Worried your art is not mainstream enough, the more niche the better! In Ep#61 we're learning about the long tail of producing art, 3 forces underlying the unequal distribution & my vision of a new economic market.
Huge thanks to Sam Sethi, McIntosh, Dave Jones, Chad F & Jeanpaul for supporting the show (plus everyone streaming as well). You all make this podcast happen!
40% of this episode is going to Cole, Sven, The Doerfels and the app developers who make this all possible.
Statistics Links:
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/stats
Castos: https://castos.com/how-much-money-can-podcasters-make/
Transistor: https://transistor.fm/make-money-podcasting/
Timeline:
(0:00) - Intro
(1:57) - What Is The Long Tail?
(5:17) - Quote 1
(9:02) - The 3 Forces
(13:05) - Quote 2
(18:33) - What Happens After Connection?
(20:10) - Quote 3
(24:06) - Stats & Examples
(33:15) - Boostagram Lounge
(37:46) - Latest Developments
(40:08) - Why Bitcoin
(44:40) - V4V: Time/Talent/Treasure
(47:52) - Cherry On Top by Ainsley Costello
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Connect With My V4V Collaborators:
Cole: https://twitter.com/colemccormick1
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Ainsley Costello: https://ainsleycostello.com/
Worried your artis not mainstream enough. The more niche,the better. And so I do. This. Welcome,everyone to another episode of the valuefor value show. I'm your host Kyrin live here on the firstof the fourth 2024. Indeed it is April Fools. But we're not foolingaround today. We're going to be learningfrom the book The Long Tail by ChrisAnderson for today's episode of the valuefor Value Show. Now, for those who areperhaps joining in, you have never heardof this. The value for value is is a model that I explain hereon this podcast, explaining essentially how digital contentcreators of whatever form they are,you know, music, text, podcasting,audio books, digital art, whatever you do thatis digital and online.
I explainhow you can connect directlywith your audience, rather than through the externalmeans of perhaps using social mediaor trying to do it through a PayPal or Patreonor something like that. And how you can also understandthat value is not just in the monetary form,but also very subjective. And we can use multiple different waysof connecting value. Now The Long Tail by ChrisAnderson. It's a book reviewI've done actually on the Mere Mortals bookreviews and my essential argumentfor for today's episode is that the podcasting medium, and probablymost of the other things I was talking about just then, is a long tailand value for value.
Best serves this longtail, which is the 99%. So in today's episode,we're going to be learning about the long tailof producing art of whatever formthe three forces underlyingthis unequal distribution. And we'll learn about that from whatthe long tail is. And then my visionof a new economic market that is going to emergefrom all of this, and why I think value for valueis going to be a pretty important part of this. So let's start offwith the the basics. What is the long tail now? The long tail started offas a blog post that Chris Andersonwas writing, and Chris Anderson was the,I believe, editor of wired magazine.
So he was very much in a kind of like tech nerdy writing journalism about what was happeningwith tech. And he was noticing in thethat businesses were transformingin the early 2000, and that behemoth companieswere were really starting to emerge from this. So he wrote this blogpost. It was such a popularblog post that he turnedit into a full book. And whatwas the fundamental cause that could give rise tosomething like alphabet, which is owns Google, ownsYouTube of Amazon. We all know whatAmazon is. And then also meta,you know, Facebook and their suite of appsand things that they've, conglomerated Instagram,WhatsApp, etc., etc.
which, by the way,these companies currently are occupying the fifth,sixth and seventh, places of the biggest companiesin the world. So trillions of dollars. Where did all of thiscome from? What was the underlyingforces from this? Well, in my words, technology allowsfor economic efficiencies, and that gives us access to a greater range of productsand the most obvious in this case is the transformationof atoms into bits, i.e. physical thingsthat we have. So music used to bea very physical thing. You'd either have to goto a orchestra, an operaor something like that to hear it, or then it turned into, you know, CDs,and you'd buy the CD.
And then it was thiskind of like in between where you would have this physical thing, but it could be, heard through a more digital medium,I suppose, through speakers and stuff. And now music just existsin this ephemeral cloud somewhere. And I go onto my phoneand I use YouTube music, or I use Spotify,or I use Pandora, whatever streaming serviceor YouTube, directly. So we see, okay, there's been a really bigtransformation. And in thattransformation, a lot of valuehas been created. And it also allows a lot more opportunitiesfor things that weren't that were too costly touse and then be, created.
And as I said, most ofthis is really obvious with the the rapid riseof these companies, but we could have also seen itin the past where it's not just atoms into bits,but it was also, you know, through efficiencies of storage,of supply chain logistics, where the supermarket,for example, is another great examplewhere were previously in, know, a little corner shop store you could only getperhaps you know, one brand of toothpaste,maybe two. Whereasif you go out there now there's thislike 15, there's so many different optionsyou can choose from. And so this is the fundamental thingthat the long tail is where it's sayingthere's a very long range of products of creationswhich are available and or could be available,but there's a kind of like artificial cap.
And so this is whereyou see, in this long tail whereit's essentially a graph X axis isor will be of some metric. sorry, the Y axis will beof some metric. The x axis. The x axis will beof the amount of things. And it's a really boringgraph because essentially it just hugs the yand then hugs the x. So forms this kind ofreverse L-shape. And this is where wewe see okay with technologywith changes we can actually open upa lot new products. But I won't just give youmy, words for it. We're going to readfrom the book, or call will readfrom the book, of Chris Anderson giving us an ideain his own words, what the long tail isas well.
