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Jon: Hey everyone.
Welcome to Build your SaaS.
This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in now 2019.
I'm Jon Buda, a software engineer.
Justin: Yeah.
And I'm Justin Jackson.
I'm a product and marketing guy follow along as we build transistor.fm.
Happy new year, John,
Jon: if you knew you were to you, I it's hard to believe it's 2019.
Justin: It is hard to believe.
We took a little bit of a break we did at the holidays and we're back.
Uh, and we actually have a little bit of thing going on.
I've called this clean in 2019.
So, uh, this is something I kind of pitched you on.
Uh, I've been feeling like.
We're, you know, we're at about $5,000, monthly recurring revenue right now.
Yeah.
And I really want us to hit 10.
That's kind of the next major milestone.
And so I thought, you know what?
To give myself an incentive, I'm going to quit drinking alcohol until we hit $10,000 MRR.
And then.
Told you about this and you said, well, maybe I'll do that too.
Jon: Yeah.
It sounds like a good idea for a number of reasons.
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah.
And actually, yeah, just to dive into this a little bit.
Um, so, and I think you've got different reasons than me, even, maybe there's some overlap, but, uh, I like drinking.
Drinking is something I've probably do two to three times a week.
Uh, but there's a few things that made me feel like I want it to give.
To start the year.
First of all, I read this article about how alcohol is basically a depressant and meaning it, it, it can make you feel more down.
It's a, it's a downer.
Yeah.
And we've talked quite a bit about mental health on this show.
And I think one of the things I wanted to do is to give myself a better chance of having good mental health in 2019.
And if I'm continuously putting something into my body that makes me feel down.
Uh, maybe I should try to change that.
Yeah.
Jon: I would agree with that.
I mean that's yeah.
That's one.
Yeah, same.
I have the same thoughts.
One of that's one of my reasons for thinking about it too.
Justin: And the other thing is just how much, uh, so for example, we have a thing called geek beer.
Uh, here in Vernon, we do it once a month.
It's awesome.
It's like, we all get together.
We have a bunch of drinks, but the next one.
Hmm.
I never feel good.
Oh yeah, no.
Yeah.
And th this idea of like, if you were getting ready to run a race, You know, every day, well, you're, you're getting you are right.
Jon: I am, I will be getting ready soon,
Justin: but you know, this work we're doing, uh, Jason Cohen, the founder of WP engine says, you know, bootstrapping is already hard.
So why do we sometimes make it harder?
Well,
Jon: yeah, I mean, you know, in the great, I think with alcohol it's it's, uh, It's a temporary fix.
It feels good temporarily.
I mean, you know, it feels good.
Alcohol tastes good, you know, it's great.
Justin: But, and actually I've already seen how hard this might be because I drink on new year's Eve and then it was pretty easy for me to eliminate it from my house.
Cause I was just like, okay, I'm just not going to drink anymore.
But the other day we were snowboarding with a bunch of friends and afterwards you invariably end up in the pub and I'm like, oh man, It's, you know, everyone's going around ordering their drinks.
And I ordered a Virgin Caesar.
Do you know what a Caesar is?
Caesar is.
Oh, it's a, the Canadian version of a bloody Mary.
Okay.
Instead of tomato juice you use.
Oh, I hate that stuff.
I guess you gotta be a Canadian to like this.
Um, you gotta try one sometime.
I think it's, it uses Worchester or tester.
Is that bloody Mary to worst.
Where's the shine.
Can somebody please leave us a voicemail, transistor.fm/voicemail with the correct pronunciation.
Uh, so let's see here.
Oh yeah.
um, okay, so they have the same thing, but yeah, uh, Caesar is, uh, with Clamato anyway, but instantly.
You know, everyone's like what, like what you're not drinking.
And I have to explain, well, yeah, I'm not drinking.
I
Jon: kind of hate that about the social aspect of like, even having to explain it.
It's like, I just, why do I have to explain
Justin: it?
Yeah.
But I think that will get easier.
There's also something very powerful about saying about.
Having in your identity?
Oh, I I'm not drinking right now or I don't drink is a, is a better one.
James clear has this in his book, atomic habits, but I, and I'm going to butcher it a little bit, but people that said I'm trying to quit as opposed to, I don't drink.
Uh, successful, but when they assume the identity of a non drinker, I don't drink as opposed to someone assuming the identity of someone who's trying to quit or trying to cut back.
Um, they had more success when they said, no, this is who I am.
I don't drink.
Jon: I had a, I had a friend a while ago who didn't, he was a developer, uh, didn't drink.
I never really asked why, because like, I don't, I didn't, you know, it wasn't really.
Didn't really matter to me, but like, I really, I respected him that he didn't and like he would, he stuck to it and never did.
And, uh, No one really like questioned him or gave him shit.
It was just like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
Like after a while it's like, oh yeah, he doesn't, he's just doesn't drink.
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
Uh, and actually I think this episode, we're going to do some predictions for 2019, but I, I think I'm going to add this one to my predictions.
Actually.
I think that sobriety is going to become a bigger trend than we've seen in the past.
I noticed a lot of folks.
More than normal, uh, talking about how they're going sober in January, at least for the month, or maybe for the year, as soon as I told some other people about it too.
And especially related to some business goals, they were like, you know what, I'm in.
I'm going to do that too.
