Graham Brown: Welcome to The Age of Audio, my name’s Graham Brown from the award-winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. The Age of Audio is a series of conversations with thought leaders and changemakers in the world of audio. Podcasts, Radio and Social Audio converging with big data to create engaging and authentic content for a new generation of listeners.
I was listening to Bring Back Bronco. I love that. I'm not a Bronco fan, but I am now. Well, I've been converted, so I've just really enjoyed that. But before we get to the really great stuff, let's go back to 2014, Steve. What was it like back then? Like before people even knew what podcasts were.
Steve Pratt: Well, it's so funny because, so I actually did my first podcast in 2005. So it was almost like starting Pacific Content was going back to something that it felt like maybe it wasn't going to come back and then it came back and we're like, oh, we know how to do this already. So I was working at Canada's public broadcaster, CBC, and I just had this brand new job with this almost like an innovation lab in the audio space called CBC Radio 3 and they were preparing to launch a satellite radio station and they had these internet properties that were in four or five different websites. And one of them was almost like a YouTube for Canadian indie musicians where they can upload their music or Myspace for Canadian indie musicians where anyone could make a page and upload their music as long as they owned all the rights to it. And the goal of this service was to showcase new artists, but also to grow new listeners who wouldn't listen to traditional radio. And we had about a year to wait until satellite radio came online and I started hearing this Adam Curry Daily Source Code thing. I was like, oh, this is fascinating. We have a website where everybody owns the rights to their own music and they were talking about how to find pod safe music and this and that, and the other thing. And we're like, why don't we try one of these things? And we have all this amazing Canadian music. And we put it out a few weeks before iTunes put podcasting and iTunes had launched it. And they featured our show because we were one of the only legal music podcasts in the world. And it just blew up. I think it was overnight like this huge thing where people all over the world were listening to music from Canada, which is really counter-intuitive. So I had a very early passion for podcasting and seeing the impact that it can have when you do something really interesting, that would not make for a good radio station in the digital audio space. But then, YouTube came along and Facebook came along and podcasts dipped in and waned a little bit until Serial came out and Apple put the podcast app as a default in the phone. And I'd been thinking for quite a while around what my next career move was going to be. And I'd seen just a lot of really interesting stuff with companies like Red Bull thinking and acting like media companies and making all this amazing video content of extreme sports and outdoor adventure stuff that was actually making it onto television stations because it was so good. And when podcasting came out, we were like, boy, it'd be really interesting to see whether there are brands that would like to think and act like media companies and make amazing shows. And build up giant audiences because they have the budgets to be able to do that stuff. And they've got the marketing channels to be able to let a lot of people know about it. And so we took this stab and we had a connection at Slack and we pitched Slack and we had two meetings and they said, yes. And we were like, oh, I guess we're a branded podcast company now. And we figured it out with them for a couple of months and they were amazing partners to figure it out with. And I think because it was such an unusual thing it got a fair bit of press and it was a fun show and it did really well. There's one headline. I think it was from Forbes where I think the headline was, 'Slack is making a podcast comma for some reason.' And I was like, this is the best, it's the best press you could get. It was like, why is Slack doing this? And people would go in and listen to it and be really delighted that it was not a show about Slack.
Graham Brown: Exactly. Yes, I remember that. It was about more, just everything around that, that Slack was almost like the red bull style. It was the ticket that got people there rather than the actual story, right?
Steve Pratt: Yeah. It was a really fun little magazine show that was partly about where the future of work is going, partly around where people have found their passion in their careers and being their best selves in their jobs. And part of it, there were some light hearted fun things poking at the pain points of modern work, almost like we understand work isn't this ridiculous sort of thing. And, the mix of those things was a pretty fast paced fun show.
