3 New Platform Changes Every Podcaster Must Know - News & Comment

0:05 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025, and today it's our news and comment edition. And we'll discuss the T verification of podcasts, YouTube Shorts algorithms collapse and the Apple podcast glitch promoting random questionable shows. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button top right hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're listening via YouTube chatter, Facebook, please share this with the fellow fellow podcaster, Oops. And now give me about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here. Good morning again podcasting morning chat. Thanks so much for being here.

1:24 I am your host Mark Ronik and currently on stage with me my Co hosts Ralph Estep, Nick Naulback, Dr. Faye and we also have a special guest today BC Babbles. I'll have to ask you about your name BC at some point. And BC is here from the Empowered Podcasting Conference community. He has something to share during our news and comment today. So I asked him to just come join us. Originally he said, Mark, would you mind talking about this for me? And I said, well, how about you just come and talk about it yourself? So we'll get into that today. And also, I've got some housekeeping for you before we kick things off first, remember on Thursday.

2:10 Oh, and by the way, Gil, Oh, Gil. Oh, there he is. Gil is here, my good friend Gil Dormeus, also part of the Empowered Podcasting Conference community. He was our photographer. He was a speaker, and like I said, a good friend of mine. Anyway, as I was saying, and I've invited Gil to join us as well. By the way, I was saying we have an evaluation on Thursday. We are evaluating a podcast from a brand new listener of ours who her words is obsessed with our show Susie Mae and her podcast is called Wander World School and Slow Family Podcast. We're gonna she wants a full evaluation from top to bottom, from one episode to her overall podcast series and branding, etcetera.

2:58 So we'll get into that. And if you're interested in hearing the episode we will be talking about and playing clips from, you can find that in the show notes. Now, before we get into the news, I'm going to start a new occasional segment here on the podcasting morning chat. I'm going to call it for now the random podcast clip of the week. And the reason for the name is because it really is not necessarily news and it's not necessarily a hot podcast take or tip, but it comes from a podcast and something that catches my ear, catches my eye that I feel like sharing with you on the show. And then I want to hear also I want to hear some reactions. This comes from the millennial show, meaning hosted by millennials, Lol podcast.

3:53 The Lol podcast. It's a comedy show hosted by 5 younger creators who built a huge following on YouTube. And when I say huge following, almost 3,000,000 subscribers and a social media following as well. For example, 8.5 million on TikTok alone, Yes, 8.5 million The episodes are, and this is just a summary. This doesn't come from me. This is something that I'm reading from. The episodes are loose, chaotic and totally personality driven. And from what I've seen so far, I I could see that. Fans love the energy in the inside jokes. Critics say the show can get a little loud and unfiltered, but either way they pull big numbers and more importantly, their audiences show up for them.

4:45 One unusual thing I noticed when researching them a little bit, their website, which I should have had handy to say but it'll be in the show notes. I think it's lol podcast.com. Their website doesn't have a podcast link, tab, what have you. Or a YouTube link or tab or section that directs people to their actual content. None of their podcast content, YouTube content is on their website. Just an interesting thing to know, especially when we talk about their success as far as the audience and community that they've built. They only have these 4 little small social media icons, including a YouTube one at the bottom corner of their website.

5:28 I found that fascinating. All right, with that, here's the clip which I found on Instagram yesterday from a comedian that you can follow him at. John dot the dad. John dot the dad. This is the Lol crew trying to figure out where the 911 emergency number came from, and it may not go exactly the way you'd think. Here it is. Off topic, the kind of on topic. You know they didn't have 911 back then. Really. They didn't have 911 till 911. But they had emergency phone numbers. What do you mean? I think they just had the number of their like Doctor. Time out, time out, time out.

6:12 What do you they definitely had nine no one before No 911 it. Was from 9. 11 is in like memorial or whatever from 911, no. Yes. I don't know who they called in like the 90s, but in the 30s I'm pretty sure they just called their local doctor. No, you called, there was an emergency phone number when was 911. One police station. I'm really shocked. What number did you use to call the police before? 911911 was first used in 1968. No way. When a call was put. Yeah. What? And. Then 9. 11 just so it happened. It happened on 9/11. Yes. It is kind of crazy. 9/11 and 9/11 #9.

6:56 There, there you go. There it is. There's the clip. Now, I'm not trying to make fun of these young adults, right? But it is funny to hear and maybe a little surprising to hear as somebody who's older than them, who went through 911 and knows the origin of 911, or at least knows that 911 has nothing to do with 911. I just found it fascinating. I think because as somebody older, it's just showing the kinds of things that we think people will always remember till the end of time and how that's just not always the case. So, you know, BC wants to chime in. Go ahead BC.