So I think, I think we're going to see more folks doing it and there's quite a few.
People that have, uh, Casey Neistat just did a, a big video on why he doesn't drink.
Um, yeah, so there's, yeah, there's some movement there.
Jon: There's a number of reasons, you know, there's a lot, a lot more reports coming out about how much worse it is.
And I think in general, and, uh, it's just like empty calories.
Justin: Yeah, totally.
I actually, and I just registered a clean in 2000 nineteen.com.
So I might maybe, maybe we'll do something with that as a part of it might just point to a blog post on transistor or something.
Jon: Yeah.
I like how someone on Twitter or.
I forget where it was replied and said, like, I'm just going to start canceling my account.
So you never reach 10 K.
So you just like,
Justin: well, and maybe I should just keep, stay clean for all of 2019, but if you are into this.
Go to clean in 2000 nineteen.com and maybe I'll have something up where you can say, Hey, I'm, I'm into I'm.
I'm gonna, you know, not drank until I reached this milestone or I'm just going to be clean for the whole year.
Yeah.
You have a note here that says your disabled.
I am slightly
Jon: well it's actually not.
Yeah, I, so I went snowboarding in December, uh, in Canada.
I was in British Columbia, but not really close.
Now, and, um, it's been a few years since I went, it didn't really feel like I, I was, you know, too out of it, like too rusty, but the weather was weird.
There was fog and it was really bad, flat light.
So you see, I couldn't see any terrain and I wasn't even doing anything crazy.
Um, I caught an edge in my snowboard and just like face planted onto my ribs and heard a noise.
And I was like, that's either my phone breaking or my.
So a couple things.
I did fracture a rib.
Wow.
Initially, initially, when I went there, like you have a really bad bruise, they took an x-ray and they're like, it's a bruise, here's some painkillers.
And then I got a voicemail later on.
It was like, you actually did fracture it.
Um, but the process to heal is the same.
You just don't just rest.
It's just going to take longer.
So that was super painful.
But I also, uh, ruptured a tendon in my finger.
Which is actually more annoying.
It doesn't, it never, it didn't hurt.
It still doesn't hurt, but I have to wear a splint on my finger for like eight weeks, total and, uh, hoping it'll heal.
And there's, there's the doctor's like, there's a chance.
It won't, uh, usually it does.
There's a chance.
It doesn't.
And, um, luckily when I was, when this happened, I was with my friend who is an ER doc.
And so I showed him my finger and I'm like, this doesn't look right.
He's like, that's, that does not look right.
He's like, that's a, that's a, you have a mallet finger or what they call it.
Um, and it's basically, uh, he said some medical term, which I don't remember.
Uh, but it's basically your, one of your tendons.
There's two tendons.
There's one on the top of your finger, one on the bottom that like, lets you either pull your fingertip down or pull it back up.
And the one at top.
Ripped and I can't pull my fingertip back up, but in order for it to heal, you have to keep it in the same spot for like eight weeks.
Justin: Oh my gosh.
Like
Jon: typing, I can type it's like, I can still bend my, like one of my other knuckles.
That's fine, but it's just annoying.
I mean, it's my fault, but it's just, it's annoying.
It's a stupid, stupid mistake that like shouldn't have happened.
Had the conditions have been clear, it'd be fine.
And that it was just
Justin: a man.
Anyway, that, that sack part
Jon: of getting old, I guess your body just sort of.
Breaks down easier.
Justin: Yeah.
It starts it starting.
It's true.
I have so many because I'm just on the verge of 40 and I've so many friends who were like, man, as soon as 40 hit, it was like something dramatic happened.
Like I was there just sore all the time.
Jon: People at work were like, ah, just tell people you're doing like a triple back flip and it went bad, I guess.
And then other people were like, no action sports after third.
Yeah.
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah.
I find, I mean, the one thing that saved me is I was pretty easy on my body as a teenager.
And in my twenties, like I have a lot of friends that were in snowboarding, especially that were super aggressive and they've all
had knee surgery and other things I'm pretty good in that department.
Yeah, I've definitely noticed things hurt a lot longer.
Um, so did you listen to any good shows over that time?
Jon: I did.
Yeah.
I had some, I had a little bit of travel time.
Um, the one that stood out to me, it was an episode of the Ezra Klein show, which is on Vox media and it was with, uh, Hassan Minhaj.
Who's, uh, Comedian, um, started off with the daily show with Jon Stewart, um, has since started his own show on Netflix Patriot act and did a couple of different like standup specials on Netflix.
Oh, cool.
Um, really interesting guy, but he, he, um, I'm trying, or remember now, like what my notes were from this, but it was a really interesting conversation between him and him and as recline.
Um, just sort of talking about the state.
I don't know, media and how we treat different types of media differently.
And like, for instance, like Cobb liar comics now.
Supposedly the voice of reason, right?
Like they're the ones like telling the truth, supposedly like how, how, how did that happen?
Yeah.
And, um,
Justin: that's a good point.
Jon: There was a lot of really good back and forth and like a seminar.
It was asking a lot of good questions about, you know, too, as required and stuff.
And, um,
Justin: that is actually a good, that would be a good deep dive for a show because for a while I felt like that, like I was kind of looking to comedians to be.
Like the, the, uh, you know, the gurus on a mountain that we're telling the real truth about society.
Shit.
