Stop Overlooking TikTok. It’s Driving Your Future Listeners

0:05 Good morning Podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Wednesday, December 10th, 2025, and today podcasting news and comment covers what happens when a podcast suddenly goes viral, how TikTok is fueling podcast discovery, and why more creators are going solo. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast chatter, YouTube, Facebook, please share this with a fellow podcaster. Now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:20 Good morning again podcasting, morning chat. Thanks so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronick and currently on stage with me. My Co hosts we have producer Ashley Feller, Jonathan Howard, Dr. Faye, Ralph Estep, Nick Nahlbach. BC Babbles and Sid Meadows, that is a full house. And as I had shared right before we officially went live, I was saying to BC it's about time we just make it official and make him a Co host, moderator, whatever terminology we want to use. But he's been so dedicated over the past couple weeks being here every day and he and I talk a little bit behind the scenes too. And I think, you know, why not?

2:01 The more the merrier, especially when we have people like BC that's really, really pouring into the community offering insights, etcetera. So BC officially welcome. He's is he getting his coffee after that whole build up? I'm here. Thank you so much. Yes, I'm here gathering stuff and and information. I'm good. Thank you. I will be here. You're welcome. I know I catch some of you off guard sometimes. OK, so today, yes, news and comment, we will dig into that in just a moment. I wanted to share a couple things with you. First, again, a reminder tomorrow is our evaluation series. We are evaluating the podcast Carefree Highway Revisited hosted by Empowered Podcasting community member Michael Messner. The show is about the songs.

2:47 Of Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian singer-songwriter, and so his primary audience are fans of folk, rock and 1970s music. We will share a link to the episode we're reviewing in the show notes if you want to listen before we do this tomorrow. If not, all good, we will play some clips for you and share lots of great information for you that I think will be helpful not just to Mike, but to you as a podcaster as well. Now before we go any further, as I've shared before, we've been wondering about Nick's audio quality because for the longest time he's been using the same headset and it has been challenging, I'll put it that way.

3:30 His audio cuts in and out, meaning it sounds like sometimes it's working through his earbuds, sometimes it sounds like it's coming through his speaker, and it's a bit of a production nightmare. For Ashley in post production. She doesn't say that I do. So Nick, good morning. Are we officially using the new Black Friday sale headset that you got or or earbuds? Yes, we are. How do I sound? You sound like you're on a phone, but it I already can tell you, you sound clear. Are you actually driving right now? Yeah, OK. And I, I was thinking about that too, like I am driving most mornings, so I feel like we're always going to get our car noise. That probably sounds better. So completely different.

4:12 This is this is unbelievable. It's so much better, Nick. I don't hear any car noise. We always heard the car noise even when it didn't switch back and forth. So this is a good thing. So what's the brand that of? Yeah. Of earbuds. Do you know now? It is. The brand is called Nothing. They make phones and and phones and all kinds of stuff like that. It's the nothing ear AI think is the official like product. They have a whole slew of different earbuds. But yeah, they had a a sick deal on Amazon. Are you saying nothing as in NOTHING Nothing. Yep, it's it's really confusing to tell people what kind of earbuds are those. Nothing.

4:54 First. OK, fine. Yeah, fine. You don't tell me, jerk. That's so funny. Cool. Well, this sounds great, Nick. I mean, again, it sounds like you are using some kind of device, headset or earbuds. Doesn't sound like studio quality, but it sounds. Way better and we'll take it. Oh my God, unbelievably better. And oh Greg in the chat and also was happened to have been the first in the chat. Happy birthday to you, Greg. Nice. To celebrate with you bright and early this morning. Thanks for being here on your birthday. Appreciate that. Let me keep things moving 'cause we do want to get to the news.

5:35 I got some mail to the Podcasting Morning Chat from a listener. This came through our pod page where you can go to podpage.com/PMC or Podcasting Morning chat.com and you can leave us a note. And Joshua from the podcast. Oh, that's a fact. Left us a really nice message. I'm going to read the whole thing, he said. I just wanted to follow up with you and explain how much I continue to appreciate you and the rest of your panel. After first listening to the PMC. I've purposefully chosen and continue to choose to listen daily. When I miss a day, I make it up the very next day.

6:16 You've made the in All caps must must listen list. Alongside How to Podcast series and Dave Campbell, who's a regular here in our audience and who inadvertently, as he says here, turned him on to our series, he goes on to list some other podcasts as well. And then he said, I'd love for you to possibly publish a list and maybe ask for others of helpful podcasts for new and old podcasters that continue fueling your creativity and remind you of good podcasting techniques and practices. Why bother? Joshua, you've got us. But that is a really good idea.

