Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting! In this episode, we have the privilege of interviewing Rob Greenlee, a legend in the podcasting space with decades of experience. Rob shares his insights on a variety of topics including the future of podcasting, free speech, AI, and the evolution of media. We delve into the challenges and opportunities that come with modern podcasting, from the integration of Podcasting 2.0 features to the impact of AI on content creation. Rob also discusses his journey in the podcasting world, including his time at Microsoft working on the Zune and Xbox platforms. We explore the importance of authenticity, community building, and the role of live content in an era increasingly influenced by AI. This episode is packed with valuable advice for both new and seasoned podcasters. Enjoy the conversation!
Key Topics Discussed:
- The future of podcasting and media
- Free speech and content moderation
- AI's impact on content creation
- The evolution of podcasting platforms
- Building community and authenticity in podcasting
- Rob's journey in the podcasting industry
- The role of live content in ensuring authenticity
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[00:00:00]
Rob Greenlee:
And to some degree, that's why I'm playing around with live content now with live video because I'm doing multiple live shows now is that that may be the only way that we can be mostly assured that the content that we're seeing is authentic and real is when it's live versus prerecorded can be created by an AI engine or it can be created and it can be fabricated or whatever.
[00:00:25] AI voice:
Welcome to about podcasting, a show for podcasters. We talk about podcasting practices, tools, successes, and failures mixed with interviews and music. Hosted on podhome.fm, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
[00:00:43] Barry Luijbregts:
Alright. Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting. And in this episode, I interview Rob Greenlee, who's been in the podcasting space for decades now and knows a lot about it. He's an absolute legend. You can find ways to connect with Rob in the show notes and also at robgreenlee.com. That is robgreenlee with double e at the end.com. We talk about many things, including free speech, the future of podcasting and media in general, AI, and so much more. Now I like to do these interviews more as a conversation, so we'll dive right in immediately.
Enjoy. But, yeah, we, it launched in November last year. That's, 2023. Okay. And I've been building for a while before that, of course, because, I mean, it's a lot of work.
[00:01:41] Rob Greenlee:
Takes time to build something like that. Right?
[00:01:44] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And make it robust. And, you know, every every time somebody says, save, that's actually something happens in an RSS feed and a pop in goes
[00:01:52] Rob Greenlee:
type of stuff. It's always a good thing when that happens.
[00:01:56] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. But, now it it works. It's nice. It is chock full of features,
[00:02:03] Rob Greenlee:
including, lots of the modern podcasting 2.0 things like Yeah. I saw that. That's awesome that you're doing that. So I appreciate that. I mean, I've worked for a lot of podcast hosting platforms and, and some of them still today struggle with trying to add those, those elements. So I think you're kind of at the leading edge of the industry to some degree, of, of where everybody should be, but it's good. I think being small, and upstart gives you some ability to be more agile and be able to do things like that because you're not dealing with legacy code
[00:02:39] Barry Luijbregts:
That you have to. That's it. That's a, right? Yeah. So it sounds easy, you know, just add a live feature, but obviously, if you have lots of developers and you've been doing this for 10 years and you're you have lots of, legacy code, it's gonna be very difficult because things are gonna be great.
[00:02:56] Rob Greenlee:
I used to work for Lipson for about 4 or 5 years, and they they really, really struggled to, modernize their platform because they had so many users using the old platform. That trying to get people off of what they were used to doing. It's kinda like shuffling all of the locations of the food and the grocery store, and it just causes customers to be frustrated because they can't find what they're used to finding and where it is and things like that. So, yeah, and it, it looked like like 5 or 6 years to get, Lipson users to migrate over to kind of a new interface and a new design and all that stuff. Cause they were under pressure because their, their design and their interface was from the very early days of podcasting. It was very dated.
But a lot of those podcasters were used to using that interface. So there is a, a lesson to be learned there. It's not always easy to change things, for, for podcasters because they get into their kind of workflow routines and they don't like to change. No, absolutely. But it is, it's all about your approach, of course, how you do things. Yep. Yeah. And you're starting kind of from a clean slate, so you can just build the right thing to begin with. And and hopefully, over time, you're able to evolve the interface to keep up with modern trends and not get behind. Because once you get behind, you're not catching up again.
[00:04:27] Barry Luijbregts:
So Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. And so yeah. And legacy coach, you know, starts to form, as soon as you make anything.
[00:04:37] Rob Greenlee:
So Right. Exactly. Because trends are always evolving. Technology is always evolving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, it it's it's it's doing its thing. We're getting the word out there. It's
[00:04:48] Barry Luijbregts:
snowballing, you know, people, word-of-mouth advertising. Yeah. And, it's working. So some, some good podcasts are coming over. Most of the customers that I get are people that are moving away from other platforms because they want new features or they Yeah. More things.
[00:05:05] Rob Greenlee:
That's fine. Yeah. And that's great. So Yeah. Well Yeah. I think that the trend line around the podcasting 2.0 side is is definitely, growing in its awareness and its popularity. I saw that, mister Adam Curry was, had a video that was played at podcast movement, about kind of his podcast index and what was going on with podcast 2 point o. So it is starting to get into people's consciousness. And when Apple Apple decided to support the transcript tag from the podcast 2.0 project, it's it definitely, made a difference.
[00:05:45] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Absolutely. So it's becoming more mainstream, and I think,
[00:05:50] Rob Greenlee:
it's getting more out of the, hey, this is, this is for technical nerds and I don't know what's Yeah. Well, it still is. I mean, let's be I mean, I mean, I started at a time when I was hand coding RSS feeds, so that's that's, that's that's where we started because, I started podcasting before even Lipson existed. So it was, just one of those things that I just added the enclosure tag to my blog RSS feed. And I was podcasting, which was really insignificant to me at the time because I was on the radio and on the XM satellite radio network and all that stuff with the show. I was, I was just making my MP3 available to be downloaded. So that's really all it was for me back then.
It just has evolved into something much more now. And in the early days of podcasting, there was a lot of video, in RSS, back, back in the early days of the medium. And that kind of disappeared because of the growth of YouTube. And now it's starting to come back again.
[00:06:53] Barry Luijbregts:
Oh, okay. And, and back in the day, were there, were there even any podcast players play that, that, your audio?
[00:07:02] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. So apple first supported podcasting back in 2,000. Was it 2,006? But podcasting actually started in September of 2004. And that's, that's when I started podcasting. That was, there wasn't any big podcast, listening apps back in those days. It it was really just a couple of, you know, hacked together kind of applications that were running. And then those applications typically work with the, like, the, the Windows Media Player software and Apple Itunes software. It basically transferred the audio file into those platforms that then connected with an m MP 3 player. So Yep. It was like a 3 step process to some degree, because those big platforms weren't yet supporting RSS. So so and then there was also feed readers, which were really more of a a text based kind of syndication approach with RSS.
And then over time, those feed readers, were were starting to embrace the ability to capture an MP 3 file, with the text. And that's that's kinda how we kind of evolved into, what's happening today. And we don't see feed readers anymore because, the tech there's really no reason for it anymore, because of how technology has evolved. But yeah. Yeah. So it's Yeah. It's it's interesting. So what's next is AI integration and that whole, whole move. Yeah. But if you wanted to up more officially start the interview, we can, we can do that. And if you wanted to use these sound bites for your lead in or something like that, you can do that too. Yeah, no, it, this is totally fine. I,
[00:08:54] Barry Luijbregts:
you know, let's just have a conversation and, we'll record it and, and that's it. And that's kind of you. Right? So, let's continue on this trend because I was looking at your LinkedIn, which is extremely long. You've been involved in, in podcasting, like you just said, for a very long time already. I do a lot with Microsoft, so that immediately caught my eye that I see here, you know, Zune podcast and video program lead around, 2007.
[00:09:24] Rob Greenlee:
I remember the can you maybe explain what that was? Oh, the Zune? Is that what you're asking? Yeah. Yeah. It was the kind of a competitive platform and hardware device that was trying to compete with the, iPad back in those days. So I got hired in, like, 2007 to manage the the podcast area of this new platform that, Microsoft was building out. So they had started the Zune. It's basically a portable media player, and then it also had, like, a companion software client, called called the Zune marketplace. And and so I was working for another startup company in Seattle at the time that was involved in, more mobile focused podcast distribution.
So in the early days of this this medium and but, Microsoft wanted to add podcasts to their music offering, as, like, their second content area in their platform. And so I was I was brought in to help them build out the catalog and do do the merchandising and kinda be the spokesperson for that platform for them. And I worked there for about almost 7 years. And then that that platform rolled into Xbox. And so for for a few years there, I worked in Xbox, on podcasting. And then and then eventually, the company back in 2014 shut the podcast area down.
It was about in the same time frame when, Windows Phone was basically getting shut down too, because the platform had evolved into working primarily with Windows Phone. So I I managed all the content that was in Windows Phone for podcasting for for about 3 or 4 years, because we had actually stopped making the zoom portable player, which is the last zoom that was made. It was called the zoom HD. Yeah. And it was a fairly large screen kind of portable media player device that had a browser built into it. And it had digital radio. It had all sorts of capabilities at a, had a very advanced kind of, well, video screen, that actually played video podcasts. So, and then also built into the Microsoft platform, Zoom video podcasts into windows media center.
And there's a lot of, folks that may not be familiar with windows media center because it's no longer, exists. Actually got shut down many years ago now, but that was the Microsoft platform for televisions. So it was back in the cable era. So it was an alternative to get getting like a cable box or a or a Roku or or a TiVo or something like that. It was kinda like more of a you know, you could put a PC under your TV and be able to to watch TV, via Windows computer, and that's kind of how it worked. So that's what I worked on also was, making video podcasts available on televisions. And this was probably back in 2010 timeframe, is when I did that.
[00:12:54] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. That, you know, doesn't sound that long ago, but it's back. It's, oh, long ago. I, I remember this one. It was a pretty great, product and windows phone as well. Back in the day, I was, oh, yeah. It's awesome. It was awesome. No, I do too. I do too. I've I was a, I'm a huge fan of, I still have like 2 or 3 of them in my drawer over here, but
[00:13:18] Rob Greenlee:
I don't use them anymore. I have an iPhone now.
