Jon and Justin open up about the challenges of bootstrapping "on the side."
How things have gotten harder (in some ways) now that we have customers.
Jon is finding it hard to juggle his day job, and getting time to build the "big features."
Justin flip-flips back and forth about investment. Would investors and advisors meddle too much?
We also discuss the Spotify rumors: buying Gimlet for $200 - $230 million?
Also, a theory about why Apple should have made Gimlet an offer.
★ Thanks to our sponsors:
Alitu.com: Alitu removes all the tech headaches associated with producing your podcast. They take care of processing, editing & publishing your podcast. Go to Alitu.com and check out their video demo.
Podcastinsights.com: If you want to get into podcasting, check out Podcast Insights. They’re a great resource for folks who want to start and grow a podcast. Podcast equipment guides, how to make money. Join millions of readers learning all about how to start, grow, and monetize a podcast at podcastinsights.com.
It's a struggle when you're bootstrapping, but you're not yet full-time. Also: Spotify buying Gimlet for $200 million?
Show Notes
In this episode:
Jon and Justin open up about the challenges of bootstrapping "on the side."
How things have gotten harder (in some ways) now that we have customers.
Jon is finding it hard to juggle his day job, and getting time to build the "big features."
Justin flip-flips back and forth about investment. Would investors and advisors meddle too much?
We also discuss the Spotify rumors: buying Gimlet for $200 - $230 million?
Also, a theory about why Apple should have made Gimlet an offer.
★ Thanks to our sponsors:
Alitu.com: Alitu removes all the tech headaches associated with producing your podcast. They take care of processing, editing & publishing your podcast. Go to Alitu.com and check out their video demo.
Podcastinsights.com: If you want to get into podcasting, check out Podcast Insights. They’re a great resource for folks who want to start and grow a podcast. Podcast equipment guides, how to make money. Join millions of readers learning all about how to start, grow, and monetize a podcast at podcastinsights.com.
Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.
Justin:
Hey, folks. Alitu.com polishes brands and publishes your podcast automatically. They've just released recording right within the app. You can upload your normal recording from Skype or whatever. But you can also record it all right there in the web app.
Justin:
It's a great service. I highly recommend it for anyone producing podcasts, especially if you're putting your podcast on transistor. Alitoo.com.
Jon:
Tell
Justin:
them that we sent you.
Jon:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.
Justin:
And I'm Justin Jackson. I'm a product and marketing guy. Follow along as we build transistor.fm. Happy Monday, John.
Jon:
Happy Monday. How are you doing?
Justin:
While we were just talking about how we're really doing, if we recorded the part of the show where we talk about how we're really doing, We got some great feedback from the last episode, actually, and we do wanna include more of that that stuff that, you know, maybe we wouldn't put in a show. Today, we're gonna be talking about 2 things, I think. Later on, we'll talk about the Spotify deal. Spotify is rumored to be talking to Gimlet about acquiring them. But I thought to start, because we'd had so much feedback about, you know, share us more about the journey, I put a new section in called, what are you thinking about struggling with right now?
Jon:
It's a good one. Some Monday morning therapy.
Justin:
Monday morning therapy. Actually, I like that title even better. Yeah. I'm gonna call it Monday morning therapy. So why don't you start off?
Justin:
How how are you doing right now in terms of life and work?
Jon:
Yeah. It's, it's been I would say it's been kind of a struggle lately to juggle life and work, the day job, and transistor, and trying to move things forward. I guess it I I can't put a finger on anything that's really changed recently, you know, as far as, like, a few months ago. Mhmm. But it just feels like it's kind of a struggle lately to, like don't know.
Jon:
Find, like, find the time and the energy to really build out features on transistor, and it just feels like slightly overwhelming. I don't know I don't know what it is. It's like, probably probably just pressure I put on myself to wanna get more done.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
Because I do enjoy it, but it's like, there's only so many hours a day I can just stare at a screen.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
And it kind of related to that. I think I was thinking about this yesterday. Like, it's becoming harder and harder to sort of move quickly and push out new features or change features, because we have we we have a larger customer base now. It's like people get used to things. You don't wanna change too much.
