Has Podcasting 2.0 Failed?

Intro: 00:00:01

It's not just all the hello there.

Mark: 00:00:12

And welcome to in and Around Podcasting, the podcast industry show, where we like to highlight a range of powerful podcasting perspectives. Now, why has podcasting 2.0 failed? Is the clickbait title we're probably going to use.

Alas, we won't annoy everyone in podcasting by actually just talking about that. But genuinely, why is it not getting the uptake that we would like to see?

Why is if you are on the outside podcasting 2.0 looking like it could be failing? It's never as clear cut as that. Why we know what it's like in the industry, outside the industry. How is podcasting poised to grow?

How is it poised to take advantage of new tech? And indeed, is where podcasting 2.0 at now? Well, is that a failure or is it something else?

We're joined by a fantastic co host and I'm gonna allow, I don't want to say the talent of the show to bring her on in just one second, but what I will say is this. And it didn't.

It's not like there was any offense whatsoever, but the co host that we have on today did say that last week with Chris and I wasn't the same without Danny. So I AM Mark Asquith, MD, of Captivate, and I'm gonna bring on. Well, I suppose, yeah, yeah, I suppose the actual talent.

Co host, Danny Brown, welcome back. Hello.

Danny: 00:01:40

Thank you very much. And it's probably the only reason I got Claire on this week. Obviously, you know, her experiences with podcasting 2.0.

Mark: 00:01:47

But I like that little bit. You can't dig yourself out of that.

Danny: 00:01:52

But yeah, good to be back, mate. I was all for last week's recording, listening to that. Loved it. You saw me on online, you know, talking about that episode. So, yeah, good to be back.

It's been a little while, so all good to go. I'm looking forward to this episode. Clickbait title in all, yeah, I would.

Mark: 00:02:07

Say it was AI that did the title, but it wasn't. It was DI Danny Intelligence.

Now, we are going to bring our fantastic co host on in a second, but before we do that, if in and around podcasting.com is where you can get your fix, tell your friends they can find it in their podcast app of choice as well.

If you've got anyone around you that you think is just getting into the podcasting industry is in the industry loves it and wants a little bit of a take from different perspectives on industry news, let them know in and around Podcasting is their place. Now, Danny, you've, you've, you've brought with you a wonderful co host. Tell us, tell us.

Danny: 00:02:44

I have indeed.

ster at creativity found from: 2020

And Claire's helping independent small business owners who are part of the Creativity Found collective to get into podcasts and understand the 2.0 features, tags, etc. And is very passionate about the 2.0 space.

So I feel this will be an interesting episode, especially with the preamble that we gave at the start there. So welcome. Claire.

Claire: 00:03:25

Hiya. Thank you so much for having me.

Mark: 00:03:28

I, I was so offended. Danny was gloating so much, honestly. No, I'm only joking. It's always nice to have him back. It is always nice to have him back.

Danny, the podcast in 2.0 space is quite interesting. It was your idea to do this episode, so, so give us, give us the background, like, what were you thinking when you saw this?

Because we've done a 2.0 episode before of a similar ilk. What brought it to your attention and why did you think it was important to bring this to the masses in this episode?

Danny: 00:03:59

Yeah, so as you mentioned, we did the 2.2.0 episode, I think, with Daniel, and I apologize, I can't recall who else it may have been. Dave, actually. Anyway, we had the 2.0 episode and we'll leave a link to that in the show notes.

But yeah, it's been five years since the 2.0 podcast and 2.0 initiative was launched and there's been a lot of discussions. You've got the podcast index that shares what apps and hosting companies, et cetera, support the tags. There's a podcast and 2.0 dedicated website.

Claire has a 2.0 podcast, but there seems to be a lot of talk online recently anyway, certainly in the last three months or so about the uptake or lack of uptake in that five year period and what features or tags, I'm just going to call them features. We call them features.

So what features are supported, what features aren't, and why that is, you know, is a fault of hosting companies, podcast apps, educators in the space, etc. Or is it just the fact that the podcasting industry in general isn't ready because the big players aren't really taking 2.0 and running with it.

So I thought it'd be interesting to see what's working, what's not, and what that means for the industry. You know, five years from now, when hopefully it'll be a lot more embedded into the space.

Mark: 00:05:15

Well, let's drop a grenade, then. Podcasting 2.0 is boring. It is boring. It is boring. It is. Of course it is. Unless it's not. Unless it's not.

And what I mean by that is that, like, it's not to us, is it? We work in the industry. Claire's got an amazing show that discusses it in practice, which I think is highly needed and a very smart move.

And, you know, we are. We're into it, so it's not boring to us, but it's. It's. It's. It's boring to my mum.

She just wants to listen to the podcast that she likes on the apps that she likes, and it's. It's probably boring to the people that I talk to in the village, legitimately. I go into the wagon in the village, you know, and they're all.

They're all now listening to podcasts. I don't really care about podcasting 2.0.

All I want to do is press play and listen to the thing that they like, and it's the pressing of the button and the response from that event, that press that matters, and whether that press is, okay, I'll give you some money through the funding tag. They don't care if it's through the funding tag, through PayPal or if they're chucking a fiver at my head. They don't care about any of that stuff.

