighted to get involved and do more with that. We've got some great people doing great work, as we all know, but I think it is a challenge that will continue to present itself.

So very interesting one there, Danny. You sort of, I think.

Did you have a chat with Kattie and Deidre, didn't you, back on episode three, just about AI and some of the potentially the ethical concerns. Let's fast forward to where we are now.

You know, you've, you've, you've used it more, you've seen the rise of the certainly the speed at which AI is rising within podcasting and beyond. Have any of your views changed since then? Are any of the things that they brought up becoming more pertinent or less pertinent? Like how's.

I suppose, I suppose I'm trying to get a sense of how you feel the evolution of this is I think.

Danny Brown: 00:27:20

The main one, certainly the main one from an ethics point of view in that episode, back in episode three is around what Leah mentioned about the voice cloning and you'd mentioned as well, Mark, about the voice cloning aspect. We know that's happening now.

Obviously Scarlett Johansson was the poster child and the big name that took OpenAI to court because of their unauthorized use of her voice. So, yeah, I feel AI is moving in the right direction. It's becoming a functionality know a really functional tool to help you with your content.

But from an ethical point of view, it's still that concern about, well, what does that mean if someone clones my voice and then they stick it up on a weird little podcast app somewhere or a hosting service and then starts to make money that I'm not getting because people are listening to that instead? Whatever. I feel that's where we still have to be a bit careful on the AI front and use the generally say the voice.

Liam Heffernan: 00:28:14

I do think as podcasters, we have maybe historically thought that maybe the rules don't apply to us as much as they apply to everyone else.

And I think now that podcasting has matured to the point that it has, we're having to address those issues around the ethical use of content and in this case, things like voice cloning.

And I mean, really there's no difference, is there, between using someone's voice versus using their face to endorse something or to represent something. You've got to pay for that. It belongs to someone. You got to pay for the right to use it is that simple.

And we're kind of at this impasse where those controls and those regulations aren't really in place as concretely as they are in other mediums. And Maybe that's something we need to address.

Mark Asquith: 00:29:08

I wonder about, just to wrap up on this, because I think we talk about this all day, but I wonder about, you know, the writer strikes and everything that went on in Hollywood earlier this year.

I wonder how many people or how much focus was put on voice only or how much voice was bundled into the lack of likeness rights and so on and so forth.

I genuinely don't know the answer and I know some of my friends work out there and they've got much more of a handle on that kind of industry than me. I'd be fascinated to find out how much voice played a part in the thinking, the negotiating and the contracting. I'd be fascinated to.

To hear about that. I think that would be really interesting. We could talk about this all day. I genuinely think that I.

I've got no doubt that AI will continue to dominate what we talk about here on number one in and around podcasting, but number two in the podcasting industry overall. So this has been an interesting chat.

At the risk of not going too crazy on it and spending four days on it, I think we'd probably need to get to our very famous stupid stuff in podcasting. Danny, you. Well, you were a little bit miffed. You put this one. I feel like I said this every time I'm on a show with you. Right.

I feel like I say, go on, Danny, tell us what you're annoyed at this week because you always spot them. What's grinding your gears this week, mate? What's your stupid stuff?

Danny Brown: 00:30:28

Yeah, so this one and I'm gonna get a T shirt just for this section so we can put it, you know, put it out there on little snippets or whatever. But yeah. This one really sort of. Well, I'll let you guys discuss it. Anyway, so I was on LinkedIn. I forgot to get the link to it.

I'll try find it so we can drop it in the show notes.

But basically there was an agency owner on LinkedIn that said podcasters or new podcasters, anyway, shouldn't think about sponsorship at the start, but publish at least fifty episodes and then start looking for sponsors. And I mean, there was a lot of things that went through my mind when I saw that. But I'm curious of your takes.

Liam Heffernan: 00:31:03

Right, okay.

From a producer point of view, I'm going to try and see where they're coming from here in that maybe the rationale for saying that is that people should focus on the content first and focus on creating a great show and getting content out there that people actually want to listen to. Because once you do that and once you have listeners, you can then search for the sponsorship and the monetization.

I have a bit of a problem with it being said as a kind of rule, like, you mustn't think about sponsorship before putting fifty episodes out, because I think that's putting a bit of a weight on any new podcasters out there who might then be thinking, wow, I've got to churn fifty episodes out before I then start thinking about how to monetize.

