Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting. This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with David Allen Moss from Evergreen Podcasts. Evergreen is a premier podcast network with over 350 shows, and David shared insights into what a podcast network actually is, what they do for podcasters, and how they operate. We delved into the history of Evergreen, from its beginnings as Front Porch People to its current status, and discussed the types of content they produce, including originals, branded content, and partner shows.
David explained the passion behind Evergreen, emphasizing their love for storytelling and the diverse backgrounds of their team members, which include writers, creative directors, and musicians. We also touched on the importance of community in podcasting and how Evergreen fosters a collaborative and supportive environment.
We explored the services Evergreen provides to podcasters, such as hosting, analytics, ad management, and marketing support. David highlighted the custom relationships they build with their partners, helping them grow and monetize their shows.
Additionally, we discussed the evolving landscape of podcasting, including the rise of podcasting 2.0 and the importance of staying nimble and innovative. David shared Evergreen's future plans, including potential global expansion and continued growth in sales and partnerships.
For more information about Evergreen Podcasts, visit evergreenpodcasts.com or find them on social media at @streamevergreen. You can also connect with David Allen Moss on LinkedIn.
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[00:00:02]
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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 dot f m, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
[00:00:25] Barry Luijbregts:
Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting. And this week, I'm talking with David Allen Moss from evergreenpodcasts.com. They are a podcast network. And we talk about what a podcast network actually is, what they do for the podcaster, for the creator, how they work, why they do it. Conversations like these are great insights for me about how the podcast industry, as in with ads and revenue for podcasters, actually works. We also talk a little bit about podcasting 2.0 because I feel that, especially within companies like these, there is no awareness of it at all.
So it's always good to spread the gospel. Now without further ado, here is David Allen Moss. And so, you know, obviously, I run into Evergreen podcasts. Perhaps we can start there, what that is, and, what you do there.
[00:01:34] David Allen Moss:
Absolutely. Evergreen is a premier podcast network with over 350 shows. We're still sort of a startup minded outfit, but we certainly have grown a lot since we founded in 2017 as a a different network. We were originally founded by our founding investor as Front Porch People. Front Porch People was a smaller network, very early stage, that came out of her passion for online radio. She had a a sort of a cottage or bespoke, series of shows she had come up with and wanted to repurpose them into the podcasting space. So our CEO came on first. There was our one of her first employees who was an intern out of college is still with us. He's now the EVP of production. So we a lot of us are still along for the ride.
We made a lot of left hand turns. The content was really, it was truly evergreen content. It was classic films, movies, classic comedy, classic books. And it was really independent of that whole hosting relationship. It was just more almost encyclopedic type podcasts. And, we were looking at Wondery. We were looking at NPR. We were looking at Gimlets, and we said, you know, we we wanna do what they're doing. We wanna do it like that in our own way. And so in 2018, I think it was fall of 18, we came up with Evergreen as a network. We knew we wanted to keep doing originals.
We knew we wanted to do branded content and content marketing, and then we also knew that we wanted to grow out the network. So how do you do that? That those are the three things we do, originals, branded, and partner shows and partner networks. And so we really didn't come out of the, the gate until, podcast movement, our first conference, August of 19. I remember it because we created this little booklet, and it was so, novel because everyone's there with their screens and their postcards and stickers. And we had a little booklet that was on a network that had just started, but it seemed like we were a thing. And my whole career has been brand strategy and and, communication design, and how do you how do you package product and media. And, so we did a really bang up job coming out as Evergreen. And, and then grew from, you know, half a dozen shows and 17,000 downloads to this over 350 where we are today across, 6 networks. We've purchased a few smaller networks recently.
Most recently was the Converge network, which is, faith based shows. We also have our own motorsport sports network. It's called pitpassmotorsports.com. Mostly f 1, IndyCar, motocross, but but really more on the 4 wheels kinda racing. And then we have a political network. We have a news, entity called 5 minute dot news, which has grown into more of a video first, media. And the website itself, which we kind of have learned to to put podcasts into buckets so that we can when we get brands and advertisers, we can sell into those buckets. It's really worked out well. Mhmm. So here we are tracking for about 40,000,000, 45,000,000 downloads this year. That's a long way from 17,000.
Uh-huh. So we're happy about that. The the the curve is going in the right direction.
[00:05:27] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm I'm always trying to figure out, why something is. Right? So as I run a podcast hosting company, I know podcast. So I know so you just told me what you do. Right? You create shows and you partner with brands and all that type of stuff. But why I did the what. Yeah. Why why do that? Why would you do that? Why would you even have a, a a network like that?
[00:05:59] David Allen Moss:
Well, I think everyone that is a part of the team, the Evergreen family, has a passion for storytelling. A lot of us are writers. I've been a creative direct creative director my whole career, really, and my background is writing and visual communications and kind of working that duality along a bed of technology. Our EVP of production has a an English degree. Our CEO was a former radio host, but also has is an author of, like, 3 or 4 history books. Mhmm. Our chief content officer loves history, loves content, and he was he had his own web enterprise that was sort of, lifestyle for men kind of, you know, web content. He's a content guy.
So we're all sort of media geeks. Yeah. So it serves us that we're not selling something that we don't also have passion in. I'm also a musician. And the expression, one of our largest channels, just so happens to be music. It's in our top three in terms of listenership. So it's it's certainly a venue also for our founder to see the excitement around storytelling, because that's her passion. She really believes in the reason she called her media company, Front Porch Media Network, which is the holding company of Evergreen, is she really believes in families and friends sitting on a front porch and the kinds of stories and conversations that happen. So we're all conversationalists.
We're all, like I said, media geeks. And the why is certainly tied to the fact we identified the industry as being a real growth industry. We wanted to do something that we could really shepherd and see take off. And, ultimately, what happens? Do we roll up with another network? Does do other networks roll up with us? Probably all of the above. Yeah. You know, we've been acquiring shows through the podcast broker and, you know, finding opportunities to also invite other passionate talent from other networks. Because, you know, it's constantly shaking up. When that happens, we're able to bring folks from Spotify, folks from cast, folks from other networks that are kind of breaking apart and invite them onto the boat. Yeah.
And the boat metaphor is one of the best in podcasting because we talk about this all the time, how the mentality is all boats rise. There's a I've been in a lot of other industries related to media and technology, and this one seems to be the most convivial, collaborative, helpful. We all wanna help one another. It's a it's a different industry, and I think that's special. I think we all recognize that, and we try to, engender that in our ranks and in our in our culture, in our our company culture. So I don't know if that's the why. Okay. We do love to tell stories. Yeah. We like to joke around.
It's a very it's a lively bunch. Evergreen.
[00:09:22] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I I I'm still wondering. I'm gonna drill down a little bit on this. Right? So Sure. It seems to me that you have lots of shows. Right? Lots of podcasts. Sure. And perhaps other things, video, things, and or combinations of those. And what do you do for the podcasters? So for the creators themselves, what are what do you help them with? Why would they be with you?
[00:09:50] David Allen Moss:
Well, that's that's really important to distinguish, and I think we have to continuously do that. Most recently, we've built our out more of a global sales agency, and that's supported by a a full time in house marketing agency. So but the first line of offering to a show that would come on as a partner is is the hosting. I mean, we're a megaphone shop, so we can take the cost of hosting off their backs. We can take all of the analytical digesting and reporting off of their backs. They still have access to the tool. They can be power users, but they can also focus more on their content. We take admin, iOS, insertion orders, the the you know, all the different work that's on the ad side of things, cross promos.
