[Music]
Hello everyone, welcome back to Office Hours. It's a very holiday-spice edition of the show.
Brentley joins me here, I'll bundle up in a holiday blanket.
Oh, I Chris. You got your hot cocoa? I do. Yeah, I like that, like, muddled cider.
You're kind of getting settled in over there, right? You've been in Berlin now for about a week as we record this, so I imagine you've probably got...
Your favorite spot to get your groceries? Ah. Probably got your stuff all set out now.
Well, you know, I've been here a few times now and I've stayed kind of in the same area.
So now I have... I actually have a routine, Chris.
I got, like, the local organic shop just here that's connected to the train station, so...
It's just smooth. It's going smooth, but it's also just about a weekend, which is your favorite time, because it's also about the time to do laundry, Chris.
Oh, doing laundry while you travel absolutely sucks. It's expensive.
Also, it's not like you packed a laundry basket, you know? So it's like just operationally. It's difficult, and I find the entire thing frustrating.
If... This is how I know I need to, you know, spend a good amount of time being poor, because if I were rich, I would just go out and buy all new clothes on the mud.
Now, now I would never do that, but now that I've been humbled, but, you know, I just got to hate it that much.
I don't do the laundromats or anything, and I pack somewhat lighter because I like to do the carry-on completely.
I don't like to... Even though I'm like, have elite status now or whatever with the airlines, because I've crossed the ocean too many times, carry on everything.
I don't check any bags, so... But you've seen that clothesline that I bring with me, right?
Yeah, yeah. That doesn't take much space.
Yeah, it's literally just a piece of string, but I also have, like, a dry bag, and I throw all my laundry in there, and do, like, I don't know, shake that bag to a ton with a bunch of water and soap in it in the showers in the hotel room.
It's a whole scene. I'm gonna have to record it for you sometime. And then I use that string and try to tie it to anything in the hotel room, and then...
It just looks like I'm homeless in a hotel room, basically.
I'm picturing soapy water all over the bathroom floor when you're doing this, like, you know, because the showers aren't meant for this.
It's like there was a wet, shaggy dog in there, I mean, you know. But my clothes is clean.
At least you're getting it done. And you can actually bring that with you too. I would imagine, because I imagine that packs down pretty tight.
That's true. And it means, you know, I could bring laundry or clothing for two weeks, but this way I could bring half of it.
No, no, no. It works out. No one's told me that I have a scent problem, so I think it's going, okay.
Are you working on my top travel tip, though? Are you low-key looking for a spot to just have an always-there stash of clothes and toiletries?
Yeah, you know, the next hot-ass-moved office is recently, and all the stuff I left, like stickers, mostly, JB stickers. I haven't found yet. And no one's mentioned to me, so...
I don't know. As long as we keep this office for a little while, I have started to stash things in a particular place that I won't tell too many people about.
So I think I can do it.
I've told Brent this a hundred times before the audience, the full picture that I think is, if you're doing a situation like Brent, where you work from home,
but a few times a year you brought into the main office, like I was when I worked at Linux Academy, what just made that work so well for me,
is I did the same thing Brent would do is I would just bring my backpack towards the end. All I would bring with me on the flight is my laptop backpack.
Man, does that make traveling so slick?
Because I had a duffel bag that I would stash at the Linux Academy office, and so I would arrive at the DFW Airport and just take an Uber to the Linux Academy office.
Towards the end, because he knows a VP after all, I actually had a car there. I had my own car there as well.
So I have the Uber take me to the office. I know. I'd grab my bag, I'd unlock my office there at Linux Academy, I'd grab my stuff, and then I'd jump in my own car and drive to the hotel.
So awesome.
It was. It was.
Do you have your own plane too?
Ah, one day.
One day, you know. But in the meantime, we grinded out. But Brent, we should probably get right into it because there's some breaking podcast news.
That's right. Fresh news here on the office hours program. Well, at least fresh is recorded.
There is a new podcast directory troll out there.
What?
A Danish company, copyright agent AS claims to represent content producers and news agencies.
It's going around to different podcast directories and asking them for about $400 in damage.
Just enough to make it cheaper than, you know, a copyright lawyer hour or two of time.
Just enough that they can make money. And of course, if they do this at scale, you know, across maybe 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 directories, they'll make a decent little chunk of change.
And what they're going after is imagery that's in a podcast album art.
But they're suing the podcast directories since the director is displaying it. They're not going after the podcasters yet.
They're going after podcast directories and podnews.net, which is a great resource for podcasting news, is one of the companies getting sued.
And they kind of fought back. They hired a lawyer. Yeah, it's an Australian company trying to use some sort of backwaters Australian copyright law to go after podcast directories.
But you know Brent, you know what the meta story is here to me.
Please tell me because I'm still a elaborate guy.
The copyright trolls are turning their eyes more and more onto podcasts like it's been a long for a long time podcasters have been able to play certain things that maybe copyright law didn't necessarily allow for.
Of course, there's no way for them to license it either. Or you know, they could use a picture on their album art that was representative of the topic of the episode.
And they didn't necessarily have to do attribution or go license that.
That's all changed as you know, maybe it should, but it's all it's all changing once you have the ability to just scan stuff and do machine matching is essentially what happens.
Does that mean the podcasting is all grown up now?
Yeah, or it's at least big enough someone's paying attention that right. We got to watch out.
Yeah, it's been a little bit. It's been all right. So this is actually an interesting developing story.
I don't think pod news is the last one that's going to get this letter saying you owe us 450 bucks and I would imagine that eventually probably going to move on to podcasters too if they can't.
So I'll put a link in the notes for that.
We got another interesting story going on so advertising has really been in the toilet for 2023 and it's looking even worse in 2024.
Of course, we came on this show a year or two ago and started worrying our podcaster friends that this was coming.