6:56 I appreciate that idea. And that's something I'll think about, especially because we do have some people in this very community that do that. So why not put the spotlight on our community? Joshua goes on to say while the discussions about stingers and bumpers are right up my alley, I tend to gravitate toward the reviews of popular and independent podcasts. My lofty goal? To create a consistent podcast that is worthy of your review. Thank you to you and all your members, all the members of your valued panel. Well done to all hands. Thank you, Joshua. Thank you so much for that. Thoughtful. Note, I mean that yeah, that blows me away. Thank you for all of that and cool to hear that you're gravitating toward some of the new features, the new segments that we're doing here.

7:46 Jonathan, that's a kudos to you for bringing us or the obsession worthy podcasts on Monday. We're going to keep that tradition going next week as well. And of course. Joshua here is referring to our Thursday evaluation episodes. So thank you, Josh. Glad that's working out that that's just music to my ears because that's one of the things we set out to do a couple months ago is really try to come up with some recurring themes and series that people will gravitate to the people will consider must listen podcasting. So thank you for sharing that with us. Final note for you guys and this is news. So I'll just.

8:28 I'll just start the news. Music. Yes, this is still under my housekeeping category, and it's still news. Last night I, along with the other members of the Empowered Podcasting Conference team, hosted a holiday party virtually via Zoom and we had a lot of fun networking and some big announcements. The first announcement is that the video to the entire weekend of workshops and presentations will be available very soon, like within days. We just have some final touches to do on it before it's available to you. So you can, if you didn't get to go, you can actually virtually go now by getting those videos. We'll have more details for you.

9:11 And if you did go, I know there's a lot of you that were really wanting the content to hold onto. And continue to learn from. So that's coming soon. And the bigger announcement we announced the date for Empowered Podcasting 3 and a very special rate. And I mean that this is going to be something that's only available to you and past attendees of the Empowered Podcasting Conference. I couldn't not offer this to the podcasting morning check community considering Really Empowered Podcasting Conference was born. Because of this group, Ashley, we will be able to put this in the show notes as well. I'm going to.

9:54 Share a link for you to get this for honestly the absolute lowest price that we will ever offer. Even if we end up doing some kind of sale down the road, we won't. Go this low ever again and I know that sounds a little car salesman E, but this is that's the honest truth. So the cost 149 for a full weekend, 2 full days actually, 2 plus days of networking content and a little bit of fun too. We've got some parties planned already, at least in theory. We've got them all written the down. Now we've got to execute and put them into motion. But. We've got lots of good stuff planned, so if you want to take advantage, this is only going to last until tonight. By 11:30 PM Eastern, it will be gone, and then it'll jump up to. 199 a ticket.

10:49 So what's the date for it? Oh, did I not say that the date is? No, I don't think I. Did you're right. The date August 21st. The weekend of August 21st. We wanted to keep the same weekend as we did last time in September, the end of September, but a that weekend. Wasn't available from the hotel. We're going back to the same hotel in Charlotte and then we wanted to maybe pick another September weekend, however. Labor Day weekend was one of those weekends. Don't want to do it then. And then there were two other weekends that yeah, those were technically open, but we don't know when podcast movement is going to happen except that it's. Supposed to happen in September. Right. That was always my big thing is trying to organize one of these big events.

11:32 When you've got these super yeah podcasting events happening all around you and you don't, it's not a competition, but you want to, you know, evenly space some of this stuff, right? 'Cause we want to give people, we want to have give everybody an opportunity to come to our thing. And if we're going to butt up against something like podcast movement, that's going to make it challenging for them and especially for speakers. That's what I'm more worried about because I know speakers may gravitate to a bigger event 'cause they get more eyes and ears on their presentation. But I'm actually more concerned about speakers than I would be attendees 'cause I believe this community will show up regardless to our event. So yeah, we just decided, you know what, let's just do it as close to September as possible without it being too close. So we chose the weekend of August 21st, so and. What is August like in in North Carolina? It's a little warm, it's a little warm, it's a little hot. But you know what, we did it, we did it in the summer for the first one and it was just fine.

12:35 Everybody was was fine with it. So I, I don't think it's going to be, it's not like go doing it in Florida or Texas in August. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, BC you had something. Go ahead. Personally, I'm very excited because, well, firstly, this time I'm very well aware of it. Well in advance, yes. Not like last. Time the day before, so super excited for that and yeah, August is not too bad. And plus we're going to be where you chose it and I think it's the same venue this time. Great venue, love the space. We're not going to be in the sun too much, so even though it can get a little in, you know, Charlotte for August, it's not going to be bad. Be inside. Great space, so totally looking forward to it. You will have my submission here very soon. Awesome.

13:16 Thank you BC excited and we've already had a, we've already had nine ticket sales from just and that all came last night during and after the holiday party. And then we now we've sent out the announcement to all attendees from any empowered podcasting conference. So I expect to see some more coming through soon and I hope you all will attend as well. I think that's it. Yep, that's all the housekeeping items. So let's dig and dig into some news, shall we? And I know Dr. this might screw up a little bit. Your top five with your eggs cooking time here approaching. I guess we'll figure it out.