7:40 I would like your definition of a millennial because as a 93 baby myself, I'm not sure we claim her Personally, I, I, I would like to get the definition on that. But I do find that really funny. It reminds me of a Smosh segment. I don't know who knows Smosh on here, but someone thought that 911 happened in 2011. So wow. But yeah, that's overall sponsor. Wow. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, it's just that is what it is. There are going to be people at that, you know, just don't always know all the things, right? It doesn't matter really what age you are either. But yeah, here we are. All right. The last thing I want to play for you before we get into news today.

8:24 Now, I've been playing all week clips that that were provided by Dr. of her podcast theme and really just her experimenting, not actually playing clips, not actually using these songs that were created by Suno, but she was just playing with it to learn the learn how it works. And we've been enjoying listening to these jazzy little tunes. But today we're going to hold the last two that Dr. has done, and we're going to play this Suno theme song that Ralph has adopted for his show. That's right. Isn't that right, Ralph? Yes, I want to be careful.

9:05 Now, this is the full link that I sent you. We're going to cut it down to 24 seconds for the show, but you can play what you've got and that'll be fine. OK so I'll play what maybe the 1st 30 seconds? Does that sound good? Yeah, you could do that. It has, yeah. Once you get to the chorus, it's kind of what we're going to use. But yeah, that's cool. It gives people the feel. OK, so, so OK, so that we'll keep that in mind. We'll listen, we'll wait for the chorus. We'll let it play and then we'll stop the clip because I think, yeah, Ralph is right. This is a long clip, so we'll play about 60 seconds at the most. Here we go. Yeah. It's called Creators on Fire. Yeah, a light's on deadline, pressure on my spine, working every angle just to stay online, running through the numbers while I chase the dream, trying to build a life bigger than the screen. And they don't see the fair, they don't see the knives, They don't see the failures or the lush free rise. But I rise from the fire where the grit that's higher, every set back man is fueled for the pile. I'm endowment.

10:05 I don't live there. Took the hits. Now I breathe out air. Every sky, every fear, every cloud. I'm stepping in stronger. This time I will create a wrong fire burning up the sky. All right, it is fire, Gil says. The song is fire. And you know, Speaking of millennial, it kind of sounds like a 90s anthem type song to me, which is not a knock by any stretch. You're in my wheelhouse with this kind of style. Maybe it's more even 2000s.

10:45 I, I, I feel like God, what is who does it remind me of? Dr. Go for it. Well, Ralph, I thought it was great. I want to know what you put in for your prompt to get that. OK, Full disclosure, I wrote the lyrics myself with a little help from AI. So I put the lyrics in the AI and then they said to AI give me a SUNO prompt that will give me like an upbeat like jump into the middle of creators mentality. That's what I used. OK. Very cool. Interesting. Yeah, very cool. And I love that approach, Ralph. I try to do that too. If you know, if I have a concept, an idea, I'm going to just unload on, let's say ChatGPT, tell it all about it, share.

11:27 Like if I've written some of the lyrics to a song and just using you as an example, I'll feed it all that. I'll maybe even say first Polish these up, make these lyrics better. Then I'll do just like what you said, I'll go into an AI and work with it to help me prompt for another AI, right? So I'll go into ChatGPT and say give me a prompt for Google Gemini to create a video right now. I'll be more specific, but just for discussion's sake. There you go. So yeah, great. Great job, Ralph. And yeah, I really dug the song. I was sitting there grooving and I'm. I'm looking at the YouTube chat and Cloud Nation Media 8326 also gave us the fire emoji.

12:13 And this person says I love listening to the replays on Clubhouse more. Good morning, Mark. Who is this person? Tell me, do I know you? And great to have you here. Good to have some YouTube activity during our live stream. OK gang, so I think, let me just make sure. Yep, that is all of the housekeeping. Which means I'm stalling because my board is not showing me my music. Who's off mic? Mark, can I say one thing real quick because yeah, I'm just asked this question. Yes, because I bought the license for SUNO. I am a monthly subscriber. I do have the license to use that. I had the attorney look into it. So absolutely, absolutely, we're good to go with that.

12:54 Love that. Thank you, Ralph. Appreciate that. All right, so with that, it's time for news and comment. You know, I was thinking yesterday because yesterday we also took about 10-15 minutes to get into the meat of the show. And you know, I struggle with that because as a podcast producer, a podcast coach, I'm often telling people, and I'm sure we'll tell more people in our evaluation episodes to just get to it, right, get to the meat. And I think it's different for us. I think that applies to weekly, bi weekly, monthly shows. I think when we're doing the daily morning show, we've got it, we've got to create some variety. There's got it, there's there's we're trying to create that morning show slash mastermind feel and there's something to me important about getting to know you and you getting to know us. Dr. Did you want to say something? Well, it's just that five days a week is we're very much, I don't know, it's like we're furniture, you know, It's like everyone knows us.