And one of the things that's at the core of podcast advertising is verifying download numbers.
And so the industry has been trying the industry has been trying to come up with a standard to measure.
And they have an IAB which is this group of folks that I don't really recognize, but they claim to set the standard and they have decided it is time to have a 2.0 version of the standard.
The problem is there's also a massive recertification fee. People don't really agree on the news standard and there's a looming deadline. So speaking of pod news, I want to play a clip from one of their episodes that will link in the show notes.
Actually, the entire episode's great too. They also touch on the Spotify layoffs and other stuff. But here's a moment from pod news that explains what's going on.
It's going to make tracking podcast downloads a lot harder in 2024.
What's the future for IAB podcast measurement? In November 2022, we reported that the IAB's version 2.0 certification would no longer be valid after the end of this year.
And as of today, some of podcasting's largest names are still only complied to version 2. So all will lose their claim to certification by the end of the year.
Those companies are ads with buzz sprout, captivate, chartable, empire streaming, who are now called Soundstack, Libsyn Podbean, PodTrack, Simplecast, and Anker.
Now of course called Spotify for podcasters. A spokesperson at the IAB Tech Lab told us we do expect companies who have not been certified on version 2.1 to be recertified or they will lose current status.
They're welcome to regain status once they sign up again and complete the certification and audit process. We do have several companies in process of recertification and we do expect them to be completed by the end of the year. For obvious reasons, I cannot tell you which ones.
Obviously.
I think that certification process to get to the 2.1 version also comes with like a ten or eleven thousand dollar fee.
I'm not exactly sure what the cost is, but you can imagine that's causing some people to drag their feet.
Did you have this supposed industry group that defines what the standards are for tracking downloads that come up with a new standard and now the some of the biggest names in there like Libsyn and PodTrack don't seem to be on board.
I wonder if they're not on board because they're they're fighting back on it or they just find it useless or like I have so many questions.
I hope that's it. I'd like to see I'd like I wouldn't mind a standard, but I think it should be an open standard.
This is why like op3.dev. It should be something that's documented publicly and that we all agree on is the right way to measure these things and not some private group that manages to make the certification process a profit process.
I just don't I don't like that.
Well, Chris, you can get certified to be a tester. So maybe you go on the inside and give us the news. There you go.
All right. Next story.
Along with downloads, a lot of podcasters out there are reporting a significant drop in downloads. I think it's a little sus, but it started back in October when iOS 17 came out.
Updates in iOS 17 to the podcast app disabled automatic downloads on shows that you haven't listened to for 15 days or longer like this show probably because we haven't been out in that long.
Oh, sorry.
And then if you do enable automatic downloads podcast app instead of downloading all of the previous shows you missed since you hadn't been downloading it will now only download new episodes since the point you resumed.
So you instead of getting the back catalog downloads you're only going to get new published episodes. That is a change and it does seem to be impacting the downloads for some podcasts, especially the podcast out there that have a lot of Apple podcast listeners.
Depending on where you go, we'll have a couple links in the show notes. Some people are seeing up to 20% others are seeing it's almost unnoticeable.
For us here at JBI it is unnoticeable. I don't think also we don't have a huge Apple podcast listener base is definitely part of it, but it's not our primary listener base and we've been encouraging the adoption of podcasting to know apps too.
So that's also been encouraging folks to leave the default app.
But for some podcasters, there's their reporting 20% Chris, I'm curious how you feel about this because I could see like on one side if you lose 20% of your, you know, quote unquote audience.
Then that's a real problem, but on the other hand, it's kind of a report of who's actually listening versus who's virtually listening. So how do you feel about that?
I think that's a better number, right? Here's I'll tell you the bad reason. The bad side, the bad thing is there, Bryant, is that he means you get to you don't get to quote such a high number to advertisers.
That's the bad news and I do believe some places I would like if I just kind of pick a name like say, twit.
I bet you about 15% of their downloads are just auto download and people don't listen, you know, I think it's a little percentage there.
So then I think you do get hurt in that circumstance.
And twit is reported as much, but I think especially in a value for value model, I would way rather have the real number than the phony number.
The phony number only does you good if you're trying to basically have a number you can scam advertisers with with a slightly higher number.
That's really the only reason why and so if you're actually going by value for value, then you know, like a show like this could have a couple thousand.
It doesn't really matter. I would imagine there's a bit of a challenge here as well though because let's say you've set up auto downloads for a particular podcast or set of podcasts and you expect them to be there because you know sometimes you're maybe for a month you're not in the mood to listen to tech podcasts and you listen to something else and then.
Or you're banking for a road trip I've done this sure sure and then you know you have the habit of going through your downloads to kind of get inspired then.
If the software is determining to you know change your settings basically is what's happening here.
Then all of a sudden you lose that discoverability within your own library which is kind of an interesting challenge.
Yeah, I think Apple made this change to well because they sell their devices with too small storage by default, you know unless you pay more.
That's a terrible reason.
You know people are buying their their thousand dollar phones and they're running out of space. So they're so I think this is probably just to help kind of cut back on that a little bit.
So this podcast can be 80 megabytes or 20 megabytes or 100 megabytes depending on the length.
Fair enough.
But imagine you know your favorite podcast wasn't downloading or you missed you know 12 episodes because it forgot to download things for you wouldn't you be kind of peved.
I'm not a fan of using the platform app to begin with.
I think you get drug around by Apple sort of design choices at the time and what they're kind of focused on and I think getting.
It's like all things if you get an independent app that's created by a person or a team that's really focused on it instead of it's just one of the many things that a giant company does you're always going to have a better result with the small focused team.
New podcast apps calm.
I was going to say do you have any recommendations on where they can go.