[00:05:35] Unknown:
The theory of the longtail can be boiled down to this. Our culture and economy are increasinglyshifting away from a focuson a relatively small number of hits, mainstream productsand markets at the head of the demandcurve and moving towarda huge number of niches in the tail. In an era without the constraintsof physical shelf space and other bottlenecksof distribution, narrowly targeted goods and servicescan be as economically attractiveas mainstream fare. But that's not enough. Demand must followthis new supply, otherwisethe tail will wither becausethe tail is measured not just in availablevariety, but in the people whogravitate towards it.
The true shape of demandis revealed only when consumers areoffered infinite choice. It is the aggregatesales, use or other participationof all those people in the newly availableniches that turns the massive expansion of choice into an economicand cultural force. The long tail startswith a million niches, but it isn't meaningfuluntil those niches are populatedwith people who want them.
[00:06:39] Unknown:
Yeah, so is funny. So I actually stole thisimage from page 19 of the bookand extended it. So if you'relooking at your screen now, you'll see rightat the bottom it's got on the Y axis downloads, Xaxis podcast rank. And you'll seeit goes from geez, I've got was upto 70,000 podcast on on the bottomand then downloads. It's getting into like the hundreds of thousands,120, 130,000 on the on the Y axis. And it's once, as I said, it'sa really boring graph. And this is showswhat it, it kind of actually looks like. So I actually extendedthis graph from the book because it wasn'ta good representation, and it still actually isn'ta good representation.
It actually needs to be40 times longer on the x axis and 40 timeslonger on the Y. And because this is wherethere's, you know, probablyabout a full million podcasts out there and the bigger shows that aregetting up into the, you know,tens of millions of plays, not into the hundredsof thousands. And this is where we have things for,you know, like the Joe Rogan'sto capture those ones. But there's only goingto be, you know, 50 of, of him and,and you know, he is, well, a truly above the nextperson who's below him. And so you get this reallyunequal distribution. And this is just what happens that there's no kind of like,rhyme, no reason for it.
Popularity makes you know,it's it's it's kind of like thosecelebrities who are famous for being famous,that sort of thing. And so we should now go,okay, this doesn't only justapply to podcasts, but it applies to music, audiobooks,ebooks, digital art. This graph was actually, createdto show the downloads for this thingcalled Rhapsody. And that's a big, long,complicated thing related to Napsterand Rhapsody. If so, if you have never heard of it before, just just imagine the first service orone of the first services that allowed streaming of MP3 is on the internet,and you kind of get get what they did.
So this long tailoccurs in many, many different placesand essentially a lot of people want to create thingsonly if you are able to, you know, really get recognised only if you get massivefame and, and, you know, associatedwealth with that. But there's a lot of people who arestill creating things and they're not reallygetting served. And this is wherewe're going to jump into this next sectionhere, which is talking about thethe three forces. So, these arethe three forces that, allow the long tail to, I guess, be be monetised in a way,to get more exposure. And the three forcesare the democratising the tools of production, democratisingthe tools of distribution and connectingsupply and demand.
So what do these actuallymean? Well, the first is easyto understand for all digital thingsthat I live, listed above. So, and I actually even did a podcaston this recently, called Podcast Tools,which was just explaining, you know, if you wantto start a podcast, you really don't needmuch. You need a microphone. It's one thing, perhaps some headphones, you can even get awaywithout them and some sort of computeror device to capture that audio on. That's that's all you needin terms of the hardware and then softwarewise and services wise, distribution wise, there's podcasthosts out there which will let you do itfor free, even.
And all the others,extremely, extremely, cost cost effective. Like they don't costmuch at all. So it's very, very easy toput a podcast out there. And I think the same things are happeningfor the music. It's much easier to buyequipment to, be able to usesoftware to create things. I always use this example,but one of the more famous Australian musicartist DJs, whatever you wantto call him, called flume. He started off with a, a small deejay thingthat you get from a Kellogg's Nutri-Grain packet and, that's just a cereal that we have herein Australia.
And he just got itfrom that. And that's how he kind ofgot his start as a musician,creating stuff on that, obviously advancedhis technical skills. But you can get startedwith basically anything. So democratising the tools of production, I think this also appliesto digital art, to, you know, drawingsto creations, which you mightturn into digital things. The amountof free software programs out therethat allow you to create, you know, pictures,images, whatever, it's all there. Okay. So we've got thethe tools of production. More people are ableto create things the, the next supply.
And this has the effect of lengthening the long tail, makingmore things available. in justin general, there's just more peoplecreating stuff. The second one, isalso easy to see in place. And this is, democratising the tools of distribution. So I kind of alreadytalked about it, the, for podcasting. This is hostthis is directories. This is apps that alldistribute audio widely. So if you no matter where you arein the world, there's, there's basicallyif you've got a phone, you can access some sortof audio in podcast form. And this is where you'll there wasa recent interesting, article on Pod Newsweekly, or a conversation whereSam Sethi had a chat with, this Indian fellow got, got him, andhe was talking about how Apple isn't very widelyadopted in India.
it's kind of viewed as athing for the rich people. And so most people usevarious different phones and there's justspecialised apps, you know, that, directly for those peoplewith these phones, which are kind of likesmartphones, but not really smartphones, but they can still getaudio because it's just the distributionmechanisms are out there. And these same thingsapply for music through Spotify,YouTube music, Bandcamp, which is the distributorof all of these. Yes. It takes a little bitof money to do it. It's not free. Free,but you can still do this, and you can bean individual artist in your home.