They just want the action and reaction. So that's the bomb, is that podcasting 2.0, in my view, unless you're into podcasting, which we are, to the masses, it sort of doesn't matter.

It just doesn't matter. So that's the bomb, Claire. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm. It's like, past the parcel. I'm gonna throw the bomb to you.

Claire: 00:06:44

Yeah, thanks for that, Mark. It. It. The thing is the word. Okay, let's start. Terminology. Terminology on a big scale, but also on a much smaller, smaller scale.

So when you have a new OS thing and it's 18.1 on your phone, I had one recently. I don't actually care what it's called, but I am quite interested in some of the things it might do, as it so happens, I haven't found anything.

It does. But anyway. And the same with podcasting 2.0, like, that doesn't really mean anything, but going straight back to your people in the pub.

And I had an actual example of this yesterday. People in the pub might be interested in an episode that talks about lots of different subjects. Really, really.

Well, I'm going to give you an example here, actually, Mark. This is an example for you. So I have a science fiction podcast, and I cover all genres of science fiction.

So I do the space stuff, I do all the films, I do apocalyptic stuff. I do all of it.

Now, you happen to be really interested in the space stuff, in particular a particular film genre, but you don't care less about the apocalyptic stuff. But you really like what I say about the space stuff and about Star Wars.

So if you have on your app a way to go to that show and go straight to the bit where I talk about Star wars and you don't have to think about the apocalyptic stuff, you'd find that a useful thing to do, I think, possibly. So, therefore, you still listen to my show, but you listen to the bit. You go straight to the bit that you want to go to.

And in fact, I had a guest on one of my shows recently, and I was speaking to her, and she said, and she's not a big, big podcast listener at all by any stretch. And she said, oh, yeah, I saw Chapters. Yeah, because I only wanted to listen to my bit, so I jumped straight to my bit.

So that is a useful thing for the person, you know, on the bus listening to a podcast. And that is Chapters is a 2.0 feature.

Now, some of the other apps do take it, but from a podcaster's point of view, you can change your Chapters if it's using the 2.0 feature.

So I've done that recently for podcasting 2.0 in practice because one of the app developers has changed one of their icons, and I've had to change the photo that accompanies that chapter to match what is now the icon.

So it is really useful for podcasters to be able to change things to make sure that what they're giving you is up to date and to give you an easy way for you to listen to what you want to listen to.

And the other one I really wanted to mention, talking about your people in the pub scenario is if the person working behind the bar really likes this particular podcast about knitting, and that person is interested in finding other podcasts about knitting.

Now, if that podcaster uses their pod Roll, which is a 2.0 feature, to recommend other podcasts about knitting and fabric crafts that they value, then you're going to value that recommendation and you can go find another show because the podcast you like likes that other show. So that's two incidents of where podcasting 2.0 features are human and they are useful and they're not boring at all.

But the terminology and what surrounds the development of Podcasting 2.0, if you're not a podcasting nerd that listens to podcasts about podcast, it will not be very exciting to you. So that's my first, my first fight back at podcasting 2.0 is boring.

Mark: 00:10:31

No, I agree. And I think that's the thing is things are always boring when there's no perceived outcome to them. And you're absolutely right.

The chapters and the pod roll and the funding features, they're all great and because they all deliver very obvious outcomes that are actually closely linked and, and closely intuited from the things that we do in day to day life. I go to a restaurant and, and someone gives me good service or I go to a restaurant in America, someone gives me terrible service.

Either way I've got to tip and I, it's the funding. I get it, I can tip. You know, if.

So I've been reading books all my life, I'll get the chapters part of it and, and so on and so forth and you know, pod rolls like. I just love that we're calling it pod rule because like blog rule was sort of 05. But that's cool. It's fine.

You know, we could just call it recommended shows, but you know, whatever.

Claire: 00:11:24

So that's terminology again. You're getting for nickety with the terminology.

Mark: 00:11:28

No, I am, I am.

Because I think that's the important part of it is that the podcast in 2.0 namespace and the, the, the, the tags and so on and so forth are actually, they are the Dolby. It's the outcomes.

And there's a reason, in my view, that the obvious quote unquote features, which I'll get to in a sec, there's a reason that those features have become the most adopted features and it's because they all derive from things that we do elsewhere that we're already very used to. And I mean.

Well, look, let's, let's credit Todd, you know, Todd Cochrane, good friend, founder of Raw Voice and you know, the owns podcasting platform Blubrry. He was the guy that said we should be calling these features not, not tags. And he's completely right. But yeah, I think you're right.

And it's, it's, it's, it's an interesting problem when you're trying to, and I know you're not via the podcast, you're very much selling the outcomes and the features, but when you're trying to sell the technology, it's a very different sell. It's like, it's almost like us, Danny.

You know, we're selling a, we're selling a pre compiled XML feed that's been validated through a feed validation service in order to Deliver some enclosed MP3 files from a CDM platform that's scattered across the world.

And we're going to measure it against your IP and we're going to get your byte ranges and we're going to check your Mac IDs and actually we're going to save that and we're going to serve it in some analytics. Actually, we've got an RSS February hosting platform. So it's, it's, it's. That was a lot of breath.