Man fountain fountain 1.0 I don't know if they're going to do like a beta what but it is so close.
They have their telegram group testing testing builds right now as we record.
And they have been working so hard night and day on the 1.0 release they are really really trying to put everything they've got.
And a fountain 1.0 so I'm kind of excited about that.
Hey that sounded like kind of a new news item and you didn't play the jingle can you can you play it for us and give us a there you go feel better.
Fountain 1.0 close to release.
Stand by for more in the future and now.
Here's another app this what I'm not so excited about.
I want to I want to describe the app to you and see if you can reverse engineer what it's actually doing.
Oh no based on the hype description okay.
We've engineered an AI enabled listening experience that provides users unlimited choice and control our technology removes those annoying interruptions.
Unless you replace them with audio content you actually want to hear.
So Bradley what do you think this app is actually doing based on that description.
I mean my idea can change but in the end I believe it's replacing ads with fillers that you choose but using AI to do it.
I'm going to give it to you really I'm going to give it to you.
Yeah so fader and I hate to even say its name because my god this could be a death nail to the podcast industrial complex.
They initially started life and you go look at it go look up from like a year ago as we're going to bring every radio station in the world to one app.
And you'll be able to mix and match news and music stations and one playlist and we'll seamlessly stitch it together for you okay neat.
But then the money got tight and the only thing getting funded in tech was AI and all the sudden.
They became an AI I think they got acquired they became an AI app right it's pretty neat so what it will do and it this all launches in early January.
Is it will do exactly what you said is it will part it'll process podcast and radio shows it will automatically remove the ads from the podcast and then stream it to the user.
And they're going to charge you a little bit for this eventually there's going to be a little bit of a price you'll have to pay for this currently it's going to be 599 per month that's only through q1 after that there's going to be an up charge associated with to subscribe.
So you have to subscribe and there's going to be an up charge but then it'll auto remove advertising from every podcast and radio show you want to listen to.
They're going to start out of the gate with about 50,000 commercial free podcasts available just right in the app as they ramp it up.
Some of the 200 most popular shows in the world they say are featured in there and there is no opt out for the podcaster who says he doesn't say hey.
Fater I don't want you to play my shows without ads they'll tell you to go pan sand because really they're just automating the skip feature.
And so it's nothing really any different than just like you know auto skipping so now you can opt out there's no lockdown.
Oh I have a few thoughts here the first one is I'm curious because I hear you saying you don't you really don't like have the sounds obviously as a podcaster that makes sense.
But then I know you use things like ad blockers on YouTube and such and during your video playing experiences so is that not the same thing just being applied now to you know you're you're near and dear.
Well I mean I pay for YouTube premium so I do you know I kind of feel like I give that way I just don't want to watch ads on YouTube so I pay for premium.
I don't you know and I don't tend to skip ads in podcasts I tend to send a little value back to the ones that do value for value.
You know so it's sort of it's kind of depends on the medium like where I will block ads is on the web and I think you could make a security argument for doing that.
But where I don't block ads is necessarily on the high value expensive content to produce I think that's well it's a death nail because podcasts and good content take time and research and production and expertise and that takes a lot of value.
And so if you're cutting that out that's imagine a fader got even just 10 to 20% market popularity right be pretty devastating especially when it rolls out in an ad winter already when ads are already paying less and their fewer and further between.
And the nature of the ad deals is constantly changing right now.
And then this comes out in the middle of all that this makes me wonder if it's legal I mean it depends where of course but doesn't it feel like they're taking someone's copyrighted material and changing it and redistributing it you can make that argument again they're defenses it's just like you pressing the 30 second forward button on your.
Yeah but they're you know you're you're paying money for them to distribute this stuff to you so I don't know it feels different to me and it's for it's getting wild out there for advertising 2024 is going to be so frickin wild with all this stuff you got you got the biggest names in tracking can't agree on how to track me yeah right.
You got you got less advertising available than in 2023 and way away significant 70 maybe 70% less than was available in 2022 in 2021 then you got apps like fader which if this is doing it others are going to do it.
And evidently there'll be some open source version of this that can do it.
That just got auto cut ads out they also in there in one of their releases they talk about how they're going to turn towards YouTube eventually to they just what they say online video content but right.
It makes the models just feel unviable doesn't it.
We got to come up something new it's a little scary.
It's a little scary and I think it's it's another it's another area where I think the value for value podcasts will have an edge up.
And where this stuff these numbers are for the sponsor side are getting kind of more and more concerning.
On the value for value side the trend is the opposite direction they're getting better and better.
Now I don't this isn't a complete snapshot but from what we can monitor based on the sets that like flow through the podcast index which is not 100% like for example if somebody has their own custom feed.
And you subscribe to that RSS feed and they don't put the podcast index in for a split then that doesn't get tracked.
But if you subscribe through an app where you do a search.
And that fee that feed is provided by the podcast index then likely the podcast index is cut in so there's a lot it's it's most.
And in the last 90 days it's really unbelievable 97 million stats were sent to podcasters.
Which works out to be about 42,378 us greenbacks which that is from a couple of days ago and the price has gone up since I took that snapshot so it's likely more than $42,000 in value in the last 90 days.
I bet you it's around 43,000 with this point 43,000 dollars in value has gone through the boost network to podcasters in the last 90 days.
Now that that's not going to pay everybody if everybody's on value for value but then again if more podcasters got on board with value and boost then more audience members would be boosting and then that number will be going up.
I mean value for value is like quite the niche in podcasting and quite the niche in the listenership and yet this is really impressive so imagine if it just becomes you know mainstream.
That's a big ask but zooming out a bit more the lightning network itself this is a report done by river.
Very solid company in the space this is an unbelievable stat the lightning network this is an incredible stat the lightning network has grown by 12,000,212% in the last two years alone.