13:59 I'll start with some podcast data for you. As of yesterday, the number one podcast on Apple, Crime Junkie by audio. Chuck, once again, I should say, if this continues, we we may have to do a Apple top five like we do with Spotify because as some of you know, we've extended a top five to for the Spotify list because it's always Joe Rogan at the top. And it was getting boring to say. And if that happens here on Apple, we may have to do the same thing. Also, I like to share with you guys some updates on the world of podcasting. These are this is how many new episodes were published in the last week across all active podcasts 615,374 this past week, which is up 9.3% from the previous week and last week I shared with you over the last 30 days. So these are the new episodes published over the last 30 days. 2.4 million.

15:03 Which is up 57.7% from last month. Pretty amazing. I guess people are back into the swing of things after the Thanksgiving holiday, at least here in the United States. And Dr., what I will do, I'm trying to think here, I'm going to wait and and come back to your top fives because we've got we've also got a year in review top five that we'll share in a moment, so I will. Good idea. Thank you. You got it. Don't rush. It's fine. I already could hear you were out of breath. It's fine. I can handle it. All right, I'm going to jump into some events that you may want to know today.

15:44 I recognize that this is more for our live audience, but this comes out early enough. For our podcast audience as well today December 10th at 2:00 PM Eastern Libsyn is hosting office hours and the description here says ready to monetize your podcast with out disrupting your content. Discover how Lipson automatic podcast ads can transform your episodes into consistent revenue streams with smart ad placement that keeps your audience engaged. So if that's of interest to you, we will have a link in the show notes for. Ya, and I will wait cause Dr. has an event of her own as well. Although I'll share it in a moment. But I do want to remind you, Podfest, Podfest Expo, the 12th annual event happens Thursday, January 15th through the 18th. I will be there.

16:28 I will be speaking there. And if you'd like to come along, just use coupon code Mark Marc for 10% off. Just go to podfestexpo.com. We're also going to be hosting a meet up there, an official meet up with Podfest there. And also yesterday I got to host a network, another networking, virtual networking call with all the Pod Fest speakers just for all of us to get to know each other better, build a little community among the speakers. And it went really well. And if you missed it and you're a speaker, we're doing another one next Tuesday. DRS got the event that she shares with us every week, the meet up and match up with podcaster speakers, authors, etcetera.

17:13 It's a podcasters directory virtual meet up. It happens this Thursday 4:00 PM Eastern and tomorrow's topics are entrepreneurship, money, finance, tech, and AI, which means those are basically like 4-5 individual tracks that you get to choose from. When you go to the event and then you can go and talk, for example, entrepreneurship with others who are interested in talking entrepreneurship and you can use discount code PMC and you'll get in for free. Excellent. That's what I wanted you to say. Thank you. You got it. I'm almost done. No problem, no problem. And also I wanted to tell you, Dr., you can just listen in for anybody who's interested. Dr. Sometimes politely complaints about the tool that they used to do this, this meet up because they use it because it does the whole breakout room thing and you can pick and choose which breakout room you can go in. And Dr. was saying that her and the people that host it, that's why they don't use Zoom because you can't do that. I can officially tell you Dr., that hosting 2 breakout rooms for my first time ever yesterday using Zoom, you can in fact turn on a feature that allows people to pick the rooms they want to join so you can let your team know that. All right.

18:32 And Dr. Are you ready for your top five or shall I move forward? Yeah, I'm ready. OK, well, take a deep breath. Slow down. It's OK. OK, It's only podcast news. It's not surgery. He got over easy eggs today. What does he usually get? Scramble. Yeah. So he got the quicker version OK. So we have Spotify's top five and #5 is the Tucker Carlson show #4 is Crime junkie #3 let's hear the Tiffany this past weekend with Theo bond #2 is Sean Ryan's show and the number one spot is the Joe Rogan Experience. There you go.

19:19 See, told you Joe Rogan always at the top there on Spotify. All right, and Dr. you have a different top five than you would normally do. Normally you pick a random genre and give us the Spotify's top five. What do you have for us today? Yeah, so the random chart is Spotify's top five shared episodes of 2025. Now this is interesting. So and you have a story after this that is comes from that as well. These are just independent. Not it's not independent podcast but it's just episodes that have been shared the most. OK, so they're top shared shared episodes or shows on Spotify.

20:02 Episodes. So episodes of the shows. So I don't think we're going to have to do the timpani on this because there's a little bit of explanation that goes. OK, no problem. So #5 is the Sean Ryan show. It is episode 163 and Gary Brekka biohacking secrets to longevity, aging, myths and science of nutrition. That's what the show is about. And that show was 3 hours and 16 minutes long. Wow, three hours and it was one of their number 5. Download most downloaded show, right? Interesting. So #4 is Diary of Aceo, the October 16th episode which is on hormone and fertility experts dangers of not having a period fasting can backfire for women and that show was 3 hours and 34 minutes. Wow.