14:17 There you go, the podcasting morning chat team. Your furniture in the morning. There, there's our new tagline. I mean, we're comfortable, you know, we're, everyone knows about my eggs and everyone knows about your ADHD, everyone, you know. So it's, it's just a comfort level that we. Yeah. We like to build rapport when we can with our. Comfy. Couch. Yes, OK. That's right. We are your comfy couch in the morning. All right, so let's get into some podcast data. So this is from Podcast Business Journal. I'm going to explain a little bit more clearly this particular segment because most of the time on Wednesdays, part of how we open the news is I give you a little bit of data about the overall podcasts and their activity over the past week.

15:09 So this is a helpful number to understand the amount of podcasts being created, right? And, and we're doing that with the total number of active podcasts. These are podcasts that are still being updated and therefore actively marketing themselves. If you are making shows, you might consider this number to be your competition rather than the big overall number of active podcast 'cause that, as many of us know, can feel intimidating that they're just these literally millions of podcasts out there. And we think, well, we're just going to get lost in that sea. But really, let's let's focus on some of the just focus on the active podcasts.

15:53 So the total podcasts updated over the past week were 198,887, which is down almost 4% last week. Total podcasts updated in the last 30 days 358,583, which is up 7% over the last month. Also, here's another stat for you, Buzz Sprout Global. This is something you can go to if you go to buzzsprout.com/stats. I believe off the top of my head, if you had in the past week 29 downloads on your podcast episode, that means you're in the top 50 of all independent podcasts of all podcasts on Buzz Sprout, one of the biggest platforms for podcast hosts. If you've published 108, I'm sorry. If you've received 108 downloads over the past seven days on your podcast episode, you're in the top 25441 downloads over the past week 10.

17:04 You're in the top 10%, 1063 downloads, top five, and you are in the top 1% if you received over the past week 4700 downloads. Yes, Nick, go ahead. Hey, good morning. I wanted to. Quickly jump back to the the active podcast stat sure, because I 300 some 1000 whatever that number was. I mean, it sounds like a lot and I just quickly plugged into complexity how many active YouTube channels there are. So for a little bit of comparison, we got 300, some thousand active podcast being in the publishing monthly on YouTube. There's over 60 million active YouTube channels. Wow.

17:53 So when you look at the numbers, you see the popularity of YouTube, how many people are on it, the growth of podcast over the last several years. 300,000 is nothing. There's not that many people actively publishing. Yeah, that's a great point, especially in this day and age where it's being, as I've said before, shoved down our throat that we've got to get on YouTube and. Less Less competition for the audio first. Yeah. And when we talk about other stats with that we've shared in the past, as much as people want to shove that video down our throat, we know that listeners of audio podcasts listen longer. They're they're listening to our content, they're consuming our content for longer periods of time. They're more loyal, they're more active, so it's just interesting.

18:49 I'm not trying to discourage anyone to not do video, but if you're somebody who's just on the fence about it or really doesn't want to do video, there's that's OK. You can still make this work and make it successful if you want it to just be audio. God, Nick. Lastly, I'll add to it. I mean, I think it is fair to take note that there are more YouTube viewers. There are more people using YouTube than are listening to podcast episodes, so it makes sense then more creators are going to be publishing that regularly. But it kind of follows the numbers. But. As Mark has been sharing week after week the number of monthly active podcast episodes, it fluctuates, it goes up and down like we haven't really seen it past that 400,000 episode mark or 400,000 podcast mark yet the number of listeners flocking to podcast is increasing.

19:42 So I just, I see that as more opportunity as more people are consuming the episodes, that's just bigger opportunities for us as podcasters to grab that audience as they're coming in. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for adding that and thank you for bringing up that point. And you know, This is why also I was sharing the episode download stats. It's because again, you might be looking at your stats and saying 30 downloads. I, I, I got some work to do and maybe you still do, but it also shows that you're not alone. You're in the top 50% of independent podcasts, right?

20:23 108. You may, some people may have a problem with that, right? Like that's, that's not what I what I signed up for. I wanted more than 100 people listening. Well, you're in the top 25. Don't complain. So yeah, that's why we do the those stats, That's why we share those and let's keep things moving and go to Dr. Actually, before we do that, I will say that the number one podcast on Apple as of yesterday is Crime Junkie, which I think that's once again feel like I've been saying that a lot lately. And DDR is going to give us the top five for Spotify because we all know who number one is on Spotify. And if you don't, you'll find out in a second. So with that, take it away Dr.