Graham Brown: I think it's fantastic. I love that show. And the fact that it wasn't, so what could have been so obviously done as a corporate pitch that would have turned people off. There's so many people who go into podcasts now and say, Hmm, this is what we want to talk about. And it's like you come from the world of media. You understand radio and you understand this idea that actually it starts with, what does the listener want to hear? What's their pain points? What's their frustrations? When I look at all the content that you've done, there's a real awareness of that, that this isn't about, what do we want to talk about? I will get to that point and understand your brand and your people and your products when first you understand me, the listener, what I'm interested in. And that must be hard. Isn't it? That when you have brands come to you and they're like, okay, we have a new product, Steve. Sell our printers. How do you take something like that and then turn it into content?
Steve Pratt: Well, it's interesting. I think you nailed it. First of all, a hundred percent, it is a listener first medium. And I think, when a big part of our job, especially very early on, is explaining the medium and making sure people understand how it works. One of the most obvious things is, it is a voluntary subscription. You can't buy listens. It is not really about impressions. Like you have to get people interested enough in the concept of a show to try it, which is a big hurdle. And then it has to be so good that they want to subscribe and keep listening on an ongoing basis. And if you make something that is that good, there's enormous benefits to be had. To be able to get a half hour of full engagement, an 80, 90, 95% completion rate over and over and over again at a half hour show, you literally can't get that in any other medium. And to really understand the opportunity there. You're like, okay, but it's a very high bar to get that. It's not about you. It's about, what's the gift that you can give to the listener. What's the show that you're the only person that can make it, but that's really serving the listener and creating huge value for them? Would you listen to the show if you didn't work here? So there's a lot of questions you can ask in a strategy phase or program development phase to get people to think like a listener and to think about their own lives as a regular consumer, outside of a marketing department or a branding department. And that usually turns on a lot of lights pretty quickly, or it tells people maybe you should make a podcast because it's probably not going to be something more than... It might be the sort of thing that you get a lot of people to listen to the first episode and they never come back.
Graham Brown: Yeah, that is good advice. Let's put it in the context of Bronco forward. Okay. So let's put that out there. Let's talk about some of the content there. I love the episode, the OJ Simpson one when they're talking about it. And then there's a bit, there's a cameo of a Ted Bundy's car in there, as well. In a museum out of all these cars and they bring out the OJ Simpson one in the chase, that car, that Bronco. When I was listening to that, there's a number of things that struck me, firstly, how good the storytelling was. And, credit to your team, putting that together,
We've a
Steve Pratt: really good team. I take zero credit for that at all. We just have a phenomenal team of storytellers. I'm very lucky in that regard. And honestly, in Ford and their agency, GTB were amazing to work with also. So the chief creative officer, communications officer, at Ford is a former journalist and he was very clear, like I wanna make a real show. Like I want to make a documentary. I do not want to make a puff piece of marketing or a brochure because no one will listen to it. And when you get a chance to work with really smart executives and marketing leaders who think that progressively it's just a treat. Because it opens the door to doing much more creative, brave treatments. And to be able to lean into what the real story is. [inaudible] because I know they've talked to a number of different companies who might produce the Bronco show. And we were pretty honest and said like, you have to talk about OJ. Like you have to talk about OJ. I don't know this, but I'm not sure how many other companies lean in to saying, like, you need to talk about OJ. And I think that might've been one of the things of saying like, this is actually, what's gonna get people to listen to it. This is actually what's going to make it a real show. And if you don't talk about that, it's not going to feel like a real documentary. And they leaned into all sorts of different really tough things about... they were like, we want to tell the real story. We want to tell a journalistically sound show with integrity and tell the real story. And as a company like ours, that's the dream. And it has paid off so well for them as well. It's a win-win for everybody.
Graham Brown: Yeah. Because you would imagine that 9 times out of 10, they would have glossed over that episode, OJ Simpson. That's not very good branding in the traditional sense, is it?