21:01 And also health related. Right #3 is a show that's close to my heart. Y'all. If you have not heard this podcast, you have got to tune in. It's called the Telepathy Tapes. It's the premiere episode, season 1, episode 1 unveiling the hidden world of telepathic communications in a silenced community. So it's all about autism and people in that community and how they have superpowers. We've been talking about, we've been talking about that, you know, off and on. We've talked about that show before. And I never really had a chance to go and listen. And on my road trip from Maryland back home here from Thanksgiving, we listened and I was just completely fascinated with it.

21:48 It was really fascinating, that show. Right, so that's Telepathy Tapes. And that episode was 54 minutes. So #2 is comes from Joe Rowe, The Joe Rogan Experience. It was episode 2294 with Doctor Suzanne Humphries, the author of Dissolving Illusions, Disease, Vaccines and the Forgotten History. So another healthcare episode and that one, of course, it's Joe Rowe. So it's two hours and 33 minutes, no? Surprise. OK, number one is from Mel Robbins.

22:31 It's the March 27th episode and it's with the doctor, Stacey Sims, The body reset, how women should eat and exercise for health, fat loss and energy. And that one was one hour and 38 minutes. Wow, OK, so surprising longer episodes. I mean, the health stuff, not maybe as surprising, but the fact that most of those were at least two hours or more is really interesting that they were also the most shared. It doesn't say, though, the most the longest retention rate. So we don't know necessarily that they were all listened to all the way through, right? It could have been shared because of one specific thing that people were jumping to to listen to.

23:15 Who knows, right? But it's still pretty fascinating that the longer episodes were the ones that were shared the most. It's crazy, when I first looked this up, I wasn't even looking at the times and then all of a sudden I looked over and I just looked down the line and I thought, what is going on here? Because, you know, every it's all fast, fast, fast, fast now clip, clip, clip, clip, fast, fast, fast. And these were like, you know, day trips in the car, so. Crazy. Well, thank you, Dr. Thanks for changing it up a little bit. And I'll actually piggyback off of that because this is part of that report, I'll call it from Spotify that you just shared their year in podcasting recap for 2025.

23:58 And another thing that stood out from that article or blog is over 80% of the top 50 US podcasts on that platform included video episodes. That's up from last year. And also the top 20 video shows on Spotify, they saw more than 24% growth since December of 2024, according to Spotify. And that shows that video can play a big role in discoverability. And, and I want to make it clear, it doesn't mean OK, that now it's time everybody must have video. If that's not your cup of tea or you're happy with being audio only, awesome.

24:40 I'm happy with being mainly audio. But it does point to the fact that video does seem to help with discoverability. It's not a guarantee, but you can't deny the fact that when people see something, it'll catch their attention a lot more, say, during a scroll than if they just hear something. In other words, a static image with some audio playing behind it. That's an example of why video can help with discoverability. I see Billy wants to come up here. Billy, I invited you up, so feel free to come join us if you have anything to say on that. Now, Ralph, I was going to give you a heads up or oh, So what we'll do is we'll go to Billy and then we're going to go to your segment.

25:26 So stand by. And Billy, good morning. What did you want to add to all this? Hey, good morning, Mark. Well, I was actually going to ask a question about the sharing of the episodes and how they calculate that. Because I'm like, is that someone sharing directly from the player or like the app, I should say? Or is that Mel Robbins tucked that link into her e-mail list of a million people? And sent it and. People clicked on. It I mean I. Was just curious. It could be a combination of both. Yeah, Billy, it could be a combination of both. I think that's a fairpoint. Yeah, I think the only thing we know for sure, it's just among, you know, Spotify consumers.

26:09 Look, I think what it is is Spotify, it can track a link from that episode. And if it's a if it's a clicked link, they might consider it a share. I don't know. But it's definitely going to be considered a share if they're used. If it's coming from that share button on Spotify directly, that will be absolutely marked as. But you really do raise a good point that, you know, if it's Mel Robbins and she's sharing that episode with her huge community, yeah, that's going to probably weigh play a factor in it. Or at least it could fairpoint. I mean, impressive either way, not to take away from any of those people. I was just curious if they told you how they got to that number.

26:51 But if that was like the, I don't think that's the only criteria. Because if it was, why wouldn't Joe Roe be in the number one spot? He has the most listeners. As the number one show on Spotify, you would think maybe then that would translate, but maybe not too right 'cause Mel Robbins got a huge audience and if that particular episode was really popular, then sure that that could still overtake a Joe Rogan, right? Yep. And there were things on that list that we haven't read in the top five in a long time. I mean, I think I read off telepathy tapes twice in the past year. Yeah. And Sean Ryan, I read every now and then.

27:33 And six through 10 is just as interesting. But you know, we only do top. Yes, yes 'cause we do have other. Take a look at it. Other news to follow? Yes, take a look at that. We can make sure to also link to that from Spotify in the show notes as well. All right, Ralph, you are up. Let's talk about it and let's please forgive me, I forgot the current working title of this segment. So please share that. As well, we'll call it the the weekly business bit. OK, there you go. Weekly business bit with Ralph E Step. Go for it, Ralph. So here's a story that every content creator needs to hear. Now, this was actually reported in The Hollywood Reporter back in September, but I think it is totally relevant and it's all about the no tax on tips rule.