Jon: I mean, you know, part of their job is just observing, making comments about observing this day-to-day life.
When part of that is, you know, the news and ridiculous things that happens in the news.
Justin: Yeah.
But there definitely seems to be a void there.
You know, maybe because we're kind of in a, especially in the Western world, we're becoming a post religious society increasingly.
And so people are looking for what, you know, you would usually get direction from, you know, a priest or something.
Right.
But now you're like, okay, well, who can tell me the truth about the world?
And there isn't like, Especially with all these, um, you know, there's some comedians that have fallen from fallen from grace, fallen from, you know, the Heights.
They're not they've, they've had some scandals.
And so maybe the, yeah, that, that sounds like a good episode.
I want to listen to that.
That's really good.
Jon: Um, I'm probably forgetting something else huge that I, I, you know, realized when I listened to it and wrote this down, but, um, Yeah, that's a good one.
How about you?
Justin: I'm going to recommend a broken record episode one with Rick Rubin.
This is Malcolm Gladwell's new podcast.
And I, that the reason I resonated with this one is they talk about Johnny Cash.
And there's this thing that I've always struggled with as someone who is on podcasts and blogs and, uh, Has a public persona.
How much of, how much do I want to be real and vulnerable with people in the open and how much do I just, how much do people just want a,
uh, They just want a kind of a fantasy from the people they look up to.
And he talks about Johnny Cash in this respect, there's Johnny Cash, the human being, and then there's Johnny Cash.
The mythical man in black.
And my goal was to make music that always fit the mythical man in black.
Now, if it fit Johnny Cash, the human being as well, that's fine, but it didn't have to, it was more important that it was.
This sort of looming cartoon figure of who he was.
That's where
Jon: that's sort of interest.
I thought you were going to say the exact opposite.
I thought you were going to say my goal was to.
Music
Justin: that fit, uh, the human, the human.
No, he had, he had even done that along the way.
Not always so successfully.
And then I actually had a really good conversation about this episode with Ben Orenstein, uh, from the art of product podcast.
And I'll link that up in the show notes.
That's on product people that TV, but yeah, it was just interesting to, to hear Rick Rubin talk about how he decided to, uh, re launch.
Johnny Cassius
Jon: career.
Nice.
Yeah.
I actually ended up listening to a couple of those episodes.
Um, cause I saw you talking about it and I hadn't, I hadn't listened to them, but the one about Tom petty was great.
Yeah.
Um, I didn't realize there's an whole other record from wild flowers that has never been released.
It sounds like they might do it.
Yeah.
And that's kind of awesome because I love that record.
Uh, but just recruitment in general is just.
Such a calming zen-like dude.
I really just want to hang out with them.
And I don't know if you've ever seen like video interviews with him where he's like walking around his, what a Shangri-La they call it his whole like studio and he's just like barefoot.
He's just like, it's like total hippie.
Okay.
Justin: You can tell that Malcolm Gladwell.
Really likes them and actually broken record in general.
He is more giddy about everybody he interviews than he is on his other show, revisionist history.
So usually he is.
Poised, but he's a little, he's got a little bit of like fanboy, uh, in these episodes, which might, some people might not like, but I actually really like it.
It's, it's kinda neat.
He's he, he's interviewed a few people that he's like, just, you can tell he's just a total fan and yeah, I dig it.
So we're about to get into our predictions for 2019 or some predictions for 2019.
But before we do.
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Awesome.
All right.
So 2019 predictions, I wrote down just a bunch of ideas, John, and I thought we would, we would go back and forth on these.
You can tell me what you think.
Um, so let's, uh, let's start with the first one here.
I think in 2019, they, there will be a global.
Economic downturn.
What do you think?
Uh,
Jon: probably so I think we saw some of that at the end of the year.
Justin: Did it go down a little bit?
I mean, the stock market
Jon: went to stock market.
Yeah.
I mean, that's not a great indication of really anything these days, but, uh, just, I there's just so much, like, I dunno, there's so much
turmoil and like uncertainty everywhere and like, Trade deals gone bad.
And like, who knows how any of this is going to end up well, and you
Justin: had apples, uh, they, they had, they, they missed their, um, right.
Jon: Quarterly.
Yeah.
They only made $85 billion.
Justin: Yes, yes.
Now, so, you know, there's been some things that are driving the modern economy and.
Uh, we knew that eventually the gas had to run out for apple, especially that you can't sell a thousand dollar phones forever.
Eventually you will have so sold enough thousand dollar phones, right.
But yeah, you've got China and China's economies, apparently not doing so hot.
Again, I don't know a lot about this stuff, but it feels like the voices people have been predicting a downturn for the last couple of years and
it just feels like this is probably going to be the year it happens.
Um, probably.
And so.
This is interesting for us because we're starting a business.
We we've started a business in this, uh, in this environment, a business that we would like to, uh, support us financially.
And so one of the things I was thinking about this could be an opportunity for us because brands that don't have a strong relationship with their audience will lose,
but companies are going to be looking for more affordable ways to reach that audience.
There's a few companies.
You know, Squarespace and MailChimp, et cetera, that I've recognized that, oh, wait, podcasting is a great deal.
You know, we put a dollar in and we get a bunch of money out.
And I think that could actually play into podcasting's favor.