Now river has been looking at about half of the biggest nodes in the network so this is an estimation but if anything it's on the low side.
Another thing they've noticed is the average channels on the lightning network have gone up to like 8 million sats from just 6 million 2 years ago which means there's more liquidity available on the network that's a really big deal.
And this build out I think the other thing to appreciate here this build out over the last two years has happened during a horrendous bear market the longest bear market in bitcoins history as the fed is pivoted and tightened liquidity.
This has grown an incredible leap in boundary all of that now at least for the short term done about by the time this comes out when the price rises the fees on the network go up which even strengthens the case and even strengthens and increases the demand for lightning.
And so this kind of growth brand in when you combine it with the lightning network combined with the value for value network in the last 90 days with the with the increasing price of sats so these podcasters the contributions that have been sent to them they're able to do more than they were a couple of months ago.
It all really comes together to something that feels like it's really getting stronger and going in the right direction and then we look at the advertising situation and it just feels like the exact opposite.
I'm speechless actually because it's such a such a posing forces it seems like and I'm glad we're part of one of those keep an eye on it. Okay one last thing.
While we're just talking about neat things coming up and value for value I saw this on the podcast social.
There is a new value for value based multi redundant object store with a totally decentralized CDN that would be great for peer tube self-hosters that removes 99% of the bandwidth cost of media hosting and storage costs online and it's going to be value for value split based.
You see we'd have a center like CDN that you put into your splits and boom now you've got great back in storage for your peer tube instance which is the trickiest part about peer tube.
It's coming in twenty twenty four and I think this is another example of services sort of like transcribed dot fm and.
Sovereign feeds and others where you can put them in your splits and essentially as long as you're using them you put them in the splits you could call a membership or a subscription if you like.
Then when you're done using them you take them out of the splits and it's there's it's just really clean and simple and you send them a little value they give you value back and how cool is this decentralized redundant object storage for peer tube self-hosters and maybe this will help kick off more peer to instances and help people kick the YouTube habit.
And this is exactly what we're looking for like a year ago yeah right.
I'm feeling really good I think the future for value is bright if there's a podcaster that you would like to help gently introduce them to the concept of the struggling right now.
Point them at the value for value show.
Kairan from ear mortals does it will put a link in the show notes could be a nice way to get.
The kid maybe a podcaster you know gently introduced to the topic and help them start thinking about it.
Now Chris you have the chance to sit down with Moritz Kaminsky of Albi and it turned out to be quite a nice chat.
Well look who is in our stocking right from get albi dot com yeah thanks a lot for having me here I'm more it's co founder at albi and yeah we are building with coin infrastructure basically to allow value transfers natively on the internet basically.
And you're moving really fast I've noticed you guys came along just sort of at the perfect moment in the lightning networks development where we really needed a solution that was browser based and that was solving some of the back end plumbing problems for users.
That's a hard problem itself to solve but then the podcasting to that oh stuff you kind of cut window and the master as well and you've been able to kind of tuck and roll and take advantage of both of those waves and kind of be an important piece of the glue there.
How have you managed to keep up like that are you guys working seven days a week over there.
I think we work quite a lot yet that's true but I think it's mainly because we have a great team of people who's working on albi and we are very much aligned all on our mission to bring like yeah sort of a native payment layer to the internet and and that's why as we build on Bitcoin and the lightning network because it just fits very well we believe that we can now also enable these instant value transfers like we see in podcast.
For example on our straight off it's nicely together that we can enable that and also grow further yeah I think it solves a big problem for developers often as well I'm thinking of like podvers for example they could build their own lightning infrastructure and become lightning node administrators and they could then create that front end code I guess to do all of that for the user as well but it kind of makes a lot more sense to outsource that back end to you.
And then as a benefit to the user I can move between podcast apps and take those sets with me really easily because I just connect my albi wallet you're kind of that that back end and it's really important so before I get into like all the really really really good stuff.
Couple of questions on my mind are I noticed recently that there's been some new limits placed on newer users and I think some limits on with draws is that a sign that there's problems everything okay is it part of the volatility what's the story there.
All the main reason is just like we are not a small company in sense of we have a little a small amount of users we have only a small amount of Bitcoin on our note no it's just we are we are constantly growing and we have also we have to be a we have to make sure that I'll be also exists in in five years or 10 years of time and with our current setup how we operate today we have to do some basic risk management
and make sure that also we comply with the with the regulations and such and that's why we have to have these things like limits in place to know okay how actually people are using our systems and not be completely blind there but it's really just like I think it more is more like it paves the way for what's what's next with albi.
Certainly that's not where we want to end right but it's just a necessary step in between so it's proactive fund management essentially yes yes you could say that's what I mean by that to is a.
With with with a hard asset you can't just go to the bank and take out a five Bitcoin loan and then cover the withdrawals on a busy day it's not how it works it's a hard asset so if somebody wants three Bitcoin taking out you have to have that three Bitcoin yeah exactly yeah proactively manage those funds to make that yeah I get that so you hinted that there's something kind of few in the works and this is kind of proactively managing things to make sure you can kind of get to that do you have more details there's some some.
So I think like that the basic idea of albi is always like you can bring your wallet to other applications right and as of now because we want to make it super easy for for users for creators to use albi we offer them a managed wallet but actually if we look at the albi browser extension for example which is a separate product of ours you can already today connect your own.
For example non custodial Bitcoin wallet we are on Bitcoin lightning node to the extension and you can already do that today also to your own albi account but it is not yet like it doesn't yet completely cover all the features so what we want to do basically in the next year is also offer a comparable like in the sense of similar convenience back and our wallet to users to use it.
To users who have a little bit different needs meaning they want to have want to transfer higher higher volumes higher higher payment amounts and such and that's what we are basically working on and until then we can only motivate people to use an on custodial option themselves until we we can provide that out of the box as albi.
