Quality Is No Longer a Differentiator [Day 19 30 Days of Podcast Notes]
September 19, 202600:09:13

Quality Is No Longer a Differentiator [Day 19 30 Days of Podcast Notes]

I've said all series that audio quality is why my show took off. The pandemic ended that advantage. Everyone stuck at home needed to sound good, so investment poured into home recording — Elgato's gear, Rode and Shure building affordable mics for people who talk rather than sing, and remote tools like Zencastr, Riverside, and Descript getting genuinely good while Zoom fixed the problems that used to produce robot voice. Good quality went from differentiator to baseline expectation. I'm even testing Ecamm for remote guests instead of insisting on local recordings, which goes against one of my oldest habits. What's left to compete on is the content.

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00:00:00 --> 00:00:05 Hey everybody and welcome to day 19 of 30 days
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 of podcast notes. We're moving right along through
00:00:08 --> 00:00:12 this month. Yesterday I talked about sponsorships
00:00:12 --> 00:00:14 during the COVID -19 pandemic. Today I want to
00:00:14 --> 00:00:20 talk about quality because I shared in episode
00:00:20 --> 00:00:24 16 and several times in previous episodes that
00:00:24 --> 00:00:28 I think quality was one of the big reasons my
00:00:28 --> 00:00:35 show did well. My show took off. At a time where
00:00:35 --> 00:00:38 people weren't necessarily focused on quality,
00:00:38 --> 00:00:43 I was focused on quality. Well, that also changed
00:00:43 --> 00:00:48 during the pandemic, and for a bevy of reasons,
00:00:50 --> 00:00:54 from about 2021 until now, my downloads have
00:00:54 --> 00:00:58 dropped quite a bit. And I think part of that
00:00:58 --> 00:01:02 is I've narrowed my audience a bit more. And
00:01:02 --> 00:01:04 right now I'm talking about the Streamline Podcaster
00:01:04 --> 00:01:06 or the Streamline Solopreneur. The Streamline
00:01:06 --> 00:01:08 Podcaster, this show that you're listening to
00:01:08 --> 00:01:14 now is a relatively new inconsistent show. It's
00:01:14 --> 00:01:16 been very consistent this month and I'm trying
00:01:16 --> 00:01:20 to do more, especially now that RSS .com has
00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 a video support. And full disclosure, I am RSS
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 .com's evangelist. In part because of all of
00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 my experience in podcasting, but I'm also like
00:01:29 --> 00:01:31 their youtuber in residence someone referred
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 to me as which I really liked but So all of this
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 is about the streamlined solopreneur formerly
00:01:37 --> 00:01:41 how I built it and Part of it was you know, I
00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 changed directions for the show a few times But
00:01:44 --> 00:01:46 part of it is like one of the things I thought
00:01:46 --> 00:01:51 was a real differentiator went away because as
00:01:51 --> 00:01:56 I alluded to in Day 17, when the market changed,
00:01:57 --> 00:02:00 there was much more of a market for better at
00:02:00 --> 00:02:06 home recording gear. And so we saw Elgato is
00:02:06 --> 00:02:10 one of them, right? Elgato put out all of this
00:02:10 --> 00:02:15 amazing stuff due in part to the pandemic and
00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 the rise in demand for good recording gear. Because
00:02:17 --> 00:02:21 this was not just in podcasting, right? TV personalities.
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 people who were now sequestered to their home
00:02:24 --> 00:02:28 but still had to record and report wanted better
00:02:28 --> 00:02:33 gear. And so a lot of investment went into recording
00:02:33 --> 00:02:36 gear. People who were now doing online courses
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 instead of in -person courses. People who were
00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 recording LinkedIn learning courses at home.
00:02:43 --> 00:02:46 A lot of investment went into better at home
00:02:46 --> 00:02:50 recording gear. And so we saw the demand increase.
00:02:50 --> 00:02:55 Which is how we came to road releasing some of
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 the affordable microphones. Sure, investing time
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 in creating more affordable microphones than
00:03:01 --> 00:03:05 the Shure SM7B that are more narrow in scope,
00:03:06 --> 00:03:10 but great for talking into. Like if you're not
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 singing into the SM7B, you probably don't need
00:03:13 --> 00:03:17 the SM7B. You can get the Shure MV7 or MV6 or
00:03:17 --> 00:03:21 whatever else is out there. So... The quality
00:03:21 --> 00:03:27 went up. Also around this time, we saw remote
00:03:27 --> 00:03:33 recording get a lot better. ZenCaster came out
00:03:33 --> 00:03:37 and Riverside came out and Descript came out
00:03:37 --> 00:03:41 and Zoom started putting a bunch of effort into
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 making remote recordings look and sound good,
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 which is what most people did. That most people
00:03:47 --> 00:03:52 did and still use Zoom. And in fact, I still
00:03:52 --> 00:03:57 have a solo show, but I will have people on sometimes.
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 And I have decided that I'm going to use Ecamm
00:04:01 --> 00:04:06 to record, which means I'm not, I am getting
00:04:06 --> 00:04:11 away from one of my deepest roots in podcasting,
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 which was get the local recording. I'm going
00:04:13 --> 00:04:17 to test it out and see how it goes. because the
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 technology has gotten so much better. And my
00:04:20 --> 00:04:27 hunch is that good content, as long as you can
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 listen to it, is what people want these days.