Uh, There will be more companies looking to do branded podcasts, more companies looking to spend, uh, by podcast ads because they are still a good deal.
Yep.
Uh, despite the high CPMs, meaning they're a good deal that even though you're spending more per thousand impressions, you are getting more in return.
Who knows.
We'll see.
Yeah.
But I think a podcasting may benefit from a downturn in the economy.
Jon: Good.
Yeah.
Uh, we'll see.
2019 should be interesting in that
Justin: regard mean, I think the other thing is in terms of consumer spending, you know, you might cancel your audible subscription, but.
What, you know, there's all this free audio you can listen to.
And so we might see consumption, increase.
Um, the, the one thing I was wondering, I don't know what you think about this, but I wonder if we'll see the big advertisers advertise less.
If there's a downturn, maybe.
I
Jon: mean, it depends how they're doing and I mean,
Justin: yeah.
Maybe companies like MailChimp do good, no matter what
Jon: I mean, it's, that's really hard to predict, like what industries will be hit.
By what I mean it's God who knows,
Justin: read this one.
I just highlighted there and tell me what you think about that one.
Jon: Okay.
In 2018, Spotify went from 10 to 25% market share of the podcast player market.
That is surprising to me, actually.
I think it will be, I think it will grow again to 35%.
So what do you think?
Uh, probably honestly, I P I won't, I don't particularly want to use Spotify for podcasts, but like, I know people that I know a lot of people that do cause it's there
and they're already, they're already, they don't, they're not hardcore listeners.
They don't have an podcasts app.
They just sort of like hear about shows from friends and then they find it on Spotify.
I mean, it's.
It makes sense.
I know we've been ha we'd have, we've had a few issues with how they've sort of built out their, their podcasting platform in regards to, you know, re hosting audio and stuff like that.
But
Justin: yeah.
Yeah.
That's why I think this, this is an interesting one for us is, um, we've had some trouble with Spotify and, uh, part of the problem is
it's a brand new platform and, you know, there's, there's been some.
Tricky pieces, I think, and then managing this new medium, you know, that they just added and a relationship it's, it's different than the music industry.
Uh, but they treat us, I think a lot, like they might treat, uh, a label, for example, like they have, they call the podcast, hosting
companies aggregators, and there was some of the way they set that up.
That hasn't been great for us, but.
I w you know, I tweeted back in November, I said, you know, anchor had released some stats that said that Spotify was 19% of their listenership.
And I was like, what?
No way.
And cause I looked at our numbers and it was like maybe 1% for our shows, but then I started digging into it a little bit more in some of our shows have 87% of their listens coming from Spotify.
And then.
People started responding to this.
This thread and said, uh, actually I listen to Spotify.
I use Spotify for podcasts, especially folks who are on Android.
They say, it's the best player.
If you're on Android, uh, also, uh, you know, Podcasting, um, in terms of the, the breakdown between genders, men, and women, um, podcasting increased this year to, uh, 44% of listeners were women.
I think most of that has come from Spotify.
Every stat I've seen, uh, is.
Women are using Spotify to listen to podcasts much more than, than men do.
So because of those two things, I think Spotify is going to continue to grow.
People already have it on their phones.
Um, you know, people are learning about podcasts and want to start listening.
What's the easiest way.
Oh, just, you know, open up, uh, Spotify.
So, uh, I stand corrected on this one.
I, I
Jon: thought.
I mean, they really hit the ground
Justin: running then.
Yes.
And it also illustrates how poorly Google podcasts has done.
They are, uh, still a tiny, tiny percentage of, I think 0.9% or something like that.
Jon: I wonder total listens.
It's that is like the 2019.
Are we going to see more and more like.
Walled gardens are like, you know, where like Google, I think, and even in Spotify, they sort of rehost your audio and then there's anchor who sort of, you sign up
for them and they sort of control the, your, your iTunes, uh, feeds and stuff.
And like, I don't know if we'll see more and more.
Justin: Yeah.
And it's, it's worth maybe just explaining a little bit more, uh, Spotify is different than apple podcasts.
Apple podcasts just takes a RSS feed and.
Points to the MP3 files, wherever they're hosted.
In the case of our customers, they're on transistor, Spotify re hosts, those MP3 files, meaning they, they grabbed them from the transistor server and then they host them on Spotify server.
They like it because then they can control everything.
Right.
It
Jon: probably probably add ads in eventually, which is kind of
Justin: weird.
Yeah.
Eventually they eventually, they will insert ads similar to what Stitcher is already doing.
Podcast snobs have a traditionally, not like Stitcher because they would recycle the content and then down sample, um, the audio files.
So they would make the audio sound worse.
And then they would insert ads in there as well.
So we'll have to see what Spotify does here.
Uh, it we're in a difficult place because clearly they are a partner and, you know, they're driving a lot of listens for our customers and that's awesome, but there's some parts of it.
I don't like, but I do think that they're going to increase their market share.
Jon: I think, you know, They've probably been getting feedback from a lot of their aggregation partners as they call them.
And I'm sure they're trying to fix things up.
Justin: Yeah, totally.
Uh, related baby.
I think podcasting will grow to 800,000 shows and I'll put an asterix on this, on apple podcasts.
So the, the best number I've seen is 619,000 podcasts, um, on apple podcast, right?
And so that would be quite, uh, that's
Jon: an overwhelming number of shows.