Jon:
You don't wanna just, like, throw in some big changes to some particular workflow without really announcing it. Mhmm. Just kind of you know, I feel like every change or feature we make or add is gonna just increase support requests at this point. Yeah.
Justin:
And,
Jon:
it's been it's been tough to keep up with the to keep up with those requests and, like, a lot of those are just questions really. They're not Mhmm. Technical problems or bugs. I mean, some of them are, but a lot of it's just questions that people have about how to get started, which I which I think we can clear up just with, you know, updates to the interface and documentation. But Yeah.
Jon:
It's still just like I don't know. The it just maybe we're at the just that weird phase where it's like you wanna do a lot more than you can possibly fit in.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Maybe talk a little bit more about you know, we're at that stage now where we're probably at feature parity with most of our our competitors.
Jon:
Mhmm.
Justin:
But now comes the time where we wanna differentiate.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
And, we have ideas around that. But for you as the primary engineer.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
That's that it's gotta be a struggle because the the the weight of that is, you know, I'm gonna be helping with wireframing and prototyping and Mhmm. You know, collecting all that customer research in one spot. But, eventually, someone's gotta, you know, get into the backhoe and move a bunch of dirt.
Jon:
Yeah. Right. I don't know if we have a back yard. I might have a shovel.
Justin:
That's a good point. That's a good point. Bootstrappers bootstrappers are moving that dirt with shovels.
Jon:
Yeah. Likewise about, you know, differentiating ourselves, but also going back and sort of updating or finishing some of the some of the features we sort of started and are for lack of a better term, like half finished. Mhmm. Like the website builder. Right?
Jon:
It's really bare bones, and people are like, how do I customize this? How do I just oh, you could go down so many other paths to, like, building out this really highly customizable website builder. And Yeah. I don't think we necessarily need to do that, but, like, that's one feature that needs a lot of love.
Justin:
Yeah. Totally. And it works fine, but, like,
Jon:
it could be a lot better.
Justin:
You know? And, you know, I've been thinking a lot about that, And this would be interesting to get the the thoughts from our our listeners, especially those that have built some sort of CMS before. Because there's a lot of apps that require some sort of editing interface. So Mailchimp has built their own drag and drop, editor for email newsletters. WordPress obviously just released a big update.
Justin:
They have this new Gutenberg editor that's kind of a block based editor. There's the one I use for my personal site is called statamik, and it has a block level, editor. And these are very difficult to build. There's companies that this is their entire focus is build you know, making websites. And here we are.
Justin:
Our our primary focus is podcasts. But as a part of that, we want to offer, basically, a CMS as a part of that. It is tricky. And I I wonder if there's a creative solution that we haven't thought of. Like, for example, we've talked about maybe, you know, one one way to maybe make it easier is to use what Shopify has done with Liquid.
Justin:
And, you know, we we could build ours on top of that, but that would still, I think, be quite a bit of work.
Jon:
Yeah. And liquid liquid would still require people to essentially write code. Like or not code, but, like, HTML. Right? I mean, it's some coding that you you can loop through different logic blocks and have if statements and stuff within liquid.
Jon:
But Mhmm. That's not it's it's good for a certain small subset of people, I think. Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a balance of, like, I don't wanna build some full featured CMS editor because that's really not our main focus.
Jon:
Like, I think having a website available to you is a nice value add, but Mhmm. If you really wanna go highly customized high highly customized website, like, probably gonna wanna use another solution, another hosted solution. You know, having us add in an API could certainly help with that. But
Justin:
Yeah. Well and then there's ideas of, like, maybe we could form an official partnership with somebody like card, carrd.co. Right. You know, he already has a kind of simple, it's only a single page builder right now, similar to what we have, but definitely more flexible. And, you know, we could maybe we could figure out a partnership with him where we use, you know, we use that editor.
Justin:
That becomes the transistor editor, instead of building it all ourself. Fizzle, the membership site, did a form of this where they you know, all of their members needed WordPress sites. So they just created an official partnership with Flywheel. And so now all of their members get a Flywheel site for free included. So, yeah, I I'm just trying to think of what are what are some maybe creative ways we can get around the CMS issue because it's such like, it it's also in terms of you and I being able to focus and build great software.