21:06 OK, so Spotify's top five is #5 Crime Junkie, just as you'd said before #4 is this past weekend with Theo von #3. You're the Timpani. The Shawn Ryan show #2 creep cast sounds creepy. Number one, you know, it's Joe. You know, it's Joe, yes, Joe Rogan at the top once again. All right, And then give us the your random chart of the week. OK, random chart of the week is physics. Now I guess I got to say that at first when I saw it, I thought it said psychic. So I was getting all excited, but I thought, no, let's take a look at the titles here.

21:53 It has nothing to do with psychic. OK, so #5 is the Origins podcast with Lawrence Krauss #4 is Theories of Everything with Kurt Kurt J. Kurt J. #3 is why this universe #2 is Sean Carroll's Mindscape Science Society was Physiology, cultural arts, and I guess the number one, that's the whole title. That's number Two's whole title. That was very that was very long #1 is Big Ideas Lab. OK. And that's. I'm worn out from #2 I'm just going to, I'm just going to repeat that.

22:38 Well, and and by the way, before you do this is clearly a grab for search engine optimization that that's why they're doing this. So go ahead. Sean Carroll's Mindscape Science, Society, Philosophy, Philosophy, Sorry, Culture, Arts and Ideas. Yeah, that is. I'm going to kill them. You know, that's basically their tagline, but they're just squeezing it all in and look, hey, it's #2 right. So is, is it a problem? No, I think maybe that's, that's helpful for this show without knowing anything about it. All right, I'm going to call out since BC is a newer member here on the podcasting morning chat. BC you are on deck.

23:21 I will let you know, but I just wanted to give you a heads up. You're on deck Sir and I'm going to give BCA little another Clubhouse lesson since he's been here a couple days now. BC if you ever want to flash those emojis, first of all, if you want to get my attention and flash the emoji, we use the hot pepper here on Clubhouse. And the way you do that is just tap on my face once and then you should be able to see a list of emojis pop up and you can find the hot pepper to flag me. You tap on the plus sign after you tap on your face to get the hot pepper. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's get into some events around the world of podcasting. The Women's Podcaster Awards are now open. As of now, they will go on through January 1st. And nominations.

24:12 I'm sorry. OK, that's what it was. Early Bird is now through January 1st. Nominations is now through March 31st and then voting begins April 1st through the 30th and then the big awards ceremony May 2026. So if you want to apply to win a Women's Podcaster award, there's your chance we will link to it in the show notes as well. And of course, you can always Google that. On December 9th. I have two events to share with you quickly. If you are a Pod Fest speaker at 1:00 PM, we're doing a virtual networking event for speakers hosted by yours truly.

24:52 And you should have gotten an e-mail. Again, if you're a speaker of Podfest, you should have received an e-mail from Podfest about this. And like I, I think I said, yours truly will be hosting this networking event. So looking forward to seeing some familiar faces on the on the 9th at 1:00 PM Eastern and then again on the 9th at 7:00 PM Eastern. The Empowered Podcasting Conference holiday party, it's a virtual event as well. It's for all conference attendees who have passed who have attended past EPC events. So even if you didn't go last year, but you went the year before, you are more than welcome. And I am also opening this up to you, our PMC listener.

25:38 The way you can attend is by emailing me mark.marc@ironicmedia.com. And if you want to attend, that's the way to do it, is to let me know. And yeah, I was going to share a live link here, but this is a little bit more of an exclusive thing. I'm not going to put it in the show notes because then it's just opened up randomly to anybody in the world who stumbles on it. So it's little more exclusive. Reach out to me if you've heard me say this and you're interested in joining us for a little holiday fun for about an hour at 7:00 PM Eastern on the ninth. Love to have you there. OK. And now I'm going to go to BC Babbles and BC Babbles, tell me a little bit about your name. I'm, I'm guessing that Babbles Babbles is not really your last name, but maybe it is.

26:26 It's just I've never heard it as a last name before. So, yeah, tell us a little bit about your name. And then, of course, tell us what you wanted to share. Yeah, I know. So now my last name, my real first name is, is Brandon. And for some reason coming up through radio through college and then my short stint in Charlotte radio, I always wanted like a pseudonym sounding name. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe growing up on like RL Stein and JK Rowling made an influence on me. But it wasn't until I came up with my podcast name, which is based off of my initials as well, where I'm like babbles BC Babble, casual Babble BC babbles. OK, let's go with it. And it just it's stuck. After that, I love it. I love it.