We handle all of that. So we have a partner relations department that really helps with guest placements, helps with, you know, feed swaps, all of the things that we do. And, gosh, there's so many things that we do in podcasting to try to elevate a show. Our that's that's how we've built our our team. And so when you sign on with Evergreen, we come up with a revenue share, and that's really a custom conversation. That's a custom number every time. Is it 80 20, 70 30, 50 50? It depends on who's doing what. Are we helping with production? Are we doing engineering recording, you know, mixing distribution, or are we just distributing what they're creating? You know, it it all depends on how far along they are on the path.
I think when we first started that piece of the business, just about any podcast with a pulse, we'd consider bringing up to the network. And now we have to bring someone on that is more mature, or has, an incredible, trajectory that they're on. And, you know, it used to be something like you might remember when it was like, well, if you have, you know, 25 100 listens over a 30 day period per episode, that's pretty darn good. But we're we're at a much higher number in terms of us being able to take on that show and and give him the ROI. Because there's an expectation when you join a network that your growth maybe is going to accelerate.
When you join the network, it's definitely a full service, almost a turnkey relationship. But it's all relationship driven. It's not about, hey. Here are the things we do, you know, and you've got access to these things. No. It's high touch. It's a lot of conversations on the front end. It's strategy. Some podcasters come to us and, like, we're really rethinking this. Or we've got this show, but we wanna start this show. Can you help? So it's it's a full spectrum of relationships that we have with partners. Okay. Which is kinda nice. Yeah. It's a lot of work, but it's nice Yeah. That we can be that custom.
[00:13:05] Barry Luijbregts:
And then, the ultimate goal is so you help ultimately with monetizing the podcast so that you can Sure. Obviously have a share of that revenue. Right? Absolutely. And to do that, you help them grow, markets, produce, edit, guests.
[00:13:24] David Allen Moss:
In those relationships with the agencies that we've grown. We have direct brand and agency relationships. That's really where we're seeing a lot of, solid growth for all the podcasters. It's just growing our partnerships with agencies.
[00:13:42] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. And and, in the podcast community, so not per se Mhmm. Industry because industry, I'd say, is basically everything that's ads related. Podcast community is basically everything that's creator related.
[00:14:00] David Allen Moss:
Yes. We
[00:14:01] Barry Luijbregts:
we know that we only have downloads. Right? So we own we don't have listens. We don't really know if people listen unless you look at the data from Spotify, for instance, or Apple Podcast. They know that because they know when somebody clicks the button, and then who they are kinda, you know, because they log into their platform. Sure. Do you, how do you deal with that when you look at ads, and then, you know, telling the company that, that the ad is about? Like, hey. It paid off.
[00:14:34] David Allen Moss:
Right? It's just that the big education that we're struggling with is the expectation of the advertiser.
[00:14:41] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah.
[00:14:42] David Allen Moss:
You gotta wonder, you know, they're so used to broadcast. The agencies are so used to terrestrial.
[00:14:51] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah.
[00:14:52] David Allen Moss:
And it's a different mindset. And then they bring it over to podcast, and they say, well, we have this promo code, and we only did 12 of them. So, you know, that's, like, $500 a promo for a 20% off. Well, that's not really what happened there. Yeah. You had people that you know, 80% of them, if the host mentions it, eventually, they're probably gonna buy your product. The the the power of voice is so different on podcasting than it is radio, and it's measurable. And let's let's just let's just, let's just think about this for a minute. Don't just it's just sort of a knee jerk reaction that that oh, that wasn't that wasn't a winning campaign because of a certain performance metric like a promo code.
And now we're looking at other platforms, and we have to be tech geeks. I mean, we're looking at other platforms where we can do community development. We're very excited about Station dot io and building building an unbundled social and, deals and promo kinda hub for thinking of a show as a bigger brand. It's not just the podcast. It's the personality. It's the it's the extras. Yeah. So we're just starting to build these sort of hubs for a show that are that are beyond just the landing page for their web for their podcast. There are places that they can do polls and do conversations, kinda like Discord, all in one place.
I like to call it like a link tree or a power link on steroids. There's so much to it. Yeah. So we're trying to go there as well. So it's a different growth. Now we're really paying attention to the community of listeners and trying to build superfans in more of an organic and real way.
[00:16:45] Barry Luijbregts:
Have you heard of, fountain.fem, which is a listening app?
[00:16:50] David Allen Moss:
No. I have not. It it's There's my pen screen. New.
[00:16:54] Barry Luijbregts:
So Fountain FM. And that is Fountain FM. Yeah. You can you can just, look that up. It's also in the web Sure. And it is completely, podcasting 2.0 based. So what that means that, shows that are on there, they are modern shows, podcasting 2.0 shows, which usually have chapters, transcripts, clips, all that type of thing. And, also can be, if they want to be, micro transaction enabled value for value. That's the feature. What's it? That's called the podcasting 2.0. And that means that through the fountain app, somebody logs in there. You can put some fiat money in there. Like, I put $50 in your wallet there. And then you can send, you know, here's, here's a dollar for this episode with a comment.
Hey. I like this or a question or something. You don't have to. You can also just comment there. And the whole thing about FountainDot. The family is that they create a community there. People don't leave their podcast app. They just comment right there. They talk to each other. They talk to the podcasters. Podcasters reply. They like stuff. They follow stuff. It's a whole thing. And it's all right there. And the power is that it's all in the podcasting player app where you were already listening to this thing. That's very powerful because you don't have to leave and go somewhere else to to do it. Right? Because that's Exactly. And I think we're finally seeing,
[00:18:18] David Allen Moss:
there was that I'm glad you called it podcast 2.0 because it's this unbundling and re I'll call it rebundling of technologies and engagement, tactics, tools, and tech into a place that's, incentivizing, that's comfortable. And like you said I think you said the right thing. They don't have to leave. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. They can they can chat with the host either, you know, text chat or, live chat. There's all these great capabilities that are being realigned in in something like what did you call it? Phantom. No. Fountain.fm.
There's probably a phantom.fm. It's probably very different.
[00:19:03] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah.
[00:19:05] David Allen Moss:
And, I get excited about that. Because as a marketer, it's really my role as chief creative officer has evolved to more of a CMO role where I'm looking at the data. We're trying to moneyball all of these campaigns. We've put a whole lot this last 1st 6 months of the year into paid audience growth, and now we're doing a huge pivot because we have to. I like these kinds of things, and I'm sure our team will wanna look into it and just compare it to what we're trying with some others. Yeah. You have to be lab mindset. You have to be laboratory about it.
[00:19:41] Barry Luijbregts:
Absolutely. And the same goes for you mentioned, you're a megaphone shop. Right? So you host everything on the phone. They are Spotify, and they are not very very modern, as in with features like these. Right?
[00:19:55] David Allen Moss:
So I think they're slow. They move slower. Very slow. We we try to push our, our account reps at Spotify and Megaphone because we have you know, they're kind of 2 different assigned reps.
[00:20:11] Barry Luijbregts:
Mhmm.
[00:20:12] David Allen Moss:
But you're not gonna you're not gonna get them to move on features.
[00:20:16] Barry Luijbregts:
No. No.
[00:20:18] David Allen Moss:
No. I mean, they'll say, oh, we've been working on that. It took them so long to just clean up the way they report. Yeah. But they still give us kind of just a dump that we have to parse. And we have to do a lot of manual work to kind of pull the data out. Do do And I know there's some smaller hosting companies that can, like, even Captivate. Those guys over there were doing some pretty cool things early. I think there's a reason they got scooped up. Mhmm. You know, I think the smaller shops that are more design minded, they have design thinking in and inside and out of their product. They're more nimble, they're more agile, and they can move more quickly to your point. Yeah. Definitely. So do,
[00:21:02] Barry Luijbregts:
does Megaphone do, transcripts already?