Strumming away YouTube,even Justin Bieber. Perfect example. He was able to get outthere. He was very much in thelong tail when he first, arrived on the scene, Iguess, and then, you know, shot upto ridiculous levels. So we see that there's no reasonyour stuff can't be found if someone was to golooking for it. Now, the problemis still existing for I believe in for digitalcontent creators as this final portion. So this is the connectingof supply and demand. So what we're going to seenow is from page 5657 which details what happenswhen consumers have the tools to interact with creatorsand with other consumers.
[00:13:15] Unknown:
Consumersalso act as guides individuallywhen they post user reviews or blogs abouttheir likes and dislikes. Because it's now so easyto tap into this grassrootsinformation, when you'relooking for something new, you're more likely to find what you wantfaster than ever. That has the economiceffect of encouraging you to search fartheroutside the world. You already know, which drives demand downinto the niches. The other thingthat happens when consumers talkamongst themselves is that they discover that collectively,their tastes are far more diversethan the marketing plans being fired at themsuggest their interests splinter into narrowerand narrower communities of affinity,going deeper and deeper into their chosen subjectmatter.
As is always the casewhen like minds gather, encouraged by the company,virtual or not, they explore the unknowntogether, venturing fartherfrom the beaten path. The explosionof these technologies that connect consumers is what drives demandfrom the head to the tail. In other words, the third forcefurther increases demand for the nichesand flattens the curve, shifting its centreof gravity to the right.
[00:14:24] Unknown:
So oneof the things that make I think podcasting really great, and especially over thesepast couple of years, is we're seeing this abilityfor the audience to create stufffor themselves from the productsthemselves. And there's reallyinteresting dynamics. And this is actuallywhat made social media so excitingfor the first time, because there was no, you know,there was internet message boards, but that and they werethey had their time. That was a revelation of a new technologywhen it first came out. And then social media,which allowed you to be a bitmore publicly visible with who you're following,how you're following, so people can follow these trails down and see,like, oh, he knows this person because he knows thatthat sort of thing.
And I think that this is a similarsort of thing is happening now withwith podcasting, which is places like fountain. And sofor those who don't know, fountain is a podcastingapp where you can especiallythey really highlight this aspect ofof sending money back and forthusing booster grams and usingBitcoin. Satoshis. And this is appears righton their front screen. It's pretty much the first thing you see some clips at the top, and then these commentsof what people are interactingwith down below. And I think this exposureis, is really helpful in, in creatingthis connection that we're talking about.
in or from the quotethat we saw just there, which is, you know,you can splinter down into these narrowerand narrower communities. All this podcast is,you know, Bitcoin relatedto farming technology out. And you know, the centreof nowhere and in middle Americaor something extremely niche podcast. It's not going to be broadwide scale appeal yet. They can still havea community. They can still, connectwith their audience and their audiencecan connect with them with each other, writingthe podcast itself, so fattening this long tail,making it bigger, which was the,I suppose, the the next expert aspect ofwhat happens when when the, the supplyand demand happens.
And what we end up seeing is that the,the mega major hits the JoeRogan's of the world. They kind of decreaseddown a little bit. And that distribution goes more into the long tailonce people realise, oh, there'sa niche podcast here, which is even niche. You're into the aliensor it's even niche, or into these otherridiculous things that he talksabout on his show. Now, I think this can goeven further. Fountain'shad a really good stab at this,and it's been my favourite app over theselast couple of years. Well,I think we'll we'll see even more of thiscoming out.
I know Sam Sethi. I talked about himjust before, we'll take thiseven further with leaderboards and things like thisin true fan, where I kind of think that iswhere a lot of the value can really be driven from,from podcasting, obviously,you need a really good app that's solidwith the technology to do thethe main essential thing that a and, a podcast app does,which is distribute audio. But then adding on thisextra layer, I think really, reallycan, allow individual economic decisionsto be surfaced at large. And I think there's a lotof value in that as well. which is also why I think it'sreally important for apps to, to play nicelyamong themselves.
And this isn't justrelated to podcasting. Same with music. I don'tthink another closed platform isis the answer, even if, a large behemoth iswhat emerges from the all of these interactionsand the surfacing, it's possiblethat would happen. I really hope it doesn't really,really hope it doesn't. But, you know, maybemaybe it will. I think a large platformprobably will emerge. Much like the long tail. There's a long tailof podcasting apps, you know, Spotifyand Apple at this very momentdominate. And then the long tailgoes out. and but I do think we'reseeing a shift where that long tail is fattening.
