What's going on in the podcasting industry? Podcasting has been around since 2004. However, it is still in its infancy in many ways; but that's about to change! Listen in as two podcasting veterans discuss the history of podcasting, the current state of podcasting, and the future of podcasting. In this conversation, you'll hear from the founder of the popular podcast conference, Podfest Multimedia Expo, Chris Krimitsos, and Alex Sanfilippo, founder of PodMatch, PodcastSOP, and host of the top-rated podcast titled Podcasting Made Simple. This is the state of podcasting!
More: https://PodPros.com/160
What's going on in the podcasting industry? Podcasting has been around since 2004. However, it is still in its infancy in many ways; but that's about to change! Listen in as two podcasting veterans discuss the history of podcasting, the current state of podcasting, and the future of podcasting. In this conversation, you'll hear from the founder of the popular podcast conference, Podfest Multimedia Expo, Chris Krimitsos, and Alex Sanfilippo, founder of PodMatch, PodcastSOP, and host of the top-rated podcast titled Podcasting Made Simple. This is the state of podcasting!
More: https://PodPros.com/160
I'm here with my good friend, Chris Krimitsos today. Super excited to have the state of podcasting conversation today. First off I want to mentioned this about Chris. He is the founder of PodFest Multimedia Expo. And it is a. It is a conference and organization and community that I absolutely love. If I'm a product of anything in podcasting, it's actually PodFest. So Chris, thank you first and foremost for that. And congratulations within the last year, getting a Guinness world record alongside that as well. We might get into that for just a second. And you do a lot in podcasting. We'll probably break into all these different things, but even your wife, Katie has women's meditation network, which is just like absolutely crushing it stellar. And you're really getting into blockchain stuff, which I think is kind of involved with the future of podcasting, so many different things. And last thing I'll mention, because I know I'm just like kind of ranting here about my friend, Chris, but he has a book called Start Ugly, which is a book that literally changed the way that I do business. And the success I've seen is a direct impact that his book had on me. So anyway, Chris, that introduction there, I'm glad you're here, man. Thank you so much. Alex, thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm really excited to chat with you today. So we're just gonna be talking about a little bit of the history of podcasting, where it's at today and where we kind of see it going in the future. First and foremost, we'll just jump into the history of podcasting. Which is really funny to me first off, Chris, when I mentioned, cause it started, is it 2000? It was 2004, is that when podcasting began? Yeah, four or five somewhere around there, but you're pretty much within the year. Right? So at some point during those years it started, but it's funny like I didn't hear about podcasting until 2014 maybe or something like that, like that. And when people told me about it still, I was like, I don't want to listen to people talk like, that sounds awful. Right? Like, it was just strange how I went from being the guy who heard about it 10 years after it came out to then being like, I don't want to hear that to now, like podcasting is all I listen to. Like, I don't want to do anything else, really. It's a, once you start listening to podcasts, it's tough to go back to the way we used to listen to audio via radio. It's almost you go back to radio, you're like, I can't believe I used to listen to this because it's on demand when you want it, what you want, and its pretty much free, you know, unless you got some premium subscription. So it's just a, it's an amazing revolution of audio. So I love seeing it now becoming the dominant force in the medium of how audio is consumed. Yeah. I'm with you with that. And something to mention there, it's weird that podcasting has been around for 15 plus years and it just seems like, the growth has been very slow till recent years. Do you, have you noticed that, or maybe you've been in it longer than I have? Have you noticed it like a consistent growth or? It just seemed to be really slow until recent years in my mind, but maybe that's just because I'm into it now. I don't know. What do you think about that? So before Steve Jobs added it to the iPod, that's why it's called podcasting, it was on these devices called iPads. Now it's known as the iPhone, right? Or whatever could stream. It was kind of , you'd have it on message board. You'd have your player link on there and yeah, it was like audio on a website, people might click the triangle, might not. YouTube, Netflix, a lot of the on-demand video took off a lot quicker and you're right that the trajectory of on-demand audio did not move as fast as on demand video. Cause like YouTube exploded, right? And if anyone remembers, I think it was February 14th, 2005. When YouTube came out, there was nine to 10 other, maybe 14 other video platforms, from Viddler to all kinds of stuff. And we used to have tools to aggregate video across all the platforms. But YouTube was just such a dominant force, it crushed pretty much everybody except for Vimeo at the time. Audio, on the other hand, the majority of consumption on on-demand audio, remember this isn't a world before people worked at home. Like, this is where you have to drive to work. Audio was consumed via the radio and most cars did not have Bluetooth enabling capabilities till many years later. And then it takes about eight years for people to change out a car. Maybe let's say let's be generous, let's say five years. So by the time that habit was able to even, leapfrog into your audio listening, it took awhile for it to take off. Now, due to COVID we live in an on-demand society where we don't even drive into work anymore, if we don't want to. Everybody's working virtually. So now there's no need to listen to radio at all. It's just easier to go on your, you know, your podcast app and listen to your favorite shows when needed, when you're working out or working around the house. So it's just interesting to watch these, different phases of how we work and how that evolved and how we drive, how it evolved with the consumption of podcasts. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned the whole car thing. I never really thought about that, but you're right. People just didn't even have a way to really listen to podcasts unless they were going to somehow do it while they're at work or at home, but there was no transit time for it and it wasn't as easy. By the way, the other day I found an iPad Nano. I don't know if you remember what those are. I was like cleaning out my glove box in my car. I'm like super organized. I had like nothing in there. It was like between two piece of paper, I'm like no way! Plugging in. It still works. That was a huge innovation. That was a huge innovation. I remember that the first time I picked one up, I couldn't figure out how to scroll the little wheel on it. I'm like, what the heck am I supposed to do with this thing? You forgot, right?. It was so easy back in the day. So things have changed quite a bit, but it's interesting to hear that obviously, now vehicles basically have built in, like podcasting ready capabilities at this point. Correct? Correct. Yeah. And when you think about people at home, like for me, if I'm doing any chores at home, like cleaning, now, we've got these wireless earbuds. My phone can be sitting on the counter and I can be vacuuming and listening through AirPods, or however people use like these little wireless Bluetooth devices, right. That you can just kind of have have in your ears all the time. And I think that's probably why we've seen the consumption rate of podcasting just get elevated in the last couple of years specifically. It's also the reason why we have such high values on our headphones. So I'm just too excited, I watched this happen in real time. I remember going into an electronics store when we had like three, four brands at the time. Now we're consolidating down to I think, one or two, and they would have two, three headsets and they'd have a cheap headset for like 20 bucks. They'd have Bose noise cancel canceling headsets. They were like the premium and there wasn't a lot of other choices, maybe a DJ headset or whatever. And then I remember one day during the podcasting revolution and on-demand music revolution too of Spotify and SoundCloud, all these other tools. They had entire two rows of headsets and they range anywhere from $1,200 down to $20. And I was like, holy crap. There's like 40 choices when there used to be two or three. So we even value the gear that we listen to our audio because the audio is free, but we value what we're consuming and then your headsets have become fashion statements now. So it's just interesting to live through that evolution where before there was only one premium headset now, like Beats, there's so many more than Beats, but Beats was like one of the first to really exploit that there was no fashionable, really nice looking headsets. So just interesting. That is really interesting. You know, I want to transition this conversation to kind of the meat of what we're gonna get into today, which is just the current state of podcasting, where it is today. Listening today, we've got both podcasts guests and podcast hosts. I want to make sure this is valuable on both sides. We've seen the listenership really start to grow. People are really, their, their cars are set up for it. They're buying all the great gear to listen to it at the top quality. We're seeing listenership grow a lot. One thing that I've noticed so Chris is, I still don't see a lot of people stay in podcasting. And what I mean by that, I mean like the new people that are coming on board. And sure it might be tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, but the majority people who start now that we're past 2.4 million podcasts, technically it's still not a lot that actually stay in the game. And what is the reason for that? Cause listenership is growing. So you would think that the number of podcast hosts are remaining active would also be growing at at least the same rate, but we're just not seeing that. I'd love to get your expertise on this. So to follow anything out of the YouTube model, the reason why YouTube has, I don't know, I don't even want to guess, but on the low side, 20 times more creators, but a lot more it's a lot more is because many of them are able to monetize and like YouTube will base layer, monetize them. So that's happening in audio now, but like you said, we're lagging behind. So as the money spreads out and everybody gets a piece, you're going to see more creator stick with it. The challenge is it takes a while for a podcast to gain traction and then to monetize. So I think with money flooding into the marketplace, you're going to see more people sticking with it over the next four or five years. We're still going to have a lot of people start and stop that that's like consistent, but the base layer of consistent podcasters, like it's been around 150 to a quarter