28:16 This is part of that big beautiful bill that was passed by Congress. And here's the thing everybody needs to hear. Yes, it includes digital creators. So for the first time, podcasters, streamers, influencers and online creators who received tips, donations, super chats, or or similar fan support may be able to exclude, listen to this one, $25,000 of those tips from federal income tax. This is a huge win for small to mid tier creators who rely on community support. I'm going to tell you though, the rules are complex and not everyone qualifies, but this is the perfect moment for creators to tighten up their bookkeeping, properly check their tip income, and make sure they're set up to benefit from this new deduction. So what am I saying here?

28:58 If you're a podcaster or a creator who receives fan tips, donations, super chats, any of those things, the new law may let you deduct up to $25,000 of that income from federal income tax. Now here's what you need to understand. It's got to be voluntary tip income, not sponsorships or ad revenue. And the downsides it is, you're still going to owe self-employment tax. So you got to track it properly. But if this may apply to you, this is a huge thing. Again, this was in The Hollywood Reporter back in September of 2025. But this is a huge thing for content creators. Yeah. Thank you, Ralph. That's really important to know. And Ralph, as somebody in the business, I think would you agree? I, I think it's important for a creator to bring that up to their accountant and not assume their accountant is going to know that this could apply to you as a content creator. So it's important for us to have that conversation with an accountant if we use one.

29:55 Well, absolutely. It's kind of like when you go to the doctor and you bring the doctor ideas of things you saw online and all that sort of thing. Because not all of us accountants know everything. And if we don't serve a lot of content creators, I happen to serve a lot of content creators. But yeah, absolutely, Mark, this is something to discuss with them. But now more than ever, it's a great time to keep track of this stuff, because if you're not keeping track of it, you're not going to be able to get this deduction. Thank you, Ralph. Appreciate that once again. What's the working title? It's our weekly business bit. There you go, the PM CS weekly business bit with Ralph E Step Love that. Let's get into some news bites. These are some stories worth sharing, but may not be big conversational pieces. But if they are awesome.

30:41 First, as we've as we've shared before, for the first time ever, the Golden Globes, if I could speak, are recognizing podcasts. They've now added a best podcast category and I got to say it's probably about time. The nominees some heavy hitters and at least one big surprise. Nominees include armchair expert from Wandering Call her Daddy Smartless and the Mel Robbins podcast. All SiriusXM shows good hang from Spotify with Amy Poehler made the list and deservedly so. I don't know why I feel like she's going to win just because she's. She's an actress or an actor, I should say. I don't think we think technically the tress and actress has been removed.

31:26 That was armchair expert. Oh, that's true. That's true. Yes, that's a good point. So I feel like. And smartless? Well, three. Yeah, you're right. OK, Throw that all out the window. Thank you, Dr. Appreciate that. I don't know why. So maybe that's just my intuition telling me that I think that show is going to win a good hang. That's just maybe it my intuition. And also up first from NPR rounds out the category. But here's the surprise I talked about. No Joe Rogan. Hashtag no Joe Rogan. Pretty surprising considering this guy is always number one on Spotify, has a huge following, is often the name thrown around when podcasting is in the conversation.

32:12 Pretty interesting. And the announcement? That was made, I believe earlier this week or yeah, earlier this week. It didn't make the TV portion of the show, meaning, you know, they do the announcement of different winners of the Golden Globes publicly on TV. They did not announce the podcast category, which it's kind of annoying. I wish they they did, especially because as Dr. corrected me, there are plenty of Hollywood people on that list. Would have been a cool thing for them to do, but it is still a foot in the door. Baby steps. Yeah, and if you want to, the show itself airs January 11th and I will absolutely be tuning in at least. Do we?

32:52 Know who the host is this year. I don't know off the top of my head, no. I'll look that up while you take this next story. Yeah, because Ricky Gervais is just, I don't know if he's going to be asked back, but that that's my incentive to watch. Yeah, he's always good. Nikki Glaser. Nikki Glaser. Oh, OK. Well, she's got some, she's got some track going. She's spicy. She's spicy. I like her. Yeah. OK, so I heart declares guaranteed human. That's in quotation marks, guaranteed human because apparently there that's a selling point now. So I Heart Media just slapped a quote UN quote guaranteed human label on everything it makes, staking its claim as the anti AI entertainment giant.

33:40 The company says audiences are tired of synthetic voices and trust hollowing out their media. Sorry this copy is weird. OK, so every podcast and radio show will now lean hard into real people and real connection. Their research shows listeners crave human made content, worry about a is future and feel more disconnected by social platforms. I heart is betting that authenticity still sells. It kind of annoys me, like I I love the idea behind. It Yeah. But I don't. I just feel like as a listener it's just kind of weird and annoying. I'd prefer the opposite approach. Just label the ones that you believe are AI or that you know are to be AI.