27:07 Thank you for sharing that. So what's the event or the thing that you want to share? Yes. So I am a part of the global steering committee for an awesome organization called The Hashes. We are a community community first volunteer run organization under our parent nonprofit social media club. What we do is we hold an event every single year where we highlight and acknowledge and celebrate leaders and Trail Blazers in social media. So this is an awesome opportunity for anyone who would kind of establish themselves either a social media or digital campaign guru. You can be an influencer, content creator, you can belong to an agency or a small mom and pop or even be ACMO for a larger company. So what we are looking for right now is we're looking for submissions, people who want to take a recent campaign that they're really proud of that did really good work submitted and basically put your name on the pot for a potential Hashi award, which is recognition from a peer reviewed network, which is officially now international.

28:13 We just opened up our first international social media club chapter, which is exciting and it's a great way to get validation for your work. Maybe for some of you who are long in the business out there, overdue validation and plus you get to turn on state. I am now an award-winning CMO. I'm an award-winning content creator. I've been acknowledged by the hashes. And so, yeah, I'm here to let people know this is an opportunity and even more so now because we just shifted our submission deadline, which was set for the 15th of the month, over to mid of January's next month. So a few more weeks now available for anyone who wants to submit. We're looking for storytellers, people who are putting good into the world, who are passionate about their work, but also who can show some numbers.

29:00 You know, the judges we have are seasoned specialists. You're looking at consultants, strategists, CM OS as well. So consider the idea that you're pitching essentially this awesome campaign that you love to someone who's going to look at something kind of analytically as well as look at the the pathos of whatever store you can provide. So can learn more about that at hashes.com. We're also looking at, I think we're some more judges as well, as well as some volunteers who want to be involved with the steering committee like myself. We are, I'm hip deep in the crazy coordination efforts behind the scenes that make the hashish possible and also looking for sponsors, any companies that are interested in being a part of this and helping your own brand get circulated by the network.

29:44 So that's what I wanted to hop on here today and present to the people to the Empowered Podcast Network. I think it's an awesome chance for anyone to kind of get out there, get their name out there and potentially bring home an award. Thank you BC congratulations on this. This is an awesome effort here and I'm looking here at the different categories I want to I don't we're not going to spend too much time on it and I do want to ask a couple of questions. For example, I see that there are categories such as creator of the year on LinkedIn and creator of the year on TikTok. What what would for that specific category, what would people, the judges be looking for?

30:25 Because when I think about podcast submissions, you know, that's easy, right? I send you my podcast, tell me, you know, did I win or not, right? But with this like, how would I know that I'm eligible as a smaller LinkedIn creator? So really what kind of set you apart is really anyone is eligible is someone who can look back at their at the their campaign. And I want to give a little bit of a caveat here. We're looking at campaigns that are within the last 12 to 18 months. So this goes back to about the beginning of July 2024. And if you have a campaign that you're proud of and it kind of skirts that a little bit, I would say just reach out and confirm if it's still a good entry, you should be good, but just reach out to be sure.

31:07 But what I would say that establishes you as a definite solid candidate is honestly, if you have the numbers to show for it, you set a goal and you either met or surpassed it, regardless of the platform that it was on. And again, being able to frame it, give us the story behind it, what inspired the campaign, what was it for? Who was it for? What does it build? How did how did it affect your brand or a client's brand? And if you can provide us that really solid package experience, then that really by itself is the candidate establishment right there. Again, we're focused on being as as more accessible than your typical other award ceremony.

31:52 For instance, a colleague of mine, Jessica, who is one of our directors shared a post the other day from another company that does a similar kind of awards thing. But their whole thing there she screenshot was that they demand that if your team is above is is less than 1000 people, you got to pay at least 395 per submission. Or if your team is over 1000 people, you have to pay at least 695 per submission. So our thing is being as accessible as possible, which is why we set the price at 100 per submission. So it's really about you being able to showcase yourself. That's what makes you a candidate. Got it. And this is a question from Nick, who put it in the chat.

32:34 Can you define campaign right? You've been using that word. So what? What do we mean by campaign? I would say any kind of like structured effort with the timeline. So if you say you set out to grow your audience from 100 to 5000 within two quarters or two fiscal quarters and you can showcase how the efforts you put in, the different clips you put out there, the SEO you put into it, the messaging you put out there brought you from where you began and to the end of that timeline where you ended up. So yeah, so quick little. Yeah, that's that would be my definition of that. OK, OK, cool.