Steve Pratt: But it's a great story. It's a great story. And it's true. I like it, and it's not it, there was certainly not a sensational treatment of it. But it's a really interesting story. And there is another really unusual thing about the Ford podcast is most clients that we talk to, the idea of like, what is the brand's presence in the podcast? Usually the answer is, it should be really light. And usually the analogy we would give is like, think about a media company. If I take Game of Thrones, we know HBO makes Game of Thrones, but there's no HBO executives in Game of Thrones trying to sell you HBO subscriptions. There's no product mentions of HBO in Game of Thrones. It's a great show. We know who made it. And for most brands, I think that the right approach is to have a really light brand touch and be the media company, not the show. But in the case of Ford, the Bronco is such an iconic vehicle and it has such a legitimately amazing story behind it that we almost went against our own best practice and said like, no, this is the one exception. Like you should really lean in it. It has the name it's called Bring Back Bronco. The whole thing is literally about the product. But I wouldn't say that that's the right strategy for everybody.
Graham Brown: But the product has stories. That's the point, isn't it? Printers don't necessarily have stories or... that's the point is that there are these kinds of iconic cultural narratives around Bronco and it's an iconic American symbol as well. It symbolizes a way of life and subcultures and movies and all of that built around it as well. So to put it in the background would have been to miss the actual main story, right? Yeah. I think it's a wonderful work of both journalism and content as well. There's that mix? Isn't it. It's rare, isn't it to get a client who has that kind of bravery as well. And like you said, not to be a puff piece of marketing. That's refreshing to hear that. And I wish every client was like that. Realistically as well, we can't expect them to all be taking those kinds of risks.
Steve Pratt: What's really interesting is I do think there is a job for everybody in the podcast industry. If they're working with clients to push them to be more and more creatively brave, everybody's going to have a different zone of comfort with that. But the more that you make a show for an audience and the less you're making a piece of marketing about yourself, the better you're going to get, the better you're going to get it, finding success for your podcast, the better you're going to find success at building relationships, with potential customers at meeting your business goals and the better experience people are going to have in podcasting. Like I know when we, I think we feel a pretty heavy responsibility that when people come to work with us, that they leave not just having a great experience with us as a company, but just a great experience in podcasting. A renewal or a second season or another show or those sorts of things, those are the benchmarks that we really care about because that's building an amazing industry and saying like, when people think of producing shows as a brand. It is a double high bar because you have to differentiate yourself among 2 million podcasts, but people will also be suspicious. Like, is this a piece of marketing? Is it an infomercial in audio? So it has to be almost like extra good to pass that bar as well. And, we don't really want people coming in and making a podcast saying like, oh, nobody listened to it, it's not an interesting medium. It's like, it's an exceptionally powerful medium with exceptional offerings to brands. When you think about values and the things that you can talk about and what lends itself to great storytelling, top of funnel, kind of brand marketing is very well suited to saying, like, we can tell great stories that are going to be of interest to an audience, and it's not about us. And it's a great fit for doing that and in audio we can paint pictures in people's minds. We can use sound design to make them feel things, and we can get a lot of time with them to explain complicated ideas or to tell really powerful, intricate stories. It's a phenomenal medium. I think we need to help make sure that everybody who comes in understand that and that it's worth doing a better show or a higher quality show or fewer episodes that are better instead of a kind of the thing that might be the quick and easy thing, which is maybe what some of the perception is, is we'll just hang out with our friends and chat and publish it. And hope we turn into Joe Rogan.
Graham Brown: Yeah. [inaudible] I mean, I was one of those guys as well, so I think we all got our starts thinking that. Yeah.
Steve Pratt: And there's nothing wrong with that. But I guess it's a question of, what are you doing it for? Is it a hobby or like trying to actually have a big impact on the world? Or is there a change I'm trying to make?
Graham Brown: Yeah, this is great advice. I think about where we are in podcasting and years ago, I'm sort of pushing a few years towards the big five-O. I'm nearly there. When I started...
Steve Pratt: Me too. Next year. Very similar context.