Justin: I think, I think it'll grow to 800,000.
What do you think, do you think?
Jon: Yeah, we'll probably keep growing.
I mean, I, you know, I don't know if a lot of those will trail off and just die or a lot of those artists dead already.
Um,
Justin: it's hard to say I've heard that something like a hundred thousand shows will become inactive in a given year.
So.
Um, and actually this, this post I'm going to link to in the show notes, by the audacity to podcast.com, they've said, uh, when he, when he looked through.
You know, all of the, it shows, uh, there was 372,000 podcasts that had no published episodes in the past three months, as opposed to 229,000 podcasts that had published in the past three months.
Jon: Yeah.
Yeah.
I wonder if we'll see some sort of content bubble where people are just like, well, that was a fun
Justin: experiment.
It continues to become this question.
You know, uh, I've had a few meetings with investors, uh, in the past month who are interested in transistor.
And one of the questions they ask is, you know, is what's going on with podcasting?
I've kind of had two minds about it.
One having less shows is actually.
In advantage in some cases, because it's easier to stand up.
There's like 35 million YouTube channels or something.
And you know, so comparatively podcasting is small and you know, it's still possible for a show to get into the top 10.
Um, you know, with that.
Having a huge budget without it.
It's still kind of possible.
Whereas YouTube is very, very competitive.
So that could be an advantage.
On the other hand, you do want to see the medium grow.
You want to see, you know, it, you want to give people choice.
You want there to be, you know, more show, more interesting takes on podcasting.
And as you've noticed, actually, you had a meeting with some folks and they were saying like, podcasting, like there's some podcasts that are just, you know, very, very small.
They're very
Jon: small.
Uh, it's almost like a private audio channel.
They don't really care how many people listen to it.
They just, they just want, they either want it to be out there or need it to be out there for some other reason.
And
Justin: yeah, how you might have like a, uh, uh, internal newsletter for a professional organization.
Jon: Right.
Um, Whereas that is the, whereas that as a portion of the printed world, podcasts are a portion of the audio world.
Um, yeah, it was an interesting take on it.
One, that one that was obvious once I heard about it, but yeah.
Immediately.
It wasn't it wasn't like, oh yeah.
Right.
Justin: And so in that case, podcasting can still grow a ton.
You know, people are going to be, you know, these organizations need to publish, okay.
Here's our news article and here's our newsletter and oh, wait.
People are also listening on, you know, headphones or in their car or on the go.
And so we're also going to use that channel to reach them.
There's still lots of room there to grow.
So it could be good.
Okay.
Here here's one that could be controversial.
Smart speakers will know that have a big effect on podcast consumption.
I know that they're becoming more popular.
They, they were one of the most popular, uh, consumer electronic devices in 2018.
Uh, they sold well during Christmas.
I don't see people using them for
Jon: podcasts.
I don't know anyone who uses them.
Like, I mean, you know, you hear, you hear on the radio and stuff like on NPR in the U S you can get your morning news from an Amazon Alexa
smart speaker to say like, Hey, Alexa, what's the news or whatever.
And it will, I don't know.
I have, I don't have one, so I don't know how to do it, but I guess you can configure it to sort of just like play you some news.
Different shows or something.
I don't really know how it works.
I mean, there's all these like set up different Alexa skills skills, but I, I don't know.
Yeah.
Justin: This one for me fails the coffee shop test, which is when I'm in a coffee shop and people.
And I ask people about podcasts.
I don't hear anybody.
Or if I overhear people talking about podcasts, Uh, none of them are listening on smart speakers.
They're saying I listened to them when I jog, I listened to them.
When I walked the dog, I listened to them when I'm doing the dishes, but it's all in headphones.
It's a, still a very, uh, intimate, personal, private thing.
You might listen to a podcast in the car with somebody else, like on a long road trip.
Jon: I have very rarely sat in a living room and listened to a podcast.
Usually if I'm going to use a smart speaker, which I don't, because I don't have one, it probably would just be for music while I'm doing something else not.
And I generally don't do other stuff while listening to a podcast unless it's running or something where I can still focus on.
Justin: Yeah, which actually brings up an idea, which could leverage this, the smart speakers, which is a show called listen together where the whole
idea is you listen to it with your friends, like you invite your friends over.
And there's times in the podcast where it says, okay, now just say pause so that you can discuss what we just talked about and then you to hit pause, and then you talk about it.
So, you know, there could be some cool things that you could do with the tech, but I do not see it affecting podcasting.
There's some folks, you know, in the industry that are using all the.
Speaker sales to say, oh, this is going to be good for podcasting.
Now it's going to be people asking about the weather and people listening to music.
It's it is not going to fact podcasting.
Currently 1% of listenership is on smart speakers.
I don't see it being big.
We've talked about this before we introduced the idea of podcasting being mindful technology.
Um, do you want to explain what we kind of meant by that when we were talking about, do you remember kind of our definition of mindful?
Jon: I do.
Yeah.
Um, sort of the ability to, well, podcasting is like you said, more of a private experience and it's, you're able to listen to it.
Um, sort of really give it your attention and ignore your phone, ignore, you know, your texts.
Um,
Justin: yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't require you to be addicted to the screen, right?
Like some platforms.
Uh, it's also, it's more passive than.
Most of the modern tech that we enjoy right now.