Fascinating so if I were say looking at the recent updates to the zoo swallow what I kind of be getting idea of where you guys might be going yeah similar similar but there really a lot of a lot of developments actually happening on lightning and and so is a great example what they do for example and yeah we have to see how we can enable similar functionalities also also with albi actually the tricky part here is really a little bit the fact that.
Albi itself is not just like it's just not not a simple app that you have on your on your phone and you run around and buy at your merchant and pay with Bitcoin no it's like a super flexible account that you can connect to other apps and this is also quite challenging for us as as developing team to see okay how can we then still give the user chance to interact with the Bitcoin and lightning network in an on custodial way.
Because usually you need to have the keys for yourself right but how do you do that if it like if you want to use albi in different applications actually it kind of sounds like to it's what you're telling me is it's not necessarily in albi's best interest for users with a large amount of sats to keep that on an online wallet it's on albi servers you would prefer.
Those users have an offline option they have them now but they're kind of complicated and so how do you walk that line of giving them a self hosted option that's reliable that they can easily migrate to but then can still connect all the applications like the online albi does I mean yeah that's that's true it's already a little bit possible today but not very nicely integrated so the the current albi you can easily connect and pay in all these different apps like super conveniently
and if you know how then you can also already today constantly offload your the Bitcoin that you don't need to have on like yeah spending account and send them to to your saving account meaning like your own cold storage or something Bitcoin lightning node or cold storage wallet exactly yes.
I like that idea I like that idea a lot it's kind of like a small bounce checking account spending account and then your real your real stack is something that's protected offline I I'm really pleased to hear that's the direction you guys are thinking I think that's that's really fantastic where is remind me where is albi incorporated it's a US company.
So are you watching these are you watching some of these discussions around some of this and thinking to it's probably maybe long term in your best interest just not to have large balances from just avoiding legal or regulator attention yeah so we we have to follow it and I think we like with the measures that we take right now we are quite well positioned for the next year.
Okay well that I've noticed that albi had an announcement with pod home which I believe is a host that's integrating value for value and albi in there and this seems like a fantastic opportunity for albi just sort of as it enabled applications like podverse to have a value for value back and without having to do all the plumbing seems just like a no brainer that more and more podcast host should be talking to you guys are you you don't have to name names
are you having conversations with hosting companies. Yes, yes, we are having conversation with companies some go quite quick like with a pot home super easy super smooth some take a little bit longer but I think like yeah we are able to yeah on board more and more likely on more and more podcast host also to to value for value what is quite good because honestly I don't think there is like as albi is built today and how we can integrate with these
podcast hosting companies. Yes, it is literally done within within just a few days like that I think the the biggest work is just like some nice UI but at the end there is no deep integration required in order to get the value block into the RS as feet.
It's I think people might think it's a little bit more but at the end it's super super simple and this is also the idea of albi we want to make it as easy as possible for for these developers be it podcast players or podcast hosting companies to to integrate this this payment system.
The backend is pick a node either you're going to self hosted or you're going to use something like voltage and inject the value block into our as feet I mean that's what we're practically speaking about the hard part really is the front end stuff really and you guys do that you guys handle that pretty well and make that pretty simple I'm glad to hear that there are some host talking really see it.
Becoming much more approachable to most podcasters when it's integrated into whatever system they're using to publish their podcast 100% I think without that it's yeah it's too manual right yeah it's also a little bit like people need to learn about that and I think also podcasters they need to take on this challenge and brace this this new way of of thinking actually that's behind value for value and not give up after like the first or second show and
there is hardly any booster gram coming in but like it's also a lot on them to educate their own listeners and teach them look these are the wallets that you can use I use value for value because of this reasons and you if you sent me some funds you enable these great things what I can do without requiring ads on my show for example so I think there's some storytelling also about that from a from a podcasters perspective.
Yeah and I think it's it's on the podcaster to really kind of contemplate what is the value here for the audience why would they want this who is the audience for this and you know we have like a really casual approach to this show because we understand it's not it's not for everybody it's it's sort of people that are into podcasting or into JB or into Bitcoin you know there's some cross over there but it's not a huge demand in our audience so we say is you know when we get to 1.4 million sets or 1 million sets
I've actually lowered it recently because the price went up you know then we'll do a podcast because what we do is we do 30% splits across the board.
The editor gets paid I get paid the co-host get paid JB gets its small cut and we're done and it's it's all right there in the RSS feed and it's really simple and what I've experienced as I've done something that's gone from a hobby into a business is there is a enormous benefit to just everything being simple everything being transparent between everybody.
Because when things get serious and if real money does get involved all those little details start to matter and I think it just keeps it really clear and it's not only clear between the hosts but it's clear to the audience too because they can just look at the splits when they do the boost.
I think that's pretty great.
So 100% I think it really nicely aligns all the incentives of all of all players involved right so podcast players can earn a fee by allowing listeners to send payments for example.
A podcast host can earn a fee by enabling their own podcasters to to earn or to receive these booster grams at the end of the day and all have also then are like really aligned and to promote this feature because there is almost no downside because I think it is really not about Bitcoin or the lightning network itself.
This is really like the underlying technology I think they're really the idea in general is I want to share value with someone right because he deserves that because he contributes value back to me by like entertaining me for example as a if if I was a listener and that's also why we at I'll be we think a little bit also over the next month.
So how can we provide an API that took completely abstract away that the fact that it's actually Bitcoin and gives people the chance to just send us dollars for example.
But in the back and then rely on on this instant payment layer like the lightning network for example so sort of as strike does right now strike you could interface with strike all day is USD when you're actually sending the money it's using lightning on the back and just instantly converting between sats in USD.