[00:13:20] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I had a Nokia Lumia, which is great. Yeah. I have one. Yeah. I can't get to it here, but Yeah. I have one right here. But App app for nonexistence and the and the ecosystem never got off off the ground. But, yeah.
[00:13:34] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. Well, they sold quite a few phones. They sold, you know, millions and millions of phones. It just, didn't compete directly with, Android and and the the iPhone. Really what killed Windows Phone was, the the app developers just didn't support the platform. And that that's what really cut down on the ability of the platform to really support, you know, be be a good platform for for users. And that's that's what really killed it in the end.
[00:14:10] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. But anyways, that's the so that's great devices. And now we have lots of, different devices, all and more modern devices, more more things are coming. But let's let's circle back because, you were in the early days and adding audio to your blogs. And so so what attracted you to audio and and broadcasting in the first place?
[00:14:33] Rob Greenlee:
Well, I certainly didn't have any kind of, you know, official, training or went to college for radio or anything like that. So when I started this, I was really a marketing guy. So I was doing a lot of marketing and advertising and things like that in the, in the nineties. And and and as we rolled into the 2000, I was starting to get more involved in the Internet and what was happening with that. And so it's this convergence of my interests around kind of, more traditional marketing and advertising is what really got me thinking about media. And then as we saw the Internet really start to grow, I could just see it as such a compelling kind of content marketing platform and and be able to reach directly to, customers or users or whatever, directly utilizing media, audio, and and video. I mean, obviously, video wasn't quite as big in the early days, but it it certainly, leap forward very, very quickly, as we kind of evolved. And and then we saw it, you know, YouTube kind of start up and that that really kind of accelerated the whole thing.
[00:15:53] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And, so, you know, there was already video then and and audio as well. What do you think, a podcast is or or should be? Is it audio only or also video, or does it matter even?
[00:16:10] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. I mean, it is a a little bit of a issue where the industry, the modern podcasting industry thinks of themselves and they have for multiple years now have primarily thought of themselves as an audio only medium. But what oftentimes is, people forget is, and I think I mentioned this earlier, it was, it was very much an audio and video medium, and it's really for all intents and purposes, it's always been that. It's just that we saw a heavy influx of interest in audio only type of content over the last I don't know if it's the last 6 or 7 years, and that's what it really has propelled podcasting forward.
I mean, YouTube has always been there, you know, and it's always been a piece of a podcaster strategy, but it's never been, you know, we saw this kind of a divide between audio and video, after about probably, it started to happen probably in the 2009 time frame, is when we started to see some really large audio podcasts really start to take off. I mean, a lot of the comedians got involved in podcasting, like Mark Maron or Joe Rogan. They all, mister Adam Carolla, those folks really kind of took audio podcasting to another level. And most of those guys really didn't do a lot of video back in those days. So, so, so then we also saw a serial and, and those were all pretty much audio only, content.
And so and YouTube was still over here chugging away. And there were some podcasters that were doing video with their podcast and then others were were doing live streaming. I know I started doing a live streaming show. That was also a audio and video podcast probably, like, 13 years ago myself. It's the it's the new media show behind me here. I've been doing that for a long time. And so this kind of convergence between audio and video was starting to come back again to some degree. And then eventually YouTube realized that they were they were a significant player in the podcast consumption space.
But YouTube has always had, a team that was focused on podcasts. It working with the larger podcasters to get them to publish some video over onto YouTube and trying to support those content creators, especially the larger creators, and trying to encourage them to to put up at least clips or put up you know, and trying to build kind of like a marketing program. And there's been various times that the YouTube platform has been very supportive of podcasting. And it's just been over the last year to year and a half that we've seen that the YouTube folks say, well, you know, let's create a podcast playlist. And, and then over time, they kind of move towards trying to get, you know, some support for RSS in the ingestion part into podcasting.
And they've, they rolled that out. It was really kind of a, a bumpy ride for them. And, and, but that's oftentimes the case. I mean, I, I went through the process of working with Spotify in the early days of their entry into podcasting too. And that was extremely bumpy for them as well because podcasting is a little bit different than what a lot of these platforms, recognize as normal and what they, what they typically expect in working with media. Because you have a lot of people that came from traditional media that have been working for those companies and, and they think of things in a way that's a little contrary to the ideology around podcasting, which is open and free distribution and, and trying to be at the cutting edge of medium media and not trying to support kinda legacy kind of approaches to to media consumption and distribution.
So so that's been that's been the struggle for the whole time of podcasting is because podcasting came out of an era where people were were saying, you know, stick it to the man. You know, we're un uncontrolled distribution. We can't be controlled. We can't be, moderated. We can't be told what to do or not not to do. So it was really kind of a rebel medium, and it really kinda came out of the era of Napster, where where the MP 3 files were freely shared and people were free from the, the oversight of what was perceived at the time to be people that were trying to control distribution of content. Right? So if if it was a radio company or a television network or a studio that said only this content can be, made available, that kind of broke that. Right? It said that anybody can create content. It kind of leveled the playing field of sorts. And that's what that's what the foundation of podcasting really is, is is being more open to contributions from, anyone. Right? And to some degree, if you think about where we are with the social platforms, they've really kind of adopted, kind of a so a podcasting approach to content creation and really made it, available to anyone. So if you think about Facebook or even LinkedIn or X or any of these platforms, they really have a podcasting mentality behind them where, where anyone can create content. And that's where podcasting really, really started.
[00:22:19] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Really the content, creator's era, right? With podcasting and also media, YouTube, TikTok, and all that stuff where everybody can create anything really.
[00:22:30] Rob Greenlee:
User generated content. You know, it even has its own kind of acronym, UGC. Right.
[00:22:39] Barry Luijbregts:
So let's round this, part of the, video, thing out. So I myself use podcasts when I'm doing stuff. Right. I'm, I'm driving, I'm cleaning, I'm making dinner or something, and I'm listening to a show. So for me, audio only is perfect because I'm not, not looking at things. I'm doing other things. Yeah. Right. I, I cannot imagine myself sitting in front of a television or something and watching a 3 hour, interview that Lex Fridman does or something. So I think it's different use cases for the different meetings.
[00:23:14] Rob Greenlee:
How do you Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. I think people different people have different preferences for what they how they wanna consume the content. And I think that's part of what's happening right now is that, the market or the consumption side is kind of expecting from the content creator that they're offering, a a choice in how to consume this content and in what form. And some people like to watch, some people like to listen. So, you know, if you want to reach everyone and increasingly the research is showing that that some people like to do a little bit of both, right? Yeah. If they happen to be at home and they have some extra time and they have the ability with their big screen television to pop up YouTube or to pop up, you know, like through a Roku TV or something like that, they can, it can consume, video podcast per se, just like they do any kind of cable TV channel.
Or they can, they can get in the car and drive down the road and listen to the same show. Right. And, and in audio only, or they can do it while they're going out for a walk or walking the dog or at the gym or something like that. So I think there, this flexibility of consumption, behavior is really key here. And I think that's why we're seeing what's happening. The kind of anomaly here is the shorts. Right? Short form content in podcasting has really never been really much of a thing. There's been a lot of people that have said that, you know, short is better. People have short attention spans. My pushback on that is, is that, you know, that that commentary is really kind of ignoring the facts. Because if you look at what's been happening in these platforms is that sure, short content is is popular, for a certain consumption behavior.
But long form continues to be increasingly adopted. Just look at x as a great example. They started out with a 140 characters, and they've been slowly over the many years. Now it's up to at one point, it moved up to 280 characters, and and now it's up to basically, you know, 5 or 10000 words or something like that. So, you know, the expansion of of long form content is much more significant than a lot of people wanna give it credit for because long form content tends to be more in-depth and more engaging. It's difficult in podcasting to deliver value in a short chunk of of, audio.
So I think it's much more easy to be done in video because you can communicate a lot more, much more rapidly in a video experience than you can in an audio experience because, you know, like a 2 minute audio show is a, it's probably only as good as like maybe, you know, doing a passage from the Bible or doing, like a horoscope update or something like that. But that's about as far as it goes in my opinion.
[00:26:22] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I I agree. And again, there's different use cases. Right? So, short form audio can be, or video can be great for instance, for like you have a little clip from your podcast. Right? That works. Then, then you get people to, to go to the podcast, say, this looks interesting. Let's go and watch that or listen to it. Yeah.
[00:26:42] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. So it's interesting, you know, the mix and the choice that we all have as consumers of content now is, is getting, wider and wider. And I think that there is a limit to how much a content creator can actually engage at all these different form factors of content. But that's another conversation. That's where AI is going to come in and help.
[00:27:05] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. That's, where lots of platforms, headliner also, at Pothome. I we do that as well. Right? So we create tips, and then you can easily share those on social media. Blueberry does it now as well, and and more do that as well, just to make it easier because you can't just, it takes so much time to create all that stuff as a creator. It does. Yeah. It's nuts.
[00:27:29] Rob Greenlee:
Everybody has to live a life too, not just play away in front of their their computer all day. Right? Yeah.
[00:27:36] Barry Luijbregts:
So so let's, okay. That that was a video thing. Right? And then you said something very interesting after the video thing about, podcasting kind of being born as this rebel media, this new media. That's free and open and and not controlled so that everybody can create something, and everybody basically say whatever they want about anything. Social media is kind of the same as well. However, on social media now, you see an enormous crackdown around the world, battling misinformation, disinformation, disinformation, whatever it's called, just censorship, basically.
[00:28:11] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. You can think of that what you want,
[00:28:15] Barry Luijbregts:
but do you think that's also coming for podcasting more and more?
[00:28:20] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah, I think that there's an effort in, in applying that there are, some technology companies that are pushing, trying to push into podcasting. It's, it's coming in, attached really more to, the the advertising side. So there's more of a justification for content moderation, as the advertiser brands, want to control, what type of associations that they have. It's called brand safety or brand suitability is the model, that's being increasingly applied to shows that want to be monetized. And it's it's even more broadly, I think, coming to podcast content in general across these consumption platforms, I I do think that there's increasing pressure on even just like Apple Podcasts or, Spotify to do more, kind of moderation, not unlike what we've seen happen with, YouTube.