33:15 Well, thank you. And again, that's hashish, that's the name. And you can go to hashieawards.com, HASHIE awards.com and we will link to that in the show notes. Very cool. BC thank you for sharing this. And we will make sure I, I'm, I'm definitely thinking about applying here. I'm just, I just got to find the right category, but I, I think I want to apply. It's like 100 bucks. Is that what it is? It's 100 bucks per submission. And I do also want to include that the main event is in LA where it will happen. Now, if you are somewhere else not in LA or near California, we do going back to Social Media Club, the parent organization. We do have chapters all around the states. So for instance, if you happen to be in South Carolina and you want to submit, but you're pretty sure you can't go to LA for the event, What you can do in the application process is say you want to attend a local chapter event. So there's Social Media Club Charlotte. Who would handle Carolina creators or people around the Carolinas if they can't go out to LA? That makes sense.

34:20 OK, cool. Awesome. I love that that option. Thank you very much, BC. And feel free to stick around here on stage with us. And if you want to participate in the rest of the conversation, by all means, you are more than welcome. Thank you. Happily, thank you. All right, that was BC the Hashi awards. I'm going to keep things moving here. And let's see, we've got Oh, Dr., do you want to share your event? OK, so Podcaster Directory virtual meet up every Thursday 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time and tomorrow the topics are health, fitness, purpose, life, religion and spirituality. So this meet up is a combination of authors, speakers, basically anyone who wants to get on a podcast, and podcasters. So this is a great way to network to even for collabs, anything like that.

35:22 Be sure and use our discount code PMC and you will get in for free and we will have the link for you in the show notes. Awesome. And just to make it clear to everyone, all of those different categories she just listed, you will have your own dedicated group to discuss whichever of those categories are of interest to you. So if you do a health. Podcast, go ahead, right, you can jump from room to room. Each one of those things that I mentioned, health, fitness, purpose, life, religion, spirituality, they each have their own room and you can jump from room to room and you know, just go into any room that you want to. So that's what makes it different other than Zoom. Zoom, you can't, you don't have the choice of which room you go to.

36:10 You know this one. You kind of do. Very cool. Thank you Dr. And again, links in the show notes. Let's share some news. DRI think I'm going to do a just a couple of maybe quick news bites, but then we're just going to get right into the headlines because we've got we're shorter on time than I thought. OK, in case you missed it over the Thanksgiving break, the podcast hosting announcements keep coming just a week after Riverside rolled out free hosting. And we were lucky enough to have Kendall from Riverside break the news here on the podcasting morning chat before anyone else knew. By the way, very proud.

36:55 Patreon has now launched its own RSS based podcast hosting for creators on the platform. The new feature lets you drop previews of paid episodes directly into your public RSS feed, designed to help more listeners discover your work and upgrade to a paid membership, notably Patreons. Patreon's announcement hints that the hosting won't play nicely with shows that rely on dynamic ad insertion, likely because of limitations in the import tool. But for creators focused on membership driven audio, it's a meaningful new option in the ecosystem.

37:36 And that could be audio or video on, but it has to be an audio file to work with the RSS feed. But you could still have an audio version. And ultimately that be the tempting, the temptation for video. Also, by the way, real quick, you may want to update or keep updating your Spotify app because they in a recent blog have requested that you do that or or suggested, I should say that you do that. And why? Well, one of the reasons Spotify Wrapped is coming. So if you want to check out your Spotify Wrapped, I know how popular that is. And yes, it includes your podcast listening habits as well.

38:17 And by the way, I also noticed on the Apple Podcast app, although they're not really promoting it, I don't think, but I noticed in the new section of the app that they're already promoting top shows of 2025. So you can go in there, tap on the little news new section and you can see things like top episodes of 2025, most shared shows and episodes most followed and or subscribed shows, etcetera. Pretty cool little feature. So check that out. All right, I'm going to go to Ralph who Ralph and I've been talking this week and Ralph's going to give us a weekly segment when we do the news and Ralph, what are we?

39:02 What are we calling this again? I think we'll call it the content business topics, maybe you like. Something like that. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, Business, it's our business section. We'll, we'll come up with a, a clever title, but yeah, this is our business, Business news section. Ralph, take it away. Yeah. So being in the business for 30 years, I guess I have some St. cred for that. But anyway, today's news is what's going on with YouTube and biometric data. So YouTube is rolling out a new deep fake detection tool for creators. What it's supposed to do is help you find and remove AI videos that fake your face or voice. And here's how it works. You upload a government ID, you record a selfie. And then here's the problem though, Mark. You've got to give your consent to YouTube, Google to process this biometric data to detect deepfakes. The idea here is they're going to go out and use that data to go see if someone else is using your face, using your image, using your video and let you know about it. But the problem with that is you're given that consent to. Google, YouTube, Alphabet to use that biometric data and a lot of people are concerned about that.