Danny: 00:12:49

I'm hot and flustered just listening to that.

Mark: 00:12:52

Yeah. Danny's like, whoa, this is, that's what we do.

Danny: 00:12:56

Nerdgasm.

Mark: 00:12:59

So, Danny, look, you know, we see this. There are so many podcasts in the world right now, you know, 5 million, 10 million, 100 million, 1 million, 2 million, whatever the number is.

Podcast Index reports 469, 000 active podcasts, which ties into something. One of the numbers that I got from Daniel J. Lewis when I saw him at podfest, very similar number.

What are the stats looking like for things like value? For value, what are the stats looking like with. For things like funding?

So two other features around podcasting 2.0 against those, those statistics of 470,000 active shows.

Danny: 00:13:35

Yeah, and I think that ties back to what you're both saying about. It's the features that sell it and what it actually does as opposed to just the having it available.

So you mentioned there, the podcast index, it shows you how many shows are active in the last, say, 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, etc. So in the last 90 days they report that about just on average, 469,000 active shows.

But then if you look at Griddle Cakes, which I love that domain, griddlecakes.com they've got the trends that they pull from the Podcast index as well as the podcast 2.0 stats, etc. And they'll look at feeds that have got different features enabled.

So if you look at the value block and the Funding blocks, obviously value and funding that helps people support listeners support their favorite podcasters. So feeds with value blocks attached is 25,000. So that's just under 5% of the 469,000 active podcasts in the last 90 days with the funding tag 64,000.

So that's good, but still less than 14%. And then just for the SATs.

So again, if you look at griddle cakes, if you look at streaming sats where people can, you know, send you satoshis to support your show directly on podcast apps that support that feature that dropped like daily unique senders. So people that actually send in sats to their favorite podcasters, that dropped from a daily high of 549 senders.

people in: 2023

So there's not a lot of people using, you know, features or there's not a lot of feeds compared to the amount of podcasts that are out there. And I think that ties back to. It's for the average listener, they don't really care about the names and the technology and that.

It's like, oh, what is this? Let me do. And for the podcast, Claire, you mentioned a great feature called Chapters and we use it in this podcast. It's an amazing feature. Love it.

But I also wonder if some podcasters don't want to add something like features because it might encourage people to skip parts of the show and drag down their listen time averages. And when you're talking to sponsors, well, I've got 10% listen time compared to this guy who's got 60% listen time because they don't use chapters.

So I wonder if there's a little bit of that as well, like reticence on a podcaster and to put stuff in.

Claire: 00:15:58

I think you've got a problem in that it needs to be communicated better and from a point of view of features, which is where we're all coming from. And it needs to be communicated between an actual podcaster and their listener.

And we talk about this a lot in podcasting 2.0 in practice is your listener isn't going to know they can do this unless you tell them they can do this. And the same with podcasters then. And I meet a lot of independent podcasters. I love networking in the whole podcast realm. It's fabulous. And over the.

So I've only really been interested in this for just over two years because I was hearing about it on Buzzsprout, Buzzcast, and I was getting FOMO about why wasn't my name and my podcast being read out on Buzzcast. I want some of this, and that's why I started to explore it.

But meeting a lot of other podcasters, they will say, I've heard about it, podcasting 2.0, but I don't know what it means or I feel like I should learn it, and certainly very much so. Everybody thinks boosts, sats, bitcoin, oh, technology. Oh, no. This is going to take up too much of my time to look into.

It's not going to be worth it. It's not going to make any difference to sponsorships. Blah, blah, blah. I say a lot of blah, blah, blah when I go on podcasts.

I think it just needs to be. And this, obviously, this is what I'm doing in podcasting 2.0 in practice, is breaking it down.

So a lot of the time you'll hear people talking about the whole banner of 2.0, and you can do this, and you can do this, and you can do this and you can do this. Well, I'm not going to do all of those things. That's. That's way too much. So give me one thing. What is this thing I can do?

Okay, well, why would I want to do that? For example, your chapters idea, you know, why would I want to have someone only listen to one chapter of my show?

Well, here's some reasons why you might. Here's some reasons why you might like to have a link in your chapters or a picture in your chapters, and the same then with funding.

And the choice with funding is you can send your listener to any place that you want to go. And the listener doesn't have to leave the app, does not have to leave the listening app they are in.

It's all making everything easier for the listener. But there needs to be that little bit of communication.

Now, from a hosting point of view, the five main features that I talk about in this show, which are the ones that I think people should know about because they're easy to do and they're good, can be done on the three hosting companies, one of which is captivate, that I talk about in the show and I give instructions how to do it. And once you've done it once, it is so easy, the funding tag, super duper easy.

Put your buy me a coffee link in there or whatever it may be, and somebody can go to that straight from your app without you having to say, in fact, Danny was my guest expert for funding without you having to say, go to patron, do this, do that, do that. Here's a nice little picture. You can do it straight here. So it is a matter of communication.

I think the whole it's all sats, boosts, puts people off, scares people, thinks bitcoin, thinks. It's just way techy and complicated. And it's all for podcasty people who like podcasting about podcasts.