[00:21:06] David Allen Moss:
Because that might be You don't know. I I don't know. And I've I've we've used Descript in the past. We might be using Rev now. I'm not sure. I get a little, I drift a little away from the day to day of production
[00:21:20] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:21] David Allen Moss:
Where I was much closer to that 4 or 5 years ago because we were smaller. Yeah. We've sort of divided off it and then divided, but we're off in our own little departments more so at Evergreen.
[00:21:35] Barry Luijbregts:
And just, let's just dive into it a little bit more of the content. Right? So Sure. Podcast is audio. You know, we mentioned the storytelling is a very powerful thing. The voice is very powerful thing. But also video for clipping and for context is also very powerful. How do you see that? Do you see more video now? Do you see a combination of that? How do you see that evolving?
[00:22:00] David Allen Moss:
You know, the I think the way we like to operate is circling back with some of our existing hosts, having the up front front conversation with new parties interested in Evergreen, joining Evergreen, and new shows that we're starting ourselves is finding you know, if this is video and this is audio, it's just finding where it makes sense for the content. So one of our for example, one of our hosts is sort of the matriarch of a major craft retail enterprise that was called Catan's. And her father started it, and she she and her 2 brothers had been running it. And it was purchased or sold out from somewhat from under her, she might say, by her brothers, to Michael's Crafts, which is, you know, the craft store next to Hobby Lobby here in North America.
She came to us. She says, I'm, you know, I'm doing this. And I I was doing the bridal thing, but I wanna get back into this. And we started an audio podcast for her. We did a first season. This was last year. And, after that season didn't take off like we had hoped, we kinda took a step back and said, well, why don't we do a video series with you? You have all this knowledge. You could be doing how to's, how to do a bridal bouquet, how to do a veil, how to do all these things. It could be bridal related, but it could also be home. It could be about design. So we thought about her brand first, who she is, Catan Designs. I designed a new brand for her, and now it's now video first, and we're getting ready to release that. We don't know how it's gonna perform, but my point is it really makes sense to think about both mediums all the time. You're gonna do you're gonna do both.
But is it just, like, clippy clips, bonus reels? Is it, is it stuff is it content marketing for social, or is it a prime piece of media that you're building off of? And so the YouTube strategies more and more we're we're playing a little catch up, but everybody else is as well. We have to know when it makes sense to be YouTube first or, you know, video first or if video is just part of the big flywheel. Yeah. And, you know, you've got your podcast either somewhere big around that or in the center of the flywheel, and then there's video and everything else all around it. It it comes down to the personality of the host, and some people don't belong on camera.
Am I allowed to say that? I don't know if I belong on camera. But, you know, some people, also are insistent. I just wanna do it. I just wanna be audio. Like, that's where I'm most passionate. I don't I don't need to be doing video. But they still need to think about how to use video to grow their audio program. So you can't divide them up anymore. They're really they're this duality that we have to think about. And, you know, now we're using the term simulcast. Yeah. When I was a kid, and I'm gonna date myself, simulcast was very exciting. My dad was an audiophile.
We had state of the art. Even when it was a tube TV, we had a Mitsubishi stereo TV that had a button simulcast. And inside the TV was a tuner, and you could tune in 100.7. And here was this live concert, and you're listening to it in stereo. You know, just, or high fidelity. And that was simulcast. Well, that means a totally different thing now. We we talk about it for sales, for ad sales. Yeah. We've kinda co opted that word.
[00:25:52] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And video is also just very different. Right? So, if you're designing for YouTube, let's say, then you need to have it very engaging. Like, the the scene, you can't just have, like, 30 minutes of talking heads. That's boring. Need some No. It needs to be something else. And audio Mhmm. If you just record this, what we're doing right now, and just put it on YouTube, there's not a lot of value in there. It's not a lot of Yeah. It's not entertaining.
[00:26:17] David Allen Moss:
Like, 2 guys talking Yeah. On screen.
[00:26:21] Barry Luijbregts:
It needs to be produced differently and and just described something. Mhmm. So the content is very different. If you look at, Direcchio, for instance, that is made for video, and then audio forms behind that, basically. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's very different.
[00:26:37] David Allen Moss:
I I for my benefit, from your point of view, talk about podcasting 2.0, and I'm not taking over the mic. I'm just curious. From your point of view, what does it mean for the for the industry?
[00:26:50] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. So podcasting 2.0, is kinda too legged. The one thing is podcastindex.org. That is a open source free podcast, directory. Just like you have Apple Podcasts, you have Spotify. Those are basically databases where podcasts live. Right? And podcast index is also one of those things. And it is open source and it brings some extra capabilities to there. So as a developer, you can use you can just query all that data. You can download a copy if you wanna play around with that. That is very useful if you're building, for instance, a podcast player app. That's very handy. And that makes you less dependent on things like Apple Podcasts or, Spotify, which are basically closed gardens because you can't really speak with those people if you're a developer. They don't talk to you.
So that's one thing. And then the extra capabilities, they come from the project that is called podcasting 2.0, which has been started by Adam Curry and Dave Jones, 4 or 5 years ago to modernize podcasting. And they do that by creating a new namespace. So in your podcast RSS feeds, that's a whole XML file that basically describes your show. Right? It has all the episodes in it, all the the data, all the show notes, all that type stuff. And they've created extra things for that. So an easier way to add chapters, easier way to add transcripts a uniform way, let's say. But all of the modern apps that then use the data from the podcast index use the same way to discover chapters, for instance, and, show those in their apps. For instance, chapters then come from a JSON file, a data file that lives somewhere in the cloud. That's the new way to do it.
Transcripts, same thing, which now Apple Podcasts in their app also has adopted recently this year, the new way of doing transcripts. They use the podcasting 2 point o standard. And there's a bunch more features that you have like identifying people, for instance, going live within a podcast app that can be audio or video, which is really cool. You can just do this and then it you can just listen to it live in an app like radio was. Right? It's really cool. Sure. And a bunch of other features, and there's more and more always coming. And that's that's very exciting.
And some hosting companies support these features, like Pod Home, the company I work for. Captivate, for instance, like you mentioned, also do a bunch of these features. Spotify obviously does not because they are Spotify. Yeah. They they don't care about that because they don't really care about podcasting too much. They're they're just a music company. They have their spin offs like Megaphone, for instance, that works for them, which is fine. And the older, bigger hosts, like you said, they are less nimble because, obviously, they have built a lot of stuff. They took them years to do and then changing them. Yeah. That that also take years to to change. And then they really need to weigh, well, do I really wanna do that? What's the benefit for me? Like, what's in it for me? But the benefit really is, on that one leg podcast index is Okay. To keep podcasting open and free. And open means, open and free from, censorship, which, for instance, Apple Podcasts and Spotify, are very, at risk of. And we'll see that, of course, when things heat up, election cycle, you know, stuff like that, things get taken down.
And I think that's not a good idea because I I I love that we are able to just talk about anything and discuss anything, because that's how we learn. Right? So so that's one thing. Yeah. We shouldn't be guarded. Just to just to sidebar.