34:28 You know what? I think I like that better. Yeah. Yeah, I think I do like that. Seems a little weird, but I mean, good for them, I guess. You know, it's certainly right now we're in that phase of AI where you know, where everybody's a little confused and doesn't know how to handle it. So, you know, kudos for them for trying to find a way to do it. Just, I don't know, it just, it's not a huge deal, but it's just a little weird to me. It's just so kind of annoying to see that all the time you want. To take the next one. Oh, OK, let's see. Solo shows are taking over and Co hosts are becoming endangered. A new altitude survey. And you know, Altitude is that platform that kind of does everything for you. So a new altitude survey shows that next wave of podcasters is ditching Co hosts and leaning into full control.

35:15 More than half of new creators plan to launch solo shows, a major jump from 2022. The format shift signals a push towards personal branding, autonomy and flexible workflows. It also reflects a huge demographic shift as more women entering podcasting. So the key takeaways are 53% of new podcasters plan solo shows, up from 43%. Co hosted formats dropped to 14%. Interview shows remain the second most common planned format at 28%. New creators choose solo work for control, ownership and schedule flexibility, and 71% say that they will handle all production tasks themselves.

36:08 That last stat. I don't love because as a podcast producer, I want more people that come to us, right? In any segment of society, like podcasting would be a segment, there's always going to be the good enoughs. Well, it's good enough. Well, you know, but that's not our clientele, Mark. Yours and my clientele are people because to do AI well, it's time consuming. Coming up with just the right prompts, going back and forth, eliminating stuff, Frankensteining stuff together, that's all very time consuming and it's a skill. And yours and my clientele are people who want to save time.

36:49 They don't want to bother with that stuff. They are the please do it for me. Those are those are our clientele. Yeah, and time consuming is all relative, right? Because we do admit using AI is saving you more time than not using it in many cases, right? But it's still tedious at times. It's tedious and again, there is a skill to using AI correctly and you and I have certainly dug deep into you know how to do that. Sure. Yeah. And if you're like Nick Naulback, he's creating something behind the scenes that will really cut down on the AI time that we spend. Yeah. So more to come on that I suppose. I'm going to jump around a little bit here from on our rundown.

37:34 Dr. So first, Triton Digital's Omni Studio is now supporting video podcasting. This means that you can now produce a full video RSS feed right from the platform. And if you still need the audio version, it'll spit that out automatically too. No extra steps. And according to Triton, dynamic ad insertion is on the way as well. And this doesn't necessarily replace Spotify's video tool or YouTube for example, it just it's just another option in your tool kit. The videos are encoded at 720P for now, which isn't the highest quality out there, but still probably fine for most podcasters. I would recommend otherwise, but that's OK. No support yet for alternate enclosures, so we're not fully there, but this is a pretty solid move in the right direction.

38:32 So if you're using Omni or maybe you've been thinking about using a different hosting platform this and you want to add video to your workflow, this is perhaps a solution for you. So that's Omni Studio if you want to learn more about that. And heads up, if you're hosting with Lipson as your podcasting host provider, they've announced a pricing update, but it's kind of been kind of quiet the way that they did it. It's you can't find it anywhere on their website yet, But they did send out some emails to some customers saying that the $5 bare essential plan that Lipson offers is jumping to $8. And it's not just that plan. Most of their tiers are going up by about 5 bucks. So if again, if you use Lipson, check that out, OK. Dr. Do you want to take story #4? I saw Junaid come up and I thought. Let me go to him and then you can pull that story up while we're waiting.

39:31 Go ahead, Junaid. Good morning. Good morning everyone. Awesome news updates. I love it. I wanted to comment on that Co host thing and and you know the story. About solo podcasting, Yeah. Because the good thing is that people are actually taking step forward to get into podcasting, which is again, they're stepping, they're taking that first step to start a podcast to at least figure out what they've been missing. And then to realize, OK, I do need additional support. And that's where we come in and we can help them. Because when I did my first podcast, I had two Co hosts in 2012 and I couldn't get the back on to continue to record the podcast and I had to go solo.

40:16 And that took me 6 years to 2018. So I'm glad that people are, you know, jumping in. Even if it's a solo podcast to get started. So good for all of. Us. I agreed. I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you Janae. Thanks for pointing that out and I'll keep things going. I teased this at the very tippy top of the show. What happens when an indie podcast? Suddenly blows up, meaning goes viral. Pod news brought this one to my attention. I saw this recently and it's. From a post on Reddit Podcasting and it sparked A thoughtful thread about what really happens when a podcast.

41:01 'S skirts virality. In other words, the podcaster shares his story, and he claims it. He's not maybe fully viral, but he really went from being kind of your average indie podcast to light years ahead of where he was. He said that while downloads and and what he did was he shared his experience, wanted people to understand really what it means when you go viral as an indie podcaster. He said that while downloads may spike, sometimes massively, what he noticed was retention and listener engagement often dropped off.