And I probably thinkthere will be other hits which take over some of these other ones,because the long tail, he doesn't really talk about itin this book, but the people who stay at the very top of the tippytop, the most famous, the most wealthy, the most attracted,the most, you know, downloaded the most,whatever. They don't alwaysstay there. There's athere is a shifting out in and out of, of thesesorts of things. So what happens after,after we're connected? What happenswhen we've got these, technologies,tools, things like this whichwe'll do us. So, when supply and demand are connected,I believe this is going to lead to the creationof a of a new market, and akanew economic activity.
Now, I haven't looked up the definitionof a market, but I would probably saysomething along the lines of like buyingand selling of products or moving thingslike this. which and or perhaps not,I don't know. but I think giving and receiving is probably a better termwhen we're thinking of this new economicmarket. And, value for valueis not purely economical. I hope you've gotten that. After listeningto the, amount of episodes that I've put out,reinforcing that, and need. There is a place like Goodreads,for example, where it's just peoplesending book reviews, recommendations,they're putting stuff up, and there's no economicvalue being traded.
There's no actual moneytrading hands, but there's a lot of value going into that websiteand saying, oh, this person like thisbook. I might also enjoyed that they saidthis about this one. Oh, this other personsaid, this thing is really interesting and diving down the rabbithole. And, I think artists like this apply will create valuablethings for the fans demand to consume. That's that'show I just envision this, this new economic marketthat is coming up. So there's six, six themes of the longtail. And, I've removed thefirst two of these, which, simply state there are more niche goods and accessing themas cheaper.
And those are the firsttwo of the three forces. We talked about thembefore. And page 53 revealswhat the other four are, which leads into also why I think this new economic activity,this new market will, get formed once, once we have better toolsand technology.
[00:20:22] Unknown:
Three simply offeringmore variety. However, does not shiftdemand by itself. Consumersmust be given ways to find niches that suit their particular needsand interests. A range of toolsand techniques, from recommendationsto rankings, are effectiveat doing this. These filters can drivedemand down the tail for once. There'smassively expanded variety in the filtersto sort through it. The demand curve flattens. There are still hitsand niches, but the hits are relatively less popular and the niche isrelatively more so. Five all thoseniches add up, although none sell inhuge numbers.
There are so manyniche products that collectivelythey can compromise a marketrivalling the hits. Six onceall of this is in place, the natural shape ofdemand is revealed on distortedby distribution bottlenecks,scarcity in information, and limited choiceof shelf space. What's more, that shape is farless hit driven than we have been ledto believe. Instead, it is as diverseas the population itself.
[00:21:31] Unknown:
He mentionedtwo things there, so there was a rangeof tools and techniques,from recommendations to rankings. So I actually thinkwe already have the technique down and that's valuefor value. I think the model, the thetechnique, the the ask. And I guess you could say there's still moreto be done on this. How do musicians dothe value for value. Ask how do book writersand authors do that? How do digital artistsdo that? So perhaps the techniquestill needs refining, but I thinkthe overall model, I thinkwe have that in place. And what we're really just lacking atthis moment is the tools.
So the toolsfor recommendation, this perhaps might be something like Pod Role, where I can recommendother podcasts that I really enjoywithin my own feed. So if people are like, oh, this is what the creatorof this podcast recommends to also check out,which is what I do. I recommendyou know, my own shows as well as podcasting 2.0and some other ones. I thinkthe tools for promotion. So this could be landingand bio pages for artists. This could be, you know, promoting your,your podcast within the actualapps themselves and not just doing itin this kind of advertising way, wherethe money actually goes only directly to the, the,the, the page itself.
So this would be,you know, places like, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram,and you could even apply it to the podcasting apps themselves, wherea bunch of them overcast, I think podcast or placeslike this fountain had a really goodwrite up of of what was happeningwith all of them. And, and you know, you get your CPMsand stuff, but, I think the directiongiving that directly to your audience, i.e. hey, I really think you'd, you'd enjoy this podcast and I'm willingto put some money up that that you would dothis. And fountain has a really good featurethat does this.
And I know true fans also, is doing a similar thing. So I think that tools,would be great tools for broadcastingyour, your activity. So this being a person on the actual platformand using activity streams to being like,okay, this is exactly everythingthat what you're doing. and once again,I'll talk about true fans here,and I'll talk a little bit about why I've,I've mentioned true fan so many times,in this episode, this is all the nerdytechnical stuff that takesa while to figure out. And so these tools that are coming outthat they do take time. And the long tail, I thinkit's a really great, imagination or a curve seeing this, this graph and going,okay, this is actuallywhat is happening within the digital contentcreation scene.
And this is, servingsome people really well, but it's not servinga lot of people at all. And, I've even gotsome stats and examples to, to backup this claim of mine. So let's jump to that now. So on your screennow you'll see, it's very simple stats. I took this from one of myhost, buzzsprout. Or my, my ex host. I've actually moved overon to pod Home and it says episodedownloads for the first seven days. And this is just of all the podcasts, I believe in their kindof hosting catalogue, which is hundreds ofthousands. I've got a lot. So the top 1% of podcasts,they get about 5000 downloads,top 5% is just above 1000, top 10% is 480, top 25%will be 119 and top 50%.