[00:30:49] David Allen Moss:
Exactly. But there are times where I feel guarded talking about their platforms. I feel like, wow. I have a network of scale. You know, we're we're approaching the top 20 networks in the you know, we've got a lot of volume here. Like, I'm afraid to criticize the way they do business because they've already we've already run into a few of our shows getting removed from Span and and the amount of backlash and customer relations that it requires for us to to smooth that over, and yet they can't even tell us why. It's getting to antitrust time. And so I just wanna say what you not to take you off course, but I do wanna say that it seems like podcast 2.0 is creating, pathways for innovation.
Absolutely. It's it's guaranteeing competition
[00:31:47] Barry Luijbregts:
Yes. And
[00:31:49] David Allen Moss:
entrepreneurial pathways for for new products, you know, like fountain.
[00:31:56] AI voice:
Yeah.
[00:31:58] David Allen Moss:
New hosting apps, new ways to deliver content because they're holding they're holding the industry a little bit hostage with this, monopoly. It's a monopoly.
[00:32:11] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. And you then as a company, you are completely dependent on them right now. We sure are. So Yeah. Obviously, they are just a hosting company. You can always
[00:32:22] David Allen Moss:
move away. Right? It it's a lot of work, which you can because it's your Oh, I mean, we we we left Libsyn at one point. Oh, okay. We were Libsyn's shop for the 1st 2 or 3 years. So Yeah. And we looked at all the we we did a great study. It was great to see, at the time, Captivate, Simplecast, Megaphone. Those were our top 3 after some looking at about 10. Yeah. Looking good and hard, we took 6 months to decide. Yeah. But that migration was another 6 months.
[00:32:54] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah.
[00:32:56] David Allen Moss:
You know? And so the idea of moving 350 shows to something else That's a lot of work. That hosting company would have to be very, empathetic and helpful in that process. Like, as in, here's our list of shows. Let us know when they're moved over. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. We wouldn't we're not close to the idea. I always wanted us to be more of a agnostic shop. But that's a lot for a distribution and accounts team to manage. Yeah. You you know, I was in a situation whereas, digital signage and, media networks shop here in Cleveland, and we decided to be agnostic. Well, that was hard for my team, because then we decided, well, we'll whittle it down to 4. So we've probably had 3 or 4 of these top digital sinus platforms at the time. And it was very much like podcasting, and everything was still in development.
And and it was hard for the team to kinda switch gears across platforms. It would be like if if Evergreen had Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Megaphone, and Captivate, you know, you'd have to really have the mindset. You'd almost have to have product special product leaders on each platform.
[00:34:16] Barry Luijbregts:
It's all different. The data all just looks slightly different. It's no uniform thing. Yeah. It's very difficult. It's very Yeah. But we'll see. So That whole, industry is also moving and shaking up. Right? So, I don't know. Maybe Lipson's going away. There's, writings on the wall right there. One of the big hoops going away or is being bought. Maybe megaphone? Who knows? I hope not for you. But something's gonna happen this year. That's for sure.
[00:34:45] David Allen Moss:
So we'll see. Yeah. We just don't know, do we? That's part of the excitement. We've been a part of a couple deals, you know, that we had to say, you know, this is going too fast. It's sort of like the dating game. You know? That was nice. Nice dancing with you. Nice dinner out. Yeah. Have a have a good one. So it's it's fun to be playing there, but it's it's like getting out in the ocean and you're hitting some big waves. Like, you're not quite sure your vessel is, like, properly equipped for this. And what's it gonna be like when you acquire this thing?
Yeah. Did you just make a permanent storm for your own company? So we might be one of the more careful outfits in this. You know, it's funny to be around all this tumult, and we're just kinda cruising along. Maybe we got a little solar power. Maybe we got maybe we got air power and diesel. You know, it's a sailboat with a really big engine. I don't know. But we're just gonna keep cutting through all this chop. And it's worked so far because people come on the boat, and they're like, okay. Yeah. Evergreen. Steady as she goes.
It might be our Midwest underpinnings. People are like, where are you from? We're in London. They're asking, where are you from? Oh, Cleveland. Oh, Cleveland. So surprised. They're always so surprised.
[00:36:12] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. So that kinda all also already answered, what I was gonna ask, as in what, will the future hold for you? What what's next for you guys?
[00:36:22] David Allen Moss:
I think we're gonna bundle up. I think we're gonna team up. Mhmm. I think we're going to keep growing sales so that it's truly a global sales outfit. The executive team, myself, and and three others, we really believe that, you know, for us to keep the lights on, we gotta get past this. You know, we wanna be into a good place of profitability. Yeah. Because that helps everybody. That helps marketing. That helps the shows that are on the network. So we're gonna keep growing our sales acumen and our relationships with brands. And I'd like to see us.
There's conversation about a joint, venture or, acquisition of a European network. We're growing in, Asian Pacific markets. And what I understand we've got a few conversations in the pipe since the, podcast show in London. When you look at India, we should all be kind of paying attention. They're gonna explode. They are exploding. And they're doing some really interesting things. A couple folks that we've talked to well, you mentioned Hopper, but they're they're finding all of these other devices. They call them dumb phones, and they're gonna be lighting those up. And when they light them up, it's half a 1000000000 people. Yeah.
So we want our content there. I want our content there. I'm trying to get everybody else to understand. We all need to understand that, hey. Let's find the right partner in that. And we have. We've done some stuff with Geo Savan, and then we have a nice small channel called voices of India. Mhmm. And India is in our top five countries. So I'd like to I'd like to see us, support Podfest Asia next year. I'd like to see us stretch beyond you know, it's been nice to be in London because I think that's an eye opener for everyone that there's a lot of growth opportunity outside of the States. Yeah.
A lot to happen.
[00:38:42] Barry Luijbregts:
So lots to come, lots of, growth, lots of I think so. Global growth as well. I think I see. Definitely, there's lots of stuff that's gonna explode in the next few years and already is
[00:38:55] David Allen Moss:
growing up. Well, I don't know how you feel, Barry, but I also a big part of that is, hey. Let's work with what we have. When you get to the scale we're at, you can really look at what you've what you've brought together and and start going around and auditing. Yeah. You do that QA. You talk you talk the difficult talk about maybe shows that need to be sunset. Yeah. Do you have to let shows go? Those are tough conversations, but that's also where we are. It's just it's sort of like you've got your you've built your, built your boat, but now you gotta work on the boat Yeah.
Itself. Things go things go wrong otherwise.
[00:39:44] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. You can't focus on don't think. You also need to focus on quality and Yes. Sustainability for your company as in that it also works well and that you interact with. It is. It's very exciting. Okay. So let's point our audience to where they can go to find out more about Absolutely.
[00:40:07] David Allen Moss:
I think if you just start, it's evergreen podcasts dotcom. And, you can also find our channel page on Apple if you wanna, like, look at our body of work. It's not the full body because several of our shows that are partner shows don't group with our grouping on Apple. So it might be about a 100 shows on an Apple that would come under that channel page. But really evergreenpodcasts.com. Just remember, it's plural. And, everywhere that Megaphone makes our show is available, but, you know, you kinda gotta get a sense. If you wanna get a sense of the breadth of our catalog, the landing page is divided up across all channels.
There's a handy little drop down that divides everything up across channels and networks. There's a nice team page. You can get to see my mugshot along with the rest of the team. I think that's a good place to start. Okay. And find us on LinkedIn. We love having conversations out there in the LinkedIn space. We're trying to be a little bit more engaging there. And on all of our social channels, you know, that's at stream evergreen. So Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
[00:41:24] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. Excellent. I will link to all of those things in the show notes so that people can find that easily and, go check them out.
[00:41:32] David Allen Moss:
If you wanna find me, it's just David Allen Moss on on LinkedIn.