Justin:
It is the one piece that could easily get out of hand.
Jon:
Yeah. And also, I mean, when you think about it, it's really I don't think that many people listen to podcasts on the web and go to peep like, I don't wanna totally disregard it, but, like, are people really listening to podcasts on the web that often? Like, the value of the website is nice and that you can, you know, you can have a central landing spot Mhmm. For your listeners and your audience. But, like, ultimately, someone's probably gonna end up subscribing through an app and listen that way.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Jon:
So how much how much, you know, energy time and energy do we wanna spend, like, really letting people build that out into something amazing when Mhmm. Energy can be spent, you know, improving analytics or coming up with some new feature that no one else has.
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, I I'm kind of split on this one. On one hand, I'm completely with you, because I think the you know, what we wanna do better than anybody else is, help people create compelling audio. Well, actually help people take the compelling audio they've already created and get that out into the world. Help them connect to an audience with that audio.
Justin:
Help them build relationships with an audience. And, certainly, you know, right now, most folks listen through podcast apps. And so the things that that kind of tech we can we can, innovate on in that space, there's still lots of opportunities. On the other hand, we are really in the business of giving people what they want. And, you know, when I had my own podcast, the having to maintain a WordPress site for the podcast was such a pain.
Justin:
And one of the big reasons I switched to simple cast originally was, oh, thank god they've got a built in website. And we've certainly heard that from people as well. Like, we we actually I there's a few people that have had full blogs on WordPress that have canceled them and are just using our CMS now because it's surprising. It's just less hassle.
Jon:
It is yeah. It is less hassle, but, like, did did they use the blogging feature? I mean, did they Probably not if they got rid of it.
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, their site was primarily a podcast, but the. All of our episode pages. Yeah. But, you know, they they they cost benefit.
Justin:
There's a simplicity benefit. If you're cross posting to WordPress, it's just a lot of extra time and overhead. Right. So I I I can understand why people want a website. I'm just recognizing that, man, that's it's such a hard problem.
Justin:
And I've seen companies get really into the weeds on any kind of editor. Forget about even just, full blown CMS, but any kind of editor.
Jon:
Oh, yeah. I mean, we we we're seeing that now with the editor we have, which is not terribly flexible. It's the one that Basecamp uses in theirs. They open source their editor, and that's what we use. But Mhmm.
Jon:
It's, you know, it's customizable to a point, but it's doesn't really handle copy and pasting very well into it. It doesn't handle markdown, and, like, some people want that. So, yeah, all of these features I've, you know, I've sort of related to my other struggles. It's like even choosing what to focus on. I mean, we have we've been using Clubhouse, and we have this stuff organized in that.
Jon:
We obviously have stuff that is prioritized. But, like, thinking about what's next and what to focus on. Mhmm. It's like, you know, could any one of these you can pick and improve.
Justin:
Yes. Yeah. Well, and, I think this is why the there's kind of this base camp philosophy of just giving things time to sit for a while too.
Jon:
Mhmm.
Justin:
This is the the idea of exploring before you move. And, Ryan Singer talks about this. I'll I'll try to find the tweet. But he basically says, you know, the the hardest part of any decision isn't making the decision. The hardest part is the long exploration phase where you're in kind of the unknown, and you're just climbing this mountain.
Justin:
It it's it's the metaphor is perfect. You're climbing this mountain, and things are not yet clear. But then there comes a point where if you wait long enough, if you are you know, instead of, like it's it's very counterintuitive. Everyone else in startup business is trying to hustle, hustle, hustle. But instead, going waiting and waiting waiting till you have this perspective of, oh, now I know why we should move.
Jon:
Yep. Yeah. I like that.
Justin:
Yeah. It's the
Jon:
way I mean, I try to approach decisions like that, but I think sometimes it's you still get, like, at some point, you enter this phase of, like, paralysis, paralysis of indecision. You're just like
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, that's where I'm at.
Justin:
How are
Jon:
how are you doing?
Justin:
That was good. I I'm glad we added this section because I think there's a lot of product people can identify with that. And Yeah. The I I that is an interesting one, because we can become overwhelmed by all these options. And
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, we we've had feedback and questions, I think, from listeners on Twitter. Right? Where they're, like, they're asking about, you know, talking more about how you how you make decisions and how you choose what to work on next. And
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
I guess that's still an open ended topic to some degree.