Graham Brown: The new 30 Steve, apparently. So there we go. My first ever business was selling websites back in the mid to late nineties. And I remember going to one client. And they said, yeah, we have this brochure. What I want you to do is scan this brochure and upload it to the website. And so obviously we were young and wanting money so we took the job, created this website and then called it Brochureware. And I think the thing is actually, it was a thing. There were a lot of people doing this. They were going round getting like, retail stores and these big offices and scanning all their brochures and putting them online. I'm like, wow, there's a lot of money in this stuff. And people were like, yeah no, go and have a look at our website, our brochures there. And it was just like a scanned menu.
Steve Pratt: This is so funny. So I hope it is okay to say this, but we actually use the term Brochureware. I'm saying like, you don't want to make audio brochureware. There you go. It's right around full circle. Yeah.
Graham Brown: Yeah. Crazy but that's how I feel, isn't it? What we've seen with all these new mediums is that they also adopt the old paradigm that it's easy, but yet it doesn't stretch what's possible, right?
Steve Pratt: I love that stretch what's possible phrase you just used. I love that. That's honestly, that is why I think I could speak for most people in our company. That's why we get up in the morning to do this. It's a brand new, medium, relatively speaking. Okay. I already said it was 2005 or whatever, but the rules haven't been invented yet. There's still so much blue ocean out there to explore. And the ability to make the industry that you want and to make the medium as flexible and creative as you want and stretch the possible. That's super exciting for us as a company, but I think it's really exciting for all the clients that we work with too. For most of them, it's really fun making a show like it's the best thing they've done in their career. Yeah. That's why we all do it too. It's really fun. So anyways, I just, as soon as you said that, I'm like, yes, that's fabulous. I love that.
Graham Brown: Yeah, no, it's good. And I get the energy as well. I feel it in terms of your work. I guess now we need to think about moving forward is that the problem, if you like, of opening this up, democratizing the medium and making it possible and giving everybody a voice is that the onus that the challenge has shifted from production to promotion in the sense that now it's getting easier to produce. So any guy, obviously to produce your standard of work is not easy by any shot, but for a guy to do, man speaks to man about man's journey type podcast. You don't even need a microphone to do that now. And so that's been completely democratized and the number of podcasts as well are a testament to that. So now we have this situation where we have more competition for the attention of the user, of the listener. Now, people are seeing, and I'm seeing this a lot across the board, that the top podcasts are getting more and the bottom podcasts are getting less. So there's polarization, as you see in all [inaudible] consolidates as well. Because the top guys come, they amass their resources and knowledge and just like the old days, the record labels had access to the radio stations and the window displays of the old high street stores. So that's happening now. And now everybody's struggling with this promotion part. What do you see as the way forward there? Because to me, what I see the vast majority of what people are doing for promotion is like two things. One is they do an audio grab and share on social media. I'm thinking that's community building here. That's fine, but that doesn't build a community. And the second one is the guest hustle. So they get a guest in, the guest comes, shares it. Steve's fans come and listen to the podcast, but they don't give a crap about Bob's episode. They don't listen to that. And so all that gets lost. So this is a huge hole in the promotion. There's a huge problem in promotion, right? What do you think is the way forward here?