But it needs to be made more real and known that it is actually easy to do now. Yes, you've got lots of hosting companies that don't, haven't embraced it, so that makes it a lot more.

And you've got listening apps, the big, big listening apps, who aren't supporting it, but maybe with a bit of like seeing other people seeing what's happening around them, they might be encouraged to start supporting some of these. For example, Apple and Transcripts is a good example.

And the fact that you can use your own 2.0 transcript in Apple, you don't have to use their own at 1, which means you as the podcaster are in control.

Especially if you know Apple, if you've got some technical things in, words need to be spelled correctly, it can be very important to you as a podcaster to make sure your transcript says the right thing.

So I started on communication and as usual, went off on a bit of a wibbly, wobbly tangent, but just kind of want to say that it's, it's not as scary and techy as it sounds and it can be really useful.

The, the, the features that are being introduced are being introduced to help and to enhance the listener and the podcaster experience because we can't stay the same because everything is always being updated.

Mark: 00:20:37

I think the challenge is like the listener beh behavior as well, though.

So if you think about there's so many decent podcasting 2.0 apps, let's just take like two of the obvious ones, like good pods, support some features, and let's take Fountain. That's what Nick and the team are doing at Fountain. Great apps. They are great apps, but my mind downloading them.

So, you know, have we reached early adopter saturation? I don't know. And I think the challenge is that a lot of these things, in fact, let me step back a second. Podcasting is lauded, all right.

All the very same people that are saying you don't need a video podcast because it's a passive medium and you can listen to it while you're running, you're walking, you're ironing, which I never do. As you can tell by my hoodie, you are walking the dog, you're at the gym, you're driving, whatever else, you don't need video.

It's brilliant because it's passive and you can do other things while you're doing it. All those people are trying to get you to get your phone out of your pocket and press a button. And that's.

I think one of the big disconnects here is that I've got to want the thing that I'm pressing the button for. If I want to skip to a chapter, I want to skip to the chapter, which is why chapters works. You have got to make me want to give you a tip.

And that comes through fandom. It comes through nurturing. It comes through time spent. It comes through time spent. And what else comes through time spent?

The very same thing that the same people always talk about, which is brand recall on podcasts.

So if I become a fan and spend a year becoming a fan, and I listen to your show every week, so 52 times, we know that you need 7 to 10, call it 20 touch points to remember a call to action. You listen to one episode per week. You mentioned that your taking tips@sparkarebellion.com Support twice in an episode. 104 times. Brand recall.

Is that stronger than getting your phone out of your pocket and pressing it at a time that you're asked to do it? I don't know the answer to that.

So my point is that it's difficult to gain adoption when there's no genuine, like there isn't that much of a genuine outcome for the listener. There is in some examples and the chapters is without a shadow of doubt, of a doubt, the very best example of that.

But all the, all the features that ad perceive lifford listener benefits add work. They add work. They add a step.

You know, I listen my biggest discovery in podcasting when I'm discovering new shows is through social or word of mouth where I've seen clips and it's stuck in my head and I'm driving along and I my car to play or I'll search. And I'm not saying I'm the same as everyone else, but. But it just does.

It feels like there's a disconnect between all the things that we say are really good about podcasting. That brand recall, the passive nature of it, and get your phone out, give us a fiver. It just, you know what I mean?

It just feels like a bit of a disconnect. And then sometimes it's get Your phone out. Download this app. Register for this app. Oh, you forgot your bloody Apple password. No worries.

Right, let's go through that, then log in, then find my show, then subscribe, then listen to this episode and then press the funding button. So the journey is just so heavy. And I'm not saying that's every feature, and I'm not saying it's podcasting 2.0, the movement. I'm saying that it's.

It's some of the features that we're selling as high benefit are actually pretty high impact for the workload of a listener as well. So it's. I don't know, it just feels like there's a disconnect somewhere. Danny, what's. What's your view on that?

Frankly, mate, you're way more into podcasting than me. So what do you make of that?

Danny: 00:24:20

I go back and look at my 40 archive shows and see which ones work and which ones don't. Yeah.

No, and I think Claire referenced it earlier about one of the app developers that changed an icon, so should go back and change your graphics for your course. And I think that's an issue as well because there's no singular recognition or recognizable point across all apps, which would be great.

That would make it a lot easier. Oh, here's a dollar sign that's universal for funding, for example, and here's a book that's universal for chapters, whatever that looks like.

And there isn't a way to do that.

And every app's got its own way of doing stuff and how it displays transcripts and how it displays chapters, and does it use hyperlinks or not for linked portions of the chapters? So that's. Again, it's. I look back at the podcast index and uptake of certain features, and only three apps have got the POD roll feature.

And there's more hosting companies got POD roll support than apps.

So it does seem that maybe, you know, because Spotify doesn't care and doesn't need to care about, you know, supporting some of the features, that's where there's a disconnect. Because it is the most used app, if you discount YouTube, I guess so, because you're asking people to do certain things and understand what they do.

If I just want to listen to a podcast, it does become, okay, well, I'm all listening to the podcast. So I will have in the background in YouTube, I'll have on my smart speaker on Spotify or whatever that looks like.