Justin:
Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. And I think just it was interesting listening to you because I I felt the same way.
Justin:
But then as you were talking, I'm like, I wonder if part of this is just we don't some of this is just you don't you haven't had time to work on things. But in terms of, like, the next big steps, what are those? With the CMS, for example, if that's stressing us out
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
I think one good response is we just don't know yet.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And to then be able to put that one to bed and say, okay. But, dynamic calls to action in show notes, for example, that we're pretty certain about. And so it makes sense to work move forward on that one. But it's no sense getting stressed out, like, allowing the CMS piece to add to our burden. Just be like Sure.
Justin:
Yeah. Let me quickly do a sponsor read, and then I'll talk about what's going on with me. And then we'll get into the Spotify talk. Just want folks to check out podcast insights.com. If you are interested in doing a podcast like John and I are doing, sharing your company's journey, maybe you are on the marketing team and your boss has said, hey, you need to get a podcast.
Justin:
Now, naturally, you're gonna sign up for Transistor, but how do you then produce the podcast? Podcastinsights.com has a a course. It's a 10 day course. It's free. And you'll learn everything you need to know from, you know, what equipment you should get.
Justin:
He's got a whole shopping list for you, how to record and edit, how to write show notes, how to publish and promote your show. All of these things that you need to learn, and he can teach them to you in 10 days instead of having to learn over years, like I had to. So go check it out, podcast insights.com. Yeah. I think just quickly, Monday morning therapy wise, one thing I'm struggling with is just I'm still unsure about investment.
Justin:
And I feel like I really get yanked around on this one. Sorry. Whether we should take investment.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
I'm almost adamant, 100% for sure, that I don't want us to take venture capital. But what's made the decision more difficult lately are these new funds that have come out, tiny seed, indy.vc, earnest, all of whom are in the application process right now. We might have missed the indy.vc window. I'm not sure.
Jon:
Okay.
Justin:
But, you know, there's a little bit of even FOMO because the Slack groups I'm in, everyone's asking who's applying for, you know, tiny seed? Who's gonna apply for earnest? And, you know, on a day you know, there's some days where you and I talk and you're saying, man, you know, it'd be great to focus more on this. And, you know, if there's no money in my bank account, I'm like, man, it'd be good to have some money in my bank account.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
And those days, I definitely feel more pushed, more, open to investment. The right now, there's this other part of me that's still, like, the idea of and and actually, maybe these are bad feelings to have. So
Jon:
I'm
Justin:
sure I'll hear from some people out there about these. On one hand so I've had talks with everybody, like, on the phone except for indy.vc. And, you know, I like Rob a lot, Rob Walling. I like, Tyler Tringus a lot. But they end up asking you these questions about your business.
Justin:
And maybe it's wrong of me to feel this way, but I just feel like, now I've got someone else asking me these questions. Some of which are legitimate and good questions that I should wrestle with, but some of which already kinda feel like meddling.
Jon:
I see. Yeah. Like, the whole point of these funds are that they're not supposed to necessarily control you Mhmm. Or, like, meddle in the business necessarily and kinda let you run with it. But that okay.
Justin:
I mean, there's some strong suggestions in and and and maybe it's just the way I'm interpreting it.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
And maybe it's maybe it's because I'm insecure, and I just don't want anyone criticizing our business.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean yeah. But I'm still on the fence about that stuff too, but I think along with the investment and the the, you know, runway to to sort of work on a thing full time, One of the bigger benefit big benefits for me too is that list of potential advisors that comes along with it. Right?
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Which, you know, they probably will be sometimes brutally honest with you and not necessarily push you in one direction or tell you what to do, but definitely give you some some advice that maybe you don't wanna hear at times.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, I feel like I've been open to that in the past. I I but I'm also I've also had bad experiences with advisers. I've been on startup, you know, part of startups that had an adviser board.