Yep. And so what we're seeing as a, you know, some some people don't like to hear this, but as a as a result of that, we are seeing a a uptick in growth around alternative consumption platforms, like a Rumble and a True Social and things like that that are starting to play an increasing role in maintaining kind of free open speech as a reaction to the control that's coming to the more mainstream platforms. And this is this is another example of what I was talking about about this medium being a little bit of a rebel media to to some degree and is we see podcasting be associated with more and more, types of consumption experiences that attitude about a rebellion against the establishment, will increasingly grow here. So what we may see happen over time is that we have a split and a divide in in people's ideology around consumption of content. And I think we're starting to see that develop already. And a lot of people don't like to hear that. And a lot of people haven't even heard of Rumble and True Social because they're in their siloed perceptions, and they don't even know that they exist. But there's millions of people that are being attracted to alternative consumption platforms, for online content that are, still trying to maintain, this free speech type of approach. Right. And and that is, I think it's the battle for the industry as we look to the next couple of years as being very, very significant. And a lot of people really don't wanna acknowledge it, because it depends on what side of the ideological fence you happen to be on. Yeah.
[00:31:12] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. I personally, I think it's a, it's very good thing to have free speech and to be able to talk about anything from all sides, because that creates perspective and that way we can learn. Right. That's the only way we can learn.
[00:31:25] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. I agree. If we're being controlled in our access to information, I think it's a danger for all of us in our society. So I think all of us need to be able to, you know, realize that people can have their opinions. It doesn't have to inflict on your life. Just listen to what they have to say because maybe they have something that is a value to contribute, that maybe it's an idea that maybe you should be open to. That's just kind of, that's always been my approach. It's not like I've changed somehow in my approach to this. It's just that now we're, we're having to increasingly defend the ability to freely speak. And I don't, I don't take what someone says to me personally.
So that's, that's the difference, I think. And actually as a content creator, I kind of encourage that. I kind of want people to, to voice good and bad to me because I, because when they do that, I, I know that they're listening. You know, I had a radio show for many years and, and face, criticism from my audience for various guests that I had on my, my nationally syndicated radio show. And, and and you just have to accept that that people have different perceptions and different understandings about the world. And and it's and and I think it's okay. And I don't take it personally, and I don't attack them. I I actually thank people for sharing their their thoughts. And and if they keep sharing negative thoughts every week about my show, that means that they're listening.
Exactly. Right. And that's that's that's the goal of what I'm trying to do is is share information and help people. And if they see my show as entertainment or engaging their, their mind and thinking about things, and I think that's, that's always a positive thing. And I think us focusing on trying to censor that type of dialogue and conversation and cancel that out is, is, is a big mistake in our society.
[00:33:33] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I, I couldn't agree more. I think that, perhaps, and hopefully the podcast index. So the the database, the podcast index, the podcast directory, that might play a big role in this, upcoming, let's call it, battle if if other directories might be, become censored, like Apple Podcasts, for instance, Spotify. Yeah. We make That they can remain open and free, podcast index.
[00:34:01] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. I mean, I'm hopeful that that can happen. I guess it gets back to what I mean, how far down this rabbit hole that the government wants to go down of cracking down on platforms and and and platforms that are encouraging, you know, free speech and and are open to conversations that are, that are considered legal. You know, I know this is ex's approach and I know this is Elon Musk's approach too, is that, is that conversations need to be, within the bounds of the law. There's no question about that. And if I think about podcast hosting platforms, and in the context of this conversation, that's always been the case.
They the podcast hosting platforms have terms of service. Right? And these are private networks. Right? These are ply private platforms, not unlike your platform. You probably have a terms of service that is associated with your platform as well. It's a standard thing that most content distribution platforms have, and it basically specifies, what is acceptable or unacceptable on the platform. Right? And typically those terms of service have outlined, certain aspects of content that are not allowed on the platform. And then, and and that's always been accepted. Right? And but it's and it's really always centered around this concept of hate speech. Right? Which which, is basically a speech that is related to doing harm to others. And typically that's violence or physical harm. Right?
But now what's happening is, our society is expanding the definition of what hate speech is, to a point where it's basically covering, everything now that someone doesn't agree with. And that's that's where we're seeing this big change happening is is the expansion of hate speech is getting broader and broader to include more and more topics, and things like that. And that's where it's opening the the door to increasing kinda censorship opportunities. That's, that's what I've seen happening. It actually really started back with Alex Jones. I was involved in trying to deal with that situation back when I was working for Spreaker.
At the time, I was contacted by, Spotify and these platforms that were wanting to take Alex down. And they that program was available on Spreaker at the time, and it was the source of Alex Jones getting into to Spotify. Because Alex Jones was using Spreaker as a pathway to get into these bigger platforms, because they couldn't do it directly. Because Spotify had done direct deals with all the podcast hosts, to get all the content from the the podcast hosts. And that would be their only source of content because because they figured that it was probably more, reliable source. It was easier to just create an API connection between the two platforms.
So, Alex Jones couldn't submit his show directly, off of his own RSS feed into Spotify because Spotify hadn't built a pathway for that. So he had to rehost it with speaker. And so that's, that's what pulled me into the middle of that too. And and so I had, you know, as a company, we had to decide what we were gonna do, under increasing pressure from all these big platforms to take Alex down. And, ultimately, we did, have to do that. But, and there's a lot of complication to that story, but it's it it definitely is, something that really started down going down this path.
[00:37:59] Barry Luijbregts:
Right? Yeah. A slippery slope, for sure. Let's,
[00:38:04] Rob Greenlee:
let's see what happens in the next few years. It's gonna be, very interesting, especially with the upcoming elections and all that type of stuff. Yeah. There's a lot of elections that are going on around the world. This is not the US that is going on here. So there's a lot of change that's on the horizon and, and media is kind of like the, I would say it's the new focus, for politics around the world because information is becoming very powerful now. It reaches a lot of people. And and I've I was kind of very idyllic about the Internet in the early days because back when I started back in 1999, my show was all about the growth and development of the Internet and the web. So it was called, Webtalk Radio is what my early show was that was syndicated on on radio across the country, and that accent satellite radio network. And and so I was I was a proponent of the growth and development of the Internet and the web in the early days.
And it and it I had a very idyllic view of what was gonna happen. I had really at the time, I had no idea how ubiquitous it was going to get. And and and also how that that Internet could be kind of weaponized against us too. It's an opportunity, but yet at the same time, if it grows to a certain scale, it basically connects all of us together. And I think to some degree, it leaves us all kind of vulnerable to, you know, being able to be monitored and surveilled and those kind of things. And, and that's increasingly what we're seeing happen. Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:39:45] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. It these are not good developments.
[00:39:48] Rob Greenlee:
No. But it is a natural development of of technology. I I think more perspective that I applied to it. Now it makes perfect sense that we're moving into an era of, instant access to information about all of us. You know, if you think about the the internet of things, Tampa thing, where all these remote devices, are all accessing data, pulling data. We're in an era of data collection, and that is that's worth a lot of money now. I mean, a lot of advertisers and a lot of companies, really kind of need data for them to operate, and to be profitable.
And so that's that's why we're seeing that develop. I mean, a lot of ways you just follow the money and you can find out what the reasons are for things that are happening.
[00:40:41] Barry Luijbregts:
So, Yeah, absolutely. But, but there is definitely a hope on the horizon, at least. I think I'm, I'm hopeful that because of the ubiquitous access to data that also people have on, on podcast, for instance, on, on on some social platforms that aren't that censored, like x, for instance. People are finding information and they're broadening their horizons and, yeah, educating themselves. They're doing their own research, let's say. But it's good. People are continue to learn and are moving away from the traditional mainstream media, which is Oh, yeah. That's definitely happening. Those folks are in trouble. No question about it. Right. That's a very positive, thing, especially when with high collections coming up and people educating themselves, which is very good.
[00:41:29] Rob Greenlee:
It's the same thing with the radio. I think, radio is not like falling off a cliff or something like right now, but, it's definitely in a steady decline. I think that the audience for traditional radio is is essentially almost it's incentive insensitive for me to say it this way, but it's literally dying off. If you look at public radio here in in the United States, anyway, like an NPR or whatever, their average listener to public radio stations here in the US are typically in their upper sixties, seventies. And as those people move into retirement and then pass away over time, that audience is going away.
And and eventually, I think what we'll see is traditional broadcast radio will find that they're they're gonna be on the short end of the of the stick eventually. It's just a matter of time.
[00:42:29] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Things are changing.
[00:42:32] Rob Greenlee:
They are. They are. And the younger people are just not listening to radio as much as maybe they had in the past, and they're doing more things with online sources like Spotify or or Apple or mostly because it's being linked up with their their technology and their mobile devices. And and, and you just look at like Tesla cars or whatever. They're basically rolling iPads. So you kind of think that maybe that's the future and that, you know, fewer and fewer cars are gonna have a radio dial in them. Now granted, I can access I've got a Tesla myself. I can access local radio stations in my Tesla. I can, but I have to open up a certain app and I have to go into a certain experience and I have to be very deliberate about it. It's not like it's gonna turn on automatically when I get in the car.
[00:43:23] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. But, so let me try and bridge that to, like, the future of of podcasting, like what's happening right now, for instance, with, music in podcasts, with podcasting 2.0, the the current model of streaming where I can go to Spotify and I can choose from all the songs that ever existed. That's that's amazing. That's amazing technology. Absolutely. But it's also, I don't know what to pick anymore. The same as with with Netflix business. It's too much choice. It's just too much. So I I like that now you have these, let's say, radio shows on podcasts, these music shows, music podcasts, where it's like, it's like the old school DJ show on the radio.
I just tune in, I hear somebody speak energetically and there's music, and they pick the music for me and I kind of tune into the type of genre that they like. I like that. I think that's a good development.
[00:44:24] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. I think, a good example. I think of where things are going is what we're seeing with YouTube. I hate to say that, but I mean, a lot of people in the industry are gonna like, oh, you know, we don't like YouTube because they're too controlling and stuff like that. But I think they are a good example of maybe where we probably should be around analytics and, and the way people kind of find new content. It's based on, on suggestions and things like that. But my worry of that is that it you know, people get too reliant on that, and that they don't try and search out and find content, quite like they used to.