Yeah, yeah for example. Yeah, I like that idea and I think you nailed it and the part I want to underscore for what you said that is a game changer for podcasting is the value for value model brings in a funding source for the first time for the podcast apps it's amazing we're like almost 20 years into this and we haven't had a built in revenue source for the podcast apps now they can do monetization through memberships they could do that.
They can do that.
So if you're not doing that, you can do that.
You can do that.
So if you're not doing that, you can do that.
Now, also like first podcast hosts that like completely build on this monetization model and leave apps completely out of their service like pot home, for example, or pot fans.
Also, pot fans, especially super interesting what they do actually with with their app because there's a lot more to micro payments.
If you use pot fans, for example, they really literally tie every single action of a user to a reward or a payment basically.
And yeah, it's quite interesting to see and quite interesting also to see what type of new use cases this actually enables.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah. So pot fans, the way I describe it is it's it's value for value for the listeners time.
So the time that the listener interacts with the podcast and the directory and the different app options and the community in pot fans.
They get rewarded in sats for that time.
So it's it's completes like it's the it's now makes it almost a cyclical value for value cycle where.
Sats come into the podcast. The podcast put some sats into a kitty those kitty and also pot fans is on kitty of sats get distributed back out to listeners and.
There is something I think when I got the demo from Sam, I thought there's something to this.
That is going to be a big deal at some point and you could only do it with something like the lightning network.
Yeah, exactly because it was just not it's not the lightning network is interoperable payment layer that is not that you don't have when you use PayPal and this is especially the useful if you are in such a very diverse and different different system like like podcasting where you have a lot of different podcast players.
But they all need to talk to each other over over the lightning network at the end and imagine if if everyone needs to implement the same wallet.
Like if everyone needs to implement support for PayPal. It's just super super hard.
But now you can have a fountain for example or you can have a breeze and you can have a podcast guru and they know all talk to each other.
Although they all have different wallet providers and that's what so what's actually the strength of such an open payment network.
Right. And you manage to have that open payment network where they can have their own providers self hosted, you know hosted whatever it is.
And there's still not six middleman in between taking a percentage so you can do a five sat transaction you can do a 10 sat reward.
That's that's my lightning rant but thank you. Okay, so I got an email the other day. So one of my last questions.
I got an email the other day kind of hinting that if I signed up I could get some additional expanded alby features in the future.
Is that kind of what you're talking about earlier? Is this a different service it look like potentially there might be a little more KYC involved with this new service. Can you tell me anything about that?
With the with the limits that we introduced we are obviously not not not satisfied. We have to do it unfortunately right now but we are already thinking okay how can we are.
Like give users the option to increase this limits and there are two ways to that I think as we think in currently and plan for it is either people go and and verify their identity at there are all used to with the traditional payment apps.
Or we can offer them a comparable solution in a non-castle the way where they can have completely no limits no no KYC required and such.
And yeah that's that's really like that's what that's that's the path that we see going forward with alby if if if users are not.
And satisfied with the current limits what is completely understandable sure either going to be adjustments to the current list because I think what it's if I recall it's something like 10 million sats in and out within a seven day period so that's total in and out no more than 10 million is that going to get adjusted without any KYC additional KYC required or is that sort of the line that you feel like you have to follow.
We might adjust that but that's like for for the next weeks on next to two or three months very likely that that we that we settle for now on this and then we have to see how comfortable we feel and by also interacting with regulatory bodies and such.
And what we can then also yeah what what's what's what's a good way in between play it smart and safe yeah exactly yeah I think also for most users they probably shouldn't in my personal opinion they shouldn't be keeping anything that size that amount in a hot wallet.
Of course it's for every person it's your own personal what amount of money you're willing to lose but for me personally get above a few million sats I just really don't think they should be in a hot wall to begin with now that's for individuals I do think it gets tricky for a podcast like.
Like us where for letting some plug we're trying to raise 8 million sats to get to scale but that's so that's you know we also have our own node we can manage that and we can do a little more advanced so that's.
It's mitigatable so I think it's probably best for the health I think it's such a valuable application such a valuable service which you guys do and the future is bright and there's so much potential and the way you're also able to quickly embrace.
New uses of lightning network as they come online I think is also the indication of probably the likelihood you guys can stick with it you're going to be successful and this is this if this what requires to manage that.
I can totally get behind that and I'm I'm always happy to help listeners get started with self hosting their stash and their stack if they want to reach out on matrix totally totally always happy to do that that's important I think that we.
Tell people how like show them a path also to take care of their own funds give them easy ways to onboard and then you have ways to improve on later on I saw you also are participating in hashtag back up day which is today as we record so that's good yeah I just see that exactly.
Well where it's we you keep us in the loop as things develop and maybe check in from time to time we'll do another chat in the future as things develop that would be great yes alright well thank you for joining us especially in the evening for your time and have a great holiday likewise talk soon.
And now as the French say it is time for the boost indeed it is time for the boost now we didn't reach our milestone but of course we wanted to get an episode out before the end of the year and celebrate the holidays with you and we do have some boost to help support this episode our win comes in with 55,426 sets he's our baller this episode.
Oh he's coming with a zip code boost from where he grew up have you guys documented your needs for self hosted podcast feed making a podcast server sounds like an interesting way to learn podcasting 2.0.
Hmm no no no but maybe if I figure out I will document it Brent do you happen to you do have the map with you that's has West finger prints all over it I feel about that yeah.
Oh sorry I'm holding it upside down geez this is hard there you go that's alright okay this looks like 55426 is Minneapolis Minnesota hello Minnesota do you care duck load it was talent where the ducks are from the mighty ducks.
Nope nope just the ducks thank you for boosting in appreciate that ghost mode comes in God I love that username 27,577 sats using numbers.