Justin:
And, you know, we treated these advisers with a lot of respect and, like, they were kind of these wise gurus. And in retrospect, their advice was almost universally bad. And so I'm wrestling with that piece too. This idea of, ultimately, there's this tension because I think only you and I know the best about what we wanna get out of this business.
Jon:
Mhmm.
Justin:
And only you and I know, because we have this constant stream of customers talking to us. We are embedded in all sorts of conversations, all sorts of observations about podcasting that other people don't see. And, you know, even today, I I'll call out this example specifically. You know, I got this question on Twitter, which is completely valid. Hunter Walk, who's a venture capitalist, just had this article about how, you know, transcription's gonna be the next big step in podcasting.
Justin:
And, you know, I had a bunch of people cc me in this. Like, hey, are you thinking about adding trans a transcription service? And, these are valid questions. But the assumption is, oh, that must be easy. Like, look, Hunter's talking about it.
Justin:
Just implement it, and then you guys profit. And but what they don't know is I've had conversations with tons of people. You and I have been testing out transcription services. Right. I use a transcription service at least 5 times a week called Descript, who I think are the best in terms of automatic transcription.
Justin:
And, for I've had conversations with Cortland Allen over at Indie Hackers. He was, he he signed up for a service that had automated transcriptions and just disliked them so much that he switched to paying someone to hand transcribe them.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
And that person quit. And then he tried another service that was $200 a month, and he's like, there's no way you folks are gonna be able to offer this quality for $200 a month. They said they would. And then, like, a few months later, they closed down. So I know the pain that is involved in that one area.
Jon:
Even yeah. Yeah.
Justin:
And so the idea of having, outsiders. Outsiders suggest things whether they are just people on Twitter or investors or advisors. On one hand, maybe they'll have a good idea that I haven't thought about. But there's this other part of me that's, like, I don't think, like, in terms of the podcast industry specifically, what are you gonna be able to offer that I'm not already seeing? How are you gonna have a hot take that and this is a little bit cynical.
Justin:
I again, I'm I'm just talking out feelings out loud.
Jon:
Yeah. It's, yeah. I go back and forth in that too, the investment thing. I mean, it's for me, it's like it it's more so around wanting to do this thing on our own and feeling like there is a lot of momentum right now with it. And, like, you know, our rev revenue is growing, And that taking an investment would sort of almost be like selling out to some extent
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
And being like, we need help.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
But it's also maybe a fairly cynical take. I mean, if it if it's if that's the thing that gets us to possibly doing this full time, then Yeah. That's not a bad thing.
Justin:
Totally. Totally. Anyway, we'll we'll keep exploring those feelings. In the next 5, 10 minutes, we are gonna quickly talk about what we think about this Spotify deal. John Buda, imagine tomorrow someone calls you up and says, hey, John.
Justin:
I love what you and Justin are doing with Transistor. I know somebody at, whatever, Time Media Group, and they wanna pay you $200,000,000 for the company. What do you say?
Jon:
Sign me up.
Justin:
Yeah. You know, that that's an interest Sure.
Jon:
That's a lot of money.
Justin:
That is a lot of money. Yeah. So Spotify this is the synopsis. Spotify is supposedly in talks to buy Gimlet Media. Recode says the price is 200,000,000.
Justin:
Nick Qua? Is it Qua? I gotta figure that out. I don't know. He's from Hot Pod.
Justin:
He says a source is telling him 230,000,000. This is all kind of this has been coming for a while. Spotify last month renamed their app in the App Store. I'm not sure if you saw this. They were just called Spotify Music, but now it says Spotify Music and Podcasts.
Justin:
They've also they were, already doing exclusive podcast deals. They reportedly paid Amy Schumer a $1,000,000 to do an exclusive show on Spotify. So it's interesting.
Jon:
Yeah. It's it is interesting. I feel like yeah. The well, the Amy Schumer show in particular is probably just a way to get people to sign up for Spotify. Right?
Jon:
I mean, that's that's their goal is to get people to sign up and pay monthly.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
Because that that show is, I would assume, only available on Spotify.
Justin:
That's right. Yeah. That would be an exclusive. And so what are some of your takes on this? You you were mentioning some people were, like, messaging you.
Justin:
What what kinds of things were they messaging you?