million, like actually active podcasters for like a while now. I know you probably know the most exact stat. I stopped looking at it cause it never really moves. I sh we should see that increase to like a million active creators as money, literally floods the zone, which will happen in next three years. It's already happening now, but next few years is going to get intense. Yeah, I'm looking forward to jumping into that with you in a minute here, but sticking with kind of where we're at today, something you just mentioned about YouTube. Like you can monetize from day one because YouTube directs the ads, right? Like YouTube is responsible for that. You just kind of upload videos, they're going to handle all that. When you pass a certain threshold, you can start earning, but something else that YouTube has is the like button and the comment section, which sometimes can be really brutal. But most of the time, if your fans around it's going to be pretty nice. Podcasting on at least the mainstream directories or players that people are using, don't really have a feature where you can thumbs up a specific episode and leave a comment. I know that there are thousands of directories now, and some of them are actually building in the community aspect of it. But do you think that that has any play in why people are just like deciding they're out of it? Cause they're just not hearing from people that are listening. So there's some pros and cons. I would agree with you. It'd be great for listeners to interact more, but it's so passive. They don't interact as much as let's say YouTube channel, but the pros of podcasting being decentralized is it's the freest form of communication that we have today. And that's because no one entity controls the ecosystem of podcasting and podcasters own their own RSS feed. So that in itself makes us the most demo democratized communication platform, which is very unique in the space. So you've got to take the pros and cons with it. I do think Spotify is making leaps and bounds into monetizing and throwing money in the space and trying to figure out how to engage in commenting. But that's the million dollar question. The one good thing, Alex is, is a lot of startups that are trying to tackle that question, how to get people engaged with podcast, their favorite podcast and create communities. And the people that do well are very well rewarded financially. And we're seeing that, but, , maybe that's why you need to start a separate Patreon or whatever you want to call it, subscription service for that core audience and slowly build that. And it gives you more streams of revenue, but more interaction with your audience. Yeah, it's a, it's a good point. You know what I'm thinking now about the, the guesting side of podcasting, right? The people that are jumping around being guests, and they're not so worried about the show being monetized, they're worried about the effect it has for them. What advice do you have for people that are getting into podcasts guesting? And I mentioned that because I see the for lack of better term, the failure rate being about the same. People jump on one or two shows, and then they're not sure they saw any real traction from it and they're kind of out. Do you think that if that's the case for you, you should just jump out or do you have a different perspective on that side of the mic? I think it's the same concept of doing a podcast. You have to be consistent. So what I would say instead of doing one or two shows, maybe you consistently say, listen, I want to do one show a week or one show a month consistently. And then just do one show a month, one show a week. Obviously you want to interact with the, the podcasters with as much authenticity as you can and not send a stock email, I know, you know, all about that. Make a personalized request if you want to be on the show. But also I would prepare like a lot of people that are guesting don't prepare, like, let's say the podcaster is a weak interviewer, you should be prepared to be a great guest, no matter what. Like I look at it, that's your opportunity. You should have stories mapped out on a piece of paper that if someone's asking weak questions, like a lot of podcasters, tell me your life story, tell me how you started. Maybe you're strategic, and that's where I've come to the fact that I've become strategic in myself and how I'm going to answer that question. Control the flow of that. Because let's be honest, if you ask anyone, tell me your story, you could start from when the person was a baby to high school and, and, and eat an hour. So anyways, I would say, be prepared, be consistent. And then the last thing is create a WOW factor for that. When I'm talking to a podcast host, I'm not worried about who's going to listen to it. I want to make sure that the host finds me interesting. And if I could convert the person interviewing me to enjoy the interview then anyone listening to it is going to enjoy as well. That's a great point, man. That's really important point there, like just being consistent and then also really focusing on the host, like making it a good conversation and making it something powerful that, that they are proud to share. Because here's the thing, even if the listener thinks it's great, if the host doesn't like it, it's not really going to get out there as much. So that's a really great perspective there. One more thing I wanna mention on guesting real quick that I really like is a lot of people have told me I'm not going to do any podcast guesting cause I have ad spend. So I can do ads on social media and things like that. And it is obviously it has its place and it's