You guys were off by country mile in the zip but that was actually my fault I didn't realize that the podcast index split the boost up into multiple smaller boost and I canceled it before the small amount was sent you know the full not yeah that.
Oh man I oh yeah that is a UI change it needs to happen first time boosters always get confused by that I think.
Hopefully the first time third time will be a charm though here's to challenging more assumptions as the mallet is no mister but a damn.
Now is he implying that ghost mode is he implying that this is a zip code boost this time around is that the implication you're getting from that.
I think so we can just I'm so I'm confused and dazed by the by the mallet stuff but okay looking here it looks like it's a Smithfield North Carolina is that look right to you yeah it's in the east of North Carolina I think.
Okay all right well hello North Carolina thank you for the morts and the boosts well Todd from Northern Virginia.
He just came in with a row of mcducks no message at all though he's out looking up for all my duck that's all right talk we just appreciate that support.
Oh the JB Crow comes in oh man we need a good crow sound somebody give me a crow sound you've got some bird sounds right with the fire I got I got it well it's not a crow I got it.
It'll have to do all right 5000 sats boosting the awesome song West pain came in hey that's me 5000 sats the golden dragon sent in a whole bunch of ducks look at that little rack of ducks talking about the bearded text blog index getting rolled out talking about progressive web apps.
Getting excited for Linux Fest Northwest and the Jupiter signal RSS feed that's in new podcast apps that's a lot of ducks dragon coming in hunt.
Yeah that's a lot of ducks thank you dragon appreciate that came out came in with 5000 sats using podverse he's a quote surprise I think those are air quotes that Google killed off their halfway decent podcast app and favor evident fear your product.
Case you didn't notice he's being sarcastic yes remember this they killed off the good they're killing off Google podcast and moving everybody over to YouTube music right they had too many products and they.
Someone made the wrong decision it's like all things get consumed into YouTube.
All things yeah like all things become like a YouTube thing oh it's so sad yeah yeah.
Mayer models podcast comes in with the row of ducks pod fans is awesome new podcasting to it up this progressive web app that we were talking about
before Sam is a smart cookie to his app is rock solid I don't like the idea of listeners competing to get on the top of the leaderboard to be part of the splits though feels like incentives of that could create some unexpected or bad behaviors keen to see if it works or not.
Yeah me too if you recall there is a listener ranking feature in pod fans and they count things like if you play how soon after you hit play after they publish if you listen to the whole
episode and you go up the ranks and then the podcaster can start including people at the top of the ranks into the splits.
See you start getting some value back.
Kind of nice right kind of nice we'll see though I'm watching pod fans with a lot of curiosity the pod father comes in Mr. Adam Curry with 10,000 sats.
It doesn't look like the wall switch worked I know I know I am so frustrated because the last I'm really going to go this time with like three songs the last couple of times I've tried it it has been.
Like this last time it was two problems I entered the duration in minutes and not seconds and there's no like input validation checking on sovereign feeds for that and so it just takes it.
But you have to put it in seconds or else it breaks everything and then the other thing that I did wrong which is a bug and sovereign feeds but I had channel level splits set up for everybody and I didn't have anything on the episode level split because I just wanted to inherit the channel level but because of a bug and sovereign feeds when using.
Value times play you have to define it both in the channel and at the episode level I had not initially and so it was busted because of that by the time I got a fix is basically everybody was done boosting all that's too bad.
You know I mean it really I've really gotten cut up trying this inserting the value times split music stuff I think it's.
Incredible you know we talked about.
Patent roles coming for podcasters so having a legitimate way to play and change up songs and music you know it's a holiday episode so we want to play holiday music and build do that in a way that's legit and the.
Creators get.
Get value for that I think it's really important for podcast so I'm going to keep trying it especially with this episode every time I tried it.
It's blown up in my face in some way this so it's very because it's like well a little bit of validation checking could have done that or the tool is using maybe had a bug or I got something wrong one time you know that surprise surprise it's just.
A lot of paper cuts or scissors cuts.
But.
It sounds like a big opportunity for improvements really I mean it's still kind early days for this but it sounds like with a tiny bit of effort this could be really select though.
I think and I know like I think there are places like ours that blue that are working on this I think it'd be a hundred percent solved.
If it was baked into my tooling right the issue here is that I'm not really familiar with a well sovereign feeds or the split kit.
And so I'm pulling two different tools together that I don't use a lot.
And I'm trying to get the right results where if it was say you know you go to like ours as blue or fireside you're just you're inputting your episode title.
Description tags and then you say oh hey at this minute I have some music and it helps search the index and find the music for you all you know that and it just puts everything in there for you and it bills the feed when you get to that point it's going to be freaking flawless.
We're just not quite there yet okay I have an idea you ready for this one yeah so what if you take that little piece of technology that we saw that wants to cut out ads and instead use it for good so use it to.
Indicate when these songs are starting and it just does it all for you.
I like that idea that's that let's let's use these these chap I think he's for good here here remake and even comes in with 10,000 sats coming in
with the booths and boosts the attack came in with 2048 sats be interested to see what happened if a major artist started distributing their albums via value for value.
You know someone say the size of T swift just to see how the system would handle it oh boy well I don't know are we ready for that I don't think so yeah no no there are we have stars right now I mean it's there's like there's a live event getting planned.
It's going to be a live music event that's going to be streamed using the lit item tag and podcasting to do people going to be able to boost the whole the whole event.
It's going to be sponsor free it's going to be value based so keep your eyes up for that might already happen by the time this episode comes out but it's neat to see it it's all around the music stuff.
Kyron comes in mere models podcast again row of ducks highlighting podverse for my value run through for the podcasting to the apps of you guys yes nice keep on it Kyron thank you.
Bend the tech I also came in with a row of ducks.