00:04:32 --> 00:04:37 Because there is no longer a high bar for quality.
00:04:38 --> 00:04:42 Because AI can kind of fix a lot of the issues
00:04:42 --> 00:04:45 with crummy quality now. Because good remote
00:04:45 --> 00:04:48 recording tools, you know, I haven't heard the
00:04:48 --> 00:04:53 robot voice on any sort of recording in a very
00:04:53 --> 00:04:57 long time. That was the main thing that I was
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 trying to prevent when I had remote recordings.
00:05:01 --> 00:05:06 And it's surely because the technology has gotten
00:05:06 --> 00:05:07 better, internet connections have gotten better.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 Thanks to the pandemic, you know, bandwidth issues
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 had to go away. Zoom had to fix those things.
00:05:14 --> 00:05:18 Anything that had video recording had to fix
00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 those things. And so are you going to get something
00:05:21 --> 00:05:25 as good as a local uncompressed recording? No.
00:05:25 --> 00:05:30 Are you going to get something good though? Usually,
00:05:30 --> 00:05:38 yeah. Usually, yeah. So... And the COVID pandemic
00:05:38 --> 00:05:44 is what accelerated this. The bar for good quality
00:05:44 --> 00:05:51 became much lower. And so today, instead of it
00:05:51 --> 00:05:55 being a differentiator, it's an expectation.
00:05:56 --> 00:06:04 And that's really, that's really why we see a
00:06:04 --> 00:06:08 lot more people not having to put as much effort
00:06:08 --> 00:06:13 into their show, I think. I think. So it's a
00:06:13 --> 00:06:15 lot easier these days to launch a show, which
00:06:15 --> 00:06:19 means the quality of the content, right? It used
00:06:19 --> 00:06:23 to be the quality of the recording was really
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 important, or at least was a differentiator.
00:06:25 --> 00:06:29 The content always had to be good. But if you
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 were interested in podcasting in 2009, You had
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 like five shows and four of them were about Apple
00:06:34 --> 00:06:37 and one of them was how stuff works or stuff
00:06:37 --> 00:06:42 You should know I should say now There are lots
00:06:42 --> 00:06:45 of shows and they're all pretty good quality
00:06:45 --> 00:06:50 and Now the the quality of the content is the
00:06:50 --> 00:06:52 thing that matters and we'll talk about that
00:06:52 --> 00:06:54 more right with this This is like this little
00:06:54 --> 00:06:58 three story arc three episode arc about the kovat
00:06:58 --> 00:07:02 pandemic is over and I'm going to get into podcasting
00:07:02 --> 00:07:08 today and in the future over the next 10 episodes.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:11 So I don't know did I forget now if I mentioned
00:07:11 --> 00:07:16 that this was episode 19 or day 19 of 30 days
00:07:16 --> 00:07:19 of podcast notes. I guess I'll give you a little
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 now that we're at 19 days and I'll give you a
00:07:22 --> 00:07:26 little how the sausage gets made. I want this
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 to be as easy as possible for me. because I'm
00:07:29 --> 00:07:35 doing a lot of traveling and I decided that I'm
00:07:35 --> 00:07:40 gonna batch episodes by recording a bunch all
00:07:40 --> 00:07:44 in one recording, clapping in between each episode,
00:07:44 --> 00:07:48 and then using Claude to separate, transcribe,
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 and write the descriptions. You may have noticed
00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 at the bottom of all of these episodes there's
00:07:53 --> 00:07:55 a disclosure that AI wrote the description. So
00:07:55 --> 00:07:57 AI writes the description, and I review it, and
00:07:57 --> 00:08:01 I determine it to be good enough. And I'm not
00:08:01 --> 00:08:02 really doing any editing, right? And I want these
00:08:02 --> 00:08:05 to be simple. Yapping, I think, is the term that
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 we're all using these days for something like
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 this, which is also the thing that makes me think
00:08:09 --> 00:08:11 the highest level of production quality doesn't
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 matter as long as the content is good. So hopefully
00:08:14 --> 00:08:16 this content is good. If you've been listening
00:08:16 --> 00:08:18 for these last 19 days, I guess the content has
00:08:18 --> 00:08:20 been good. But that's how I've been doing this,
00:08:20 --> 00:08:25 so forgive me if I Forgot because I'm recording
00:08:25 --> 00:08:29 a bunch of these in a row To say that this was
00:08:29 --> 00:08:32 episode 19 and now we're at the end of episode
00:08:32 --> 00:08:37 19 if you're enjoying this series be sure to
00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 subscribe wherever you are listening and Again,
00:08:40 --> 00:08:43 I think I said this in the last episode but Right
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 in review. All right. I think this is still something
00:08:46 --> 00:08:50 important to Apple. So it'll help us me get found
00:08:51 --> 00:08:53 And if you are a solo business owner who is doing
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 everything yourself and you want to stop doing
00:08:55 --> 00:08:57 everything yourself without hiring a team, join
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 my mailing list over at streamlines .fm slash
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 join. I will teach you about solo ops so that
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 you can take things off of your plate without
00:09:05 --> 00:09:08 having to hire a team of people. That's it for
00:09:08 --> 00:09:10 this episode of the Streamline Podcaster. Thanks
00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 so much for listening and I will see you tomorrow.