41:41 The moment of rapid growth becomes a stress test for content hosting and the creator's nerves, according to this podcaster and some key themes that he shared. Like I said, downloads spike, but the plays don't necessarily equal listens. He says that speaking to that stress test quote I shared, the sudden exposure feels like a stress test. The algorithms pushing the show to millions of eyeballs can expose weaknesses, inconsistent quality, production, pacing, things that may have flown under the radar when the audience was small because feeling a little more exposed and maybe being called out more by a larger audience. He says again that the retention and listener habits matter more than raw download numbers do.

42:35 A viral spike can be misleading. It may inflate the stats without building a loyal audience. And he talks about creator expectations versus reality tension. The search can feel validating but also overwhelming. Many creators report a mix of excitement and a quote UN quote. This is scary as attention grows. Finally, long term sustainability depends on consistency. Stable release rhythms, reliable quality, and engagement strategies matter more after the initial burst than at the moment of going viral. While not all comments said it outright, the vibe across responses underlines this idea. Now.

43:18 I think I saw somebody flash an emoji to speak, but I was kind of looking out out of the corner of my eye. Yes, Jonathan, go ahead. It doesn't necessarily surprise me because honestly, that's what a lot of people feel when when they go viral on social media. It's a big, it's a flash in the pan. It doesn't help the overall growth of the business. And you know, yes, there's a lot more people, but you do better actually with the slow growth than the viral growth. And I'm sure that maybe may apply for some people and not others, but I think by and large, I agree with you there. Yeah. I mean. I remember my friend Travis Brown when he went viral on Instagram.

43:59 I know, not quite the same thing. I remember him telling me it was, I'll say a mind. F going viral because things really can change overnight and it can get really overwhelming. All the DMS, all the comments trying to keep up with them, you know, think about what your workflow is now. You know, if you're anything like me, you see a comment on Instagram, for example, my instinct is instinct is when I see that comment, I want to respond to it right away because I know that helps with engagement. So imagine, you know, doing that a handful of times during the day to all of a sudden having hundreds, if not thousands of comments and DMS to consider answering, right? You've got to instantly change your workflow, change your strategy and approach.

44:45 There's a lot that goes into it. And not to mention, you know, getting that kind of exposure also leads to trolls and negative comments. And being mentally prepared for that, it's hard to do if it happens overnight. So as much as I would like to. See a big burst in growth for the podcasting morning chat. I'm not sure mentally I'd be able to handle that. Being completely honest, I saw somebody else flash an emoji. Didn't see who. Go ahead, Janae. It was me. This is a great article or point that Pod News puts out and we have actually some people, some we have some people in the audience and, and on the stage right now that are actually experiencing something exactly this, Ralph.

45:28 We were talking about this yesterday and there's another gentleman that also experienced very similar thing. He went from 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, his one video hit it off and within six weeks he was at 100,000 because he had a library of really, really good content. So what that one video that hit it off and brought the algorithm, you know, the people to his channel basically going viral brought attention to the rest of his videos and people stayed. And that's exactly what Ralph is experiencing with his Truth Untold channel that we talked about earlier. So you got to have that back library, back content for that virality to stay.

46:14 But if you just have like 10 videos and one goes viral, well, it's going to phase off and die out. But you have if you have hundreds of videos or hundreds of podcast episodes, then you already have a library of content. People are going to stay and listen to the rest. Thanks. Yeah, another great point. Thank you. Janae And Ralph, since Janae mentioned to you, do you have any? You don't have to, but do you have anything you wanted to add to that or echo? Yeah, I would just say thank you. Yeah, the Truth Unveiled channel is now almost at 150,000 subscribers and that's happened within the last seven weeks. So what Janae says is true. Like I've been putting content out there and there's plenty of content for them to go see, and that's going to just help me build that even more. So thank you for the mention, Janae.

46:54 Yeah. And Ralph, while we have you, I know that you posted something on Facebook regarding one of your podcasts, and I figure why not share a little bit here as well and then we'll wrap up with another story after that. Awesome, Mark, thank you so much. So I do a weekly live show. I do 4 shows. One of them is called Grit and Growth Business. This show is tailored for small business people who are looking for tips and tricks and how to do a better job with their small business. And I've been doing that live show solo for about 9 months this year. Well, starting in January, I want to bring on a Co host, a Co contributor. I'm not looking for somebody that's a business expert. I'm looking for somebody that is a communications person, somebody that can help me.

47:36 I've got 30 years of experience, but I tend to get stuck in the minutiae and the tax talk and the accounting jargon. I'm looking for somebody to help kind of provoke me into better discussions. The format is really getting people to send in questions and we kind of tackle them on the show. We're going to do some live coaching, but I'm really even looking for somebody that is interested in being involved. It's going to be a weekly live show. I actually use ECAM to do it. It's streamed on YouTube and Rumble and LinkedIn. But I'm looking for somebody that has an interest in that. Again, it doesn't have to be somebody that is a business expert, just somebody who has an engaging personality and maybe has some interest in that type of topic. If you're interested, just reach out to me.