So I do feel that, like you say, the ask can be hard to overcome as well, it's one of the reasons I don't use the. The funding tag. I just use straightforward here how you can support it. You know, with my tips, it's really easy to go.

You can go to it on a browser, on your phone, or on your desktop, wherever you are, as opposed to trying to find where's that little support feature or support icon on the app.

So I feel there's a lot of opportunity there that does get missed from an education point of view, from a singular approach to what that feature looks like and how it's displayed, and until we sort of make it super easy for listeners to do it while they're phones over. Because if I'm on a smart speaker, I can't click the support button. I can't click the chapters button, right?

I'm in the kitchen and I can't say, okay, Chuck, I don't know, maybe you can. Maybe that's something I've missed. But maybe you can say, hey, pay this podcast five bucks.

If you can't do that, then that'd be an option to offer smart speaker listeners to make it super easy. So, yeah, I feel that there's definitely a disconnect there.

That trouble is prohibiting the growth that 2.0 could have, you know, in the five years it's been around, for example, the uptake on apps and hosting companies.

Claire: 00:26:59

But there's no reason why podcasters can't take advantage of both. You know full well that you're going to have the majority of your listeners on Apple because they have Apple phones.

And those people that didn't even know what a podcast was can still find it on Apple podcasts. And of course, the same with Spotify, because that's what everybody knows.

But there's no reason why you can't say as well, did you know there are these other things and then the person has the choice, the listener has the choice to explore. Did you know that you can do this other thing if you fancy having a look at it? Have a look at this app, you know, and that's it. That's it.

Have a look at this app if you want. And then once someone has a look at this app, they might, oh, well, I'll have a little more. Bit more of an explore, see what else I can do.

I personally have two.

Well, I have four 2.0 apps on my phone in order to, like, do the homework and stuff I need to do, but I have two that I listen to all the time and I don't listen to. I don't use Apple or Spotify anymore at all. I have absolutely no need to because these apps do exactly the same thing.

You can just go there and play a podcast. You don't have to do all the other fancy stuff.

You might look at this interface and think, I quite like this interface a bit more than another interface.

Yes, I know that means people having to try something new and explore something else, but that's not to say there aren't people that want to give that a go, and they can very easily give that a go. And it's the same with, you know, asking for money. None of this excludes something else. So your funding doesn't exclude sponsorship.

And asking your listeners, do you value my show? Would you give me something back in return? Doesn't exclude you're actually having an ad in there as well. These are these options that you have.

And yeah, nobody's going to have picked up a new. And I know, five years. Five years. I don't know. It's not how long I've been aware of it. So that's another communication aspect.

But these things take time.

And I mean, does the terminology all completely match up with the different social media apps, for example, the different way you use your social medias, but they are all used by different people because of why they like it. So there's no we, there's no reason it has to be all. It has to be Facebook and nothing else is my kind of comparison at the moment.

But it's going to take time.

Mark: 00:29:26

Yeah, I get that, actually. And it's very fair to say that, you know, things aren't mutually exclusive, nor should they be, nor will they ever, ever be.

Which sort of then leads me to then, you know, starting to discover and I suppose consider, you know, are we actually too Harsh on podcasting 2.0? It is a movement, after all. It's not, it's not an outcome. You know, the features of the outcomes.

And if we're being too harsh on it, when do you stop being harsh on it and understand that being harsh is actually realism? And I don't know where we are in that journey yet. And the reason that I mentioned that is that, you know, if we've got.

We've got a growing pool of listeners that is growing still, thankfully there was that, that reporter from Australia just earlier today in POD News.

And you've got a very small subset of those listeners that will care enough about an industry or about a show to actively seek out podcasting 2.0 features, not chapters are supported. If you put timestamps in your show notes. By Spotify. That's a given. Or by Apple, whatever, that's a given. You know, genuine 2.0 apps.

The market for those is so small that maybe we should be asking ourselves, you know, as part of the report card that James is doing and so on and so forth, what's the actual 2.0 market right now? Because the addressable market in any industry is not the industry size, you know, captivates.

Addressable market is not any podcaster and doesn't want to be any podcaster. It's the market that we define within the parameters that we want to go for. And it's the same with 2.0.

You know, the addressable market might be 10% of listeners, 4%, 2%, 1%, 30%. And I think until we sort of roughly know, we can extrapolate some information from those engaged enough to actually fill surveys.

And how do we know how far from early adopter saturation point we are? Because I think without that, we don't know what work we've got left to do.

You know, standardization of branding, standardization of naming, you know, moving towards a more user friendly naming convention. You know, not, not Pod Roll. It's recommendations. All right, yeah, we can label it like that on our websites and the app developers can do the same.

But that's the point. We would have to name it and then explain what that means. Recommendations is powered by this Pod Roll tag and a Pod Roll tag is this.

And Pod roll comes from: 2005

Is it getting to the point where it needs some UI and some UX and needs people that aren't just podcast lovers and industry lovers to actually go and spray a little bit of usability over the top of it, you know, and at all levels. But I think until we know how big the addressable market is for 2.0, the people that really care about 2.0, not just a feature.