And so I, I think we saw a trend like apple released, uh, their smartphone stats.
Uh, have you looked at yours?
Did you turn that on by the way?
The, um,
Jon: yeah, it's on, it gives me randomly like notify me of something, but I don't, I haven't really, you haven't
Justin: dug in
Jon: mostly it's a safari.
Like I just,
Justin: oh, really good stuff on the web.
Yeah.
And have you have your stats been going down or up?
Jon: I don't know.
Maybe I should check.
Justin: Yeah.
So, I mean, I think that that had, that was interesting to actually be able to quantify how much time you're actually spending on the screen.
But I think the next step is going to be, uh, like a dumb phone mode.
Uh, so you've seen like there's the Punkt phone, which is like, just, all it can do is taxed and.
Do phone calls.
I think apple just like airplane mode.
There will be a dumb phone mode where you can only have texting phone calls and GPS and maybe selectively decide what other apps are
active, but all the other apps will disappear from your home screen.
When this mode is enabled again, I think this could be good for podcasting because.
If, if you, you know, you're like, you know what, I just want phone calls, GPS and texts and okay.
I'll I also want to be able to listen because podcasts typically aren't addictive.
It's not the thing that people are trying to get away from.
They're trying to get away from Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff.
What do you think about this?
Do you think we're going to see this kind of move or?
I think so.
Yeah.
Jon: It seems like apple is at least aware of it more so than other the other companies.
Um, it's weird because it's sort of, it goes against like, you know, what they're trying to do, which is sell more stuff.
So think they probably have to try to walk a fine line.
Um,
Justin: but of all the companies, because they're not selling ads.
Yeah.
Ultimately, what they want to do is increase.
Um, you know, they want to increase the enjoyment you get from the device.
Right?
Right.
Yeah.
I think, I think this is something we're going to see.
I would personally, I would love this.
Uh, and my wife has looked at those dumb phones.
Ironically, most of those dumb phones, you still need a smartphone for them to work.
And the idea is you buy the dumb phone and then you just leave, you, leave your smartphone in your, you know, Okay.
And then you take this one out, so it makes way more sense for it to just be, just to be built into the phone.
Uh, there's a good article on fast company that I will put in the show notes.
Um, all about the dumb phone idea, dumb phone
Jon: movement.
Justin: What, uh, what else do you have any other things in 2019, something you think, um, We'll see more of, or less of, or, um,
Jon: I think probably, uh, continue you movement by like traditional media.
Well, maybe not traditional.
I don't know if Netflix is traditional.
Maybe they are now, but media companies looking to podcast for original content.
Uh, yeah.
Uh, whereas, you know, before it was like, oh, that's fine.
Book that's great.
And turn into a movie or TV show, like it's already happening with podcasts.
I mean, it's like homecoming, which setting is on Amazon, which was a pretty big hit.
And that was an original podcast.
Justin: That was a Gimlet show originally.
It was a Gimlet show.
Jon: Yeah.
Um, interesting.
And, uh, there's a couple of other ones.
Um,
Justin: Well, there was that Alex Inc.
That didn't do so well.
Jon: Um, so I think, you know, it's another, another avenue for, you know, original creative content
Justin: and, and some of these, uh, you know, like Netflix is a huge media company now.
And they are just hungry for content.
They've realized that original content is what's going to be really paying their bills.
They are buying less third-party content and you've got moves by Disney, you know, Disney wants to create their own streaming service.
So, and I mean, right now on an apple TV, you can search, you know, you can use the voice command and search for show and it'll search Netflix, Amazon video.
ITunes.
So, yeah, I think you're right.
I think, uh, they are so hungry for content.
You're going to see way more of it coming from podcasts.
Honestly, if I was apple, this was one of my predictions is that they're going to announce their own streaming service.
Um, I think they're going to break iTunes apart on the desktop.
I think there's going to be a big,
Jon: I think they will.
I mean, I think they kind of have to, at this point too, Revenue growing, which is what they, you know, what their investors expect.
Justin: Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
They want to do a big jump into services and traditionally they have not been great at that.
No, like the, the apple, so the TV stuff that they released on apple music.
Yeah.
Do you remember that?
Right?
They
Jon: still there they're keep, I keep reading stuff about them.
Or like all these shows that they're producing and developing and like, where are the, where are these going to be released, I guess, on apple music.
But that doesn't make sense.
So I would, yeah, I would assume they'd
Justin: split it off.
Yeah.
They're going to split it off.
And honestly, apple, if you're listening, hire John and I, there are so many things that they could bring like as original content.
From the podcasting world, not just, uh, fiction, but also like nonfiction talk shows and other things.
These are experienced people that have big audiences that would love to watch a show.
Even if it's just talking heads, discussing a topic.
And it's, it's like it's fertile ground for them to get and content pretty cheap.
So I think there will be a big move here.
If apple is smart, they will get in on this game.
They will start buying IP from podcasts, both fictional and non-fictional.
So, yeah, I think that's definitely going to be a trend.
Jon: Uh, we have a dynamic content will continue to be bigger or we'll be bigger.
Um, outside of that, The advertising realm.
So currently a lot of podcasts use dynamic advertising to be inserted.
Um, a couple shows have played around with dynamic content in that it will change based on time of day, download it or where you download it from, or,
uh, you know, locally source news will get to you based on where you live.