Steve Pratt: I guess, first of all, I would say thinking about the show itself is how you are differentiated and who are you trying to serve? And I think your point is very well taken that it's getting harder and harder to serve everybody, but podcasting is very effective at super serving niches. And I think we're seeing more and more opportunities to say, I'm not going to be The Daily and I'm not going to be Joe Rogan, or I'm not going to be Serial. I'm going to pick the one thing that I really want to own, or the thing I'm passionate about, or the thing where I see there aren't shows in this domain or this style for that audience and go after it. I think that's a really smart strategy. And even within certain categories, thinking about what's the show that doesn't exist in that group of shows and maybe it's a higher quality show. Maybe it's a narrative show. Maybe it's a game show. Whatever that is, but pushing the bravery on the format so that you're different from everybody else. I think that's part one. I'm trying to remember who said this. I feel like it was a podcaster like Roman Mars might've said. So apologies if I butcher this, but somebody said, oh, podcasts don't go viral. And he's like, they do. It's just really slowly. And because word of mouth happens and I think within certain communities, if you make a show for that community, word of mouth does act very well for audience development, if you're great at using your time and attention. This is a big niche, we do a show with Red Hat, which is all about open source software and we make a show with them called Command Line Heroes. And I would say when we first started working with them, I was like, I think it's an amazing opportunity to make a fantastic show for people who are interested in open source. But I don't know how many open source podcasts listeners there are. And it's a lot, like it's a lot. And by trying to be a fantastic show, super serving a very specific target audience. I think it's a highly underrated strategy when we think about that sort of stuff. The second part though, is the audience development is that if you're going after open source web developers with your podcast, it's very obvious the places where you should go to for your show, other podcasts that deal with open source software topics like, finding a match for subject matter and a match for the type of listener that you're looking for people who are already listening to podcasts. That's a very effective strategy and most podcasts people love the hosts and most hosts are willing to do host read ads. And if you present them with a good show, And whether there's some agreement for a promo swap or a feed drop or you're buying ads on their show or whatever it is, if there's an opportunity for a host to say, Hey, if you like my show, I've got a great other show that you're going to like to listen to. I've listened to a couple of episodes. They're fantastic. They're really well done. It's great storytelling, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here, go have a listen to this. Or there's a link in the show notes or something like that. And then they put it out in their email newsletter. That drives pretty serious results and they're exactly the right people. That's certainly one of the key areas that we're spending a lot of time on seeing great results in. I would also say that, the other piece that's amazing and getting better and better and better are all the attribution tools. So things like charitable pod sites, like they're all helping marketers figure out what's working. And I don't know if there's a one size fits all for every show, but being able to do different experiments and measure what works and adjust and iterate and iterate and iterate, you learn what works and maybe stop wasting time on things that don't work or can double down on the things that have the highest impact. So I think that we're going to see more and more strategic audience development based on measuring different strategies and doubling down on it.
Graham Brown: Yeah. I like this space. I like the way it's evolving because it's necessary and it follows a path which is being validated, if you like, in internet marketing that many of the tools that have made internet marketing, like Google analytics, for example, and SEO have really helped people understand, to your point, like stop doing what doesn't works. The classic example is creating a website and thinking that you go like, let's wait for the traffic to come. And then it's like, crickets and tumbleweed nothing because that person, and I've done this. Didn't build the website with Google in mind, or didn't build a website with the audience in mind to your first point, right? What do they want? What are they searching for? What are the keywords they're using? Do they actually talk about what you have in those times? And increasingly that's the case now, isn't it, with podcasts is that we have to think both audience and the platforms in mind because they're all [inaudible] traffic is the fire hose, if you like.
Steve Pratt: Yeah. Like I worked with this super smart guy, Dan Meisner. He is just a real treat on every level to work with. And I quote him all the time because he has all these great turns of phrases, but it's like even doing things like. What is the description for your show and in your RSS feed, and what are your episode descriptions and thinking about writing copy that is partly for humans and partly for machines. And you're probably thinking about the humans, about the first few sentences, because that's what's above the fold in an app that the humans need to read it. Say like, if this is a show for me, but thinking about machines and making it easy for machines to find your show when people are searching for it is also super interesting. And thinking about everything from like, - what's your podcast art? What's the name of your show? What am I communicating? And is it standing out in a sea of tiles? All those things that I think maybe thought of primarily more on an editorial thing, are actually also audience development strategies and thinking about audience development as you develop the show so that you're making a show that is going to be easier to market or is designed it every step of the way to make marketing or promotion effective I think is maybe underrated.
Graham Brown: Increasingly it would become a thing I'm sure that you are seeing, I'm sure that, especially in North America and with your vantage point on the podcast industry, it's only natural, isn't it, that to the earlier point about the consolidation is that those with resources and access and knowledge will use it to say, okay, well maybe we do the show like this, as opposed to the B variant. That's how they can help build audiences for these brands as well. So I think, it's interesting what's happening. Like you mentioned, for example, Chartable the development of these tools as well. SEO, I feel, where it's heading in terms of long term, I liked your point about writing for humans and Google. I think in SEO, in the web, they talk about write for humans design for Google, and that's where we're going. And Google in our context is Spotify effectively or Apple, right? Because if they can get you into that jet stream of organic traffic who are winning.