How can we, how can we decide whether or not the movement is gaining traction? Because if the V for V stuff and the, the SATs daily unique senders, that's, that's way less than half from two years ago, a year and a half ago.

Like how we're measuring things. Just a lot of thoughts there to unpick, but I mean, we could do this probably for about six hours.

But I don't know, Danny, it just, it feels like we should be less focused on the movement and more aggressively focused on user friendly, outcome focused features that listeners can naturally adopt into their own lifestyle because they're based on behaviors from other. Other things they do in their life, like chapters, you know.

Danny: 00:33:03

Yeah. And that's. It comes down to selling the benefits to the user. I always go back to Steve Jobs when he brought the. Well, he didn't bring the ipod out.

Can't give him all the credit. There's a bunch of engineers and tech people and all that.

Mark: 00:33:14

No, it was just Steve Jobs.

Danny: 00:33:15

100% just Steve. What about watching that wasn't Stevie W.

But he always said, like when he's marketing, when he's doing these keynotes, you know, the universities and tech events, et cetera, that he didn't tell you what an ipod was in it. Tell you, you know, the, the, the. The memory and all that, blah, blah, blah. It just says you can fit your whole music library in your pocket.

That's it. Or what? I can get 2,000 songs on here. I'm done. I'm in. Take my money.

And I feel we need to, like you say, maybe an evangelist or something that just reshapes. Maybe how we're approaching 2.0 at the moment, and it might be a name change. You know, doesn't need to be podcast in 2.0.

Can it just be whatever it might be? But it goes back to that simplicity. And Claire does it on our podcast and she's mentioned it in this episode today. It's about just explaining.

Once you explain it and make it really easy to understand, people will try a new app or they'll say, oh, I didn't know I could actually have chapters on a podcast. How does that work? And it just comes to that. Oh, simple. Make it simple.

Simple, simple and easy to understand for the layman that will then pick it up and start to use it without even thinking of it. I think. Yeah. Your whole point about, are we being too harsh or is it realism at the moment?

And does that realism now drive where it needs to go to really get where it should be because of what it offers listeners and podcasters? So, yeah, lots of opportunities. I feel for the movement.

Mark: 00:34:50

Yeah.

And I think people, you know, if we look at things like cross app comments, you know, it's a big thing that a lot of people advocate for, but the users have got to want it.

You know, if you're going to comment on something, look at YouTube, you've either got to absolutely love it or be that pissed off with it that you want to talk about it. There's only those. There's only those two reactions. That's it. And in order to activate the percentage of people that are Going to comment.

You need a much larger audience size than most of us have. And it's such a. I know, it's chicken and egg.

Well, without cross up commenting, how can we activate all of the audience and get that 5% or 2% of people to comment? Because there is nowhere to comment until we do. The cross up is a very chicken and egg thing. But it's. Who's asking the listeners?

Like, who is asking the listeners. And then I just wonder if we should. And Claire should probably lead this, frankly.

Like, it shouldn't be led by, you know, the people that are running hosting companies are doing other weird things, you know, that it should be led by people that love podcasting. And it should be a case of what feature do we want to get out there first? Not, let's upgrade podcasting 2.0.

It should just be right, you know, for the next year, someone's going to employ Claire and she's. And she's going to go out and she's going to tell every hosting company the benefits of the funding tag and she's going to go.

And she's going to go to the podcast show and she's going to see Apple and she's going to see Spotify and all the apps and sell the one feature. Because what does Spotify not do? It doesn't roll out movements. It rolls out features based on all the behavioral data that it's got.

We can love them or hate them, but they're bloody good at that part of it.

Claire: 00:36:31

But if you haven't told the listeners or the podcasters, then the companies are going to go, well, the listeners and the podcasters don't want it.

Mark: 00:36:40

Well, that's the point. No one's talking to them.

Claire: 00:36:43

We need to, we need to be telling the listeners and the podcasters what you could be doing that you don't know.

Mark: 00:36:49

We need to be asking. So let's jump in. No, I think that's the, I think that's the flip. I think we've got to ask the listeners, you know, go out and talk to on the ground.

Listen. I'm not talking like the listeners that are into, into podcasts.

Like, talk to Dan, my builder, who like is in the van and is, oh, yeah, I listen to Joe Rogan. All right, what would you love to be able to do while you were listening to that?

Well, very often I get these things and I want to make a note of these things. And there's no real way to do that. So actually it'd be lovely to be able to Add notes on it, little things like that.

Claire: 00:37:20

That's just happened.

Mark: 00:37:22

I had that idea in: 2014

How do you aggregate the data enough? Captivate wouldn't build features without knowing what the users wanted through feedback and response, you know, and neither would Buzzsprout.

Neither was Robert, the Libsyn team, or Todd. You know, everything we do is data driven. It's not driven by. Wouldn't it be cool if technically this was possible?

And don't get me wrong, that does happen, but it's not the whole movement. So I don't know, maybe we should talk to more listeners.

Claire: 00:38:00

But then how are people gonna be aware of what could be possible if they're not? Show, first of all, what is possible. For example, if we're talking about podcasts, we may think it's an audio file. There it goes. It's an audio file.