And I think and also just the the, like you said, just the number of choices that are out there makes it very difficult. And I think if you look at a lot of the podcast consumption platforms, The exception, is YouTube because they have this whole algorithmic display. And I think we're starting to see it come to Spotify and other platforms where, shows are being suggested to people based on their prior behavior. The problem that that runs into is that, you know, unless those algorithms have the ability to build in, serendipitous discovery of of various shows, which I do think that YouTube is playing around with this, where you don't want to just suggest, content to people that is in there.
Exactly. Just in their little tiny limited bubble of exposure to content. Right. Because then it creates people that are very siloed into, seeing only certain types of content, and that's that's harmful to people's perception. Granted, there's a lot of pressure to only deliver to people what they wanna see. But but that's always been the challenge here. This personalization stuff that we've been talking about for many, many years comes with some baggage. And that baggage is is that, people only consume content that they want to consume, or agree with. Right. And I think that's, that's where we run into a little bit of a of a challenge here. You know, there needs to be an opportunity for people to discover content that challenges their, their worldviews.
And that's really, I think at the end of the day, that's, that's really where we're seeing this struggle right now is that people are aligning ideologically with content and they're only consuming, a certain type of, ideology. And they're not opening themselves out to like, maybe you, you know, watching both sides and then making a decision between 2 different views or multi, you know, I think there's like 10 different views on everything. So how do you, you know, decide yourself? And I started a show called trust factor. Also, I've done many, many episodes, and I think that's the number one challenge that we all have is, and as we move into this AI era, how do we trust the content that we see, increasingly? And, and to some degree, that's why I'm playing around with live content now with live video, because I'm doing multiple live shows now is that that may be the only way that we can be mostly assured that the content that we're seeing is authentic and real is when it's live versus prerecorded can be created by an AI engine, or it can be created and it can be fabricated or whatever. I know, YouTube just put out a new policy statement that they're they're they're basically saying that, if you use AI content or AI to generate your content for YouTube and it includes deceptive or manipulative content, then it's gonna be taken down. So so there is a gauntlet getting thrown down around AI generated content.
That's not necessarily to include, like, how you pre produce a show. Like, so let's say use AI to come up with an outline or a script or something like that. I think that's acceptable. I think what what they're concerned about is AI video, basically, representing the president of the United States or someone saying something that they didn't say, or giving people, like, fake information. Now granted that takes us down this path of moderation also, that's gonna be required, but AI may put us in a position where content moderation is going to have to occur. The question gets back to is, you know, how are we going to distinguish between what's real and what's not from a consumption side?
And, and all of us are going to need to develop very advanced kind of, BS filters is what I like to call it. You know, are there things that we can look for in the content or in our, our understanding of, of people in, in the world? And, and it may force people to kind of back off from, exposing themselves to this kinda crazy world that we're coming into with AI, because it's just it forces people to have to, think too much and analyze things and research things to to to really solve a a president of United States says something crazy, that is just unbelievable and it creates this firestorm. Well, you have to ask the question, did he really say that, or did somebody just create that?
Right. Yeah. That's gonna be very difficult.
[00:50:14] Barry Luijbregts:
I think, we're this close to being at the point where you have no idea what, what is actually generated or not audio that is indistinguishable. Yeah.
[00:50:25] Rob Greenlee:
Which pretty good. I have to say, I mean, I mean, I mean, I could basically do this thing where I, I voice and create a transcript. Yeah. And, and then take that transcript and apply it to a cloned version of myself and actually reproduce the whole thing, in an AI voice and put it out. And it probably would sound just like me. Nobody would know that it was AI generated.
[00:50:54] Barry Luijbregts:
No. And, yeah. So that's gonna be very difficult, OpenAI with their SoR and there will be different platforms as well. Oh, especially on the video side. Right. That's gonna be crazy. But I think, like you said, probably the only thing that we can do as consumers is be critical and to, you know, wonder why is this person saying this? What this doesn't make sense. Perhaps, you know, because we can't rely on the platforms to detect all that stuff, because at some point it will just be undetectable. Yeah. And sometimes
[00:51:25] Rob Greenlee:
I think people need to pull back and realize, you know, let's apply some common sense here. Right. And I think that that is something that people kind of lose sight of. And I see this a lot on Twitter too. It's almost like there's like this cognitive dissonance between, common sense and kind of inflaming people's reactions and trying to get clicks. So you have this, and there's a danger there that you can come across looking like a hypocrite, or you can kind of come across looking like you're, misrepresenting something, based on your own personal bias. And and I'm not sure that that is a good place for us to go go towards, but people are increasingly making money from, you know, clicks and, audience growth based on telling kind of half truths or exaggerated stories or taking old content and putting it out as though it's new, is also another thing I'm seeing start to grow and develop.
[00:52:30] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah, it it's interesting.
[00:52:32] Rob Greenlee:
It is interesting. You know, it's always, it's always funny and it's entertaining to see. And that's kind of how I look at it. Oftentimes it's like, well, I hope, most people that see this don't really take this entirely seriously. Just take it for what it is and, and, you know, add it to your list of experiences, but, maybe just kind of like, don't, don't take it as entirely true or real.
[00:53:00] Barry Luijbregts:
No, exactly. And he was your common sense. Right? Exactly.
[00:53:03] Rob Greenlee:
Yep. So press is hard to come by. These days. Yeah. Definitely.
[00:53:11] Barry Luijbregts:
So, perhaps we can, we can close out on, a couple of positive practical things. Yeah. You've been, podcasting and creating media for a very, very long time. So what would you say to, podcast creators, podcasters right now that are either thinking of starting a podcast or are in the midst of, they're already created creating a podcast. What are, let's say 3 very practical tips that they can use to create their best podcast and succeed at what they are doing, whatever their their, definition of success is?
[00:53:48] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah, I think that's a challenging question to answer right now, because I think that with all of the changes that are happening in the media landscape right now, I think it's, it's increasingly being clear to me that, content creators that are able to make creating content look easy and authentic and real, but also drive value to the the viewer or the listener, I think is is key. You know, it's a little bit why I, I decided to get all in on creating content again was, is that I think that the media landscape is, is evolving and changing. And I think, increasingly there's so many, so much content choice out there now that you really have to, think about what you're doing and the purpose of it. And increasingly, I'm hearing this concept around community, building community, not audiences.
And that implies, building direct human connections with others and especially coming out of the pandemic and, and this gen Z population that is increasingly, becoming content consumers. They have a, a intrinsic need to connect at a deeper level, and, and to connect with others. And if you can foster those kinds of, you know, I hate to say, but emotional connections, with, viewers of your content, I think that is, that was a very powerful thing. And one of the best ways to do that is to be authentic and, and real and, and be who you are and, and create content that, is really focused on trying to drive values. And I know, specifically, I'm increasingly hearing that, especially on, on YouTube, if you're creating content for, for YouTube is just getting pretty specific on what your value equation is and solve people's problems and give people choices in their lives.
I do see a lot of content creators, playing into the, the the negative narrative, around creating controversy and trying to spin things up as kind of like a disaster scenarios type of a thing is that the world's collapsing. And, and, you know, I've got the tips for surviving and all those kinds of things, which was plays into a certain degree of, creating fear in your audience. And so it's a little bit of a manipulation. I think you have to think about these things. So you have to really decide what your mission is, what your focus is of why you're doing what you're doing, what your talents are, and try and match it up best with, any content that you you you create.
I'm I'm struggling with this myself of trying to get clear on what my role is going forward. I've I've been doing many podcasts about podcasting for many years. But I'm trying to expand my, my horizon. And if, if you, as a, as a new content creator, want to get into creating, creating media and really kind of building a channel for yourself. I think it's, it's, it's a combination of getting specific, in a niche, but it's also, there's an opportunity of just kind of like being human with people and talking to them as, as though they're there with you and and not I'm getting this trend towards, simplicity of content now.
People are have been bombarded with overproduced content and overproduced videos, and and and even audio has a factor here too. So having having maybe just simpler content is maybe a a way to stand out is, it's basically now when I say simpler, not simpler from the content value itself, but simpler in the production, and how it's presented. Maybe the trend of the future here though. There's gotta be a lot of content creators. And, you know, you look at like a Mr. Beast couldn't be any more highly produced content then, but he's, he's trying to cater to a whole different market now of this reality TV, type of experience.
And that requires, a lot of production. Right. But shows like what we're doing right here may actually be good at connecting to a niche audience and it may not have 200,000,000 views, but it'll, it'll have a good chunk of people that maybe you as a content creator want to reach. And I think that's, that's, that's how I'm increasingly thinking about this opportunity. So, and then being as versatile as you can on as many platforms as you can being a podcast, I think is a great place to be. Doing some video is a great place to be as well in, in connection with that. I'm increasingly doing full episodes on video and taking that audio and putting it out as a podcast. So when I think about the video production, I'm, I'm thinking about the audio side too. So, so I can just produce once and repurpose into a, into a variety of experiences out there.
[00:59:13] Barry Luijbregts:
Right. Yeah. I think that is, very valuable. So listeners and, and, and just consumers are looking for value and for authenticity and authenticity. Then you can create by not overproducing all your stuff and just, you know, bringing it out as you go or doing a live for instance, and recording that live. Yeah, I think live is an important takeaway. I think,
[00:59:35] Rob Greenlee:
is a live will ride through this AI revolution. If you can build a community around live, you're kind of immune to the AI kind of filter, hopefully, you know, unless they come up with an AI that can, host a live show, which probably at some point will probably happen. So you can imagine, you know, me being an AI, and hosting a live show and being able to take questions and comments from the audience and answer them. And it's all AI. It's probably coming, but it's not here and it won't be here for quite a while. I don't think.
[01:00:15] Barry Luijbregts:
I hope not because I think we're still, we, we want this human connection, right? That this people are great thing and we, we need that. It's, it's a good thing.
[01:00:24] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. Yeah. Unless they eventually we'll see the, optimus robot from Tesla have started doing podcasts. So we'll, that would be interesting. So it'll be like a downloadable plugin to the Optimus robot. It's the podcaster app that runs in the, the Optimus robot that will host podcasts.
[01:00:46] Barry Luijbregts:
So interesting times to be alive. That's that's fair.
[01:00:50] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. All right.
[01:00:51] Barry Luijbregts:
Thank you very much for, for being on the show and for sharing your wisdom with, my audience.