[00:41:37] Barry Luijbregts:
Alright. And I'll link to that as well in the show notes. Yeah. So that you can go and connect, have a conversation. Thank you very much for talking with me today.
[00:41:47] David Allen Moss:
Thank you. Have a great day.
[00:41:50] AI voice:
Thanks for tuning into the show. For more episodes, go to about podcasting dot show, and remember to host your podcast on podhome.fm, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
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 dot f m, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
[00:00:25] Barry Luijbregts:
Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting. And this week, I'm talking with David Allen Moss from evergreenpodcasts.com. They are a podcast network. And we talk about what a podcast network actually is, what they do for the podcaster, for the creator, how they work, why they do it. Conversations like these are great insights for me about how the podcast industry, as in with ads and revenue for podcasters, actually works. We also talk a little bit about podcasting 2.0 because I feel that, especially within companies like these, there is no awareness of it at all.
So it's always good to spread the gospel. Now without further ado, here is David Allen Moss. And so, you know, obviously, I run into Evergreen podcasts. Perhaps we can start there, what that is, and, what you do there.
[00:01:34] David Allen Moss:
Absolutely. Evergreen is a premier podcast network with over 350 shows. We're still sort of a startup minded outfit, but we certainly have grown a lot since we founded in 2017 as a a different network. We were originally founded by our founding investor as Front Porch People. Front Porch People was a smaller network, very early stage, that came out of her passion for online radio. She had a a sort of a cottage or bespoke, series of shows she had come up with and wanted to repurpose them into the podcasting space. So our CEO came on first. There was our one of her first employees who was an intern out of college is still with us. He's now the EVP of production. So we a lot of us are still along for the ride.
We made a lot of left hand turns. The content was really, it was truly evergreen content. It was classic films, movies, classic comedy, classic books. And it was really independent of that whole hosting relationship. It was just more almost encyclopedic type podcasts. And, we were looking at Wondery. We were looking at NPR. We were looking at Gimlets, and we said, you know, we we wanna do what they're doing. We wanna do it like that in our own way. And so in 2018, I think it was fall of 18, we came up with Evergreen as a network. We knew we wanted to keep doing originals.
We knew we wanted to do branded content and content marketing, and then we also knew that we wanted to grow out the network. So how do you do that? That those are the three things we do, originals, branded, and partner shows and partner networks. And so we really didn't come out of the, the gate until, podcast movement, our first conference, August of 19. I remember it because we created this little booklet, and it was so, novel because everyone's there with their screens and their postcards and stickers. And we had a little booklet that was on a network that had just started, but it seemed like we were a thing. And my whole career has been brand strategy and and, communication design, and how do you how do you package product and media. And, so we did a really bang up job coming out as Evergreen. And, and then grew from, you know, half a dozen shows and 17,000 downloads to this over 350 where we are today across, 6 networks. We've purchased a few smaller networks recently.
Most recently was the Converge network, which is, faith based shows. We also have our own motorsport sports network. It's called pitpassmotorsports.com. Mostly f 1, IndyCar, motocross, but but really more on the 4 wheels kinda racing. And then we have a political network. We have a news, entity called 5 minute dot news, which has grown into more of a video first, media. And the website itself, which we kind of have learned to to put podcasts into buckets so that we can when we get brands and advertisers, we can sell into those buckets. It's really worked out well. Mhmm. So here we are tracking for about 40,000,000, 45,000,000 downloads this year. That's a long way from 17,000.
Uh-huh. So we're happy about that. The the the curve is going in the right direction.
[00:05:27] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm I'm always trying to figure out, why something is. Right? So as I run a podcast hosting company, I know podcast. So I know so you just told me what you do. Right? You create shows and you partner with brands and all that type of stuff. But why I did the what. Yeah. Why why do that? Why would you do that? Why would you even have a, a a network like that?
[00:05:59] David Allen Moss:
Well, I think everyone that is a part of the team, the Evergreen family, has a passion for storytelling. A lot of us are writers. I've been a creative direct creative director my whole career, really, and my background is writing and visual communications and kind of working that duality along a bed of technology. Our EVP of production has a an English degree. Our CEO was a former radio host, but also has is an author of, like, 3 or 4 history books. Mhmm. Our chief content officer loves history, loves content, and he was he had his own web enterprise that was sort of, lifestyle for men kind of, you know, web content. He's a content guy.
So we're all sort of media geeks. Yeah. So it serves us that we're not selling something that we don't also have passion in. I'm also a musician. And the expression, one of our largest channels, just so happens to be music. It's in our top three in terms of listenership. So it's it's certainly a venue also for our founder to see the excitement around storytelling, because that's her passion. She really believes in the reason she called her media company, Front Porch Media Network, which is the holding company of Evergreen, is she really believes in families and friends sitting on a front porch and the kinds of stories and conversations that happen. So we're all conversationalists.
We're all, like I said, media geeks. And the why is certainly tied to the fact we identified the industry as being a real growth industry. We wanted to do something that we could really shepherd and see take off. And, ultimately, what happens? Do we roll up with another network? Does do other networks roll up with us? Probably all of the above. Yeah. You know, we've been acquiring shows through the podcast broker and, you know, finding opportunities to also invite other passionate talent from other networks. Because, you know, it's constantly shaking up. When that happens, we're able to bring folks from Spotify, folks from cast, folks from other networks that are kind of breaking apart and invite them onto the boat. Yeah.
And the boat metaphor is one of the best in podcasting because we talk about this all the time, how the mentality is all boats rise. There's a I've been in a lot of other industries related to media and technology, and this one seems to be the most convivial, collaborative, helpful. We all wanna help one another. It's a it's a different industry, and I think that's special. I think we all recognize that, and we try to, engender that in our ranks and in our in our culture, in our our company culture. So I don't know if that's the why. Okay. We do love to tell stories. Yeah. We like to joke around.
It's a very it's a lively bunch. Evergreen.
[00:09:22] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I I I'm still wondering. I'm gonna drill down a little bit on this. Right? So Sure. It seems to me that you have lots of shows. Right? Lots of podcasts. Sure. And perhaps other things, video, things, and or combinations of those. And what do you do for the podcasters? So for the creators themselves, what are what do you help them with? Why would they be with you?
[00:09:50] David Allen Moss:
Well, that's that's really important to distinguish, and I think we have to continuously do that. Most recently, we've built our out more of a global sales agency, and that's supported by a a full time in house marketing agency. So but the first line of offering to a show that would come on as a partner is is the hosting. I mean, we're a megaphone shop, so we can take the cost of hosting off their backs. We can take all of the analytical digesting and reporting off of their backs. They still have access to the tool. They can be power users, but they can also focus more on their content. We take admin, iOS, insertion orders, the the you know, all the different work that's on the ad side of things, cross promos.
We handle all of that. So we have a partner relations department that really helps with guest placements, helps with, you know, feed swaps, all of the things that we do. And, gosh, there's so many things that we do in podcasting to try to elevate a show. Our that's that's how we've built our our team. And so when you sign on with Evergreen, we come up with a revenue share, and that's really a custom conversation. That's a custom number every time. Is it 80 20, 70 30, 50 50? It depends on who's doing what. Are we helping with production? Are we doing engineering recording, you know, mixing distribution, or are we just distributing what they're creating? You know, it it all depends on how far along they are on the path.
I think when we first started that piece of the business, just about any podcast with a pulse, we'd consider bringing up to the network. And now we have to bring someone on that is more mature, or has, an incredible, trajectory that they're on. And, you know, it used to be something like you might remember when it was like, well, if you have, you know, 25 100 listens over a 30 day period per episode, that's pretty darn good. But we're we're at a much higher number in terms of us being able to take on that show and and give him the ROI. Because there's an expectation when you join a network that your growth maybe is going to accelerate.