Jon:
Yeah. Well, you know, along with you and a couple other people, it was like they would send me a link to this. It might have been a recode or somewhere else, but, they were like, oh, wow. This is you know, that's a huge deal. Like, you guys should definitely go, like, go all in on Transistor and just, like, take, you know, take some investment and just go all in and see where you can go with it because, like, podcasting is so hot right now or whatever.
Jon:
Mhmm. And
Justin:
part
Jon:
of me gets that, but the my immediate thought was, I don't know I don't know if you heard about this or if it's unavailable in Canada, but there's a show on National Geographic TV, I wanna say.
Justin:
It's a it's a channel?
Jon:
Yeah. There's a National Geographic TV channel in the US, and you can stream it online, but they have a show called Valley of the Boom, which is about the mid nineties, late to late mid to late nineties, like, Internet boom. It's basically, like, a cross between a documentary and a TV show where they actually have interviews with, like, people that were involved in businesses then Mhmm. But also have actors playing out bits, you know, around the whole all the stuff that was happening in that in that time period. So like the first thing that came to mind when a friend of mine messaged me and said that was like kind of in relation to that and how the Netscape IPO, I think it was in 95 Mhmm.
Jon:
Like, triggered this massive gold rush and just, like, in Silicon Valley and everywhere, and people were moving there and just, like, getting investments for having just an idea. And, I mean, that ultimately led to the whole dotcom bubble bursting and Yeah. All this crazy stuff happening and, like, you know, I just I I'm wondering if that's where something like this deal is gonna lead to. Mhmm. In that, I don't know.
Jon:
Are there just gonna be a ton of deals for, like, these expensive, like, highly high cost shows that are well produced? But, I don't know. I'm just like, is that the is that the future of podcasting? Is that where it's going? Is, like Yeah.
Jon:
Are media groups gonna be bought up and shows being bought up, and it's all gonna end up in this walled garden of like Spotify podcasting or some other walled garden where you have to have Spotify all listen to these shows. Mhmm. Because, like, yeah. Yeah. Up to that point, I mean, it's been a very open infrastructure.
Jon:
There haven't really been, as far as I know, aside from Spotify, really many walled garden type shows where you couldn't listen to it elsewhere.
Justin:
Yeah. Well, I mean, the there there's multiple places that have tried.
Jon:
Okay.
Justin:
So, I we could go one side. Patreon has lots of, exclusive shows if you if you support on Patreon. Breaker just released a, similar thing where you can pay the the, podcaster directly and get a pod an exclusive stream. Anchor's doing that as well. Cast Castbox is doing that as well.
Justin:
Himalaya, which is a new app, from China has lots of exclusive content. So I think an Audible had Audible originals, which were, private podcasts just for, people subscribers.
Jon:
Okay. Cool.
Justin:
So I I I think there there's definitely people going this way. And Spotify clearly wants to be the Netflix. They want they want to be Netflix. They they've already tried video in the past. It didn't work out.
Justin:
But their model is let's be Netflix. And so that Amy Schumer deal is a good example. They wanna have exclusive content the same way that Netflix does. And in that sense, buying Gimlet makes a lot of sense. The, my guess and this is I was talking about this on Twitter.
Justin:
My guess is that shows like reply all will stay free and ad supported. And remember, if Spotify wants to, they already rehost every podcast feed on their platform. So if they wanna use their dynamic ad engine that they're already using for music, they can do that on all of their Gimlet shows that they now would own. But if they wanna still distribute those shows outside of Spotify and have, you know, a different ad server that's running all of those. They can also do that.
Justin:
So they've got some options here in terms of ads. They can run run the ads inside of Spotify. And then as soon as you pay, you get, they just magically take those ads out of the podcasts. Right? And then they can also for everyone else, for all the all of the, the outsiders listening on Apple Podcasts or whatever.
Justin:
They would get, either host read ads or dynamic ads or whatever they wanna do. So they've got some options there, that seem to make sense. The other thing is, you know, like the Gimlet has a lot of kind of Hollywood intellectual property now. We talked about this last show, homecoming and everything else. Yeah.
Justin:
And if you want if Spotify wants to, you know, they wanna be the home for audio, so people are listening to music. And then, oh, wait. Reply. All's got a new episode. I'll listen to that.