[01:00:57] Rob Greenlee:
I'm sure they get lots of value from this. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I appreciate you having me on. Good luck with the program with the platform. I think your your hosting platform is terrific looking, and I think you're in a in a position to innovate. So I think that's that's always awesome. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Great. Alright. Thank you.
And to some degree, that's why I'm playing around with live content now with live video because I'm doing multiple live shows now is that that may be the only way that we can be mostly assured that the content that we're seeing is authentic and real is when it's live versus prerecorded can be created by an AI engine or it can be created and it can be fabricated or whatever.
[00:00:25] AI voice:
Welcome to about podcasting, a show for podcasters. We talk about podcasting practices, tools, successes, and failures mixed with interviews and music. Hosted on podhome.fm, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
[00:00:43] Barry Luijbregts:
Alright. Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting. And in this episode, I interview Rob Greenlee, who's been in the podcasting space for decades now and knows a lot about it. He's an absolute legend. You can find ways to connect with Rob in the show notes and also at robgreenlee.com. That is robgreenlee with double e at the end.com. We talk about many things, including free speech, the future of podcasting and media in general, AI, and so much more. Now I like to do these interviews more as a conversation, so we'll dive right in immediately.
Enjoy. But, yeah, we, it launched in November last year. That's, 2023. Okay. And I've been building for a while before that, of course, because, I mean, it's a lot of work.
[00:01:41] Rob Greenlee:
Takes time to build something like that. Right?
[00:01:44] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And make it robust. And, you know, every every time somebody says, save, that's actually something happens in an RSS feed and a pop in goes
[00:01:52] Rob Greenlee:
type of stuff. It's always a good thing when that happens.
[00:01:56] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. But, now it it works. It's nice. It is chock full of features,
[00:02:03] Rob Greenlee:
including, lots of the modern podcasting 2.0 things like Yeah. I saw that. That's awesome that you're doing that. So I appreciate that. I mean, I've worked for a lot of podcast hosting platforms and, and some of them still today struggle with trying to add those, those elements. So I think you're kind of at the leading edge of the industry to some degree, of, of where everybody should be, but it's good. I think being small, and upstart gives you some ability to be more agile and be able to do things like that because you're not dealing with legacy code
[00:02:39] Barry Luijbregts:
That you have to. That's it. That's a, right? Yeah. So it sounds easy, you know, just add a live feature, but obviously, if you have lots of developers and you've been doing this for 10 years and you're you have lots of, legacy code, it's gonna be very difficult because things are gonna be great.
[00:02:56] Rob Greenlee:
I used to work for Lipson for about 4 or 5 years, and they they really, really struggled to, modernize their platform because they had so many users using the old platform. That trying to get people off of what they were used to doing. It's kinda like shuffling all of the locations of the food and the grocery store, and it just causes customers to be frustrated because they can't find what they're used to finding and where it is and things like that. So, yeah, and it, it looked like like 5 or 6 years to get, Lipson users to migrate over to kind of a new interface and a new design and all that stuff. Cause they were under pressure because their, their design and their interface was from the very early days of podcasting. It was very dated.
But a lot of those podcasters were used to using that interface. So there is a, a lesson to be learned there. It's not always easy to change things, for, for podcasters because they get into their kind of workflow routines and they don't like to change. No, absolutely. But it is, it's all about your approach, of course, how you do things. Yep. Yeah. And you're starting kind of from a clean slate, so you can just build the right thing to begin with. And and hopefully, over time, you're able to evolve the interface to keep up with modern trends and not get behind. Because once you get behind, you're not catching up again.
[00:04:27] Barry Luijbregts:
So Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. And so yeah. And legacy coach, you know, starts to form, as soon as you make anything.
[00:04:37] Rob Greenlee:
So Right. Exactly. Because trends are always evolving. Technology is always evolving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, it it's it's it's doing its thing. We're getting the word out there. It's
[00:04:48] Barry Luijbregts:
snowballing, you know, people, word-of-mouth advertising. Yeah. And, it's working. So some, some good podcasts are coming over. Most of the customers that I get are people that are moving away from other platforms because they want new features or they Yeah. More things.
[00:05:05] Rob Greenlee:
That's fine. Yeah. And that's great. So Yeah. Well Yeah. I think that the trend line around the podcasting 2.0 side is is definitely, growing in its awareness and its popularity. I saw that, mister Adam Curry was, had a video that was played at podcast movement, about kind of his podcast index and what was going on with podcast 2 point o. So it is starting to get into people's consciousness. And when Apple Apple decided to support the transcript tag from the podcast 2.0 project, it's it definitely, made a difference.
[00:05:45] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Absolutely. So it's becoming more mainstream, and I think,
[00:05:50] Rob Greenlee:
it's getting more out of the, hey, this is, this is for technical nerds and I don't know what's Yeah. Well, it still is. I mean, let's be I mean, I mean, I started at a time when I was hand coding RSS feeds, so that's that's, that's that's where we started because, I started podcasting before even Lipson existed. So it was, just one of those things that I just added the enclosure tag to my blog RSS feed. And I was podcasting, which was really insignificant to me at the time because I was on the radio and on the XM satellite radio network and all that stuff with the show. I was, I was just making my MP3 available to be downloaded. So that's really all it was for me back then.
It just has evolved into something much more now. And in the early days of podcasting, there was a lot of video, in RSS, back, back in the early days of the medium. And that kind of disappeared because of the growth of YouTube. And now it's starting to come back again.
[00:06:53] Barry Luijbregts:
Oh, okay. And, and back in the day, were there, were there even any podcast players play that, that, your audio?
[00:07:02] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. So apple first supported podcasting back in 2,000. Was it 2,006? But podcasting actually started in September of 2004. And that's, that's when I started podcasting. That was, there wasn't any big podcast, listening apps back in those days. It it was really just a couple of, you know, hacked together kind of applications that were running. And then those applications typically work with the, like, the, the Windows Media Player software and Apple Itunes software. It basically transferred the audio file into those platforms that then connected with an m MP 3 player. So Yep. It was like a 3 step process to some degree, because those big platforms weren't yet supporting RSS. So so and then there was also feed readers, which were really more of a a text based kind of syndication approach with RSS.
And then over time, those feed readers, were were starting to embrace the ability to capture an MP 3 file, with the text. And that's that's kinda how we kind of evolved into, what's happening today. And we don't see feed readers anymore because, the tech there's really no reason for it anymore, because of how technology has evolved. But yeah. Yeah. So it's Yeah. It's it's interesting. So what's next is AI integration and that whole, whole move. Yeah. But if you wanted to up more officially start the interview, we can, we can do that. And if you wanted to use these sound bites for your lead in or something like that, you can do that too. Yeah, no, it, this is totally fine. I,
[00:08:54] Barry Luijbregts:
you know, let's just have a conversation and, we'll record it and, and that's it. And that's kind of you. Right? So, let's continue on this trend because I was looking at your LinkedIn, which is extremely long. You've been involved in, in podcasting, like you just said, for a very long time already. I do a lot with Microsoft, so that immediately caught my eye that I see here, you know, Zune podcast and video program lead around, 2007.
[00:09:24] Rob Greenlee:
I remember the can you maybe explain what that was? Oh, the Zune? Is that what you're asking? Yeah. Yeah. It was the kind of a competitive platform and hardware device that was trying to compete with the, iPad back in those days. So I got hired in, like, 2007 to manage the the podcast area of this new platform that, Microsoft was building out. So they had started the Zune. It's basically a portable media player, and then it also had, like, a companion software client, called called the Zune marketplace. And and so I was working for another startup company in Seattle at the time that was involved in, more mobile focused podcast distribution.
So in the early days of this this medium and but, Microsoft wanted to add podcasts to their music offering, as, like, their second content area in their platform. And so I was I was brought in to help them build out the catalog and do do the merchandising and kinda be the spokesperson for that platform for them. And I worked there for about almost 7 years. And then that that platform rolled into Xbox. And so for for a few years there, I worked in Xbox, on podcasting. And then and then eventually, the company back in 2014 shut the podcast area down.
It was about in the same time frame when, Windows Phone was basically getting shut down too, because the platform had evolved into working primarily with Windows Phone. So I I managed all the content that was in Windows Phone for podcasting for for about 3 or 4 years, because we had actually stopped making the zoom portable player, which is the last zoom that was made. It was called the zoom HD. Yeah. And it was a fairly large screen kind of portable media player device that had a browser built into it. And it had digital radio. It had all sorts of capabilities at a, had a very advanced kind of, well, video screen, that actually played video podcasts. So, and then also built into the Microsoft platform, Zoom video podcasts into windows media center.
And there's a lot of, folks that may not be familiar with windows media center because it's no longer, exists. Actually got shut down many years ago now, but that was the Microsoft platform for televisions. So it was back in the cable era. So it was an alternative to get getting like a cable box or a or a Roku or or a TiVo or something like that. It was kinda like more of a you know, you could put a PC under your TV and be able to to watch TV, via Windows computer, and that's kind of how it worked. So that's what I worked on also was, making video podcasts available on televisions. And this was probably back in 2010 timeframe, is when I did that.
[00:12:54] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. That, you know, doesn't sound that long ago, but it's back. It's, oh, long ago. I, I remember this one. It was a pretty great, product and windows phone as well. Back in the day, I was, oh, yeah. It's awesome. It was awesome. No, I do too. I do too. I've I was a, I'm a huge fan of, I still have like 2 or 3 of them in my drawer over here, but
[00:13:18] Rob Greenlee:
I don't use them anymore. I have an iPhone now.
[00:13:20] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I had a Nokia Lumia, which is great. Yeah. I have one. Yeah. I can't get to it here, but Yeah. I have one right here. But App app for nonexistence and the and the ecosystem never got off off the ground. But, yeah.
[00:13:34] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. Well, they sold quite a few phones. They sold, you know, millions and millions of phones. It just, didn't compete directly with, Android and and the the iPhone. Really what killed Windows Phone was, the the app developers just didn't support the platform. And that that's what really cut down on the ability of the platform to really support, you know, be be a good platform for for users. And that's that's what really killed it in the end.
[00:14:10] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. But anyways, that's the so that's great devices. And now we have lots of, different devices, all and more modern devices, more more things are coming. But let's let's circle back because, you were in the early days and adding audio to your blogs. And so so what attracted you to audio and and broadcasting in the first place?