They get 30 downloads, 31downloads in the first seven days. So the questionthat I have of this is, and we're really divingdown into podcasting here before the longtail is exposed there. There's a Cut-Off point,usually financially. And that's what we saw in all of theseprevious graphs. And this Cut-Off pointused to be, the the record store canonly hold so many records. The, supermarketcan only hold so many spacesfor toothpaste. The, you know, the CD store,the distribution or the bookstore can only holdso many books, all of thesesorts of things.
but then when the digitalage came around, we see, okay,they can hold so much more. So my my question is, how many podcasts break the dynamicad insertion barrier? So that's one kind offinancial Cut-Off point. And we're just lookingat finances here. How many the sponsorship and ad barrierare just at all. How many break thefinancial barrier at all. And so there'sa couple of articles which I'm going to bereferencing here. And the first ofthese was, I've given youthe stats there. And so the top1% of podcasters of 5000, per episode, and there was an article by costoswhich says how much money can podcasters make?
And if you jump downto the the section where it says,how much money do average podcasts make? And I've got a couple assumptionsthere related to to ads, how many people would contributeand things like this. And they say if you have 5000 downloadsper episode, you'll start to landsponsorship. You'll be able to chargeabout $20 CPM for ads. And so this is kindof that that little break offpoint in terms of pretty much puttinghaving like dynamic ad insertionand be able to put ads into your showthat it just injected the sponsors,the ad advertisers, they need that.
So this is the top1% of, of podcasts that, they'll be about to,to start, you know, putting some adsinto their shows like that where it'sthis kind of impersonal or at bulk, just bam, bam,bam, chopping them in. we then go on toanother article over here, which was from TransistorDolphin, which says,make money podcasting. And if you jump downto the bottom here, they they would talk abouthow to get advertisers for a podcastwith low downloads. And I was just saying,you know, if you find your sponsors, you can do this.Our podcast gets about 2600 downloadsper episode.
we're able to attractadvertisers organically because we servea very specific niche. And so they're essentially saying,you know, if you're in the low thousands, you can still make some moneythrough advertising. It's probably not going to be this bulk dynamic ad insertion, but you could probably do it through host readads and through, you know, a sponsorshipof, you know, this, this companyis sponsoring us. How about thethe just breaking the financial barrier at all. And so the other the other things that they hadn't herewould, you know, affiliate sales you could docreate a course.
You could also usePatreon support. And so you have this direct contribution back and jumping backover to the costless article again,they were assuming like, you know, if maybe 1% of your audienceor 2% of your audience, that's goingto contribute directly. then then you can makesome money from that. Well, if you've only got30 listeners, which is what50% of podcasts do, that's,that's like 0.9 people, you'renot breaking the barrier. So they're I think a good I think this lines upwith the long tail, which is,you know, 1% of podcasts are able to get these deals, I guess,and make money from that.
Then we jump into,I guess, you know, the top 5%,maybe being able to make some moneyjust through the sponsorships and adsand then the top 50%, they might be able to make a little bit of money,but the bottom 50%, they're not even direct supportcontribution from their, their audience. The they're not goingto be able to to do this. And so, I'm arguing,I guess in this, in this episode that the, the 1 to 5, 1 to 50%range are just not getting servedadequately monetarily speaking. and that the 50 to 100%range that are not served in the monetaryform as well.
So I was talking aboutvalue and and monetary stuff,but I think, I think there'sthis lack of ability within podcasting apps,within music apps, within, you know, e-book readersand things like this. to receive an in-appmessage. was frustrating.For example, in podcasting,now we have it. We've we've solvedthat one and it and it solved a dilemma,for example, for myself. and same with receivinga payment. Boom dances. It happens in the app now. And I think that'sa revelation. I think that's an amazingthing that's happened because every barrierthat is up.
So yes, we have Patreon. but if you're only getting30 listeners an episode and tryingto convince them to join up onto a new platform, add in all of that, you know,credit card details and things like thiswhen they're, you know,you're just adding extra barrierafter barrier to do that. And so I think, thecurrent lack of ability to comment on an episode,for example, will eventuallyget solved. And this is the mythical crossapp comments which mayor may not happen one day. I think they will. so not only these audienceto created connections are required, but I thinkalso the created to create up an audienceto audience as well.
All of these thingsthat we're talking about of connectingsupply and demand. I believethis stuff is happening. I think personally it's going to happenwith a monetary aspect to it as well,so you can support your favouritemusician, your odyssey digital content creatorwithin the app itself. And they don't have to rely on these,these other methods. and I just think this isa fantastic way of, of the long tail being able to get servedin that new market, this new economicactivity, because at the momentthen, then I don't think they're getting servedthat that 1 to 50% range.
I think they're stillstruggling a lot. And being able to do this directly within, from peerto peer, within the application or whatever applicationyou're using. to to do that,I think is a is a fantastic wayof doing that. Now, there is, a caveat that I need to add here,which is, a common misconceptionof the long tail. Just becausethere is a lot of people creating things,it doesn't mean that those things are worthy ofof getting value back. So there's a lot of trashin the long tail. There's a lot of trashin the niches. there's a lot of trashin that bottom 50%, probably even in that top1 to 50%.
There'sa lot of crap in there which just probably doesnot deserve getting value. So just because it's created doesn't mean itdeserves value back. and which I thinkonce again fits into the very nicelyinto this economic model that I'm creatingin my head, which is, you know, the valuefor value model. It's if you're givingsomething you want to be givingsomething that is worth a value. And when you'rereceiving it, you want to receive something of valueas well. And so if you as a content creatorjust putting out crap, yeah, you're just going to get crap in returnor nothing in return.