Justin:
And then I'll go back to listening to music. The longer they can keep folks in the app, the better. That's what they want.
Jon:
Yeah. I personally will not be resubscribing and paying for Spotify until they spend some of their money on finally updating their app to sync music to your Apple Watch.
Justin:
Well
Jon:
It's really, really annoying. I've been paying for Itunes again because that's the only way to put music on your watch and go running without a phone. Yeah. And they don't I like, I don't understand it. Take $1,000,000 of of that money and just, like, build an eye an eye watch app.
Jon:
Just do it.
Justin:
Well and, actually, maybe and maybe we're the only ones talking about this. I we've experienced what it's like to work with the Spotify back end. Yeah. I wouldn't say it's I'd say there's a lot of problems there.
Jon:
It's not great, and I don't know if it's if they're struggling between, like, allowing because we're we're signed up as an aggregator. Right? So we can we can push out the shows that we host up to Spotify. Mhmm. But they also have this new platform where people can can submit their own shows.
Jon:
Mhmm. And I'm wondering if they're, like, maybe they're rethinking that aggregator idea
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
And not putting much focus on it.
Justin:
It and it would make sense in the beginning. Right? Like, hey, everybody come host your shows with us. But
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
I've you know, and then we're gonna build up a directory that competes with Apple Itunes directory. Yep. And then once we have a dominant position and Apple says, well, wait a second. We're not gonna let you folks, you know, use our directory anymore or whatever. I think only about 60% actually, sorry.
Justin:
I should clarify. Spotify is not using Apple's directory. So that's incorrect. People submit their shows directly to Spotify. About 60% of shows seem to be on there, I think.
Justin:
If they are able to build up their directory organically, like everyone wants to have their show on Spotify, and they could become the dominant, you know, the
Jon:
They could. Yeah.
Justin:
The direct is kind of the power.
Jon:
But, like, you know, you know, we go weeks between hearing from our contact, I think, getting emails, and I think they're overwhelmed or something.
Justin:
Yeah. Well, it
Jon:
That's it.
Justin:
Yeah. Our contact's on a new team now. We just got a Oh. A different contact. Yeah.
Jon:
Oh, nice. So I That said, like, I really do like the Spotify interface and its recommendations and its, like, ability to to, like, bubble up new music that you wouldn't have discovered otherwise. And I think Apple's music the tools around that we're recommending are not good at all. Yeah. It's just not good.
Justin:
It does seem that there's a couple jug juggernauts, rising here. So Spotify has taken the number 2 spot. I'm interested to see what Apple does. We don't have time to talk about this. But to me, if I was Apple, I'd be very interested in acquiring Gimlet for the same reasons that Spotify wants it, but plus the idea of them building an all you can eat streaming service, TV, movies, podcasts, and music.
Helen:
I think
Jon:
the I think the problem with Apple doing that and paying a bunch of money for for podcasting is that they don't make any money on it.
Justin:
Yeah. But I wonder
Jon:
if that You don't have
Justin:
you don't have to subscribe
Jon:
to Apple Music. Maybe. Yeah.
Justin:
I I wonder if it's gonna change because and I got some pushback on this on Twitter, but people don't realize how much Apple is investing right now in original content. They've signed deals with Spielberg
Jon:
Tons.
Justin:
Oprah, Jennifer Aniston. It goes on and on and on.
Jon:
There's nowhere to watch it yet.
Justin:
And, I
Jon:
mean, there's all kinds of rumors going around that they're gonna release some cheaper Apple TV with whatever for this new service.
Justin:
Yeah. Well and they've also put, iTunes now on Samsung TVs. So the old idea of you only being able to use iTunes and, even I'm going to put it out there right now, Apple Podcasts on Apple Devices, they've they're already proving with their actions that they are going outside of that. And so I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is saying, wait a second. Audio is now this big industry.
Justin:
We own most of that industry. 60% of listeners use Apple Podcasts. We have the podcast directory that everybody is using. Like, Overcast uses it. Pocket Cast uses it.
Justin:
We we need to start monetizing this. And the way to do it is have one streaming service to rule them all. Chris put some echoes on that when I said that.