When you join the network, it's definitely a full service, almost a turnkey relationship. But it's all relationship driven. It's not about, hey. Here are the things we do, you know, and you've got access to these things. No. It's high touch. It's a lot of conversations on the front end. It's strategy. Some podcasters come to us and, like, we're really rethinking this. Or we've got this show, but we wanna start this show. Can you help? So it's it's a full spectrum of relationships that we have with partners. Okay. Which is kinda nice. Yeah. It's a lot of work, but it's nice Yeah. That we can be that custom.
[00:13:05] Barry Luijbregts:
And then, the ultimate goal is so you help ultimately with monetizing the podcast so that you can Sure. Obviously have a share of that revenue. Right? Absolutely. And to do that, you help them grow, markets, produce, edit, guests.
[00:13:24] David Allen Moss:
In those relationships with the agencies that we've grown. We have direct brand and agency relationships. That's really where we're seeing a lot of, solid growth for all the podcasters. It's just growing our partnerships with agencies.
[00:13:42] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. And and, in the podcast community, so not per se Mhmm. Industry because industry, I'd say, is basically everything that's ads related. Podcast community is basically everything that's creator related.
[00:14:00] David Allen Moss:
Yes. We
[00:14:01] Barry Luijbregts:
we know that we only have downloads. Right? So we own we don't have listens. We don't really know if people listen unless you look at the data from Spotify, for instance, or Apple Podcast. They know that because they know when somebody clicks the button, and then who they are kinda, you know, because they log into their platform. Sure. Do you, how do you deal with that when you look at ads, and then, you know, telling the company that, that the ad is about? Like, hey. It paid off.
[00:14:34] David Allen Moss:
Right? It's just that the big education that we're struggling with is the expectation of the advertiser.
[00:14:41] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah.
[00:14:42] David Allen Moss:
You gotta wonder, you know, they're so used to broadcast. The agencies are so used to terrestrial.
[00:14:51] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah.
[00:14:52] David Allen Moss:
And it's a different mindset. And then they bring it over to podcast, and they say, well, we have this promo code, and we only did 12 of them. So, you know, that's, like, $500 a promo for a 20% off. Well, that's not really what happened there. Yeah. You had people that you know, 80% of them, if the host mentions it, eventually, they're probably gonna buy your product. The the the power of voice is so different on podcasting than it is radio, and it's measurable. And let's let's just let's just, let's just think about this for a minute. Don't just it's just sort of a knee jerk reaction that that oh, that wasn't that wasn't a winning campaign because of a certain performance metric like a promo code.
And now we're looking at other platforms, and we have to be tech geeks. I mean, we're looking at other platforms where we can do community development. We're very excited about Station dot io and building building an unbundled social and, deals and promo kinda hub for thinking of a show as a bigger brand. It's not just the podcast. It's the personality. It's the it's the extras. Yeah. So we're just starting to build these sort of hubs for a show that are that are beyond just the landing page for their web for their podcast. There are places that they can do polls and do conversations, kinda like Discord, all in one place.
I like to call it like a link tree or a power link on steroids. There's so much to it. Yeah. So we're trying to go there as well. So it's a different growth. Now we're really paying attention to the community of listeners and trying to build superfans in more of an organic and real way.
[00:16:45] Barry Luijbregts:
Have you heard of, fountain.fem, which is a listening app?
[00:16:50] David Allen Moss:
No. I have not. It it's There's my pen screen. New.
[00:16:54] Barry Luijbregts:
So Fountain FM. And that is Fountain FM. Yeah. You can you can just, look that up. It's also in the web Sure. And it is completely, podcasting 2.0 based. So what that means that, shows that are on there, they are modern shows, podcasting 2.0 shows, which usually have chapters, transcripts, clips, all that type of thing. And, also can be, if they want to be, micro transaction enabled value for value. That's the feature. What's it? That's called the podcasting 2.0. And that means that through the fountain app, somebody logs in there. You can put some fiat money in there. Like, I put $50 in your wallet there. And then you can send, you know, here's, here's a dollar for this episode with a comment.
Hey. I like this or a question or something. You don't have to. You can also just comment there. And the whole thing about FountainDot. The family is that they create a community there. People don't leave their podcast app. They just comment right there. They talk to each other. They talk to the podcasters. Podcasters reply. They like stuff. They follow stuff. It's a whole thing. And it's all right there. And the power is that it's all in the podcasting player app where you were already listening to this thing. That's very powerful because you don't have to leave and go somewhere else to to do it. Right? Because that's Exactly. And I think we're finally seeing,
[00:18:18] David Allen Moss:
there was that I'm glad you called it podcast 2.0 because it's this unbundling and re I'll call it rebundling of technologies and engagement, tactics, tools, and tech into a place that's, incentivizing, that's comfortable. And like you said I think you said the right thing. They don't have to leave. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. They can they can chat with the host either, you know, text chat or, live chat. There's all these great capabilities that are being realigned in in something like what did you call it? Phantom. No. Fountain.fm.
There's probably a phantom.fm. It's probably very different.
[00:19:03] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah.
[00:19:05] David Allen Moss:
And, I get excited about that. Because as a marketer, it's really my role as chief creative officer has evolved to more of a CMO role where I'm looking at the data. We're trying to moneyball all of these campaigns. We've put a whole lot this last 1st 6 months of the year into paid audience growth, and now we're doing a huge pivot because we have to. I like these kinds of things, and I'm sure our team will wanna look into it and just compare it to what we're trying with some others. Yeah. You have to be lab mindset. You have to be laboratory about it.
[00:19:41] Barry Luijbregts:
Absolutely. And the same goes for you mentioned, you're a megaphone shop. Right? So you host everything on the phone. They are Spotify, and they are not very very modern, as in with features like these. Right?
[00:19:55] David Allen Moss:
So I think they're slow. They move slower. Very slow. We we try to push our, our account reps at Spotify and Megaphone because we have you know, they're kind of 2 different assigned reps.
[00:20:11] Barry Luijbregts:
Mhmm.
[00:20:12] David Allen Moss:
But you're not gonna you're not gonna get them to move on features.
[00:20:16] Barry Luijbregts:
No. No.
[00:20:18] David Allen Moss:
No. I mean, they'll say, oh, we've been working on that. It took them so long to just clean up the way they report. Yeah. But they still give us kind of just a dump that we have to parse. And we have to do a lot of manual work to kind of pull the data out. Do do And I know there's some smaller hosting companies that can, like, even Captivate. Those guys over there were doing some pretty cool things early. I think there's a reason they got scooped up. Mhmm. You know, I think the smaller shops that are more design minded, they have design thinking in and inside and out of their product. They're more nimble, they're more agile, and they can move more quickly to your point. Yeah. Definitely. So do,
[00:21:02] Barry Luijbregts:
does Megaphone do, transcripts already?
[00:21:06] David Allen Moss:
Because that might be You don't know. I I don't know. And I've I've we've used Descript in the past. We might be using Rev now. I'm not sure. I get a little, I drift a little away from the day to day of production
[00:21:20] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:21] David Allen Moss:
Where I was much closer to that 4 or 5 years ago because we were smaller. Yeah. We've sort of divided off it and then divided, but we're off in our own little departments more so at Evergreen.