48:16 I'm hoping to put somebody in place when we go live again on January the 6th. How often would you need this person, Ralph? It's a once a week show. We do it every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. So basically I would need somebody, you know, 6:30 to 8:30. Well, I try to keep the show about 30 to 45 minutes. But if we get a lot of chats and, and I got to be very honest with you, this is a show that is, is very small, but there's a huge opportunity for it, especially as we roll into the new year. There's a lot of people that are, I have a lot of business type questions and and it's a way for me to kind of give back my 30 years of experience to help people get to that next level with their business. And I really want somebody to sort of stir me up a little bit because what I've found is I'm doing good with the solo, but I've really come out of my shell when somebody kind of provokes me and is a I'll use the word provocateur. Somebody says, yeah, Ralph, but what about this? And can you explain that in ways that I can understand? So that's what I'm really looking for. Sounds good.

49:14 What? Oh, go. Ahead and what's the title of it again? It's called grit and growth business. OK. And it's not faith-based at all. It's it is business, business. Yes, correct. Dr. Yeah, I do have several shows that are faith-based. This one I intentionally do not. I don't trumpet the faith side of it. I'm who I am, so you're not going to. Occasionally I will say something that is all have to pray about that, but it's not a prayer related. It's not religiously related at all. It's all business stuff. Cool, I've put a link in the chat here on Clubhouse and Ashley if you wouldn't mind grabbing that link and put a link in our show notes this way if anyone's interested.

49:55 I would Ralph if I had the capacity. I'm interested like it's perked my interest, and I don't think I think I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I committed to something else right now. But it feels like it would be a good fit. But I don't know that I could commit. I wish I could, and I know you weren't directly asking, but there's just something that I was thinking as you were sharing about it. No, thank you, Mark. You know, in life we have to say no sometimes to protect what's important to us. And I have a problem with that. My coach always says, Ralph, you say yes too many times. But thank you for let me share that Mark. I truly appreciate. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. Let's talk about TikTok. So TikTok is now the accidental podcast kingmaker. Let me tell you what I mean by that. So Tik Tok's influence on audio keeps growing. Edison Research new Infinite Scroll report. That's the name of the report.

50:46 Infinite Scroll shows nearly half of weekly TikTok users turn to the platform to discover new podcasts, with even stronger adoption among younger users. Now, music discovery is higher, with 64% of users 13 and older finding new songs on the app. Engagement is massive, with 29% of Americans 13 and older using Tiktok daily, but many users also say they spend too much time on the platform. That Would Be Me has reported here on PNC recently. Tiktok is now expanding into podcasting with a new network created in partnership with iHeartMedia. I'm going to stop you there.

51:36 I want to point out something here because. I, we hear a lot of especially the, the podcast experts, professionals, whatever you want to call them, I hear a lot of them out there saying, you know, you're wasting your time. And I'm paraphrasing, you're wasting your time if you're promoting your podcast on a social media platform because those users, they only go there to consume the content that's there. They're not going to take the time to go and find the podcast that they've discovered on TikTok. And I've always felt like that's not the case. And I, I think you know, to the point that you brought up about the music discovery, TikTok has made such an impact on the music industry.

52:17 And yes, when those songs on TikTok go viral, those trending songs, one of the first things that happens is you'll see those songs go launch to the top five on Spotify. People will take the time to go to Spotify and get that song because they want to hear it. I did it this morning. It's from an artist that I would never in a billion years walk across the street for Eminem. But he has a new album out where he's it's called like Blue Eyed Soul or something like that. And there was a TikTok that used one of his songs. And I thought, what is that? And I immediately went to go find it on Spotify and screw the 13 year olds I am.

53:02 Well, wait. Wait, what? OK, because it kept saying 13 and older. Yeah, grown ass adults are doing it too. Grown ass adults. Just take it with a grain of salt. When you hear some of those gurus out there saying Nah, that's a waste of your time. Look, it's not a guarantee either. So let's make it very clear. It doesn't mean you're going to put your content from your podcast on TikTok and you're going to automatically become. Discovered, but you will be more discoverable in my opinion, and I think it is worth sharing that content on those platforms if you want to try to increase that discoverability. So consider that. Think about that when you're considering video or considering whether or not you want to put video on social media.

53:50 All right, gang, although we had more stories to cover, it is just about 8:00 AM. So a reminder, go check the show notes and listen to the episode. We're going to be evaluating tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM Eastern. And also remember that we're back as well Friday as we are every Monday through Friday at 7:00 AM Eastern live on Clubhouse and if you want it and also live on YouTube, Facebook, etcetera, if you want any of that information. Just go to podcastingmorningchat.com. So until tomorrow, make it a great day everybody take care.