And thatmakes sense to me. So I don'tthink all of the apps are serving usproperly at the moment. And I think thethe ability to find these niches to fatten is tailis just ever expanding. for example, the,there's a show called beer, Bourbonand Balderdash. It's a podcast. It'svery niche. You know,they talk about beer, bourbon, balderdash,and then a theme topic. And, this is Wes and John, and I thinkthey outperform what their numberswould be because they are onthe value for value model and they are experimentingwith these new things. The door whose musicyou heard at the start.
And if you're on the livestream as well, you would have heard,at the beginning and end. They also outperformwhat they do. So I personally discovered so many niche podcasts,music, artists through the valuefor value world space. And, I think this is justthe way of the future. So the long tail, if you never heard about it before,is, is a great way to, jump into itand to learn about it. And, and I think it's, it's going to bean important concept to, to think about for the,the coming time. So roof big, big, section that let's jump onto some booster gram lounge and thanks some people who haveactually helped contribute to this show and providesome value.
So Adam Curry,please take it away. Welcometo the value for Value. Booster Gram Lounge. Brilliant. Thank you so much Adamfor that introduction. There a lot of hugechunk of value being, shown back from here from, quite a while ago as well. So the Boost Gram lounge,for those who don't know, is whereI'm talking about, you know, I'm I'm firmlyin the long tail. For those who don't know, this podcastis probably getting in. I'd say rangeof like the hundreds of of downloadsper episode about that. same with my other ones. Mere mortals, meremortals. Book reviews.
I'm very firmly in the top 25%, like just borderingon that 25% range. So I'm in the thickof the long tail. and this is where I, I, you know,I don't have the option. I wouldn't have done itanyway. I don't like advertising, but even if I hadthe option to, I wouldn't want to, but I don't havethe option of doing dynamicad insertions because I'mjust not large enough. But that doesn't matter,because I've. I've found my niche. I've found the people who want to contributeback to me. And they boy stepped upthis week bigly. So jumping inwith that bola boost here.
Bola boost I should sayit's Sam Sethi and he says V5 is going to take timeto get into the consciousness of massconsumers. PocketFM just raised 130 million at a valuationof 750 million for a pay as you gomodel like V for V, I believe it was last weekor the week before. I was talking about how the pay what you wantis very equivalent to value for valueis big wins like this. That raisedconsumer awareness of alternative models.Stick with it. And that was 50,000 satsusing Trufant bola the equivalent wise. That's like 55 bucks,Australian. And not only ishe content with that, he says another one tree fence has multiple modelsto help monetise creators streamsthat boost, but also support the admindashboard.
Creators can also locktheir minimum value so fans cannot pay lessbut can pay more. We have recoupednegative sets, VCs and A and that stands for valuetime splits and a newadvertising model where users are paidto listen to adverts. The future is here. It's just unevenly distributed,just like the long tail. Another 50,000 satsand using a tree fence. My God, thank you Sam. and the reason I've been talkingabout Sam so much is. Yeah, he gets it. He really gets it. and books like this, I'msure, have influenced his thinking a lot. And, we can seesome results here.
We have John Paul,and he just says thanks. He sent ten sets, sent using tree fence,and then another one. Great fee for this stuffand others. ten sets using tree fence. I have no ideahow he found me. found me, I believe, is because I was just playingaround on the platform, you know, adding people, boosting,putting activity there. And, that sort of activity is the thingthat can drive people to, to your niche to,to find it out. So once again, a little,a little example of that very minor, very smalleconomic activity. But it is happening there.
We see Dave Jonesalso coming in. He saysgreat topic cover 2112. Since then, using treefans down a lot of people a standard starting to catchon people. Interesting. We have Macintosh here and it says lovethe thoughts. It's been a journey for me over the last twoplus years. More frustratingthan exciting really. But we press on.I feel your Macintosh. that was 2100 SATsat using fountain, one of his favouritenumbers. with his showSatoshi's Plebs. It's changed namea couple times. Had to think about that. And so that is a Bitcoin podcastand very informational if you, interested inthat, want to know more?
More than I can provideon this podcast for sure. and yeah, he doesthe value for value model. He's been doing itexclusively for, as he said, twoplus years. And, and it is a struggleat times. But we press onand it's we're at these early stageswhere it's not easy. It's not easy. But this is where the fun stuff is and where the exciting stuffis really happening. And then we havefinally Chad F coming in. So just realisedin Bruce's episode and he sent that out,today, 12:30 a.m. 3333 it sentusing fountain as well. And then you also hadthe shocker emoji face. And I did see himlive in the chat as well.
So thank youfor for joining live chat. And I really, really doappreciate that. So much fun. When I have some peopleto interact with and who I knowwe're, tuning in as well. So let's jump on to, I suppose, the latestdevelopments. I want to try and keepthis show snappy ish. It's,I do like to talk, but we'll keep it snappy ish. And so what are some ofthe latest developments? Well, one of the reallycool ones actually coming up once againtalking about true Fence is, this technologygetting better and easier. So I've been saying like, oh, it'sa bit of a grind still.