Now that you're experimenting with all these fancy podcasting to do features I've decided to embark on a child about hello from boost C L.
I yeah buddy bend the tech guy you're doing a good job you're doing a good job right on man right on that is Gene Bean comes in with 7000
sats you can host with cast a pod.
Oh my gosh oh my gosh yeah I know are says blue I know I know Gene Bean you see how do you put it brand it's like complicated yeah not the only thing we have to worry about right right we also have a lot of tooling complex.
I'm not a tooling complex plan that's it.
Inertia you might call it.
Yeah if we could take three months off but we all still showed up and you know spent the same amount of time we could get a lot of things done we need like a time machine that just has a pause button I could use that yeah right right okay but let's ask like what would it take I think it's something you do one show at a time as the tech gets ready like I really thought we would have a lot of things done.
We thought we would have our own we would be we'd be brewing our own our ss feeds by this point and you know part of me really wishes we were still.
But also part of me realizes that we have like iterated on the idea of how we do it two or three times in house.
So it's like.
I don't know like sometimes we just take a little bit longer than I'd like but then it's like we're iterating on the idea so like what we end up doing is better in the long run anyways.
So that's what it takes time and I probably just shouldn't talk about it until we're like really close but then you know where's the fun and that.
You know and Gene suggested to you like maybe we write up like a spec that we would require for a host and all the stuff and it's like even something like that.
I have a problem with some family members that are angry at me right now because they haven't seen much of me and so they're trying to schedule time to come see me they're unemployed they're retired and.
I am self employed you know doing some shows also this is a holiday schedule so we're recording doubles right now so we're running we're running the regular show load plus we're prepping an additional show for each show.
You know I got three kids got a lot going on.
And this person has nothing going on but yet they're like well why don't you just do this why don't you just do x y z and I'm trying to say to this family member it's like.
You are a priority to me but I literally don't have time like I collapse like around 9 30 at night exhausted I wake up around 5 a.m. and I'm usually out the door by 6 a.m. working.
And I do that six days a week usually um so this like you'll stay you've got kids yeah the seventh day is I spend with my kids yeah yeah.
Although it's really it's the sixth day of the week Saturday I spend with the kids and then Sunday it's back to work yeah there's a real bad with problem there I was thinking you know what a real life goal would be.
Would be to get to a position where I can hire a couple of people full time.
And then we just start executing on stuff all the time because it's just never going to get there.
Otherwise but you know we'll see we'll see Jean being we're always like you know the it's what I've learned is not to let it stress me out too bad because.
The way it generally happens is it's slow slow slow sort of like building and building building and then it pops and then it's just boom all of a sudden it's immediate and it stinks change on a dime.
So I it's always kind of goes like that bunch of nuts sends in our first baseball boost of the batch one two three four five sets.
So the combination is one two three four five.
And then we just do a few numbers like one two three four five is baseball row at ducks there is an old list that I think pod news has kept up to date but it doesn't they have an update in the long time.
So right now it's sort of just you pick it up as you listen.
But we've had a lot of requests for that bunch of nuts so somebody wanted to put something on our GitHub right maybe that be good place to put it and people that's a good place to put it.
You can also create your own you know screw the dictionary just make some yeah tell us generally you come up with the boost and then you tell us what it is.
And we'll start but we'll go with it.
Maryland J B comes in with another space balls boost luggage boost one two three four five yes that's amazing I got the same combination on my luggage.
Thank you for writing hours of entertaining content love the combo and love when we get the combo thank you guys thank you both appreciate that bunch of nuts and Maryland J B appreciate that camera comes at 4,321 sets just FYI.
Eric has created an IPFS podcasting flake.
Yes IPFS podcasting continues to be very exciting camera thank you so much for your hard work over there and I will put a link to that in the show notes.
We very much would like to base our system around next we'd eventually love to have our own redirect or two we got a road ducks from Scott but no message and our last message going on air this week comes from adversaries 17 adversaries adversaries.
17 5,000 sats using podverse just boosting for the next office hours I hope to hear it someday well you know what here you go B O O ST Mr. Rusted Castle verse also came in with some support fear gas balls Sam Sethi came in with 10 sats using pod fans.
So we had 23 boosters total and we stacked 208 sats 500 28,591 sats well thank you very much not quite our 1.4 million goal although I'm rate I'm lowering that.
With the increase since we set that I'm lowering our goal to 1 million this will definitely be our last episode of 2023 maybe our last office hours ever I don't know unless unless we return to school but Brent you know it's been nice either way so he's fun hanging out with you.
So he's fun so kind of miss it actually we shouldn't let it go that law well yeah we could do better you know we could have done better I don't really put that falling short of the goal on the audience.
We lost momentum it got busy with the holidays.
Brank out a new job he's traveling a bunch there's just a lot of best happen there yeah yep yep and next year's crazy to.
We got so much going on just in the first quarter to so it's okay I do I do miss doing it and if we got to our 1 million milestone 1 million sats I'd be happy to sit down and do another one.
So maybe subscribe and make sure you set it to auto download so after 15 days I was doesn't screw you.
Oh good or get a new podcast at podcast apps calm.
Founded 1.0 might be up by the time you hear this.
If not pod versus beloved by our audience pod fans seems like it's picking up steam cast thematics fantastic on I was there's a lot of good apps out there.
Okay Brantley I think that's it. I think we're all done here happy holidays everybody hope you have a great one with you and your family happy holiday Brantley.
We save travels.
Well thank you.
Make sure you warm up that eggnog that vegan eggnog I'm sure vegan dog girl what do they call it?
A vegan dog?
Not nog.
No that doesn't sound right.
Doesn't sound right.
Alright thank you for joining us happy holidays.
We'll see you maybe.
2024.
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