Not thinking about. You can put these other things in so that these other things happen. So you're. Then listeners are like, oh, okay, that's cool.

I like that I can have a picture of the person there and I can click on that person because that person's a guest and I like them and I can go and see what else they've done. But I didn't know you could do that. If you can do that, perhaps you could do this other thing that I've always thought of.

So I think it's going to be circling, isn't it? It's going to be secular and connecting.

Mark: 00:38:48

Always feedback loops. Yeah, definitely.

Claire: 00:38:50

Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I think so. There's the two sides of it. Yeah, absolutely. Be listener led, listener having an idea.

But how's the listener going to know unless they know that some things are possible? So you need both of those things going on to symbiotically make something.

Mark: 00:39:09

I just think we should start with, you know, take your podcast and tell your listeners that anything's possible. Because it is. So anything's possible. Here's a survey. It's two questions. It'll take you three minutes and do that for a year.

You know, get every podcaster to do that, and then that's what you build.

Claire: 00:39:31

You.

Mark: 00:39:32

That's what you build. But, yeah, I don't know. We could talk about that forever. We should probably do a follow up on this. Danny. I'm.

I'm conscious of time, but, Claire, look, we're going to Wrap up. We're going to do some of our famous segments in a second. But what. What do you wish people would start with then?

When it comes to podcasting 2.0, if you've got. If you're a podcaster, you sort of thinking to yourself, oh, this has piqued my interest.

Like, where would you recommend someone starts as a podcaster? What's the. What's the one thing they should do?

Claire: 00:39:57

What, you mean with regards to actually implementing a feature?

Danny: 00:40:01

Yeah.

Mark: 00:40:01

Getting involved in 2.0 and sort of dipping their toes.

Claire: 00:40:05

Yeah. I think, obviously listening to my show, but being aware of how these things can help you as a podcaster.

For example, with discovery, not just going in, thinking it's a tech thing, but going in with, say, transcripts, saying transcripts, they could be searchable, which means I could be found. Oh, okay. This is why it's useful. Or thinking somebody may need to clarify something, they're going to use the transcript. This is going to be useful.

So it's definitely going to the human side of it for the listener, for the podcasting, for the podcaster. And looking at these features, which we started with at the beginning, saying we call them features rather than tags.

It's certainly what I call it throughout the whole of my show is the human element of it and how it's going to help you and your show to be found. Because I think most people as well, even though, yeah, we'd like some money, obviously, that would be nice.

But we also want to spread our message and any ways that, you know, these features can help us just with that, without us having to do an even that much extra work. I'll take it. I'll give it a go. I'll give it a try. So it's that looking at it from the human discovery, interactivity, you know, like, what.

How can it help me and how can it help my listeners?

Mark: 00:41:29

I love that. Love that. Go check out podcasting 2.0 in practice now, Danny, we're going to finish up on some of our segments.

So now it's time for a little bit of this stupid stuff in podcasting. Danny, you put this one down.

I see every time we do stupid stuff, it feels like you put it down like just an angry Scott in Canada, just in the dark, pounding on the Reddit on the Reddit dashboard for stupid stuff in podcasting. What's your stupid stuff this week? I just feel like this should be your segment now, dude. Like Danny's stupid stuff in podcasting.

Danny: 00:42:07

Danny, don't. Just. Danny. Dawn. Yeah, no, so you mentioned Reddit, and this is where I found this one. I've seen it on the Facebook groups, etc.

But mostly Reddit, and you see it almost every other day. And that's no exaggeration. But you'll get maybe a solo developer. And no diss on solo developers. Obviously, they're.

They're doing stuff from a passion point of view, but they'll share their new amazing AI tool that transcribes audio and gives you titles and show notes, which is great, but everyone and their dog's doing that right now. So I'm just asking. And then I see some comments like, you know what Reddit's like. They are relentless.

They will hunt you down and, you know, feed you the dogs. But the question becomes, well, everybody's doing that. Why should I even try yours when I can get that XY here? So it's just, where's the innovation?

Where's the AI stuff? That really makes it cool? Because AI is a hot topic. And I'm sure we'll revisit that topic because we've had a couple episodes on that as well.

So when are we going to move past just show titles and show notes to really going back to Claire and your point about helping podcasters and listeners.

Mark: 00:43:12

I think he's got to be useful. You know, I think that's the point is that AI at the minute in podcasting is. Is. Is. It's, again, it's boring. It is because it's all about outcome.

It's not about how it's done or what we're. What. What we technically can do. It's got to be useful. And I think that's the challenges you get.

We saw it like in: 2016

It could be investment from a public, you know, very public brand, which then triggers a load of startups outside of the industry, many of them solo developers that then think, oh, maybe I should be in the podcasting industry. And so they do the very obvious thing in podcasting. What. When Whatever that obvious thing at the time is.

You know, it used to be clipping tools, it used to be social media tools. It was tipping tools for a little bit. It was. I'm the Netflix of podcasting. No, that's already podcasting.

So you see these things, and AI is just the latest one of those for me. And so you know, I can see why the developers do it.