[00:21:35] Barry Luijbregts:
And just, let's just dive into it a little bit more of the content. Right? So Sure. Podcast is audio. You know, we mentioned the storytelling is a very powerful thing. The voice is very powerful thing. But also video for clipping and for context is also very powerful. How do you see that? Do you see more video now? Do you see a combination of that? How do you see that evolving?
[00:22:00] David Allen Moss:
You know, the I think the way we like to operate is circling back with some of our existing hosts, having the up front front conversation with new parties interested in Evergreen, joining Evergreen, and new shows that we're starting ourselves is finding you know, if this is video and this is audio, it's just finding where it makes sense for the content. So one of our for example, one of our hosts is sort of the matriarch of a major craft retail enterprise that was called Catan's. And her father started it, and she she and her 2 brothers had been running it. And it was purchased or sold out from somewhat from under her, she might say, by her brothers, to Michael's Crafts, which is, you know, the craft store next to Hobby Lobby here in North America.
She came to us. She says, I'm, you know, I'm doing this. And I I was doing the bridal thing, but I wanna get back into this. And we started an audio podcast for her. We did a first season. This was last year. And, after that season didn't take off like we had hoped, we kinda took a step back and said, well, why don't we do a video series with you? You have all this knowledge. You could be doing how to's, how to do a bridal bouquet, how to do a veil, how to do all these things. It could be bridal related, but it could also be home. It could be about design. So we thought about her brand first, who she is, Catan Designs. I designed a new brand for her, and now it's now video first, and we're getting ready to release that. We don't know how it's gonna perform, but my point is it really makes sense to think about both mediums all the time. You're gonna do you're gonna do both.
But is it just, like, clippy clips, bonus reels? Is it, is it stuff is it content marketing for social, or is it a prime piece of media that you're building off of? And so the YouTube strategies more and more we're we're playing a little catch up, but everybody else is as well. We have to know when it makes sense to be YouTube first or, you know, video first or if video is just part of the big flywheel. Yeah. And, you know, you've got your podcast either somewhere big around that or in the center of the flywheel, and then there's video and everything else all around it. It it comes down to the personality of the host, and some people don't belong on camera.
Am I allowed to say that? I don't know if I belong on camera. But, you know, some people, also are insistent. I just wanna do it. I just wanna be audio. Like, that's where I'm most passionate. I don't I don't need to be doing video. But they still need to think about how to use video to grow their audio program. So you can't divide them up anymore. They're really they're this duality that we have to think about. And, you know, now we're using the term simulcast. Yeah. When I was a kid, and I'm gonna date myself, simulcast was very exciting. My dad was an audiophile.
We had state of the art. Even when it was a tube TV, we had a Mitsubishi stereo TV that had a button simulcast. And inside the TV was a tuner, and you could tune in 100.7. And here was this live concert, and you're listening to it in stereo. You know, just, or high fidelity. And that was simulcast. Well, that means a totally different thing now. We we talk about it for sales, for ad sales. Yeah. We've kinda co opted that word.
[00:25:52] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And video is also just very different. Right? So, if you're designing for YouTube, let's say, then you need to have it very engaging. Like, the the scene, you can't just have, like, 30 minutes of talking heads. That's boring. Need some No. It needs to be something else. And audio Mhmm. If you just record this, what we're doing right now, and just put it on YouTube, there's not a lot of value in there. It's not a lot of Yeah. It's not entertaining.
[00:26:17] David Allen Moss:
Like, 2 guys talking Yeah. On screen.
[00:26:21] Barry Luijbregts:
It needs to be produced differently and and just described something. Mhmm. So the content is very different. If you look at, Direcchio, for instance, that is made for video, and then audio forms behind that, basically. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's very different.
[00:26:37] David Allen Moss:
I I for my benefit, from your point of view, talk about podcasting 2.0, and I'm not taking over the mic. I'm just curious. From your point of view, what does it mean for the for the industry?
[00:26:50] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. So podcasting 2.0, is kinda too legged. The one thing is podcastindex.org. That is a open source free podcast, directory. Just like you have Apple Podcasts, you have Spotify. Those are basically databases where podcasts live. Right? And podcast index is also one of those things. And it is open source and it brings some extra capabilities to there. So as a developer, you can use you can just query all that data. You can download a copy if you wanna play around with that. That is very useful if you're building, for instance, a podcast player app. That's very handy. And that makes you less dependent on things like Apple Podcasts or, Spotify, which are basically closed gardens because you can't really speak with those people if you're a developer. They don't talk to you.
So that's one thing. And then the extra capabilities, they come from the project that is called podcasting 2.0, which has been started by Adam Curry and Dave Jones, 4 or 5 years ago to modernize podcasting. And they do that by creating a new namespace. So in your podcast RSS feeds, that's a whole XML file that basically describes your show. Right? It has all the episodes in it, all the the data, all the show notes, all that type stuff. And they've created extra things for that. So an easier way to add chapters, easier way to add transcripts a uniform way, let's say. But all of the modern apps that then use the data from the podcast index use the same way to discover chapters, for instance, and, show those in their apps. For instance, chapters then come from a JSON file, a data file that lives somewhere in the cloud. That's the new way to do it.
Transcripts, same thing, which now Apple Podcasts in their app also has adopted recently this year, the new way of doing transcripts. They use the podcasting 2 point o standard. And there's a bunch more features that you have like identifying people, for instance, going live within a podcast app that can be audio or video, which is really cool. You can just do this and then it you can just listen to it live in an app like radio was. Right? It's really cool. Sure. And a bunch of other features, and there's more and more always coming. And that's that's very exciting.
And some hosting companies support these features, like Pod Home, the company I work for. Captivate, for instance, like you mentioned, also do a bunch of these features. Spotify obviously does not because they are Spotify. Yeah. They they don't care about that because they don't really care about podcasting too much. They're they're just a music company. They have their spin offs like Megaphone, for instance, that works for them, which is fine. And the older, bigger hosts, like you said, they are less nimble because, obviously, they have built a lot of stuff. They took them years to do and then changing them. Yeah. That that also take years to to change. And then they really need to weigh, well, do I really wanna do that? What's the benefit for me? Like, what's in it for me? But the benefit really is, on that one leg podcast index is Okay. To keep podcasting open and free. And open means, open and free from, censorship, which, for instance, Apple Podcasts and Spotify, are very, at risk of. And we'll see that, of course, when things heat up, election cycle, you know, stuff like that, things get taken down.
And I think that's not a good idea because I I I love that we are able to just talk about anything and discuss anything, because that's how we learn. Right? So so that's one thing. Yeah. We shouldn't be guarded. Just to just to sidebar.
[00:30:49] David Allen Moss:
Exactly. But there are times where I feel guarded talking about their platforms. I feel like, wow. I have a network of scale. You know, we're we're approaching the top 20 networks in the you know, we've got a lot of volume here. Like, I'm afraid to criticize the way they do business because they've already we've already run into a few of our shows getting removed from Span and and the amount of backlash and customer relations that it requires for us to to smooth that over, and yet they can't even tell us why. It's getting to antitrust time. And so I just wanna say what you not to take you off course, but I do wanna say that it seems like podcast 2.0 is creating, pathways for innovation.
Absolutely. It's it's guaranteeing competition
[00:31:47] Barry Luijbregts:
Yes. And
[00:31:49] David Allen Moss:
entrepreneurial pathways for for new products, you know, like fountain.
[00:31:56] AI voice:
Yeah.
[00:31:58] David Allen Moss:
New hosting apps, new ways to deliver content because they're holding they're holding the industry a little bit hostage with this, monopoly. It's a monopoly.