[00:14:33] Rob Greenlee:
Well, I certainly didn't have any kind of, you know, official, training or went to college for radio or anything like that. So when I started this, I was really a marketing guy. So I was doing a lot of marketing and advertising and things like that in the, in the nineties. And and and as we rolled into the 2000, I was starting to get more involved in the Internet and what was happening with that. And so it's this convergence of my interests around kind of, more traditional marketing and advertising is what really got me thinking about media. And then as we saw the Internet really start to grow, I could just see it as such a compelling kind of content marketing platform and and be able to reach directly to, customers or users or whatever, directly utilizing media, audio, and and video. I mean, obviously, video wasn't quite as big in the early days, but it it certainly, leap forward very, very quickly, as we kind of evolved. And and then we saw it, you know, YouTube kind of start up and that that really kind of accelerated the whole thing.
[00:15:53] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And, so, you know, there was already video then and and audio as well. What do you think, a podcast is or or should be? Is it audio only or also video, or does it matter even?
[00:16:10] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. I mean, it is a a little bit of a issue where the industry, the modern podcasting industry thinks of themselves and they have for multiple years now have primarily thought of themselves as an audio only medium. But what oftentimes is, people forget is, and I think I mentioned this earlier, it was, it was very much an audio and video medium, and it's really for all intents and purposes, it's always been that. It's just that we saw a heavy influx of interest in audio only type of content over the last I don't know if it's the last 6 or 7 years, and that's what it really has propelled podcasting forward.
I mean, YouTube has always been there, you know, and it's always been a piece of a podcaster strategy, but it's never been, you know, we saw this kind of a divide between audio and video, after about probably, it started to happen probably in the 2009 time frame, is when we started to see some really large audio podcasts really start to take off. I mean, a lot of the comedians got involved in podcasting, like Mark Maron or Joe Rogan. They all, mister Adam Carolla, those folks really kind of took audio podcasting to another level. And most of those guys really didn't do a lot of video back in those days. So, so, so then we also saw a serial and, and those were all pretty much audio only, content.
And so and YouTube was still over here chugging away. And there were some podcasters that were doing video with their podcast and then others were were doing live streaming. I know I started doing a live streaming show. That was also a audio and video podcast probably, like, 13 years ago myself. It's the it's the new media show behind me here. I've been doing that for a long time. And so this kind of convergence between audio and video was starting to come back again to some degree. And then eventually YouTube realized that they were they were a significant player in the podcast consumption space.
But YouTube has always had, a team that was focused on podcasts. It working with the larger podcasters to get them to publish some video over onto YouTube and trying to support those content creators, especially the larger creators, and trying to encourage them to to put up at least clips or put up you know, and trying to build kind of like a marketing program. And there's been various times that the YouTube platform has been very supportive of podcasting. And it's just been over the last year to year and a half that we've seen that the YouTube folks say, well, you know, let's create a podcast playlist. And, and then over time, they kind of move towards trying to get, you know, some support for RSS in the ingestion part into podcasting.
And they've, they rolled that out. It was really kind of a, a bumpy ride for them. And, and, but that's oftentimes the case. I mean, I, I went through the process of working with Spotify in the early days of their entry into podcasting too. And that was extremely bumpy for them as well because podcasting is a little bit different than what a lot of these platforms, recognize as normal and what they, what they typically expect in working with media. Because you have a lot of people that came from traditional media that have been working for those companies and, and they think of things in a way that's a little contrary to the ideology around podcasting, which is open and free distribution and, and trying to be at the cutting edge of medium media and not trying to support kinda legacy kind of approaches to to media consumption and distribution.
So so that's been that's been the struggle for the whole time of podcasting is because podcasting came out of an era where people were were saying, you know, stick it to the man. You know, we're un uncontrolled distribution. We can't be controlled. We can't be, moderated. We can't be told what to do or not not to do. So it was really kind of a rebel medium, and it really kinda came out of the era of Napster, where where the MP 3 files were freely shared and people were free from the, the oversight of what was perceived at the time to be people that were trying to control distribution of content. Right? So if if it was a radio company or a television network or a studio that said only this content can be, made available, that kind of broke that. Right? It said that anybody can create content. It kind of leveled the playing field of sorts. And that's what that's what the foundation of podcasting really is, is is being more open to contributions from, anyone. Right? And to some degree, if you think about where we are with the social platforms, they've really kind of adopted, kind of a so a podcasting approach to content creation and really made it, available to anyone. So if you think about Facebook or even LinkedIn or X or any of these platforms, they really have a podcasting mentality behind them where, where anyone can create content. And that's where podcasting really, really started.
[00:22:19] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Really the content, creator's era, right? With podcasting and also media, YouTube, TikTok, and all that stuff where everybody can create anything really.
[00:22:30] Rob Greenlee:
User generated content. You know, it even has its own kind of acronym, UGC. Right.
[00:22:39] Barry Luijbregts:
So let's round this, part of the, video, thing out. So I myself use podcasts when I'm doing stuff. Right. I'm, I'm driving, I'm cleaning, I'm making dinner or something, and I'm listening to a show. So for me, audio only is perfect because I'm not, not looking at things. I'm doing other things. Yeah. Right. I, I cannot imagine myself sitting in front of a television or something and watching a 3 hour, interview that Lex Fridman does or something. So I think it's different use cases for the different meetings.
[00:23:14] Rob Greenlee:
How do you Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. I think people different people have different preferences for what they how they wanna consume the content. And I think that's part of what's happening right now is that, the market or the consumption side is kind of expecting from the content creator that they're offering, a a choice in how to consume this content and in what form. And some people like to watch, some people like to listen. So, you know, if you want to reach everyone and increasingly the research is showing that that some people like to do a little bit of both, right? Yeah. If they happen to be at home and they have some extra time and they have the ability with their big screen television to pop up YouTube or to pop up, you know, like through a Roku TV or something like that, they can, it can consume, video podcast per se, just like they do any kind of cable TV channel.
Or they can, they can get in the car and drive down the road and listen to the same show. Right. And, and in audio only, or they can do it while they're going out for a walk or walking the dog or at the gym or something like that. So I think there, this flexibility of consumption, behavior is really key here. And I think that's why we're seeing what's happening. The kind of anomaly here is the shorts. Right? Short form content in podcasting has really never been really much of a thing. There's been a lot of people that have said that, you know, short is better. People have short attention spans. My pushback on that is, is that, you know, that that commentary is really kind of ignoring the facts. Because if you look at what's been happening in these platforms is that sure, short content is is popular, for a certain consumption behavior.
But long form continues to be increasingly adopted. Just look at x as a great example. They started out with a 140 characters, and they've been slowly over the many years. Now it's up to at one point, it moved up to 280 characters, and and now it's up to basically, you know, 5 or 10000 words or something like that. So, you know, the expansion of of long form content is much more significant than a lot of people wanna give it credit for because long form content tends to be more in-depth and more engaging. It's difficult in podcasting to deliver value in a short chunk of of, audio.
So I think it's much more easy to be done in video because you can communicate a lot more, much more rapidly in a video experience than you can in an audio experience because, you know, like a 2 minute audio show is a, it's probably only as good as like maybe, you know, doing a passage from the Bible or doing, like a horoscope update or something like that. But that's about as far as it goes in my opinion.
[00:26:22] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I I agree. And again, there's different use cases. Right? So, short form audio can be, or video can be great for instance, for like you have a little clip from your podcast. Right? That works. Then, then you get people to, to go to the podcast, say, this looks interesting. Let's go and watch that or listen to it. Yeah.
[00:26:42] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. So it's interesting, you know, the mix and the choice that we all have as consumers of content now is, is getting, wider and wider. And I think that there is a limit to how much a content creator can actually engage at all these different form factors of content. But that's another conversation. That's where AI is going to come in and help.
[00:27:05] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. That's, where lots of platforms, headliner also, at Pothome. I we do that as well. Right? So we create tips, and then you can easily share those on social media. Blueberry does it now as well, and and more do that as well, just to make it easier because you can't just, it takes so much time to create all that stuff as a creator. It does. Yeah. It's nuts.
[00:27:29] Rob Greenlee:
Everybody has to live a life too, not just play away in front of their their computer all day. Right? Yeah.
[00:27:36] Barry Luijbregts:
So so let's, okay. That that was a video thing. Right? And then you said something very interesting after the video thing about, podcasting kind of being born as this rebel media, this new media. That's free and open and and not controlled so that everybody can create something, and everybody basically say whatever they want about anything. Social media is kind of the same as well. However, on social media now, you see an enormous crackdown around the world, battling misinformation, disinformation, disinformation, whatever it's called, just censorship, basically.
[00:28:11] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. You can think of that what you want,
[00:28:15] Barry Luijbregts:
but do you think that's also coming for podcasting more and more?
[00:28:20] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah, I think that there's an effort in, in applying that there are, some technology companies that are pushing, trying to push into podcasting. It's, it's coming in, attached really more to, the the advertising side. So there's more of a justification for content moderation, as the advertiser brands, want to control, what type of associations that they have. It's called brand safety or brand suitability is the model, that's being increasingly applied to shows that want to be monetized. And it's it's even more broadly, I think, coming to podcast content in general across these consumption platforms, I I do think that there's increasing pressure on even just like Apple Podcasts or, Spotify to do more, kind of moderation, not unlike what we've seen happen with, YouTube.
Yep. And so what we're seeing as a, you know, some some people don't like to hear this, but as a as a result of that, we are seeing a a uptick in growth around alternative consumption platforms, like a Rumble and a True Social and things like that that are starting to play an increasing role in maintaining kind of free open speech as a reaction to the control that's coming to the more mainstream platforms. And this is this is another example of what I was talking about about this medium being a little bit of a rebel media to to some degree and is we see podcasting be associated with more and more, types of consumption experiences that attitude about a rebellion against the establishment, will increasingly grow here. So what we may see happen over time is that we have a split and a divide in in people's ideology around consumption of content. And I think we're starting to see that develop already. And a lot of people don't like to hear that. And a lot of people haven't even heard of Rumble and True Social because they're in their siloed perceptions, and they don't even know that they exist. But there's millions of people that are being attracted to alternative consumption platforms, for online content that are, still trying to maintain, this free speech type of approach. Right. And and that is, I think it's the battle for the industry as we look to the next couple of years as being very, very significant. And a lot of people really don't wanna acknowledge it, because it depends on what side of the ideological fence you happen to be on. Yeah.