Jon:
It's possible. I mean, they're they certainly seem to be moving more into the streaming market and original content. That said, their previous performance in that area doesn't really give me a lot of hope. Mhmm. Like
Justin:
Yeah. You're talking about the original content that was on Apple Music?
Jon:
Well, no. I think the the content will be fine just because of who they're hiring
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
But their ability to actually build services around it. Yeah. Like like, iTunes is a mess. Apple Music is not great. It's fine.
Jon:
Yeah. I just don't know how they manage that without making it confusing. I mean, it they almost have to split it up into separate apps or something.
Justin:
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple comes out with a major update where this new streaming app is the center. It will either be central and you get everything up from one app, or it they will break it apart. So they'll have TV, movies, podcasts, audiobooks, music as separate apps. But they will have a single strategy going forward. And I think we're seeing, kind of, 3 main juggernauts.
Justin:
We've got Netflix with movies and TV. We've got Spotify with audio. And Apple is going to try to take them both on. And remember that what happens in podcasting podcasting is not a silo. Podcasting IP is going over to TV and movies.
Justin:
TV and movies IP, like Conan O'Brien is going over to podcasts. They're they're everything is going everywhere. And so there's going to be an opportunity there if they want it. And, I I'm not sure how I feel about it if it's gonna be good for podcasting or not good for podcasting. Yeah.
Justin:
But I do know that if if Apple came along and said, listen, you can get all the same shows, except for Netflix and originals. But you can get, you know, all the same shows and movies that you would get with Netflix. You can get Apple Music, which we already subscribe to. You can get audio books. You can get, premium podcasts.
Justin:
You can get everything in one service. You don't have to pay, a bunch of services. That might that might convince us to move over. And there's something there. Or at the very least, get buy that and keep Netflix, but then we're done.
Justin:
Right? Like, no Hulu. No. Nothing else. I think it's You will see.
Jon:
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know I don't know if it's good or not, this whole deal for podcasting. I'm my only concern is that it it ends up, like, somehow crashing the market because people get go get, like, too money crazy about it.
Justin:
Yeah. I
Jon:
but I guess we'll see.
Justin:
And the advantage that we have is is it's based on RSS. Tons of venture capitalists do not like the fact that it's based on RSS, by the way. That that's a common criticism. But I just look at blogging. The there are tons of blogs that became TV shows and movies.
Justin:
And there's tons of Twitter, accounts that became TVs and movies and books. And so, but blogging has kept its, open platform. There's not one platform to to rule them all. And Yeah. To me, blogging is doing just fine.
Justin:
And I think podcasting as an open standard will do just fine. I think there will be paywalls just like there are in blogging. Exclusive content, you know, on the New York Times and all that. I I think that will continue to exist. And I that doesn't scare me as much, because, you know, I think there's there's room for that as well.
Justin:
I think overall, this seems this is just another deal, and I I I don't think it actually affects you and I that much.
Jon:
Yeah. I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, think well, like we've said in the past, like, the the podcast market is still really small. Mhmm.
Jon:
It's popular. I mean, it's you know, most people know about it, but it's still a pretty small market.
Justin:
Yeah. Where where it could affect us is more attention on audio does improve our business. So the more people that hear about it, the more people that get an interest in it. The more, you know, young kids that might listen to a podcast for the first time on Spotify, and then say, oh, I wanna do that when I grow up. Those are all very good things for, you know, businesses like ours.
Jon:
Yep.
Justin:
So I yeah. I think there's something there. And we'll just have to leave it there, folks.
Helen:
I think
Jon:
We'll see where it goes. Yeah.
Justin:
We'll see where it goes. John, why don't you thank our patrons on patreon.com?
Jon:
Alrighty. So first up, we have Colin Gray from elituh.com, as we mentioned earlier, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Kevin Markham, Sammy Shuckert. Shuckert. I was I don't know if I do that right. Dan Erickson, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Giunta, podcast insights.com.
Jon:
So thanks to everyone who's supporting us, keeping the show going.
Justin:
Yeah. Thank you. And, you can find all the show notes for the show, saas.transistor.fm/44. And yeah. We'll see you next time we record an episode.