So I think that's probably some technology that, uh, will continue to sort of be used for different purposes.
Justin: And this is something we have on our roadmap for 2019.
Uh, I want you folks to imagine that you do a segment and you know, that the segment is, you know, it's, it, it will expire.
So maybe you're, uh, talking about an event that's coming up or maybe it's just, it's a, a topic that is of the moment, but will not be interesting to folks in the future eventually.
We want our users to be able to highlight those segments and say, okay, I want this piece of content to expire three months from now.
And transistor will just automatically take that out.
And then, but the show continues to live on you just don't, you don't have to do any more editing, manual editing.
Uh, I think that could be really powerful for, you know, people making shows.
Uh, so yeah, that's going to be one for sure.
Uh, also on that front, a couple of more podcast, specific ones, uh, I think there will be a lot more.
Live streaming of podcasts in 2019, the tools have gotten so much better.
Um, we've seen big platforms like Twitch, uh, kind of mostly for gaming, but I think we'll in 2019, you're going to see more folks outside of games.
Doing live streaming.
So already we're seeing programmers that are like live streaming, their, you know, their coding sessions, you know, business people, designers, illustrators, and it just makes sense
that eventually folks are going to want to listen to audio live and interact with the show.
We've done that.
For this show here, and it is a different experience.
Um, it's not right for, you know, every episode or every show, but every once in a while, it's really refreshing to have your real
listeners show up and interact as you're, you know, doing the show.
So, yeah, I think that'll become a bigger thing for sure.
Related.
And some of this is John and I think in about, you know, what, what kind of features are we actually going to build?
I think related the biggest can point with podcasting in terms of production is the editing, uh, Marco Arment tweeted recently, it takes them two to three hours to edit the ATP show.
You know, when I edit the show, most of the time Chris ends does it, but when I edit the show, it probably takes me yeah.
One to two hours.
It's a pain.
Jon: Yeah.
It's a lot of work.
Um, So you're saying you think that podcasting without editing will become more popular?
No music just recording it and publishing it immediately?
Yes.
Uh, yeah, maybe.
I mean, I think you're still going to get it as long as you can keep the, somehow keeps the quality high audio quality and stuff like that.
Justin: Yeah.
I don't think, I don't think it will be right for every show, but.
One thing we've seen with video and live streaming is that for the live streamers, it's easy.
They just hit record.
They have to show up, they have to be entertaining.
They have to be really good on the spot and then they hit end record and that's it.
And that, that piece of content is then searchable and watchable, uh, even when it's not live.
And so for some shows, I think that's what the host wants.
Uh, Taylor Jackson is a good example of this for his photography show.
He started just recording it yeah.
Into his iPhone and publishing it from there.
And I think for platforms like transistor, we're going to have to serve those customers that just want to be able to.
Kind of go straight to tape and not have like, even like editing the show notes and, you know, uh, putting in all the fields and it's cumbersome.
And I think for some shows, And this is going to become more popular.
Some folks are just going to want to be able to, you know, like if you're a CEO and you want to give your a weekly news update to your employees.
Yeah.
I just want to like record it, hit stop, and then it automatically just publishes and you know, maybe I have to put in a title, but that's it.
Yeah.
I think it's something to think about.
I think there, the desire is there already, and it's kind of up to us and people like us to figure out how to make it happen.
Yeah.
Cool.
Uh, yeah, so that that's pretty much it.
Um, anything else you can think of?
All sorts of
Jon: predictions I could make about us political system, but I'm not going to do that.
Justin: So folks, let us, let us, let us know what you think.
What predictions do you think are going to kinda happen in podcasting or it could be in tech or in business as well.
Um, you can tweet us if you want.
We're at transistor FM.
I deleted Instagram from my phone.
So if you want to reach us, maybe I'll check Instagram every once in a while on the web, but Twitter is a good way.
You can email us, uh, shows@transistor.fm.
You can leave us a voicemail, transistor data fam slash voicemail, talking about voicemail, John let's, uh, let's end the show with
some questions from listeners, and then we have a few app updates.
Jon: We do.
Cool.
Uh, yeah.
First question here, um, is for me.
To me.
How did you implement the team members functionality in transistor?
Have, did you use a specific Ruby gem or did you roll it yourself?
Um, would love to hear more about it and that's from, uh, Roberto.
Uh, it's a good question.
Um, it is sort of all hand rolled.
Um, pretty simple in that a show can have one or more team members attached to it.
Uh, each team member is their own user record in our database with their own password and email.
Um, and then that user account itself is then tied to, um, One or more shows via this team membership sort of like intermediary record in the database that just ties a show to a user.
And also on that membership record has a specific role that's assigned to that person.
So right now there's only two roles.
There's basically like you're a member or you can be a member and owner or an admin.
Um, there's only one owner per show.
You can upgrade members to admins and you can downgrade admins to members, um, and it just affects, um, sort of what they can do and what they can see.
So it kind of lets us, uh, keep it open to other roles.
Maybe there's like an editor role or a finance role or something else where it sort of limits what they can see and what they can do.
Um, and then on top of that, I did use a Ruby gem called pundit, which is the.
Authorization layer, which you can sort of set up, just sort of helps set up permissions, um, for different roles.
So different team members can, you know, are allowed to add a new episode or delete an episode, whereas.
Team members are not.
So it sort of puts all this logic into one central place.