You know, you still gotto work on it. Things aren't. You know,I was talking about the thingswhich will come. Well the future is herefeatures here. So bigshout out for Sam Sethi at True Fencefor getting the, Google and Apple Payability to acquire sets. When I first gotsome Satoshi's on the Lightning Networkand started boosting podcasters wereit was painful. Holy damn, it was hard. And if you're coming in absolutelyfresh, the concept of it. I can still see being hard,but you don't have to deal with the technical thingsright now if you got a true fence,if you download the app, it's a progressiveweb app.
So to work ever, oryou just go to the website if you getan alibi account and then you clickthe button, top up wallet. It's a one click thing. Connects to stripe. I don't know how it worksor Google or Apple Pay and you can acquiresets easily. And, you know, a bunch of peopledid it this week because Sam saidhe had it. And man,it was quick and easy. So it still requiresa lot of steps. I guess. But, you know,Sam himself, he referenced the the long tailin last week's Pod News Weekly, so I knowhe reads his books and, I assume he keeps gettingvalue from these podcasts because he,he keeps boosting and big.
And this is just a quickreckon. Ask for me hereif you have books like, oh, a list of all the onesI've done here so far. So we have, The Inevitableby Kevin Kelly. We have The Long Tailby Chris Anderson. We had free by ChrisAnderson as well. We had Book Wars by JohnB Thompson. I know I've also read theThe Second Curve by Charles Handy, whichSam recommended to me. I've got a couple moredifferent books coming up, and I'm probably going to go back to somefor some extra concepts in thisin this, season four. But if you haverecommendations to send through of a book that you think relatesto how technology is trending and, and that you think somevalue for value concepts, within that book, pleaselet me know.
Send that to me.I would love to read that. So let's jumpon to this section here. My Why Bitcoin section. a lot of what makes the long tail interesting is that itit exposes abundance that waspreviously capped. So these these caps that you would say that were kindof artificial in a sense. So like there was it was there was a physicalreason for, you know, a store can only hold so many recordsand things like that. and for a lot of thingsin the human world, this has mostly positiveconsequences. So, abundant energy,for example, when it exposesthis abundance, that was capped.
It's good. It's, you know, the most wealthysocieties, the ones which have the highest standardsof living, the highest, you know, happiness ratesand all the good things that humansenjoy in the world. They're the ones withwith the most energy and there are some trade offs. For example,we have more waste in, in some of thedeveloped countries, in terms of raw volume,in terms of the actual efficiency, it's,it's way better here. and a book that highlights this is more from lessactually, how growth is not actually always gainedby consuming more, but by essentially recycling andfinding efficiencies. So, what isinteresting, I think an and worth contrastingwith Bitcoin with, with what we're thinking about the long tail herewith this, you might go, okay, well artificialscarcity is silly because we just learnedfrom the long tail.
It's better to have, you know, abundanceand be able to access this abundance. And so there's a couple of three thingsthat I had from this one. One of my lifephilosophies is paradox is part of life. So we want abundantMP3 music. We still desirethat thing. and we also still desirethe very hard to get expensive lambinto Lamborghinis. So we can want thingsthat are abundant, and we can want things that are not abundantat the same time. It's not. It's not just about supplyand demand. It's there are some other factors that come into it. the long tail isn't a zero sum game,so there's still going to be room for the hits.
This is the Joe Rogan's is the Taylor Swift'sis the Jake J.K. Rowling's of the world. There is still going to be people drawninto a certain thing, because it is better, because it has networkeffects, because, it was the first onebecause whatever reasons, and I think Bitcoinis just definitely a hit. There is a long tailof, of cryptocurrencies and they're, you know,interesting to dive into. I believe the economicmarket works things out. And so if you want to go play with some of themthat's awesome. But it's also worthrecognising okay there is a hitand the hits the cultural phenomenonand the things that have value.
Not that these othersdon't have value, but it certainly has greatervalue. and Sam was mentioningin his his message that, there wasthis company which had, what was it called? It was called dingding ding ding pocket FM. And they were essentiallyusing like, fairground tokens within the, in their appwithout any, real value attached to it. And I think there's a there is a good argumentto be said for, especially if you'retrying to create a livingfrom these things, it's nice to be able to bring some of that valueout of the system, rather than just all of itstaying within the the pocket FM app.But you know, who knows?
We'll see. We'll seewhat happens to that earning a lot of, you know,raising a lot of money to do things like that. Interesting, interesting. The last point I just hadhere was caps are a funny thing,and money doesn't work well when more ofit is made exponentially. which contributesto things like inflation. it's notthe only reason, but, if everything is gettingmore efficient over time, why wouldn't it getcheaper over time as well? And so, here'sa little just thing, which is kind ofinteresting. Bitcoin is, not deflationary. A lot of people say this,but it's disinflationary.
So it actually still isinflating. It's just inflatingat a lower rate. And this is on a strictly speakingeconomical terms. and part of this way way of this worksis through the halving which is occurringon the April 20th. So in 19 days time, which would be veryexciting, very interesting and yeah,this is part of the reason why we're a lot ofpeople are using it within these podcast apps, within these music appsthat are coming out. And I think more peopleare just going to get more and more into itbecause it, it's the best of the bunchso far. So little interestinglittle y bitcoin section.