When making a podcast takes time, it takes money, it takes effort, and if you've got a great idea, why, why shouldn't you shop it around to see if people want to sponsor it from day one? I mean, it's tough, but why not?

Mark Asquith: 00:32:05

Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that's. I have the same problem, Liam. It's the hard and fast LinkedIn rule.

All right, and which is basically delivered by people that have maybe dipped the toe into it a little bit. Like, done two podcast deals and now think that, you know, John Podcast.

And it's, it's, it's the hard and fast ruling of this sort of stuff that annoys me.

I think there are so many people that have good advice, but deliver it from such an absolute perspective and, you know, you can only do this, this, or this, and anything else is wrong, or it's only this. If this. And I. Yeah, I agree. I think if we were to give people the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, okay.

What they're saying is practice, get good, make your future content really valuable. Also, okay.

You've probably got to do a year's worth of audience building, but at the same time, you know, let's go, let's go both sides of the spectrum on this one. Let's go top tier. So I'm a massive production company and I start a podcast and I signed some top tier talent.

You think I'm going to do fifty episodes before I go out to sponsor? I ain't doing one episode. I'm taking a pitch deck out. All right? And that's how agencies work on the bottom end of the scale.

And I'm saying bottom end, like, we all are. Like, I'm a Star Wars podcaster with, like four downloads a day. I love it, but I don't do it for that.

But I would still go out and get a sponsor if I started a new one, and I would still start pitching, and I would still do whatever if I wanted to do it, if that was my end goal. It's it's so prohibitive. It's almost like telling your kid, you know, don't pick that golf club up unless you're going to be a pro.

You know, it's silly. Don't. Oh, you can't do that Lego unless you're going to be an architect. Show up, dad. So it's ridiculous to, I think, to pigeonhole people.

I know people that have gone out. So I actually took my own. I did one season of a startup podcast years ago.

It was always intended to be, maybe I was going to do two, but I did one season, shopped it to a startup accelerator, shopped it to Xero and AWeber and I guess what I got three literal three sponsors, like paid my wages for like four months. It was great. And I was no-one and they just believed in it and it worked.

So I think it's, I think it's such a double edged sword and I, I wholeheartedly will give benefit of the doubt to this sort of stuff. I think I'm with you, Liam. It's the rule of absolution that winds me up with this sort of stuff.

The, the fact, and it's always some absolute more on, on LinkedIn. And it's always someone that's like, drove my car down the road the other day. Here are ten things I learned about being a podcaster.

And then you got to click the more button for the engagement. Do you know what I mean? Oh, I saw a cat walking down the road the other day. Here are three things it taught me about podcast advertising.

You're like, oh, come on, you absolute gonk. So it's, and it's, I think you can always see it, it's always packaged up in like a layer of, you know, a layer of twattery.

So it's, it's just, it's not for me. But we'll give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were saying, build an audience and be good at content.

Liam Heffernan: 00:35:13

I mean, what I've said to clients before and what I'll say to absolutely anyone who wants to start a podcast is that you just need to understand what your why is. And if that is to be rich and famous, fine. Like, if that's your end goal, it's, it's going to be very, very difficult to do.

But as long as you know that's what you want to get out of it and you can always create content with that in mind. And if your end goal is just to earn a little bit of money to pay the costs, fine. If it's to just Have a bit of fun, that's fine. But I just.

Again, as you say, Mark, it's the absolutism. It's the telling people how and why they should be making podcasts. I don't like it. As long as you know why you're making a podcast, that's cool.

Danny Brown: 00:35:58

Yeah. And I think for me, it was to both your points can one hundred percent agree on the, like, the totality of the, you know, the advice.

But it also reinforces we should be giving away content for free, you know, which is one of podcasting's biggest issues. It continues to be, you know, we don't value.

We don't always value the work that we're putting out there, and we don't feel we should be compensated for that. And I think advice like that kind of builds onto that. So, I mean, that's what sort of ground my gears on that one.

Mark Asquith: 00:36:27

I think it's fascinating and it's almost, you know, it's the same side as the coin. As, you know, you shouldn't start a podcast unless you intend on monetizing. Like, we've all seen that on LinkedIn before as well.