[00:31:12] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. I personally, I think it's a, it's very good thing to have free speech and to be able to talk about anything from all sides, because that creates perspective and that way we can learn. Right. That's the only way we can learn.
[00:31:25] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. I agree. If we're being controlled in our access to information, I think it's a danger for all of us in our society. So I think all of us need to be able to, you know, realize that people can have their opinions. It doesn't have to inflict on your life. Just listen to what they have to say because maybe they have something that is a value to contribute, that maybe it's an idea that maybe you should be open to. That's just kind of, that's always been my approach. It's not like I've changed somehow in my approach to this. It's just that now we're, we're having to increasingly defend the ability to freely speak. And I don't, I don't take what someone says to me personally.
So that's, that's the difference, I think. And actually as a content creator, I kind of encourage that. I kind of want people to, to voice good and bad to me because I, because when they do that, I, I know that they're listening. You know, I had a radio show for many years and, and face, criticism from my audience for various guests that I had on my, my nationally syndicated radio show. And, and and you just have to accept that that people have different perceptions and different understandings about the world. And and it's and and I think it's okay. And I don't take it personally, and I don't attack them. I I actually thank people for sharing their their thoughts. And and if they keep sharing negative thoughts every week about my show, that means that they're listening.
Exactly. Right. And that's that's that's the goal of what I'm trying to do is is share information and help people. And if they see my show as entertainment or engaging their, their mind and thinking about things, and I think that's, that's always a positive thing. And I think us focusing on trying to censor that type of dialogue and conversation and cancel that out is, is, is a big mistake in our society.
[00:33:33] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I, I couldn't agree more. I think that, perhaps, and hopefully the podcast index. So the the database, the podcast index, the podcast directory, that might play a big role in this, upcoming, let's call it, battle if if other directories might be, become censored, like Apple Podcasts, for instance, Spotify. Yeah. We make That they can remain open and free, podcast index.
[00:34:01] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. I mean, I'm hopeful that that can happen. I guess it gets back to what I mean, how far down this rabbit hole that the government wants to go down of cracking down on platforms and and and platforms that are encouraging, you know, free speech and and are open to conversations that are, that are considered legal. You know, I know this is ex's approach and I know this is Elon Musk's approach too, is that, is that conversations need to be, within the bounds of the law. There's no question about that. And if I think about podcast hosting platforms, and in the context of this conversation, that's always been the case.
They the podcast hosting platforms have terms of service. Right? And these are private networks. Right? These are ply private platforms, not unlike your platform. You probably have a terms of service that is associated with your platform as well. It's a standard thing that most content distribution platforms have, and it basically specifies, what is acceptable or unacceptable on the platform. Right? And typically those terms of service have outlined, certain aspects of content that are not allowed on the platform. And then, and and that's always been accepted. Right? And but it's and it's really always centered around this concept of hate speech. Right? Which which, is basically a speech that is related to doing harm to others. And typically that's violence or physical harm. Right?
But now what's happening is, our society is expanding the definition of what hate speech is, to a point where it's basically covering, everything now that someone doesn't agree with. And that's that's where we're seeing this big change happening is is the expansion of hate speech is getting broader and broader to include more and more topics, and things like that. And that's where it's opening the the door to increasing kinda censorship opportunities. That's, that's what I've seen happening. It actually really started back with Alex Jones. I was involved in trying to deal with that situation back when I was working for Spreaker.
At the time, I was contacted by, Spotify and these platforms that were wanting to take Alex down. And they that program was available on Spreaker at the time, and it was the source of Alex Jones getting into to Spotify. Because Alex Jones was using Spreaker as a pathway to get into these bigger platforms, because they couldn't do it directly. Because Spotify had done direct deals with all the podcast hosts, to get all the content from the the podcast hosts. And that would be their only source of content because because they figured that it was probably more, reliable source. It was easier to just create an API connection between the two platforms.
So, Alex Jones couldn't submit his show directly, off of his own RSS feed into Spotify because Spotify hadn't built a pathway for that. So he had to rehost it with speaker. And so that's, that's what pulled me into the middle of that too. And and so I had, you know, as a company, we had to decide what we were gonna do, under increasing pressure from all these big platforms to take Alex down. And, ultimately, we did, have to do that. But, and there's a lot of complication to that story, but it's it it definitely is, something that really started down going down this path.
[00:37:59] Barry Luijbregts:
Right? Yeah. A slippery slope, for sure. Let's,
[00:38:04] Rob Greenlee:
let's see what happens in the next few years. It's gonna be, very interesting, especially with the upcoming elections and all that type of stuff. Yeah. There's a lot of elections that are going on around the world. This is not the US that is going on here. So there's a lot of change that's on the horizon and, and media is kind of like the, I would say it's the new focus, for politics around the world because information is becoming very powerful now. It reaches a lot of people. And and I've I was kind of very idyllic about the Internet in the early days because back when I started back in 1999, my show was all about the growth and development of the Internet and the web. So it was called, Webtalk Radio is what my early show was that was syndicated on on radio across the country, and that accent satellite radio network. And and so I was I was a proponent of the growth and development of the Internet and the web in the early days.
And it and it I had a very idyllic view of what was gonna happen. I had really at the time, I had no idea how ubiquitous it was going to get. And and and also how that that Internet could be kind of weaponized against us too. It's an opportunity, but yet at the same time, if it grows to a certain scale, it basically connects all of us together. And I think to some degree, it leaves us all kind of vulnerable to, you know, being able to be monitored and surveilled and those kind of things. And, and that's increasingly what we're seeing happen. Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:39:45] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. It these are not good developments.
[00:39:48] Rob Greenlee:
No. But it is a natural development of of technology. I I think more perspective that I applied to it. Now it makes perfect sense that we're moving into an era of, instant access to information about all of us. You know, if you think about the the internet of things, Tampa thing, where all these remote devices, are all accessing data, pulling data. We're in an era of data collection, and that is that's worth a lot of money now. I mean, a lot of advertisers and a lot of companies, really kind of need data for them to operate, and to be profitable.
And so that's that's why we're seeing that develop. I mean, a lot of ways you just follow the money and you can find out what the reasons are for things that are happening.
[00:40:41] Barry Luijbregts:
So, Yeah, absolutely. But, but there is definitely a hope on the horizon, at least. I think I'm, I'm hopeful that because of the ubiquitous access to data that also people have on, on podcast, for instance, on, on on some social platforms that aren't that censored, like x, for instance. People are finding information and they're broadening their horizons and, yeah, educating themselves. They're doing their own research, let's say. But it's good. People are continue to learn and are moving away from the traditional mainstream media, which is Oh, yeah. That's definitely happening. Those folks are in trouble. No question about it. Right. That's a very positive, thing, especially when with high collections coming up and people educating themselves, which is very good.
[00:41:29] Rob Greenlee:
It's the same thing with the radio. I think, radio is not like falling off a cliff or something like right now, but, it's definitely in a steady decline. I think that the audience for traditional radio is is essentially almost it's incentive insensitive for me to say it this way, but it's literally dying off. If you look at public radio here in in the United States, anyway, like an NPR or whatever, their average listener to public radio stations here in the US are typically in their upper sixties, seventies. And as those people move into retirement and then pass away over time, that audience is going away.
And and eventually, I think what we'll see is traditional broadcast radio will find that they're they're gonna be on the short end of the of the stick eventually. It's just a matter of time.
[00:42:29] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Things are changing.
[00:42:32] Rob Greenlee:
They are. They are. And the younger people are just not listening to radio as much as maybe they had in the past, and they're doing more things with online sources like Spotify or or Apple or mostly because it's being linked up with their their technology and their mobile devices. And and, and you just look at like Tesla cars or whatever. They're basically rolling iPads. So you kind of think that maybe that's the future and that, you know, fewer and fewer cars are gonna have a radio dial in them. Now granted, I can access I've got a Tesla myself. I can access local radio stations in my Tesla. I can, but I have to open up a certain app and I have to go into a certain experience and I have to be very deliberate about it. It's not like it's gonna turn on automatically when I get in the car.
[00:43:23] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. But, so let me try and bridge that to, like, the future of of podcasting, like what's happening right now, for instance, with, music in podcasts, with podcasting 2.0, the the current model of streaming where I can go to Spotify and I can choose from all the songs that ever existed. That's that's amazing. That's amazing technology. Absolutely. But it's also, I don't know what to pick anymore. The same as with with Netflix business. It's too much choice. It's just too much. So I I like that now you have these, let's say, radio shows on podcasts, these music shows, music podcasts, where it's like, it's like the old school DJ show on the radio.
I just tune in, I hear somebody speak energetically and there's music, and they pick the music for me and I kind of tune into the type of genre that they like. I like that. I think that's a good development.
[00:44:24] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. I think, a good example. I think of where things are going is what we're seeing with YouTube. I hate to say that, but I mean, a lot of people in the industry are gonna like, oh, you know, we don't like YouTube because they're too controlling and stuff like that. But I think they are a good example of maybe where we probably should be around analytics and, and the way people kind of find new content. It's based on, on suggestions and things like that. But my worry of that is that it you know, people get too reliant on that, and that they don't try and search out and find content, quite like they used to.
And I think and also just the the, like you said, just the number of choices that are out there makes it very difficult. And I think if you look at a lot of the podcast consumption platforms, The exception, is YouTube because they have this whole algorithmic display. And I think we're starting to see it come to Spotify and other platforms where, shows are being suggested to people based on their prior behavior. The problem that that runs into is that, you know, unless those algorithms have the ability to build in, serendipitous discovery of of various shows, which I do think that YouTube is playing around with this, where you don't want to just suggest, content to people that is in there.
Exactly. Just in their little tiny limited bubble of exposure to content. Right. Because then it creates people that are very siloed into, seeing only certain types of content, and that's that's harmful to people's perception. Granted, there's a lot of pressure to only deliver to people what they wanna see. But but that's always been the challenge here. This personalization stuff that we've been talking about for many, many years comes with some baggage. And that baggage is is that, people only consume content that they want to consume, or agree with. Right. And I think that's, that's where we run into a little bit of a of a challenge here. You know, there needs to be an opportunity for people to discover content that challenges their, their worldviews.