There. Value for value. How can you help supportthe show time, talent and treasure? It's whatI like to talk about and which is the kind ofrecognised standard ofof wireframing things. So timeyou can share this episode with a digital contentcreator. I would really appreciatethat. I think they're the ones who need to hearabout this first, so that they can let theiraudience know, hey, this is what valuefor value is, and this is how it works. you can also join melive as well. That's really fun. And I did see,Sam streaming in some sets from truefans as well.
So, you can do this via a lot of differentpodcasting apps. I also go live on YouTube,just, for the visual aspectto be able to show that. But I really doappreciate the, the sets coming inwhich I get split up with, my three collaborators aswell, who helped provide voice acting,who helped provide digital and,you know, art. The gifts that, Sven was makingas well as music right at the start and preand post live stream. So really appreciate when you sendin those sets, because a lot of that is goingto other people who help create the show as well.
Talent. anything I can doto make this show better. What annoys you? Do you like thethe time format? I don't create chapter,episode art for this. If you wanted to do that, I would very muchappreciate that. And I would, you know,I'd be willing to put you in on a split as well. if there are waysthat you think that you can helpcontribute to the show, whichyou have a special talent in, if you think it'ssomething I'm not doing or could be doing betterreach out to me. I really love to knowthis. We already have that. last time by it was at the tone record, I think he was talkingabout, wantingto do some end of show, creations for me.
And I said,yeah, I'd love to do that. We'll do thatin season five. So all those sortsof things, book recommendationsalready, asked for that as well. And the last one treasurethree options, new podcast app. So if you go to meImmortals podcast.com/support, I've got a runthrough there of all ofthe different apps and also viathe Podcast Index website. Or if you do it directly to me through the PayPallink down below, I like to send that on andand help developers who are also within these,splits as well. I think next weekI'll do an episode on focusing what value forvalue music is.
I've been noticingsome really, just the discussions that I think I could helpclear up or help contribute to a one off piecefor new people coming in. I've done this before,but I think this is one of those ones I've gotto keep coming back to. and especially for those who don't knowhow wavelike it's working. and this also ties in with, remixingand the new economy I was talkingabout earlier. I want to dive into thata little bit more. I also will be in Brazilthis time next week, so, please,please bear with me for any interruptions if I'm not liveat the particular time, that I normally am, I might have to changesome things around.
It will be like 9 p.m. there, I think,when I normally do it. So yeah, I'll have to see. I'll have to see. and this is going to getus onto our last section here,which is where I play some very fairvalue music. and I do see, Sylviain the chat or Silva, putting some beesin. Nice. Thanksfor joining. So we'll, And value for value music. So what is that? It's essentially where, people put their music upas an RSS feed withthe acknowledgement that, hey,value for value, you can use thisin their shows. I just ask that you, put me in as a splitand predominant split, and, I play the musicon my show.
And if you boost in, if you havestreaming stats whilstthis song is playing, most of the statswill go to them. I put 90%as the split for this. So we were talkinglast week about the value for value concertand some news on that. It is officially going to be on Saturday,April 6th at 5:30 p.m. Central time. so this will be the,I guess, the second real big live value value music show,which I helped to support. And I sent in,you know, 222,000 sets to to do that. So, a fair chunk of moneyto, to help support, rebellion is creation on and for the artiststo be able to create and earn directlyfrom their art, through this new model,I'm putting my money where, where my mouth is.
So last weekwe played just loud and he had a song calledshrimps were one of them, one of his songs.It's got many. And he was a trailblazerin doing this. And the other,I suppose, like main main lady who kicked thisall off was Anthony Costello. And her track Cherry on Top was thethe first one to reach a million sets,boosting in. It was the first kind of big hit in the valuefor value world space, if you want to call itthat. And it's a bangerof the song. I loved it as well. I was, you know,one of those people contributingto those million sets. So I feel it'sonly fitting for, for her to play us off before the,the next, one comes at.
And so here is, cherry onTop by Ainsley Costello I.
[00:49:52] Unknown:
Guess I'm not. dance as you guys, I. Knowthat you didn't know that I knewabout your little play, but you had to goand tell. Everyone. I might mentionthat you hadn't won. But I bet you're wonderingwhy you little knife doesn't hurt my doglike you thought. It worked. Well, thankfully,you did the hard part for me,and I just think it's good you put to your songfor the mess you made. But I leave it out. I won't say I won't give youthe reaction that you want to share on the top. You share your song flaws. I know that if I did,I would sneak away. To the corner of the room.
CauseI know that you weren't used to having it allgiving back to you. And though it might besomething to say. If it's rottenand cry like a little boy. You lied to everybody. Don't serve a purpose. And if I do, I'mstill the bigger person. To your songfor the mess you made. But I leave it out to rot. Won't failI won't give you the reaction that you wantto say sorry. I'm from, It's your, Well, honey,I hope you know that. I wish you well. Or maybe I don't, butyou know that I love you. Tell you she the way. Can't say you didn'thandle it with grace. Becauseat the end of the day, I'm not the onewho put the cherry on top of the messyou made.
But I'll leave it. Out to rot. We'll say I'll give you the reactionthat you want to keep. Let's say you're sorryfor the mess you made. But I'll leave it outto rot. Don't say I won't give youthe reaction that youwant the cherry on top. It's very much up. It's cherry on top.