40:08 Is anyone concerned about that here? I'm curious. Or because there are some, you know, Yeah, there there's some good to this, right? But some people may feel a little awkward about giving up their physical identity. BC wants to chime in. Let me check in with BC. Go for it. Yeah, I was going to say I was going to speak to the good about it. I was specifically if anyone you know knows about the whole Ariana Grande thing, where at the Singapore launch of Wicked for Good, she was attacked by that dude in The Who didn't Cynthia Rivo pushed him off. And then I think a couple days after that happened, I saw an AI video of Cynthia Rivo air quotes here saying that her entire security team should be fired because what were they doing?

40:53 They were paying attention, yada, yada, yada. And not only was I thinking that Cynthia's got a lot more tact than that, she wouldn't do that, but also the legal ramifications if she would have done that. And this is an AI video too. So initially I'm hopping on to the potential good of that. But yeah, also reflecting on, I'm not sure how much I want Uncle Sam looking into me like that. Yeah, to be very honest. But yes, it's quite the dichotomy there. It is, it is. And I, I mean, I've got to think that that's at least a possibility that at some point, at least with all the different platforms we use, we might have to provide our likeness so that we can prevent people using our identity falsely.

41:34 Yeah, Ralph, go ahead. Yeah, Mark, let me speak into that because this is something a lot of people might not know about, but the IRS and most government entities went with this thing called ID me guess it's been about 18 months or two years ago. And a lot more governmental type entities are doing that where you have to send them a copy of your driver's license. You have to do a selfie video. So yeah, that information is getting out there. And I see it all the time with my clients. I do a lot of tax work on the IRS side. But I think the big concern here is in YouTube's privacy policy. They consider that to be public information at that point. And I think that's the part that's got a lot of people concerned. Yes, you want to protect yourself from the deep, the deep fakes, but are you willing to give more sensitive data to that same big tech company?

42:23 Because let's be honest with each other, what are they going to use it for? Are they going to somehow use that to benefit themselves? Thank you, Ralph. Yeah. So to be continued, we will see where this goes. And I mean, overall, I think it's, I personally like this. I like that there's this option. I haven't decided yet if that's something I would do, but I'm drawn to it so I could. All right. Thank you, Ralph. Appreciate that and let's keep it moving you since we talked about YouTube YouTube shorts algorithm just hit the brakes and creators are feeling the quote UN quote shockwave. This comes for originally from someone on LinkedIn. Mario Joes JOOS and Pod News picked it up and that's where I saw it.

43:13 Creators across YouTube are reporting a sudden collapse in views on older shorts, and new data suggests it isn't just seasonal slow down. A mid-september algorithm shift appears to be heavily prioritizing recency, leaving Evergreen content unexpectedly tanking and creators scrambling for answers. Data pulled from channels ranging from small creators to those doing 100 million to a billion monthly views showed the same pattern, a steep performance drop in shorts older than 28 to 30 days. The September shift disproportionately effects back catalogs, which many creators rely on for predictable, stable traffic. The change pushes creators toward frequent posting instead of long term quality or sustainable growth, and the behavior resembles competitive strategies seen on TikTok, hinting at platform level shifts rather than a creator focused update.

44:20 While some older shorts still breakthrough, the algorithm's recent bias is clear in the data across multiple channels. But yeah, I, I have to go back and look because you know, and I, I know the article here says that some shorts breakthrough, but I've got to say, I have an old YouTube channel that I ditched a while ago when for whatever reason, just, I don't know if it's coincidentally or not, but when my Instagram was hacked several years ago, I end a lot. That's what it was because my old Instagram was hacked and that one was at Ironic Media. I also had a YouTube at Ironic Media. And so when I lost my Instagram, I went to Markronic at Markronic, right?

45:06 So why I'm telling you all this is because that I never took down that old Ironic Media YouTube channel and recently went back to it and discovered I have a few shorts that are just blowing up over this past year and continue to. It's pushed me to over 1000 subscribers over there and my actual active YouTube has half of that. And so I see some of my old content still working for me. Maybe that's just because it was so popular at some point that the algorithm continues to push it. I don't know. So a mixed bag. We'll have to see what happens. All right, I'm going to go to UDR for our news story #8 and how appropriate that you get to bash Apple a little bit. #8 let me Scroll down.

45:59 It's the apple. Podcast glitch? Yeah, OK, so Apple Podcast, which is pushing random shows and some look, well, unsafe. Apple Podcasts have been opening itself and surfacing unexpected shows for months. The issue effects iPhones and Macs, and some of the podcasts being surfaced contain broken code or suspicious links. One even pointed users toward a potentially malicious website. No one knows whether this is a bug or an exploit or metadata problem or anything like that, but it raises serious questions about platform safety. So here's a little summary.