very powerful, but it's completely different. To me when you're a guest on a podcast you're able to develop, know, like and trust with the people that are listening. Like through an ad you can't really tell, like, if I see an ad of you Chris, I can't tell if I know like, or trust you necessarily, right? But if I listen to you for 20, 30 minutes talking, I can usually figure out if, okay, I'm on the same wavelength as this guy. I agree with what he's sharing or I like his perspective here. I think it has that power and also it's not the same, like number wise. So you might have a thousand people see an advertisement you send out, but only 50 people listen to you on a podcast. But to me, as a guest on a podcast, it's like me staying on a stage where someone just told me, Hey, this is the talent. And there's 50 people sitting in chairs. To me, that's a really powerful thing. So to me, being a guest on a podcast is one of the best ways to get your message out. That's what I'm thinking in today's world, at least to what is your thoughts on that Chris? Well, I do a lot of ad spend for Katie and for her podcast, in the meditation space. But I will tell you that the advertisement is only going to get more expensive. So it's not going down. So, what that means is, if you could guest that's probably your best way to really establish authenticity, people get to know you. So I could only say that with Katie, where we're scheduling out a guest bookings for her, very strategic, obviously, because her time is, is not very flexible. So we have some spots where we could schedule those out. I couldn't, those, those are probably some of the best ways to get the brand out there, convert new listeners, convert new evangelists of her brand. And I would agree with you in that, paid ads, aren't everything. Guesting should also be part of your strategy because some of these shows you're going to be on, might might not be big today, but they might be huge tomorrow and people go through the back catalog. So there's an evergreen effect to all of it. So, I couldn't agree more with you that that should always be part of your strategy. If you're busy, maybe only do one a month. If you're, if you're, if you're not busy, you looking to build your brand, I don't understand why you wouldn't be trying to do as many as you can. Cause that that would be a huge point of building a brand. Imagine if you did a hundred interviews in a year. The only advice I'd give you is have different stories to mix up your different appearances. That's a good point because some people they'll reshare, like every time they're on an episode, I was guilty of this. This is how I know this. And people will be like, dude, you share the same thing every single time. I'm like good point. No one wants to listen to me tell the same story 15 different times. I agree with you have a way to mix it up a little bit. I always now learn to just cater it to the audience. That's keeping the host in mind and keeping who he has, listening in mind as well. So anyway, we've talked now about like podcasts guesting, hosting, like both sides of the mic really. And something you mentioned earlier, which I think gets into the future of podcasting, I think is one of the biggest selling points for me right now, is it's the the last true way that independent voices can get heard without potentially having it suppressed, not to get into politics or anything like that or religion, any of that, right? At the end of the day, no one really controls or owns it. It's just, hey, here is the voice. And I really like that about podcasting a lot. Cause I feel like it's how the world's being served the most. It's true, it's authentic, right? It's, it's, someone's actual opinion not being suppressed in any way. And I like that. I think the future of podcasting has even more of that. Listen, I think because of that, the future's very bright, because no one, no one controls the podcasting ecosystem. But I do see a lot of blockchain technologies being unleashed right now for all kinds of stuff. And in that it's decentralized, a lot of it's decentralized, so there's a lot of, I think we're, so when I, when I came of age in high school, that's when the internet was coming out. And I just remember, I could go on a website and go look up pictures of Greece, and I was so amazed. We'd have to wait for the dial up, but then I remember, the internet was pretty much static HTML pages, and then WordPress and Web 2.0, came out. And that was when social media, and it was so exciting that people could engage in dialogue and podcasting and YouTube. Now they're, they're branding this as Web 3 and that's the decentralized, autonomous organizations of the internet are being built off of blockchain technology. So if you thought the birth of the internet was a big deal or Web 2, WordPress and social media companies, this next wave, it's like a, it's going to be like a tsunami compared to all the other innovations. It's gonna be ginormous and it's going to wash over everyone. So I'm excited for that, in a good way. And I think it's going to bring, everything has its pros and cons. But, right now I see a lot of pros in the early, early stages of it, but maybe we're all going to be living virtually with Oculus glasses, not leaving, not leaving the house cause that's part of the metaverse and all this other stuff. So it's just exciting innovation. Doesn't wait for anyone. And, we're in for a huge ride as creators across all platforms. Man, you know, what makes me really excited about this? Is I believe that podcasting is at the forefront of a lot of this, like it. Yeah, right now we are. Absolutely. Yeah. And