And that's really, I think at the end of the day, that's, that's really where we're seeing this struggle right now is that people are aligning ideologically with content and they're only consuming, a certain type of, ideology. And they're not opening themselves out to like, maybe you, you know, watching both sides and then making a decision between 2 different views or multi, you know, I think there's like 10 different views on everything. So how do you, you know, decide yourself? And I started a show called trust factor. Also, I've done many, many episodes, and I think that's the number one challenge that we all have is, and as we move into this AI era, how do we trust the content that we see, increasingly? And, and to some degree, that's why I'm playing around with live content now with live video, because I'm doing multiple live shows now is that that may be the only way that we can be mostly assured that the content that we're seeing is authentic and real is when it's live versus prerecorded can be created by an AI engine, or it can be created and it can be fabricated or whatever. I know, YouTube just put out a new policy statement that they're they're they're basically saying that, if you use AI content or AI to generate your content for YouTube and it includes deceptive or manipulative content, then it's gonna be taken down. So so there is a gauntlet getting thrown down around AI generated content.
That's not necessarily to include, like, how you pre produce a show. Like, so let's say use AI to come up with an outline or a script or something like that. I think that's acceptable. I think what what they're concerned about is AI video, basically, representing the president of the United States or someone saying something that they didn't say, or giving people, like, fake information. Now granted that takes us down this path of moderation also, that's gonna be required, but AI may put us in a position where content moderation is going to have to occur. The question gets back to is, you know, how are we going to distinguish between what's real and what's not from a consumption side?
And, and all of us are going to need to develop very advanced kind of, BS filters is what I like to call it. You know, are there things that we can look for in the content or in our, our understanding of, of people in, in the world? And, and it may force people to kind of back off from, exposing themselves to this kinda crazy world that we're coming into with AI, because it's just it forces people to have to, think too much and analyze things and research things to to to really solve a a president of United States says something crazy, that is just unbelievable and it creates this firestorm. Well, you have to ask the question, did he really say that, or did somebody just create that?
Right. Yeah. That's gonna be very difficult.
[00:50:14] Barry Luijbregts:
I think, we're this close to being at the point where you have no idea what, what is actually generated or not audio that is indistinguishable. Yeah.
[00:50:25] Rob Greenlee:
Which pretty good. I have to say, I mean, I mean, I mean, I could basically do this thing where I, I voice and create a transcript. Yeah. And, and then take that transcript and apply it to a cloned version of myself and actually reproduce the whole thing, in an AI voice and put it out. And it probably would sound just like me. Nobody would know that it was AI generated.
[00:50:54] Barry Luijbregts:
No. And, yeah. So that's gonna be very difficult, OpenAI with their SoR and there will be different platforms as well. Oh, especially on the video side. Right. That's gonna be crazy. But I think, like you said, probably the only thing that we can do as consumers is be critical and to, you know, wonder why is this person saying this? What this doesn't make sense. Perhaps, you know, because we can't rely on the platforms to detect all that stuff, because at some point it will just be undetectable. Yeah. And sometimes
[00:51:25] Rob Greenlee:
I think people need to pull back and realize, you know, let's apply some common sense here. Right. And I think that that is something that people kind of lose sight of. And I see this a lot on Twitter too. It's almost like there's like this cognitive dissonance between, common sense and kind of inflaming people's reactions and trying to get clicks. So you have this, and there's a danger there that you can come across looking like a hypocrite, or you can kind of come across looking like you're, misrepresenting something, based on your own personal bias. And and I'm not sure that that is a good place for us to go go towards, but people are increasingly making money from, you know, clicks and, audience growth based on telling kind of half truths or exaggerated stories or taking old content and putting it out as though it's new, is also another thing I'm seeing start to grow and develop.
[00:52:30] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah, it it's interesting.
[00:52:32] Rob Greenlee:
It is interesting. You know, it's always, it's always funny and it's entertaining to see. And that's kind of how I look at it. Oftentimes it's like, well, I hope, most people that see this don't really take this entirely seriously. Just take it for what it is and, and, you know, add it to your list of experiences, but, maybe just kind of like, don't, don't take it as entirely true or real.
[00:53:00] Barry Luijbregts:
No, exactly. And he was your common sense. Right? Exactly.
[00:53:03] Rob Greenlee:
Yep. So press is hard to come by. These days. Yeah. Definitely.
[00:53:11] Barry Luijbregts:
So, perhaps we can, we can close out on, a couple of positive practical things. Yeah. You've been, podcasting and creating media for a very, very long time. So what would you say to, podcast creators, podcasters right now that are either thinking of starting a podcast or are in the midst of, they're already created creating a podcast. What are, let's say 3 very practical tips that they can use to create their best podcast and succeed at what they are doing, whatever their their, definition of success is?
[00:53:48] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah, I think that's a challenging question to answer right now, because I think that with all of the changes that are happening in the media landscape right now, I think it's, it's increasingly being clear to me that, content creators that are able to make creating content look easy and authentic and real, but also drive value to the the viewer or the listener, I think is is key. You know, it's a little bit why I, I decided to get all in on creating content again was, is that I think that the media landscape is, is evolving and changing. And I think, increasingly there's so many, so much content choice out there now that you really have to, think about what you're doing and the purpose of it. And increasingly, I'm hearing this concept around community, building community, not audiences.
And that implies, building direct human connections with others and especially coming out of the pandemic and, and this gen Z population that is increasingly, becoming content consumers. They have a, a intrinsic need to connect at a deeper level, and, and to connect with others. And if you can foster those kinds of, you know, I hate to say, but emotional connections, with, viewers of your content, I think that is, that was a very powerful thing. And one of the best ways to do that is to be authentic and, and real and, and be who you are and, and create content that, is really focused on trying to drive values. And I know, specifically, I'm increasingly hearing that, especially on, on YouTube, if you're creating content for, for YouTube is just getting pretty specific on what your value equation is and solve people's problems and give people choices in their lives.
I do see a lot of content creators, playing into the, the the negative narrative, around creating controversy and trying to spin things up as kind of like a disaster scenarios type of a thing is that the world's collapsing. And, and, you know, I've got the tips for surviving and all those kinds of things, which was plays into a certain degree of, creating fear in your audience. And so it's a little bit of a manipulation. I think you have to think about these things. So you have to really decide what your mission is, what your focus is of why you're doing what you're doing, what your talents are, and try and match it up best with, any content that you you you create.
I'm I'm struggling with this myself of trying to get clear on what my role is going forward. I've I've been doing many podcasts about podcasting for many years. But I'm trying to expand my, my horizon. And if, if you, as a, as a new content creator, want to get into creating, creating media and really kind of building a channel for yourself. I think it's, it's, it's a combination of getting specific, in a niche, but it's also, there's an opportunity of just kind of like being human with people and talking to them as, as though they're there with you and and not I'm getting this trend towards, simplicity of content now.
People are have been bombarded with overproduced content and overproduced videos, and and and even audio has a factor here too. So having having maybe just simpler content is maybe a a way to stand out is, it's basically now when I say simpler, not simpler from the content value itself, but simpler in the production, and how it's presented. Maybe the trend of the future here though. There's gotta be a lot of content creators. And, you know, you look at like a Mr. Beast couldn't be any more highly produced content then, but he's, he's trying to cater to a whole different market now of this reality TV, type of experience.
And that requires, a lot of production. Right. But shows like what we're doing right here may actually be good at connecting to a niche audience and it may not have 200,000,000 views, but it'll, it'll have a good chunk of people that maybe you as a content creator want to reach. And I think that's, that's, that's how I'm increasingly thinking about this opportunity. So, and then being as versatile as you can on as many platforms as you can being a podcast, I think is a great place to be. Doing some video is a great place to be as well in, in connection with that. I'm increasingly doing full episodes on video and taking that audio and putting it out as a podcast. So when I think about the video production, I'm, I'm thinking about the audio side too. So, so I can just produce once and repurpose into a, into a variety of experiences out there.
[00:59:13] Barry Luijbregts:
Right. Yeah. I think that is, very valuable. So listeners and, and, and just consumers are looking for value and for authenticity and authenticity. Then you can create by not overproducing all your stuff and just, you know, bringing it out as you go or doing a live for instance, and recording that live. Yeah, I think live is an important takeaway. I think,
[00:59:35] Rob Greenlee:
is a live will ride through this AI revolution. If you can build a community around live, you're kind of immune to the AI kind of filter, hopefully, you know, unless they come up with an AI that can, host a live show, which probably at some point will probably happen. So you can imagine, you know, me being an AI, and hosting a live show and being able to take questions and comments from the audience and answer them. And it's all AI. It's probably coming, but it's not here and it won't be here for quite a while. I don't think.
[01:00:15] Barry Luijbregts:
I hope not because I think we're still, we, we want this human connection, right? That this people are great thing and we, we need that. It's, it's a good thing.
[01:00:24] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. Yeah. Unless they eventually we'll see the, optimus robot from Tesla have started doing podcasts. So we'll, that would be interesting. So it'll be like a downloadable plugin to the Optimus robot. It's the podcaster app that runs in the, the Optimus robot that will host podcasts.
[01:00:46] Barry Luijbregts:
So interesting times to be alive. That's that's fair.
[01:00:50] Rob Greenlee:
Yeah. All right.
[01:00:51] Barry Luijbregts:
Thank you very much for, for being on the show and for sharing your wisdom with, my audience.
[01:00:57] Rob Greenlee:
I'm sure they get lots of value from this. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I appreciate you having me on. Good luck with the program with the platform. I think your your hosting platform is terrific looking, and I think you're in a in a position to innovate. So I think that's that's always awesome. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Great. Alright. Thank you.
Introduction and Authenticity in Live Content
Interview with Rob Greenlee: Podcasting Legend
Building and Launching a Podcast Platform
Podcasting 2.0 and Industry Trends
Rob Greenlee's Early Podcasting Days
Audio vs. Video in Podcasting
Content Consumption Preferences
Podcasting as Rebel Media and Free Speech
Future of Podcasting and Media
Practical Tips for Podcasters