46:48 Apple Podcast has been open, opening automatically on users devices without input. The app often surfaces unexpected podcasts from wide ranges of categories. Some titles include scrambled text or odd embedded URLs. One Surface podcast page linked to what appears to be a malicious website. This behavior has gone on for months with no official response from Apple. Oh really? Go figure. OK. Experts suspect metadata abuse, feed feed poisoning, or a vulnerability in Apple's content handling. And This is why Nick and I have nothing to do with that. Right.

47:39 This is the reason so there and there's nothing in the story that says that this has been addressed. Well, we know that you you called that out that Apple hasn't addressed. This. Yeah, they haven't responded. Fascinating figure. Yeah. So be careful, I suppose, with your Apple podcast app. Yeah, I, I, I haven't seen that happen. Although I did tell Dr. this morning when we were doing some show prep that all of a sudden an episode of the PMC started playing randomly on my computer. And I was like, I all of a sudden you're Dr. talking to me and I don't know where it's coming from. And I had to search all through my different apps open on my computer. And yeah, it was the podcast app, but I think that was just maybe a key I hit on my keyboard. I really don't think, and certainly I don't think we're a show that's going to poison anyone's feed. We're not.

48:27 We don't. We're not a feed poisoning show. We're not. We're not a poisoner, no. All right, I'm going to keep it moving with this story. I, I teased it at the intro. Everything is becoming television, and that includes podcasts. In his essay Everything Is Television, Derek Thompson argues we're witnessing A sweeping cultural transformation. Nearly all media, including podcasts, are evolving or being forced into the language of television. As short form video AI powered feeds and video podcasts rise, the old boundaries between media platforms blur for podcasts. For the podcasting world, that means rethinking format, distribution and what listening audiences, quote UN quote, even look like in 2025.

49:15 Those are not necessarily all my thoughts and opinions. Those are those come from the article. And Speaking of that article, giving a little more from it. Podcasts are increasingly becoming YouTube shows, which we all know. Thompson is saying video podcast consumption is growing 20 times faster than audio only shows, and many top podcasts now offer video versions. I'm not. Again, I can't verify some of these stats. These are coming from the author. Audio only may no longer cut it. He says that for podcasters aiming for scale or long term relevance, sticking strictly to audio could feel like swimming against the tide, especially as the broader media ecosystem bends toward visual flow. Yes, Ralph I.

50:05 Was just going to comment on what you're talking about there because I noticed in the last like 7 to 10 days, all of the quote coaching gurus are talking about, oh, you, I've always told you when I'm, when it's time to get on YouTube, I'm going to tell you it's time to get on YouTube. And they're all saying it. Now, Mark, all of a sudden you got to be on YouTube. I must have heard five different coaching gurus this past week put out content that says this is the time you've got to get on YouTube. So I might kind of follow what you're saying there. Interesting. Yeah. And I, like I said earlier, I think really success is defined by you and, and what you're going for, what your goals are, right? So if your goal is that you want as many eyes and ears on your podcast, you just want to rack up the views, rack up the downloads, that's your goal then yeah, you probably, I hate saying it, but I'll just say it for this conversation, you have to go on video to increase your chances of more views and more downloads.

51:04 But if your goal is to, let's say, grow a business, get more clients, then you don't have to have the whole world listening. In fact, you don't want to have the whole world listening. They they're not going to care about it anyway. You want to try to get in front of your audience, your target audience. That's the key. And that's maybe your definition of success. But what happens is, is that the waters get muddied when the gurus say this is the time you got to get on video without any context. If they're going to say that, OK, say it. And I know sometimes it's just for click bait too. But if you're going to say it, say it. But say, get a little more specific. Tell me if if that's my goal, then, yeah, to get as many views as possible.

51:49 Now's the time. Get on YouTube and have an audio podcast. But I just don't believe that's as far as independent podcasters go. That's really not their goal. Maybe if they're just an overall entertainment podcast, maybe that's something that you can can get you more views and and a more general audience, but I don't believe really that's what the success of podcasting is. And I've already explained. So I'll stop there. By the way, Congrats to Billy on his five year clubhouse anniversary. So he put that in the chat there. Yes. And he has the little balloon icon on his profile picture. Happy anniversary to you Billy. And with that gang, we are going to call it a day for news and comment.

52:30 Thank you all for the contributions. This was a fun one. Lots of engagement, lots of different voices participating. That's my kind of episode of the podcasting morning chat. And if you want to find more episodes, go to podcastingmorningchat.com. You can find our whole 400 plus episode list there. And you can always find us on your favorite podcast platform. So until tomorrow for our evaluation episode, make it a great day everybody. Take care.