so you mentioned blockchain. I want to get into this last, last couple of minutes here of like where you see the future of podcasting going. I think you've already shared a little bit of that vision with web three, right? Like thinking about that side of things, but also you mentioned blockchain, you mentioned monetization because now it myself included I'm a, I'm a software creator in podcasting. There are software companies showing up everywhere to support podcasters there's new monetization opportunities every day on both sides of the mic. New tools for podcast host to help podcast guests get exposure after the interview. I mean, everything is just blowing up in this space, now. Where do you see this whole thing heading? So I'll give you like three key concepts. So one is decentralized domains. Those are domains that no one owns, it's not even run through ICANN and you could buy it off of the blockchain and you could link up your wallet to the website. Meaning people could send you money directly to the website. Now there's going to have to be some safeguards to that because, just a lot of stuff could happen with that, but let's just say you have a podcast and now you have a decentralized audio platform. And now you're going to put it on your website, which is decentralized, and now your fans or your listeners want to send you money and they could send you through the Bitcoin lightning network, Bitcoin, payments. As they listen per minute, per second, whatever you put in that smart contract. The most amazing part about that is let's say, Alex, you have this amazing podcast. You've built up this amazing audience. You could sell it to someone or give it to someone and say, I just want to collect a 10% royalty for the life of this podcast. And it's in that smart contract for rest of your life. You're getting paid out as long as that person keeps your brand current without you having to fully. So you could create a th there's going to be royalties that you could keep track of for the art that you create. And that's part of NFTs. That's part of all these terms that you're hearing, but basically I could sell it or tokenize my art. Sell it to my community, put in a licensing royalty fee and then have other people host the show and it could live on. The one thing I've always wanted to do, and I hope I can do this with one of my brands as I'd like for it to live way past me. So when my daughters and my granddaughter, you know, grandkids or whatever around, they'll be like, oh, you know, my distant relative built this and it's still around. And the challenge was selling a traditional business. I've been through this, is, if the person destroys it, it doesn't live anymore. But with art, and podcasting is an art. Imagine Alex, instead of you trying to sell it for a fee, you say to someone, I think you're really capable, you're really talented. You're going to make 50 grand a year as a paycheck, let's just say, off of the revenue I already have. I just want a 10% override for as long as you do the show, sign this contract, you make that deal for the rest of the life of that brand. Alex and his family are getting paid for generations to come. That's like what's happening right now. And that's really exciting. I mean, that is really, really cool to be able to hear. And a lot of those terms like Bitcoin, blockchain, NFTs, people are still not familiar with, but like you said, innovation waits for nobody. Like we're going to have to start to learn this stuff and podcasts again being at the forefront of all of this. We're just going to hear it more and more. So hopefully the education continues to come out and all of us can learn a bit more about it. Did you have anything else you wanted to mention to that point before we end here? The only thing I would mention is make sure to take, so podcasting is basically free to start. The education is not free, but podcasting itself, maybe if you get a 20, you could get a $20 mic, $20 headset. So let's just say a hundred dollars, 150 bucks, you could get started. A lot of the softwares are free out there. Invest in your education. If you were to ask me the people that are the most successful that I see over and over, and there's a lot online courses. So the investment doesn't even have to be money. It could be time like you go on YouTube, watch every video. If you find a really good channel or PodMatch has really good education. Invest in your education because that's what determines the people that keep growing. And sometimes your original concept might not be the best, but you could pivot and find an even better concept that you like and adjust with it. So that that's my only thing is invest in your education as a content creator. Katie and I have been through a lot, lots of ups and downs, and a lot of people telling us that this is not possible. You can't do this. Only broke people, podcast. We literally had a consultant, tell us a family friend consultant tells only broke people podcast 10 years ago. And you know, luckily we we've, we've proven them wrong, but he, he meant, he meant it out of love. That's the, some of the worst advice we get are from the people we love. And still one of our family, friends, we love him, but he just couldn't see the future, and that's a mental block. A lot of people have, they don't see what's around the corner. For you, if you're on this journey, invest in yourself and just keep moving forward. One step at a time. You'll be fine. Chris Krimitsos, thank you so much for bringing the state of podcasting to everybody today, man. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Alex. I appreciate you. And the PodMatch team.