That's pretty much it.
Uh, you know, you can invite team members, you can delete invitations and team members have their own like invitation landing page or they can set their password.
Yeah.
It was basically all hand rolled.
I mean, it's, it's something that's, you could certainly find a gym for, but they're always like either.
They're just like try to do everything or they don't quite do what you want.
Justin: Yeah.
Yeah.
Is that, is that kind of your, your general kind of feeling towards gyms?
If you can roll it yourself, you will not really.
Jon: I mean, it depends how small it is.
Like the team members stuff is, it's a sort of a small feature.
I mean, anything I've used, like never really has the whole like flow I want, which is.
Invite someone send an email, they have their own page to sign up, or if they already have an account and they can confirm a password.
But yeah, generally, like if there's a gym that does it really well, I'll, I'll use it.
But a lot of times when you're dealing with something that is front end related as well with which this is, um, sometimes it's just easier
to build it because it it'll conform to more of your idea of how.
The interface should work a lot.
A lot of the gems that I use are just like stuff that's happening in the background.
Justin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
So the next one is related to our big feature announcement.
What is it, John?
Uh,
Jon: the, the feature announcement is that we did turn on a SSL for everyone.
Um, And what that means is we did have SSL on the app itself for, um, all your feeds and all your images and the dashboard were all encrypted with SSL.
But now if you use a custom domain with your transistor website, you will also get SSL enabled for free.
So everything within transistor is encrypted, um, over SSL and secure.
Uh, that's been a long time coming.
There's sort of some, some false starts, right?
Investigations into other a couple of different ways to do it.
Um,
Justin: and so that's, Jonathan's question
Jon: the question.
Yeah.
Jonathan says awesome value.
The SSL update.
Congrats.
Uh, we're looking into this for our customers as well.
If you have a minute, it would be super helpful to hear what steps you took considering that let's encrypt, uh, which we used caps each certificate at a hundred dollars.
Uh, so that is true.
So we use a service called Lutsen crypt, um, which is this.
Now they started a couple of years ago and they've been improving steadily and adding different types of certificates.
It's busy a way to get free SSL, um, with some, you know, manual set up that has to happen first.
So yeah, you can have certificates from let's encrypt that actually encrypt multiple domains up to 100%.
Um, but each time you add a, each time you add a new domain, you have to sort of update the certificate and add to it.
And it does cap it at a hundred.
That's not what we did.
Um, we used a web server called caddy, which I think we talked about before, uh, can add a note to in our show notes, but I think it's
caddy server.com it's written in go, which is a language that is.
Pretty interesting and fairly new and very fast.
So what it does is it basically replaces if you've, if you've dealt with this stuff before it replaces a patchy or engine X, which are other web servers, um, and it basically
handles automated certificate generation and renewal, um, Through the web server itself.
So anytime you get a request for anytime, someone points their custom domain to transistor and our web server gets a request for a domain.
Um, caddy hits, it hits an end point on our system.
It checks to see if that domain has been set on a show and then we'll, and then if it.
You know, if that request returns true, that you know, that domain is in our system.
Um, caddy continues on to basically contact this let's encrypt service, pull down a certificate, store it locally.
So the first request is maybe like a second or two.
It takes a little time to generate it and get it back after that it's stored locally and it's served.
Um, and then I think the certificates last for six months, but caddy will automatically update them and keep them up-to-date and generate a new one.
Um, yeah, so that's what happens.
It's it's pretty cool technology.
Um, I was a little bit wary at first, if it was really production ready.
Um, but I read a lot more about it and it just seems to be doing pretty well.
They have, they
Justin: have nearly 20,000 stars on GitHub.
It's a
Jon: lot.
Yeah.
It's a lot of stars.
Um, I don't, you know, it's hard to say like who is using.
For what, in what big, like, applications are using it.
But, um, it was actually, you know, pretty easy to set up.
Um, I had, uh, I had a friend who did it similarly for another service he's starting and he helped me out quite a bit, but yeah, it's pretty neat.
Justin: Sweet.
Cool.
Well, it's been a big deal for our customers.
Uh, there's a bunch of reasons you would want HTTPS on both your podcast website and your podcast feed podcast feeds have always been.
I had SSL with the transistor, but now that we can offer the websites also, we can also serve the websites, have our H TTP S uh, it's good for Google search results.
It's good.
If it's good for a bunch of reasons.
So, and the whole web is going this way.
So now that we can do it for everybody, this is a pretty big deal.
Like there's a lot of other podcasts hosts that charge while you have to pay.
Uh, you have to pay for this on the side, so you have to order a certificate to GoDaddy or something.
And, uh, so the fact that we were able to use less crept.
Yeah,
Jon: yeah.
And people don't have to do anything.
I mean, it's literally zero configuration for them.
They just enter in their domain name in transistor, set up their DNS to point to transistor.
And that's it.
Yeah, and it's done.
Justin: It's done.
Yeah.
It's pretty sweet.
Uh, anything else?
Uh, in terms of app updates
Jon: related to SSL, I mean, there was a bunch of updates to our infrastructure and like how we deploy new code and how that's set up.
Nobody should notice anything.
It's just sort of extra resiliency on our end
Justin: ness.
Sounds good.
Cool.
Well folks, thanks for listening.
First episode of 2019, we are glad you're still here.
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