Steve Pratt: What is interesting too, like even Google. They have very powerful speech to text AI. And they've been working on this for a number of years, but just having audio show up in search results in Google at the right time. And it may be when you're wearing headphones. Maybe it's when you're on a smart speaker. Maybe it's when you're driving a car. But if the best result at the time happens to be audio, they know what's in every podcast episode and are able to search and suggest episodes or potentially sections of episodes. I don't know, but it's all about being able to know what's in an episode, which feels like a big part of the future of audio SEO.
Graham Brown: Yeah. Brave new world. I was speaking to Todd, the founder of Blueberry. He's an O G. He has been around since 2005. Not one of these Johnny-come-lately(s). So he was saying that when I was interviewing him for this and he said, Google is the biggest discovery platform for podcasts. And people don't even think about it because where do people go when they want to discover podcasts, they go into Google, compared to the amount of people that go into Apple and Spotify and search significantly higher. When you look at people like Neil Patel. He noticed that. I saw him say something the other day that the SEO on a podcast is 13,000 times less competitive than on a website. And he's all in on podcasts now. I think he does 30 episodes a month for his podcast. So, these people are getting it and it's happening. So I think you've got these two major factors. One is the strategic audience development that you're talking about. And then you've got this really high quality content, that kind of stuff that you guys and Wondery and, I guess [inaudible] started. That kind of work, that real understanding of the audience, real understanding of narratives that keep us coming back as well. So, it's an exciting time. Where do we go next from here, Steve? You've been in here so long that you could see the next a hundred years in podcasting. What should we pay attention to at the moment?
Steve Pratt: It's so funny. I feel like I've been in it long enough that, maybe I don't know, but I feel like I'm the wrong person to ask. My favorite kind of podcast strategy interview I heard was on the Andreessen Horowitz show, the a16z podcast last summer, I think with a guy named Gustaf from Spotify. I think he's their head innovation officer or something like that, or chief innovation officer or something. And he just changed a lot of my perception around where audio can go and all sorts of levels. So I think one look at the success of TikTok in the last two years and how easy it is for anybody to make a TikTok or to consume content on TikTok and how the creator tools are so easy and yet making a podcast is still hard. Like for most people to actually make a show and to submit it to directories and to figure out an RSS feed and do all those sorts of things. I think that's what Anchor is doing for Spotify. The role of Anchor is to be almost like the TikTok creator tools, like make it as easy as possible to make more and more creators out there and then think about what are the benefits of a Spotify ecosystem compared to a podcast ecosystem. They're experimenting with mixing music and podcasts and making it almost like a radio equivalent. They're experimenting with the ability for anybody to make their own music based show as a playlist with host breaks. I'm very curious about what sort of creator first tools they decide to make. And I'll be very curious about what the conception of a podcast even is going forward. I almost feel like it's inevitable that we end up with short form feeds the same way TikTok is in there. What does that look like in audio? Is it people telling jokes or doing impressions or telling stories or doing short news reports? Like I have no idea what that is, but I think, in some ways, I think that's the biggest lesson of platforms like TikTok or potentially Spotify, if they make it a creator, first platform is we're just going to provide the tools and then millions of users are going to figure out what it's for and in a way, it's the next level of democratizing of the media or audio all the way back in the beginning is it's very hard for anybody to get a radio license or to be able to have the budget, to have a broadcast tower. And there's only a certain number of time slots in a day where somebody could be an on-air host. And podcasting changed that to being like, it can be anybody, but it's still a lot of work to do that. And I think we're just going to see that kind of continuing to shift as a creator first universe. And that's where I'm super excited. I just feel like there's going to be all sorts of stuff that we haven't even thought about yet.