You're like, wait a second. Same type of person that's saying that, you know, it's always the same type of person. So, look, this will come up again inevitably.

But we don't want to wrap up on negativity, do we? That's boring. No one likes that. We like to spread positivity, which is why we will do this. Liam, you are honorary guest, our wonderful co host.

You, my friend, get to flatter someone, something, somewhere, somehow, somewhere, whatever you love. In podcasting right now, you can flatter, give a shout out, give links, do the pitch, tell the world about whoever, whatever you love.

Liam Heffernan: 00:37:25

Look, I'm gonna. I'm gonna shout out someone and the work that they do, because I think it's very timely.

And I think what she's contributed to the independent podcasting space has been nothing short of incredible over the past couple of years.

And that's Em McGowan for her work in co creating the Independent Podcast Awards and really creating a space for indie podcasters who maybe don't feel like they can break through the big awards like the British Podcast Awards. You know, she's really created a space for people to get recognized and celebrated in creating that.

And also she has a great podcast called Verbal Diorama. And as a bit of a film nerd myself, it's a great podcast. So if you like movies, go check that out.

She puts a Lot of effort into it and had the pleasure of speaking to her before the Indie Podcast Awards a couple of weeks ago. So I just, I know how much like blood, sweat and tears she pours into her own show.

So, yeah, Em, you're awesome and people should check out what you do.

Mark Asquith: 00:38:27

Love it. Very well deserved. Yeah. Em's. Em's fantastic. The... I'm the same as you boys. Bit of a movie nerd and listen to Verbal Diorama a lot and it's.

I think it's great. I think it's great to see.

So with the Independent Podcasting Awards, like I've been a judge there the last couple of years, sort of helped them on the advisory board with it. And it's amazing to see number one, the event that's come about because of Em and everyone else has been involved.

You know, we've got just all the why now team everyone that's helped put that together. But one thing that stands out for me with this is the amount of effort that can go into a bad top tier podcast.

Whether that's celebrity one or whether it's a, you know, a top tier one versus the effort that goes into a great independent podcast is no different. And the, the difference tends to be the amount of people putting that effort in. And as a judge, some of these shows, I do not know how they do them.

I do not know. I went on Sequel Pitch once and it took me four days to come up with a pitch.

So the people that are doing these indie shows that are narrative, they're a drama, they're audio fiction, the quality of the shows versus some of the quote unquote top tier, it's criminally, criminally underexposed. So yeah, huge, huge props on that one. Great shout, Liam. Danny, you know Em as well, don't you?

Danny Brown: 00:39:51

I do know Em, yeah. I had her on my Five Random Questions podcast recently. She's like, Em's awesome. Like you said earlier, Em's awesome.

I think anybody that meets her or sees what she does online, for indie podcasters especially, we'd all agree.

Mark Asquith: 00:40:06

I love that. Well, much love. You're getting some love here. We'll give you a shout out over on the Twitter as well.

Right, we're going to stick a pin in it just there. This has been In and Around Podcasting back from a completely self imposed hiatus.

You know, we'll do the usual blame time, we'll blame work, but it's just on us. But we are back with a bit of a vengeance, rocking every single week, landing in your podcast app of choice every single Tuesday.

You can check us out at in and around podcasting dot com. Leave us a review at slash review and give us a little tip at slash support. Liam, wonderful to see you, mate.

Always a pleasure and thank you for, number one, your support and your kind words. But number two, for being just a fantastic guest and doing all you do in the industry.

Liam Heffernan: 00:40:53

Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks, guys for having me on. Bucket list item checked off.

Mark Asquith: 00:40:58

High praise there. It's the first and probably last time we'll get on anyone's bucket list, Liam. We appreciate that, mate. Really, really cool. Danny, good to be back.

Being an old cynic with you. Always fun.

Danny Brown: 00:41:09

Yeah, old and cynic, they are two words that get used around me a lot with my wife and kids. So I'll take another one right there, mate.

Mark Asquith: 00:41:17

I relate, mate. I'm in the old cynic zone at this point in my life. So yeah, I mean, virtual fist bump right there. All right, we will be back next week.

It's always a pleasure. If you know anyone that you think would enjoy the show, tell them. Just do a quick search in their podcast app of choice for In and Around Podcasting.

And until next week, keep on doing what you do. Share your voice because it really does matter. Until then, bye bye for now.

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