I, I don't yet know how AI becomes even more useful in podcasting outside of contextualizing, clipping and just analyzing and suggesting like we do at Captivate, you know, coming up with ideas. But I don't know, I think sort of AI just needs to calm down a little bit for 18 months.

Let's, you know, let's have something more interesting in AI in, in the next 18 months. But let's leave it 18 months. Let's just, let's, let's let something new develop. You know, let's all get a vibe for it.

So I don't know, Claire, what do you think? Are you, are you into AI much in the, in the podcasting space? Do you use it at all?

Claire: 00:44:56

I do use it. I actually have been quite happy with Spark AI, I must say.

Alth, I had to change my settings this week to a more formal setting than the casual one I'd already set because I was saying that imagine you're vibing and I'm like, I've never vibed in my life, so imagine you're chilling. What? I am not chilling. Okay, so. But I moved it over to the, to another setting and it came back to. It worked really well with me and I did like.

I'm not quite sure how it works, but I did like that I was able to put in some of my blog posts to Spark AI. So it got an idea of how I speak. So I have enjoyed that. I have used other ones as well. I'm. I'm with you. I get quite.

I do get very bored with it, a bit like the whole video and podcast argument, but I do get bored with people going on and on and on about AI. And I will just use it for my show notes because it is boring writing show notes. Even though I'm an editor of text, I find it boring.

So I can use that. Once you get something you're going to stick with with it.

I'm not going to try other ones because they're going to start getting all flowery and saying the word resilience a million times. You know, I've tried all of these different ones. When you get one you like, you stick with it. So, yeah, it's boring. I can't see why we need more.

And what more would be useful for me personally, because I still have control over what I want to be put out there. So I'm never going to just go, oh, yeah, whatever you say is going to need a bit of extra work to make it creativity found E or whatever it is.

Yeah, but it doesn't, it doesn't need to keep going on and on and on and on.

Mark: 00:46:36

No, I agree. It's utility focused on outcome, isn't it? Which is, I think, where, you know, we can, we can sort of bring that back to 2.0.

You know, each, each feature is utility focused on outcome.

And, and it's clear that the industry, like any industry, you know, will become more efficient, more refined and more focused on what the user experiences. AI is a part of that 2.0, the movement 2.0, the feature lists are all part of that.

And they'll be, there'll be, there'll be new things, you know, there's always new things. So we'll see how that develops. Now, Danny and Claire, we actually finish up on a bout of positivity, as always. So Claire is the guest co host.

You get to deliver the flattering ram where you can pick anyone of your choosing. Anything of your choosing. And it is, it's the flattering ram segment. Danny, shall we play the bloody music then? Stunning music.

Stunning music as composed by the one and only Catherine Ranis. Now, Claire, who is someone doing amazing things in the podcasting industry that you just want to shower with love, for no other reason.

They're doing great things.

Claire: 00:47:45

Well, I'm gonna go with this lovely group of podcasters I meet with once a month over on Zoom and they are headed up by Vic and Charles and that is Mike's Podcast Club. And we have a lovely chat, we have some features.

Sometimes there might be particular things we're talking about, just whatever we need to talk about at that time. So I'm going to give my flattering ram to Mike's podcast club. Thank you for being there.

Certainly for me, for the past two years, I think I've been going.

Mark: 00:48:25

I love that. Just over the hill from me as well. Vic and Charles do a great job over in Manchester. Yeah, a lot of time for them. A lot of time for them.

Hopefully they'll do pods up north again. That was a great event. Maybe we should petition them for that one. So, yes, wholeheartedly agree with that.

Thank you so much, Claire, and thank you for being a guest co host. You've been fantastic. We should definitely do a follow up as 2.0 continues to develop and to evolve. So thank you so much.

Where's the best place for everyone to get. Get the new show then?

Claire: 00:48:54

Yeah, podcasting 2.0. In practice, obviously it's best listened to on podcasting 2.0 apps such as Fountain or True Fans.

You'll get the most of it there because you get to see the pictures that are in the chapters and you get to really see, you know, how I explain the features and you get to see them in action. Instagram podcasting 2.0 in practice and then everywhere else in the world.

You can find me under Creativity Found or Creativity foundation and Podcast. Thank you.

Mark: 00:49:23

Love that. Thank you so much. And Danny, always a pleasure, sir.

Danny: 00:49:27

Yeah, I just thought, you know what? That's all. That's all I'm gonna give. Yeah, it is always a pleasure.

Mark: 00:49:35

Can you believe this? Like, you took my surprise then. Oh, my God, someone's talking to me. I didn't realize. Well, no, thanks. Thanks, man.

Danny: 00:49:48

No, no, it was nice to be back, mate. I missed, you know, the last episode, such as try to get my words out. So, yeah, nice to be back and especially with a great topic like today's.

Mark: 00:49:59

Love it. Love it. And thank you, the beautiful listener. Do check us out in and around podcasting.com in your podcast app of choice.

And if you know someone that would enjoy the show, do tell them that they can also do the same. So until the next time, keep doing what you're doing. Keep sharing your voice.

Just remember that it always matters what you say, and there are people out there listening as well. So take it easy and we'll see you on the next one. Bye.