Graham Brown: I like that very democratized future, very decentralized as well. There's some really interesting stuff in Asia. Obviously China is a big factor and it's a bit of a black box for the outsiders. Last year when we were looking at it, there were some clients wanting to get into the Mandarin speaking market. There was a platform called Lizhi which basically means lychee, the little fruit. And it's got like Lizhi FM [inaudible] and basically, it was just all in Mandarin, so I can't read anything, but you can get the idea of what it looks like. And basically it's what you're talking about. It's like a short, but it's a lot of young people, but they will have followers. It's like a mix of TikTok and podcasts. So Steve will have his channel and they'll do like a 30 second every day whilst he's getting up in the morning and doing his inspirational talks and then somebody redoing like 30 minutes and then somebody do like a 40 second one. It's all kind of random, but it 's evolved. And there's like the dating section, people are like I like his voice. It's very sort of like manly and they have all of these kinds of comments on it. It's really interesting.
Steve Pratt: That sounds super interesting. I would love to see that. That's amazing.
Graham Brown: You need to run it through Google translate to stand a chance, but it's really interesting, like what's happening and it's got hundreds of millions of users on it.
Steve Pratt: You know what's really funny when we, like, I think it was this past fall. I like the fall of 2020. We have a really creative team and we use Slack a lot and we have a standup channel, like where everybody just posts - here's what I'm doing today. Just bullets in there. And one of our showrunners Mio just posted an audio file there one day. And it was him saying like, I'm committing to the medium of audio, I'm going audio first. This is my audio stand up. And it just led to a week of all these people one upping each other on this thing of like, here's what I'm doing today. And parodies and gags and music and sound effects and all sorts of crazy stuff. And we were like, oh, it's like Slack and audio where it's our new company called 'Slaudio'.
Graham Brown: Quite register the domain.
Steve Pratt: Yeah, I know. Somehow I don't think it's going to take off, but it was really fun. Everybody had fun and you could listen to five or six or seven of these so quickly. And it's like a short burst of joy and around the same time, I subscribed to this Sam Harris meditation app called the Waking Up. I love it. It 's just a really different way of thinking about consciousness and almost like a much more sophisticated, I don't know approach to meditation. And he put in one of the most interesting features in the last year. And it's just this thing called moments. That you have to opt into and you basically say like, send me a one minute thing randomly at some point during the day. And it's just like this little pearl of wisdom one minute. And it's not even like, you have to sit down for 10 minutes or 20 minutes to meditate, but it may be in the middle of your day. You're like, oh, there's a nice little nugget, boop. And it's like a palate cleanser and something to think about or gives you pause to take a little mini reflection break. I love it. And I feel like there's a role for that that is not being met on the broader scale out there.
Graham Brown: Yeah. Possibility. I like that. A short burst of joy.
Steve Pratt: Yeah, maybe it's just me right now. I think we could use more of that these days.
Graham Brown: Absolutely. I totally agree with you. And like it's going to evolve, isn't it. It's going to meet in the middle because you've got like the Clubhouses and all these sorts of social audio. I think Discord will be very interesting when it starts really gearing up in this space. Like this is all going to come together and I think the spill off from that area of social media is what we're talking about here. I don't think it will happen on Clubhouse. It's going to happen where people use it for more, you know, for different reasons now and just talking at people, I think it'd be more communication and community building.
Steve Pratt: But isn't that interesting now that like in the last year all these big platforms are like, oh, I guess we should pay attention to audio now. And we've got Twitter, we've got Facebook, LinkedIn's going to be doing stuff, Discords doing stuff, Slack is doing things coming out, obviously Clubhouse, Fireside. There's going to be a lot of audio. And I think that even just the different types of platforms that are doing there and the number of people that are going to be using it will lead to a lot of experimentation in forms and formats.
Graham Brown: Absolutely. And new players in the space.
You've been listening to The Age of Audio with me, Graham Brown from the award-winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. To get access to all the audio conversations and book content for the age of audio, go to www.theageofaudio.com. One more time - theageofaudio.com