[00:32:11] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. And you then as a company, you are completely dependent on them right now. We sure are. So Yeah. Obviously, they are just a hosting company. You can always
[00:32:22] David Allen Moss:
move away. Right? It it's a lot of work, which you can because it's your Oh, I mean, we we we left Libsyn at one point. Oh, okay. We were Libsyn's shop for the 1st 2 or 3 years. So Yeah. And we looked at all the we we did a great study. It was great to see, at the time, Captivate, Simplecast, Megaphone. Those were our top 3 after some looking at about 10. Yeah. Looking good and hard, we took 6 months to decide. Yeah. But that migration was another 6 months.
[00:32:54] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah.
[00:32:56] David Allen Moss:
You know? And so the idea of moving 350 shows to something else That's a lot of work. That hosting company would have to be very, empathetic and helpful in that process. Like, as in, here's our list of shows. Let us know when they're moved over. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. We wouldn't we're not close to the idea. I always wanted us to be more of a agnostic shop. But that's a lot for a distribution and accounts team to manage. Yeah. You you know, I was in a situation whereas, digital signage and, media networks shop here in Cleveland, and we decided to be agnostic. Well, that was hard for my team, because then we decided, well, we'll whittle it down to 4. So we've probably had 3 or 4 of these top digital sinus platforms at the time. And it was very much like podcasting, and everything was still in development.
And and it was hard for the team to kinda switch gears across platforms. It would be like if if Evergreen had Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Megaphone, and Captivate, you know, you'd have to really have the mindset. You'd almost have to have product special product leaders on each platform.
[00:34:16] Barry Luijbregts:
It's all different. The data all just looks slightly different. It's no uniform thing. Yeah. It's very difficult. It's very Yeah. But we'll see. So That whole, industry is also moving and shaking up. Right? So, I don't know. Maybe Lipson's going away. There's, writings on the wall right there. One of the big hoops going away or is being bought. Maybe megaphone? Who knows? I hope not for you. But something's gonna happen this year. That's for sure.
[00:34:45] David Allen Moss:
So we'll see. Yeah. We just don't know, do we? That's part of the excitement. We've been a part of a couple deals, you know, that we had to say, you know, this is going too fast. It's sort of like the dating game. You know? That was nice. Nice dancing with you. Nice dinner out. Yeah. Have a have a good one. So it's it's fun to be playing there, but it's it's like getting out in the ocean and you're hitting some big waves. Like, you're not quite sure your vessel is, like, properly equipped for this. And what's it gonna be like when you acquire this thing?
Yeah. Did you just make a permanent storm for your own company? So we might be one of the more careful outfits in this. You know, it's funny to be around all this tumult, and we're just kinda cruising along. Maybe we got a little solar power. Maybe we got maybe we got air power and diesel. You know, it's a sailboat with a really big engine. I don't know. But we're just gonna keep cutting through all this chop. And it's worked so far because people come on the boat, and they're like, okay. Yeah. Evergreen. Steady as she goes.
It might be our Midwest underpinnings. People are like, where are you from? We're in London. They're asking, where are you from? Oh, Cleveland. Oh, Cleveland. So surprised. They're always so surprised.
[00:36:12] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. So that kinda all also already answered, what I was gonna ask, as in what, will the future hold for you? What what's next for you guys?
[00:36:22] David Allen Moss:
I think we're gonna bundle up. I think we're gonna team up. Mhmm. I think we're going to keep growing sales so that it's truly a global sales outfit. The executive team, myself, and and three others, we really believe that, you know, for us to keep the lights on, we gotta get past this. You know, we wanna be into a good place of profitability. Yeah. Because that helps everybody. That helps marketing. That helps the shows that are on the network. So we're gonna keep growing our sales acumen and our relationships with brands. And I'd like to see us.
There's conversation about a joint, venture or, acquisition of a European network. We're growing in, Asian Pacific markets. And what I understand we've got a few conversations in the pipe since the, podcast show in London. When you look at India, we should all be kind of paying attention. They're gonna explode. They are exploding. And they're doing some really interesting things. A couple folks that we've talked to well, you mentioned Hopper, but they're they're finding all of these other devices. They call them dumb phones, and they're gonna be lighting those up. And when they light them up, it's half a 1000000000 people. Yeah.
So we want our content there. I want our content there. I'm trying to get everybody else to understand. We all need to understand that, hey. Let's find the right partner in that. And we have. We've done some stuff with Geo Savan, and then we have a nice small channel called voices of India. Mhmm. And India is in our top five countries. So I'd like to I'd like to see us, support Podfest Asia next year. I'd like to see us stretch beyond you know, it's been nice to be in London because I think that's an eye opener for everyone that there's a lot of growth opportunity outside of the States. Yeah.
A lot to happen.
[00:38:42] Barry Luijbregts:
So lots to come, lots of, growth, lots of I think so. Global growth as well. I think I see. Definitely, there's lots of stuff that's gonna explode in the next few years and already is
[00:38:55] David Allen Moss:
growing up. Well, I don't know how you feel, Barry, but I also a big part of that is, hey. Let's work with what we have. When you get to the scale we're at, you can really look at what you've what you've brought together and and start going around and auditing. Yeah. You do that QA. You talk you talk the difficult talk about maybe shows that need to be sunset. Yeah. Do you have to let shows go? Those are tough conversations, but that's also where we are. It's just it's sort of like you've got your you've built your, built your boat, but now you gotta work on the boat Yeah.
Itself. Things go things go wrong otherwise.
[00:39:44] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. You can't focus on don't think. You also need to focus on quality and Yes. Sustainability for your company as in that it also works well and that you interact with. It is. It's very exciting. Okay. So let's point our audience to where they can go to find out more about Absolutely.
[00:40:07] David Allen Moss:
I think if you just start, it's evergreen podcasts dotcom. And, you can also find our channel page on Apple if you wanna, like, look at our body of work. It's not the full body because several of our shows that are partner shows don't group with our grouping on Apple. So it might be about a 100 shows on an Apple that would come under that channel page. But really evergreenpodcasts.com. Just remember, it's plural. And, everywhere that Megaphone makes our show is available, but, you know, you kinda gotta get a sense. If you wanna get a sense of the breadth of our catalog, the landing page is divided up across all channels.
There's a handy little drop down that divides everything up across channels and networks. There's a nice team page. You can get to see my mugshot along with the rest of the team. I think that's a good place to start. Okay. And find us on LinkedIn. We love having conversations out there in the LinkedIn space. We're trying to be a little bit more engaging there. And on all of our social channels, you know, that's at stream evergreen. So Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
[00:41:24] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. Excellent. I will link to all of those things in the show notes so that people can find that easily and, go check them out.
[00:41:32] David Allen Moss:
If you wanna find me, it's just David Allen Moss on on LinkedIn.
[00:41:37] Barry Luijbregts:
Alright. And I'll link to that as well in the show notes. Yeah. So that you can go and connect, have a conversation. Thank you very much for talking with me today.
[00:41:47] David Allen Moss:
Thank you. Have a great day.
[00:41:50] AI voice:
Thanks for tuning into the show. For more episodes, go to about podcasting dot show, and remember to host your podcast on podhome.fm, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
Introduction and Guest Introduction
Understanding Podcast Networks
Podcasting 2.0 Discussion
Evergreen Podcasts: Origins and Growth
Why Evergreen Podcasts Exists
Supporting Podcasters at Evergreen
Challenges in Podcast Advertising
Building Podcast Communities
Video vs. Audio Content
Podcasting 2.0 and Industry Impact
Future of Evergreen Podcasts
Closing Remarks and Contact Information
